He's often called a monster, but he's not a monster. A monster is an exception, an outsider, someone society doesn't have to be responsible for. But society is responsible here. These "monsters" are not sick: they're healthy children of the patriarchy, of rape culture. Rape culture condones those behaviors that damage and oppress women, starting from things we don't recognize as important but are: controlling behavior, possessiveness, catcalling. All men are privileged by this culture.
"Not all men," they often say. Not all men, no, but they're always men. A man can’t be good if he doesn't do anything to demolish a society that makes him so privileged. In this patriarchal society that gives them so much privilege and so much power, men are responsible for educating friends and colleagues when they hear the smallest hint of sexist violence. Say it to your friend who controls his girlfriend, say it to your colleague who catcalls passers-by, make yourself hostile to behaviors that are condoned by society and are the prelude to femicide.
Femicide is state murder, because the state is not on our side. The State doesn't protect us. Femicide is not a crime of passion, it is a crime of power. We need widespread sexual and emotional education; we need to teach that love is not ownership. We need to support anti-violence institutions, and we need to give whoever needs it a chance to ask for help.
For Giulia, not a minute's silence. For Giulia, burn everything down.
(Elena Cecchettin’s open letter after her sister Giulia’s femicide. In the last sentence she quotes Peruvian poet architect Cristina Torres Cáceres: If it's me tomorrow, if tomorrow I don't come back, mother, tear everything down. If it happens to me tomorrow, I want to be the last one." Read a good article about it (in Italian) and an English one. All translations are mine.)
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Reductress is just spreading terf rhetoric now
The "joke" is that nonbinary people are somehow escaping from violence by being trans that we can opt out of fearing violence and don't fear violence when walking at night....
Like just yuck as a transmasc nonbinary survivor whose actually aware of the stats of violence against nonbinary people this just disgusts me...
Also I'm betting they have talked to zero Black trans enbies or men or women of colour about how being seen as "scary" puts them in danger from racist white people & or they're just assuming all enbies are white idk it's disgusting... There's just so many layers to the bigotry and white fauxminism of this "joke"
They've previously made posts like this so idk if they've got terfs on staff who keep trying to slip this in to pipeline people or people who think certain trans people they dislike facing violence including sexual violence is funny and that those trans survivors are lying and shouldn't be beleived.
They're priming their audience to disbelieve and mock nonbinary trans survivors. They're literally pushing the "people transition to escape/opt out of patriarchal violence like a fun game" terf talking point which isn't reflected in the stats of violence against trans people who face higher rates of physical sexual and domestic violence than cis people
Just "it's a coin toss!"
As a survivor fuck you
Like the comments section is full of transphobia and people going "har har they think they're in danger they're delusional " or spouting transphobic BS and a trans man whose talking about how he fears violence walking at night being called 'female' and misgendered like well done you've curated a comment section full of transphobes and people who think trans people aren't who we say we are fucking yikes
None of the transphobic comments have been deleted reductress seems happy to leave up comments calling trans men "female" and saying that trans people are a danger to children
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ik people like to act like sex and imbalanced sexual dynamics are uniquely traumatizing (moreso than any other kind of power imbalance, abuse of power, or just flat out abuse period) but from personal experience not really. there's nothing inherent to sex and sexuality that makes it traumatizing. there's nothing inherent to sexual trauma that makes it more traumatic than any other trauma.
and chiefly trauma is never really about the intentions of any party who made or let it happen. someone who wants, intends, and tries to hurt you might bounce off you just like that; because they simply failed to psychologically damage you, because what they did didn't bother you a lot whether it be mental physical or sexual. conversely someone who does not want, intend, or try to hurt you may scar you for life with something either they don't understand is harmful or isn't even inherently harmful and is uniquely that way to you.
i just. i'm annoyed at the narrative of trauma being taken away from the survivor themself. if i say this was traumatizing and you think it's not a big deal, too fucking bad, listen to me. if i say that wasn't traumatizing at all and you think it's the worst thing in the world upon hearing what it is, too fucking bad, you don't get to tell me what my trauma is. i'm sick of seeing people put words in each others mouths and tell someone's story for them without that person's consent. idk like? it makes me so angry that whenever i used to talk about things people would blatantly disregard the most horrific times of my life and instead focus on stuff i was neutral or even positive toward as a big terrible thing that ruined me.
nowadays i'm very grateful to have people who are chill and don't jump to conclusions no one asked them to. people who listen when i tell them "i know this sounds bad but it wasn't actually" or "i know this sounds stupid but this was world shattering." people who i get to laugh with. the RIGHT people who extend me the same kindness of knowing their strange "good bad things" and "bad fine things."
life just isn't as simple as "this is always terrible for people" and "this is always fine for people." PEOPLE aren't a monolith. yes, even that thing that you think must be the worst thing possible. yes, even that thing that you think no one could possibly be hurt by. it's hard to involve myself in serious discussions about abuse because there is a very clear Narrative people want to follow and if you as a "victim" don't follow it then either it didn't happen or you're wrong about your own experience.
hopefully I can consult my therapist about this phenomenon in discussions of abuse and trauma. and also about the specific thing that made me think of this. it irritates me quite a lot when others pity me for something that i knowingly chose-- and in retrospect never hurt me either. like what are you fishing for. why are you looking at me like that. i'm fine, maybe you're the one that needs counseling if my talking about this creates such a visceral reaction in you.
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what your thoughts on title cole's hades hangman series?
My immediate thoughts are that Tillie Cole is a racist who should be actually cancelled (not the weak shit we call cancellation), as in any possible publishing career, indie or otherwise, done. Nothing. I'm honestly worried about the pen name shit I imagine she'll pull or has pulled, because I dread people buying books by her without realizing it's her after all this.
But uh.... yeah. I have zero tolerance for Nazi romances, KKK romances, any romances featuring a racist, genocidal protagonist or protagonists. And I do want to be clear--genocide is what the KKK wants in the end. As is the case for most hate groups. They may say they want people "in their proper place" or "over there instead of here" (displacement being a part of genocide) which is all heinous and unacceptable. However, the reality of the nitty gritty is that they want them eradicated, or at least eradicated from the part of the earth the genocide mongerer feels entitled to, which is most of it. The only alternative, if you could call it that, being that the racist wants the "inferior" race enslaved or subjugated for their own gain (the implicit word usually being "again"). And I think that even the "smallest" breadcrumb of racism can easily tip into these mindsets with some degree of radicalization. So yes, zero tolerance.
I often have seen the "devil's advocate" arguments from "liberals" (white feminists who want to read these books) being "but how is this any worse than books where the heroine falls for her rapist".
And here's the thing--there are a couple books I've read wherein the heroine does fall for her rapist, and I like them still. I'll be clear--these are historical old schools (as in, the 80s) which I don't think came from the perspective of say, a contemporary Sam Mariano book. (I haven't read her books, but I know they can contain this content). I have yet to read a recently published contemporary wherein the heroine falls for her rapist that works for me. I have spoken to people for whom certain books have worked, including a couple survivors.
What I think sets these books apart is that a heroine in a dark romance falling for her rapist, however fucked up and unrealistic, is based on a personal relationship between two people. It isn't about anyone the reader represents, and I don't even really think it's often about gender (though it can be, which I think is probably a line--if a hero is a serial rapist because he hates women, I don't think the reception would be the same). And let's be real here--most of the time, this does reflect real life. The vast majority of sexual assaults are the result of intimate partner violence. It is something between two people, and while I would personally never suggest anyone forgive their rapist and reconcile with them, or frankly forgive them in general... That is something where it is about the one individual and her perspective, and in a romance it follows the same mentality. I may not LIKE that book, but I do see that as a book about harm to a PERSON and within a RELATIONSHIP, which is more individualized.
A KKK hero or a Nazi hero or what have you is often paired with a woman who represents a group he hates (though in Tillie's case, the heroine is a white-passing Latina, a "cartel princess", which lol, ALSO RACIST, but I suppose her complexion is meant to create ambiguity). If he isn't, she's the white woman he is allowed to be with anyway. Either way, he hates a collective. He is enacting violence, physical or otherwise, against a collective. Even if the heroine is of the group he hates, SHE cannot validate his redemption arc~ or "forgive" him. However unrealistic the forgiveness or validation of redemption a rapist "hero" may be, that is a situation where I can say "fucked up, but her choice". This is very literally not something a single heroine can give, and even if the author came from the same marginalized group as the heroine in a genocidal hero book... that author can't speak for the collective either. (I say this because I have heard of authors writing about sexual assault and reconciliation in books state that they're survivors, and I really can't speak on how they work through that on an individual level, but I do think it's important to again note the individual.)
While sexual violence is absolutely a worldwide epidemic, it is NOT the same thing as genocide. Doesn't mean it's better or worse... Though I will say, I think the fact that sexual violence is used as a tool by genocide mongerers does speak to the fact that genocide is obviously a more existential threat, here. And I don't really care for the comparisons I've seen made between the two in discussions of this book and its place in dark romance--because they often seem to be coming from my fellow white women, and I feel there is often a "we're all women, we're in this together" mindset. When the reality is... no. First off, women aren't the only targets of sexual violence, and men are not the only people who perpetuate it. Second of all, not all women experience rape culture in the same way. Cishet white women live under the threat of rape culture, absolutely. But white women don't experience racialized predation. Nobody is trying to "convert" cishet (or simply cis) women through sexual violence. Nobody is killing cis women because they feel "tricked" by us. And for that matter, white women, especially cishet white women, can be the oppressors of women of color, queer women, trans women, and so on. They can encourage sexual violence against women with a single vote--and have. How many white women voted for Mr. "Grab 'Em By the Pussy", again?
So yeah, I don't really like the whole "well this is fine for me to read because y'all read your rape books" discussion of these books when we get into discussion, because these just are very different topics. And I don't like conflating them to either EXCUSE the violence of these books, or once again devolve into a "dark romance readers are universally dirty little perverts". Because--while there are ABSOLUTELY dark romance books that go way too far, which I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole... I think there's a point where a book isn't even dark romance, it's just using that as a mask to perpetuate a form of like... artistic violence against an entire group of people.
Because these genocidal hero books are about violence against the collective marginalized group being dismissed, "redeemed" or "forgiven", there's this inherent dismissal of what has happened to potential readers of these books, and I see that as a kind of casual violence. That dismissal happens every day, and it is ESPECIALLY happening right now, when so many western nations (and I'm not denying it's happening elsewhere, I'm just much more aware of the USA, Canada, and Europe) are in the midst of nationalistic far right swings. And hell, let's be real, most people of color are not reading Tillie's books on purpose, I imagine--but frankly, that doesn't matter. Tillie has, I suppose, a legal right to write these books. But I don't view them as any different from the vitriol spewed from a Westboro Baptist Church representative, or the people calling BLM protestors looters.
You just can't slide this shit into a "dark romance is gonna dark" slot, or "why do dark romance readers keep bringing this to us" whine rant. I will bet you anything that a lot of the readers who read this book and rated it a 4 or 5 on GR haven't read a single other dark romance novel in their fucking lives. They enjoyed it because they want to romanticize a guy in the KKK and act like he can be redeemed, because their sick little fantasies about their white prince proud boys are what they're looking for here. This isn't about tiptoeing to the ver edge of dark romance, this is about wanting to bathe in a racist fantasy. It's their Birth of a Nation moment, but with porn.
I mean, what has been really frustrating to me... because obviously outright racists will shamelessly defend Tillie, outright... is just this idea that this somehow has come back to a discussion of dark romance, when really, it should be a discussion of RACIST ROMANCE NOVELS. Which is something that extends faaaaaar beyond dark romance, or any subgenre. I've read a fuckton of racist contemporary romances. Obviously historicals have quite a long journey with racism in books. I've read racism in paranormals, for fuck's sake. I believe one of the big Nazi romances was an inspirational romance. To me, there's just been this dancing around admitting that this is a romance-wide issue, because people want to go "well, it's only an issue with dark romance, MYYYYY favorite romances would never" and it's like. I don't know, girl. People of color are widely underrepresented in the genre (as are queer people and trans people) so maaaaybe just maaaaybe romance isn't your perfect haven where all we need to confront is men being misogynistic. Maybe, just maaaaybe, there are other issues going on here.
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