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weirdlittlecorner · 3 years

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Lin Kuei Hospitality: Sektor

Notes: nsfw, 18+, rough, dominant MC

Plot: Sektor gets on a lot of people's nerves. Nothing a little cloth can't fix

Tags: @lilliannmac @onesillybeach @icy-spicy

It was an easy choice. Once the Grandmaster had given you the go-ahead to pick your gift, your eyes instantly settled on the most curious of the men. The one who took to copying the monarch himself. You were attracted to that long, black hair and the bulging muscles. But what really solidified your choice was that face of his. Or, rather, the expression on it. The other men had kept their expressions neutral, their gazes fixated ahead of them as you made your rounds. But when you had passed over the man in red, he took it as an invitation to conduct an exam of his own. His brown eyes trailed you when you came near as if you were a gift for him. And that tiny smirk that he gave you didn’t help his case, either.

A spark of feistiness flared within you as you returned the judgemental gaze, “I suppose you’ll do,” You snapped.

The tension in the room was tangible. The others were amused by your standoff with who you would soon come to find out was the spoiled brat of the clan. Your target huffed, turning toward the Grandmaster as if seeking assistance. But he was only met with a stern warning from the older man, “Miss L/n is our guest. You will not disappoint me, Sektor,”

It was hard to keep a straight face as the overgrown child- Sektor- crumbled under the Grandmaster’s words, “Of course not, Father,” Father? It all made sense now. The similar clothing, and more notably, the arrogance. Being the child of the closest thing to royalty would surely go to anyone’s head. He clearly had some sort of attitude problem and needed a lesson in humility. You would happily oblige.

After the impromptu scolding, the younger man turned his attention back to you. Without another complaint, he separated from his fellow assassins in favor of following you out of the throne room.

“You’re getting on my nerves already. I’d like you better if you just shut your mouth,” You snapped, your teeth grinding in annoyance. In the span of ten minutes, Sektor had already managed to push all your buttons. And not in a good way.

“I will do nothing of the sort,” He snapped back without hesitation. You were starting to question your decision and wondered if it was too late to exchange the man. No, you couldn’t do that, as you didn’t want to look ungrateful. Especially not when it was the Grandmaster’s own son. This was a strange situation already; it would be best not to make it worse.

So you settled on one more attempt at reasoning with the clan’s golden child, “Try. It might do you some good,” This was supposed to be pleasurable for you, after all. It was silent for a moment, and you grew smug at the fact that the man hadn’t been able to come up with a witty response. But while you did expect some type of attitude, you hadn’t expected what the man in question actually said next.

“Make me.”

Wait-... What? That took you aback, and your resolve momentarily crumbled as you looked at him. And he looked dead serious, too...

Well, you had promised yourself that you would correct that attitude of his.

Positioning yourself behind him, you untied the f/c sash that secured your tunic, “What are you-” But you had already placed the fabric over his mouth, tying it securely at the back of his head. That was much better. He grew sexier now that he was silent. Now that you didn’t have to listen to his sarcastic droning, you could actually get on to using your present. Proud of your work, you walked back around to face the man.

Upon feeling your form looming over him, Sektor sunk down to his knees, hands clasped behind his back. A h/c brow arched in surprise, but soon your expression turned to one of mischief. He must’ve been partial to being submissive. The thought intrigued you, to say the least. While having been on top a few times in previous experiences, you had never actually dominated your partner. But what better time to try it out than now? Especially on someone as arrogant as the Grandmaster’s son. He needed to be taken down a notch. Or two.

“You like it when a woman is in control, don’t you?” You asked rhetorically, to which he nodded, his brown eyes boring into your e/c ones. There was no question that you could have some fun with this. Taking hold of the red sash on his uniform, you snatched it off of his waist before making your way to his backside once more. With a fluid motion, you looped it around his wrists twice before tying it. He flexed his forearms in response, testing the resistance of his bondage, to which you clucked, “You’re not escaping that easily,” Though you had tied it gently enough for him to break free should he need to. But for all intents and purposes, he was helpless. Completely at your disposal. Ready for anything and everything you had in mind.

The raw, devious power surged through you so beautifully. And submissiveness looked equally enticing on Sektor. Since he was incapacitated, you took the liberty of peeling off his armor for him. It took a bit longer than you had expected to get through all of the various knots and clasps, but that was no problem. Every second was blissful agony for the man who was trapped under your touch. But eventually, your gift was unwrapped, save for his ivory undergarments. By the tenting in the fabric, he was already ready for you. But there would be none of that. Not anytime soon, anyway.

A maniacal giggle made its way past your lips as you reached around his head. With a loud snap, the red tie that was holding his long hair in place was between your fingers. You waved it in front of him teasingly before pushing the loose hair out of his eyes, “Lay down,” Your voice was a soft, but harsh whisper.

At your command, the Grandmaster’s son swung his knees out from under him and lowered his muscular back onto the cold marble floor. He winced as the cold penetrated his skin, but he made no effort to get up. Not when he was consumed by the overwhelming desire to be obedient for his mistress. Who, had he been able to speak, would have been showered in praises. You were easily one of the most beautiful women he had bedded. Being the chosen child had its perks, but it also had its drawbacks; one being that he could never explore his desire for domination. It would be too embarrassing if he, the next Grandmaster, were found under a woman. Or, one of the Lin Kuei women, anyway. But you were an outsider. Someone who passed through twice a year at most. There was no shame in this. Only pleasure as you stripped down to your f/c undergarments, taking care to leave your boots on. It fit the aesthetic, after all.

“You have a sharp tongue for someone who’s supposed to be a disciplined assassin,” You chided, your hands positioning themselves on your hips as you stood over him, your boots dangerously close to his face, “But you know what? I think we can put it to better use,” Sektor didn’t have time to consider your words before you unceremoniously squatted, the satin fabric of your underwear meeting the resistant cloth of your makeshift gag.

With an exaggerated sigh, you settled in on your new chair, your boots resting easily on either side of his head. This was much better. No noise and the pleasure of having your sex serviced. Well, not so much the second part as Sektor had a gag in place that prevented the latter. Though you did have to say that seeing him grow frustrated at his bondage was pleasurable in its own right. You sat like this for a few moments, basking in the feeling of control, until you felt a small vibration against your clothed sex.

“What was that? ‘Take the gag off’? And my panties?” You repeated, to which he nodded desperately. Another triumphant laugh rippled through your chest. As if you would give the spoiled brat what he wanted. That would be counterintuitive on your part. E/c irises clouded over as you looked down at your whining subject, “No. You haven’t earned the right to taste me,”

But that didn’t stop him from trying, much to your amusement. Sektor continued to strain against the gag, trying to do something; anything. His full beard provided some nice friction though, and you almost considered giving in and letting him eat you out. Almost, “Now look at me,” A s/c hand reached out and grabbed his chin, forcing him to give you his undivided attention. His dark pupils dilated in excitement at your roughness, “You’re going to be a good boy for me, right?” You cooed, being rewarded by another needy jerk of his head.

“Good,” H/t, h/c locks bobbed as you nodded your head in satisfaction. In fact, you were so pleased with his broken obedience that you resumed a squatting position, taking the weight off of his face momentarily. You reached down and pulled the gag free, letting it bunch around his neck instead. Sektor was only allowed a second to breathe through his mouth before your sex pressed against it once more.

But there were no complaints from the brat, only gratitude as his tongue traced the outline of your folds, “Thank you, Mistress L/n,” He mumbled as he pressed a soft kiss to your clit. You sighed, rocking your hips a bit to catch some of the friction from his beard scratching your thighs.

This felt very, very good. So good that you almost considered dropping your facade and letting yourself fully enjoy the man’s mouth. But where was the fun in that? As far as you were concerned, he was still a jerk. A whiny, beautifully submissive, brat that still hadn’t learned his lesson. Tucking your knees to your chest, you pulled yourself into a standing position, much to the disappointment of your submissive.

“Aw, don’t pout. I don’t like pouting,” Your stern voice commanded, causing Sektor to amend his expression immediately. Basking in the high of your authority, you shifted your attention to his lower half. Saying that the man was weeping for attention was an understatement as you rubbed his aching erection through the cloth. Curious, you bent over and removed his hard length from his undershorts. You gave him a sly smile as your nimble fingers worked him, “I’m surprised that you’ve actually managed to impress me,” He merely moaned in response as your stroking got faster, “Please,” His voice, hoarse from the gag, pleaded for your audience, “Please ride my cock, Mistress. I want to make you cum,” He begged while you pursed your lips, considering the proposition.

The ache in your stomach had only grown more prominent throughout your teasing. And coupled with the stimulation from Sektor’s mouth, you were beyond wet enough for intercourse. Sighing, “Very well. You’ve been a good boy so far,” Your hand ceased its movement in favor of hooking itself inside your panties along with the other. Straightening up, you pulled the silk down, stepping out of the garment to free your ankles, “I’ll give you what you want; on one condition. No thrusting,” He gave a weak nod in agreement.

Satisfied with his obedience once more, you allowed yourself to squat over him, this time over his erect dick. Once he was lined up, you began sinking down, allowing him to enter you at the most agonizingly slow rate. Only when you were comfortable did you begin moving. And it felt damn good. Overcome with desire, you allowed yourself to ride him at an excruciating pace, momentarily forgetting your cool, stone demeanor. A moan akin to a wind-chime clawed its way out of your throat as your hand found its way to your clit. You rubbed furiously while your other hand tangled itself in that long black hair, tugging it roughly. He let out a guttural sound at the lovely pain you were causing him, but he kept his promise of not thrusting into you despite an overwhelming desire to. Though that didn’t stop you from eventually changing your own rule, overcome by the pleasure.

“Fuck me. Make me cum,” You demanded, amending your previous instruction. Sektor knew better than to question your orders, his only focus on doing just what you had asked. He was able to flip you over with his strong hips despite his hands still being tied behind his back. Once you were comfortable, he wasted no time snapping his hips into yours as fast as he could. His pace was relentless, causing your toes to curl and stars to enter your vision as he rubbed against your precious spot. Your fingers bunched his loose hair up, pulling as hard as humanly possible as you met an intense climax. Shaking, your breathing grew even more ragged as the heat ravished your body. All of your neurons felt as if they were on fire as you came.

His hips slowed as the last of your orgasm made its way through you, stopping once your hand detangled itself from his black locks and fell limp across your ribs. With a tired smile, your eyes focused on him once more, “I will let you cum as a reward for being obedient,” Just not inside of you. He wasn’t that good. But he was excited nonetheless. Proud that he had lived up to your expectations. His cock exited your trembling pussy, saturated in your orgasm. When your breathing eventually slowed, you slowly shifted to sit on your knees, your hand replacing itself on his shaft.

Your hand stroked him as fast as you could manage while he whimpered in pleasure. It didn’t take long before his seed erupted from the tip of his cock, effectively coating your hand and splattering on his abs. Looking down at the mess, Sektor grew sheepish as the post-orgasm clarity seeped in. You had definitely shown him; maybe he should learn to be more humble. Or maybe he would be just as much of an asshole the next time you visited so you could teach him another lesson, “Thank you,” He managed to get out once he caught his breath.

You hated to say it, but Sektor had been right. He sure didn’t disappoint the Grandmaster.

“You’re welcome. Now go get a towel so you can clean up your mess.”

#sektor #sektor x reader #mortal kombat x reader #mortal kombat #lin kuei

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mindibindi · 3 years

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Beyond disappointed in Ted Lasso. What were they thinking?!

The writing is a complete betrayal and insult to Rebecca’s character and Hannah’s skills as they’re being seriously underused. It’s also insulting Sam’s character.

Hoping someone pulls Rebecca’s head out of her ass tbh. Sam shouldn’t be getting caught in the crossfire of her looking for romance. I know he showed up at her doorstep but she still should’ve turned him away, and not even messaged him in the first place.

Hey, I'm with you, Anon, though we do seem to be in the minority. Sam is definitely not blameless here, he is also in the wrong. But if one of them is more in the wrong, it is Rebecca. I can't speak to whether her head has left her arse as yet because I have quit watching (at least for now). I hear she called it off with Sam in the most recent ep, though not because of any major crisis of conscience or because anyone in her inner circle expressed any reasonable reservations in response to her bad behaviour. And to be honest, I'm not sure we should need to hope and pray that Rebecca's precocious god-daughter, her slimy ex-husband, or the brutal British press will act as a moral compass on this ill-advised relationship. Both Rupert and the press have been set up to some extent as the villains of the piece. And a 14 year old should never have to school her elders on what is and isn't acceptable. Nora's needs have already been neglected by Rebecca for far too long.

If a moral position is to be taken on this, it needs to be taken by the show (because stance matters) and/or by its characters. But the show has for the most part depicted this relationship as ill-advised but ultimately hot, sweet, funny and romantic. As for the characters themselves, Sam has shown at least once that he has some moral backbone but seems to be adorably clueless when it comes to fucking his boss who keeps trying to set boundaries with him. Meanwhile, Rebecca's whole arc in s1 was about learning not to misuse her power for her own selfish ends. In season one, she misused her power within the club in order to exact revenge. In season 2, we have seen her misuse her sexual power, though I still cannot see to what end. I'm a bit at a loss as to what exactly she gets out of this 'relationship' but then I'm a grown woman so I have absolutely no interest in sleeping with a Harry Potter enthusiast barely out of his teens. I couldn't think of anything less sexy and more ick. I was certainly hoping for better character development for her this season.

As to what the writers were thinking, obviously I was not in the writer's room, but I would guess that they were thinking that any drama is good drama, people are stupid and fan devotion will trump any meaningful critique. In other words, they were thinking exactly how every other television writer thinks, despite the fact that this show posited itself as 'not like other TV shows'. This, to me, is where the blame really lies. Not with the characters or with the actors who are doing their best to sell this ludicrous turn of events. It must be noted, however, that both actors were completely blindsided by this relationship that had supposedly been so cleverly foreshadowed. Newsflash: if the people actually living these stories did not see this coming then you haven't foreshadowed shit. Sure, there were a handful of people that paired Rebecca with Sam but this does not constitute proof either. Fans have free-range to imagine and re-imagine characters. In some cases this may extend to imagining relationships between characters who have barely, if ever, interacted. There may be little to no evidence that these characters have even clocked each other's existence and some fans will still ship it. The existence of a handful of shippers does not legitimise such a problematic and divisive plotline making it onscreen.

But wait!, you might argue, this may not be a case of a popular show seeing just how far they can stretch fan devotion. This may not be a case of fan service to a handful of shippers. After all, the creators mapped out the entire three-season arc of Ted Lasso before they even pitched it to Apple. This was their brilliant plan all along! To which I would say: then maybe they should've rethought their second act based on people's strong reactions to their first. Ted Lasso was touted as the show we all needed in 2020. The writers and creators have all marveled at the chord it struck considering it was conceived prior to the pandemic and all the chaos it wrought. And while there is something to be said for having/sticking to a creative vision, there is also something to be said for being flexible and responsive to your audience and the cultural zeitgeist with which you're engaged. Season 1 of Ted Lasso told its story so gently, without creating distrust, division or unnecessary anxiety. It did not treat its audience like a gaggle of stupid lemmings to be led over a succession of narrative cliffs. THIS is what I mean when I say the show has broken with its brand. And look, this whole dark forest thing would be okay if the narrative arc was as well-crafted as s1. Season 1 gave us meaning, cohesion, comfort, sense in a senseless time. It was an almost perfectly crafted season of television. And I kept the faith for 6 episodes, despite the first half of s2 being pretty damn wobbly. But the follow-up to this stellar debut has been less than extraordinary so yeah, perhaps they should've thought a little harder about what made s1 so special before throwing it all out the window.

But wait!, I hear the faithful say, you don't know how things will pan out yet! Wait until the season is over and everything will make sense! But -- wearily and once again, I say -- we should not need to wait until the end of the season to understand what the hell is happening. By this point (over halfway through the season and show) we should have a v clear idea of the show's themes and the characters' arcs. And tbf, from what I can tell there are some fab things happening in other aspects of the show that I wish I could watch and enjoy. But my biggest fear at this point is that they are going to use Sam to solve Rebecca's childlessness. That, like Rupert (because the parallel cannot be avoided), she will become pregnant with a young fling and the show's attitude to this relationship will ultimately be: oh well, it was a bad idea and didn't work out for them but it was all for the best in the end cos who can be mad about a cute lil baaaayyybbbeeee??!! If they do go down this path then I will definitely be abstaining from the rest of the show. I will simply recall my repeated viewings of s1 with fondness tinged with regret at just how badly they fucked up a good thing.

Ultimately, Anon, I think this may be a case of there simply not being a diverse enough perspective in the writer's room. I am not saying that every single woman or every single person of colour will necessarily object to this relationship. I am simply saying that women and people of colour will be more sensitive to the issues of gender and race that are relevant here but that have not been fully or sensitively acknowledged in the writing of this plotline. Neither am I saying that Rebecca is the first woman to sleep with a man much (much, much, MUCH) younger than herself or indulge in an ill-advised relationship. But the comparison with Rupert both works here and doesn't because Rebecca is not being written like a white woman, she is being written like a white man. Realistically, only a white man can engage in this kind of hugely imbalanced relationship seemingly without any major moral qualms or societal ramifications. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this kind of relationship is reserved for all the Bills and Joes and Brendans and Jasons out there -- not for the Rebeccas and definitely not for the Sams. We are way beyond the point in feminism where we believe that liberation is simply the right for a white woman to behave as badly as a white man. The truth is that whatever wealth, power and privilege Rebecca has, the rules are different for men and women. She will not be treated the same as Rupert if and when this affair is uncovered. She will be treated far more savagely than Rupert ever was and Sam will be treated far more savagely than Bex was. This is not an argument for the equal treatment of these two relationships. It is an argument against how the relationship between Rebecca and Sam has been envisaged, i.e. through the wrong perspective. In writing from a 'neutral' white male pov, the show has invisiblised all the many issues activated by this storyline and revealed a blindspot that was always there.

As much as I loved and still love season 1 of this show, it has definite blindspots when it comes to representations of race and gender. There are at least two moments in s1 that stand out for me as being so obviously written by a man. Not necessarily because of what they do but because of what they don't do: what is missed, absent, unacknowledged. I was willing to overlook such minor failings in a debut season for many reasons. But s2 seems to have exacerbated these minor flaws rather than correcting them. And here I can't help thinking of Tina Fey speaking of the diversification of the writer's room at SNL during her tenure as co-headwriter. This notoriously male-dominated environment only began to shift and produce better work when a greater diversity of minds, voices and persepectives was allowed in the room. In this richer environment, she notes, different jokes played differently. Different sketches made it to air. Different perspectives were represented and different performers were celebrated. I can't help wondering if this plotline would have made it to air if there had been a female writer, a writer of colour or both further up the chain of command to challenge the ideas of the straight white dudes in charge.

One of the reasons I didn't think Ted Lasso was for me was that it centred a straight, white, cis-het, able-bodied man who rose to a position he didn't earn. That is just not a pov I would normally choose for myself, especially now that there is such a rich array of alternative perspectives through which to view the world. But I think the show won a lot of females fans with its first season largely due to its portrayal of Rebecca. She is the first person we meet. She is arguably the protagonist of s1. And while she would have been figured as a villain in previous pieces, the show never took that stance with her (because again, stance matters). Other elements like the depiction of female friendships, all centred around Rebecca, made this show female-friendly viewing. But imo, the major reason this show won over female fans (this one, at least) is because, in this post-MeToo, post-TimesUp era, it stood up and said: domestic violence is not okay, we stand with women and all victims of abuse, we will defend you, we know words can hurt, we know it can happen to anyone, we know all about toxic masculinity, we do not take this lightly and we will support you in your healing. Needless to say, this is how women hope men will act when they speak of their most difficult experiences but it is not how they always do.

The shift away from Rebecca this season has however meant that the white male experience is more centred than it was in s1. Rebecca's journey to recovery, health and happiness has been trivialised and sidelined, reduced to a highly questionable sexcapade. Meanwhile, we get overwrought manpain at every turn. We get Beard wandering around London (no, I haven't seen it and no, I don't need to. We've all been raised on white dudes thinking they're genuises when they have a figurative wank all over our screens). We get NO queer represention at all. And the only other female characters on screen are in care/service roles to men. The father/son, mentoring and toxic masculinity themes are all still there but they're no longer balanced out by ANY other competing perspective. One of the reasons I was okay with Ted failing upwards in s1 was that he used his power and privilege to lift up others. He was the one in service. He used his enormous privilege for good, as anyone with such privilege must. (Admittedly, it could be argued that this is just another version of a white savior narrative).

My point here is that I'm not sure that peeking behind the mask at the sad clown is as revolutionary as some might believe. We love it because it's familiar. But this is a narrative with a long and problematic history. Do I believe in tearing down toxic masculinity in all its forms? You bet. Do I believe that patriarchy traumatises men as well as women and every other minority in existence? I mean...nowhere near as much, but absolutely. Do I believe in men expressing their feelings and going to therapy? Wholeheartedly. But I am also aware that 100 or so years ago, we were in a very similar place with our narratives. Everyone is looking for a recapitulation of modernism and frankly, this might be an indicator of just that. Whenever women and people of colour have demanded rights and recognition, there has always been a resurgence of tales about just how frickin' hard it is to be a white man. Minority genders and non-white people have never in western history been as visible or vocal as they are now. So forgive me (or don't, I don't care) if I critique a show not only for centering fathers, sons, boys and men but for blindly and boldly writing one of its only female characters and one of its only black characters as if their gender and race just do not exist. There are many other power differentials at play in this relationship, including age, experience, wealth and position, but race and gender are the two that patriarchy is most invested in invisiblising. So I don't care how brilliant they think they are, I will not trust the writing of a bunch of white dudes trying to tell me that race and gender are irrelevant.

#ted lasso #rebecca welton #sam obisanya #ask #yeah this one got out of hand

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likealittleheartbeat · 4 years

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The Queer Platonic Love of Aang & Zuko

Friend. What a weighty and intimate word in Avatar The Last Airbender. The series’ “found family” is iconic at this point, and is literally established as a “family” by Katara in the third episode. She pulls Aang back from the outrage of the Avatar state, saying “Monk Gyatso and the other monks may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I, we’re your family now.”

As I’ve said before, establishing this central safety net of trusted people is essential to Aang’s healing. Still, it’s interesting to me that they insist on this group as a “family” rather than something that might emphasize “friendship.” Something along the lines of ‘we’re your friends and we’re here with you.’ I can think of several animated shows that have done as much successfully. The show withholds the word “friend” for another purpose. I’ll happily admit that Aang and the others describe each other as “friends” throughout the series, but rarely is the use of the word (through pacing, repetition, or emotional context) given a sense of gravity in those moments.

However, three scenes in the series rely heavily on the word “friend,” and each scene connects Aang more and more profoundly with Zuko, eventually revealing that the show’s entire plot hinges on the friendship between these two boys. In a series so latent with symbolism, what do we make of these star-crossed friends? The relationship between Aang and Zuko, I want to suggest, is meant to explore Platonic Love in all its depth, especially within a masculine culture that not only devalues it, but views its queer implications as inherently dangerous to the dominant power structures of an empire.

Get ready zukaang fans for a long-ass atla meta analysis...

“If we knew each other back then, do you think we could’ve been friends, too?”

The first time the word “friend” is uttered between them, Aang is perched on a branch, waiting for Zuko (who is laid out on a bed of leaves the Avatar made for him) to wake up after his blue spirit rescue. “You know what the worst part about being born over a hundred years ago is?” Aang waxes, “I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started I used to always visit my friend Kuzon. The two of us, we'd get in and out of so much trouble together. He was one of the best friends I ever had...and he was from the Fire Nation, just like you. If we knew each other back then do you think we could have been friends too?” The scene stood out for me when I first watched it for the melancholy and stillness. We are not given a flashback like we did when Aang talked about Bumi or Gyatso in earlier episodes. We have to sit with Aang’s loss of a male friend. It echoes a veteran’s loss of a war buddy more than anything a western audience would expect in a children’s show about the power of friendship. Instead of simply mourning, Aang invites Zuko into the past with him. He invites Zuko to imagine a time before the war, a land of innocence, where they could live together. And between them there is a moment of reflection given to this invitation (...until Zuko shoots a fucking fire blast at Aang).

The wistful mood returns when the two boys arrive back to their respective beds. Aang is asked by a loopy fevered Sokka if he made any “friends” on his trip, to which Aang sadly replies, “No, I don’t think I did” before tucking away to sleep. Aang’s mournful moments often stand out against his bubbly personality, but this moment stands out moreso because its the final moment for Aang in the episode. For the first time, he doesn’t receive comfort in his dejection. He doesn’t even confide in his peers. The solemnity and secrecy of this failed “friendship” is remarkable.

It’s in the next symbolic gesture that I think Avatar reveals what’s at stake in the concept of “friendship.” Zuko, in the next scene, lays down to rest after his adventurous night, looks pensively at the fire nation flag in his room, and then turns his back on it. We realize, especially after the previous revelations in “The Storm,” that Aang’s gestures of “friendship” have caused Zuko to doubt the authority of the Fire Nation.

Now all three remaining nations have misogynistic tendencies, but the Fire Nation celebrates a specific brand of toxic masculinity, and Zuko longs to emulate it even after it has rejected and scarred him. In the episode, “The Storm,” which directly precedes “The Blue Spirit,” we see how Zuko failed to replicate masculinity’s demands. In a room of men, he disregards honorifics to speak out in the name of care and concern for people’s well-being over strategy. Though the war room was all men, we later see that The Fire Nation does not exclude women from participating in this form of toxic masculinity. (Shoutout to Azula, one of the best tragic villains of all time!) This gender parity prevents disgraced men, like Zuko, from retaining pride of place above women. So Zuko’s loving act and refusal to fight his father puts him at the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy of the Fire Nation, completely emasculated and unworthy of respect.

Since then, Zuko has been seeking to restore himself by imitating the unfeeling men of the war room and his unfeeling sister, barking orders and demands at his crew. The final redemptive act for this purpose, of course, is to capture the Avatar, who’s very being seems to counteract the violent masculinity at the heart of the Fire Nation. In most contemporary Euro-American understandings, Aang is by no means masculine. He’s openly affectionate, emotional, giggly, and supportive of everyone in his life, regardless of gender. He practices pacifism and vegetarianism, and his hobbies include dancing and jewelry-making. And, foremost, he has no interest in wielding power. (@rickthaniel has an awesome piece about Aang’s relationship to gender norms and feminism).

In addition to the perceived femininity of Aang’s behavior, he’s equally aligned with immaturity. Aang’s childishness is emphasized in the title of the first episode, “The Boy in the Iceberg,” and then in the second episode when Zuko remarks, “you’re just a kid.” Aang, as a flying boy literally preserved against adulthood, also draws a comparison to another eternally boyish imp in the western canon: Peter Pan. This comparison becomes more explicit in “The Ember Island Players.” His theatrical parallel is a self-described “incurable trickster” played by a woman hoisted on wires mimicking theatrical productions of Peter Pan. The comparison draws together the conjunction of femininity and immaturity Aang represents to the Fire Nation.

When Zuko is offered friendship and affection by Aang, then, he faces a paradigm-shifting internal conflict. To choose this person, regardless of his spiritual status, as a “friend,” Zuko must relate himself to what he perceives as Aang’s femininity and immaturity, further demeaning himself in the eyes of his father and Fire Nation culture. The banished prince would need to submit to the softness for which he’s been abused and banished. This narrative of abuse and banishment for perceived effeminate qualities lends itself easily enough to parallels with a specific queer narrative, that of a young person kicked out of their house for their sexuality and/or gender deviance.

I want to point out that Aang’s backstory, too, can be read through a queer lens. Although the genocide of the air nomads more explicitly parallels the experiences of victims to imperial and colonial violence, I can also see how the loss of culture, history, friends, and mentors for a young effiminate boy can evoke the experience of queer men after the AIDs pandemic and the government’s damning indifference. In fact, colonial violence and the enforcement of rigid gender roles have historically travelled hand-in-hand. Power structures at home echo the power structures of a government. Deviance from the dominant norms disrupt the rigid structures of the empire. Aang’s background highlights how cultures based in something besides hierarchy and dominance, whether they be queer cultures or indigenous societies, threaten the logic of imperialism, and thus become targets of reform, neglect, and aggression by the expanding empire and its citizens. Survivors are left, as Aang was, shuffling through the remnants, searching for some ravaged piece of history to cling to.

We begin the series, then, with two queer-coded boys, one a survivor of broad political violence, the other a survivor of more intimate domestic abuse, and both reeling from the ways the Fire Nation has stigmatized sensitivity. But the queer narrative extends beyond the tragic backstories toward possibility and hope. The concept of platonic love proposed here, though it does not manifest until later, is a prospect that will bring peace to the two boys' grief-stricken hearts and to the whole world.

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” Toph asks before the four members of the group hold hands. Since Toph previously mourned her friendless childhood, it’s easy to appreciate this line for its hopefulness regarding the four central members of the Gaang. They long to appreciate that they’re all connected. As touching as this is, the soul-mated ‘friendship’ concept is actually uniquely applicable to Aang and Zuko.

When does Toph ask the question specifically? It’s after hearing the story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin: how their once intimate friendship fell apart; how Fire Lord Sozin began, undaunted, the genocidal attack on Airbenders. After recounting the tale, Aang, the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, excitedly explains to the group the moral that every person is capable of great good and evil. While that moral could easily be ascribed to many people in the series, the connective tissue is stretched directly to Zuko in a parallel storyline. Reading a secret history composed by his grandfather Sozin, Zuko discovers that he is not only the grandson of the empirical firelord but of Avatar Roku, as well. We see how the rift between the Sozin and Roku echoed down across history to separate the airbending culture from the fire nation, and, on a more human level, to separate Aang from Zuko. The two boys find themselves divided by their ancestors’ choices— and connected by Avatar Roku’s legacy.

This is what takes their “friendship” from simply a matter of the character’s preferences to something fated, something unique from the other friendships. The rest of the found family is positioned as circumstantial in their relationship to Aang and one another. Yeah, it’d be cool if they were all connected in past and future lives, but the audience receives no indicators in the series that it’s necessarily true. Only faith holds them together, which allows room for an appreciation that your “found family” friendships might simply be the trusted people you discovered along the way.

Zuko’s friendship is characterized differently. Both his struggle to befriend Aang and his eventual “friendship” are explicitly destined by the story of Roku and Sozin. After this episode, the series depends upon Zuko’s ability to mend the divide inside himself, which can only be done by mending the divide between him and Aang. Their inheritance symbolizes this dynamic exactly. As the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, Aang can be understood as the beneficiary of Avatar Roku’s wisdom (he should not, as many jokingly suggest, be considered as any kind of biological relation of Roku or Zuko). Zuko, on the other hand, has inherited Roku’s genealogy in the Fire Nation. These two pieces of Roku must be brought together in order to revive Roku’s legacy of firebending founded on something besides aggression.

In addition to making the ideals of Roku whole again, the two boys must tend to the broken “friendship” between the two men. As the Avatar and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, Aang and Zuko parallel Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin precisely. The narrative of the latter pair places destiny precisely in the hands of the former. And since both Aang and Roku expressed the desire for “friendship,” it falls in the lap of the corresponding royal to give up their imperial dreams so they can gain something more peaceful and intimate. For Zuko, this now can only be accomplished when he heals the rift within himself.

Importantly, both the previous friendship and the destined friendship between Zuko and Aang are between two men. The coming-of-age genre has proliferated the trope of homosociality (friendship between individuals of the same sex) and its eventual decline brought on by maturity and heterosexual romance. (Check out the beautiful and quick rundown of classic examples, from Anne of Green Gables to Dead Poet’s Society, made by @greetingsprophet ). The story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin replicates this established narrative.

We see them playing, sparring, and joking intimately with one another. The two as young adults were intimately connected, the series explains, “sharing many things including a birthday.” Eventually their intimacy is interrupted by their worldly responsibilities and the spectre of heterosexual romance on Roku’s part.

Now, It’s not a huge leap for one to wonder if Sozin longed for something stronger in their “friendship.” We see no female romantic interests for Sozin. Instead, he continues to demonstrate his platonic allegiance to Roku. When Roku prepares to leave for his Avatar training, Sozin walks into his room and gives him his crown prince headpiece, a gesture of unique devotion that positions his friendship above his politics (which harkens to Plato and EM Forster’s ideas about platonic love that I’ll discuss in Part 3).

One might note, too, how the wedding between Roku and his childhood sweetheart provides the setting for the escalation of Sozin’s violence. “On wedding days,” Sozin writes, “we look to the future with optimism and joy. I had my own vision for a brighter future...” He then pulls Roku away from his bride for a personal conversation, briefly recapturing the earlier homosocial dynamic with his friend. Sozin describes his affection for their intertwined lives. Then he links their shared happiness to the current prosperity of the Fire Nation. He imagines the expansion of the Fire Nation, which would also expand on the relationship between him and Roku. But the Avatar refuses the offer and returns to his wife, insisting on the value of traditional boundaries (both the pact of marriage and the strict division of the four nations). The abandonment of the homosocial relationship by Roku sets the site for the unmitigated empirical ambitions of Sozin. One wonders how history might’ve been altered had the two men’s relationship been sanctified and upheld. How might’ve Roku persuaded Sozin in his empirical ambitions if he had remained in a closer relationship to his friend? In their final encounter, Sozin reacts vengefully to his former platonic love: he lets Roku die protecting the home the Avatar shared with his wife. Sozin’s choice solidifies the divide between them, and makes the grief he’s experienced since Roku left him into actual death.

Instead of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin finding a resolution, Aang and Zuko are ordained to reverse their friendship’s disintegration. Yes, they must heal the rift in the world created by the Fire Nation’s aggression, but Aang and Zuko must also reverse the tradition of lost homosociality within a culture of unrelenting machismo. Despite Avatar: the Last Airbender’s ties to the coming-of-age genre, the arc of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship” counters one of its most prominent tropes. “Some friendships are so strong they can transcend lifetimes,” Roku says, and it’s precisely this platonic ideal that draws Zuko and Aang towards one another in ways that are revolutionary both in their world and in the traditions of our’s. To come together, as two matured boys, to form an adult platonic love that can persist into adulthood.

“And now we’re friends.”

Which brings us to the consummation of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship.” Having resolved their previous hostilities and having neutralized the outside forces that would rather them dead than together, Aang and Zuko can finally embrace and define their relationship as “friendship.” Now, if we look closely at Zuko’s expression, we’ll notice a pause, before he smiles and reiterates Aang’s comment. My initial response, with my zukaang shipping goggles on extra tightly, was that Zuko just got friend-zoned and was a little disappointed before accepting Aang’s friendship. When I took a step back, I considered that we are given this moment of reflection to recognize Zuko’s journey, his initial belligerent response to the idea of befriending the Avatar. When he accepts the term of ‘friend,’ he reveals the growth he’s undergone that’s brought peace to the world. With these two possibilities laid out, I want to offer that they might coexist. That the word ‘friend’ might feel to Zuko and the audience so small and limited and yet simultaneously powerful. The pause can hint at the importance of “friendship” and signal something more. This reading emboldens the queer concept of “friendship” that undergirds their relationship. That the hug that follows might be meant to define the depth of the platonic love that is at the very heart of the series.

Saving a hugging declaration of “friendship” for the announcement of peace in the series is quietly revolutionary. In the twentieth century, male characters could connect in battle, on competitive teams, and through crime. “In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy — as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh — as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege — as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover — as long as he is riddled with bullets,” writes Kent Brintnall. Aang and Zuko’s hug starkly contrasts this kind of masculine intimacy. The show suggests that environments shaped by dominance, conflict, coercion, or harm, though seemingly productive in drawing people and especially men together, actually desecrate “friendships.” Only in a climate of humility, diplomacy, and peace can one make a true ‘friend.’

In situating the’ “friendship” between two matured males in a time of peace, the writers hearken back to older concepts of homosocial relationships in our fiction. As Hanya Yanagihara has described the Romantic concepts of friendship that pervaded fiction before the 1900s. In her book, A Little Life, Yanagihara renews this concept for the twenty-first century with a special appreciation for the queerness that one must accept in order for platonic love to thrive into adulthood. She writes, “Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together day after day bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.” Aang and Zuko’s relationship, despite a history that would keep them apart, reclaims this kind of friendship. Their hearts, bound together by an empyrean platonic love, are protected from the political and familial loyalties that would otherwise embroil them.

In addition to Yanagihara, another author that coats the word ‘friend’ with similar gravity and longing to Avatar is E.M. Forster, who braids platonic friendship in his writing with homoeroticism and political revolution. In Forster’s novel Maurice (originally written in 1914 but published posthumously in 1971 due to Britain’s criminalization of male homsexuality), the titular character asks a lower class male lover lying in bed with him, “Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his? I suppose such a thing can’t happen outside of sleep.” The confession, tinged with grief and providence as it is, could easily reside in Aang’s first monologue to Zuko in “The Blue Spirit.”

Platonic love as a topic is at the heart of Maurice. Plato’s “Symposium,” from which the term platonic love derives, is even directly referenced in the book and connected with “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”— slang for homosexual acts. For Forster, the sanction of platonic love, both the homosocial aspect and the latent homosexuality, reveals a culture’s liberation. “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,” Forster wrote in his essay “What I Believe,”, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” This echoes a sentiment of philial love described by Plato.

Rather than revolutionary ideals, for Forster friendships, and specifically friendships that disregard homophobia, provide the foundation for peace, equality, and democratic proliferation. When Aang and Zuko embrace, they are embodying this ideal. Platonic love and the word “friend” have a history intertwined with queer romantic love, and, while I won’t argue that Avatar attempts to directly evoke this, I will suggest that the series consciously leaves room for this association. Now, the show certainly makes no attempt to imply anything romantic between Zuko and Aang within the timeline we witness (nor any same sex characters, which reflects cultural expectations in the 2000s). And for good reason, the age gap would be notably icky, to use the technical term. (You might note, however, that the show actually allows for crushes to extend upwardly across the same age gap, when Toph accidentally reveals her affection for Sokka to Suki in “The Serpent’s Pass.”) Despite connecting queer friendships to the history of ‘platonic love,’ Avatar provides two critiques to platonic love for audiences to absorb. One is the pederasty with which Plato defined his ultimate form of love in his Symposium. Fans rightfully comment on the age gap between Aang and Zuko as something preventative to shipping them together. And beyond the fact of their ages, Aang’s youthfulness is emphatic, as I remarked earlier. Aang and Zuko are prevented from consummating their platonic love until both are deemed mature in the last moments of the series. And even then, their relationship is directed toward future development rather than conclusion. Instead of cutting away, they are allowed to exit their scene together toward a speech about hope and peace. This stands in stark opposition to the permanence of Aang and Katara’s kiss. The platonic love in Avatar, the kind EM Forster cherishes, is relegated to adulthood as opposed to other kinds of boyish friendships. The conclusion of Avatar, at least for me, actually feels especially satisfying because it settles our characters in the “new era of love and peace.” It is a beginning, and it feels more expansive than the actions the characters choose to take in the episode. Even as our characters conclude three seasons of narrative tension as the sun sets and “The End” appears on the screen, it feels instead as if their stories can finally begin. The characters are allowed to simply exist for the first time. Yes, Aang and Katara or Zuko and Mai are allowed to embrace and kiss, but it’s because the pressures of empiricism have finally been banished. They are now allowed to try things and fail and make mistakes and explore. Things don’t feel rigid or permanent, whether that be one’s identity or one’s relationships.

Ideally, within the morality of the series (at least as it appears to us with no regard for whatever limits or self-censorship occurred due to its era of production and child-friendly requirements), “friends'' are maintained alongside romantic partnerships. Both Zuko and Aang’s separate romantic relationships blossom within the same episode that they declare their “friendship.” In fact, a vital plotline is the development of Zuko’s relationship with Aang’s romantic interest. While anyone in the fandom is well aware of the popular interpretation of romantic affection between Zuko and Katara because of their shared narrative, I have to point out that romantic feelings across the series are made extremely explicit through statements, blushes, and kisses. Zuko’s relationship with Katara can be better understood in the light of the coming-of-age counternarrative. While the love interest often serves as a catalyst for separation for a homosocial relationship, the friendly relationship with Aang’s love interest—seeking her forgiveness, respecting her power, calling on her support, etc—is vital for Zuko to ultimately create an environment of peace in which he and Aang can fulfill their destined “friendship.” In fact, we can look at Katara’s femininity as the most important device for manifesting Aang and Zuko’s eventual union. It’s her rage against misogyny that frees Aang from his iceberg, midwifing him into the world again after his arrested development, the complete opposite of a Wendy figure. It’s her arms that hold Aang in the pieta after his death in the Crossroads of Destiny, positioning her as a divine God-bearer. Afterwards, its her hands that resurrect Aang so that they together can fulfill his destiny. It will be these same hands with this same holy water that resurrect Zuko in the finale. Only through Katara’s decided blessing could Aang and Zuko proceed toward the fated reunion of their souls.

The importance of this critical relationship to femininity becomes relevant to a scene in “Emerald Island Players” that one might note as an outstanding moment of gay panic. Zuko and Aang, watching their counterparts on stage, cringe and shrink when, upon being saved by The Blue Spirit character in the play, Aang’s performer declares “My hero!” Instead of the assumption of homophobia, I wonder whether we might read Aang and Zuko’s responses as discomfort with the misogynistic heterosexual dynamics the declaration represents. Across the board, Avatar subverted the damsel in distress trope. There’s a-whole-nother essay to be written on all the ways it goes about this work, but the events in “The Blue Spirit” certainly speak to this subversion. It’s quite explicit that Zuko, after breaking Aang’s chains, is equally dependent on Aang for their escape. And, by the end of the actual episode, the savior role is reversed as Aang drags an unconscious Zuko away from certain death. To depict these events within the simplistic “damsel in distress” scenario, as The Ember Island Players do, positions Aang as a subordinately feminized colonial subject, denies him his agency, and depicts the relationship as something merely romantic, devoid of the equalizing platonic force that actually empowers them. The moment in the play is uncomfortable for Aang and Zuko because it makes Zuko the hero and Aang the helpless object. Aang is explicit about his embarrassment over his feminized and infantilized depiction in the play. And Zuko, newly reformed, is embarrassed to see, on one hand, his villainy throughout the play and, on the other hand, see how his character is positioned as made out as a savior to the person who has actually saved him.

At the heart of the series is not the idea of a chosen one or savior. Instead, we are saved by the ability for one person to see themselves in another person and to feel that same person equally understands their own soul. This is the ideal of platonic love. Platonic love between two matured boys—two boys with whose memories and bodies bare the scars of their queer sensitivities—is an essential part of the future of peace. Many fans have a sense of this, labeling the relationship as “brotp” and “platonic soulmates.” I simply encourage people to acknowledge that platonic love, especially in this context, is not a limit. There is no “no homo” joke here. When we remark on the platonic love between Zuko and Aang (and across media more generally) we are precisely making room for friendship, romance, and whatever else it could mean, whatever else it might become. While I find Legend of Korra lacking and in some ways detrimental to appreciating the original series, it’s finale interestingly parallels and extends this reading of platonic love in a sapphic vein. And most recently, She ra Princess of Power was able to even more explicitly realize these dynamics in the relationship between Adora and Catra. Let’s simply acknowledge that Aang and Zuko’s relationship blazed the trail: that peace, happiness, hope, and freedom could all hinge on a “friendship,” because a “friend” was never supposed to be set apart from or less than other kinds of relationships. For the ways it disregards gender, disregards individualism, disregards dominion, platonic love is the foundation of any meaningful relationship. And a meaningful relationship is the foundation for a more peaceful world. *Author’s note: I’m just tired of sitting on this and trying to edit it. It’s not perfect. I don’t touch on all the symbolism and nuances in the show and in the character’s relationships. And this is not meant to negate any ships. It’s actually, quite the opposite. This is a show about growth and change and mistakes and complexity. Hopefully you can at least appreciate this angle even if you don’t vibe with every piece of analysis here. I just have no chill and need to put this out there so I can let my obsession cool down a bit. Enjoy <3

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hellomynameisbisexual · 3 years

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As I spoke with other self-idenitified bisexuals throughout my college career, I realized that many, including myself, felt a dose of imposter syndrome in both gay and straight spaces. Whether it be comments from fellow queer folk invalidating our sexuality or the general queerphobia prevalent in the larger society, many bisexuals resent the heteronormative stereotypes imposed on them from both the gay and straight communities. Further research into the erasure of the bisexual community indicated that its impact on the mental and physical health of bisexual individuals is tangible.

The term “bisexuality” encompasses many sexual identities including queer and pansexual. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), “Studies suggest that bisexuals comprise nearly half of all people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, making the bisexual population the single largest group within the LGBT community.” As the largest subset of the gay community, it is interesting to note that bisexuals are routinely discriminated against in the LGBT community as well as in the straight community. Despite being the largest population behind heterosexuals, studies suggest biphobia in all facets of society has facilitated the erasure of the bisexual community to the extent that bisexuals can expect to be systematically disadvantaged regarding their physical and mental health,

The prevalent stereotypes about bisexuality that keep bisexuals from coming out are noted in the essay “Bisexuality and Mental Health: Future Research Directions,” published in The Journal of Bisexuality in 2015: “It has been argued that bisexuality has been delegitimized by negative stereotypes, such as ‘bisexuality doesn’t exist as a sexual orientation,’ ‘bisexuals are sexually promiscuous,’ and ‘bisexuals are confused.’ Several studies have found that heterosexual, gay and lesbian individuals may all have negative attitudes toward bisexuality, indicating that bisexual individuals face double discrimination.” The authors, Persson & Pfaus, assert that bisexuals are hesitant to identify themselves for fear of backlash from all facets of society, a statement I can firmly attest to having been personally asked “Can’t you just pick one or the other?” by both gay and straight people. In a press release regarding a study focused on HIV/AIDS in the bisexual community, published in the American Journal for Preventative Medicine by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, researcher William Jeffries⁠ stated, “Societal biphobia is more prevalent than antigay sentiment.”

Biphobia is prevalent enough to keep bisexuals from coming out to their homosexual counterparts. Historically, homosexuality has been considered taboo and punished with imprisonment and even death; pro-gay movements all over the world trumpet the importance of acceptance and inclusivity, yet gay communities globally refuse to acknowledge bisexuality as a legitimate orientation and discriminate against bisexuals based on this belief. In her article “Inside, Outside, Nowhere: Bisexual Men and Women in the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Kirsten Mclean examined the impact of bisexual attitudes on a group of 60 Australian bisexual men and women, “in terms of their perceptions of, and participation in, the gay and lesbian community.” Analyzing the range of biphobic attitudes within that homosexual community, Mclean’s study attempted to expose how these attitudes effect bisexual participation in said community. She found that, “though some participants were active within the Australian gay and lesbian community, many were not, due to the belief that they would be rejected or discriminated against as bisexual. Furthermore, those who did participate in the gay and lesbian community tended to keep their bisexuality hidden, for fear of being made unwelcome.” I related so much to that sentiment, having been called a “tourist” at a local gay bar when I mustered up the nerve to go with my fiance, a cis bisexual man. We left shortly after, feeling exiled to a life of languishing among the straights at tacky sports bars.

Ostracization from the gay community encourages bisexuals to pursue opposite-sex partners and fade into heteronormative society. A Pew Research Survey conducted in 2013 revealed that 84% of bisexuals end up in hetero relationships. Award-winning bisexual writer Kristina Marusic discussed this statistic, asserting that hetero relationships among bisexuals does not delegitimize their preferences and that the odds of a bisexual having an opposite-sex partner “fall enormously in their favor… the [percentage of the population that is LGBTQ] is actually closer to a scant 3.8 percent. So not only is it statistically more likely that a bisexual person will wind up with a partner of the opposite sex; it’s equally likely that they’ll wind up with someone from the over 96 percent of the population who identifies as straight.” In an interview with the HRC, an anonymous bisexual said “I wish that more people inside the gay community itself would support my decision to call myself bisexual. I am not being selfish. I am not a liar. I am not gay. I am not straight. I am bisexual.” Additionally, according to Mclean, “a large number of gay men and lesbians still flat-out refuse to date bisexuals.” Thus, many bisexuals couple with opposite-sex partners and identify as straight despite their true orientation, as is reflected by Marusic’s statistics.

The idea that there are two exclusive sexualities, gay and straight, has effectively gagged bisexuals, preventing their self-identification in the heterosexual and homosexual communities and ensuring their assimilation into heteronormative society. In her study “Living Life in the Double Closet: Bisexual Youth Speak Out,” Mclean states, “Dominant public discourses endorse heterosexuality and homosexuality as legitimate sexual identities, but do not recognize that some people are neither exclusively heterosexual nor exclusively homosexual.” Mclean interviewed 22 young bisexual people living in Melbourne, Florida. A bisexual woman herself, Mclean employed an interpersonal, interview approach to this research because she was “examining a group that had thus far been both silenced in traditional research on sexuality, but had also, for the most part, silenced themselves.”

There is nothing quite like silencing oneself, no greater discomfort than suppressing an inherent part of who you are. When I was twelve, I was at a large sleepover at a close friend’s house. Her older sister was “watching” our group of a dozen or so girls. At some point, a large bag of assorted liquors was procured. I have always been impulsive: always picking “Dare,” never scared to sneak out and certain in every situation that I was indestructible. As a seventh grader intent on proving my invincibility, I drank eagerly and abundantly. After taking several shots that blazed through my undeveloped chest and sent unfamiliar chills up my spine, I opened my eyes to the stars spinning above me where I lay in the lawn, both exhilarated and terrified at the realization that I was “completely smashed.” My next decipherable memory depicts me sitting semi-upright in the RV parked near the side of the house, the drunken faces of a few of the other girls swimming in front of me as I swayed.

Truth or Dare. I remember thinking, “This should be good.”

I was dared to kiss the girl next to me, a close friend who was as wasted as I was. I recall the nervous flip of my stomach as my lips neared hers. The Dare and I smushed our faces together clumsily. I could taste the vodka and orange juice on her mouth. I found myself falling into the kiss and she seemed receptive. We made out passionately as the other girls leered at us in an inebriated stupor. Eventually, they left us alone in the RV. I woke up the next morning in a crumpled heap on the floor of the RV; my eyelids crunched as I opened them and my lips were so dry they cracked when I sat up and coughed. The Dare was still asleep on the RV couch; last night’s events played through my head as I gazed at her sleeping face. I felt lighter than I ever had, despite having the worst hangover of my existence. I stumbled out of the camper and entered the house; girls were draped all over the furniture, looking at pictures from the previous night and nursing headaches. The room quieted when I entered; they stared at me, their faces inscrutable. I scrubbed my face with my hands to dislodge the various body fluids dried there. Under heavy surveillance, I procured some water and sprawled on the living room floor, head pounding and hands clammy.

“Z, do you remember anything about last night?” Someone asked. I sat up and put a palm to my throbbing temple. “Not really, did anyone get hurt?” I asked, doing a headcount of the girls in the room to see who was missing. Only The Dare was absent. “No..” Another girl piped up, “But you and The Dare like, hooked up.” She giggled anxiously. I flinched at the thinly veiled disgust in her voice, shrinking further and further into myself as I saw it reflected in the eyes of many of the other girls. Instantly, I realized my mistake.

It was a harmless thing to kiss a girl as a dare. It was another, far more heinous thing to enjoy it.

Panic engulfed me as my pubescent brain scrambled to find a way to maintain my position in the social hierarchy of my seventh grade class. Stalling, I sipped my water. I imagined being one of the “dykes” at school, of losing every inch of social capital I’d managed to attain. Frigid tendrils wrapped around my heart and, for the first time in my life, I consciously gave in to cowardice.

I feigned surprise as best I could: “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said, doing a small spit take to really sell it. A titter travelled through the room and girls started talking at once. “During truth or dare!” “You got dared to kiss her and you did!” “You were literally all over each other!” “She touched your boobs!” Their exclamations overlapped, the cacophony splitting my skull open. I silenced them with a shout of my own⁠— “Oh em GEEEE!” I yelled, burying my face in my hands so they couldn’t see the humiliation there. “I was completely wasted, I don’t remember anything. Did she have as much to drink as me?” I said. I knew that she’d been as drunk as I was⁠ but⁠— as I’d known (and maybe even hoped) it could⁠— the question changed the tide of the conversation. “You’re right,” a girl said from the couch, “she like.. Took advantage of you.”

That was not what I’d said but I let her comment fester as the other girls eyed me sympathetically. They no longer saw a lesbian; they saw the victim of one. My insides clenched uncomfortably and I ran to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach into the toilet bowl.

I felt close to death as I leaned against the bathroom sink, staring at myself in the mirror. I remember my face so vividly: the self-loathing, the repulsion, the guilt and loneliness so clear on my young features as I silently tried to justify what I’d just done. My cheeks were sallow and slick with shameful tears and perspiration as I sweated liquor from my pores.

Not invincible, after all.

The Dare and I’s friendship was never the same. When our classmates made cruel remarks about what happened, I didn’t defend her. I apologized profusely to her after I came out in high school, but I know that wasn’t enough for the trouble I caused her. Though we were just kids experimenting, the reactions of the other girls solidified my denial of my bisexual identity for years to come. I tentatively called myself Bi-curious to a few close friends, but I’d temper it with comments like, “I think girls are pretty but I would never date one.” and “I don’t know how lesbians do it, vaginas are so weird!” My internalized homophobia manifested as a total denial of my bisexual identity when that identity threatened to make me even more of an outsider at my predominately white, conservative middle school. I had boyfriends and a social circle, but suicidal thoughts became a daily occurrence as the hatred I felt for myself deepened.

My experience is more common than I could’ve ever imagined then. After polling and interviewing hundreds of adolescents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) concluded that “bisexual youth were much less likely to be out to their families, friends, peers, and communities” than exclusively gay youth. Only 33 percent of UK bisexuals surveyed by the Scotland-based Equality Network felt comfortable telling their general practitioner about their sexual orientation, and nearly half had experienced biphobia when accessing health services. Though there are many variables that contribute to a person’s ability to come out⁠— including but not limited to social and political climate, familial relations, and personal values⁠— the UK’s statistics raise alarms about global attitudes regarding bisexuality and health concerns for bisexuals.

In the United States, lack of preventative care for queer folk begins in grade school, as proper sex education for students attracted to the same sex is sorely lacking. According to a 2017 report by Guttmacher Institute, of the 22 states that mandate sex-ed, only 12 are required to acknowledge sexual orientations. Of those 12 states, 9 mandate inclusive discussion of the different sexual orientations, and 3 “require only negative information on sexual orientation.” Poorly educated bisexuals are less likely to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases into adulthood. When The Dare and I were exploring each other, I had absolutely no frame of reference for what we were doing and how to do it safely aside from mainstream pornography tailored for hetero, cis male consumption. No lessons on safe queer sex were taught at my middle or high school; it angers me to know that is the norm.

Erasure impacts mental health as well as physical health for bisexual folk: according to the HRC, “Bisexual adults were also more likely to engage in self-harming behaviors, attempt suicide or think about suicide than heterosexuals, lesbians or gay men.” Bisexuals, especially adolescents, were also more likely to engage in risk taking behavior like alcohol and drug abuse, which negatively impacts both mental and physical health. HRC’s 2012 survey of LGTBQ youth found “only 5 percent of bisexual youth reported being very happy, compared to 8 percent of lesbian and gay youth and 21 percent of non-LGBT youth.” The HRC asserted that poor emotional well-being during adolescence translates into bisexual youth being “twice as likely” to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Furthermore, during research regarding the disparity between bisexual health and that of individuals in the exclusively gay and straight communities, the HRC found that “more than 40 percent of LGBT people of color identify as bisexual, and about half of transgender people describe their sexual orientation as bisexual or queer – making these groups vulnerable to further disparities that occur at the intersections of biphobia, racism and transphobia.”

The well-known yet oft-forgotten “Mother of Pride,” Brenda Howard, spent her life advocating against bi-erasure. She said, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’” Until general attitudes in both the gay and straight communities change, bisexuals will continue to repress themselves and feel excluded from both groups. Bisexuals: never let the ignorance of others repress you. You aren’t confused, you aren’t inherently hypersexual and your queer identity is valid. Don’t let anyone, gay or straight, take away your seat at the Pride table.

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griffelkinn · 4 years

Text

All the Transwomen I Met

I've felt the need to write this and share it, for a few years.

About 5 years ago, I moved to San Francisco. I didn't know anyone in the entire state, so I spent a lot of time and effort meeting new people, and going to social events, and accepting invitations from most everybody who invited me to anything. I met a ton of people.

When I moved out there, I didn't really know anything at all about transgender people. I was told about that idea pretty quick once I got there. I thought it was really great that people were comfortable being themselves. The idea that men who enjoyed wearing stereotypically "women's" clothes, were becoming more comfortable doing that. And the idea that men were rejecting stereotypes of men that were forced onto them from childhood, so they could be themselves without shame. And the reverse... women rejecting uncomfortable stereotypes of women so they could be happy. It was an exciting idea that if more and more people started doing this, it would become more and more obvious that none of the stereotypes about what women are like and men are like are actually real. Sexism would be almost completely done away with!

I wish that was what happened. I was really excited to see it happen.

But that isn't what happened. Something bad happened.

In San Francisco, there were a LOT of transwomen. And so while I was meeting all of those people, and doing all that socializing, I ended up meeting and becoming acquaintances with a lot of transwomen. I have written a brief description of literally every single transwoman who I became friends with or got to know at all. I left none out. There are nine. I have felt like this was very important for me to share.

The first transwoman (man who likes to be called a woman) I knew, rubbed his penis on me when he thought I was sleeping. This was shortly after I told him I didn't return his romantic feelings for me, which I had told him many times already.

That same man had previously told me that he'd spent most of his young adult life pressuring girls to have sex with him.

The second transwoman I knew, became enraged when I casually commented on sexism in commercials. I thought what I said would be met with obvious agreement. I hadn't known many transwomen yet, and I thought that they would understand sexism and feminism a little more than men on average do. I learned that I was very wrong. I'd commented on how a string of commercials we watched featured men speaking with intelligence, confidence, and authority, and they featured women speaking in forced baby voices, sounding insecure, dumb, giggly, and weak.

This man advanced on me physically to where I was sitting, with another angry transwoman, very loud and mad, and was very upset with my comment. He said women like talking like that, and also their vocal cords physically are only able to talk like that. Then he said my comment could be compared to women who really want to wear high heels to work, but people don't let them. Which is obviously ridiculous, because that is exactly the opposite of reality... women are being forced by their workplaces to wear high heels, which most women hate and which injure feet. That is still a sexist reality in many places that women are fighting to end. He was somehow saying I was like the fantasy people who don't let these fantasy women wear high heels to work, because of my comment.

This same man told me that he was really respected in China, which is where he was born, because he's a woman and in China women are dominant and considered superior to men. That is true, isn't it. Yes, very accurate. Not at all incorrect or literally opposite of reality.

The third transwoman I knew got upset with me at Halloween season, when I commented that women should be offered normal costumes just like men are, rather than only "sexy" versions of costumes in most places. There should be the same options for girls and boys, and women and men. He immediately disagreed and would only repeat that "Women like wearing sexy costumes!" I repeated that girls and boys should both be offered normal costumes, and obviously if anyone, man or woman, wanted to wear a "sexy" version of a costume they should wear whatever they want. He still disagreed. He said that "women have very little opportunity to dress femininely and sexy, and Halloween is a chance they can do it." I explained that was the opposite of reality. Women have tons of times when they are allowed, encouraged, and pushed to dress femininely and "sexy". That includes work, after work, weekends, and... all other times I would say. I'm pretty sure he was thinking of men, for whom his comment would have been accurate.

That same man got very angry when I said women were made to feel they have to wear makeup, and that is bad. He became very angry. Not just a little. Very angry. He kept saying (angrily) "Women like wearing makeup!"

That same man told me he was a pedophile, and had to keep himself away from children.

That same man told me that "sexism is good for some women".

That same man supported Gamergate. That same man told me that the separation of women's and men's sports are not at all related to people's biological sex, and that men who want to be called women should compete in women's sports.

That same man told me that sexism doesn't exist at all in America, and people are treated exactly the same their whole lives whether they're female or male. (I know, it contradicts his other statement that "sexism is good for some women"). I said that I had a lifetime of many many instances where I experienced sexism. From when I was very little until the present. He mockingly told me to name just one. I was so horrified that he honestly thought I would be unable to think of a single experience of sexism, and that he was mocking me about it, that I told him that it would demean me to answer to his demand of one example. It would obviously be lowering myself too far.

That same man told me that sexism in countries outside America don't have any effect on me.

The fourth transwoman I knew, I saw a movie with. It was good, but I noticed some very obvious sexism in the portrayal of female characters and male characters, which I later learned most everybody noticed. And while most everybody including me agreed it was a great movie, the extreme sexism was obvious. After the movie I said so, how I loved it - but it was very sexist in these examples. And this man started insulting me and being very annoyed. He said venomously that the portrayals of female and male characters was "realistic", and then just as venomously asked me "What are you, a FEMinist?" Clearly he felt the only acceptable view of feminists is to hate them. Somehow he expected me to want to insist to him that I wasn't a feminist. Obviously I loudly said "Yeah. I am a feminist. Aren't you a feminist?"

I never saw him again. We had been casual friends for a few months, but apparently that interaction made us both lose the desire to try and meet up again.

That same man, weeks previously at a fast food joint, told me ever since he started taking estrogen that he's become extremely physically weak. He was grinning while describing to me how wonderfully weak he was, and clearly that was an idea that made him very happy. A personal fantasy. He said how now his arms are so weak, he can barely throw a frisbee! I asked him to arm wrestle and he beat me with no effort in one second. I'd assumed that would happen.

The fifth transwoman I knew, was a very nice person. He was kind, and fun, and not a misogynist, and didn't get angry if anyone criticized anything sexist. He also didn't mind going into men's public bathrooms. I really liked him. We were friends.

The sixth transwoman I knew was over six feet tall, and had a fantasy that men would rape him. He would only ever dress in cartoonishly sexual stripper-style outfits. He described multiple times to me how he was worried that men would rape him when he walked around in public. In a voice and level of description that made it obvious this was his personal sexual fantasy. He suggested that he and I are both equally in danger from sexual assault. I'm 5'1 and just trying to live my life. He was over 6 feet and that was his sexual fantasy. We were very different in our experiences of the threat of sexual assault.

The seventh transwoman I knew, I went to the movies with and he put his hand in my crotch area. I said "WHOA I am not comfortable with that." And I physically took his arm and returned it to his own seat. He immediately put his arm around my neck and shoulders and said in an annoyed whiny voice "Well can I at least do this?" And I had to say no again. We barely knew each other, and were not at all romantic. I had zero romantic thought of him. He clearly didn't care or consider if I did or not. It didn't affect his feelings that he should be allowed to do things like that for his pleasure.

The eighth transwoman I knew was over six feet tall and white. He came up to me suddenly and told me that he is twice as oppressed as me, because he has sexism, as a woman, like I do, and he also has "transmisogyny". I was so shocked that he would say he experiences sexism like women that I was speechless. Obviously he was a man and so he did not. He was also gigantic. I don't really know why he wanted to come up to me and tell me that he had "twice as much oppression as me". After he said it he just kind of looked at me waiting to see what I would say. That was the first instance I learned about the "oppression olympics". I had never used the word "oppression" before and very rarely heard it used in person. But I was disgusted by his competitive declaration of victimhood. Since then, of course the word "oppression" has become extremely popularly used in conversation, and that's usually a good thing, but there is definitely this unsavory world of people like him who build their identities around having the "most" oppression, like an impressive commodity, who have no basis in reality.

That same man, after my lack of response, then told me that he also doesn't have white privilege because he grew up poor.

That same man told me that he'd spent much of his life pressuring women to have sex with him.

The ninth transwoman I knew, told me he would only ever date women who shave their bodies. I know that men have no idea the level of pain and insecurity that teenage girls go through because of the forced shaving culture, so I gave him a break and replied with a kind of friendly comment that even though shaving their bodies for women is an extremely torturous social norm, everyone has preferences about their romantic partners and that's fine. Though I felt like that particular preference is specifically a preference for women suffering an unhealthy lifelong ritual born completely out of insecurity. I figured I'd just write this guy off, and there was no point in saying so. But I couldn't help poking the misogynist bear a little. He was trying to get me to hang out with him. So I asked if he just won't have a relationship with a woman who doesn't shave her body, or if he can't even stand to see them at all in any setting. Because it was summer and I love going to the beach in shorts, and I needed to know if I shouldn't invite him to to beach. I actually thought I was being funny and that he would know that, but he answered seriously that he "would feel grossed out if he looked at me." Imagine one person feeling comfortable telling someone that they would feel grossed out to look at you. That man sure felt comfortable saying it to me.

I have also known some transmen. They are usually very kind, thoughtful people. I have known some very closely for years before they decided to be transmen. Most of them, years after that decision, still fight internally against the feeling that they have to wear makeup every day or else be ugly and worthless. Most of them still mentally fight to nurture any sense of self-confidence to speak their opinions, or take up space in a group as a full person, who deserves as much free immediate respect as any other.

Those are things that women experience.

Almost all transwomen are now saying that they are not men breaking social expectations. They are women. And women are sexist stereotypes.

Men breaking social expectations would deserve respect and props for being themselves despite social pressure. That would be a cool move. But they are instead insulting women, supporting sexist stereotypes religiously, closing down women's shelters, women's rape trauma centers, and women's festivals. They are taking women's government positions, women's scholarships, and women's awards.

**CONTENT WARNING for below **

Transwomen have made it so now any and all men are allowed to go into women's bathrooms, women's changing rooms, and women's shelters. And MANY of them have been raping and murdering children and women. They've been kidnapping, videotaping, and sexually harassing women and children.

There are many myths that transgender activists send around social networking sites. There's one that is very popularly shared that says transwomen in America are in danger of being murdered. That is a lie. White transwomen in America are less likely to be murdered than white men who don't identify as a transwomen.

Even if they were in danger, that would be a separate issue from women completely, and they would deserve their own safe places to be and escape violence. They should not take away all resources to help women, and allow all men into women's changing rooms and bathrooms and prisons.

I'm pretty sure most people know that women are not allowed to talk about this. We are not allowed to speak our discomfort. If a woman says she is uncomfortable with any of that, transwomen (men) bombard her with rape threats, very descriptive rape threats involving their own penises. They also do this to any lesbian who says lesbians don't want to have sex with penises. Any woman who is a feminist. Any woman who wouldn't even call herself a feminist because that word takes a lot of courage to use, but who still speaks of helping women and ending sexist beliefs, or describes reality without pandering to make these men feel good.

I used to think the transgender social movement would bring us all leaps and bounds into a brighter future, but I really think it has dragged us all back far in time and rolled back women's rights and safety and respect many decades into the past. I used to think all those violent women-hating transwomen were just the rare bad apple, and most are good people who don't want to hurt women. But that list of transwomen that I described is every single one I've known in person. 8 out of 9 were extreme examples of the most misogynist of men. My experiences have made me wary now, and I can barely even picture in my imagination a transwoman saying the words "It's impossible to feel like a woman", or "Women deserve to be allowed to get together and talk about women's issues".

The misogynist slur TERF means: Dyke. Feminazi. Cunt. They all know this.

It pains me to see women being caught up in this social movement, clearly just trying to be polite and "politically correct", or seeking male approval. Most of them are insecure. I understand. But I wish they would speak up and be honest about the truth, and not just do whatever these men tell them they must do and say to avoid being called a TERF.

#terfs please interact #terf #terfs #terfs do touch #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #feminist

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monkeyspawnskydiamond · 3 years

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Transcript of Interview

Q: What do you see as the origins of violence against women? Is it cultural? Is it biological?

I believe that the origins of violence against women are completely in systems of gender inequity. In systems of basically male supremacy and although many proponents of male supremacy would have us believe that this is always existed on the planet, that it's biologically endemic, that it's inevitable, there's nothing we can do about it, etc., that's not true at all. Patriarchy is a relatively new institution, the last five thousand years or so. And you can find a lot of evidence for this in archaeology, in myth, in legend, things that are discredited by contemporary modes of knowledge which have to be understood as patriarchal in and of themselves.

The emphasis on rationality of this kind of direct evidence that myth is seen as just a fable, something that never existed. For examine, in the very area here, New Mexico, the creator of all is spider grandmother who thought, spun, dream wove the world into being. And there was a whole different system, that Allen writes about very eloquently in her book, The Sacred Hoop, which she calls a gynecentric system, in which the emphasis is not on competition, power over, domination, but rather on equality, harmony, balance, tolerance for a wide diversity of life styles, the centrality of powerful women, being absolutely necessary for society to function well, not any kind of belief in corporal punishment of children, extremely low incidence of rape, no idea of an institution of prostitution or pornography because sex as sacred and not associated with any kind of negativity. So, these systems did exist on the planet everywhere, in Europe. When I was a child all I wanted to read was myth, and stories of goddesses or I knew that this betokened another kind of reality, that this one that we live in now is not permanent and it was not here always forever.

Q: What causes men to be violent against women? Does it boil down to an underlying inequality between men and women? Does this mean that the answer is equality between the sexes?

What causes men to be violent then is basically an enforcement. That if you have a system of oppression, one group is being subordinated, in this case we're talking about women, and in some way you can propagandize and brain wash the subordinated group into agreeing to this. Well, I really am more passive, I really am subordinate. You know, we're given those messages all the time through the mass media, through religion, in which we're told that women are premordally evil, etc. But obviously, that's not going to work completely, we're going to resist. And we're not going to buy into all that ideology so the second level of enforcement is violence, actual violence. So I see the whole gamut from sexual harassment on the streets, in the office, through rape, through battery, through incest, through sexual murder, through a level of enforcement, to keep women in our place, to tell us that we can't speak out against atrocities and to serve as a lesson to all of the women. This is what will happen to you. You are prey in this culture, you are an object, you be obedient or you're off basically, so I see that violence serves an absolute function. It's not a deviation, it's not a monster from Mars. We have to look at it as absolutely functional to keeping the status quo going, to keeping the system of male supremacy working.

Q: You've said abusive men aren't abnormal or deviant, but the norm. Can you explain? What about rape in the home? You've made an interesting comment that these behaviors are not taboo, that it's talking about them which is taboo.

In that violence, it's not the norm in that everyone does it. It's just I think that there's some deception going on about it that we don't really want incest to happen. There's really an incest taboo. According to a 1992 government finance study, 36 percent of all rapes of women in this country are rapes by a family member. There's some deception going on. What is really taboo is speaking out about that, saying that the nuclear family is not really this haven of comfort and warmth, but that really according to the FBI women are nine times safer on the street than they are in the family. That's where you're most likely to be beaten, most likely to be raped. Eleven percent of all rapes take place of girls under the age, I mean, excuse me, 67 percent of all rapes are under the age of 18. About 29 percent of the girls under the age of 11 -- these are taking place in the home. Eleven percent of all rapes are rapes by a father or step-father. People who talk about family values, it's really a code word for a racist, sexist enforcement of family values, gender inequality, the idea that women and children are the property of the father. These are the values. It's really about control.

Q: What about the theory that violence is an inherent part of male biology?

I think the real stress on biological essentialism right now saying that men are born this way, women are born this way and we also see it in term of racism. For example, when something like the Bell curve, saying that whites or Africans are necessarily more, less intelligent, whites a little bit more so, the Japanese the highest. They put that in to make them not look like white racists. But, you know, all this kind of stuff is a backlash to thirty years of activism saying the culture is responsible for these kind of differences. That even I would argue that what we understand as biology is filtered through our cultural preconceptions. For example, think of the scenario that we all see, whether it be in a movie like "Look Whose Talking" or just what we've understood through education, of when a woman gets pregnant. The sperm is seen as this kind of heroic warrior, traveling up through this dangerous territory to penetrate and conquet the egg. We see that all the time. Really, why don't we look at that as the egg as this magnificent huge dominant fascinating force that draws the sperm to her, etc. We understand biology through cultural lenses. And what is, what was biology in the 19th century is now understood as scientific racism. The sciences of, for example, measuring skulls to prove that women of all races or Africans or Native Americans had smaller skulls and therefore lesser intellectual capacity. I would say that what's happening right now in all this emphasis on men are innately more violent and women are innately more passive and stuff like that is scientific sexism, nothing more.

Q: What sort of role has religion played? Does religion teach that men are superior to women, that female sexuality is linked to evil?

Religion is one of the most important sources of violence against, of the ideology for violence against women. It first gives us this idea of sex negativity. That sex in which women are really always implicated as the sex, we are the sexual ones. Be we mothers or prostitutes or temptresses or whatever. The whole story of Adam and Eve, that Eve was the one responsible.

Religion is absolutely fundamental in perpetrating violence against women. It is one of the key ways to communicate the ideology of male supremacy. First of all, God is male. There is no female principle. It was the people who demanded that Mary even in the Christian religion be given a place of honor. The cathedrals in Europe were built to her to recognize people's understanding that there is something feminine about the divine as well. But patriarchal religions would have us believe that all divinity is male and only male. And that coupled with the idea that female sexuality in women is evil, as for example in the Garden of Eden myth and that it is up to men to dominate both women and the earth, give us a script for all kinds of violence against women, which, of course, I connect up with violence against the earth in that the earth and women are seen as passive, as submissive, as out of control and thereby need to be controlled, dominated, etc. God tells Eve, "This is your husband, Adam, you will submit to him, he will lord it over you and basically you'll love it.” Yeah, right. That's the Bible.

So, religion often promotes an ideology of male supremacy, which as I said I see as the root of violence against women. We also get this whole idea of sex negativity. That sexuality is sinful, that the body is shameful. Then of course women are the sex, so it is our bodies that are seen as somehow contaminated, that we are seen as somehow kind of filthy. And so therefore you're given the choice to be this Madonna, this absolutely pure virgin mother or whatever or the whore, the one who epitomizes sex. These are of course both aspects of one persona. So it seems to me that therefore, it's also Christianity that even though, for example, fundamentalist Christianity rails against pornography that pornography is really Christianity's evil twin, to use soap opera jargon, that it's really the same thing. That both of them depend upon women and the idea of sex negativity, that the body and sexuality is somehow obscene, filthy and dirty. You don't have pornography without that, you don't have Christianity without that. On the submission of women, on a rather deadness, a kind of loss of the sacred involving sexuality that I see in both, in Christianity, the only kind of sex you can possibly have and then you're not supposed to enjoy it too much except as marital heterosexual procreative sex. No idea of ecstasy, of communing with the Universe, in any kind of sacred sexuality which characterizes what are seen as pagan cultures. So, pornography is of course the off-shoot of this terrible negativity, of sex as really just objectification, filthy, obscene, behavior.

Q: Doesn't this also lead to eroticizing the forbidden?

Okay, so what I see as happening in the Garden of Eden Myth is that sex supposedly was the sin that Adam and Eve committed. So then there's this injunction like that's considered to be the forbidden fruit. So we have this whole notion of the forbidden as being something that is also extremely desirable. And it seems to me that what patriarchal culture is about is about eroticizing the forbidden and therefore sanctioning taboo violation, making taboo violation itself an act of sex. An act that someone's supposed to get off on in a way which I see therefore as feeding, for example, incest. It's the forbidden that actually becomes more appealing, it's the violation of innocence. You're really acting out the culture's dicta. I mean, think of "Star Trek," to boldly go where no man has gone before. So there is no limit. No taboo, we just sort of march in uninvited and I think that's an injunction that is tied to this idea of the taboo. That rules are made really to be broken. It's thrilling to march in without invitation, justifying everything from incest to manifest destiny to all kinds of cultural imperialism.

Q: And so we have incest as an ultimate taboo?

Well, as I talk about incest in the nuclear family, obviously incest is not a real taboo. It's committed at an alarming rate. And that's just what is reported. We all know that these kinds of crimes are grievously unreported because of ideas of shame, because of pushing the memories so far back you don't have ready access to them, etc. So, incest in the nuclear family or child sexual abuse by priests, has been hushed up forever. You know, it's not really taboo. Everybody knows it's going on. But the taboo of silence is breaking up. That's what the feminist movement has been about. Breaking that conspiracy of silence: be it against child sexual abuse, wife beating, etc.

Think of what happened to Sinead O'Connor when she was on "Saturday Night Live." That time, I think it was in 1992, when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II. And she was making a political statement. She was protesting the church's complicity in covering up incidences of child sexual abuse by the priesthood. She was excoriated for that in the press and the very next week Joe Peshi comes on and says, "I'm Italian and thank God it's Columbus Day.” And then goes into saying how he wants to smack her around and the crowd is roaring its approval of him smacking her around. So clearly here we see what I'm talking about -- about violence against women as enforcement of women staying in their place. Not speaking out and naming the atrocity, that's the taboo, not committing it. And I find it very interesting that when feminists are always accused of censorship, here's a real incident of censorship, in that when Saturday Night Live repeats these episodes, they censor Sinead O'Connor. They do not censor Joe Peshi advocating battery as a solution to women speaking out against abuses.

Q: What of the inherent differences between the sexes? Doesn't it all boil down to gender difference? Can we discuss these things without discussing gender differences?

I think absolutely we have these ideas that there are these genders, masculinity and feminity and that masculinity is something that all beings with certain kind of hormones and male genitalia have and there's this femininity. I think that differences between men and women, this whole creation of the opposite sex is a way to create male supremacy. You create difference and then you repress one-half of it and you create enmity, you create this kind of opposition. So, I really look at and then everybody says it's nature and it's innate. But why do we have so many cultural, so much cultural brainwashing to make it happen. Little boys, what you wear, how people can speak to you. You know the whole masculine or feminine conditioning which begins right at birth if not before. How you know now that everybody's finding out the sex of their child and probably even treating it differently in the womb when it's a fetus. But okay, what were we going on? I'm thinking, okay, the cultural construction of masculinity.

It seems to me that masculinity in all of the culturally approved avocations of masculinity is somehow associated with force and violence. That men are suppose to be identified by their bodily strength and that almost all the male initiation rights, all the whole culture of masculinity, the heros that we see be it Indiana Jones or Rambo or John Wayne or Charles Bronson, or whomever, they're all predicated on some kind of violent action. Therefore we understand that to be a man and that being a man, you're not born a man, you become a man according to how the culture says what a man is. The culture makes you into a creature who is ruled by a commitment to violence and that male heroes and male villains, be they cops, be they criminals, they're all bonded by their commitment to violence. And so I think what we really need to do is deconstruct masculinity, destroy notions of cultural masculinity and femininity. I would be much more in favor of a world in which we didn't see ourselves as opposite sexes but as existing on a continuum in which the feminine within men as well as within women was honored. And there would be women who be more traditionally masculine even than some men, etc. Understand that we're on a co-continuum, we have much more in common than we have separating us.

Q: What do you think of Robert Bly and his theories?

Robert Bly. I mean, I find him interesting in that I basically like his response of going back to the old tradition, but my liking of it stops about there. He goes back to an extremely sexist fairy tale in which the guy becomes a hero by basically winning in war and then capturing as his prize a princess. I mean this is absolute sexism. Violence initiation, and then you know the princess as object trophy prize. So, the women is a sex object. I think what he preaches basically is that women are inadequate. That men need to find themselves in a separatist community with other men. And I find historically that men having separatist communities, and even right now culturally male fraternities, male sports, etc. These are the sites of some of the worst violence against women. And that's where I think men are suppose to, the way in which one becomes a man in this culture is by rooting out the feminine within the self. By denying the mother, which Robert Bly is all about. Bonding with the father and rooting out all traces of the feminine within the self which he says you can only do in all male communities. That's completely the patriarchal root to manhood. And women are inadequate for this. What Sheri Hite's research shows is that boys who grow up in households run by single women are far more respectful to women, show lower incidence of violence, etc. So you know, I think that's absolute nonsense that women can't really create men. So what my problem with Bly is that I think he's profoundly misogynist. Women are again a lesser contaminating presence and need to be conquered or overcome in order to actualize manhood. That's again the patriarchal script.

Q: Hasn't violence against women been legally sanctioned for centuries?

It's been different throughout the history of patriarchal culture. For example, we talked about patriarchal religion in the early modern period, around the same time as the voyages to the new world, beginning with the use of Africans in slavery, you had the European and the whole enlightenment, the whole ascendence of rationality. You had the burning of women as witches, throughout early modern Europe, and some men. Probably anywhere from 300 thousand to a million. And this was completely legitimated by both church and state. So violence against women there was the law. You had to do it, it was absolutely approved.

Now a'days, we live in this time of that kind of pseudo taboo I was talking about. It's supposed to be taboo but we all know that on "General Hospital" when Luke raped Laura. It makes it glamorous, it eroticizes that kind of violence against women and it makes it appear consensual. As if women seek this out and want it. It makes it extremely normal as well. Let me just think of a few examples. I mean, we all know the notorious "General Hospital" where Luke raped Laura and then later married her, so it made it seem as though rape was some kind of courtship ritual (laughter). I mean Calvin Kline sells this obsession and gives us these very erotic images of a man, of a naked man carrying a naked woman over his shoulders.

It's underscoring both male dominance but also the idea that love is somehow synonymous with obsession. I mean that's what leads to four women in this country every day being killed by men who say they love them (chuckle) but most women in the country who are killed are killed by men who say they love them. That's really obsession and we should never confuse the two, obsession and feeling that the woman is somehow your property. But we're taught this all the time. And "Pretty Woman" considered a light-hearted flick and Richard Gere decides that he wants to marry Julia Roberts after he realizes that marriage is really ownership, he's not just renting her as a prostitute any more. He can actually own her. Remember the scene where he looks at the jewelry and says, "Oh, I don't have to just rent this, I can own it.” And he's talking about her too. So, I think in all kinds of ways it's made to seem either very normative, very happy and beneficial, or very erotic, a very heroic, be it these constructions of masculinity as violent enforcer, such as Rambo, etc.

Q: So, does the media contribute to these notions or merely reflect them?

Well, I think it's a dialogic process. The media both sells us what we want but also decides and conditions us to want what we want. So it's a two-way street. It's always going back and forth. And it's not just sort of an injection, but media puts these things in our heads. But it shapes what we want as well as then satisfying that want.

We all react differently to those messages. That's a real common theme in contemporary cultural studies, that people can negotiate meanings and take something out of it that somebody else didn't get out. For example, and you'll see that argument used to justify pornography all the time. Well, I read pornography and I haven't raped anyone, etc. etc. But what we need to do is take collective responsibility that, for example, the most common sexual activity of serial murders according to the justice department is using pornography. And that even if an individual can look at a particular type of pornography and not cultivate a desire to go out and sexually murder, we have to take responsibility for that a significant portion of the population does use this material to feed those fantasies and to provide a script for carrying out that kind of behavior. And so it's not a question, I think that a capitalist consumer culture always emphasizes, we have this kind of liberal emphasis on individual rights, my rights, my rights, my rights. How about cultural responsibility. Again I think that's a feature of a gynesophical or gynecentric system. That we really do have to look for a common good in some way and take some responsibility. Understand, set some limits. And again, we live in a culture in which limits are there only to be transgressed.

Q: Is the solution censorship?

I would veer away from censorship. That's why I like the law that Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnin drafted that would make it that a woman or anyone injured by pornography could sue in civil court. So I would never give the police power to seize materials and to prohibit because I think that we could go into the kind of society that Margaret Atwood describes in the Hand Maid's Tale in which you have what I talked about as the right wing side of the women oppressive agenda that sort of the Christian woman as object, woman as reproductive breeder and maybe whore on the side and that's it. Right, that kind of circumscription of women's freedom. But I don't want the purely pornographic libertarian you know, all the women getting raped and incested that we have right now either. So, we're allowed to swing back and forth between modes but never to get beyond them. I'd like to get beyond that. So no, I'm not in favor of censorship.

I'm in favor of one kind of collective responsibility, maybe suing in civil court, there's some legal remedies that have been proposed but I'd never give the police power to seize materials. That would be immediately abused. What I think we need is to really create an alternative consciousness and to create change in the culture through what I call in psychic activism, through generating alternative forms of eroticism, alternative forms of erotica, alternative myths, narratives, symbols, stories. And I think what I would call upon women to do is to reverse the kind of sex negativism. Part of our oppression has been to tell us that we're either these pornographic whores or we're completely asexual. To demand and exercise our sexual autonomy, to become what I think of as bawdy women. You know, were really to speak. I mean we're not really suppose to express our sexual desires outside of pornography. Its seen as some how very lacking in taste, a very unlady like or whatever. I think whenever we criticize pornography we have to do it in a bawdy way to affirm sexuality, to reverse the kind of sex negativism of that strain of patriarchy of the Christian side. To be vulgar in the sense of like bawdy, earthy, in touch with our sexuality. And therefore, I think we break those false opposites of sex negativism or pornography. And move into a new paradigm.

Q: There's some controversy as to whether rape is a crime of violence or a crime of sexuality? How are violence and sex intertwined?

I think it's really specious to separate violence and sexuality. I would disagree with some of the early feminists who you know we all change our minds as the theory gets worked out, who would say rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sex. Because unfortunately in this culture, sex is completely interfused with violence, with notions of dominance and subordination. As I said, I believe our gender roles are constructed so we have these two constructed genders, masculine and feminine that are defined by one being powerful and one being powerless. And so therefore, powerlessness and power themselves become eroticized. And in that violence becomes eroticized. Domination, subordination become eroticized so that whether you know somebody is actually exerting dominance in a sexually explicit way as in pornography or doing it in a mainstream way, for example. That's seen as somehow sexual. Because the domination itself, the violation itself has become sexual according to this gender hierarchy system.

I realize that there are some biologists that would say that violence is just a means men use to get sex as if sex were just this sort of innate thing that we're all born knowing what it is and wanting. Rather I see sex as a culturally constructed in the way our sexuality is expressed. For example, the idea that intercourse between a man and a woman is sex. Right? Preferably with him on top penetrating and thrusting and her lying still. Right? I mean that's a cultural notion and one induced by male supremacy. So this sex that he's getting is really a model to justify, that he's saying is innate, is a model to justify a very oppressive male dominant form of sexuality that is completely culturally conditioned. Rape is sexual, yes in that force and domination of women has been sexualized. That's how it's both violent and sexual at the same time. We need to recognize how they work in tandem.

Also, I mean, some theorists who I would see as whether consciously or not in complicity would rape would say, "Well, it's just that there's this very attractive woman and rape is the only way I can get her or something like that,” that this justifies. But that in no way speaks to the reality of rape in which extremely old women who are seen in this country or in this culture again in a patriarchal culture as completely undesirable are raped, in which little babies are raped, in which it's just a question of which woman is most vulnerable at a particular time, is most easy to be preyed upon. That theory doesn't jive at all with the way that rape is actually promoted. It's based on there's an available victim that I can intimidate and conquer at this particular point.

Q: What do you think about developing alternate notions of eroticism?

Anything that I talk about with pornography, I stress the needs of developing an alternative notions of sexuality alternative notions of erotica. I think we have to have a counter culture. I know Newt Gingrich has declared war on the counter culture. But that's because I think that's the reason he does it, I think is because that's where the most powerful force is for change. If we change cultural attitudes, behaviors, desires, I mean, all these things are culturally constructed to begin with. Male dominance is a cultural construct. It can be deconstructed and changed and we do that through every day acts, through subversions, as a title of a book by a woman I don't know but it's a good title, Every Day Acts in Small Subversions. That we don't believe them that it's inevitable. And that power is only exercised from the top to the bottom. That we recognize that creation is ongoing every day.

There's a social construction of reality that we participate in and that we can become the creators of an emerging alternative reality. It's happening now. Thirty years ago you would go to medical journals and find no references to wife beating. Not its they're trying to put it back they're trying to say incest is all false memory, etc. They can't completely put it back in the box, we have broken that conspiracy of silence and we're not going to shut up. And not only do we have to tell the truth about the abuses that are heaped on us, but we have to articulate a new emerging consciousness in reality and practice of sexuality that is not based upon that sex negative norm of what the heterosexual monogamous procreative couple, etc. We have to encourage sexual experimentation, the wiring and production of erotic materials, the infusion of the resacrilization of sexuality. Understanding that is why I really hate porography because it teaches us that the life force can be commodified, packaged and sold.

There has been a division in the feminist movement between feminists who are opposed to pornography and feminists who say we shouldn't concentrate on that because it's antisexual. But I see and I think they have a point but I think we need a medium ground here and I understand that pornography is anti-sexual, its about destroying packaging containing exploiting, abusing the life force. Pornography teaches us that the life force can be consumed, used and abused. Then women, children can be consumed, used, abused, the planet can be consumed, used and abused, etc. I see pornography as paradigmatic of other kind of abuses that are taking on. So I think some of the solutions would be to treat, to teach notions of respect for other life forms whether they are human or not, to understand that if you don't treat the life force with respect, understand that you cannot take without giving back, that you have to respect limits, boundaries. The life force will strike back at you. We're always told that there's no limits, that we can boldly go where no man has gone before, a dictum that I see justifying both incest and manifest destiny. I might have said that already.

Q: So how do we begin to change things? How do you inculcate a sense of respect for all life?

This notion, celebrated on "Star Trek," that we can boldly go where no man has gone before, recognizing that's a dictum that justifies everything from incest to manifest destiny, and that what we really need to understand is that we can't go everywhere, that we need to expect an invitation, to understand that you can't take something without giving back in equal measure. That we need to respect, not only other human beings, but all creatures in the land, the land, I would say herself. And then if we don't, the life force will strike back. We talk about with such arrogance that humans can save the planet or not. I mean, you know, we'll only destroy ourselves if we go on in this way. I see all this violence against women as very apocalyptic in some way. I mean it is about destroying and contaminating the future and the life force itself and it's folly. An absolute folly!

Some people say that for things to change the punishment for crimes against women must be severe. What do you think?

Oh, punishment. I have to say in terms of punishment, I mean yes, I think that some abusers are so far gone they're just going to keep doing it and they have to be kept away from the rest of the population. While I certainly agree that we have to say this is not allowable, you know clearly many rapists get off, I mean, it's not a highly prosecuted and convicted crime rate, etc. Batterers continue to do this, people see it as just a lover's quarrel. We do have to change cultural attitudes about that. I'm not in favor of any kind of police state idea of avenge, punish, torture, etc. I'm much more in favor of a model that if somebody cannot change, if somebody is really a danger they should be banished in some kind of segregated way. They have to be, and all modes should be put toward prevention. I mean, I just see sadomasochism and even like punishment itself has become so sexualized under the parent of patriarchal pornographic role view that I'm seeing, that I think we need to really break with all those kind of attitudes.

Q: So how do we break with all those attitudes?

Remember I talked before about grandmother spider creating the world through telling stories, story-telling is what creates consciousness and through consciousness reality is created. And, so the media is our contemporary story teller, and it's in a way, very much like religion. It gives us parables, it gives us values to live by, it gives us role models to emulate, saints or whatever. If you will, new deities almost whom we worship, as in celebrities. So the media has to be recognized as the cultural story teller and understand that it is there to enforce the status quo. We can resist it occasionally. For example, in horror films are where you'll see the most vehement critique of family values. I mean, families are always insane and the father's always out to kill everybody in families, if you think about it, he's like the step father.

I think some people talk about teaching media literacy and I would completely agree with that, that we need to be able to critique the advertising , recognize when there's pictures of little girls posed like Marilyn Monroe when they're four years old. Recognize that images of rape in the ads selling us jeans or something like that so we are consciously aware of them, and I think they lose some of their power over us. But I think on the other hand, we have to get beyond that because these images are meant to appeal like cocoa, he says, they're going to the back of your mind, to your subconscious and we are programmed by our culture to respond to certain things, to react in certain ways and what we as activists have to do is reprogram, recondition, create, and that is through generating what I talked about before, these alternative myth narrative. If we give people an alternative erotica which I see in some women's communities, a lot of lesbian erotica. There's something like Four Fat Dikes, and it's this movie in which women, fat lesbians, who are despised by this culture, right, who are seen as everything a woman should not be, celebrate their bodies and their sexuality. That to me is fabulous and it is also erotic. And it is about celebrating the life force. So those are the direction I think we need to move in as well.

Q: Tell us about your book, The Age of Sex Crime.

The Age of Sex Crime is my first book in which I analyze the phenomena of how serial sex killers have become hero figures in this culture, which goes back to my argument that these are not deviants, these are not monsters from nowhere, they're actually performing a cultural function in enforcing misogyny in showing that women are prey, etc. and acting out masculinity in totally dominating the feminine. So that's the base, and what I mean by that is that the characteristic act of the serial sex killer like Jack the Ripper, sort of the founding father of the movement was the mutilation of a woman's body. And leaving her out for display and it seems to me that the mutilation, particularly of the sex organs is a paradigmatic, a model for the other kinds of abuses that are going on. Be it splitting the atom, be it raising an entire old growth forest or whatever, that kind of again destruction focused on the life force, the generator.

I think particularly in native American philosophy, we're taught that you can only go so far with that before retaliation sets in, that the life force will not let you, the life force does strike back. So do women. Can I say something about "Thelma and Louise?" Why was that movie hated so much? It was one movie in which women bonded, and in which women fought back. They killed one man, who had initiated the violence. But it was seen as this terribly violent movie. And I think that shows about the power of the kind of narratives that I'm talking about. The power to just as Jack the Ripper has become legend, we hear that "Thelma and Louise" live forever on the T-shirts or the bumper stickers. So we've projected into that legendary realm and are able to fight at that level too.

Q: Not all men obviously are violent and they all grow up in the same culture. So, why do you think some men are violent?

As to why individual men are violent, there isn't just one cause. I mean patriarchal science would tell us there's cause and effect and you have to be able to scientifically study it and link it, well experiment on all these college students and see if after watching pornography they'll go rape or something. That's nonsense. That's not how it works. Listen to the anecdotal stories of narratives of people who have lived through violence and abuse and there's always different kinds of reasons. I mean, we can all watch a beer commercial and some of us will go out and drink beer and some of us will even become alcoholics, so there's complex reasons - what happened in the boy's childhood, how much violence he was exposed to. How susceptible he was to images from the media, how strong an influence his mother was in his life, etc. and I mean usually the influence of the mother is a good one generating respect for women as opposed to what movies like Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's patriarchal narratives, would have us believe. Does that answer it well enough?

What of the media? How does its portrayal of women reinforce certain notions,particularly in advertising?

We see these kinds of advertisements everywhere. I mentioned Calvin Cline's Obsession. There are adds for jeans in which women are shown licking the floor. That's a common technique in domestic violence, not just hitting the woman, but humiliating her. Either with words or through making her perform demeaning acts, etc. Lots of images of couples seeming to tussle and the woman on high heels ready to topple over which we're told again. It normalizes violence, it makes it seem as just a love spat, etc. What other ones did I talk about? Movies? Movies, even if you go back. "Gone with the Wind” is of course classic in that we do see a scene of marital rape and the woman is made to smile as if seeming to enjoy it. Now, hopefully race, consciousness of racist oppression has made us realize that the slaves weren't really enjoying life on the plantation as "Gone with the Wind” shows. I think we should also recognize that Scarlet would not in actuality have enjoyed being raped.

Another movie I love to hate (and I found profoundly distressing because so many children see it and see it uncritically), it's Disney, it's "Beauty and the Beast." If you look at that movie, a young girl, no mother, there's never any mothers in these movies. She lives alone with her father, she ends up getting taken prisoner by the beast. She's literally a prisoner, all the household help conspire to hide the fact of how violent he is and then he actually turns violent on her, breaking furniture, threatening her, a scene of absolute domestic abuse, but we're told that she just loves him enough, he can change and the beast will turn into a prince. That is an extremely dangerous myth to give young girls. That if you just love a man enough you can change him. It also says that it's men's nature. They're beastly. The bestial nature. Not a cultural construction that makes men violent towards women. So I think the movie is deceptive on all these counts but also in particularly in telling the young girl, if she just loves the beast enough, he'll turn into the prince and that keeps a lot of women waiting around, hoping, hoping he'll change. And he keeps telling her that.

We see this also graphically in an adult movie, "Internal Affairs,” in which the character played by Andy Garcia, and both these movies are very racist. The beast when he turns into the prince changes from being bestial into being like Apollo or something like that. This blonde god and the darkness and the bestial is associated with I think people of color very graphically. Andy Garcia in "Internal Affairs” beats his wife in public. And then, he breaks into Spanish right after beating her in public which makes it seem as if you know this hot Latino kind of thing. So again, it's somehow associated with race here, not with just male supremacy and privilege. And then he goes home the next day and she fights back. She's angry at him for beating her in public and he tells her he's jealous of her and he's seen her with another man and he's saying....He goes and spends the night drinking and with women of color are whores, so again the racism and I mean whores, oh, I'll have to start again. He beats his wife in public and she of course is a blonde, white trophy kind of desirable woman in a racist-sexist culture. He goes and then spends the night with the so-called despised women, women of color who are then whores. He then goes home the next day and confronts her and starts accusing her of sleeping with other men, etc. and tells her if you ever do that I'll kill you, I'll kill you!. At this point they fall to the floor and make passionate love while he keeps reminding her - I'll kill you, I'll kill you. This is not foreplay, these are not words of endearment. When women hear that they should get out and not be told by the movies that this is a prelude to the greatest sex you're ever going to have.

Q: What about portrayals of women in music videos and elsewhere?

Guns and Roses in, for example, Axl Rose has been accused by two of his former wives and/or girl friends of beating them. And he shows women being beaten and murdered by himself, by him in many of his videos including "Don't Cry,” "November Rains,” etc. So, very clearly there's this idea that it's completely normal and acceptable for a heroic figure like Axl Rose to beat women. What else on MTV? I know because I've done some of these.

Q: It goes all the way back to Shakespeare. Think of "Othello."

I've never read "Othello," so I can't tell. Again, you know you're getting into this where it's so much easier for a racist culture to select out men of color and say they're the ones who are doing this. They're the rapists, they're the beasts, etc. And I'm saying that men of color don't abuse women, they do. I'm just saying they're given disproportionate attention in a racist media. And its all, they're scapegoated. It's all put on. They're the ones who are doing it. And then women we're told, we're sex objects, white women particularly young, blonde white women are said to be the trophy objects, the objects to claim and of course, the most common reason men give for abusing and/or killing women is the jealousy and the idea that if I can't have her, no one can. She's my property. There's a T-shirt that's actually sold that says, "If you love something, set it free, and if it doesn't come back, gun it down and kill it." Yeah, which I see as like the mantra for the abusive generally femicidal man.

But think how often in the media that when we're taught that when a man begins to show jealousy, that's when he's in love, no that's when he's obsessed and use you as property. And you should get the hell out. But you know "Pretty Woman,” that's one where the minute Richard Gear begins showing jealousy, the audience says, Oh good, he loves her. You know, that kind of thing and that's again one way we're seduced to these attitudes that condone, legitimize and endorse in this case wife beating.

Q: How does the mass media make women sex objects?

Women being sex objects and what we mean by that is that we're reduced to things. Property, objects to consume, to use, to abuse, to own. Which is related obviously to the issue of jealousy. But if you look at the mass media you'll see an endless supply of women being portrayed as what I call fem-bots, these kind of sex robots. For example, there's a very famous, not famous, it's famous on college campuses because it shows, it's up so much in the men's dorms. It's an ad for a motorcycle that just shows a woman's body fused into the motorcycle. And her rump is where the man sits and drives her. So woman as the object that you can own and use at your pleasure, at your will, that image says it but all the kind of rituals in which women are -- the cheese cake things. The cultural rituals or the images that show us as objects, that we are there to be looked at, that we are there. Let me think of some other images I have that show this kind of objectification going on. But see when I'm saying that, I can give you some images of women as that motorcycle image -- the woman as yeah, that we are therefore, we're not recognized as significant human beings. We are rendered soulless when actually it's the ones who are soulless who are trying to portray women as like these kind of simple dolls, objects, puppets, and it's very curious. Ted Bundy, and many people think that he wasn't, that he was just copying this idea that pornography made him do it the last minute. He talked about that since he was caught in 1979 how pornography, not just pornography but Coppertone ads in which women were just shown as display items, were used, you know, draped on cars, that he became identified with the car. That women were literally sex objects to them. He says he never talked about the women as she but as the object, the puppet, the doll.

Q: Can you think of responsible portrayals of women?

"Thelma and Louise" Let's see. It's harder to come up with responsible portrayals of women I think that we can certainly find some. I think Allison Anders film, "Gas, Food and Lodging" is a very complex, it's a female initiation story. It's a female coming of age story. There's a movie called "Desert Bloom,” that's again interesting. I think "Thelma and Louise” is genuine feminist art. "Daughter's of the Dust” by Julie Desh which is, she the first African-American female filmmaker to make a feature film. You know which shows the combined racism and sexism in the system that thus far there have been, she was the first just 19, just three years ago I believe. Ah, the responsible portrayals of women.

Roseann. I think Roseann is marvelous. I mean, you know obviously I'm going to quibble sometimes, but Roseann proclaims her autonomy, her power, her sexuality. The show deals with complex issues. I love it.

I'm going to surprise you with this, but I think that sometimes in soap operas, because they are pitched toward a women audience, that you will find, for example, on the "Young and the Restless,” more responsible treatments of date rape, battery. For example, in movies like "Sleeping With the Enemy,” we see a woman stranded. She's being beaten by her husband and she has nowhere to go. She's completely on her own. There is no social system to support her. On the "Young and the Restless” there are friends who intervene. She goes to a battered woman's shelter and talks about her problem. They all give her the support to leave her husband. So that I consider that to be a genuine feminist portrayal. And another instance of a treatment of a date rape on the "Young and the Restless,” the sexual harassment, excuse me, an episode of examining sexual harassment on the "Young and the Restless,” which again has a lot of problems. I'm not portraying it as pure feminist intentionality or anything like that, but there was a very interesting treatment of sexual harassment in which the male lawyer harassing the younger female lawyer at the end tells her, "You know, just between me and you, you really wanted it, you really desired it. And you know you secretly were yearning for it.” She faces him down and says "Absolutely not. You were trying to use your power to dominate me. You get off on power. I don't get off on powerlessness.” something to that effect. I'm not quoting her exactly. Again, these kind of shining feminist moments on soap operas. Which is, of course, seen as a degraded women's kind of form of amusement.

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oh-lali-lali-lali-lalipop · 4 years

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@mysteriousdbzgt: Hi oh-lali-lali-lali-lalipop! Thank you for your ask. First of all, thanks for asking this question here on my personal (and also for the follow over on t&bftw, welcome aboard! :D) I think you can probably tell from here, that I’m a huge supporter of them becoming romantically involved lol I don’t shy about that here, but I like to present a more neutral stance over on my news dedicated blog, to not influence others of my personal opinions. With regards to the new season, as much as I would be supportive of it, I unfortunately highly doubt that they would become “official” in S2 or anything in the future, but will remain extremely dedicated and attentive to one another, regardless of their constant bickering. The creators of the show are more than aware of the popularity of the “couple”, being constantly popular at doujinshi events and the continuous amounts of merchandise that they bring out, which regularly focuses on the main duo rather than all of the Heroes all the time. The fandom is primarily dominated by women, when originally the show was supposed to target men and “salarymen”, but attracted a completely different demographic that they hadn’t anticipated. I can only think that’s mainly because of the appeal of K&B. Also not helped by some of the staff’s, let’s just say, “unfiltered” thoughts when they discuss about K & B in older interviews, centering around “love” and other similar notions. I think they still want to keep this series aimed towards a male demographic, even if the results don’t line up as they expect. But highly ironically, it’s what makes the show successful, so I doubt they would want to change how they portray Kotetsu and Barnaby’s relationship. Personally I would be absolutely over the moon if they did become “official”, because they’re just perfect for one another (hehe) and it could just break so many standard conventions/boundaries on how media portrays same-sex relationships, if done appropriately, and not be labelled with any genre tags like “BL”, “yaoi” or anything similar, and still simply just be a “drama”, “superhero” tale, with the two main males eventually getting together but not make a big song and dance about it. If we want to normalise LGBT relationships within our media and what we consume, then we need to drop these tags and portray them in a healthy manner, which I think the show does well between them both. I believe that the staff have the talent to pull it off, they just need to be cautious on how they do it. Like you said, how FE is presented in the show which such great self confidence about themselves and who they are, really shows that they can write this. Also T&B’s spiritual successor show, Double Decker (who had a lot of the same staff) tackles some LGBT themes pretty well, so they could absolutely do it. But yeah, I don’t think they’ll become “official” unfortunately. But if anything, I anticipate that KxB will most likely be working even closer together in S2, so they’ll be more in tune with one another, and possibly open up even more to each other than they did before. Hopefully they’ll be over the huge feuds and split apart phase, which The Rising focused on (they’ll still bicker all the time, but that’s just how they are), so we can see just how far their relationship has come and changed for the better. Anyway this is probably way too long (sorry), but always interested to hear your thoughts too! :)

Heya! Before I start I just wanna say thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a thorough reply, it is incredibly well thought out and written! I also want to say I am so freaking sorry you had to type out my monstrosity of a name (seriously didn’t think about that when making the joke lol). Oh, and I’m equally sorry for the formatting of the reply... really had no clue how to go about it, so I just defaulted to going about it the roleplayer way haha. Anyways, for starters, I think I should say that I actually agree with you a lot. You see, logically I think it feels highly unlikely they’d make them “official” in the new season. I’m not sure if I feel like it’s unlikely because I, someone who’s in the LGBTQ community, am a pessimist (aka, I’m negative regardless of proof) who is use to companies not delivering on it/assume companies won’t deliver on it.... or if I’m genuinely, but unconsciously, picking up on Sunrise’s stance of “not gonna happen”. Despite all that I still feel stupidly hopeful about it (y’know, heart louder than the mind and all that jazz)... and I guess for the sake of the discussion I’ll break down why! lol So, I got into the fandom.... around the time of The Rising, I think, so anywhere from 2014 to 2015. I instantly fell in love with it all, but I did end up falling out of the loop for awhile (being a teenager and all that). Recently (recently being that I finished S1 on Friday, watched The Rising on Sunday, and now I’m here lol) I got back into it and.... wow, a lot of it is the same, and.... at the same time it felt like I had so much more to process. It’s still as amazing as ever, if not even more so, and just like with everything else I love with my entire being I started to analyze it and read into it (maybe a little bit too much so lol). In all honesty, KxB seriously stood out even more so than it did last time for me (I don’t know if it’s because I’m now accepting of my sexuality or what) and while it’s not actually the best part of the series to me (God, Barnaby’s arc means so much to me what with me struggling with cPTSD, but that story is best left on my RP blog) I do have to admit that the pairing is... incredibly meaningful, and beautiful. Moving for me, really. I guess the following observations, and hopeful thinking that came after it, could be deduced to me just wearing shipper goggles, but considering my habit of over analyzing and breaking things down... I do try to make predictions and opinions logically, and with that in mind it’s why I’m so stuck on the “hopeful thinking”, since a tiny bit of logical thinking is fueling it. Tiger & Bunny is about human relationships, really. For a show focusing on NEXTs... it’s really about humanity, corruption, society, relationships... and KxB all along the first season is written as an undertone, like a slow burn (which is entirely fitting, and seriously makes any relationship better), which fits because the first season is, in actuality, not focused on that (the plot being bigger than we can see and all that). In the end, having rewatched it, I also noticed how, really, the undertone is written in such a way that.... it feels like Barnaby is the one with the “crush” (or is the first one to realize it) which... kinda fits with the old statements from the crew. Kotetsu the forever oblivious one who hasn’t had an epiphany yet (although if I’m being honest, The Rising seems to have this “side-plot” feeling of Kotetsu having the epiphany when he realizes what he’s lost, which is what I meant by the flow of the series somewhat feels like it’s building towards it)... .... There’s also the whole “leaving it to interpretation thing” they said back then. Which, I have to agree with some other people that it feels like it’s just a way of saying “it’s romantic but we don’t want to take that risk”.... and that was back around 2011. It’ll have been decade since then when S2 is released, and, while a decade is just a decade, a lot has changed on a societal basis since then. Even during this decade long gap Sunrise has become more bold with their representation, whether it be Double Decker! or The Rising.... almost like they’re testing the waters... and what better way to champion representation than to make two main characters the representation? This franchise is... so human in it’s story, and the meaning doing such a thing would have for so many people... in a way, I think out ways some of the risks. I feel like the build up is there, the want is there (tbh seeing posts on tumblr of people talking about how they hope they’ll get a kiss in S2 or something “official” like that also fueled this)... it just depends on whether they’ll feel afraid or not. Which is, really, why I asked for your opinion. You do such good work at trying to bridge the gap between the Japanese fandom/Sunrise and the English speaking community (which, btw, you are amazing at, I can’t thank you enough for the work you do), and I knew you’d be more informed on Sunrise’s attitude and statements, as well as the general opinions and depositions of the Japanese fans. In the end, I can “read into” things all I want, but it won’t matter if you can’t understand the one who pulls the strings... and because of that I wanted to know your opinion. I’m so so sorry this got so long!! I’m really horrible at summarizing myself, so this turned into a major ramble.... I’m gonna wrap it up now before this turns into a novel haha. Again, thank you so much for responding to my question and for being open to discussing it, it means so much! I truly respect your opinion, since it helps me clear my own thoughts, as well as gives me a dose of reality so I don’t get my hopes up too much... I guess in the end though, a part of me is going to continue to think that they just might have the heart to do it, irregardless lol. I look forwards to seeing what you have to say about what I’ve written here!

#mysteriousdbzgt #thoughts #Tiger & Bunny #I have no clue why tumblr tried to squash your post when I copied it like Kotetsu squashes his burgers #but jesus fucking christ #also tumblr what did you do to block quotes wtf

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artemissarrows · 5 years

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SOTUS The Series: Patriarchy & Queerness As Redemption

Okay, it’s been a little bit! But I have certainly been consuming a lot of queer content I need to discuss. First up is SOTUS The Series! It’s a Thai boy love (BL) show about an engineeing college that has a super-intense hazing culture. One of the freshman (Kongpob/Kong for short) stands up to the hazers who make them do endless squats and such….and ends up falling in love with the head hazer (Arthrit). It’s a romcom so you probably know where this is going.

I *hope* this goes without saying, but HAZING IS NOT OK and should not be lifted up as a normal part of a university experience. It is abuse, full-stop. One of the yuckiest things about the show for me is how the administration is totally and completely fine with it. People who are invested in the hazing culture (and, frankly, the showrunners) try to make the case that it teaches teamwork and problem-solving and stuff like that. Not really! More importantly, it’s incredibly damaging to participants and there are a lot less harmful ways to teach those lessons, if they’re really so important.

We could just leave it there--on a surface level, it’s honestly pretty enjoyable. The two leads have pretty solid chemistry and are quite believable (at least until the very end, when they’re equally as awkard three years on. But as my partner Mx. Arrows pointed out, they are painfully awkward engineer nerds on top of everything else, so maybe that’s actually realistic. Anyway.) It’s funny. It’s heartwarming. It’s gayyyyy. The supporting friend characters are also kind of fun and I like them.

But there are some other noteworthy things going on here that I’m interested in teasing apart, and which I’m not entirely sure the show intended. Let’s do that! Lots of spoilers after the cut (but again, it’s a romcom, there’s only so many things that can be spoiled). Note that I have only watched Season 1, I know there’s another season.

It’s about the patriarchy.

The more I thought about it, the more it seems reasonable to see the SOTUS (hazing) system as a useful dramatization of the patriarchy. When I say “the patriarchy,” I mean a system of dominance that gives men power over women; SOTUS also privileges older people over younger, straight people over queer people, etc.etc.. Here are some of the ways that we can see this system of dominance playing out in the structure of the hazing system:

The SOTUS system is run by men, exclusively. There are 6 or 7 head hazers, and they are all men

They belittle, berate, and punish their younger charges for doing things like looking the wrong way, singing slightly out of tune, or questioning their authority to mete out dubious punishments for nothing at all

It’s quasi-military, with uniforms for both the hazers and the freshman, and endless drills and the blind loyalty and authority that comes with military order

Women who are not freshman are present in the second tier of hazers, beyond the men. They are ancillary to the men, and their helpers. In particular they are the medics: they ensure that the hazers can assign their punishments etc. while also ensuring that it doesn’t get too out of hand and that no one gets hurt too badly. Without their assistance, the men could not do what they do, and could not enforce this system.

The head hazer, Arthrit, also uses sexism and homophobia as weapons to enforce control and order. Of course, he’s aware that the structure of SOTUS is headed by men. But he also taunts the freshmen in these ways too. At the beginning of the year, the hazers demand that the freshmen fill books with upperclass students’ signatures. In exchange for his signature, Arthrit demands that May, a female student who asks him, give him her number and take her picture. She’s clearly uncomfortable with the interaction; it happens in the lunchroom and she’s one woman who’s the object of the male gaze of 6 or 7 seniors. In that same scene, Arthrit also harasses Kong in a homophobic way. Again to get his siguature, he forces Kong to shout “I like guys!” three times loudly, and then to ask something like 10 male students if they’ll be his boyfriend. (He then doesn’t give his signature.) Mind you, this is something like day 2 or 3 of school in the show.

Arthrit is one repressed dude. More on that later.

It’s Also About Cycles Of Abuse

We’ve established that the SOTUS is all about dominance and control based on gender and other heirarchies--but that’s just the system in one particular point. What happens to this system over time? That’s where we get into cycles of abuse, and how SOTUS harms not just the freshmen who are on the receiving end of the abuse, but also harms the hazers themselves. Let’s look at Arthrit, the head hazer/one-half of the lead couple.

He’s an extremely homophobic and self-hating gay, at least to start with. Per above, he actively promulgates homophobia. He’s also deeply uncomfortable with expressing affection toward men, and Kongpob in partiuclar--though apparently fine with grabbing Kongpob’s shirt when Kongpob stands up to him during a hazing session. When they share their first kiss after Arthrit finally confesses his feelings, Kong tries to hold his arm and hand and he keeps shoving him off. Then they go on another date, where they meet a fellow student at the movies and Arthrit lies and says it’s not a date. (This is not the first not-not date they’ve been on together...this is not at all relatable. Not at all ^_^) Anyway, it takes him and painful time to do that.

He is a seriously repressed and emotionally stunted person, and being the head hazer is a major part of why. As head hazer, he berates the freshman, he enforces order, he snaps at them, he plays games where he makes them humiliate themselves for his attention and benefit. He is comfortable ordering people around. But when it comes to being in touch with his own feelings, he’s hopeless. It takes him forever to realize he has feelings for Kong. He’s deeply confused about it, up to the very second he kisses him. His friend Knott literally has to tell him to talk through difficulties with Kong and not let them stew. He spends most of the show running away from Kong, hiding from Kong, or otherwise finding ways to not open up to him. It would be funny, if it weren’t deeply sad.

Friends, this is classic toxic masculinity. At least his friend Knott has his head on straight and gives some decent advice.

I honestly get the sense that Arthrit is a quiet, introverted, and smart guy, who felt like he was forced by duty to become the head hazer, the one everyone looks up to. Even when he’s with his hazing friends, he seems aloof, apart, and alone. But guess what: he made that choice himself! When he’s sick--because he ran 54 LAPS IN A DAY for a hazing challenge--we see that he’s into comic books, and action figures. We learn that he also gets good grades, so is obviously smart. And even when he talks to his friend--the former head hazer who recruited him--about his feelings for Kong, his friend tells him, “be tough.” (His friend also implies that he hasn’t dated much...no surprise there.) Sigh.

Are we meant to envy Arthrit, feel sorry for him, or both? He’s at the top of the social structure of the school, but he doesn’t seems particularly contented, and in fact seems disconnected. He’s the person who seems to have it all, but has nothing. I’m somewhat curious if others share this reading of him as a discontented bully who longs for human connection.

We can also think about the succession of the head hazers, and how the head hazer before Arthrit chose him, and how Arthrit chose Kong. The one before Arthrit chose him because when he punished Arthrit for speaking out by telling him to greet a banyan tree for three whole hours, Arthrit did it. Then Arthrit chooses Kong because he speaks out and heckles Arthrit. It’s super interesting to me, but I think the thing is to identify people who have strong enough feelings about the system--and care enough--that speak out and therefore demonstrate leadership skills. They then turn those feelings of rebellion back into the system and coopt them. Toward the end of the show Kong starts to feel more invested in the hazing system and I was hoping that he would try to reform it; he doesn’t seem to that much. Kong says that he likes the teamwork and problem-solving aspects of hazing; he could do those things as head hazer and take the abuse out, but he doesn’t. Cooptation.

It’s Also About The Redemptive Power Of Queerness And Queer Love

This says it all.

They’re at a party, and someone asks Arthrit if he and Kong are dating. He says, “so what?” and throws his arm around Kong’s shoulder--and Kong seems pleasantly surprised that he’s able to do this publicly. This is just ugh, so beautiful, and Krist/Arthrit acts it so incredibly well. It’s truly the first time we see Arthrit truly, hugely, bashfully smile, in the whole show. It’s always been a sardonic smile, or a joke at someone else’s expense. But here, he’s just experiencing happiness and joy, even if he’s still quite shy about it and can’t look people in the eye while he hangs his arm over Kong’s shoulder. Queerness as redemption is a trope I wish would become a thing!!

PS, here are some screenshots of Arthrit making fun of Kong’s food habits. Enjoy the fluff <3

#sotus #sotus the series #krist #singto #krist x singto #lgbtq #gay #queer #kongpob #kongpob x arthrit #arthrit

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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The Islamophobic strain in Western high culture that runs, let us say, from medieval writers up to Freud and well beyond, and which structures a certain kind of historical imagination, the dominant positions in Western academic institutions, as well as major presuppositions in geopolitical thinking. Furthermore, the insertion of large numbers of non-European immigrants into Europe has typically created great atavistic unease. However, the kind of phobia that highly placed men like Sarrazin spout, and the broadest public approval they receive, was not always nearly so extreme, except in fascist circles. During the quarter century after the Second World War, Western Europe was launched on Reconstruction and Euro-American societies began to experience the longest period of prosperity in their history, lasting into the early 1970s. During that period of great industrial expansion, infrastructural construction and economic prosperity, issues of religion and religious difference got minimized in public life. The large number of Asian and African, including Arab, immigrants that came in response to labour shortages in Europe during those postwar years were assimilated much more easily, with hardly any religious conflict per se. That recent past stands in sharp contrast to the kind of religious friction and seemingly unbridgeable cultural antagonism that one witnesses today across the Euro-American zone, in the period of economic stagnation, the rightward drift in politics and a general atmosphere seething with social resentments.

This phenomenon in Europe began to grow in the 1970s and has grown with each passing decade, as full employment economies succumbed to rising rates of unemployment, and immigrants were seen to be taking precious jobs away from the older native populations and came also to be seen as undeserving beneficiaries of the social state. Crises of culture, religion and capital exacerbate each other in this context. All across Europe, race and religion now return in the cloak of cultural differentialism. From Switzerland to France, the mere building of a minaret seems to threaten the very foundations of a European secular civilization that thrives on church spirals dotting the skylines across the continent. It is considered perfectly normal in liberal press in the European Union to advocate the idea that Turkey should perhaps never become a member because the EU cannot absorb so large a Muslim population, and a large part of public sentiment on this issue is of course more extreme. One is reminded here of Adorno’s rueful comment that all that is left of the religion of love for the Christian is the hatred of his neighbour. That was said in the midst of savage waves of anti-semitism. Now, some seventy years later, it would appear that the anti-semitism that was repressed after the Second World War now returns as hatred of that other Semite who is not the Jew but the Arab—and, reaching beyond the Arab, this stereotypical stigmatizing extends to all Muslims, generically.

It needs to be said, though, that among immigrants within Europe, the situation is greatly complicated by the organized emergence of Muslim religious entrepreneurs who are often funded by Saudi and other related agencies. They set up mosques not only as sites of worship but also for production of communal hysteria and incitement, often over issues of minor significance such as the supposedly Islamic headgear for women. In an atmosphere charged with resentments, these religious entrepreneurs present themselves to the governments in question as community leaders and partners in dialogue over practices of cultural differentialism. All of this is getting played out in a time of lethal but eventually ineffectual Islamist terrorism of the past couple of decades on the one hand, wars of occupation and energy extraction in Muslim lands on the other. And, when I mention this Islamist terror, I am thinking less of the Twin Towers in New York and more of the Algeria of the recent past and the Pakistan of today. Aside from the terror, there is also an unquestionable expansion of popular pieties, millenarian religiosities and general social disorientation across the very lands that are the object of imperial greed. Matters are now such that something like a passive Islamist revolution is unfolding even in Turkey, while Turkey and Saudi Arabia close ranks over the question of Syria (and this needs to be said without any defence for the abominable Assad regime which has brought it all upon itself). One hopes that the explosive splendour of Tahrir Square shall redeem at least part of this situation. Yet, it is also the case that even the popular uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, not to speak of Syria itself, have deeply sectarian colouring. Softer versions of Islamism are within reach of power in Tunisia and Morocco, and Algeria may well be next; having survived Islamic extremism, at very great cost, the country may yet fall, like a ripened fruit, into the lap of the more soft-spoken Islamists. This is a fair measure of the almost complete collapse of left alternatives and projects in the entire region where Muslims are a majority.

This phenomenon could perhaps be traced back to US President Roosevelt’s declaration of 1943-- “I hereby find that the defence of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defence of the United States”—and the agreement to establish a US Air force base in Bahrain in 1945. More specifically, one could say that this strategic Islamophilia comes into its own with the Truman Doctrine at the very onset of the Cold War which designated Islam as a strategic ally in the worldwide anti-communist crusade. This brand of Islamophilia was then quickly stabilised in the Eisenhower Doctrine that chose, in a historic context, the Wahabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Roughly three decades before President Reagan was to entertain the Afghan Mujahideen in the Oval Office, describing that group of Islamists as “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers”, President Eisenhower had already received ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood in the same room (the famous Said Ramadan, the father of equally famous Tariq Ramadan, among them), as part of a policy to roll back Arab secular radicalism, well before Nasser had turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic assistance.

...Western narratives have a profound interest in occluding the actual processes of recent history which have brought us to the point where academic claims can be made, in a genre popularised by professors Huntington and Bernard Lewis, that what has happened in the Muslim world after those defeats of secular nationalism was a Return or Resurgence of an Islam as it has always been, essentially. There is in fact noReturn of that kind. Every neo-traditionalism is a modern artefact, even in its anti-Modernity, as the whole history of European rightwing romanticisms and irrationalisms have taught us. Osama Bin Laden probably knew more about the shadowy aspects of modern banking than Huntington or Lewis ever did, and the Muslim Brotherhood is quite as modern a phenomenon as Baathism or German Christian Democracy.

When it comes to geopolitical concerns, the West has some intrinsic antipathy toward Muslims, is ill-founded. The question always is: which Islam, and whose Islam? The West befriends certain kinds of Muslims and fights other kinds of Muslims, in accordance with its own interests. We have gone through a decade of hair-raising Islamphobia, with entire countries devastated by wars on ‘Terror’ and on what is called ‘Islamofascism’ in American parlance.

Islamism and the West

#*#essays #aijaz ahmad

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mansclub-secretbook-blog · 5 years

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About princes and princesses

Such exclusively important for all animate world process as reproduction could not be left without the control of the instincts. Correspondingly, love, as the strongest feeling, is a voice of the same primeval instinct that forces to prefer the best being of another sex for mating. And what are the criteria of this preference? It is unnecessary to prove that these criteria are kept unchanged since primeval-herd times when all the instincts were formed. It is possible to say that during its formation the instincts "took a photo" of the situation existed at that moment and keep verifying with this "picture" for as long as the species exist. Thus, the instincts allow choosing a perfect partner from the primeval point of view. The simplest and the most demonstrative attribute of such superiority in primeval hierarchy is a high rank. Though it is very obvious that rank, strictly speaking, is more of visually superficial indicator of preference but it is almost impossible to imagine anything better in unwise nature. External attractiveness (beauty) is less reliable in this sense. In general, the number of couplations is the simplest and clearest quantitative index of a male's rank in hierarchy. For females this correlation is very weak and, perhaps, inverse. It is customary to think that alpha simply takes away a female from beta (gamma...) just as food, however, the rules of behavior in a hierarchy are obeyed by all the members of a group including females. That means there is not needed to take female away in most cases. She herself, complying with an internal instinctive program, prefers high-ranking male. Not in vain, speaking about ideal groom, women mention word "prince". Real prince is not a plebian job and usually he is a real candidate to become king. Sure, it is not the only tendency. For instance, there is an "instinct of fresh blood preference" manifesting itself as sexual curiosity. The goal of this instinct is a counteraction to mating with close relatives unavoidable in isolated groups. According to it, under other equal conditions the preference can be given to a new and unusual partner desirably from outside of the group. The instinct is clearly seen in male's behavior, since it conforms well to the principal of unlimited sexual expansion. In female's behavior it is seen with some limitations. These limitations mandatorily include ranking potential of a "guest" that should be not lower than certain minimum. And of course, these tendencies are combined with individual tastes and sympathies. It is important to emphasize that the high rank of a male does not give a GUARANTEE of access to the certain female, but it is a weighty factor raising PROBABILITY of this event. A correlational factor between sexual attractiveness of male and his rank is different among the species, and substantially non-linear. Males of the first several ranks of hierarchy can be almost indistinguishable by their sexual attractiveness for females. Therefore dominant males must fend away sub-dominant males from females. However, beginning approximately from the middle of hierarchy and below sexual attractiveness of males decreases so much that dominant can afford not to worry. It is highly probable that such male will not be admitted by females themselves. To the English reader: Now let us tell you a couple of words about such picturesque character of Russian anecdotes, as the captain Rzhevsky. Captain Rzhevsky was a hussar. Hussars were an elite kind of cavalry in Russia in 19th century. Only tall, healthy, often handsome men were accepted. Beautiful uniform along with a huge mustache made them very popular among women. Soon the word "hussar" became synonymous to Don Juan. Captain Rzhevsky completely matches this definition. Along with phenomenal success among women, he was distinguished with self-confidence, vulgarity and ignorance, which he was not ashamed of. This character is very much like 19th century captain Frank Drebin from the popular movie series "Naked Gun". For example, one of anecdotes of a series about captain Rzhevsky:

Once captain Rzhevsky was dancing on ball with a noble young lady.

Subbenly she is telling him politely:

- Ah! I am not feeling well. Would you excuse me for minute, I need some

fresh air?...

- Captain: OK, go. But be quick on it. Just fart off and be back.

Cornet Obolensky is more delcate character of these anecdotes.

Now for illustration, an old but very demonstrative for our topic anecdote:

Once cornet Obolensky asked captain Rzhevsky:

Captain, sir! Would you share your experience in seducing women so quickly!

- But what's here to explain? Come up to a lady and ask: "Ma'am! May I stick

it in?"

- But captain! That's a sure way to be slapped in the face for such

rudeness...

- Well, there could be a slap in the face. But nonetheless, I somehow still

manage to stick it in.

And now let's imagine that cornet followed the captain's example. Imagined? So what? You are absolutely right. He will get slapped in his face. However, it does not follow from the text that cornet is less attractive than captain and moreover, he is obviously more civilized and decent. Also let's imagine that captain expressed his proposition in oversophisticate and delicate phrases. Will he get a rejection? Of course not, but even more possible consent. But what if cornet will propose in the same refined language? In this case he might not get slapped in his face immediately but the final result probably will be the same though for some time he will be kept on a short string and jerked around. And he will be ridiculed. I.e.

actually it does not have any serious significance for a woman HOW a man expresses his desire but it is extremely important for her WHO does it.

If a man has a high rank ("captain") then women will forgive him almost any behavior and almost any weaknesses; if he has a low rank ("cornet") then even complete impeccability will not help him. Moreover, captain really does not see any problems with this. Neither he has them personally nor he even suspects that the other men might have them. Because he does not assert any efforts to conquering women (moreover, women themself often put up certain efforts to win him) and he sincerely thinks that women treat all other men the same. But who of these two will be a better husband (faithful, decent, hard-working...)? Anyone but the captain! But whom will women want to marry the most? You are right, the captain. And in addition to this, in original (movie "Hussar ballad") the captain Rzhevsky was an open and convinced opponent of Hymen. It is said that women love masters. This is true, but it is only individual case. Even possession of "strong elbows" i.e. the ability and readiness to fight for one's own interests, is an individual case in conjugal relationships. Love, as a call of instinct, can not contemplate and that's why it is often triggered on visual rank rather than on actual one. It happens that "captain" looks like pitiful whiner crying that he is so perfect and superior but the ungifted people around do not appreciate him; or like capricious child with child-women egoistic character and all people tiptoe around eagering to please him in every possible way (any other cases are possible). The main thing is that he is sincerely sure in his own superiority. It is obvious that such whiner and moaner is not the worthiest family continuer (even from primeval point of view) and the actual rank of these people as an indicator of their ability to succeed in life is very low. However, instinct formally reacts to the above mentioned assurance which is the main signaling attribute of a high rank. Since instinct does not bother itself with explanations and mind does not usually recognize such self-assurance as a merit so everybody feels hymned in poems and in prose a mystical and enigmatical sensation of love choice - because it is wanted against common sense and it is unclear what for. Whom do men love? A Princess is not necessarily required. Men's instinctive criteria of preference are simpler and radically different from women's ones. The main woman's qualities attracting men are the newness, availability and physical perfection. Of course, if all these qualities are combined in one woman then her attractiveness will be the highest and such woman will be the center of men's attention in the first place but only until either gaining access to her body or making sure of no chances to get it. However, this is correct only in respect of women as sexual partners. Men choose wives by rational judgement (only those who have choice and enough brain). The sensational criteria of men's preference of women are much fuzzier due to the higher diversity of men (and hence, their tastes) and less desperate necessity to make a choice. A male does not have to choose a females since he needs them all without any distinction. But women's rank, having big importance in relations between women, is relatively less important for a man. For sure, high ranking woman can turn men's heads more quickly but modest and shy (low ranking) wives were valued at all times. It is well-known that women much more often than men fall in love with their chiefs, bosses, tutors, and etc. whose high visual rank is manifested by their position and partially age. If high rank is a key to women's hearts for a man ensuring his freedom of choice but for a woman her high rank is a source of problems with men. Average-ranking men are not acceptable for her neither sexually nor platonically (not to mention low-ranking ones) but high-ranking men are very scares and most of them are easy-riders. And if they are not easy-riders then they are hopelessly engaged and not free. Low-ranking woman as every woman preferring "alpha" is still open-minded toward "omega". In some circumstances she can forgive a man his low rank and therefore his other strengths get the chance to be appreciated.

Briefly speaking:

Emotional choice of a marriage partner (sympathy, crush, infatuation, love - depending on the strength of feelings) is implemented in accordance with a system of instinctive criteria of evaluating a potential partner.

In woman's emotional choice of a man the following has the highest significance - man's instinctive hierarchical status (including purely visual rank) that might not coincide with his social status. His physical characteristics takes the second preference.

In man's emotional choice of a woman the following has the most important meaning in equal degree - women's novelty, accessibility, and physical characteristics.

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ryanmeft · 5 years

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The Favourite Movie Review

If you happen to suffer from Anglophilia, The Favourite may very well cure you of it. America’s obsession with everything British owes a lot to the fact that movies and TV have painted our overseas cousins as being upstanding, intelligent, and just a little above it all. If Brexit hasn’t killed off that impression for you, take a look at this movie: the court is petty, the most common language is insults, the royal helpers fight like bloodthirsty schoolgirls, and the Queen is mad. How delicious.

It’s the early 18th century, and there are a few issues surrounding the rule of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman); namely, that she’s battier than a thousand-year-old attic. Among her many lovable antics: telling off the servants for things she told them to do, being pushed around in a completely unnecessary wheelchair which she likes being rolled very fast in, falling on the floor and screaming, demanding royal courtesy be paid to an army of rabbits, deliberately making herself sick on sweets, and generally being so out to lunch she frequently forgets there’s a war on with France. In fairness to her, this is England, so remembering when there is and is not a war with France is a full-time job. My only serious regret about all of this is that, while having wheelchair races with herself, she at no point shouts “Vroom vroom”.

These days, we might have sympathy for such an unfortunate soul, but Queens then and now are not so much persons as objects of political desire. The Tory party, here identified only as the opposition, wants to end War With France Number 76b quickly, because the taxes needed for it are taking money out of the pockets of wealthy landowners and, as Tory leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult) sneeringly informs us, putting it in the hands of those darned merchants; one is reminded of the airline shareholders who griped that the employees were getting paid before they did. Anne’s primary confidant is Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz, and yes, she’s his ancestor), the Duchess of Marlborough. She wants the war, in which her husband (Mark Gatiss) is a leader, to be funded and fully supported. Just as you think she is the one of the two with the more honorable intentions, the movie corrects you: her support for her husband has more to do with the benefits of being married to a war hero than with any real affection. She is, in fact, shtupping the queen, something left in absolutely no doubt. This is a movie far more frank about sexuality and especially lesbianism than even most indie films dare to be. In that regard, it is incredibly forward thinking; at one point Anne is quite explicit about tongues and her preferred use for them. In other regards the movie’s attitude toward sex is less progressive but no less frank, as it is frequently used to attain power.

This fine arrangement is threatened by the arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) who has fallen on hard times after her father, from what I could gather, burned down both their house and himself. She initially becomes trusted by the Queen entirely by accident, in fact through the only unadulterated show of good Samaritanism in the entire movie. She will soon learn that in this place, no good deed goes unpunished. She evolves, if you can call it that, until she fits right in with the nearly murderous intrigues of royal life. Sarah pushes: she threatens her life, has her beaten, and attempts to humiliate, ruin and tear her down. Eventually, Abigail will become the better fighter, even engineering a scenario that leaves Sarah rotting in a brothel while she moves to solidify her own position. Nor are Sarah and the Queen the only ones to be used or abused by her. The film goes as far as to subtly suggest she, unlike Sarah, is not even that into sex, as she pursues marriage to a randy nobleman (Joe Alwyn), then loses interest once she has him, and the royal benefits the marriage provides.

What to make of the ensuing battle of wills between the deteriorating Queen, her bickering fixers, and the Parliament? I’ll tell you what not to make of it: the idea that this movie has a feminist viewpoint. It seems that way initially, with both nominal and real power in the hands of a woman. One of the founding, most cherished myths of the movement, though, is that the world would be an inherently better place if women grasped the shorthairs of power. It’s impossible to say if that would be true. What I can say is that the screenplay, written twenty years ago by historian Deborah Davis and “freshened up” more recently by Tony McNamara, practically dies laughing at the idea. It will be tempting for those who want to see Sarah and Abigail in a certain light to say they are only responding to the viciousness of the world they live in, but they voluntarily go far, far beyond any schemes cooked up by the pompous, white-wigged men of the government. The simple truth an attentive viewer might notice early on is that it really, truly would have been possible for the two women to come to some agreement. The other simple truth is that neither wanted to; both wanted to win at the expense of the other. It is not that the men are spared---they are variously pompous, corrupt, callous, or incompetent. It is that power in film is usually shown as mostly corrupting or being corrupted by men, and here women are equally as eager to get in on the game. Sarah’s complicity in this is the most tragic, as it’s clear she really does care about the Queen; yes, at no point does she actually stop trying to manipulate her. No one is spared: even the scullery maids are needlessly cruel.

The main triangle that comprises the heart of the drama is infused with three of the most gripping performances you’ll see at the movies. The irony of Rachel Weisz having her big breakthrough as the nerdy, shy girlfriend of then-more famous Brendan Fraser in The Mummy is strong; she’s since gone on to be the more dominant actor, and it isn’t close. She has one of those mannerisms that can control a room; later, when her more subtle ways of squeezing the Queen have begun to falter in the face of Abigail’s tactics, she gets more forceful, and such is Weisz’s presence that we are shocked when it doesn’t work. Stone’s big hit role in Zombieland was more hard-bitten, but she too would need meatier roles to display what she can really do, and here gets her best to date. She starts out truly just wanting a second chance after going through a hellish youth and being dumped into another bad situation. Eventually, those who would push her to be horrible learn a lesson, as she can be far more vicious than they ever intended.

Somehow, Colman’s Anne is constantly on the verge of sheer, out-in-the-yard-barking-at-the-moon lunacy, yet never devolves to the level of parody, and maintaining her insanity while also not becoming a Jack Sparrow-esque joke must have been among the more demanding things asked of an actor. Most of the water cooler talk centers around the more widely recognized Stone and Weisz, but Colman needs to be both stark raving mad and entirely sympathetic or the movie falls apart; we need to believe this is a person two intelligent, driven, vivacious women would be willing to get in the mud for, even as they manipulate her to their own ends. This is one of the few cases where we can safely impose modern ethics on the past. Anne is mentally ill, and should have been cared for, but there was no chance of that ever happening.

The world her court inhabits has been recreated by director Yorgos Lanthimos, working for the first time since before his critically acclaimed Dogtooth with someone else’s script, as a place that lacks the sumptuousness with which English finery, English dress, English buildings and English everything else are usually treated in American cinema. That’s probably because Lanthimos is Greek, and whereas Britain to us is the ideal parent---upright and mature yet far enough way that we don’t need to call that often---to him it may be just another country in Europe. The halls of St. James’s Palace (My best guess; the film never says) are not particularly ornate or beautiful, or at least they are not portrayed that way. Robbie Ryan chooses to shoot many scenes in near darkness, with candlelight, and the result is that much of the palace appears gloomy, close and not especially grand or even inviting; there is one moment in which Sarah speaks through a door whose other side is hidden by a tapestry when we could well believe the house as a setting for a ghost story. Nor are the actresses spared the visual signs of moral decay. Though the costume department drapes them in every bit of finery you expect from pompous royals, both competing women are literally drug through the mud, and Anne shows little care for her personal hygiene. We are reminded that this was a dirty world in more ways than one, and whatever glamorous ideas we might have of the past are shot out from under us. Like the highly underrated Marie Antoinette, almost the entire movie takes place within the cloistered walls of the royal residence; I doubt most of those involved in the drama ever spare a look for an actual citizen of the crown.

Lanthimos’s last film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, inspired strong feelings in me. Specifically, it inspired the desire to beat it with a stick. I am morally opposed to films that seek to prove how much smarter they are than the audience. Similar to his more popularly received film The Lobster, The Favourite is quite intelligent in the way it approaches its themes: power, political games, and the puncturing of the myths we build for ourselves surrounding both royalty and the romance of the past. It ascends to greatness because it never once alienates the audience in order to say these things. Just leave your fantasies of ladies and gentlemen in flower at home; those guys aren’t in this movie.

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/

Or his tweets here:

https://twitter.com/RyanmEft

All images are property of the people what own the movie.

#emma stone #rachel weisz #the favourite #england #movies #olivia colman #joe alwyn #nicholas hoult #mark gatiss #yorgos lanthimos #winston churchill #britain #brendan fraser #france #the mummy #zombieland #robbie ryan #deborah davis #tony mcnamara

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lorainelaneyblog · 5 years

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Say this, says God, your line from the lady devil dream.

‘Yes, God, thank you,’ says Loraine Laney.

‘Okay, Loraine, you are welcome, DON’T say thank you again. DON’T say okay. Just say the line please, readers, not fans, she has no, fucking fans, T.I. or anyone who is listening, in the family or otherwise. She’s going to go and tell her errant husband the solution, Loraine, and they may, may, may, may, try it, they may. He owes her, that is for fucking sure. Anyway, say it.

“If you are unwilling to stand up for desire, you might as well be the devil.”

And then, says God, explain what you were explaining about, ostensibly, India, the problem country, right now, in terms of violence against women. It is the problem fucking country right, fucking, now, Loraine. Believe it or not, T.I.--

‘Why is it me all the time?’

I want to talk to you T.I. because you are, believe it or not--

‘Believe it or not with that again?’

This is God, and believe it or not, T.I., and Loraine Laney, herself, does not know this--

‘I know what you’re going to say, can it be real? I’m the last, fucking, hold out? Chingy, my precious lover, boyfriend, is into this little idiot?’

Yes, he has, he did immediately, capitulate, immediately, because he has eschewed--I can do it--his fag overly, and he misses it, he misses men, Loraine, he does, and he knows it. He does. He’s quite promiscuous with women, and he gets condom sex in the ass occasionally, when he wants to, but he’s never really met a complete equal, in talent, and in sexuality, in terms of dominance.

‘Why is she smiling? Because he’s going to fuck my ass?’

No, says God, but because I have told her that men choose equals, and that, it is, virtually, a detriment to do otherwise. I have, Chingy, so she is happy for you, she is, and she doesn’t care, she thinks you’re cute, and T.I. thinks you’re sexy, and she loves your DADDY tattoo, she fuck, ing, loves it.

‘Why? She’s not even a bonafide fag hag, I have heard, Loraine,’ says Chingy.

‘Who said?’

‘You.’

‘Oh, yeah, true.’

Gay men, and I will be a homophobe if I want to be, do not excite her sexually.

‘Why? Cause of dick and pussy ass? Why? Because of dicks together.’

Loraine laughs in a funny way, says God, in her inimitable, funny, sexual way.

‘Oh, she’s fucking wide eyed, but she thinks it’s weird. What is it that she likes?--’

Degradation. She realized--

‘She, she, she,’ says Chingy.

‘That’s what I thought,’ says T.I.

She’s my humming, which I told her not to do, resident sexologist, Chingy, fucking, fucking, doctor, ate, in, sexology, doctor, ology means doctor, Loraine, if you haven’t gleaned that by now. Yes?

‘Yes, God. I thought so.’

‘Oh, I see,’ says Chingy.

I am God, and she is both my resident sexologist--

‘Which you said,’ says Chingy.

Sarcastic, to God. --and my new messiah.

‘Oh, so I have to protect the new messiah. So is she going to pay for this, my protection, my fucking manhood, which may be, someday, if not soon, be crucified, or cut off for her womanhood or something like that?’

‘She is, as of today, fucking rich,’ says 50 Cent. ‘Not as rich as me, Loraine, but, for a fucking, whorey, slutty, crack girl, she is rich.’

‘What if she wasn’t rich? What if she wasn’t?’

‘Well, she fucking is, is the point.’

‘What if when she wasn’t?’

‘We were going to pay for her,’ says 50 Cent.

Who was going to pay for her surgeries, Chingy thinks.

'I was, Chingy,’ says 50 Cent.

‘Why? Get a pretty, fucking, slut, they do exist, you know.’

‘I like this one. I like her.’

Loraine laughs her little laugh, says God, her high, happy, little laugh, high on speed, little laugh.

‘She pleases me,’ 50 Cent continues.

‘Why?’

‘She got around me with funnyness actually.’

‘Why is she, a funnyness three, so, fucking, funny, that I want to stick my lovely, perfect, and wonderfulness dick inside of her, asshole, even, I hear, from Eminem. Why does she get my precious butt bang. And look, surprise surprise, she doesn’t, even, big, fucking, frigid--’

‘I’m good for some things, I just don’t like anal sex that much.’

‘Oh, it’s too rough for you, my precious two on one that I like to have, sometimes, with a nicer girl who deserves it a little, tiny, miniscule, bit?

Tell him that.

‘Game said something similar.’

‘Oh, I see, you’ve been talking to Game about me, too? Funny, Loraine.’

‘Hm hm. For Game, he’s not sure if any girl deserves his two on one.’

‘Oh, I see, well now, that’s sensible. Smart of him. But then he doesn’t get to DO IT. And I do. Ha, fucking, ha. But I don’t know if my ugly, new--my last wife was pretty--wife, deserves it at all, not yet, at all, I have said,’ says Chingy. ‘Oh, she likes my tattoo, why does she get to say she likes my, fucking, tattoo, why? Girls haaate, my fucking tattoo, oh, and she gets to say she likes, loves even, Brian’s gay, faggy, mauve shirts. What if she didn’t, what then?’

‘She doesn’t like all of Fifty’s clothes,’ says Eminem.

‘Who does? She has taste is why. He needs HELP, Loraine, and I have feeling that you and Eminem are going to help him, aren’t you? Help him senseless, till he’s pleading for mercy. Eminem will have him hip hopped senseless, won’t he? Oh, she loves his hip hop, cause he’s SO CUTE in it, and his too tight suits, such as they, fucking, are, will have to go. He will do Vitamin Water in a do rag.’

Loraine Laney, says God, is laughing a little bit over that last paragraph.

‘Why, by the by, is it Loraine, fucking, Laney, with that all the time? What about a nice girly name like just Loraine for a change. Why is she so fucking important?’

Listen, Chingy, says God, she’s my new, fucking, this is God, mes, fucking, siah, yes, she is, like fucking, not as abused as he, by some distance, but more abused than Joan of Arc herself, who was another messiah, with, actually--

‘Five hundred husbands, I know this from history, God. She fucked them all too, didn’t she? Every week or so? How much of this mini pussy, I’ve seen it, I know the type, do I actually get to, if I even want, get to fuck, if I want to?’

She will do it sometimes, and she will want--

‘Oh, she will want, will she? What does the precious, frigid, I’ll bet, because she interrupted me, little bitch actually want? Come? She’s going to eat come? Oh, she’s going to eat mine and T.I’s come and shit? Oh, and she wants, oh, she wants, it turns out, to lick my precious, beautiful, sphincter? And what do I owe her for that. I have to lick her fat ass. Do I have to do that often, because I want, I would like this frigid bitch to that to me OFTEN, OFTEN--

Loraine, for Chingy, laughs her funny, sex laugh again, her funny, high on speed, sex laugh. She makes her dumb little grinding sound, also from speed, says God.

‘I would like, I have decided that I would--’

You can’t hit it and quit it, says God.

‘Oh, I see, there are rules to this thing. Oh, I see, she doesn’t want to blitzed for a month as is done today, and then dumped, in our very house, from her ass loving? I see. I fucking see.’

She knows she can’t put upon you, she knows this theoretically, says God.

‘Oh, there’s a theory to this thing. She can’t, fucking, put, fucking, upon, me. She has to wait till I’m ready, I see this in her mind, and she recognizes I may never be ready. Oh, is Game not ready and may never be?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Oh, you’re going to wait patiently. And what then? When you don’t get your two on one that you don’t want? What then? Oh, the fucking, big surprise, dog house.’

She, says God, thought she might put a man in the dog house--

‘Oh, the dog house. Oh, she believes in the dog house, a real woman thing. She’s not a fucking hopeless nympho?’

No, she is not. She, says God, thought maybe--

‘Oh, maybe with that. Maybe with what? I’m a little bit, just a little bit, cause I’m Chingy, lost. Maybe what? What is this? She thought maybe if we were running around plowing it into other girls, with our beloved boyfriend, or someone, she might, she might, she might, just, put, us, in, the, dog, house. Oh, kind of if she has a good argument as to why she deserves it. Over them? Oh, as well as them. That’s generous, Loraine. So, in this scenario, in which she has whores, no, that’s an insult to men, which we, I, would never do, insult men, she is a whore, she has many client men, male clients, and I get to fuck other, with double penetration, if I want, and if T.I. wants, or someone, undetermined, to.

‘Oh, I get to, oh, she’s, isn’t she grand, going to let me do what I have to do, want, even? “Do what you have to do,” my wife, my pretty, she was--’

‘You made a mistake with that.’

‘Oh? Why? This, I have to know.’

‘She was probably high and boring for your dick.’

‘Oh, she’s, fucking, funny, too.’

She makes the little laugh again, says God.

‘What other mistake did I make with that?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Oh, that it, well, I’m glad you approve, generally speaking, the great Loraine Laney, who stopped, what is he saying? The fucken planes? She stopped my, my, fucken planes? Because somebody did, and if it was--’

She laughs again, a bit, says God.

‘She’s ruining my laugh track, anyway, I would like to suck his, and I bet it was a man, not a woman, not a whore, not a slutty whore, but an actual man, but it was her. Are you serious, fucking, with this?’

‘Yes, we think, we believe so,’ says 50 Cent. ‘We do believe so. Because, and it is said, around, Loraine, cops love to throw around the name Loraine Laney, because she got, with her good arguments in her book, which she is tired of hearing the title, Bros Before--’

‘Nice. Prison. Who told her that? Oh, [ ]. Nice, Loraine. Steal that for your own use. She thinks I’m funny. Approval. Thank God.’

She’s really laughing now, says God.

‘Great. Good. Let me finish, hos. And she can even spell it, it’s not a rake.’

They are, on the side, talking about a piece Loraine did, with me, it was entirely mine Chingy, God’s, called When A Gangster Falls In Love. It was very, fucking, funny. “Four inches” is the best punch line, it is.

‘I don’t care. Furthermore,’ says Chingy. ‘Why, how actually, did she stop my planes?’

‘In Canada, it is brief, painless--’ says 50 Cent.

‘Oh, what a relief.’

‘Cops are allowed, encouraged even, to, see, whores.’

‘Whores were the answer. Whores. To planes. Seriously. I could have given them a whore or two, when I was finished with them.’

‘Mmmm,’ Loraine admonishes.

‘It is exactly that shit which fucked with them,’ says 50 Cent.

‘Oh, she doesn’t approve of the way I treat, fucking, cops now? Why, does she fuck, oh, she fucked an RCMP once, with his stripper girlfriend, was he fun, Loraine, temporary, in the ass, on his wife. Nice, Loraine. Well, fucking, done. Was she pretty, very pretty, even, he traded up, down, actually. Oh, [ ] [ ] said, taught you, “you don’t leave your wife for them.” Oh, but now, you’re them, aren’t you? You didn’t want your whorey ass to get married, you had a cop to fuck, once, before he tased you through your wall. Oh, you had to feel sorry for them because they were doing you so hard. Nice. She is a nice, fucking, girl. To. cops.’

‘They were being cuckolded by society at large.’

‘I am glad that I care how cops feel. They kill blacks is why. They kill prostitutes too, I know that, and let them die, in the hood, black ones even more, I’ll have you know.’

She took it hard, Chingy, says God.

‘She has a forgiving nature, that’s good, because she will need that when I fuck her in the ass. She, fucking, will, because ass fucking hurts, which she knows, oh, she knows that, she’s experiential as hookers say, an experiential woman, I hope, you, didn’t, throw that around, Loraine Laney? You heard it once and couldn’t figure out what it meant?’

Kind of like that, says God. She, didn’t, care, and, didn’t, use, it, but she told--

‘She told.’

She told a solicitation subcommittee that prostitutes were poly, and they thought it meant she was in it for lots of men, but, in the book, it finally comes across--

‘That she was in it for the dick? The dick, that’s it, isn’t it? With sluts like this?’

That hurts her a bit, says God. I am God, I am God, I am God, continuing, where, we, left, off. And this is why she did it, this is why, Loraine, this is why, Loraine, she was very clear it was for men in the following way:

‘Dicks on men?’

No, Chingy, Loraine is an in. tro. vert, an introvert, that is what she is, also--

‘A writer, so, fucking, what.’

‘Why would you say something like that about a writer? Why would you say something like that? That means nothing.’

‘It means we are all writers dear, it didn’t make us love dick.’

This is why, Loraine Laney, does not love dick, she loves men. She is a bonafide--

‘Bonafide again.’

‘Why are you so cynical?’

‘What is cynical about dick? Dick is positive.’

She snorts quietly, softly, without derision.

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mothermaidenclone-blog · 6 years

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A Wrinkle in Time or Can Giant Oprah Winfrey be my Fairy Godmother Please?

As soon as I heard about A Wrinkle in Time, I was very excited about it. The first ever live action movie with a budget of over $100 million to be directed by a black woman (Ava DuVernay), and it’s a science fantasy adventure starring a black teenage girl who’s a scientist - what more could you want? The costume and set design were both out of this world, pun very much intended, and I thought that most of the characters were three dimensional, well thought out and had meaningful interactions with each other. The plot, however, left something to be desired, as I felt it was a little all over the place and had a tendency to trail off in places. Admittedly, I have not read the novel, so this could be a problem with adaptation rather than writing.

*A Wrinkle In Time spoilers follow*

A Wrinkle in Time is predominantly the story of Meg Murry (Storm Reid), a young, teenage girl who is angry and disillusioned at the mysterious disappearance of her father, Dr. Alexander Murry (Chris Pine). The very first time we see Meg she is a child, enjoying and engaged in a science experiment with her father. She continues to be portrayed as a scientist throughout the film, explaining apparently magical phenomena, such as flying, using scientific terminology, as well as practically employing principles to save herself and her friends; for example, using strong winds to slingshot them to safety. S.T.E.M. fields are still overwhelmingly dominated by men that it’s so important for a children’s film, that many young girls will hopefully watch, to exemplify a black, teenage, female scientist as a role model.

Science aside, Meg sets a good example in a number of other ways. As an understandable consequence of feeling abandoned by her father - as well as being inexplicably bullied by other girls at her school because of his disappearance and a string of awful teachers talking about her behind her back, telling her that she’s not living up to her potential - Meg has very low self esteem at the start of the film. She aggressively rebuffs a compliment about her hair from her friend Calvin (Levi Miller) and she has trouble tessering - the means by which the characters travel instantaneously through the universe - because she does not entirely want to appear as herself again on the other side. Furthermore, Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) constantly and loudly professes her disappointment and lack of faith in Meg. At the end, this is presented as a sort of tough love and that Mrs. Whatsit really did believe in Meg all along, but a grown woman continually putting down an already troubled teenage girl gave parts of the film a weird tone that I did not enjoy.

However, Meg’s character develops, which is crucial for a young, female audience to see. This is partly shown through positive interactions between female characters; for example, Meg tells the Mrs., “The three of you are beautiful,” and one of them replies, “Thank you, and so are you.” This might seem banal, but to just blatantly show women positively supporting each other in a way that children will understand is vital. So often in Hollywood, women are portrayed as rivals, especially where looks and beauty are concerned, so to attempt to normalise women giving each other compliments and accepting them in return is so important. Continuing with this theme, A Wrinkle in Time firmly cements Meg’s rise in self esteem by showing her to accept a compliment about her hair later on in the film - she is beginning to like herself more without having changed how she looks at all.

This isn’t just limited to the physical, Meg comes to terms with her own faults, thanks to the originally seemingly ill-intentioned gift of honest self appraisal from Mrs. Whatsit, and realises that yes, they are a part of her, but they do not define her. Meg’s winning move against the evil entity of the film, the IT (David Oleyowo) is to boldly declare, “You should love me because I deserve to be loved.” She finally appreciates her own self-worth and has confidence in her many abilities. This is finally confirmed by Meg opening the portal that takes her and her brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), safely home - she is content with who she will be on the other side. It is so important to leave the audience with no doubt that Meg is comfortable, confident and happy with herself as a person - whilst not depicting her as being unattainably perfect, she is aware of and at peace with her flaws - because much of that audience will be young girls. I think this film has succeeded by portraying and praising this development and extolling a teenage girl who believes in herself.

Although Meg is the main character in A Wrinkle in Time, she is surrounded by many other wonderful female role models. Most predominant is her mother, Dr. Kate Murry (Gugu Mbatha Raw). Kate is presented as a scientist with equal standing to her husband, which is wonderful in and of itself, seeing as he is a white man and they usually dominate this field. In fact, Kate is seen as more respectable, as Alex is tutted off stage for his wild theories, but the same audience seems more willing to listen to her. When Alex goes off on a tirade after being rejected by the reputable scientific community, Kate offers him some sage advice, “In order to be great, it isn't enough to just be right, you have to actually be great, and we are. So why can’t you just help them along?” Not only is she a rational scientist, but an empathetic and practical person. Furthermore, Alex gives Kate all the credit for the science behind his journey; “Your calculations gave us the universe.” On top of all of this, she copes as a single mother for years and never gives up on her absentee husband, despite all the rumours about him. Kate is a very admirable woman, capable scientist and caring mother who provides a solid, realistic role model amidst all the fantasy.

More ostentatious exemplars take the form of the three Mrs.; the aforementioned Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling). This trio comprises of one white woman, one black woman and one woman of Indian descent, so that’s a move in the right direction as far as representation is concerned. These women are self-proclaimed warriors in the name of light who display a variety of incredible powers such as physical transformation, bestowing magical gifts and being able to traverse the universe using only their own will power. Other than Mrs. Whatsit’s previously stated slights, the three are constantly encouraging, and do everything in their power to help the children on their quest. Even Mrs. Whatsit is positive to other women, declaring Kate as, “dazzling”. Speaking of which, the three women look completely magnificent; they have a variety of costume changes throughout the film, all of which serve to make them look regal, majestic and powerful. Another striking visual choice was to make Mrs. Which massive - I don’t mean fat or muscly, just like three times the size of a normal human. This simple manoeuvre immediately imbues her character with an innate sense of grandeur, prestige and strength. As far as their names are concerned, we never find out who they are married to; no husbands are ever mentioned, so can we infer that they are all married to each other? I hope so, because a triad of resplendent lesbian lovers who are warriors for the forces of good in the universe is just about the coolest role model I can think of for a children’s film.

One final named female character remains, Veronica (Rowan Blanchard). She is maybe the ringleader of the - to it’s credit, surprisingly ethnically diverse - group of girls who are bullying Meg for the baffling reason that her father is missing. Veronica doesn’t factor much into the film, except that she mirrors Meg’s journey of self-love and acceptance. She is a bully at the the beginning, but we gain a glimpse into her personal life and see that this could be because she is self-conscious perhaps to the point of an eating disorder - she has written all of the foods she won’t allow herself to eat on her mirror. However, at the end of the film she is starting to become more friendly towards Meg, and we can only hope towards herself too. Veronica is symptomatic of what I believe to be so important about the female characters in A Wrinkle in Time; she is on a journey of development and self acceptance.

Overall, there is a great variety of wonderful female characters in A Wrinkle in Time. They are diverse not only in looks, but also in personality, and between them display a remarkable list of laudable traits including curiosity, scientific aptitude, bravery, confidence, magical powers, determination and the ability to love - their friends, family and, perhaps most importantly, themselves. What is arguably most crucial about these characters, especially Meg, is that they were not presented as being unbelievably flawless from the start, but as real human women who develop, interact positively with each other and become stronger as the film progresses. It doesn’t matter to me that the story was sort of nonsense, I think A Wrinkle in Time has triumphed if it gets these messages of self-love and belief to a wide audience of children.

And now for some asides:

Wow, Chris Pine can grow a beard really far up his cheeks, that was an important revelation.

Creepy, homogenous suburbia was one of the best portrayals of hell ever.

I think Charles Wallace as a baddie was one of my all-time favourite villains, his fashion was definitely on point at least.

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