#care work

SOURCE: the guardian “I admit I may have rewatched it more than once,” she said. “It’s super sexy. They’re fabulous to look at. There’s a huge amount of consent. I’d really like to get that back in my life – that feeling of ‘I can’t keep my hands off you.’”

------ While watching for the first time, I immediately clocked the wealth part as something soooooo relaxing.

So dreamy and idealistic, this is what normal life is lacking a lot...

Does that sounds like the bar is in hell? Well...

Just my opinion and observations:

1. Being and/or living with cis het men in hetero presenting relationships as a woman and they let you do all or at least most of that work is so endlessly exhausting.

2. And many opt out and choose not to join households and are happier for it. Especially the neurodivergent folks I know.

3. This struggle is a constant topic in friendships or for therapy.

4. Mix chronic or mental illness into it and you might be better off alone… to feel good, relaxed, desired, calm, inspired, whatever, you would need a lot of things removed.

5. Romance between two men seems like escapism. I am fine with that.

All of the struggle outside and inside does one thing: it kills the vibes, iykyk!

This, this does not:

“It’s extra fun and escapist for me to watch a relationship that is hard to possibly project myself into,” said Annie Vought, a 34-year-old bisexual woman from Seattle. “There is zero room for me personally to be like, ‘Wish that was me.’ I’m just like, ‘Get it, boys!’” ----------------

Same! And I like this term from the article a lot:

"imaginary space free of gendered hierarchy"

------- I used to read lesbian romances when I was a young queer woman and I would have to agree, at least the ones I got my hands on, the patriarchy always got to the protagonists in one way or another.

Two men benefit from patriarchy while also being exploited due to it partially. I am aware of that.

Doesn't ruin the fun for me, they are superstars, super wealthy, IT IS A FANTASY, through and through.

Let me have it. 😇 Life sucks enough all the rest of the time... ------

I'd really recommend looking into care work

Care work here is specifically being a home care aid, a care aid or assistant at any kind of residential home.

This for usually for elderly or disabled adults - and those are the ones that tend to be most entry level, from what I've seen, but also for mental health, addiction recovery etc. (With the obvious caveat that some of these jobs will be more emotionally intense than others)

I'm so serious about this guys. I was applying to jobs in care work for just three weeks, starting a couple days before Christmas, and in that time I got three interviews, two jobs offers, and five additional interview requests

Care work needs people CONSTANTLY

because it's a huge sector but very hard for them to keep staff long-term. Partly because it can be high burn-out, and there's definitely toxic places out there you should watch out for. And partly because a lot of people think care work is beneath them

AND they ACTUALLY MEAN IT when they say they're entry level. Because it's so hard for them to get staff that a lot of them will advertise super aggressively that they will train you themselves. A lot of them will straight up pay for your CPR and First Aid certifications, once they hire you, too (and you can get a leg up on applications by getting a CPR/First Aid certification for like. $30 to $80, at least in the US). They also accept experience taking care of elderly/disabled/etc. family members as real experience

Like, obviously don't do it if you hate taking care of people, but if you're open to it, it's probably by far your best shot of getting hired rn, statistically

(eta: Genuinely disclaimer that it can be super taxing emotionally and large portions of the industry are indeed fucked, and def don't take a job in this field if you're gonna be an asshole to the people you're caring for, but sometimes you just need whatever job you can get.)

Seriously, though, the first time I applied for a care work job (in October 2023, yes short timeline, like I said there's some toxic workplaces etc. out there), I applied to like ten or fifteen jobs over the course of a week or so. Within three weeks, I was working.

(And they did provide all of the training, fwiw)

3 kowtows to the Writer/Director for bringing out the utmost best in every single actor as well as the team of creatives and technical crew bringing this story to life with pride and excellence.

ShaoYou must feel so betrayed. He’s been violated emotionally and sexually, lied to, finessed and manipulated by someone he loved and trusted but it seems the thing that is harder to get over is that he has been dominated the entire time by Hua Yong when he thought he held the unearned privileges he had come to expect in relationships, that make him feel like a man.

When he thought he was dominating Hua Yong it was ShaoYou who was led by the nose all along; now his whole identity is upside-down over the boundary violation that should matter the least - the upsetting of the gender power dynamic.

I also have a thought about the high-level calming pheromones an Enigma can emit but not an Alpha. Are soothing pheromones in ABO Desire the unpaid care work and emotional labour that are powerfully deterministic for the survival of human beings but are at the same time devalued and that women tend to have foisted on them in patriarchal real life?

When a man is hurting, has a bad day at work or some kind of emotional crisis he is socialised to turn to a wife or girlfriend to cook nice food he enjoys; provide sexual pleasure for him while not demanding pleasure for herself; to cuddle him and listen to his fears and worries without judgement; create an aesthetic and hygienic atmosphere at home ect but getting men to perform sexual, domestic and emotionally caring labour for them this is not available to wives and female partners of men if women lose their job or experience a catastrophe - it’s just not a resource women are typically raised to expect to extract, but not reciprocate to husbands and boyfriends.

Most of what ShaoYou has come to expect from Hua Yong he knows he cannot expect from an Alpha which is what makes these Alpha-Alpha pairings unfulfilling - the gender performance an S-Class Alpha receives from people subordinated to power one cannot extract from an equal.

I can’t help thinking that this parallels with patriarchal straight men not wanting a woman as powerful and certainly not one more powerful than they, rejecting anyone who doesn’t fit into gender hierarchies in the right way.

Straight men without a woman providing this hierarchical advantage in real life believe themselves severely and unfairly deprived (often described as lonely) by the slight narrowing of artificially created power differentials, and do everything from politically organising other men, petitioning the state to intervene to restore this male entitlement, to committing violence against women and society.

Shen WenLang for his part seems like a candidate who needs to examine his internalised homophobia which, although it is visibly externalised to Gao Tu for simply “being close to and consequently smelling like an Omega”, is a form of gendered and therefore misogynistic, self-hatred. I go against the majority in welcoming a multi-year separation between them because as it is, Shen WenLang is by no means a safe or suitable partner for Gao Tu and far from becoming a stable or supportive father to any child.

The parallel that’s hitting me with Shen WenLang is queer men wanting only hyper masculine men - men whose gender performance makes them appear to be straight and explicitly not gay. This is as a result of lifelong homophobic trauma and is by no means innate or natural in men.

In the non-fictional world men often stake their whole dating or partnering non-negotiables on this inconsequential aspect, making a deal breaker of what is essentially a made up prejudice enforced by the instigators of homophobia - and calling it an individual, natural and unchangeable “preference” is a nonsense even if a much cherished one. This psychological problem is the result of trauma in real world male-male dating spaces as much as it’s likely to be revealed to be a trauma in the fictional motivations of WenLang.

It is the same psychological problem that afflicts straight men who have been indoctrinated into masculinity and also limits how they’re able to relate to themselves, other men of any sexuality and obviously restricts their ability to have functional relationships with women as equal human beings.

And finally, don’t you just love the gender swap the Director inserts via Shen WenLang’s delivery of the floral hospital bouquets - pink floral arrangements for the boy and blue for the girl. I do even though I’m not clear what she wants to say about WenLang’s psyche with them yet.

This is just a tiny moment, but - even within the context of gastronomy, since tending to the canteen is Salva's job - showing a man setting the table when we so often often see the women doing that (e.g. Luz serving coffee in 493) is notable. You don't even see his head here: the focus is on the labor. And he is in an apron, too (I don't recall Gaspar in an apron, wo portrayed a lot less dominant masculinity by looks Gaspar the Honorary Lesbian)