Books. Nerdery. Life.

That’s one question to ask, sure.

But when a little boy is being told by his mother to suck it up or else he’ll never be a real man?

That’s a woman placing that system’s constraints upon her son. She didn’t set it up any more than her son did, or her father did. But she is being the enforcer of the system.

We need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though the current men who live under it made it, and we also need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though they are ever only enforced by men.

from The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

When a man earnestly tries to verbalize the immense pain and suffering he experiences under patriarchy, and your response is a witty quip that shifts the conversation away from vulnerability towards mockery and blames him for the existence of the system both of you were born into without choosing, you are acting as a patriarch would like you to act: man up, shut up.

this is also not true btw. everyone needs to get more kyriarchy in their feminist analysis.

there is no "ongoing collective permission of men," because patriarchy is not a fucking democracy. it is one element of an entire matrix of domination (to use Patricia Collins' term from Black Feminist Thought) and the majority of man are, at best, foot soldiers and cannon fodder for the (white supremacist imperialist eugenicist cisheteroperisex-)patriarchy.

patriarchy, as all systems of oppression do, creates an illusion that the majority of people have some inherent connection with those in power, in order to convince them to support the system and so that they do not recognize how the system truly works. when you say shit like this, you are buying into that patriarchal illusion.

and like, yes, if all men / the majority of men suddenly developed a feminist consciousness and became dedicated to anti-patriarchal action, obviously that would be a massive blow to patriarchy and kyriarchy as a whole. but realistically, that will never happen in a way perfectly removed from everyone else? there is no way the majority of men will become anti-patriarchal without it having anything to do with women. there will never be a world where men simply decide that patriarchy is bad and deconstruct it while all the ladies sit around a pool drinking cocktails.

the system of white supremacy, of imperialism, of ableism, etc. could not exist without the participation of white people, citizens of the imperial core, abled people, etc. which is why these systems do not ask permission from these groups, they construct institutions and social worldviews which manufacture these groups & their participation in the system. these institutions and worldviews are difficult to separate oneself from, hard to even fully understand in the first place. it will NEVER ever ever ever ever be as simple as "everyone who is classed as the dominant group one day simply decides to reject it and then the whole system crumbles and everyone celebrates." liberation will always require solidarity. which itself requires emotional intelligence, conflict resolution skills, and not waiting for the people one suffers alongside to be ideologically perfect/ly aligned with you before they "deserve" your solidarity.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

The author's proudly displayed fetish

The author's fetish you're pretty sure they don't realise they have

The author's fetish which they're firmly convinced everyone has and is just pretending otherwise

The author's non-sexual special interest which just sounds like a fetish because of their habitually unfortunate phrasing

The fetish the author is making a well-meaning effort to cater to in spite of clearly not understanding it themselves

The author's fetish that never quite makes it into the text because they keep getting sidetracked by the requisite worldbuilding

The author's utterly pedestrian sexual preference which the text treats like a bizarre fetish because they've got shit to work through

The author's seemingly innocuous recurring trope they're going to have a personal revelation about ten years down the road