I've mostly gotten good a curating my dash how I want but the dehumanization of 1d adjacent women still kind of distresses me. I don't see a lot of it, and when I do I've been ignoring it but I don't feel good about that. I'm not a confrontational person and don't feel like calling people out directly is very helpful usually, but biting my tongue is making me feel icky. do you have any suggestions? (I want to like these people in fandom, in fact a lot of times I DO like them, they make funny and interesting posts but then they hit me with a completely unhinged woman hating tirade, and I find it really disheartening)
I know what you mean! When I first joined fandom I kind of accepted the "these particular women are especially toxic and evil" narrative about the women of the moment (Eleanor and Camille) and was too excited about my shiny new fandom to worry too much about questioning things. A shift happened for me when there were rumors about Harry and Kiko Mizuhara. Before she denied the dating rumors, i had already started seeing posts about how problematic and awful she was.
It feels clear that for a lot of people there's no way for a woman to be a "good" beard. She's making content that represents a straight image for the guy she's linked with? That's clout chasing, leeching off his fame, and doing wayyyy too much. She's not posting about him at all? She's a lazy leech who isn't even doing what she's being paid to do.
Unfortunately the answer is blacklisting the tags that popular blogs use to talk about ships or the women in them and to unfollow/block the people who say the most.
My strategy was to unfollow the people who talk about the current pr relationships/"stunts" regularly, especially the blogs that seem to have a lot of followers and will end up on my dash anyway. I'm sure I blocked a couple people too, but unfollowing helped a lot! I did this during holivia era and haven't felt the need to go back to following anyone, though i still cruise by occasionally because, like you, i enjoy fandom jokes and wanna have a good time!
Also. There was one occasion in particular where a couple people were using a tag to talk about a woman in a way that felt extra misogynistic and somewhat ableist. When that happened, i sent a DM to the people with the tag and spoke honestly, telling them the specific issues i had with what was said and asking them if they had considered the implications of it. They were both immediately understanding and actually changed/didn't use that tag anymore. I can't remember the blogs or what the tag was, but it did feel like an important reminder that most people don't want to cause others distress, and are willing to listen when you come to them as yourself (not an anon, but someone they've been in fandom community with for a while) and speak honestly as someone with a concern, not a person trying to win a fight.
I would say that's something to use sparingly though, because at the end of the day, we live in a society that not only hates women, it teaches and rewards hating women constantly. I think of myself as someone who has worked to combat the misogyny ingrained in myself and the world around me, and I still have to stop myself from letting those thoughts in! I'll literally have a thought about some woman or other being annoying, roll my eyes, and then realize OH SHIT men do this all the time and don't get called annoying for it 😅😅😅. It's not your job to try to teach a relative stranger on the internet how to recognize and combat internalized misogyny; sometimes you gotta sigh and move on!
Sorry this got a bit long, but hopefully it helps!
Also, i recommend looking at the blogs of people whose attitudes you like and checking who they reblog from! Great way to find more like minded people without having to ask for a blog rec list.
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