like bell hooks basically sums up the issues i've noticed wrt feminism & the idea that "feminism has always said the patriarchy hurts men!" yet that idea not materializing into feminists investing in men's liberation:
It was difficult for women committed to feminist change to face the reality that the problem did not lie just with men. Facing that reality required more complex theorizing; it required acknowledging the role women play in maintaining and perpetuating patriarchy and sexism. As more women moved away from destructive relationships with men, it was easier to see the whole picture. It was easier to see that even if individual men divested themselves of patriarchal privilege, the system of patriarchy, sexism, and male domination would still remain intact, and women would still be exploited and oppressed. Despite this change in feminist agendas, visionary feminist thinkers who had never been antimale did not and do not receive mass media attention. As a consequence the popular notion that feminists hate men continues to prevail.
The vast majority of feminist women I encounter do not hate men. They feel sorry for men because they see how patriarchy wounds them and yet men remain wedded to patriarchal culture. While visionary thinkers have called attention to the way patriarchy hurts men, there has never been an ongoing effort made to address male pain. To this day I hear individual feminist women express their concern for the plight of men within patriarchy, even as they share that they are unwilling to give their energy to help educate and change men. Feminist writer Minnie Bruce Pratt states the position clearly: “How are men going to change? The meeting between two people, where one opposes the other, is the point of change. But I don’t want the personal contact. I don’t want to do it…. When people talk about not giving men our energies, I agree with that…. They have to deliver themselves.” These attitudes, coupled with the negative attitudes of most men toward feminist thinking, meant that there was never a collective, affirming call for boys and men to join feminist movement so that they would be liberated from patriarchy.
Reformist feminist women could not make this call because they were the group of women (mostly white women with class privilege) who had pushed the idea that all men were powerful in the first place. These were the women for whom feminist liberation was more about getting their piece of the power pie and less about freeing masses of women or less powerful men from sexist oppression. They were not mad at their powerful daddies and husbands who kept poor men exploited and oppressed; they were mad that they were not being giving equal access to power. Now that many of those women have gained power, and especially economic parity with the men of their class, they have pretty much lost interest in feminism.
As interest in feminist thinking and practice has waned, there has been even less focus on the plight of men than in the heyday of feminist movement. This lack of interest does not change the fact that only a feminist vision that embraces feminist masculinity, that loves boys and men and demands on their behalf every right that we desire for girls and women, can renew men in our society. Feminist thinking teaches us all, males especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life. Clearly we need new strategies, new theories, guides that will show us how to create a world where feminist masculinity thrives.
^^ that last part is why anti-transmasculinity theory is so important. what is the goal but new strategies and theories that guide a new understanding of feminist masculinity (more of the quote under the cut, read the book here)
Sadly there is no body of recent feminist writing addressing men that is accessible, clear, and concise. There is little work done from a feminist standpoint concentrating on boyhood. No significant body of feminist writing addresses boys directly, letting them know how they can construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism. There is no body of feminist children’s literature that can serve as an alternative to patriarchal perspectives, which abound in the world of children’s books. The gender equality that many of us take for granted in our adult lives, particularly those of us who have class privilege and elite education, is simply not present in the world of children’s books or in the world of public and private education. Teachers of children see gender equality mostly in terms of ensuring that girls get to have the same privileges and rights as boys within the existing social structure; they do not see it in terms of granting boys the same rights as girls—for instance, the right to choose not to engage in aggressive or violent play, the right to play with dolls, to play dress up, to wear costumes of either gender, the right to choose.
Just as it was misguided for reformist feminist thinkers to see freedom as simply women having the right to be like powerful patriarchal men (feminist women with class privilege never suggested that they wanted their lot to be like that of poor and working-class men), so was it simplistic to imagine that the liberated man would simply become a woman in drag. Yet this was the model of freedom offered men by mainstream feminist thought. Men were expected to hold on to the ideas about strength and providing for others that were a part of patriarchal thought, while dropping their investment in domination and adding an investment in emotional growth. This vision of feminist masculinity was so fraught with contradictions, it was impossible to realize. No wonder then that men who cared, who were open to change, often just gave up, falling back on the patriarchal masculinity they found so problematic. The individual men who did take on the mantle of a feminist notion of male liberation did so only to find that few women respected this shift.
Once the “new man” that is the man changed by feminism was represented as a wimp, as overcooked broccoli dominated by powerful females who were secretly longing for his macho counterpart, masses of men lost interest. Reacting to this inversion of gender roles, men who were sympathetic chose to stop trying to play a role in female-led feminist movement and became involved with the men’s movement. Positively, the men’s movement emphasized the need for men to get in touch with their feelings, to talk with other men. Negatively, the men’s movement continued to promote patriarchy by a tacit insistence that in order to be fully self-actualized, men needed to separate from women. The idea that men needed to separate from women to find their true selves just seemed like the old patriarchal message dressed up in a new package.
Describing the men’s movement spearheaded by Robert Bly in her essay “Feminism and Masculinity,” Christine A. James explains:
Bly claims that women, primarily since feminism, have created a situation in which men, especially young men, feel weak, emasculated, and unsure of themselves, and that older men must lead the way back…. Bly holds up the myth of the Wild Man as an exemplar of the direction men must take and never challenges the hierarchical dualisms that are so integrally linked to the tension he perceives between men and women. Arguably, the notion of the Wild Man merely reinforces clichés about “real masculinity” instead of trying to foster a new relationship between men and women, as well as the masculine and feminine.
The men’s movement was often critical of women and feminism while making no sustained critique of patriarchy. Ultimately it did not consistently demand that men challenge patriarchy or envision liberating models of masculinity.
Many of the New Age models created by men reconfigure old sexist paradigms while making it seem as though they are offering a different script for gender relations. Often the men’s movement resisted macho patriarchal models while upholding a vision of a benevolent patriarchy, one in which the father is the ruler who rules with tenderness and kindness, but he is still in control. In the wake of feminist movement and the diverse men’s liberation movements that did not bring women and men closer together, the question of what the alternative to patriarchal masculinity might be must still be answered.
Clearly, men need new models for self-assertion that do not require the construction of an enemy “other,” be it a woman or the symbolic feminine, for them to define themselves against. Starting in early childhood, males need models of men with integrity, that is, men who are whole, who are not divided against themselves. While individual women acting as single mothers have shown that they can raise healthy, loving boys who become responsible, loving men, in every case where this model of parenting has been successful, women have chosen adult males—fathers, grandfathers, uncles, friends, and comrades—to exemplify for their sons the adult manhood they should strive to achieve.
Undoubtedly, one of the first revolutionary acts of visionary feminism must be to restore maleness and masculinity as an ethical biological category divorced from the dominator model. This is why the term patriarchal masculinity is so important, for it identifies male difference as being always and only about the superior rights of males to dominate, be their subordinates females or any group deemed weaker, by any means necessary. Rejecting this model for a feminist masculinity means that we must define maleness as a state of being rather than as performance. Male being, maleness, masculinity must stand for the essential core goodness of the self, of the human body that has a penis [note: obviously this is very cis-perisex language]. Many of the critics who have written about masculinity suggest that we need to do away with the term, that we need “an end to manhood.” Yet such a stance furthers the notion that there is something inherently evil, bad, or unworthy about maleness.
It is a stance that seems to be more a reaction to patriarchal masculinity than a creative loving response that can separate maleness and manhood from all the identifying traits patriarchy has imposed on the self that has a penis. Our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination. There is a creative, life-sustaining, life-enhancing place for the masculine in a nondominator culture. And those of us committed to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the masculine that does not make it synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.
Patriarchal culture continues to control the hearts of men precisely because it socializes males to believe that without their role as patriarchs they will have no reason for being. Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
btw i do in fact have to add at the end of this, that Abdullah Öcalan's paradigm of democratic modernity vs capitalist modernity not only centers women's liberation as a core element of true socialist and democratic liberation, but also i think Rojava and the Zapatistas in Chiapas are great examples of how actually intersectional revolutionary feminism can in fact lead to not just better conditions for women but true connection and solidarity between men and women.
THE ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF MANHOOD AND MASCULINITY ARE POSSIBLE!!!!! but they must be truly revolutionary, truly democratic, truly anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and radically anti-patriarchal in order to succeed. feminism has not failed men by going too far, it has failed everyone by never going far enough.
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if you build “community” around hating other people, just know that the second you step out of line—regardless of your moral uprightness or the hypocrisy on their part—you’re the next person they’re going to tear to pieces.
Please know this sites hashtagging system is categorical and NOT clout based
Aka if I look up the “Wendell and Wild” tag, I should find clips, media, art and posts related to Wendell and wild ONLY. Same with any other random tag searched
If I spy a selfie, a random neighborhood, or any other kind of “insta” post trying to take likes for a popular hashtag, I’m reporting you for spam. Most other long term users will too and your acct will be fast tracked as a spam blogger and blocked.
You will not ruin the last non corporate site for us, especially by trying to treat this site like influencers matter. If you get popular, it’s bc you’re a clown w a skill not bc your hot or rich or skinny, got it?
#holy shit at people in the notes this isn't 'tyrannical' it's basic courtesy AND against the tos #the spam report button is easily accessible for this exact reason #cross tagging is absolutely reportable spam according to tos so just don't do it #it also doesn't get you any more notes it just pisses people off
People (me) will report you for this (I will). If you are spamming the tags, someone (again, me) will click the little report button (and I will enjoy doing it) every time they (I) see your unrelated posts clogging their (my) search.
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I think over the years I’ve realized that assuming people you don’t understand are stupid by default is just like a mental shortcut to avoid having to think about why people act the way that they do.
I’ve kind of gotten tired of people doing that I guess. I used to do it, so I get it, but I’ve also figured out that you can learn a lot if you don’t assume by default that people are stupid. Almost everyone is fairly intelligent in some form or another, actually.
My family is full of mostly nice and empathetic people and they raised me to be kind and even they I think kind of raised me with the idea that we’re the smart ones and some people are just stupid
But over the years I’ve slowly decided to try to understand people better instead just assuming that they’re stupid.
And some people are idiots. But they’re rarely stupid.
It takes work though to think like this. Like I said, I understand the impulse to just assume that people are stupid. It’s easy. It involves a lot less research and connecting the dots and listening to people who annoy you or even people who actively dislike you.
It’s possible I have too much of an open mind sometimes but idk maybe broadening your understanding of the world and having a bit of compassion for people that you dislike is also very worth it.
A friend of mine basically lives under a rock and just learned about the existence of AI girlfriends and his first instinct was to assume that people who use these services are just stupid.
But it’s like. No I don’t think that they are. I think that they’re lonely and most of them are fully self aware about what they’re doing. And even if they’re not, the bad guys here are the companies profiting off of their loneliness and stealing their data. Not someone that’s so starved for human connection that they become attached to a chatbot.
And maybe pointing that out makes me a stick in the mud but I feel like I’d rather be a stick in the mud than just dismiss other peoples perspectives immediately.
it is really funny that "Adonis" is used to mean an ideal sexy masculine muscular man, when Adonis in Greek religion & myth was an androgynous young man, known not for his strength but his beauty, who Aphrodite and Persephone essentially had shared romantic/sexual custody over (in an arrangement that interestingly mimics Persephone's own), who "acted as a man with Aphrodite and a woman with Apollon," and the Attic festival in his name (the Adonia) is about Aphrodite mourning his death after he was killed by a boar.
Adonis is a lot more similar to other androgynous "beautiful youths" who die young, representing the Greek fascination with life/beauty and death/aging and the border that a dead youth represents. and it interests me specifically that, in his myth, his divine lover/s are primarily feminized beings, who actively desire and pursue him and have control over his life, and he dies not through being a Brave Manly Warrior but is passively killed. its similar to Ganymede and Hyacinthus, but in both of those stories their divine lovers are masculinized (Zeus and Apollo) and one might think that their androgyny / feminized role in the story is the product of being in a homosexual relationship. but then here we have Adonis, who is said to have "acted as a woman" for Apollo, yet his story is centered around his heterosexual relationship with goddesses and he is still androgynous and narratively passive.
anyways. people hear "epitome of male beauty" & assume that Adonis must represent a modern, Western binary "male beauty" which is just the equivalent of being a handsome, strong, tough man. but ancient Greek culture was full of examples of idealized male warriors, and Adonis was not that. male youth had its own kind of gendered connotation in ancient Greek culture (as did female youth, but that ended much sooner, as adulthood was defined around ability to get pregnant as opposed to civic participation/military service). but (at least in the US) the modern idea of Adonis is so filtered through Western gender norms & Christianity that essentially nothing other than the notion of him being a Hot Guy has gotten through the game of cultural telephone.
"trans men have privilege over other demographics of trans people" quick question, can you give me a list of trans men that have any sort of power in anything whatsoever? then can you give me a list of trans people who aren't trans men who have any sort of power whatsoever? hey, why are you ignoring me? get back here and explain your logic to me coward
okay i know most of you guys know leon s kennedy in passing but do you know his extended lore? or do you all only know him as that slut from horror game because i have news.
he is canonically a mafia princess. the us government forced him into servitude at 21 by promising to torture and kill the 12 year old girl he kind of adopted if he didn’t. his iconic haircut is a result of his commanding officer not letting him cut it to something regulation because he thought leon was too pretty (he also sexually harassed leon for years). he keeps adopting younger blonde girls because he watched his little sister get murdered in front of him was he was 7. he’s in love with a woman he’s supposed to arrest on sight. he’s got the worst survivors guilt and passive suicidal tendencies I’ve ever seen.
the most important is the fact that he became a cop because his parents and sister got killed in mafia related violence and he survived because the cops came in just as he was about to get shot. and at 7 years old he decided he wanted to do that for someone. we all know how that went. also he technically killed a sitting us president.
I'm seeing warnings about scammers trying to commission artists but the "reference sheet" for their character they want commissioned isn't an image but a .vbs file ("visual basic script"), and will run a script when you open it, probably to yoink your account(s), but I haven't seen this from anyone who's actually clicked it yet. Just be careful and never open a file like that, 'cause people suck.
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An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.
Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.
a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project
all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project
if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet
like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.
now
Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.
And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.
But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.
This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...
It's claiming discrimination...
It's a bot.
It's AI.
This is not a real person.
What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?
@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog
The important thing about wool is that it continues to keep you warm even when it’s soaking wet.
Other natural fibers don’t do this. In fact, quite the opposite. Campers and boaters are usually familiar with the phrase, “cotton kills.” If you’re wet in cotton or linen, your clothes actually sap heat from your body.
If you sink in a lake in late October like I did today, staying warm is important. I was rescued long before I would’ve actually died, but cold makes your muscles seize up, which isn’t good if you have to swim to land.
Which brings me around to life jackets. If the water’s cold enough, you may only have five-ten minutes until your muscles seize (today I probably had 40-60, more than enough time to get to land if I hadn’t been picked up), and you’ll drown.
In a life jacket, even in extremely cold water, you can float semi-conscious for perhaps another 30 minutes or so before you actually freeze to death, which is usually when someone rescues you.
What’s more, you probably know that moving around on land warms you up. Jumping jacks, jogging in place, etc.
In water, moving actually makes you colder. You need to stay still curled up in a ball, which you can only do in a life jacket.
In wool AND life jacket, you’re warm, and your head’s above water, which is pretty much your only and entire goal.
If you’re allergic to wool, synthetics are available specifically for this purpose. I know I always say natural fibers are the way to go, but when it comes to safety, wear what protects you!
Yep! A really simple “experiment” I learned as a kid and now use in my own courses is sticking your hand in ice water. Compare moving it around in the water to curling it up in a fist. The contrast is stark!
To increase your survival time in on cold water, you want to curl up! If you’re with others, you want to huddle!
Again, both are only possible when wearing a life jacket!
I know a lot of people are reblogging this for writing reference, but I like to believe that 7,000 people on this site were actually continually living in fear about this specific situation and that when the time comes, I’ve prepared them with what they need to know to survive.
One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.
Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.
There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!
the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."
bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.
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Golden Girls was so incredibly progressive for its time and not even slightly afraid to be loud about it. They talked about queer people, about race, about ableism, and they made it central and overt. They talked about things that mattered, and they never punched down, and they were allies off the stage too.
Reblogging this again to add some context for anyone who may not know. In the 80's, being outed as gay could get you blacklisted in Hollywood. It ruined people's careers.
Bea Arthur and Betty White both suffered damage to their careers for standing up against racism and homophobia. Back in the 50s Betty White hosted a variety show that was canceled because she featured a black dancer and doubled down when they told her to stop.
they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.
their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.
longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years
toxic flesh
has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.
lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion
largest genome of any shark
eats everything including moose and polar bears
ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you
