#sj doesn’t view women as actual people

[stardust-falling]

*taps microphone*

Shen Jiu isn’t a feminist, he just hates men.

*drops mic and runs*

#svsss #shen jiu #I could write a post about it #but tbh ‘feminist icon sj’ portrayals make me cringe #he’s not misogynistic as in ‘hates women’ #but he is misogynistic in ‘sees women as lesser/weaker/othered’ #sj doesn’t view women as actual people #anyway

[baoshan-sanren]

Hi, I just finished SV and I Loved it! I have a question though that irks me and I'd love to hear you opinion on it. It's said in the novel that LBH knew no kindness except from his mother and then NYY & SY!SQQ. It seems to me a little like he fell in love with SY's kindness and not really with his personality. He didn't fall in love with NYY's kindness so it could also be an authority thing. My q is, do you think LBH would fall in love w any other Shizun who showed him the slightest kindness?

Okay bear with my nonsense here for a minute because, aside from making fun of everyone and everything, SVSSS is a pretty good study of what happens when reader expectations meet real situations and real flesh and blood people, and just how unrealistic most of them turn out to be. We see PIDW and LBH in SVSSS via mirror of only SY’s perception and his preconceived notions, but we’re also bound to only see SVSSS and SY via mirror of our own perception and with our own preconceived notions (and boy, do a lot of people miss that about SVSSS completely even though SY the judgmental reader and all his baggage are right there). How many chapters does it take for SY to admit that he hasn’t been really viewing LBH as his own person, but a fictional character he had only gotten to know through airplane’s bad writing? I remember how fucking frustrated I kept getting the first time I read SVSSS because SY kept that picture of LBH (the one we never met bc we never read 300+ chapters of airplane’s novel like SY did) firm in his mind despite all evidence that they were not the same person. Who is it that said “compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there, the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones?" SY’s whole issue with PIDW is that the novel sucked. That most of the characters were one-dimensional and unrealistic, and that even his own scum-villain character had no story/background that would justify his attitude or behavior towards LBH. We only get to see SJ as a person with a history, and grievances, and a boatload of unaddressed trauma because SY digs up and improves all those storylines that airplane had left out. But even knowing that, SY still keeps seeing LBH through the lens of his own preconceived notions, and keeps assigning him motivations that LBH clearly doesn’t have. So I guess my thing is, if it took SY nearly a decade of flesh and blood contact with LBH to figure out that all of his expectations were wrong and inaccurate, can we (the readers of SVSSS) ever view LBH accurately? 

Anyway, not to write an essay (too late) but I guess if I were to speculate on the subject via my own subjective interpretations, I would say that airplane wrote a pretty shitty stallion novel for $$ during which LBH fell for NYY for her “kindness” but right off the bat in SVSSS, we see that NYY does very little except managing to make LBH’s life harder. Still, despite being a character that solely consists of bouncy breasts and questionable life choices in PIDW, she does seem to harbor genuine affection for LBH, and PIDW LBH, who has not gotten affection since his adoptive mother passed, is likely to have latched on to any affection, no matter how destructive it turns out to be, for some self-preservation of his self-esteem and self-worth. Obviously not the healthiest way to obtain either, but hardly unexpected (and we see him doing the same thing with literally every female character in PIDW - Freud would have a field day with just a quarter of this novel). Again, we only know PIDW LBH through SY’s perception, and SY is clearly not the most objective witness, but I find it hard to believe that PIDW LBH ever truly loved any one of the 300+ women in his harem. There is no indication (in what we get from airplane’s writing) that he trusts any of them, and it even seems as if all the harem infighting served as a means to keep them from focusing too hard on LBH as anything other than a prize to be obtained. I mean clearly, PIDW was not meant to be that deep, and we don’t get to read it, so there’s no use speculating much. (I’m sure you noticed my theories are all psychology/trauma centric, which is my bread and butter, and subjective as fuck, so there’s half my point made).

As to whether I think LBH would fall in love with a different shizun who showed him kindness? If kindness is the only factor, I don’t think it’s likely. After all, the 300+ women in his harem in PIDW have all probably showed him some kindness at one time or another. In that respect, SY is certainly not special. There are theories about LBH not actually being sexually attracted to women in PIDW at all, extrapolating on the idea that a more supportive and loving environment during his development years has allowed him to grow up without repressing many things he has clearly repressed in PIDW, his sexuality included. That theory, I suppose, could support the idea that LBH could have just as easily fallen in love with a different man in his immediate vicinity who showed him kindness?

Idk how much I buy into any that; like I said, PIDW was never meant to be that deep, and SVSSS is just full of loose threads I love to yank on (always aware I’ll never see where they lead without an access to MXTX’s brain). I think we’re meant to view PIDW for what it is - a poorly written story for $$ with cardboard cutout characters that, once permeated with “real flesh and blood humans,” turns out to be nothing like the story that the reader (SY) expected to find. And since there’s the same degree of separation between PIDW and SVSSS, as there is between SVSSS and us (the readers), speculating on who LBH might attach himself to if SY was someone else, and how his story might go under any other circumstances, is bound to be as accurate as SY’s predictions concerning PIDW LBH, which turned out to be (as we clearly find out in SVSSS), inaccurate as fuck :)

#Anonymous #ask for ts #svsss #meta #sorry noonie #idk if that'll make any sense to you #y'all should never ask me anything about svsss again #bc I'll just go on and on

[natsunoomoi]

So sometimes I check wikis to like look things up about a show or series that I don’t have time to read or watch the whole thing fully cuz that’s a time investment I just don’t have but I have questions I just want a quick answer to.

The problem is, wikis are of course, made by like regular people with varying levels of biases and also sometimes selective memory of events. As can be seen in my more recent posts with SVSSS and MXTX’s works I’ve been on those wikis, but sometimes the explanations of plot points and a bunch of other stuff are really confusing and circular. SVSSS’s is being more cleaned up recently, but it still has some things that it says happened, that I couldn’t find at all when reading the book and I’m just like, where did they find that info to put on the wiki?

Like one of my earlier posts when I started reading SVSSS at the beginning, I mentioned how I read that original Luo Binghe got killed by his harem eventually and I thought that made sense cuz ultimately no one in that original plotline made choices that made them genuinely happy. But when I read the book, I didn’t see any mention of that anywhere...? I think last time I went to go look at BC Novels they had one chapter left to translate. Is it in there?

Then at other times, I wonder if there’s an inconsistency because there’s a limitation between the translation I read and like something in the original Chinese text like there’s a typo, which obviously there’s a mistake then. But then other times, I’m wondering if people read a different thing, but most of the people with a different interpretation don’t seem to be able to read Chinese and are reading the same translation as me, but I’m confused where they got certain details from?

Like for instance, there’s another part on the wiki where it says Airplane originally planned for PIDW to be a BL from the beginning, but I’ve literally been trying to find where that was stated because I don’t remember that and I don’t see that anywhere and the chapter citation that is listed on the wiki goes to a chapter that doesn’t talk about that at all. Airplane/Qinghua does say that he made changes to Qingqiu’s character that were originally more complex to make him a trash human and he did that to make a living, but I can’t find where it says he originally wanted it to be a BL theme to begin with. In the chapter they cite it says that Qinghua had designed Binghe to have an appearance in a way that appealed more to a female audience and be more of a pretty boy. That doesn’t mean that he meant his entire book to be a BL it just means you make your main character look a certain way partly for internal logic because that look is really popular with women so the in-story women would probably find him attractive and in a meta sense any females who happen to also read a stallion novel like some women read shounen manga would find him hot in real life. A successful story does things like that to reach people outside of its target audience and that’s kind of a lot of the reason why a lot of Shounen Jump manga are really popular with women too even though a lot of the stories have the male perspective in mind. The chapter it cites only talks about the actual physical appearance design choice he made for Binghe vs Mobei-Jun. He just says that Mobei-Jun was made for the kind of male character he prefers to think about, but Binghe was just designed with the idea of what would make him more popular and also could kind of be like a self-insert-ish for his desire to beat on people for funsies. It doesn’t talk at all about what the genre he planned for the book to be and interpreting the text to that much is really stretching the context to wishful thinking levels. I don’t even actually care either way what kind of novel PIDW was because it’s not actually that important to enjoying the story of SVSSS, but I don’t know if it’s the Ravenclaw in me or what, but it just bugs me when there’s something that seems *wrong* printed on a thing that is supposed to inform other people. I’m literally reading chapters at the same time as trying to write this post to find where I think maybe it was said, but it sure as hell wasn’t the chapter the wiki cites.

The other day I re-read the chapter when Qinghua taunts SY with Qingqiu’s real memories, and he doesn’t even say it then. ATM, I’m trying to look through the last chapter because there’s that one part when Qinghua shows up right at the end and talks with SY at the celebration, but even at the start at the chapter, SY talks about how Qingqiu was super straight to him. SY is an unreliable narrator, but given the context of Qingqiu’s life events that makes sense. His personal trauma because of Qiu Jianluo also pushed him away from any amount of closeness he could have with other men other than ones he already trusted to some degree. He had a lot of problems forming new relationships of any kind with other men because of deep-seated trust issues. Not that he didn’t have any, but meaningful ones were pretty absent. One only because of a very sad misunderstanding and lack of communication and explanation, but the others just tough.

But like also there’s like that SJ slept in the Warm Red Pavilion and he went there just for comfort rather than more lascivious reasons. Yeah, it’s true that he didn’t go there for those intentions, but like it’s still in the environment so it’s not like he’s unaware of what happens there. I mentioned it in the previous post about his search for means to grow his cultivation, but only to say he’s probably not that innocent and there may be some truth to him wanting to do something to Ning Yingying out of desperation to make up for his low cultivation foundation. Like he’s aware of those kinds of things and he probably came across something that said that was a way he could grow his cultivation. Desperation and this motivation I think is probably the only reason why he would be so tempted to cross that line with Yingying because he otherwise treats women rather well. She is his favorite too, so if a person who usually treats females well for some reason wants to do something that would be hurtful to their favorite person, there has to be a much deeper motivation behind that. The only thing that is a canonically greater obsession I think would have to be his cultivation level. He has a number of self-esteem issues and such a well, but his greatest pride and greatest concern is his cultivation. He is proud of his abilities, but also he laments and regrets the version of him he couldn’t become so much I can foresee that if there was a suggestion that he could overcome his late start in some way by using someone female, I think he’d at least think about it and also consider who he knows could be a viable candidate should he want to act on it and that is how that part of PIDW happened. Pain and desperation make people do things that are uncharacteristic, so it has to be something that really bothers him more than in a moment of weakness that idea is there.

Which is another point I have an issue with on the wiki because it says his low cultivation is “logically” because he started late and spent so much time with a fake master. It’s not logically. It’s factually. It’s mentioned several times especially in the extras chapters from Shen Jiu’s point of view where he talks about how he is specifically behind because of wasting time with Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi and also that he was the last to form a golden core. If it was coming out of SY or someone else’s mouth as an explanation, maybe you can say “logically”, but if it’s coming from SJ’s point of view chapter it sure as hell is not. That *IS* his motivation. He states it himself.

Also, I think some people don’t understand what it means to have a low cultivation foundation. Cultivation from what I gather according to the rules of this world is like a lot of talents we have in our world where you need to start young to be good at it. There’s a few skills that you can learn that if you don’t start at a specific time you lose the optimal window to develop your talent for it because of the way the brain functions and basically purges off skillsets you’re not using in your environment. 

Learning a language is one such skill. When a baby is born, it has the capability to learn how to speak every language in the world, but as it gets older its brain purges out the sounds that it doesn’t hear from its environment and this keeps going into older childhood as well. The taxi driver I talked to the other day about this said you have to start before you’re 10, which sounds about right. The phoneme purging in your brain starts quite early though so that’s why my company has classes for Moms and their 1 or 2 year old so that they can speak to them in English to try to keep English sounds in their environment so that they can have perfect pronunciation when they grow up. If you try to learn a new language when you’re older that’s how you have accents. You don’t have the phonemes to speak the language perfectly so your brain is imitating the sounds with the ones you do have. Plus it’s a constant use skill. I used to be able to speak Cantonese with no accent up until my teens, but I haven’t spoken it in so long that slowly I started to have an accent and now I can’t say the words properly anymore. I don’t know that much Cantonese to begin with that aren’t baby words, but I used to be able to say them properly.

Music is another one and that one has an even more narrow window. Kids with parents hoping that they will be music prodigies usually start them on music VERY young like 3 or 4. It’s not that it’s impossible for someone to pick up an instrument later in life, but there’s a type of sense to music and hearing the scale and developing that skill that if you don’t start kids on it at that time, their musical ear will not be as good.

And it’s that “not as good” thing that Qingqiu is chasing. He is exceptionally powerful and talented which is why despite starting late he became favored. He is very capable and good at what he does, but he is not as good as what he could have been. Even though he is so good, he is only haunted by how much better he would have been if he had started on time and had proper instruction. A musician who maybe wants to be a concert violinist but took up the instrument late may struggle to get a good seat in an orchestra because despite any talent they have, their ear is not as developed as someone else. Such a musician would be vexed and lament that they hadn’t discovered their love for the instrument sooner just as Qingqiu is vexed and laments that he didn’t start proper cultivation development earlier.

And I’m griping about SVSSS more because I read that book so I have more points of reference to go on. But like the wikis for MDZS and TGCF aren’t much better. MDZS is maybe a little more coherent and easier to follow, but TGCF confused the hell out of me and it took me awhile to understand what was going on. I really needed it though cuz I was watching the donghua and like I think the way they present some of the scenes is like slightly out of order for like foreshadowing and other like film reasons, so I checked the wiki while watching to try to get more context cuz I don’t have much time right now to pick up another book at the moment. I was so confused though cuz like...it seems like the logic in the entries is so circular and I’m trying to keep track of all the characters and what’s happening. I hope it’s better now but at the time I was watching it I was so confused and struggling to make sense of what’s happening.

And like maybe you’re wondering why if I read the book, would I bother checking a wiki. Mostly out of laziness because I’m thinking of something and I don’t want to go find the exact chapter to help me flesh out my thought and reference point. I end up getting more frustrated sometimes depending on what I’m looking up because of the above things.

Plus again I’m like a bit mystified as to why Qingqiu’s look seems to appeal to me. It’s not just him though and like other characters with a similar style in some of the games I play. I think there’s some imprint from some very old childhood memory that I only vaguely remember. Like it’s a look that seems familiar, but I can’t put my finger on where it’s from and I can’t figure it out, so I keep just going to check images to see if it will make me remember. I think it’s a movie I saw with my Dad as a young child, but I can’t remember it at all. I remember there was one Jet Li movie I watched with my Dad once and I ended up watching all the time cuz I thought Jet Li was really cute in that movie (I was also 3 so I don’t know why I’m thinking that way, but whatever), but like Jet Li was bald in that movie because it was about a Shaolin Temple. I think at the time my Dad showed me that movie I already showed an interest in movies from my own heritage, so that’s why he showed me that. But like I can’t remember anything else. I suppose it could have been something my grandpa watched because sometimes he’d watch a Chinese movie when I was playing in the living room and I’d stop to watch too and then he’d fast-forward through the intimacy scenes, but because I’d just look over at something he was already watching I have no idea what any of those were.

[fierceawakening]

Also, re the empathy thing

I get that the Bloomian idea of empathy being an untrustworthy auxiliary to the moral life is based on the idea that decisions made rationally are (almost?) always superior to decisions made on emotion, but I keep thinking that sometimes emotion does help us be good, and I thought of the following example:

Alice is a Tumblr user. Alice has Imbibed by osmosis the views of people who are caught up in a moral panic about “pedophiles.” So if Alice knows that someone does things she associates with “pedos,” whetehr this be harming children or writing fanfiction with underage characters in it, Alice will conclude this person should die, and so will not assist them if they are I. Trouble.

But what if Alice just sees someone injured or in trouble and has a response of affective empathy? Then she may act before considering if the person “is a pedo,” because she’s reactin to the distress before she has a chance to consider what the views of the other might be.

Most of us probably think Alice is wrong, given my general blog audience. But here’s the thing: is Alice irrational?

In a universal sense I think she is. Moral panics ultimately play on emotions like fear and worry. But in another sense, I think ALICE would see herself and her views on this as rational. They’re grounded in an incorrect but elaborate theory of how media influences people, and therefore the adherents reason that seemingly harmless things like fanfiction are actually potentially quite sinister.

So from Alice’s own perspective, she might very well see her views as coldly rational. Cull the deviant to protect the vulnerable. Maybe even utilitarian. They won’t like being shunned or killed, but they’re a minority, so their concerns don’t outweigh the good of the whole.

And to me, it seems like once your rational thought processes get twisted in this way, affective empathy can be very useful for helping you begin to get back out again. If your logic tells you that person deserves no mercy but your heart doesn’t want to abandon them, that can be the beginning of questioning the bad thinking.

Or at least it seems so to me. there’s that former Nazi who talks a lot about his journey out of Nazism And it sure sounds to me like he was on board fully with the very harsh and unforgiving THEORY, but that he kept stubbornly having feelings about POC who were nice to him, or who he knew were going through it, and eventually “this just doesn’t *feel* right, though” cracked the edifice.

I still am not sure how rationality alone would fix something like THIS, as you’d have to be already open to the idea you might be wrong.

I’m pretty sure this helped in my own exit from very harsh SJ. I was sure the logic was sound (in fact, YEARS after leaving I’d say things in therapy like “I know it’s personally healthier for me to watch queer porn and not punish myself, but am I harming women more than I’m helping me? Given my horny, can I trust myself to do the calculus properly right now? Ever?”)

But I jus5 kept FEELING BAD about how mean we were being, even when I struggled with rejecting the logic. Eventually that led to me concluding that the logic was bad TOO, But that happened much later. “This feels wrong and I don’t like it” happened first.

(Full disclosure I read SOME of Bloom’s book but stopped when It became clear it’s a book length ad for Effective Altruism. If EA helps you, that’s cool. But It felt a little like bait and switchy group recruitment at that point to me.)

[maoam]

what’s your opinion on one piece ships?

I don’t have that much of opinions on them, for me op is more about found family. I hope Oda won’t make ships happen at the end (if he ever actually manages to end it) but I feel SJ is pushing on pairing endings.

I did find Kyros/Scarlet story sweet, they’re cute.

I don’t think Luffy/Nami is the worst thing ever but I also don’t want it to happen. I don’t want anyone for Luffy. It would also be nice if Nami was allowed to remain single and not just end up as a knocked up housewife.

I actually started to think people who think Oda will pair up Zoro with Hiyori might be onto something. Or at the very least, that she likes Zoro. Oda seems to like writing “mean” women have a soft spot for the men they like and Hiyori is like this with Zoro. They also apparently met in a similar fashion as her parents. I don’t mind this much mostly because I dislike all the other popular m/f options for Zoro. :|

NOTPS:

Sanji/any woman - Mostly because I’d feel sorry for the women. Sanji’s view on women is just too distorted and disrespectful. I like Sanji pre-timeskip but post-timeskip he bothers me exactly because of how he treats women.

Hancock/men that aren’t Luffy - This is not because I’m a die-hard luhan shipper or anything; it’s because it’s so clearly implied Hancock was raped and abused by men and that’s why she hates them; I feel like one of the reasons she was able to form feelings for Luffy is because he doesn’t lust for her (because Luffy doesn’t lust period) and it feels sort of nice. I don’t want to put Hancock with men she doesn’t like.

Zoro/Robin - I like them both, but it doesn’t deserve to be as popular as it is. They exist, they’re a man and a woman, and they’re hot. That’s pretty much the reason it exists.

Zoro/Tashigi - I like Zoro and Tashigi is ok to me but I don’t like when they interract with each other. I also don’t feel like someone like Tashigi is a fitting match for Zoro.

Shanks/Makino - They talked like once and people ship them because she’s the only woman I think Shanks has ever talked to. I dislike a lot when people have to ship absolutely every single character JUST BECAUSE.

Any parental relationship turned romantic like I’m not someone who hunts people for their ships or cancels anyone but this one is a big nope for me, especially since foster parents trope is one of the best things in op.

Op has so many ships it would take a while to go through all of them... if people want to know my opinion on some specific ship then just send another ask.

#anon #op ramblings

[rasoir-national]

Thanks for your super fast reply on Saint-Just! I'll do my best to go of anon at the first possibility, for better communication. I actually appreciate your non-historian POV (will talk more as soon as I fix the account issues). Speaking of which, I browsed through your SJ tag, and there's a mention of his (I might be paraphrasing) "strange attitude about virgins". May I ask what you had in mind? Once again, thank you for that super-fast, detailed reply!

No problem ! And I don’t mind the anon as long as it’s not a way to be shitty while hiding behind it :)

And yeah there’s some value to being a simple enthusiast, I don’t want to look down on my own point of view but it’s no substitute for actual scholarly perspective so I always take care to mention it.

The reference I made was from the Fragments d’institutions républicaines, SJ’s personal notebook I mentioned which you can find in french here.

Anyway, about virgins, you can find this passage in the chapter on education :

“Les filles sont élevées dans la maison maternelle. Dans les jours de fête, une vierge ne peut paraître en public, après dix ans, sans sa mère, son père, ou son tuteur. “

“Girls are raised in the maternal home. On festive days (a reference to national celebrations I believe), a virgin cannot show herself in public past her tenth year, without her mother, her father or her tutor”.

And again in the chapter on celebrations :

“Tous les ans, le 1er floréal, le peuple de chaque commune choisira, parmi ceux de la commune exclusivement et dans les temples, un jeune homme riche, vertueux et sans difformité, âgé de vingt et un ans accomplis et de moins de trente, qui choisira et épousera une vierge pauvre, en mémoire de l’égalité humaine.”

“Every year, on the 1st of floréal, the people of each town will choose, among those in the town and in the parish, a rich, virtuous young man with no disability, between twenty-one and thirty years of age, who will choose and marry a poor virgin, in memory of human equality”

So yeah, as the kids say, not a great look, not absolutely reprehensible either (which is something, I guess). This is where my lack proper knowledge fails me, because I am not sure “virgin” in the context of SJ’s writing isn’t simply a common term from the times to talk about a young woman who’s never been married. Still, it’s hard to read these as anything that would reflect positively on SJ. That said, in the same notes we do find passages such as this :

“[Si les époux] se séparent, la moitié de la communauté leur appartient ; ils la partagent également entre eux.”

“If a married couple splits, half of their estate belongs the them. It is split evenly between them.”

So SJ is in favour of equal separation of estate in case of divorce. Each spouse has equal authority on their children, btw.

We have also :

“Une fille a le droit de faire demander dans le temple un autre tuteur sans en expliquer les motifs.”

“A girl has the right to ask the parish another tutor without explaining why.”

Or again :

“ Celui qui frappe une femme est banni.”

“Whoever hits a woman is banished”

Note there’s no exception made to this rule for the spouse.

Those are only a couple cherrypicked lines, and I don’t claim to be making any kind of general appreciation on SJ’s ideas as a whole. Outside of virgins there are some truly bizarre precepts in there, and I highly recommend you check the whole thing for yourself. But I think we can say without much risk that while there is some stuff in there, for example the virgin stuff that’s pretty representative of the ambient sexism of the times, there are just as many lines in there indicating that SJ, albeit clumsily and sometimes misguidedly, does demonstrate a concern for women and girls’ wellbeing. Being in favor of divorce, women owning and managing their own property (you have to remember his mother managed the family estate for the better part of his life), women choosing their spouse and having an equal say in the marriage, condemning violence against women... That’s significant. I think I said that in the last ask I received on the topic, but while it’s pretty obvious that women and gender equality was not SJ’s pet issue and he doesn’t seem to regard it as a priority (he never publicly pushed for it either), in particular having nothing to say on women’s place on society outside of the home, he could at least be considered progressive on women’s issues within the restricted confines of the role that was allocated to them back then.

#frev #saint-just

[hazardous-waste-containment]

Based on r*dfem responses to one of my posts about Dworkin's trans allyship I'm forced to conclude that a lot of them are just working from a fundamental misunderstanding of what most trans people and allies (using that term tentatively because I'm wary of the concept of "allyship" but it's the easiest term to use here) even believe and want and are talking about.

Like I do have criticisms of mainstream trans discourse among liberals (both cis and trans), such as the idea that gender is an essence that lives innately inside your body or mind or soul, rather than transness as we currently know it being situated in a particular gendered social and political context (which doesn't make it "not real" or suggest anything about the validity of a trans person's identity; for comparison, mental illnesses are also absolutely real and worth addressing but are similarly inextricable from contextual social systems- not that being trans is itself a mental illness ofc; you know what I mean). But that's more of a problem I have with liberalism and its effect on the trans liberation movement, not anything inherently to do with "transgenderism".

The fact is that most people I know who I'm sure r*dfems would consider 'TRAs' or 'genderists' or what have you, simply do not believe the things that they seem to think we believe. So they are fundamentally fighting a strawman because even liberal trans discourse doesn't really look like the caricature they portray, and radical trans liberation discourse is literally completely removed from anything that r*dfems are ostensibly critiquing.

So their objections just kind of fall flat because I sincerely don't know anyone who both supports trans people and believes these things (such as that women have like a natural spiritual connection to liking pink and wearing dresses; like I guess there are some transmeds who believe that stuff but they are marginal and widely seen as transphobic reactionaries within the trans community). Even among reformist liberals who do retain some essentialist ideas about the way gender identity works (like, again, the atomized notion that gender is this fixed intrinsic force that dwells inside of you but that also somehow "corresponds" to exterior bodies) that kind of stuff is at most a wildly niche view in trans spaces and I personally have never heard it from anyone that I know.

Anyways, I'm sure r*dfems feel the same way, that no one's truly "engaging with their ideas" and are only fighting strawmen, which I'll admit is the case for most people on this website who, similar to the twitblr social-justice-industrial-complex attitudes toward literally all SJ issues, don't know anything about T*RFs except that they're bad (which they are, but hardly anyone seems to have an accurate concept of why that is.) However, I have also found people on this website who genuinely do have a solid and comprehensive grasp on r*dfem ideology, and yet I see r*dfems still just repeat the same transphobic screeds at these users over and over again, so I do have to question the idea that the only fundamental hindrance to productive discourse is people not understanding r*dfem beliefs. They complain that the mainstream liberal-progressive concept of gender is essentialist (which again, it is) but then when trans liberationists present a radical and anti-essentialist take on gender they complain about that too.

Almost as if their actual problem is with trans people themselves- but I'm sure that's just another strawman

#drone disorientations #this is the last thing i'm going to say about t*rfs on this blog for a while unless a relevant post crosses my dash

[spaceshipkat]

OK I'm not really well informed on the SJMaas debate buuut ik she loves LOTR alot and A lot of fantasy books she grew up reading ends with a huge battle, I don't think she intended to glamorize it rather employ a very common fantasy fiction trope that all the popular fantasy books before included. You can see with modern movies eg marvel an easy culmination to build up to is usually a good guys vs bad guys battle for the ages.

—and to add even Harry Potter is an example of a series that culminates with a big war. I wouldn't say by employing that narrative frame it would be glamorizing it.

this is actually a common topic on my blog since i studied war history in uni and will be getting my master’s degree, in part, on 20th century history, predominately the war period and how it impacts the future. 

ANYWAY. heh. rambling. yes, your examples are actually examples of how war is romanticized in popular fiction (although i’ll hold back on saying definitively yea or nay on Harry Potter, as i’ve only seen one of the movies and read none of the books, so i don’t know enough). sj///m is certainly not the only culprit but since she’s one of the authors whose books i talk about most on here she simply happens to feature more in my conversations on it, especially bc she’s written a war into each of her series (one is mentioned in CCity’s synopsis, so i think it’s a given). since Marvel is a good example, and i’d say it’s a given that more people have seen those movies than they’ve read sj///m’s books, i’ll explain how that romanticizes war: take, for instance, how there are always moments in battle where characters can stop to banter; where every single woman in the MCU somehow magically appears at the exact same moment as every other woman in it in order to have this whole “badass” sauntering montage (was i the only one who cringed when i saw it? it was trying way too hard to prove that the MCU does actually focus on women uwu); where we get slow-mo shots of characters like Cap doing a cool flip midair; where in the group movies like Infinity War we only ever focus on the war as it happens rather than the after effects (sure, we see what Thanos did to the world, but it’s not exactly worse for wear; we watch NYC get destroyed only for NYC to be fine later on; in Captain America: Civil War, when there are worldwide responses that try to curb what the superheroes have the freedom to do, we get an entire movie of Cap just noping out of there despite the fact you can’t just...run willy-nilly...and fight...like that...against the fucking UN for pete’s sake), and more. it looks cool and therefore romanticizes war. yeah they’re fighting the Big Bad, but it’s still painting war in rosy colors. 

sj///m, like most people who don’t study warfare in any grand way, has a very romantic view on war, and it’s made clear bc she doesn’t actually focus on every single aspect of it. her war is just like Marvel’s war: it exists to showcase how badass characters are rather than to focus on how war impacts the world at large. and sure, not every single instance of war needs to show the nitty-gritty of it, the fucked up parts of it, the war crimes that take place (of which alien, in t0g, is guilty of imo), but when war is shown in 99% of popular media to be this romantic ideal in which you can fight the Big Bad and Always Win, Always Survive, there comes a problem. in k0a, there are armies with hundreds of thousands of soldiers but we never learn where those soldiers came from, how they’re all armed, how they have no problems feeding everyone, who trains them, where they go when war isn’t occurring, if there’s some judicial system in place to ensure that soldiers can’t just run amok and do whatever tf they want, and more. alien simply saunters out in gold armor (i will never get over this oh my god) and suddenly rallies everyone, despite the fact they literally wouldn’t know who tf she is, and wins the day, is crowned queen for Reasons, and is married to rowboat despite the fact he actually brings nothing to her or Terrasen (when, by all accounts, after a war she should be marrying someone who can actually help her country recover). i mean, a great example of how sj///m pads alien in plot armor is how, after alien is rescued from Maeve, she literally just sends letters to lords and ladies she’s never met, tells them that Maeve, their ruler, has tortured alien, and suddenly has their undying support. they’ve never met alien and have lived beneath Maeve’s rule for umpteen years. they have no reason to trust a word alien says, especially bc she doesn’t even send diplomats, at the very least, to their courts in order to sell her case. 

all of the above, though it might not seem like it, romanticizes war. it makes it seem like this easy thing that takes a month (and, by all accounts, it literally does take about a month or two in k0a. the entire series from t0g to k0a occurs in roughly two years: alien is 18 in t0g and 20 at the end of k0a; meanwhile, her adversaries are literally immortal and have been planning and enacting their takeover of Erilea for eons) to win and everything is hunky-dory afterward. we never see the fallout. we never focus on the shit bc it’s more fun to show cool stunts and write in vapid banter. war should be the very last option. i’m not a pacifist (i believe that Hitler, for instance, would not have been stopped had World War II not happened) but i’m also really tired of seeing war in fiction unless the author is willing to treat it with the respect it demands. for a good take, i recommend the Glass Alliance series by Joanna Hathaway. she’s a friend of mine who really knows what war is about (we actually talk about shit all the time, such as what happened in Iran yesterday), so she’s a great example :)

#ask #anonymous #anti sjm #anti tog

[funkymbtifiction]

You’ve mentioned taking this time away from blogging to understand MBTI and Enneagram better. Do you plan on doing some sort of “my updated views on type x” posts? I’m curious to know if there was any major change on how see and recognize each type.

Reading Lenore Thompson’s Personality Type book was a major breakthrough for me, in understanding the functions I don’t have – especially high Se, Si, and Ti. In the past, a lot of my understanding was gathered haphazardly from all over the place – from reading and trying to understand Jung (not easy) to reading other people’s stuff about it (some of it right, some of it wrong) – and the bad thing about online learning is that a lot of people who take an avid interest in personality typing are intuitives, which means they have zero understanding of what a sensing function looks like from the ‘inside.’ They will either attribute their own clumsy lower sensing function (which is often rigid, controlled, and weak) to a sensing type, which means their misunderstanding of it translates into traits and thinking processes that actual sensors cannot resonate with, because it is so NOT LIKE THEM (well, it wouldn’t be, coz an N wrote it!).

In that regard, it’s become much easier for me to identify Si-doms, due to their tendency to develop personalized expertise on something of avid interest to them – the ‘learner of all, master of none’ is a Ne trait, the ‘I happen to be the world’s leading expert on [insert thing here]’ is a Si trait. Jackie Robinson, being an expert on baseball, and that being something that absorbed his entire life, was decidedly a Si-dom trait; being an expert on ancient mythology and turning his own personal experiences into fantasy was Tolkien’s Si-dom fascination; etc. If you look around you, you’ll see this tendency a lot in Si-doms. Some particular thing strikes a chord with them, whether it is Disney or old movies or golf or stamp collecting or the Revolutionary War, and little by little they become an ‘expert’ simply because they have read more about it, and studied more about it, and thought more about it, and been absorbed for years by it, than anyone else.

Se-doms were always a mystery to me, and it did not help that I had been misinformed about Si vs Se methods of learning styles. I knew Se-doms were hands-on learners, but not how bodily they can adjust while doing something in order to gain a better result the next time – it’s instinctive for them. THEY are the people who actually respect the most an ‘expert’s’ HANDS ON knowledge. So if a Si type reads a book on scuba diving, they may feel equipped to scuba dive; a Se will want to talk to someone who has been scuba diving, and hear what it is like – the currents, the jolt of adrenaline, what they did in a crisis moment, and then they will want to do it, and learn AS they are adjusting to the environment. Viewing them as thrill-seeking hedonists does them a disservice, because their bodily awareness is absolutely jaw-dropping insanely incredible – they can just ‘lose themselves’ in things. For hours. Being TOTALLY in the present.

Ti is still so foreign to my own thinking I find it harder to grasp, but figuring out a Ti ‘figures out things while they are doing them’ did help me a bit – because I can look at the high Ti’s in my life and see that’s true. In fact, they will say they’ll ‘figure it out once they get there.’ I’ll have to read the Ti-dom chapter several more times to get the full grasp of it, because I can’t anchor it yet to any clear objective examples.

You’ve probably noticed some characters have changed type since I moved them over to the wordpress blog. That will probably continue to happen, as going through and saving old characters has forced me to evaluate whether this character actually fits the patterns established based on my new understanding. Some intuitives have become sensors, because I realized they were never Ne’s at all; some sensors have become intuitives, because there’s nothing hands-on-learning about their approach to life, it’s all whimsical Ne. Some characters, I’ve realized that I wasn’t sure about, are now SJs because of their Si tendencies. Etc. I didn’t get them all right, and I am still not getting them all right, but over time I hope to be more accurate and concise and not rush as much to reach a firm conclusion. It’s a fault of my own high Ne/low Te that I am not as meticulous as I should be in gathering and providing evidence.

Enneagram-wise, I’ll shoot straight with you. Probably because I am a 6, it is very hard to split my focus and analyze multiple things or characters at the same time. I want to focus on one person or task, since I am used to doing that. So trying to think about cognition and behaviors and separate that from their motives / what they want (Enneagram, and figure out “Okay… so the emphasis on ‘doing the right thing’ is actually because this person is a Fi-dom and NOT a 1…’ is… hard. Sometimes so hard that I will watch something once, to get their MBTI type down, and then watch it again thinking ONLY about the Ennagram. But of course, with long serials I don’t have that luxury. I don’t have another 10 hours to spend on this. Sometimes, a character’s Enneagram comes through loud and clear, and sometimes I don’t have a clue so I make my best guess. I am still reading and re-reading and studying the Enneagram and learning it as best I can, but since I am much newer at it than at MBTI, my conclusions are not always as firm on characters with dubious intentions / motives / sloppy writing.

When I type, I am sort of paying attention to everything all at once, and trying to keep track of all the characters (or just the leads, if I know no one cares about the side characters) and if I get stuck on the Enneagram, I yank out the cards I made with the basic traits / an image of a notable character of that type and play the comparison game. I keep a mental record of ‘things against this type’ – in short, I look for these things in characters:

1s: anal, responsible, duty-driven, can be harsh or refuse to make allowances

2s: warm, inviting, receptive, helpful, desperate for love, can be manipulative

3s: self-confident, ambitious, driven, out of touch with self, can be braggarts

4s: highly emotional (expressive or not relies on wing), deep, melancholic, focused on what they don’t have vs. what they do, can be self-absorbed / emo

5s: self-trusting in their own logic, ruthlessly logical, arrogant, lives minimally, can be misers and/or refuse to participate in society itself

6s: suspicious, distrustful, cautious, but also funny / eager for others to like them, suffers self-doubt and at times, paranoia or anxiety about significant other

7s: witty, full of banter, doesn’t like to be tied down, escape artists, distracts people off things they don’t like through humor, can be irresponsible

8s: strong will, unafraid of anyone else, domineering, can be argumentative or needlessly push others in the story to get what they want

9s: mild-mannered, receptive, sweet, hates conflict / lets others have their way, can be too passive and/or their plot line suffers from a lack of ‘agency’

If stuck, I compare as to who this character is more like, ‘in that way.’ It helps.

Character examples for comparison: 1 Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), 2 Mike Wheeler (Stranger Things), 3 P.T. Barnum (The Greatest Showman), 4 Rose de Witt Bukater (TITANIC), 5 Sherlock Holmes (the books), 6 Brett Maverick (from the Mel Gibson movie; the original James Garner Maverick is a healthy social 8w9), 7 Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls), 8 Princess Leia (Star Wars), 9 Beth March (Little Women).

- ENFP Mod

#question #enneagram #mbti #submission

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I was a little anxious about posting (8 pages of) the final part of the post today because I'm worried it might be too "meta" about tumblr (I don't care if it is), but it's mostly just an in-depth explanation of the scientific background behind the term "social justice warrior," which is true in the way that "science says" that phrase can mean (I was looking for this phrase when I made that post).

The post is very embarrassing, but also very topical because of the recent flamewar I was ambivalent about in the comments regarding a new book (like this or this). I don't want to get in another tumblr argument like those but I do want to say some of the things I was bothered by.

The basic problem is this: the term "SJ" was invented specifically to refer to a specific cluster in the category "social justice warriors," and it did so before we had much idea how this cluster would relate to the concepts co-occurring in Big Social Science; Big Social Science is dumb, and it tries and fails to be everything to everybody. So it's easy for people on the outside to say things like "SJW (or 'anti-SJW,' whatever) is a stupid term, it refers to nothing," and this is bad because people who think that way tend to have a very negative stance towards the term "SJW" in general, and it's not the kind of thing you can just ignore, because it sticks around and is an obstacle to clear communication.

The way this obstacle manifests is that it's hard to just switch to another term in most cases without seeming to dislike the concept of people who are too confrontational and too critical of prevailing social arrangements. It's almost like there's something in the terminology which has the potential to be all of "the people associated with SJ" or "those who worry that SJ, and perhaps social injustice generally, is wrong." There aren't, as you might expect, feminist anti-SJ people, or libertarian anti-SJ people, or left-wing anti-SJ people – the closest thing there is, as far as I can tell, is "criticizing prevailing social arrangements; person who is confrontational and critical of prevailing social arrangements – it's the worst of many unknowns here".

Can anyone think of a good alternative? "SJW, or antifa" doesn't really work because "antifa" can refer to more than one groups. If people just keep saying "SJW" and never bringing up any specifics, then what? It's a bad reference for someone wondering what the heck I mean by "SJW." It doesn't give anyone new information they didn't already know ("anti-SJW exists" vs. "antifa exists"). It's just like saying "SJW means everybody who is confrontational and critical of prevailing social arrangements."

Moving away from the hostility and probably worse on both sides (tonight's discussion involved angry accusations, then calm reassurances, then accusations – bringing the whole thing up would have been too risky) but assuming that happened I hope there would be some new terms and not just people quoting each others' terms ad nauseam. The whole problem I'm talking about is that the terms are not only ambiguous, but also poorly settled. There are a bunch of people using the term "anti-SJ" and a bunch of people using the term "social justice warrior" who seem to be competing to see who can look most outraged first and both of these have the negative effects I'm worried about.

So what am I hoping for here? Well, at the very least I'd like people to pick some new terminology that hasn't been corrupted by memes about the previous term (it's been years, the new term has hopefully come into it's own) and use it consistently. #NotYourShield is a set of hashtags started by someone in a specific situation and with a specific goal in mind, #YesAllWomen is a wildly misapplied term used to cover things that actually fall under "not all women" and #YesAllMen is used to cover all negative aspects of men no matter how necessary they are to understand how terrible society views them (and what this looks like, politically, when men talk about being viewed with suspicion and being viewed as potential predators).

The reason I feel like such a failure is my inability to just say "oh I forgot this one was around" is that, if I had to explain what the heck I was thinking, I'd have to admit "I don't really understand what's going on here, I'm just emotionally invested in being a part of this thing and don't know what the heck I'm supposed to be doing"

[2ya2yao]

I feel like for Heechul, the fact that he's over thirty is definitely a blow against him in the eyes of all these fake woke GG stans, because to them any man who's past their twenties is immediately a predator and should stay the fuck away from their precious uwu baby girls (despite the fact that many of these girl groups are actually around the same age or older than the actual fans). Smh.

THIS!

T H I S!

T H I S!

Thank you so much, anon! And also, fake stans act like Heechul is like 80 years old, and noooo. They have like 13 years of difference (which is pretty normal nowadays so why you surprised? do you live under a fucking rock?), and they're adults in a consensual relationship, nobody is forcing anyone. And not only gg stans are like that, some bg stans are like this too! Or multis and mostly new gen stans, and is so fucking annoying and disgusting that when it comes to sj they basically shitting on them for stuff they said/did the last decade, when they even apologized for it. And people change, you know? We all make mistakes, but they're not forgetting it because they're not their faves. They can't even breath because they're talking shit about them.

And I'm dropping this here

because it's so damn sad that still there are also some immature gg stans (and also elf, you're not getting safe out of this one, nah bc you're fucking jealous over nothing or making fake assumptions) that don't like to see them near gg or girls in general, because they become predators instantly. Your girls can take care of themselves because they're grown up women, just like me and millions of women all over the world.

The fact that you're infantilizing them shows how disgusting you are, like we don't need anyone to take care of ourselves. And like we all needed your fucking opinions and points of view as well. Guess what? We don't, and surely Momo doesn't and your faves doesn't because it's their private life and you don't know them personally. Just support them and stop being so fucking annoying!!!

#I'm so fucking maaaad #and the fact that their faves also admire sj is like #bro #they made your faves #did you know that first and second gen made your fucking faves #?????? #and some 3rd #but y'all keep fighting and throwing hate everywhere over nothing #and the artists just chill and are even close friends #sit down already #you're not fans #you don't deserve to be called fANS #!!!!!! #im not sorry #I wish we could all enjoy the music #but hell no #sometimes I couldn't even look at some gg bc it just reminded me of their fucking annoying and hateful fans #and I learned to not do it now #but it's difficult you know #bc it's the face that u give from them #so don't complain about haters either #some of u did the work so- #I'm not sorryyyyy #and also #suju is not going to marry you either elfff #grow uppppp #you don't know them #stop being jealous!!!! #and fucking support suju in their comebacks #bc that's the least you doooo

[stardust-falling]

Having more thoughts about Shen Jiu because of course I am.

I don’t think he has the capacity for empathy or genuine selflessness.

He spent the entirety of his formative years deep in survival mode, and because of that, he evaluates people solely based off of how they might threaten or ensure his safety and/or comfort. As far as individual people themselves with their own perspectives… honestly I don’t think he even thinks of that.

Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don’t think even YQY is exempt.

Shen Jiu doesn’t have a moral code. When every day is spent on surviving, a moral code is a luxury.

And really, he just never got out of that mode. See, the thing is, once you’ve had enough adverse experiences it only takes a little bit to trigger you back into that mindset. Shen Jiu was used to being scolded and then beaten or abused, so for him, even a simple chiding is a precursor to abuse— even if he DOES recognize that nothing more will happen, his body and mental patterns will still go into that preparation time.

So of course he never left survival mode, because even if nothing is actively happening, your mind will keep reinforcing those patterns.

For someone with a normal upbringing, as far as I can tell, empathy is something you learn and develop from those around you. Many seem to think it’s something innate and natural and if you don’t have it then there’s something wrong with you from birth. I think Shen Jiu falls into exactly this category of thought— and so he doesn’t even consider that he could try to learn and develop it as a skill he can perform, even if it doesn’t come naturally.

Of course, would he even try? He hasn’t been given any incentive. Any time he has tried to do something good, he ends up getting hurt (saving Yue Qi leading to being taken by QJL) or misinterpreted and admonished (the well ghost incident, keep in mind my earlier point about scoldings perpetuating the same patterns).

So he stays in that same vicious cycle, perpetually in survival mode and unable to escape, even in a relatively secure position (see: his paranoia).

Now, this is all relevant to the discussions of SJ’s feminism, misogyny, and/or lack thereof. I feel like a lot of discussions aren’t really getting the full picture.

SJ sees people, no matter who they are, as solely how they can affect him. Just because this isn’t exclusive to women, or because if comes from a reasonable place, does that really mean it doesn’t play into misogyny?

Let’s take another angle.

I think his abuse of LBH and other talented disciples also is rooted, deep down, in this same issue. He’s not just hurting LBH only to hurt him, his aim is specifically to stunt his cultivation. There’s jealousy at play there of course, but there’s a bit more layers to it too— SJ doesn’t think he’s capable of goodness. So reasonably, he’ll be a bad teacher. He already knows what happens when someone becomes more powerful than their oppressor. LBH may be a child now, but a part of SJ whether he acknowledges it or not sees him as a future threat that needs to be treated as such.

It’s rooted in fear— because everything is with SJ.

So does that mean it’s not actually abuse?

No. The behaviors he shows are still abusive, the reasoning just gives a lens for understanding.

Now, with his views on women— I mentioned in the tags of my original post that I don’t think he views women as people. This is based in that earlier idea of how he interprets others based off their risk and benefit to him. For women specifically, though, there’s another layer.

Shen Jiu grew up in a society where women are inherently lesser— and he grew up in an extreme version of this. He saw women being treated as property firsthand(both as slaves, as well as QJL’s views on his sister). Your worldview is shaped by the world that you view during those early years. Whether he agreed or not, SJ would still take on the patterns of his environment. This, though, is just the same as general societal misogyny and ingrained bias. I don’t think he’s any different than anyone else in this way.

But where SJ’s particular flavor comes in is that to him, women are a source of comfort. For various reasons— positive past experiences, less threatening (or at least don’t carry the dangers men do). He craves comfort— needs it really, because he doesn’t get it and his cortisol levels are always so high they’re poisoning his body. Women are the best source of that comfort for him.

It’s not that he likes them— at least, not any more than someone would like drinking water, or a coat in the winter. They’re fulfilling a survival need for him.

That is what the objectification is where SJ is concerned.

So… is it misogyny?

I’d say yes, in a way it still is. It’s not violent, and it doesn’t come from some inherent sense of “superiority as a man” but at the core of it all, he’s still not viewing women as people, and he has no interest in changing the status quo, because it benefits him to be able to go purchase comfort at a pleasure house, even if it’s not what people usually do there. The picture is bigger than just misogyny, but the traits taken as themselves are misogynistic nonetheless.

I could go into his specific relationships with women and how that informs his character, but this post is already long enough. We know that he mentally divides people by sex, and that distinction has a lot of weight in his judgment of them. Even if it comes from a place of trauma, even if it comes from a general worldview that applies to everyone, he still views women as a commodity— so on some level, and from an outside perspective, he is misogynistic.

In the end, though, it still all comes from him being stuck in survival mode. His lack of empathy, his viewing others as risks and benefits— these things themselves aren’t moral failings— it’s just a consequence of his environment. He’s a bad person because he won’t confront this, develop a moral code, and act on it, not because he doesn’t experience empathy.

But in his circumstance, there’s not really a chance for him to choose to be good. Because he’s still trying to survive, and goodness is a luxury he doesn’t realize he can afford now.

He’s scum, but pitiful, you know?

#svsss #svsss meta #zhuixing meta #shen jiu #listen I’ve been through a lot of shit and I project on this dude a lot #so ymmv on how you interpret the character but this is just how I see him #and honestly that’s ok! characters aren’t people so everyone can interpret them differently and they CAN be different from person to person #but also… I think the ‘is sj misogynistic’ answer really comes down to what you consider misogyny #is it the motives or the actions 等等 #I think the way it affects those around him is most important and therefore yes he is #but others may say the source is too different and the motives are different #and tbh other views are valid #it’s a grey line area #anyway #none of the replies to my post really encapsulated the root to it as I see it #also before you come at me I literally AM the ‘no empathy and views people as risk vs benefit’ in the post #I just try really hard to have a moral code #and consciously think about not harming/helping others #sj is just someone who DOESNT do that

[leahazel]

7KPP MBTI - over-long and completely unedited meta

I’m just copy/pasting this from my notes software with no editing. If you’re brave enough to read the whole thing, more power to you. It’s about 3K words all in all.

I was in a doctor's waiting room this morning (I have the flu and I was waiting for a chest x-ray) and while I waited, I was thinking about some recent thoughts I had about D&F, and how they've changed my mind on some MBTI typings I've had for the 7KPP NPCs. I've been musing on the MBTI subject on and off for as long as I've been playing the game (first post here: https://leahazel.tumblr.com/post/126655090075/congratulations-on-the-kickstarter-also-if), and I've typed most of my own MCs and other OCs. In fact, for some of them, their MBTI and enneagram types are pretty central to their character arc.

But some characters are more well-developed than others, and some are quite difficult to type. And, of course, impressions are subjective. Since I'm fluish and too tired to actually write any fanfic (I have several unfinished), I might as well do a proper post of all my typings.

If I were at full strength, I'd so a whole resources section with links about what MBTI is and how it works. Since I'm not, I'll give the bare minimum background. MBTI is a personality typing system based on Jungian cognitive function theory. You can find everything from official descriptions written by professionals, to jokey quizzes and Tumblr memes, all over the internet. My favorite fannish MBTI account is @funkymbtifiction. I love their character typings and I rely on them for nuanced takes on the different types.

Without getting too much into my typing philosophy, here are the 7KPP NPCs, grouped somewhat arbitrarily.

Introverted sensing types

The four types marked SJ use the introverted sensing function as either their primary or auxiliary cognitive function. Stereotypically, Si-using types are hidebound, dutiful and traditional, reliable but also stubborn and rigid. Certainly unhealthy SJ types act like this a lot of the time. More mature, healthier people of the same types have access to all of Si's strengths -- an eye for detail, conscientious work ethic, a strong sense of honor -- while being aware of their weaknesses, and compensating for them.

ISTJ - Cordelia and Jasper are both ISTJ types. They share some of the same strengths and vulnerabilities. Both are very emotionally contained, but have difficulty expressing affection openly. At the same time, they have a strong moral compass and inner sense of right and wrong. This is typical of the Te/Fi function pair in the secondary/tertiary positions. Both of them have personal dilemmas and character journeys revolving around the tension between tradition and novelty. When frustrated or at a loss, they're prone to retreating into loops of rumination (Si-Fi loop), or spiraling into anxiety about future possibilities and everything that can possibly go wrong (inferior Ne). Cordelia is the more stable of the two. When we meet Jasper, he's already in the midst of a personal crisis. I suspect Sayra is also an ISTJ and generally write her with this type in mind, but not enough is known of her to pin her type down.

ISFJ - Penelope and Ria are both ISFJ types. Both of them are kind, gentle and helpful as ISFJs often (stereotypically) are, and are prone to putting other people's needs ahead of their own, as Fe-users often are. ISFJs thrive on the power of friendship and community, and excel at promoting harmony for the benefit of all. Disharmony, cruelty and rudeness make them anxious and upset, but they also possess hidden reservoirs of both fortitude and courage, especially in defense of others. As Si-users, they have a keen appreciation for the aesthetics of small, everyday details, and as Fe-users, they feel a strong need to put up a persona that reflects what others expect of them. When their desires are at odds with group harmony, they can struggle to assert themselves. Both Penelope and Ria have character arcs that show them to be strongly motivated by a sense of justice and fairness, being stronger than they initially appear to be, and willing to come into conflict with established mores when necessary.

ESTJ - General Falon is an ESTJ, and I believe he's the only one out of the characters I've named here (there are some characters that I don't feel I know enough about to type). As Falon is a minor character and not very well-developed, he adheres closely to ESTJ stereotypes and doesn't provide much nuance. He's driven by duty and honor and values tradition, hierarchy and efficiency. When driven out of his comfort zone he becomes easily flustered. He has a hard time seeing things from other people's point of view, is weak at diplomacy, and his discourse style lacks tact. Many traits that are typical of the extroverted thinking function.

ESFJ - Emmett and Lisle are both ESFJ types, and both pretty typical, although in slightly different ways. Here's the controversial part: I now think Jarrod is also an ESFJ, and I'll explain why, but I want to start with the simpler, more linear characterization.

ESFJ types use extroverted feeling as their leading cognitive function. It's a powerful emotional function that excels at both reading people's behavior and intentions, and reflecting that behavior back at them. Fe-dom types, when healthy, switch handily between personas appropriate to their surroundings, they know how to read the room's mood, and when they want to influence people, they know how to form an argument that's tailored to their conversation partner. On the downside, Fe-users can get lost in their masks or lose sight of their own goals, because they read other people's desires so readily. When supported by Si, introverted sensing, their desire for stability and continuity can hinder them from considering the possibilities of positive change. They can be cautious to a fault. Lisle is a typical ESFJ and his difficulty in opening up about negative emotions can be attributed his the Fe-driven desire to promote social harmony above all. Emmett does not initially seem like an SJ type or a J type at all, because judging types are not usually perceived as being as open-minded and easy-going as he is. This however is more of an adaptation to the circumstances his family life thrust him into, not by his own decision, and Emmett several times expresses a desire for a more stable home and family life.

Now, about Jarrod. On the face of it, his behavior is more consistent with a thinking type than a feeling type. He has no patience for anything soft or tender, he's quite aggressive and demanding, comfortable handing out orders. These are behaviors associated especially with extroverted thinking, which would make one think he should be an ESTJ or ENTJ. Likely ESTJ, since he shows a clear preference for a stable subjective sensory environment, typical of an Si-user. In fact, I'd initially typed him as ESTJ and I was comfortable with that typing until recently. However! You can't type a character based only on a type's weaknesses. If he's really an ESTJ, he should have an ESTJ's strengths, too. Looking at General Falon, he might be hidebound and inflexible, but he's also hard-working, efficient, and has the kind of natural air of authority that's so useful to a general. Jarrod yells at servants, but struggles to get them to obey his orders. He's not very organized or efficient, and can't manage to wake up on time even with a battery of servants at his disposal. The only sphere he shows any discipline in at all is his physical training. He's... not very smart, and his week one dialogue shows a lack of basic strategic understanding, quite aside from being tragically ill-informed. Jarrod doesn't act like an ESTJ, he acts like someone trying to be an ESTJ and failing, badly.

In MBTI circles, a lot is made of statistics that show that thinking types are disproportionately men, and feeling types are disproportionately female. This affects a lot of people's self-typing, because it introduces bias. Gender norms in the 7KPP universe are based on our own, and while we haven't seen a lot of direct evidence of the idea that men are inherently more logical and less emotional than women... it's not implausible that this belief is just as common in the Seven Kingdoms as it is in reality. Jarrod's particular flavor of "rationality" looks a lot more like the rationalization of a feeling type, in the grip of his inferior thinking function. The Si/Ne function pair still fits, and so ESFJ is my conclusion. I would elaborate and say that the mimicking abilities  of extroverted feeling as a dominant function are especially suited to a young person attempting to emulate a stronger personality in order to gain acceptance and social cachet.

...Wow. That was long.

Extroverted sensing types:

SPs, sensing perceiving types, are very different from sensing judging types. The sensory cognitive function they use is extroverted, less subjective and personal than Si, more grounded in external reality. This makes them more flexible but also more disorganized. Part of the reason why so many cast members are Si-users is because the Summit itself is such a socially rigid environment, where perceiving types in general are less likely to fit in. Se-users especially are more impulsive and that's reflected well in the two main SP types in the cast, Hamin and Anaele. Both of them struggle with the strictures of the Summit's schedule and rigid behavioral codes, and are constantly seeking outlets for their enormous physical and social energy.

Aly has said explicitly that Hamin is an ESFP, and that tracks. His superficial behavior is driven overwhelmingly by the demands of the energetic Se function, which demands a lot of attention and forms most of his public persona, his reputation. His quieter, more hidden side is emotionally driven and has a strong moral core looking for an outlet, both in terms of his desire to do right in the world, and in terms of his strong interpersonal relationships. Subtler still, you can see the signs of his tertiary function, Te, in his leadership ability and his efficiency in accomplishing tasks -- as long as he deems them important enough to be worth his attention (Fi-Te). Thinking about the future makes him anxious, because his future-oriented inferior Ni function is weak and under-developed. That's the main thrust of his personal character arc.

I went back and forth on Anaele, but eventually typed her as an ESTP. ESTP and ESFP types can appear similar some of the time, simply because the leading function is so extroverted it can overwhelm the expression of the auxiliary function, especially in public. Ana's Ti function isn't always super obvious, but her tertiary Fe is evident in her constantly struggling with the idea of social consensus and social responsibility. Her reputation and the reputation of her warriors is important to her, as is Skalt's standing among the kingdoms and her standing with her mother. At the same time, she resents the need to fit in and to conform herself to other people's ideas about who she is and how she should behave. She also has some of the positive aspects of tertiary Fe, she can be charming and reassuring and supportive, and generally has a good grasp of how to influence the mood of the room, when she's willing to put in the effort. Her insistence on speaking with Skaltic cadences even though she knows they sound wrong to the speakers of the common language is exactly the kind of stubborn oppositional behavior typical of ESTPs who like to provoke a reaction, without necessarily thinking through what they're provoking.

Jaslen and Blain are also probably ESP types, but I'm not confident about their typing, at least not enough to pin a specific type.

Introverted intuition types:

NJ types are targets for all sorts of stereotypes and mystification in MBTI communities. In fiction, they often appear as extraordinary characters, world-changing types, great heroes or villains or even mentors. The Ni function is described as being big picture oriented, very abstract, intuitive and futuristic. Judging intuitives sometimes seem to be reaching for "a target no one else can see", which is probably why they're often seen as being intellectual or artistic geniuses. Or, at least, really good at faking it. NJ types in the 7KPP universe are usually characters who are hiding important secrets, mostly about things bigger than themselves. They're driven by great conviction and not easily derailed from their plans.

ENFJ: Aly has stated that this is her type and also Clarmont's type, and in fact a significant part of his characterization seems to revolve around it. Feeling types are more ethically-driven than thinking types, at least stereotypically, and Clarmont is not an exception. He has a vision for the future that he's willing to sacrifice for. He has deep convictions, but he's also able to dine and dance with his mortal enemies, without betraying his true thoughts or feelings. In fact, he so excels at hiding his intentions that the Matchmaker makes a point of remarking on it.

INFJ: Look, I know I just said that feeling types are ethical, but the prototypical INFJ in the 7KPP verse is Gisette. It's easiest to explain by contrasting her with Avalie. Both Gisette and Avalie show certain common traits: they are contained, composed, ambitious, manipulative, and unscrupulous. They both know how to pull people's strings and like peeking inside people's heads to see through to their true intentions. The difference is, the way they do it is different. Avalie is a thinking type, and she operates like a chess player. She sets people in scenarios that cause them to reveal themselves. Gisette is an INFJ, and her auxiliary function is extroverted feeling. To execute her grand vision (Ni), she manipulates people through social convention, using gossip to tear down reputations and carefully curating her own public image. Gisette's weak one event is absolutely typical of an amoral FE-user. She doesn't hesitate to use the power of social convention to position people according to her needs. He tertiary Ti function shines through in her tactical thinking skills, and her inferior Se function is apparent in her love of fashion, as well as her ability to pounce on opportunities when her carefully laid plans go awry.

As a side note, I believe that Countess Yvette is also an INFJ, but it's harder to gather evidence for it, since she has a fairly minor role, all in all.

INTJ: Avalie and Woodly are both INTJs. INTJ is often touted as the chessmaster type, and it makes perfect sense as a type for people who prefer pulling strings in the background, as opposed to openly passing out orders, like General Falon. Not much more to be said about that, except that the manifestation of INTJ functions can be affected by social convention. Avalie is an attractive young woman and Woodly is an older man who is much more socially established, and naturally this affects how agreeably they interact with others. Thinking types are not stereotypically known as being particularly polite or graceful, in the social sense. But, the introverted intuition function is very calculating, and the extroverted thinking function is results-driven. With time, a woman with a TJ type can learn to mimic behaviors that create the illusion of the feminine softness that's expected of her. Avalie in particular does this very well.

ENTJ: My second controversial typing, I insist that Zarad is an ENTJ. The persona he puts up is that of an ESFP, like Hamin, but as his opening narration says, no one whose reputation is that consistent can be exactly what he seems. Zarad's public persona, that of the careless flirt and black sheep, is a bit too much of a textbook description of an ESFP. It lacks the depth and nuance of Hamin's internal conflict. Putting up an elaborate facade for years on end is not something that an Fi-user, like an ESFP, is typically proficient in. A judging type is more likely to succeed at this, specifically either an Fe-dom or a Te-dom. The reason why I zeroed in on ENTJ for his true type, is that ENTJs and ESFPs have the same cognitive functions, but in a different stacking. This commonality would allow Zarad to more effectively access the thought process that would be typical of the type he's assuming -- it's all there under the surface, it's just not his natural, instinctual behavior. I also think part of the reason that he and Hamin collaborate so well is that they're not the same type, but rather they complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. The confounding factor is that the difference between Hamin and Zarad is not just in type, but in environment. Hamin definitely couldn't maintain the type of long-term deceit that Zarad engages in, but maybe an ESFP who was raised in the secretive and backstabbing Corvali imperial court could.

Extroverted intuitive function:

The only NP type in the cast, as far as I can tell, is Lyon. He is canonically an INTP, which Aly has confirmed is based on several of her family members. His introverted thinking function fixates on the idea of an internal, consistent and logical inner world, at the cost of interacting with the messy and subjective outer world. This causes him to rationalize emotional behavior patterns and close himself off. As part of his character arc, the auxiliary function of extroverted intuition opens up possibilities for him, because what Ne excels at most is offering up lots of alternative explanations based on existing parameters. For example, "what if not everyone hates me?" or, "what if sometimes things actually go right?" I'm being sarcastic about this because I'm an Ne-user myself, so I'm allowed.

Odds and ends:

Minor characters like Imogen and Mrs. White don't have types, because we don't know them well enough. Specifically, we don't get to contrast their typical, healthy behavior with their behavior under stress. Kade, Leala and Greer don't yet have types or enough characterization for typing, but based on my intuition and what I've learned about Aly's writing, I have preliminary predictions. Leala is probably an ESFP like Hamin. Greer is most likely an INTP, or else possibly an ISTJ or even ESTJ. I would guess that she's an introvert, but as her leading function is definitely a thinking one (as her blunt speaking style reveals), Te-dom is also a possibility. Kade is a bit of a wild card, but I'm placing bets on either ISTP or ENTP, just for the sake of novelty.

Among my own problem princesses, I have an assortment of at least three quarters of the types. Least represented are the FP types, excepting Princess Felicity, who's an ENFP, and widow Selene, who's an ISFP. If you add in the supporting OCs, they really run the gamut.

#7kpp #7kpp spam #mbti #characterization #meta #word vomit #flu and fanfic season 2020 #hazel is self indulgent

[fierceawakening]

Also... I don’t remember the details of Scott’s post, so I may be misremembering important bits here, but one question I have is what it’s meant to cover.

Like. I get it for political debates. Like take a feminist and a manosphere member. (I have a definite opinion on which of these I think is more right, but am writing this neutrally to express a point.)

Both of these people believe themselves to be oppresrsed. Both believe that society is structured to favor the group they’re not in, so both view the claims “no, women/men are the oppressed ones, so equity means give more resources and support to us, not you!” with deep skepticism if not outright hostility and bitterness.

As I understand Scott’s labels, “conflict theory” is the idea that one of these is right and the other is just wrong, and that the proper resolution is to act on the principles of the one who is right, and that the one who is wrong will either adapt or be bitter, but that isn’t our problem, because they’re wrong. One side is good and the other is evil.

So in SJ circles (to which I am broadly sympathetic), this means that the manosphere guy is losing power he once had and sees that as “oppression” when it’s actually “making things more even,” and he just needs to deal with it. He’s wrong and it matters that he’s wrong. We don’t have to please someone who is wrong.

Where “mistake theory” (I think?) is the idea that these people are at odds at least in part because they don’t understand one another. They don’t fully understand that the other person believes themself to be oppressed, and believes bad experiences in their life to be a part of a crushing and demoralizing pattern. So what they should do is talk to one another and understand one another’s point of view, on the theory that this will Ultimately lead them each to understand the other’s wants and needs and compromise.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that online leftism doesn’t do enough of this, and to the idea that the radical right is in some ways becoming more and more extreme in response. I think that’s part of what’s going on.

But my question is this: how much are these concepts meant to cover? Again, I could just be misremembering Scott here, but it seems like sometimes, “conflict theory’ may be unavoidable.

For example: the other day I was watching some videos on YouTube that described the allegations of abuse against Marilyn Manson. And one thing that struck me was they described, among many other things, the idea that he would assume disloyalty of some kind on the part of his partner, and some of the alleged abusive behavior was described as a means to “prove you love me.”

I’m not entirely sure if the assumed betrayal was infidelity, but I know that many abusive people do make that assumption. Go through social media, partners’ phones, etc. looking for evidence of affairs.

And the thing is, often this is not the case. It’s something the abuser assumes or decides is happening, whether or not the partner has cheated.

And in a case like that, how would we apply “mistake theory?” The idea is, from what I understand, get yeh parties together and have the, hear each other out. But if we’ve established that one party believes false th8ngs even in the face of evidence, then it seems to me at least like we know that no compromise can be Reached. BecUse one party can and will make up, or trick themself into believing, violations of the contract.

Which implies that at least in SOME cases we need both models. Sometimes someone is actually just wrong, even if their pain or fear is understandable.

[liskantope]

A response to Aella’s essay “The Responsibility Narrative”

I initially planned to quickly link to this piece @aellagirl put up a few days ago just to highlight it as a piece of writing containing ideas that I’ve tried to express for a while (longer-time followers know that the whole agency/responsibility topic is right up my alley) and to thank her for expressing them so much more elegantly and from a much more powerful point of view. Then I noticed a bunch of points I wanted to pick apart a bit (while I overall really like this post there are some places where I think she goes a bit further than I do or just want to respond to in other ways). Also, it seems that she turned comments off for that post or something, so I guess this post is my way of dropping a (very long and slightly erratic) comment under hers while at the same time linking my Tumblr followers to her piece and providing a response.

I’ll start by saying that I really envy the author’s writing skills, in the sense that Aella seems to have an uncanny ability to put forth highly controversial theses that many would take offense to in an eloquent, concise, and direct manner (I might even go as far as to say “blunt”), and yet manages to do this in a way that facilitates in the audience opening one’s mind and listening rather than taking offense or feeling attacked. This is something I’ve noticed for a long time in her writing. An example is her piece on monogamists rejecting polyamory out of fear, where her thesis is one that I strongly disagree with and may well have responded to with resentment if it had been displayed by any other writer. I wish I knew how to emulate this. From time to time I argue positions that are controversial and potentially threatening or angering to some, but in my writing there’s all this hemming and hawing and insertions of softening qualifications and so on which can often make those essays look like sloppy messes by comparison in which my central point is nearly lost amid all the carefulness.

As for the actual content, first of all, I’m always happy to see someone else writing things like this:

Responsibility is weird. Ultimately there’s no free will and agency is a trick of the light, but we seem to have particular rules for when and where we throw responsibility at something. Sometimes we throw responsibility at the environment, and sometimes at the person.

...and I’m especially happy to see this (as most people in my vicinity have seemed to shy away from describing the Left vs. Right divide in this way or agreeing with me when I did):

Responsibility placement seems to occur along political divides, too. Conservatives see everyone holding their own glowing ball of responsibility, while liberals see the responsibility in the environment and the cruel, unchangeable past.

Aella’s views on how we assign free will (or responsibility, which after all is treated by most as equivalent to free will) in practice is the same view as mine and seems to be pretty much the universally-agreed-upon way forward on the pragmatic side, at least judging from the (admittedly very limited) set of people whose writing on that question I’ve read. I wish there were a way to translate that pragmatic solution to a metaphysical one that we could all agree on -- I think my solution is to say that “free will” is just a word that we have no choice but to define according to the pragmatic solution because any attempts at a more “cosmic” definition are in fact meaningless. Perhaps Aella would differ by emphasizing the term “responsibility” in place of where I used “free will” in the sentence above, as after all she does call free will nonexistent and agency “a trick of the light” -- that view seems equivalent to mine for pretty much all means and purposes, though.

And as for “if someone is very lazy, shouting at them to be less lazy sometimes works”, well yes, although a key word there is “sometimes”.

Then we get to the much more controversial thesis of the essay, which is initially presented with “In my old society, men were formally and strongly given the glowing ball of responsibility... [which] sucked bad enough that I don’t think being a woman was worse than being a man.” On first reading, I’m pretty sure I misread that last bit to instead say, “I don’t think being a woman was as bad as being a man”. When just now I read the phrase correctly, my eyebrows didn’t raise quite as high as before, but they’re still raised a little bit. Because while I’m really glad that the author is presenting this alternative view and wish more people could be exposed to it and take it seriously, I still lean fairly strongly towards believing that on the whole it was still better to be a man.

(In this and what follows, I do want to point out that the author is considerably more qualified than I am to speculate on such things given her experience as a woman who actually grew up imprisoned in an ultra-conservative community; however, let me offer my own speculation based on my general impression of how humans react to power and responsibility.)

The author comes across to me as emphasizing the seductiveness of believing that fault lies not in oneself but in the environment while seeming to ignore the potentially negative effects of such a belief, or equivalently, the benefits of feeling a sense of personal responsibility. Yes, the essay highlights the (very obvious) benefits of having power, thus drawing a rough equivalence between the benefits of power and the benefits of not being assigned responsibility in a society where men hold most of the power and most of the responsibility, but I’m talking about how the holding responsibility part comes with psychological benefits along with the psychological disadvantages. Namely, in my view and in my experience, feeling a sense of responsibility is empowering, while feeling a lack of responsibility or agency is certainly easier in many ways but also comes with a sense of weakness and helplessness that can create a lot of depressed feelings. As I remember reading once in an advice article (whose title and author I don’t remember), “It’s easy to be miserable.” In the context of that article, I think its author was trying to say that a lot of misery arises from a failure to take responsibility, which is seductive because of how easy it is... but of course, due to the being miserable part, that deal definitely isn’t better than one where one feels empowered through the weight of responsibility to not have to be so miserable.

(Rereading what I’ve written here the following day, my words in the above paragraph look like contradictory nonsense in the context of the essay I’m responding to: it may sound like I’m saying “Aella is wrong to equate the benefits of lesser responsibility with the benefits or greater power, because carrying lesser responsibility also comes with the disadvantage of having lesser power.” But this is because I’m struggling to make a clear distinction in words between power in the sense of institutional power or authority to make decisions -- the power that Aella refers to -- and the feeling of personal empowerment in the sense of being able to tolerate or withstand adversity. I’m saying that a direct negative consequence of not carrying the ball of responsibility is a feeling of personal weakness that comes with it, which is fairly separate from the fact that lesser responsibility tends to be correlated with less society-bestowed power. Perhaps I’m slightly confounded here by viewing everything primarily through the lens of modern times, where differences in concrete society-bestowed power have mostly disintegrated and a lot of the oppression that activists complain about boils down to some adversity being intolerable mental-health-wise. Not sure if this edited-in aside clarifies my position or makes it even more muddled.)

This is not to say that in practice people don’t choose the less-responsibility route far more often than taking the glowing ball of responsibility. They do, I believe increasingly as our society becomes more socially progressive, and the younger generations recently seem to be embracing a norm of doing it more than ever. And that’s in large part because in a certain sense, it is the easier path. But that doesn’t mean they’re better off psychologically for it. Here let me try my hand at saying something potentially offensive very concisely and directly *deep breath*: the people I know who are most committed to shooing away that ball of responsibility -- the “environment-changers” as Aella might call them or the low-agency-goggle-wearers as I might call them -- the ones who go to the most extreme deep end in that direction tend on the whole to be the most bitter and frustrated, the most terrified of life in general, and the least emotionally or psychologically healthy people I’ve known, to an extent that I don’t think can fully be directly explained by the disadvantages that were handed to them.

As for Aella’s observation that on average men tend to have a more high-agency mentality while women tend to have a more low-agency one... yes, this has certainly occurred to me although I don’t think I’ve ever noted it in writing -- for some reason, I hesitate to feel fully convinced. I still lean towards claiming that the tribe one belongs to is a bigger factor here than gender, but it certainly makes sense that gender is a factor, and her observation does jive with my experience.

Now we get to the part about the Gillette ad, and again I can’t bring myself to go as far as the essay does. I should probably write another post describing a fuller reaction to the ad. As a response to the essay, I would argue that the author is making a point I strongly agree with about modern feminism in general (perhaps it can be applied to some other wings of SJ but far less so since for most other axes of oppression the reality really is something much closer to members of one group directly oppressing the members of another), but that the Gillette ad is not really a great example of this.

I understand “toxic masculinity” in this context to refer to certain behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity that are harmful but still encouraged or normalized for men in our culture. I agree that the ad places responsibility for fixing toxic masculinity solely on men and that this is an overly-simplistic judgment (although to some extent a statement that brief has to be simplistic). I also have some of my own issues with the ad. But sometimes the solution to overturning a cultural norm for a particular group really does almost exclusively rest on the shoulders of that group.

Aella states near the end of the essay, “Women reinforced gender roles just as much, if not more, than the men did.” My personal impression is a variant of this: I think it always has been and continues to be the case that women are the primary enforcers of female gender roles (including some of the most oppressive ones to live under) while men are the primary enforcers of male gender roles. In other words, gender roles are policed most heavily among one’s own gender group. That would imply in this case that many of the traditionally-male behaviors brought up in the ad -- physical aggression, sexual harassment, objectification of women and so on -- are reinforced in men primarily by other men. This strongly jives with my personal experience: it’s never been girls and women in my life who shamed me for not being fiercely competitive about something or for not picking fights or for not being aggressive enough at approaching women for dating/sex. In my life, it’s almost exclusively other guys that have. Of course I’m not saying that these masculine norms are entirely not enforced by women -- in particular, objectification of women arguably is perpetuated on a certain level by some subset of the female population. But I think by and large women tend to promote values for everyone of all genders which are the opposite of the uglier traditionally-masculine norms: diplomacy, sensitivity, gentleness, and so on.

And one corollary of men being the main perpetrators of “toxic masculinity” behavior among fellow men is that the most effective way to push things in the opposite direction is for men to start pushing other men away from these behaviors (”Not cool, dude!”). Which is exactly what the Gillette ad is preaching.

#Gender Roles #high vs. low agency goggles #feminism #toxic masculinity #gillette ad

[alicedrawslesmis]

personal and non-cohesive (uncohesive? incohesive?) thoughts about Brazilian politics and history: it turned out to be about the experience of existing in the western periphery I guess

this ended up incredibly long and way too personal, maybe a tad corny

do not proceed unless you want to take a peak at how my brain works, it may distress you

well... obviously there is a chance we'll have an authoritarian contradictory ultra-far-right poverty-hating confused scum-of-the-earth literal-garbage-can-mouth pro-gun against-abortion-and-women's-rights against-life ultra-liberal ultra-evangelical misogynistic falsely-meritocratic racist-ass proudly-ignorant president elected this year. When that happens we can kiss goodbye to all the certainties brought on by this our young democracy that was at least trying! to bring about equality! a little!

~this sounds awfully pessimistic - only because I'm angry-typing and I am PMSing on top of it all - but bare with me a little, give me a little break

Actually scratch that first statement. Bozo will win. Because that's what kind of a country this is. That's not to say this is a bad country or a backwards country or anything like that (I don't even believe there are such things as backwards countries anyway, since that implies history is a steady climb towards a better version of the world, and that's bullshit. Sorry my man Enjolras, I still love you tho). There are moments, of tension and distension, where crises lead to loss and anger, which leads to the dark side, which lead to pointing blame, which leaves space for opportunists to rise to power and then comes euphoria, then regret and finally grief. Until things calm down and allow room for negotiations and for that little while things seem easy and we can breathe before the next wave. That's what history is, waves. You can't really say a wave goes up or down, only the swimmer.

We are a portuguese colony that never had an emancipation, and has always lived in the periphery of great powers.

On the one hand: american culture was systematically silenced in favor of an imitation of "civilised" culture (including all the so-called forward-thinking individuals) (again, 'forward'. As if the people who think the way I do are the Right and everyone else is 'backwards' and ignorant. See what I mean?). We read from Proust to Harry Potter, we have access to all sorts of diversity of culture from within the - let's call it 'western canon', that does not include us nor was it made with us in mind as readers and comes from a totally different point of view. I remember some sj discourses about inclusion and race that are repeated exactly the same way by our movements whether or not they make sense on our conditions. We repeat discourse that doesn't apply because that is what came out of this whole colonial experiment.

To be less vague and generalising, our elite is mainly made up of white people. These rich white elites have never entirely belonged here. They (we! actually it's me too) are colonisers or immigrants. We see Brasil as an intermediate state between birth and, if we work hard and pray enough, our ascension to Europe or Miami. Specifically Miami for some reason. Idk why. I don't even like Miami but there we are. I myself am Italian/Portuguese/that brazilian mix of ethnicities that I can't quite pinpoint, and I spent most of my childish days looking outwards to what we apparently lack, instead of what we are creating right here, right now. As did most, if not all, of my colleagues.

My first teacher to question that dynamic to us (Luis Carlos, bless you my friend) ironically taught me portuguese lit when I was 15. Coincidentally he was my first black teacher. Ever. I live in Brasil, and he was the first black person I had a long-lasting relationship with who wasn't a maid, or a nanny, or a driver. Luis opened my eyes to a lot of things. He was aggressive, sometimes even abusive. He didn't seem to enjoy being the literature teacher to a bunch of private-school white teenagers which is understandable. But mainly he made me see the sheer percentage of books in any given bookstore here that are foreign in origin. And the vast majority of those that are brazilian are imitating european/US american books. And most of the books left are about trying to walk the fine line of who we are as a nation and as a culture, american, african and european. The rest are cookbooks (just kidding).

But I mean I get it! In come the white portuguese with their books and their values, and they settle here, right (read invade, but that's another topic of discussion) They establish a government here, still get their european education and so on. Soon the find their values don't apply here, just because it's not the same as Europe. Warmth is bad, there are only two seasons, rainy and dry, the sun is your enemy. Sexuality and the nuclear husband-wife family are wildly out of place. Natives know the land, they work with nature and not against it, they live in a sort of ecological balance with their surroundings. Worse even. They don't think they need to dominate nature. The very basis for western ideology means nothing to them. Science and math and medicine and all the traditional western knowledge is useless, "superstition" runs rampant (what they usually call superstition is mostly just the lack of separation between nature and humanity as concepts but anyway), the plants are lush, the animals docile, insects are big and colourful and the land is "unexplored" (read, there is no human occupation of the land as they know it).

Slowly they make the land theirs. They build a version of their home here. They clean off the insects, (and yes they bring in western aesthetics to the mix). They build giant monoculture farms. It still doesn't fit, but they are keen on it fitting, so the rich isolate themselves from the other populations on a miniature imitation of Europe, with walls around them, and they allow for some other people to come in and help keep their micro-civilisation up. The poor white population that can't afford isolation blame their surroundings because what they consider right and wrong doesn't fit. They indoctrinate the people they dominate to believe nature is something exterior that needs to be tamed, and that any other way is primitive, 'outdated' (the future is dominating your surroundings). The people of mixed origin hate their ancestry and their non-white peoples don't take them in.

In come the slaves. They take foreigners as slaves because they don't know the land or the social organisation, they mix different ethnicities and languages so the slaves can't communicate with each other and keep from rebelling. Slavery of african peoples brings mountains of profit to Portugal so there really is no downside for them as far as african slavery goes. The people from Africa that they kidnap are also indoctrinated in christian values because it brings a sort of hope that suffering has a purpose in a way that keeps them from rebelling. Also Christianity is everywhere, and they are exposed to it constantly - as the only form of organised religion allowed. Like, rituals of african origin are permitted as long as they are performed in christian holidays, to christian saints, and things like that.

Some people fight back, but it's mostly localised and isolated. Some of them do organize and build communities outside of portuguese reach. A lot of people brought in as slaves were more well read and intellectualised then their kidnapers, but they were shut up by force. Muslims united in their religion and they had a stronger bond to fight back. All of this to keep that sort of illusion of a micro-Europe being built in a completely different situation then in the european peninsula (yes I call Europe a peninsula of Asia because that's what it is boohoo).

Centuries go by, generations mix a little more. Then in comes the turning point of it all. Spanish colonies were different. They had little foreigners (read: they used the americans themselves as slaves, to their own downfall) and they repressed with a lot more violence. Colonials united themselves against Spain. They managed to form nations of their own despite spanish rule. Portugal had a different, a lot more effective, approach. Mix ethnicities, confuse people, and present christianity as a unifying force, which justified colonisation as a necessary evil. Because of that, Brazil was never really a nation. 

And then came the Man. That one. The one who shifted the game completely. The one who was later branded by republicans as a coward even tho he was anything but. I don't like glorifying individuals as historical game-changers but I have to admit he really was one of those. D. João VI, regent prince of Portugal, (also his court and his allies in the english court).

Afraid of the napoleonic threat, and afraid of losing his head in a guillotine (because for them Napoleon = french revolution) he made a move that had never been done before and changed everything: moved the capital of Portugal to Rio de Janeiro. Whaaaaaat. They physically took the whole court to Brasil. In boats. Libraries, scientists, artists, historians, priests, nobles, the whole shindig. They opened the ports to allied nations (read England). They elevated Brasil to United Kingdom. Suddenly we were faced with the notion that we were in fact a one single nation. "What? Does that mean that a jewish fisherman in Recife, a muslim merchant in the south, a black mãe-de-santo from Bahia, a freed man who now owns his own slaves, the portuguese barons, those mixed-race farmers from the countryside and that french-speaking homosexual piano teacher of my daughter's are all one people???? Fuck off..."

The next centuries are exactly that. Our people confused about who we are. Try as we might, we do not know what we are. Rich white elites deny our native american roots. Rich white elites whitewash our blackness. They go to Miami. We created an imitation of western civilisation that never once fit. The elites that own the means to disseminate knowledge are all european descendants, and the knowledge and culture of groups-turned-minority are now lost of trapped (RIP the Curt Nimuendajú archives :'( and the National Museum)

Where was I going with all this? I had a point... oh yeah

Back to the original point of this gigantic historical rant, Bolsonaro is using the unifying power of christianity (the only common point between most of our identity confusion) and an impulse to violence and frustration to unite a people in a time of crisis against a made-up enemy. Saying that the party that tries to turn their eyes toward what our people can be instead of what they don't have are infiltrated enemies. Turning minorities into outsiders, even though they were already there when the notion of "nation" started to be built. History is NOT a steady climb towards civilisation, that is just something we made up because we refused to think maybe nature and humanity are one thing. Maybe our way is not the right way. Insects are dirt are not Bad Things that need to be eliminated. Poor people don't need to become rich to be respected. They don't need to want to be rich either. I know I don't. And the fact that I don't want to grow indefinitely economically makes me somehow a threat to civilisation.

That's what I'm talking about. I don't think JB is the End Of Times, just another phenomenon in a long-line of phenomena attempting to turn an entire people into civilised although western civilisation itself cannot be sustained if the entire world is civilised. It dies. Not just from wasting natural resources, but people themselves. To sustain a civilised way of life you need a multitude of people living in sub-standard conditions. That cannot hold on forever. Humanity will kill itself if it tries to go on 'taming' nature forever. Fuck off with your hubris, Western Man.

That's my final thoughts on the topic. Fuck off with your hubris. Good conclusion to a confusing text.

#personal #political talk #unrelated #ish