one of the hardest things about being aro is that the minute you start explaining your identity (which you may have spent months and years processing, working through internalized hatred and feeling broken, grappling with the constant pressures of amatonormativity) to an alloro person they suddenly decide that no one on earth has ever valued romance more than friendship, that all romance is juat sex + friendship if you think about it, so ACTUALLY you don't need to identify as aromantic or talk about how being aro affects you or ask anyone to change anything about society ever and if you do, you are actually crazy :) and they still don't even know what amatonormativity means

like half of raising awareness of aromanticism ime involves first convincing alloro people that they are in fact alloromantic

I forget there’s people out there who think that trans men not wanting to be misgendered is the same as cishet men thinking that washing their buttcrack is gay. I step out of my bubble of cool nice friends and get reminded that transphobes exist

You can be nonbinary and grow old. 

You can be elderly and come out as nonbinary. 

There is no special age limit on the lives of nonbinary people. 

This Week in Labor News (Posted Nov. 14, 2024)

If you read "maybe it's not helping us if the only thing boys and young men see from equity-seeking spaces is how they, personally, are to blame for everything and we actively hate them and they're garbage, regardless of behaviour, their own experiences/situations/marginalizations, and maybe we need to address that"...

...and you immediately interpret that as "you're telling me I have to prioritize never hurting men's feelings" and so on....

....maybe stop and consider that there are in fact a range of ways to treat people and interact with people and even work for change that include more options than "any criticism at all hurts feelings and is not allowed" and "people who have a characteristic that is more privileged than mine in society can be rightfully subjected to anything I want to do or say to them and I don't have to think about the impact, accuracy or justice of anything I say, ever."

Like there are some other options here. Human communication and consideration allows for a whole range in between these two comical yet so often foregrounded extremes.

Another fascinating facet of this post so far is that people really are inserting quite a lot of . . . .assumptions into what I'm saying.

For instance those who are objecting are really frequently jumping in to talk about white men and while firstly white guys are still potentially subject to class, disability and economic marginalization and can even, you know, be trans and intersex (I as a woman from a professional middle-class home who has her Masters' degree do in fact hold economic, educational and class privilege over a guy with highschool or equivalent who's been working as a stocker for a grocery store his whole life; that's a simple fuckin' fact, my darlin's*), I did not say a damn thing about ethnicity or race in my original post.

That's what I meant when I said "regardless of their own experiences/situations/marginalizations."

"Men" includes disabled men, gay/bi/pan/ace men**, trans men, intersex men, Latino men, Indigenous men, Black men, and I pulled those three out specifically because of current topics but also obviously all other racialized men, a bunch of men I have probably forgot what the categories even are (sorry, it's been a long day, it's not because they aren't important it's because my brain is full), it is a huge fucking tent and they all are, you know: men.

Just another, you know, minor note.

(*it doesn't stop being fucking ablism because the target is a guy.

Nor does it stop being ablism because the guy in question isn't aware that the way the world is fucked so that he has to keep doing work despite agonizing joint/skeletal/muscle pain, so that his print disability fucks up his job prospects, so that his stutter messes with his life, so that . . . . and so on, because he has not realized that this makes him part of a potential solidarity group? Doesn't stop it being marginalization because of disability. Just as a Fucking Tip.)

(**if you fucking start anti-ace discourse here I will just block you. Fuck off.)

Honestly, what's been strange to me about the "how dare you" responses to this post is that they've mostly been denying that this actually happens. People absolutely swearing up down and sideways that nobody (except terfs, they say, in a staggering no-true-scotsman position from people who seem to hate men every bit as much as terfs) is just unloading on men unless they do something wrong! And therefore, this post must be saying that unloading on men is wrong even when they've done something evil!

So is it poor reading comprehension? Do they see "You can't treat men like garbage all the time just because they're men" and "That doesn't mean you have to refrain from criticizing their positions when they're wrong" and smush the two together to arrive at "You can't criticize men even when they're wrong"?

Because otherwise, I am forced to conclude that the response comes from people being livid at the idea that they have to stop treating men like garbage, and their response is to deny that anyone is doing that .........while defending the position that it would, in fact, be okay if they were, because obviously those men deserve it.

Edit: Actually, I went through the angry reblogs and all the sudden it makes sense.

Marytylermoar is, in fact, a radfem. Scrolling well into her blog shows that she often, often posts fairly subtle radfem talking points - most directly anti-kink, but plenty of quieter ones. So she reblogged the post with a nasty comment about how people only yell at men (or, apparently, anyone) when they do bad things.

Feather, as OP, reblogged that take calling it out as wrong.

In a staggering twist of irony, someone else reblogged that particular chain arguing that only TERFs and trauma victims are yelling at men for not having done anything wrong, and accusing OP of hanging out with TERFs. (I don't know if they specifically reblogged it from Marytylermoar, since they've deleted it since.)

hey man. nice regional dialect. mind if i apply some baseless assumptions about your personhood to it? i was also gonna prescribe morality to it as well. if that’s cool with you

Hasselback potatoes

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Show me what you cooked!

sort of a tangent, but the extreme levels of misogyny in regards to the Mary boycott thing are important to note too - and it’s the double punch of antisemitism and misogyny combined, which Jewish women have suffered in varying ways throughout history. Jewish women are demonic witches, ugly, undesirable harpies, or exotic sexual objects. the slut shaming happening to the actress, and by extension to all Israeli women (mocking the casting of an Israeli Jewish woman as holy/virginal/pure, implying that Jewish women are dirty and unusually promiscuous, etc). something about this that should be very clear: it is rape culture. it is the same line of thinking, in fact bolsters, the denial of the brutal sexual assaults carried out against women of all ages, from young girls to elderly, on 10/7 (and the complete disregard that men were also mutilated and assaulted. Jewish men additionally suffer from specific strains of demonization, belittlement, and stereotyping connected to their Jewishness). saying Mary had to be anything but the Jewish woman that she was is primarily based in the idea that Jewish women are particularly wicked, vulgar, and marked by sin. it’s ghastly medieval thinking to see coming from anyone, much less people masquerading as progressives.

We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.

I’m not actually interested in the bad faith radfem readings of this post where I get called an incel pervert (????). But I will be donating a lot of money to trans organizations and blocking all the radfems in the notes, because I don’t think it’s worth speaking to people whose position is that their politics are incorruptible and anyone who critiques them is wrong (and having incel fantasies???? What???)

I do want to talk about how there’s a lot of radical feminists in the notes acting like men doing small nice things for women like opening doors is what benevolent sexism is. It’s not, and I don’t want anyone who’s new to the term getting confused.

“Benevolent sexism” refers to sexism that masks itself as complimentary and beneficial to women. That might include holding open doors, but that’s a tiny and useless example. The bigger part is putting women on a pedestal as kind, innocent, safe, pure, etc, often in contrast to the roughness and violence of men. That used to be a major argument against women voting and engaging in politics, that they needed to be protected from something so rough, dirty, and corrupt. That’s where the similarities to radical feminism comes in.

Let me expand on my original thought:

Gender/sex essentialist radical feminists/TERFs and traditional sexism conservatives share many of the same basic beliefs about the world. Men are inherently rough, violent, and sexually aggressive where women are kinder, gentler, and inherently safer to be around. That’s benevolent sexism. Traditional sexists turn this into a belief that women must be protected by men from the world, so women must have husbands to shelter them from the world (ie control them). There’s also strands of outright misogyny that come with traditional sexism, but this post is long enough. Radfems turn this into a belief of separatism from men, which is interesting because many sexist and misogynistic societies do practice many kinds of separation between men and women.

Any radfem who’s insecure or unsure in her beliefs, who’s attracted to men, or who thinks she knows a good man is vulnerable to traditional sexist beliefs because she’s already accepted the same base premise. She just needs to change her mind about rejecting men entirely (which can be a struggle when you’re attracted to men or have men close to you in your life) to the idea that she can pick a Good Man(tm) to protect her. A person who jumps out of one set of radical beliefs can easily overcorrect in the other direction, as well. This is what sets up radfems who do become tradfems.

It’s a lot easier for benevolent sexism to slip into queer and feminist spaces in general, which is part of why it’s important to talk about it. The traditional sexist role for women is posed as subservient to that of men, but it’s still often posed as good, honorable, necessary, etc. If you’re willing to accept anything that paints women in a positive light into your feminist spaces, then it becomes easy to let benevolent sexism slip in.

The fundamental belief of feminism about women should be the women are human beings, people, not that women are inherently good. Any type of feminism that rejects that (as transphobic and separatist strands tend to) becomes vulnerable to benevolent sexism.

Bringing back this post in the context of 52% of white women who voted doing so for Trump. Benevolent sexism, the promises and pedestals patriarchy offers as its bait, is definitely a part of some of that.

In my area, I only heard "benevolent sexism" as "if you are a special kind of woman, you'll be able to to join the lower ranks of men, who are required to trample upon other men and women. E.g. upper-middle class women trampling on the poor men and women and the minorities.", so your part is absolutely going to be my new usage of the term! Thank you.

Good to know! I first ran into it while learning about the suffrage movement and the paternalistic framing of keeping women from voting as protecting their “goodness” by keeping them away from dirty politics, so it’s interesting to hear about other contexts.

I do think that benevolent sexism tends to come into the Madonna-Whore complex where there are good, wonderful, perfect, pure women and then tainted, fallen women, so it certainly can enable certain women to become enforcers of sexism and other -isms from their pedestal of being seen as Pure, Angelic creatures. But to get pedestal treatment, they still do have to be middle class, white, cishet, etc, and perform feminine gender roles that put them as subservient to men.

This also goes for things like 'divine femininity' and 'women are mystical creatures that need herbs based on their menstruation and not western medicine' etc etc.

Yes medicine has large gaps regarding qualitative treatment of bodily systems generally associated with women. No that doesn't make women ~mystical aliens~ that need completely different things than regular humans (men).

boy help the internalized ableism and capitalistic pressure to be as productive as possible at all times is getting me

cripples and assorted mental freaks please remember that just being disabled in this society is traumatizing. especially if you have been disabled from a very young age. it takes so much active healing to unlearn internalized ableism. but you must or it will kill you from within

Mass deportation is a form of ethnic cleansing. Do you understand.

i am an indigenous minority in russia and i can't agree more on that.

russians didn't "peacefully conquer" volga, ural, siberia, far east and caucasus. they ethnically cleansed it.

"mass deportation of crimean tatars" it was actually a genocide.

"mass deportation of kavkazi people" it was actually a genocide.

mass deportations are not safe for those who are being deported. they suffer famine, the lack of sanitary norms, infections, lack of water and medicine, and other anti-human conditions. and i promise mass deportation are intentionally designed to be like that. they are designed to cull as much of those who are deported as possible.

if you support mass deportations of anyone, block me so i don't have to. and fuck you

While the Onion buying InfoWars is indeed extremely funny, very few of the posts I've seen commenting on the sale have mentioned that the families of the Sandy Hook victims apparently agreed to voluntarily reduce their lawsuit payout as part of a deal to ensure that the Onion would acquire InfoWars wholesale, rather than having the company broken up and auctioned off piecemeal, as the latter course could potentially have allowed some of those pieces to end up back in the hands of Alex Jones' cronies.

Like, yes, it is in fact very funny that InfoWars is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Clickhole, but the real props go out to the Sandy Hook families who saw the opportunity and willingly gave up the additional millions of dollars that could have been realised by stripping InfoWars for parts in order to make that happen.

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Dr. Gachey with foxglove, 1890

Some of Van Gogh’s best work was done during a period of his life that he spent in a hospital being treated for his mental health problems. I could be wrong but I think Starry Night was among those.

This is consistently the case. Creators tend to do their best work when they are in a healthy place and receiving proper treatment and not being self destructive in their efforts to cope. Go figure.

All our experiences, good and bad, inform what we create, but suffering is not the price of great art. Suffering is what prevents artists from completing great art.

(I bring to mind this @tkingfisher / Ursula Verson quote about once a week <3)

I'm begging on my hands and knees for anyone who writes aro and ace characters in romantic/sexual relationships to at the very least understand what "lack of romantic/sexual attraction" means and NOT accidentally write them as allo.