the woman you’re becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces, and material things. choose her over everything.
My husband told me today, “I really like how good you are at fighting back against terfs. I learn a lot from you.” Like boy??? I’m already married to you why are you coming at me so hard with the seduction??
So we’re all on board with being anti-patriarchy. Anti-toxic masculinity. We all understand damage done to us by a world that grooms men to be destructive and aggressive. We understand creating spaces free from that force.
We do a disservice to *all* trans and non-binary people when our response to that is limited to the celebration and prioritization of women and the rejection and hatred of men.
What we create when this is the extent of our response is:
– a space where non-cis people are terrified of their own masculinity and their own relationship to male identity.
– a space where non-women are terrified of their own love for girls.
– a space where EVERYONE is terrified of their own love for boys.
– a space where in order to feel accepted or okay, people must define themselves as related to women.
– a space where in order to talk about gendered oppression, people must define themselves as related to women.
– a space where attraction only feels “wholesome” or “pure” or celebrated at all if it’s attraction between two girls.
– a space where non-binary people are forced to identify with the binary in order to participate in the queer community.
– a space where people’s goodness and badness, purity and toxicity, is measured by how much they look like a girl or like a boy.
Feel free to add your own.
– a space that fosters hostility towards trans guys and men aligned nonbinary people, as well as (and most especially) trans women, for ever experiencing “male privilege” (TERF rhetoric)
– a space that is reductive towards the complex experiences trans people face before discovering the identity, while being closeted, and even while passing, that often involves aspects that are unique to being trans
– a space that forces multiple gendered people to prioritize the woman or feminine aspects of identity even if that may be dysphoria inducing in the name of eradicating internalized misogyny
– a space where gender euphoria when it relates to masculinity is dismissed as privilege, and praised when it relates to femininity
– a space where men are discouraged from ever rectifying any toxic or bad behavior, because don’t you know, they’re evil by nature?
– a space where anyone who’s been hurt by a man is victim-blamed, because sweetie, he’s a man, shouldn’t you have known better?
– a space where traditional, patriarchal femininity is elevated because men are bad, at the expense of anyone who can’t fit that femininity
– a space that can’t come up with any kind of non-toxic masculinity, because masculinity is toxic by default, and therefore contributes absolutely nothing to actually dismantling toxic masculinity.
-a space that tells men they have nothing to contribute (and therefore nothing they need contribute) to dismantling the patriarchy except being quiet and staying out of the way
-a space where cis dudes feel just as terrified of their own masculinity and their own relationship to male identity
-a space where people are discouraged from seeking support from the men in their lives, especially about gender issues
-a space where we know we dislike the status quo, but can’t fully articulate a vision for the future
-a space where domestic abuse survivors are shunned and silenced
-a space where rape survivors are shunned and silenced
-a space that encourages distrust, paranoia, and out and out hatred of half the population, as no one can never interact with a man ever again
-a space that shames bisexuals, pansexuals, and queer people for their attraction
okay but the idea that finn and rey meet each other and immediately settle on a system of respect is revolutionary because all we ever get is boy meets girl and boy acts like a dick/girl hates boy and yet somehow of course by the end of the movie they’re together (i’m looking at you, jurassic world)
and this idea of what makes a “””good couple””” in media is so toxic because it perpetrates this idea that if two people hate each other or are assholes to each other for most of their time together then somehow they’re going to get together and it’s gonna be peachy
and in force awakens i was so ready for that to happen all over again BUT NO
instead we get two people who look out for each other in ways that neither of them have ever really experienced before and there’s just no forced antagonism between them. there’s drama, sure, but there’s also honesty and loyalty and giant space squid monsters
like holy guacamole what a way to kick off a trilogy
The fact that people completely sleep on the Finn and Rey dynamic and fixate on The Last Jedi as some kind of feminist victory is so wild to me.
[image text: “The phenomenon of female anger has often been turned against itself, the figure of the angry woman reframed as threat — not the one who has been harmed, but the one bent on harming. She conjures a lineage of threatening archetypes: the harpy and her talons, the witch and her spells, the medusa and her writhing locks. The notion that female anger is unnatural or destructive is learned young; children report perceiving displays of anger as more acceptable from boys than from girls. According to a review of studies of gender and anger written in 2000 by Ann M. Kring, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, men and women self-report “anger episodes” with comparable degrees of frequency, but women report experiencing more shame and embarrassment in their aftermath. People are more likely to use words like “bitchy” and “hostile” to describe female anger, while male anger is more likely to be described as “strong.” Kring reported that men are more likely to express their anger by physically assaulting objects or verbally attacking other people, while women are more likely to cry when they get angry, as if their bodies are forcibly returning them to the appearance of the emotion — sadness — with which they are most commonly associated.”]
LF: This character is forced to be some villain’s girlfriend!
Me: so she’s his sex slave or what???
LF: she’s not wearing a bikini though, so it’s… feminist!?
Me:
AND she tells Han that she doesn’t feel worthy of his love because of all she’s been through for three years, which is you know, a rape victim for all these years. Which fucking YIKES, that really reads like “I’m no longer “pure” and you deserve a woman who hasn’t been tainted by a man other than you”.
And he’s not even giving her a deep speech about how that’s nonsense?
Apparently he does, he views her as a victim who he couldn’t save (again her primary purpose in this movie is for Han to “save” her), but she ends up leaving him in the end because she doesn’t feel worthy of his love. Instead of, you know, a storyline where they could have actually given a female character agency and had her been an ambitious career woman who prioritized climbing up the crime syndicate ladder over her relationship with Han, they made her a kidnaping victim/sex slave who only leaves the male hero because she doesn’t deserve him now that she’s no longer pure.
Upon reading the spoilers, it actually really comes off like LFL/Kasdan were catering to the dudebros who worship Han as a masculine hero who would be upset at him being dumped by an ambitious career woman. “The only way a woman could choose not to be with Han is if she doesn’t think she deserves him!”
No, y’see, she *chose* (under duress) to become a mobster’s
‘girlfriend’ and that automatically makes it consensual, how dare
critics be misogynistic by calling her a rape victim!!!!!!!
^Pretty sure that’s how people with a very warped view on ‘feminism’ will defend the writing.
Yet again, the price of adventure and danger for a woman is captivity and sexual violence while for a man it’s more adventure and, eventually, love. Like we haven’t seen this a thousand times.
I’m guessing you mean ALL or ANY of the female characters could be replaced by a sexy lamp without the plot falling apart. That said, much as I dislike TLJ, I disagree. The female characters in TLJ were by and large not inert plot devices, I can say that much, though enragingly enough it’s Leia who comes closest to that description due to spending much of the movie in a coma.
My issue with the way these characters were written is that they were not given their own stories but rather made to serve the stories of male characters with a fake sheen of empowerment. Rose was there to “set Finn straight” or whatever (there are so many levels of racism and sexism in this thinking it’s dizzying), Rey to try and bring Kylo back to the light and ultimately show how far he has fallen, and Holdo and Leia to guide Poe to be a leader. The flaws and traumas of these women are made subservient to the needs of male growth and change, and in the case of Rose and Holdo especially, instead of having their own messy humanity they are Right for the Edification of Stupid Men.
I’ve heard it said that feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. If women are not allowed their own flaws and biases but can only be omniscient and hyper-capable devices to help and teach men, then they’re not being treated as human beings. Among its many other flaws TLJ is a fake feminist story, and predictably White Feminists™ in particular are eating it up.
All of my white feminist friends loved TLJ. I absolutely cannot comprehend how, but they all see Leia, Rey and Holdo, in particular, as strong women without seeing any of their massive flaws. To the point that they rage at me for daring to criticize them, saying I’m just afraid of women in power. I don’t understand how they can’t see that I’m actually further on their side than they are.
I suppose I can’t blame them, though. Women get so little good, strong actual women in power, and so little good representation that when they see anything, even–even really shittily written and executed characters–they eat it up. It still amazes me though, because they’re just so offensively badly written.
I suppose you could bring up the absolute butch job done on Phasma. Phasma who has always been marketed as this incredible big bad and has been sidelined this entire series, getting taken out by a cheap shot.
@brotherskywalker Yeah, I mean conventionally strong female characters can be great wish fulfillment so I can see where your friends are coming from, but I tend to side-eye the interpretation that it’s some kind of feminist triumph for female characters not to have their own stories but rather primarily teach male characters lessons.
And they can be read as less shining beacons of righness and more as characters with biases and weaknesses as you point out. I think that’s way more interesting, actually. Rose’s story can be about her grief and confusion in a situation where she lost her only remaining family and is losing the one thing she has left, the Resistance. Holdo’s story can be about her hubris and blind spots as a commander and as a survivor of genocide. The focus is all wrong for these readings to really gel, though, and rather than lend itself to multiple interpretations the execution of the story lurches between confusing and offensive.
@grandoljoe Phasma of all characters could actually have been replaced by a sexy lamp, smh. RJ even took out the scene where she shot the Stormtroopers to cover her ass. I’m really disappointed with her character in both TFA and TLJ, all the more because she had so much potential.
I’m guessing you mean ALL or ANY of the female characters could be replaced by a sexy lamp without the plot falling apart. That said, much as I dislike TLJ, I disagree. The female characters in TLJ were by and large not inert plot devices, I can say that much, though enragingly enough it’s Leia who comes closest to that description due to spending much of the movie in a coma.
My issue with the way these characters were written is that they were not given their own stories but rather made to serve the stories of male characters with a fake sheen of empowerment. Rose was there to “set Finn straight” or whatever (there are so many levels of racism and sexism in this thinking it’s dizzying), Rey to try and bring Kylo back to the light and ultimately show how far he has fallen, and Holdo and Leia to guide Poe to be a leader. The flaws and traumas of these women are made subservient to the needs of male growth and change, and in the case of Rose and Holdo especially, instead of having their own messy humanity they are Right for the Edification of Stupid Men.
I’ve heard it said that feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. If women are not allowed their own flaws and biases but can only be omniscient and hyper-capable devices to help and teach men, then they’re not being treated as human beings. Among its many other flaws TLJ is a fake feminist story, and predictably White Feminists™ in particular are eating it up.
I find it pretty telling that some white dudes described Rey as more ‘likable’ in this film – presumably because she was treated in a more ‘conventional’ way to them…
Yeah like… none of that inconvenient anger for being tortured and having her friends killed and hurt… so convenient. I mean, likable.
L.J.'s Obsessions 