As I get older I realize more and more how incredibly helpful it was for me to get exposed to queer erotica when I was young. Had some friends who were furries and through them I got to see various kinds of queer erotica, which sexualizes and loves the human body in such profoundly different ways than cishet porn and erotica does.
It was helpful because it helped chip away at the idea of normativity, the idea that there is one central ideal towards which all things must strive.
Not in a "queer porn made me enlightened!!!" kind of sense, but in the sense that once the time came that I was ready to start confronting my internalized self-hate and body shame and insecurities, I had some ammo to work with. I wasn't going up against it alone - I could point to this art - gay male art, lesbian art, furry art, art from the transgender perspective, all of it - and know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I still had to do some work to accept it, and internalize it, but I could know because I had evidence that, yes, there are people who desire bodies like mine, and who love those bodies earnestly and viscerally.
And regardless of whether I am attracted to those people in turn, whether I want to date them or sleep with them, it means that that insidious little voice which is drilled into the back of our heads telling us that our bodies do not meet the standard of quality that qualifies us for love is, quite simply, wrong. Beauty ideals are not a universal value, and they arise from no necessary truth or rational principle, they are a series of deliberate choices made by cultures, influenced by the culture's values.
And when that culture is struggling with a history of white supremacy, with a history of systemic sexism and homophobia, when that culture is dictated in large part by the whims and interests of billion dollar corporations intent on selling Products & Services™, the choice of beauty ideal is neither neutral or healthy, and you can unmake that choice for yourself, and find something better.
Anyway, I guess my point is that porn is good for you actually, especially the gay stuff. Replace all the Marvel movies you watch with filthy Ao3 fiction and furry smut.
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not to be a woman womaning all over the place but i feel like if you genuinely like. do not have friends that are women then you have something to work on. if you cant think of any female characters that you treat the same way you do male characters then you have something to work on. if you cant handle even seeing "i dont like being called a guy/bro/lad/etc because it doesnt feel gender neutral to me" but can understand when one of your masc besties is uncomfortable with being called girlie or sister then you have something to work on. if your default in regards to how you handle other people and even characters is to assume masculinity then you have something to work on. if you cant even let women and otherwise feminine people speak about our experiences without bringing up how you suffer too then you have something to work on.
it doesnt matter if youre queer or a poc or a minority in whatever which way, if you do not include women in your life and cant even stand a fucking inch of genuine feminism (and i dont mean terfs but god is it fucking agonizing that thats all you people can think of when you hear feminism anymore) where the point is to treat women, all women, equally then you have something to work on. listen to women, even the ones whose experiences completely dont align with yours (hell ESPECIALLY the ones whose experiences completely dont align with yours). just like how we all have to check ourselves for racism, ableism, queerphobia, we all have to check ourselves for misogyny too. stop acting like it got solved at some point. it still exists and it exists within you and you have to actually fucking work on that. "women should be included in your life and you should listen to them" shouldnt be a hard goddamn pill to swallow.
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it's always funny to me when people blame jack's insanity and genocidal tendencies solely on lilith and moxxi's so-called "betrayal" and at this point i'm convinced that they played some different game because:
lilith and moxxi literally saw him kill innocent scientists only because he thought they may betray him, but there was no solid evidence for that. and even if there actually was a traitor among them, jack could've simply put them in some sort of jail or just deal with them quietly. but no. instead he decided to make a whole show out of killing them in one of the most cruel ways possible, while gathering all of his allies around. because his goal wasn't to just get rid of someone you can't trust - he wanted lilith, moxxi and roland to see what will happen to them if they dare to disobey him
after he killed the meriff he thought that it was - quote-unquote - "invigorating". killing scientists also "felt good". normal person behavior btw
he never cared about felicity. he doesn't feel any remorse or guilt after killing her, even though she was helping him this entire time. and correct if i'm wrong, but while he did need an army to take helios back, he, in the end, never actually used it. the loaders in bl:tps couldn't do much - we had to manually turn them into the loaders who can shoot or blow up stuff. and it was after we already got on helios. so basically, there was no rush to make a constructor out of felicity and consequently kill her in the process
by the time of the events of bl:tps he has already destroyed moxxi's underdome like she said in one of the side quests in bl2 (nevertheless, she still agreed to help him). and before you say anything about how he couldn't actually do that and it's a retcon because he was a low-level programmer may i remind you that he had the money to make a goddamn body double for himself. he had a fancy office. he had a chamber for angel's containment. and i think it's pretty believable that a person with that much money is capable of doing that
and yes, angel. while lilith and roland didn't know about that at the time, he has already enslaved his own daughter many years ago and used her to manipulate them into finding the vault for him in bl1. and he had the resources to keep her in her place, too
so, of course, when they saw the eye of the destroyer they knew what was going on. imagine somehow killing a monster that took down armies just to see its' eye being used by some big fucking corporation for god knows what years later
now, to the fun part - the betrayal. let's just say that moxxi’s good at reading people - she wasn’t wrong when she called jack a «power-hungry psychopath» and said that «a lot of decent people will live to regret it if you come down from helios alive» as we will see in the future events. she and others saw jack's true colors shine through during their little quest to save the moon and it was the only logical conclusion. she was fucking right
moxxi specifically asked jack to be at the eye of helios because she planned to kill him (and, well, people who agreed to work for him) and him (and his team) only. moreover, the station was already under attack by the lost legion by quite some time. so there was literally no possibility that it would've impacted any innocents (so idk from where some people got the idea that they killed "millions of innocent hyperions" - that's just called making shit up)
jack, on the other hand, didn't know how much of an impact that caused. however, he isn’t sad about the possible death of people that singularity might have caused (again, it could, but it didn’t - still, Jack doesn’t give a fuck). he isn’t even worried about his own team. all he cares about is that he lost a very valuable and deadly weapon because of «the things he could have done with it» - and it’s pretty obvious what exactly can you do with this sort of weapon. it wasn't just standing there to look pretty you know
also, while we’re at it, you can even argue how this whole “saving the moon and its’ people” thing might have been just a cover up for a real reason – that is, get this very dangerous weapon back under his control. but that's just a speculation based on some of the in-game things i've noticed, so let's not dwell on it
finally, i never really got why people are so mad at lilith for punching jack - she literally admits that she should’ve just killed him instead, as, in the end, it costed her a lot of people’s lives and, more specifically, roland’s life. she feels extremely guilty. she knows that she fucked up. her main mistake, however, wasn't that she "betrayed" jack - her main mistake was leaving him to die instead of finishing a job and thinking that he can actually be trustworthy
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i'm still so mad re last post oh my god. it doesn't even matter i'm just Enraged. you're seriously gonna look at the locked tomb or yellowjackets or the dreamer trilogy or gillian flynn's books or the silt verses or any number of my other absolute favorite psychological horror properties & go "oh ummmm it's about women though? :/ cringe, women aren't complex :/ it's impossible to write a woman with enough depth to interest me :/ no i don't trust your taste or analytical ability because i KNOW women are boring and not worth wasting time on :///"
and then be like
"what do you mean i'm a misogynist!! i never said anything about REAL women!! just fictional women!!!! and also everyone who's ever written them!!!"
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