#and people who sexualise virgins are still fucking gross

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

oh my gosh I love your list on why to love Jude Duarte. Another thing about the not having had sex before and the way that's respected is that it also isn't being sexualized. As someone who hasn't had sex before even though I'm in my twenties, I've experienced my fair share of people thinking it's "hot" that I haven't had sex and it's kinda gross. It seems to be fading now (thankfully), and I'm not sure if that has with me now interacting with older dudes or if society is progressing past the "innocent virgin" trope. I just love how in the series, despite having sex and having lots of it is considered pretty normal, her not having had that isn't a thing that's looked at as neither strange, childish or hot. Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest

ffs do people really sexualise that shit?? listen, i can't relate to that reaction because i was never exposed to anything like that but i was in my twenties before i had sex. all people ever did upon learning of my "virginity" was go "😳 oh." and make me feel like shit for not having had what can probably only be described as a very anticlimactic (pun there if you want it) life experience.

in retrospect, this could've just been genuine surprise that i, absolute mantrap that i am, had yet to woo a bedfellow (/s) and therefore i am retroactively flattered. but anyways, my point being, most people either saw my virginity as this huge burden that i was putting on them, or they just thought it was weird that i hadn't had sex by that age.

and it absolutely shocks me to my core that the flip side of the coin is taken to such an extreme as some gross fetishisation (i mean i can believe it, cos how dare we expect to exist without being sexualised, i'm just extremely disappointed).

so i guess this is all to say yes. i 100% agree. i love the TFOTA series for not making virginity a big deal point blank period. and you ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NAILED IT by saying that despite this hypersexualised world that the fae live in, they still somehow manage to not have Opinions about what other people do or don't do with their bodies.

whether it's when Jude legit had her first kiss at 17/18 (which some would consider "late") or that it didn't matter to Cardan how much experience she had or hadn't had by chapter 21 of QON because THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF SEX, the concept of Jude's sexual experiences throughout the series were put forth simply as this:

"here is this life experience that many people who are in love or not in love have, and it is sometimes scary and sometimes vulnerable and often times not quite how you pictured it happening for the first time, but it's one way of connecting with someone in ways that even words can't. and if you don't want to partake in that, here, have a sword."

thank you so much for sharing, nonnie. ilysm 🥺❤️

#asked and answered #nonnie #tfota #also just for the record #i have plenty of friends who are 25 26 27 years old who haven't had sex purely because they haven't vibed with anyone yet #(or maybe even cos they don't want to idk it's none of my fucking business) #so just in case you were wondering if you were weird or if there was something wrong with you: YOU'RE NOT THERE'S NOT #bc that was very much how i felt at 20 when it seemed like everyone around me was doing it and i just look back now and think #GOD that's so young. that's so fucking young to be thinking there's something wrong with me bc i was ''inexperienced'' #and people who sexualise virgins are still fucking gross #ahhhh this was such a lovely ask you receive thank you for this #jurdan #holly black

[trueishcolours]

American Gods: ARRRRRRRGHHHHH

This post comes with content warnings for sexual violence, child sexual abuse, misogyny and general violence.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that I hate Neil Gaiman’s American Gods with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Now I know that a lot of people really love this book and I’m sure it has much to recommend it, so this post definitely isn’t intended as shade at any fans. It’s just that I’m filled with salt and love to rant.

My central thesis is that American Gods contains a ton of gratuitous sexualisation of women without enough redeeming features to make me forgive it. I think I’d have found it a dull read no matter what, but the real sticking point is the women. And you know how a lot of stories don’t have that many characters? Or at least not many important ones? So in a story with say five detailed characters, there’s one woman and she gets fridged and you side-eye the author but you’re like, ‘maybe it was just a coincidence! Not every character has to be a woman and people do sometimes die! Perhaps all his other novels are full of feminist icons and it all evens out!’ But the gimmick of American Gods is that it has probably hundreds of characters who pop up for a scene and then disappear, so you can really get a representative sample of how Gaiman writes women.

So if you don’t want to plough through 635 pages of this, strap in for the highlights!

p.5 – we meet our first female character. She is the protagonist’s wife, and he imagines having sex with her. Reasonable.

p.14 – his wife is dead. Does it count as fridging if she gets back up later?

p.32 – a man has sex with a woman who turns out to be some kind of goddess. Her vagina swallows him up. Om nom nom.

p. 54 – a woman comes to the protagonist’s wife’s wake and spits on the corpse. Why does she do this? It could have been because she is a bigot and the dead wife is a member of a minority group. It could have been because they were colleagues and the dead wife ruined her career. It could have been because the dead wife put gum in her hair in third grade. But actually it’s because her husband was cheating on her with the protagonist’s wife. A reasonable reason in itself, but it’s all about context…

And then we find out that the protagonist’s wife died because the guy she was having an affair with crashed the car while she was giving him road head, and this is where I lost my shit for the first time. Of all the fucking male power fantasy bullshit. Road head. I’m starting to wonder if Gaiman realises that women can do things or have things happen to them for reasons that aren’t sexual.

Just. The woman is angry because sex. The wife is dead because sex. The wife is linked to the protagonist through sex. It’s getting boring and we’re only on page…

63 – where the hero watches a TV episode called ‘I want to be a prostitute,’ featuring ‘several would-be whores, mostly female.’ Gotta give him marks for the ‘mostly,’ I guess.

p. 64 – the protagonist dreams that he is walking through a hall of statues. One has her tits out; another has a ‘gash’ between her legs. Some male statues. No dicks.

p. 65 – the statues continue: ‘…their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care…’ Yo Gaiman I think you’re describing your female characters here!

p. 70 – dead!wife shows up. I must admit that she seems a decent character so far. Also there’ve been several service industry women who’ve appeared for like a line without getting sexualised, and it seems only fair that I mention them.

p. 71 – wait shit I take it back the God Odin is in bed with the ‘ratty’ ‘girl’ from the motel desk. She has small breasts, in case you were wondering.

p. 81 – ‘ “The best thing about the states we’re heading for is they have the kind of women I like…full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese.” ’

p. 82 – we meet some old lady goddesses. I am pleased that women get to be old in this story.

p. 97 – a midnight conversation with another Goddess. The hero is ‘uncomfortably aware’ that she isn’t wearing anything under her nightgown.

p. 99 – ‘Her nipples, every goose-bump on the areolae, were visible momentarily.’ Thank God, because I was getting worried she didn’t have any.

p. 105 – an 18th-century diarist reminisces about a buxom scullery maid who gets knocked up by the squire’s son. Got to admit her story is kind of cool overall.

p. 117 – ‘ “Liberty is a bitch that must be bedded on a mattress of corpses…that’s who they have in their New York harbour: a bitch, who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbril. Hold your torch as high as you want to, m’dear, there’s still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg.’

p. 137 – the god Anansi reminisces about having ‘a big old high-titty woman’ to keep him company.

p. 139 – store mannequins with ‘sexless breasts.’ Not too sexless to be worth mentioning, apparently.

p. 151 – an old woman in a red sari shows up, but it turns out she’s got a goddess-form and it’s naked.

p. 163 – dead wife (Laura) shows up and kills a bunch of baddies and saves the hero and it’s actually kind of badass?

p. 165 – one of the baddies was in the middle of jerking off when she killed him. It’s not a sexist moment, it’s just a whyyyyyyyyyyy moment. More sexy/=more interesting.

p. 174 – totally relatable believable humanised cash register lady.

p. 178 – totally relatable believable humanised hitch-hiker.

p. 190 – a TV goddess has a reasonable, interesting conversation with the hero, and then, when she can’t persuade him to join her by other means, starts to unbutton her shirt while asking if he wants to see her tits. Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re back.

p. 193 – a little girl. Female children are also allowed to exist.

p. 204 – sex but with two men this time.

p. 213 – okay, so we had a lull there, but this is where I lose my shit for the second time because the protagonist enters a funeral home and a teenage girl is lying dead and naked on a slab and photos of her smiling and happy are stuck up around the place and the death God/coroner cuts her open and catalogues all her organs and eats bits of them and he’s supposed to be doing an ancient Egyptian embalming ritual but I don’t even care because I’m in full-on militant feminist get your hands off my sister and stop making a spectacle of women’s pain rage at this point. And of course she was murdered by her boyfriend who thought she was pregnant because nothing happens to women for reasons unrelated to sex. We learn, in detail, about all five of her stab wounds. No, Gaiman, this scene is not ‘respectful, not obscene,’ and your protagonist’s urge to give the girl some privacy is right. It could have been a man’s corpse on that slab, but it’s not. It’s a teenage girl’s. Surrounded by three living men.

p. 228 – another goddess appears to the protagonist and they have healing, life-giving sex. Some might call me churlish for complaining both about the vagina-nomming death-sex and about the soothing ecstatic life-sex. Maybe there’s no pleasing me. She has nipples, in case you were wondering. Hard nubs.

p. 252 – a character flirts with a waitress, who looks ‘scarcely old enough to have dropped out of high school.’ Look, you can put your misogyny in the mouth of a morally bankrupt character if you want, but in the end it’s just going to sound like misogyny. Especially if nobody refutes or punishes the character. I don’t care whether it’s the author saying it or just the character. I’m sick of hearing it. I’m tired.

p. 260 – the character succeeds in his seduction of the waitress. It is unclear why, since he is creepy and gross. Possibly magic? The hero is ‘uncomfortable’ and remarks that the waitress looks ‘barely legal.’ The other character says he doesn’t care. Apparently it is important for his godly magic that she is a virgin.

p. 267 – two fourteen-year-old girls get on a bus. The protagonist eavesdrops on their conversation. We learn that ‘one of them knew almost nothing about sex, but knew a lot about animals, while the other was not interested in animals, but thought she knew a great deal about human sexuality.’ A brilliant ruse! By mentioning that the girls are also talking about animals, Gaiman conceals the fact that he is absolutely slathering to write about them talking about sex. This is where I gave up.

This concludes my ethical quarrel with the book. My other issues are just a matter of taste, and your mileage may vary. Basically, there is not one single character who I give a fuck about. The hero starts out completely passive, which makes sense because he’s just come out of prison and lost is wife and is obviously traumatised as fuck. But three hundred pages later he’s still completely passive. I know that trauma doesn’t get better all in a minute, but it’s unclear whether Gaiman wants the reader to understand that the hero is in a bad, bad way, or just thinks that writing an apathetic lead character is edgy and cool. And all the other characters seem to be varying degrees of terrible, so there’s no reason for me to get invested in any of their problems.

But at least we know they all have nipples.

#sexism #feminism #misogyny #monstrous blogs #complain complain complain #rape cw #paedophilia cw #murder cw #american gods #literary criticism