winterrnightss:

“It’s literally impossible to be a woman.

You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we’re always doing it wrong?

You have to be thin, but not too thin, and you can never say you wanna be thin. You have to say you wanna be healthy, but also, you have to BE THIN.

You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean.

You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.

You have to be a career woman, but also, always be looking out for other people.

You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is INSANE, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining!

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood, but ALWAYS STAND OUT and ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL. But never forget that the system is rigged, so find a way to acknowledge that but ALSO, always be grateful!

You have to never get old. Never be rude. Never show off. Never be selfish. Never fall down. Never fail. Never show fear. Never get OUT OF LINE. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says ‘thank you!’ And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also, everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself, and every single other woman tie herself into knots, so that people will like us.

And if all of that, is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don’t even know.“ -Gloria the barbie movie

this is it. this is exactly it oh my god.

punkass-diogenes:

peachhoneii:

Ken was more than an antagonist/villain but a representation/metaphor for all the sweet boys in our lives who eventually grew up to be misogynistic men. Who take more than they’ll ever give. They are the boys who felt under-appreciated and unloved and found validation from Andrew Tate podcasts.

A lot of women if not all can relate to that on some level. Son. Brother. Friend. Cousin. Nephew. Uncle. It happens so much more than we want to think about. It’s so prevalent and sad that despite everything Ken did, Barbie apologized to him and received no apology in return.

Barbie Land was far kinder than Kendom. The Barbies were dismissive about the Kens, yes, but they were always treated kindly and with some decorum. Kendom literally made the Barbies their servants designed to cater to their every whim. Just look at that. And even then, Barbie apologized. President Barbie gave them a (admittedly low) position in the courts as a token of good will. A fairly realistic take right there but so sad considering the harm they’d done.

He stole her dreamhouse. He stole Barbie’s dreamhouse. And she apologized for hurting him.

Ken’s greatest suffering came from being a beta orbiter in the friendzone. From not being taken seriously by the person whose attention he believed he needed to validate his own existence. He was never exploited or degraded or dehumanized. He was never subjected to malice or sadism or violence. He was not raped. He was not objectified. The Barbies always treated him with respect (kindness, goodwill), but not with Respect (gravitas, adulation, obsequiousness).

This is truly the worst fate many men can imagine. This is what they mean when they absurdly complain that women have all the power in society, that feminism has gone too far. Men are lonely, men feel unwanted, men feel disposable, men feel unneeded, men feel unimportant, men feel disRespected.

Meanwhile, Barbie is sexually assaulted within five minutes of entering the Real World. She unapologetically hits back because she has not yet been taught that women who hit back are punished. And then she is the one who gets arrested, not the man who assaulted her. In her mugshot, her face shows a mixture of bewilderment and violation. Ken, on the other hand, is beaming. He is oblivious, blissfully unaware of sexual violence.

Because while the Kens never perpetrate such acts, they have also never been victimized in this way. The “plight” of Kens in Barbieland, the one lamented and dreaded by the incels and the Andrew Tate fans, is in no way analogous to the realities of what women experience under patriarchy. It’s not even close.

Even without any knowledge of sexual violence, Ken should be attuned the obvious discomfort of the woman he proclaims to be in love with. To the fact that someone has just harmed her. That she is being stared at with an undertone of violence. But he isn’t. Because even in his state of innocence, even when he is supposedly HER accessory, he still sees her as a thing first and a person second. Ken’s wooing of Barbie is about his desire to obtain and possess her to validate himself and give himself purpose. It is not about her as a person at all. So, while she is upset and confused after being assaulted, he is grinning his face off because he has found an alternative source of validation in patriarchy and is thereby freed of whatever self-serving incentive he once felt to have any concern for her well-being at all.

buzz-season:

i think the difference between the barbie’s treatment of ken’s in barbieland vs the ken’s treatment of barbie’s in kendom can be summed up pretty easily actually:

barbie’s ignored ken, realistically they were given an opportunity to have their own lives and do what they wanted and they didn’t do it. everything revolved around their barbie’s, ken would only have a good day if barbie did or if barbie acknowledged him. they never tried to do anything they genuinely wanted to.

whereas when the ken’s took over, they brainwashed the barbie’s into liking them and doing things for them. they would bring them beers and act like waitresses, give them foot massages or watch films they otherwise wouldn’t be interested in. they became mindless and existed to serve the ken’s. they were no longer just friends with the barbie’s, they didn’t want barbie to love them back, they wanted to own them.

people talking about ken falling down the patriarchy pipeline out of neglect or loneliness but why couldn’t the ken’s form friendships and communities like the barbie’s did? why is it up to barbie to ensure that ken doesn’t feel that way? at what point is it acceptable to blame barbie for ken’s feelings? barbie let ken come to her party, watched him beach, held him whilst he went to the hospital, agreed to let him go on her journey, says hi to him when she sees him, things friends do and things she’s shown doing with all the other barbie’s, but if he still feels loneliness after that because she doesn’t want to kiss him or doesn’t love him back, why is that barbie’s fault? meanwhile the entire time ken is ignoring other ken’s out of his fixation on barbie and is even trying to “beach” other ken’s off and causing problems with other ken’s to gain barbie’s attention

to me it’s the perfect representation of the real world in the sense that women will leave men alone, men will want to own women, and women will be blamed for men’s neglect and loneliness but it’s a paper cage they create for themselves because they refuse to see women as individuals and arguably they don’t actively try to create and nurture communities in the same way women do. ken’s story is sad yes, but it’s a story of his own design and what makes it worse is that he blames barbie for it. not himself, not mattel, no the real world but barbie, who’s friendly disinterest in him means that she should be the one who is blamed and punished

heybluechild:

hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon:

batsarebetterthanpeople:

batsarebetterthanpeople:

here’s my hot take about my generation and people younger than me (I’m 22 years old)

The reason current teenagers and people in their really early 20s are conservative on accident and have such shitty takes on the internet is because our generation was much more sheltered than previous generations and because we were raised to be ok with orwellian servailence and that is 100% the fault of our parents, Reagan Era kidnapping panics, and the rise of technology all coming together to prevent us from doing the sketchy shit that sends parents into panic mode but which is also completely fundemental to childhood development. If your parents had even a crumb of money to their name and even a shred of free time they started tracking your phone as soon as it was possible to. I did not experience this because my parents are actively trying to live like it’s the 1990s and still have not gotten cell phones of their own, and did not let me have one until I was 18 years old and it was no longer their choice, but literally over half of my friends in middle and high school had their phones tracked by their parents at some point or other, and we would occasionally find this out, not because their parents told them, but when we were trying to do the aforementioned sketchy shit and their parent’s car would pull up. And I would, like a reasonable person after finding this out, encourage my friends to just leave their phones at home, and their response would be “What if I get kidnapped” or “My parents are just trying to keep me safe”

This in my estimation has lead to a combination of kids being terminally online because they do have internet access and are better at deleting search history than their parents think they are, but don’t have the freedom to go out and do shit without their parents’ knowledge or consent, so they have the most privacy from the people who control their lives while they’re on the internet, and kids not having the real world experiences they should have, not knowing how to connect with other people irl, not feeling comfortable leaving the house because of the horror story lies their parents told them to make them ok with the surveillance they were inflicting on their kids. Kids these days are growing up in the fucking panopticon when they should be out in the woods playing with knives or stealing cigarettes from their older sibling and going out to an empty parking lot to smoke them or whatever and that shit is sticking with them into adulthood. Things that were “tee hee we could get in trouble isn’t this so fun and daring” in the 1990s and 2000s have become in the 2010s and 2020s things that are “If I do that without texting my parents some sort of lie to excuse where my location is my parent’s car will pull up and I will get grounded for the next two weeks.”

Like even when I was 19 I had a 16 year old friend who would volunteer their time at a food shelf and that’s how we knew each other. We would talk about dungeons and dragons together, and the game store was 4 blocks from the food shelf. One day we left the food shelf earlier than they had told their parents they would and they got punished for that. We were literally just going to look at dungeons and dragons miniatures and dice, which was self evident if you could see where we started and how far we walked and where too. I have to assume that this isn’t uncommon. It’s wrong, but it’s not uncommon.

Ok it has become apparent to me that people do not understand what I mean by conservative on accident.

Nobody my age is voting republican. Let’s be clear on that. With the exception of a small minority of gamer gaters and people who were raised in actual cults most people my age are either commies or good liberals who votes straight blue down the ticket. This is because of the greta thunberg effect. We’re all afraid of dying of thirst because there’s no water anymore at the age of 35. Wealthy white children are no longer safe with the republican party which has become less of a political party and more of a death cult, and white children are less wealthy than they used to be (I specify white because POC by in large never voted for the party of the southern strategy for obvious reasons). We as a generation are so insanely blue that they’re trying to raise the voting age to 25 about it.

This liberalism and party affiliation doesn’t preclude them from being conservative on accident. What I mean by that is… Well

No kink at pride is a great example. The assumption that pride should exist at all makes them think that they’re immune to conservative logic but they’re still trying to enforce a dominant ideology onto a minority group. That person who made the tweet about how you shouldn’t have sex in houses where there are children in the other room and if you can’t avoid it you’re a sex addict. That’s a great example of like straight up puritanism coming out of the mouth of someone who proports themselves to be a leftist

If you ever see a discourse that feels like an obvious psyop as an adult and you can’t understand why these supposed leftist youths are falling for it it’s because that kid has never had sex in the woods and had to try to buy plan b under their parent’s nose. My generation is dumb about sex. We’re dumb about drugs. We’re dumb about theft. We moralize literally everything. We’re so dumb about stranger danger that we never learned how to community organize so while the vast vast majority of us are crushed by existential dread about debt and climate change but we never do anything about it because we just don’t know how to organize because we’re raised to see everyone else as a threat and we never went to or organized parties as teens because our parents would always know and stop us.

They managed to invent a generation that hates capitalism but fully buys into individualism and who is supportive of queer people and way less monogamous than previous generations but who still buys into the base assumptions of the nuclear family and thinks sex is evil. The levels of politics going on here are way weirder and stupider and more complicated than “young people vote republican and watch Fox news”

I’ve never seen anybody explain it so well

all of this, plus the constant reminder that “everything you put online is permanent.” as an elder gen z, there was an era of my life pre-social media, but we now have entire younger generation whose entire lives are documented online, staring with baby photos on their parents’ facebook accounts before they have social media of their own.

if you’re a young person and you get any education about internet safety, one of the things drilled into you is “the internet is written in pen, not pencil.” if your internet use isn’t surveilled by your parents, it’s surveilled by your school/teachers*, potential employers, and of course by your peers, and it’s presumed to be both permanent and to be potential ammunition against you. as a result, you have an entire generation of young people who operate under the understanding that everything we say and do online is being watched and can potentially be used to punish us at home/at school/in the workplace/by peers. considering that so much of life nowadays takes place online (especially since COVID, lockdown, and the advent of zoom school/remote learning), that means that effectively nothing is private—unless it’s in a physical diary, which your parents still might read, or just in your head. when taken to its furthest extent, it’s almost Truman Show-like: the fear that everything you say and do may be viewed by anyone in your life who wants to look.

now, some young people have turned to the idea of being as quote-unquote “perfect” online as possible to protect themselves against punishment and attack and ridicule. the aforementioned weirdness about sex and sexuality is a prime example, but it’s also an overarching sisyphean quest to be as “nonproblematic” as possible re: politics and ideology and dating and friendships and everything else.

I’ve seen a lot of unsympathetic takes from older generations about the rise of neo-puritanism among gen Zs that doesn’t make any effort to understand why some of our generation is that way. if you grew up with your parents (and your school) monitoring everything you do online and everywhere you go and as a result feeling like everything you believe and everything you do is being watched, you can start to understand the reactionary impulse to be as sanitized as possible in all areas of life.

I don’t agree with the resultant puritanism, obviously, but I see where it comes from. if you want to counteract the rise of reactionary conservatism among young people, you have to understand where it originates.

*I mean this literally. some teachers are encouraged to surveil students’ internet use and browsing habits on school-issued technology, and there are now types of technology sold to school districts that will trawl students’ social media accounts and monitor everything they post. this technology is advertised to give advance warning of mental health crises and mass shootings, but it’s been used to spy on student activists—in addition to, once again, monitoring everything kids post.

greelin:

greelin:

love will always find you. Both threat AND promise

“but i don’t feel like i deserve it.” boo hoo. too fucking bad. Get loved idiot

prancingintheshadows:

I’m really into the meta-narrative of Across the Spider-Verse. They could’ve come up with a different name for canon events, like Stable Dimension Events or some other made up nonsense, but the term canon events really paints it this as a conversation about adaptations on Spider-Man and his various off shoots. Hell, it could apply to comics and adaptations as a whole. Is it still Spider-Man if he doesn’t get Uncle Ben or some equivalent killed? Is it really Batman if he doesn’t vow to never kill? Even if it looks like Ultron, is it still Ultron if it’s origin and personality are different?

And it’s kinda the perfect subject matter to be tackled by Miles, the Spider-Man who gets to be his own Spider-Man. Look at the vast majority of the named spider people in this movie. They’re either based on existing people in Spider-Man’s story or they’re some permutation of Peter Parker. Miles isn’t another Peter nor is he a ‘what if this character was bit instead of Peter’. Miles exists purely to be the next Spider-Man after his Spider-Man died. There aren’t any expectations to play out the same story as Peter, because Peter’s story was already played out in his world. He has every right to make his own story, play by his own rules, go through adventures no other Spider has gone through. Every Peter has Uncle Ben die, but Miles’ call to action is never consistent. Ultimate comics had his mom die, Into the Spider-Verse had his uncle, and PS4 Spider-Man had his dad. Miles’ story is fluid in a way no other Spider’s is because he’s ironically not running in Peter’s shadow and established story. He’s an anomaly because every universe has runs on one Spider logic except his.

Which is also why Miguel’s such a fascinating choice as the antagonist. Because, a lot of what I can say about Miles could be said about Miguel. Traditionally, the Spider-Man of the year 2099 isn’t an alternate dimension Spider, he’s just a Spider-Man from a time after the original’s run. He is, just like Miles, the second Spider-Man who exists after Peter’s demise. And just like Miles, he doesn’t have to play by Peter’s rules, having a vastly different tone and manifestation of powers. So it’s also perfect that Miguel’s positioned against Miles specifically because he’s tried going against the flow, going against ‘canon’ and has suffered for it.

So the narrative is about two Spider-Men who can write their own story, fighting over whether or not they can deviate from the template set by the original story and if their story could survive it. Into the Spider-Verse said anyone can be Spider-Man. Across the Spider-Verse asks if Spider-Man is allowed to be anyone other than the Spider-Man.

soracities:

i think at some point in life you are going to have to grapple with the fact that nobody is going to just perfectly fit into your idea of them, and nobody is going to slot into your life without any uncomfortable bumps or rubbing of edges, and nobody is going to follow the script you want them to follow or thought they would follow because the people around you, shockingly, are not cardboard cutouts. at some point in life you WILL need to face the, surprisingly, real and messy interiority of other people. and you are going to have to learn to grant them the same nuance, agency and consideration you grant yourself, or want to be granted. and you are going to have to learn to make grace an important factor in what you say and what you assume about others bc i guarantee there is no shortage of grace being offered to you at some point in your life, and not in some transactional sense either but bc it is not that difficult to pause for literally 2 mintues and give people the space to be human and then just….move on with your life.

like i dont think it can be pointed out enough that responding and reacting are two very different things and it’s a kindness to your future self to actually learn the difference.

tangerinesofmint:

ruhlare:

[text id:

he kissed my scars and said: “you taste like the love others would drown in, but my thirst for you will always remain.”

end id.]

constant-sapphic-breakdown:

on love and devotion

unknown // richard siken, litany in which some things are crossed out // hera lindsay bird, I KNEW I LOVED YOU WHEN YOU SHOWED ME YOUR MINECRAFT WORLD // warsan shire // clementine von radics, the next time we talk on facebook // amal el-mohtar and max gladstone, this is how you lose the time war // k.c. cramm, christmas eve forever

ganymedesclock:

I don’t believe institutional misandry is real but I do believe there is an aspect of white, cis-hetero-amato-normative patriarchy that requires male suffering.

At the core of misogyny and queerphobia is the revelation these are tools to police masculinity. This entire system is contingent on that men are afraid they are doing it wrong. The Other is used to threaten, this could be you if you step out of line. And the tightrope that it herds its hypothetical perfectly normal men onto burns the feet.

A Real Man should want a wife and want to have sex with that wife to produce biological offspring. But he oughtn’t be a father. Change a diaper? Good heavens, you’re emasculated. The most acceptable parental emotion a man is allowed to have, encouraged to look up to, is a kind of territorial rage, the superhero avenging his dead tragic girlfriend, the gun-toting furious dad clutching his little helpless baby girl who’s all he has left.

A Real Man should be young-looking, sexually potent, and studly, but he mayn’t under any circumstances be caught committing artifice or seduction. Cleanliness or fastidiousness becomes suspect. But of course every fictional male model we’re given to look up to, most of them are played by men dieted and styled and carefully dressed and painted and polished with extravagant artifice. But we are led to believe, this is just a Real Man. He’s So Manly he is cashing an exception with his bank account of testosterone.

A Real Man is a starving, isolated animal. A Real Man becomes desperate on the woman he is told is his only possible outlet for softness, vulnerability, compassion and understanding, which no human being can live without and which women are not inherently more blessed with any of those traits besides men.

Meanwhile, the two-year-old boys that I watch scamper and play at my workplace seem a fascinating form of animal. If they comprehend themselves as boys at all, it is without this anxiety of competition. They do not see themselves as defined by absence to flinch from anything that’s too feminine. They seize princess dresses from the dress-up station, excited by bright fabrics and plastic jewels. They quarrel for teacher attention when they see their long-haired classmates being given braids or ponytails, me too me too me too!

At this point, they are motivated not by a fear of being an inadequate man but by a love for being exactly what they are right now. Whatever experience appeals to them, they want it. As I watch these boys age, I watch many of them- as early as age three- begin to squirm with anxiety. They have spoken to girls too much. Only boys are ordinary, uncomplicated friends. In a few years, will they dread the time they now spend playing house?

Misogyny and queerphobia make a wasteland of masculinity for everyone, in the process of recruiting soldiers for the crusades against the “unmanly”. Those campaigns would dry up in the face of meaningful, healthy masculinity that isn’t built on a terror of inadequacy and a territorial selfishness not reflected by the world we live in. None of these traits are inherent to men. We can do better. We can escape this. We will live fuller, happier lives without it.