bisexual-magneto - Tumblr blog

bisexual-magneto · 7 months

Text

I mean, I feel like it is a natural outcome considering that both the jury and the public seemed to completely forget that Depp v Heard was about defamation, not abuse, but it terrifies me that a lot of people don't realise me what a giant blow to women's freedom of speech this was. She didn't name Depp as an abuser in that article, she said she was a figure representing abuse. The article was co-written with the ACLU and one of the contested lines was written by the editors but she got sued for it. Not the Washington Post, not the ACLU. Which definitely is at least partially because she had the worst lawyers and partially to get back at the ex, but Depp sued the Sun in the UK. He does sue newspapers.

And this is another facet of the larger phenomenon where all those big Western values of liberty and individualism, the personal pursuit of happiness, civil liberties for everyone etc etc etc - is and always have been directed at (white) men, with anyone else being granted some of that as a concession. So many of the lauded works in our literature are about how any person has the right to take charge of their own fate and needs civil liberties to be able to take responsibility for their lives - but at any of those points of time, it was always clear that this does not apply to women.

That since men have decided that women are happier as housewives, they have to be housewives, it had to be made law and there had to be social pressure. Since men have decided that women are better wives if they're uneducated, they barred them from education. That since men had decided that women cannot handle stress, they have to be banned from all sorts of things. And so on. The ideal of self-determination has always been a gendered one. It is about the man as the special crown jewel of creation, the being of infinite value, intelligence and depth, alleviated to personal power by the Enlightenment - and the woman as the NPC beside him. The rib. Remember, the same phase in history when male philosophers and scholars started to push for the idea that every (white) man is created equal, has the same abilities barred by circumstances - that was the same time that othering was more and more transferred from a religious rationale to a scientific one.

And much in the same way, if a man - any man but especially a white man - had lost a defamation trial on such shaky, shaky grounds, men would be taking his side, sharing 1984 quotes or whatever and consider it a dark day for human rights. In fact, think of all the male pundits who will spin outright lies about some celebrity being part of a cannibal paedo cult - and when they're found out to be lying, their fans defend them and say that "well it's their freedom of speech!"

For the public, there is no urgency to defend women's right to freedom of speech, especially when they're talking about gendered issues, because quite classically, they think a woman has nothing meaningful to say and "should be seen, not Heard".

#there is also the idea of the social hierarchy. Beautiful women are status symbols for rich men. Just like their cars and their mansion.#everyone knows that they're treating them like crap. That's part of the stereotype - getting away with it is part of what gives them status #That's why Snoop Dogg paraded women on leashes on the red carpet or Hugh Hefner lived like he did. They want to show that they can do that.#so in a world where this appeals to our sense of a functional world-order - the idea that a status symbol can defend herself feels unjust #amber heard #johnny depp #lmao get ready for the clown posse

14 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 8 months

Text

every day I log into the Website

1 note · View note

bisexual-magneto · 9 months

Text

on second thought, I'm not getting involved with that. Still, I can only share my experience that Christians going "I wouldn't be treated like this if I was Jewish/Muslim" stems from an intra-community narrative of Christians being especially persecuted, usually going hand in hand with the denial of the experience of actually marginalised religions.

1 note · View note

bisexual-magneto · 9 months

Text

Hey, at least she has credentials:

295 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 9 months

Text

I'm sure you struggled for many years with that one lmao

#bro how long can that journey have been

2 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 9 months

Text

absolutely not misogynist behaviour to type shit like this, then ask women to calm down before granting them right to"politely, politely ask some clarifying questions" about whether they're a misogynist

Now that THAT mess is over, I’m here to give a friendly reminder before you get hashtag triggered at what someone on the internet said, take a DEEP breath, calm down, and politely, politely, ask some clarifying questions, before you call someone a misogynist cop, because in most instances, they don’t mean to appear that way!

2 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 10 months

Text

Flight Attendant, Receptionist, Salesperson in many areas of retail, Performing Artists, video journalists, Public Relations/Marketing Professionals, Corporate Executives, Hotel Industry Staff with customer contact, Event Planner/Coordinator, Professional Dancers

And that's just some of the ones where it's put into the job requirements. In others, you might just get a reputation for looking "ill-groomed" and not very "presentable", so have a severe disadvantage to your career if you don't spend a large share of your salary on dolling up.

"bUt i tHiNk mAKeUp is fUn" that's nice. i would like to be allowed to exist without it without being socioeconomically punished for that choice but what's important to focus on here is that you're just having the funnest time ever

31K notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 11 months

Text

maybe that should....TELL YOU SOMETHING????

#sorry if this is becoming my throaway rant blog

4 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 1 year

Text

"We don't want to be called terfs, we are 'radical feminists' who care about women's rights. Also all women are stupid"

#?????????#what is this if not misogyny?

1 note · View note

bisexual-magneto · 1 year

Text

Now, just as a belated heads-up, this is not a conversation about the prison system. Just saying. If you add a "but also the prison system is-" or "are you saying that the prison system is-" - not the point here. This is a conversation about lines of argumentation)

If you ever want a really succinct illustration of the way terfs frame their transmisogny as feminism: Consider all the time terfs spend on talking about trans women in women's prisons.

They bring it up a lot. 'How trans women violate a formerly (cis) female space.' That's how they present it. That's literally what you read on their protest signs - "Keep Men Out Of Women's Prisons!"

In fact, if you google this, you will find many variations of this sentence - but the keyword "keep" is universal.

Keep.

...

Keep. - - - not 'get'. Keep.

And that there shows you how this framing works.

Because men are already fucking there. Have been, always. They're the fucking guards. No word about that though.

Because's that's not what they're protesting against. In fact - does anyone genuinely believe that any serious bid advocating for abolishing male guards from women's prisons would get nearly the same attention and genuine support in terf circles as the campaign against trans women in women's prisons does? Well, there is an easy answer to this: Either the reason we don't see those takes is because terfs straight up don't care about the issue enough for those takes to exist or we don't see those takes because they're not being paid enough attention by their community to be widely distributed - let alone draw as much attention as 'trans women out of women's prisons is.

In the UK, in some prisons it's a 1:1 ratio of male to female guards (see Freedom of Information Act, Reference No 86754). So you're really gonna tell me that all that rallying against a tiny handful of trans women in women's prisons is sincere, genuine concern about keeping "men out of women's spaces" - when there is no word, no peep, no nothing about the fact that on the other side of these bars, the people in uniforms, the people writing reports about behaviour and dealing out punishments and controlling contact to the outside world - are straight-up cis men? Cis men in uniforms who chose a job that gave them state-backed control over socially marginalised women?

In my home country (Germany), there are over 50% male guards in women's prisons. In some places women's prisons are so empty, that there are several times more guards than prisoners in those facilities, which should tell you about the chances of connecting against the guards or the gender-related culture in there. There was a case in Chemnitz of a male guard impregnating a female prisoner a while ago that made the press - which is an indication of larger-scale sexual abuses going on. Pregnancy is pretty much the only outcome of sexual violence against a prisoner that a guard wouldn't be able to cover-up with the power dynamic as it is (and remember, guards, unlike prisoners, can easily smuggle contraceptives into prison) - so the fact that the public learnt about this or that it even made it past the room it happened in, probably constitutes merely a tiny tip of the iceberg.

But that's not on their protest signs.

That's not what they talk about in their posts. That's not where they direct their vitriol.

And it also illustrates how they echo established right-wing narratives. Of course the right doesn't care about about men being guards in women's prisons. Or about men having power over women. That's what they deem natural and ideal. To them, the prisoners are criminals and whatever suffering can be inflicted on them is appropriate, whether it is part of the intended sentence or not. They also don't care about trans women in women's prisons (because they don't care about cis women prisoners either - why would they care about who they're housed with?).

No, they want trans women in men's prisons for the same reason they're okay with cis male guards in women's prisons: Because to them, sexual violence is a natural punishment for misbehaving women - because men are the 'protectors' on top of the society, and by offending against that society, the umbrella of benevolent male protection is removed. For them, cis women violated that natural order by doing whatever got them into prison - so now they're fair game. Trans women were never women in there eyes to begin with - they're 'men' attempting to undermine their distinct separation and hierarchy of the sexes, as they perceive them, by having the gall to imply that a man could 'become' a woman - not to mention: By requesting transfers to women's prisons, trans women (in the right-wing narratives) are trying to escape the extra-judicial abuses that (see above) they consider the natural punishment for violating what they consider the natural order of the sexes (see some similarities here?). From a fascist perspective, bigotry is a means of controlling the behaviour of the members of society and purifying it of undesired elements - and both the abuses that a trans woman would suffer in a man's prison as well as the abuses a cis woman would experience at the hands of a cis male guard are perfectly acceptable to them.

Spaces separating women from the male public have always been held up as a privilege that women could earn/maintain through desirable behaviour such as submissiveness, chastity, prettiness, good manners etc - at the hefty price of giving themselves and every aspect of their lives into hands of a much small number of men, such as her husband or her father.

Meanwhile, undesirable behaviour is punished by refusing women that 'privilege' of male 'protection' - and tossing them out to deal with the male-dominated public while still being restrained in the rightless state of a woman - whether that meant being sent to a psychiatric institution at the mercy of uncaring doctors, going out to work in a factory with no education received beforehand, a workhouse, whether that meant prostitution in a society that has absolutely no sympathy for that profession, or whether that meant a divorced women being forced to find lodging for herself (remember, divorced women were also subject of discrimination for a long time and often this came paired with poverty.)

Now, mind you, this is rationalised through the narrative that women are not suffering a social disadvantage but that these differences are founded in biological reality. The idea is: "If you're no longer being good and obedient for the men who so kindly protect you, you defective, weak little creature - then go out on the street and deal with the real world! If you want to act like a man - see how ya like dealing with that, you dumb bitch!!" (yeah, there it is, ye olde: "I love you, I love you, I love you - - - - Well, I never liked you anyway and you're ugly!")

This is something you will commonly find echoed in anti-feminist narratives: The idea that instead of the benevolent husband she's serving as a dutiful housewife, a woman will now have to "serve" an employer, who is not actually interested in her as a person but just as a worker. The idea of a single-mother being punished for failing to keep the father by begging for child support and going to work. The idea that a woman going into a specific physical place/entering a specific line of work/dressing a certain way/going out in specific times of the day or night is herself at fault for falling victim to any attacks against her - because she should have known to state at home in the domestic state or be chaperoned by a man. While any man attacking her, abusing her, harassing her, a) couldn't help it because skirt short and b) is basically just enforcing a 'natural law'.

Or: Just take a long hard look at the famous little sentence "she's for the streets". There's that entire sentiment in four brief words.

For the right, the absolute authority of random prison guards over their prisoners is highly respectable in their hierarchical, fascist world view. And male guards are just a punishment that disobedient women deserve in that world view. Also, the narrative that we're living in a male-led, functioning-at-it's-best-only-through-absolute-authority society that is being attacked and undermined by liberal whackos is also and important right-wing talking point (because there always needs to be a threat!) - and the prison system works oh so wonderfully as a setting for that fight, doesn't it?

That's the right-wing side of things.

Now let's look back at the terf side of things.

Now, a (sincere) radical feminist perspective obviously shouldn't allow for male guards in women's prisons, simple as that. If terfs genuinely cared, that would be their battle cry in all prison context. That should be one of their first demands, if their logic was consistent.

But that's not how framing works. Much like the right has their framing of what is happening, so do terfs. And from that framing, we can deduce backwards what the intended goal is: What reason is there to gloss over the presence of male guards in prisons, if one is so genuinely concerned about male presence in women's prisons? What purpose is there to the 'keep men out' narrative, when very clearly, men have always been 'in'?

- - - trans women.

Yeah, anti-climactic, I know. But that's how you crack open the framing and see clearly what is behind 'Keep Men Out Of Women's Prisons' - that's who they have a problem with. If they started addressing the much bigger social issue of 'male prison guards in women's prisons' - a subject that they would get barely any support anywhere right of the centre from (unlike the support they get when they tackle the popular 'Trans Agenda!!!!) - they'd have to tackle big state institutions. They'd have to start a giant campaign. They'd have to get people interested in a subject that few people have any empathy towards - convicted felons. It would be unpopular. It would be a lot of work. And it would not be centred around talking about evil trans women. So they're not interested in that. But that's how it works: A protective layer of 'feminism' around what is really 'we hate trans women'

#cw misogyny #cw transmisogyny #cw rape mention #cw abuse mention #cw prison mention

8 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 1 year

Text

(And before anyone tries to get nitpicky about this - the video of Ezra Miller strangling a woman leaked in early spring 2020.

Due to Covid-19, filming for Secrets of Dumbledore only started half a year later -

so they definitely heard of the allegations (do you have to call it that if it's literally on video?) concerning one of their big stars and could have (would have!) found some magical explanation for a re-cast, same as they did with Depp's character, if a certain copyright-holding, actively-involved in production billionaire with women's rights so very close to her heart had insisted on that)

2 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 1 year

Text

I know, I know, everything has been said about how useless it is to call out bigots about their hypocrisy and how their narrative doesn’t line up with their actions - but time of my life I’ve found myself incapable of curbing that impulse so:

It’s genuinely fascinating to me how JK Rowling, supposed champion of women speaking their minds without danger to their jobs, is out there sawing at the branches of every woman who disagrees with her but keeps around people who actually hurt women as long as they make her money -

(btw, Harris condemned the death threats Rowling received and defended her right to speak, she only pointed out that as public figures they get death threats all the time - but that that doesn’t make them Salman Rushdie)

(Edit: I didn't watch this film, but I've since learnt from FriendlySpaceNinja's review on YouTube that she has been reduced from a popular main-character and female lead to 2 appearances with barely any lines in a way that apparently clearly indicates last minute rewrites)

This one is really interesting if you consider that JKR also brands herself the champion of abuse survivors and has repeatedly proven to be rather paranoid about AMAB trans people being predators and whatnot -

And yet, Ezra Miller who really is a predator and has assaulted girls and women is still in the franchise and Johnny Depp only resigned under pressure from Warner Bros.

In fact, the accusations against Depp were a big problem for the franchise for over five years at this point and this is what the queen bee of radical feminism had to say on that matter:

So she’s on twitter, hand-wringing about letting ‘men’ into women’s spaces in case there could be a theoretical predator among them - but is perfectly willing to put a multi-millionaire with a history of mistreating women and assaulting service staff into a position of power in a production she holds sway over, as long as it pays her bills.

54 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 1 year

Text

We really gave unseasoned milktoast dudes a free check on making the same jokes on women they always did with that one. And they sure are cashing it in.

Because your father doesn't help her with the holiday preparations, Tyler. And because you sulked and threw a tantrum for 18 years whenever anything wasn't perfect and she was the one who had to deal with that. Tyler.

#solve all supermarket Karen tantrums forever by doing the family shopping yourself Tyler #standard disclaimer: I'm not saying that you cannot critique middle aged women being horrible to underplayed employees #I'm saying that it is going the same way any opening to make fun of a marginalised group has gone ever #the moment white dudes in their 20s got hold of it #paired with the same way every insult against women ever went

4 notes · View notes

bisexual-magneto · 2 years

Text

Okay. Your answers are legitimately so far removed from reality and any sense of decorum that I have very little confidence that you will listen to what I am now going to try and tell you (in fact, on any other website I'd assume you are a troll or just very, very young) but I will try it in good faith in the hope of sparing you a lot of future drama. Both here and in the real world.

You can criticise these things. You can criticise all these things. You can and should criticise everything under the sun, in fact, if you have the knowledge, the sense of propriety, and sincere and honest motivations to do so. I love people who think critically! Sapere aude and all. How fandom treats male characters vs female characters, "blorbo culture", whatever you want to call that - yes, you can criticise it. In fact, there is a lot about that to criticise and it's great when people speak up about it and address it. Thank you for doing that! And thank you for being that voice in your fandom! You're on the right side there and doing good!

But - and this has nothing to with where you stand on fandom things and what your opinions are: Nothing is ever worth a single human life. It never is. Never. No show, no cartoon, no movie is ever worth a real-life person suffering. Actual human suffering is always above and untouchable by whatever happens in your fandom. Every single breath a real person takes anywhere on this planet is worth more than this entire website. That is why it is so incredibly offensive for example when Hetalia fans make content about actual catastrophes or wars. That is why it is so incredibly offensive when people write fanfics about real-world suffering like "Harry Potter characters react to 9/11". Even positive things like "my OTP reacts to gay marriage being legalised" has a 99.9% chance of being in incredibly poor taste because it using real world struggle and pain as a prop and thereby being incredibly condescending and exploitative. That's for example the discourse you see around the fandom-ification of True Crime, where people will argue what the line is between e.g. historical interest and commemoration and glorification or taking away from the dignity of the victims and the severity of the crimes. I'm not saying that is what you're doing! What I'm saying is that you tapped into an entire secondary conversation with your post that has nothing to do with gender dynamics or "blorbo culture" and I want you to be aware of the mechanics that lead to your post coming across as it does (seemingly not only to me).

And that is because, as you say, - media doesn't exist in a vacuum. Media is an interactive commodity in our lives that we contextualise and associate specific values and a specific cultural importance with. And the value of fandom discourse about a fictional cartoon does never, ever in any way occupy the same relevance as the death of this young woman.

This young woman was a real person. Her name was Asia Womack. She was 21. She was a living human being with friends and loved ones. People who are grieving. She had a home, she was athletic, most likely she had a favourite food, hobbies, a favourite outfit - she was an entire human person made of flesh and blood which is something no fictional character will ever be. Likely there is an entire community that is shocked by what just happened. This woman has had a whole life ahead of her. Every single moment of which she has been robbed of. Every single moment of which is a thousand times worth more than the entire channel of nickelodeon, its entire corpus of children's cartoons including Avatar the last Airbender and a thousand times worth more than this website, anything that ever happens on it or any discourse there might be about some fandom stuff.

The thing is, by associating things of such different social values, you are saying that these can be compared. You are commenting on a hierarchy, intentionally or not, consciously or not. You are saying that you looked at a real world murder and decided that it was worth being used for in a fictional character argument - and thereby, you're are denigrating it. You are assigning so low a value to this death (again, maybe not intentional but this is what your post evokes) that you seem to think it is appropriate to use it as an argument in a conversation about a fictional character and "blorbo culture" and "babygirl culture". And that is what makes it so disrespectful.

And I understand what you are saying! You want to talk about the social dynamics underlying this! I do understand that. But there are ways to do that and ways not to do that.

What you could do is make a post about fragile and toxic masculinity prompting violence against women - and then talk about her death. In order to educate and raise awareness for this social problem AND to honour her memory by telling more people about her, about the loss this world suffered, and reminding everyone to take such violence seriously. You could even touch upon how excusing men's actions or demonising/dehumanising women facilitates violence like that. About how we women are forced to constantly priortise men's feelings or risk infringing our safety and bear their abuse - and that people should check their own behaviour and interactions for such patterns. No one would complain if you did that. Because you wouldn't be putting someone's death in the service of another, second thing of much lower priority. Her death would then be the priority of this post.

You could also make a post about how gender dynamics of this sort - toxic masculinity, violence against women, the idea of women's inferiority as a crutch for men's sense of self, the othering of women and the prioritisation of men's views and interests etc - relate to and are reflected in fandom culture. In this case, you would have to do research and you would have to be incredibly sensitive so that the focus of your concern and your prioritisation remains on the priority - real life suffering. In that case, I'd recommend you use statistics and sight theoretical works rather than real life examples.

And perhaps we are all reading you wrong and that was what you were trying to accomplish - in which case, consider the reactions you got a feedback on how to phrase these things.

You started with "a woman died" and arrived at the conclusion "this is why I feel the way I do about these cartoon characters." You understand why this comes across as disrespectful, right? If someone tells you they lost a relative or a friend, you would never say: "Wow this reminds me of what happened on my shows-"

What is (when done with decorum and respect) appropriate is:

Statement: "This is how this character acts" -> "this is the real world stuff they are reflecting/reminding me of" -> "that is why I don't like them." Great! Nothing wrong with that! Now the priority was to explain the way you feel and how it was shaped by real life events which overshadows this fictional world. All good.

But if you do it the other way around, then the fictional characters become your conclusion from a real world event: "This real world catastrophe happened" - "this is what is going on in my fandom" -> "I don't like Character". That is in poor taste and that is what will make people question the sincerity of your motivations.

Young woman beats male friend at competitive sport. Young woman trash talks male friend. Fragile, insecure male friend seeks to put young woman in her place.

“ Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” Story as old as time.

Unpopular opinion, but our grim reality is why as a WoC I just could never bring myself to root for Zuko in his quest to prove his superiority over Azula & reclaim his “birthright”. An angry, impulsive, insecure young man who misdirects his anger at a young woman (instead of the adult male abusing them both) is not an underdog but a ticking time bomb.

110 notes · View notes