This is such an interesting dissection of a very common trope in writing female characters that I never really thought about before, but it’s so prevalent and so obvious and so fucking disgusting.
Straight men who infantilize women’s friendships have no fucking survival instinct. Like my uncle is always making fun of and rolling his eyes at my aunt’s friend lunches and telephone dates with her lady friends, teasing her like she’s a gossipy teenage girl in high school drama. And my aunt just laughs about it but I know for a fact that if it wasn’t for her best friend K, she would have probably set him on fire by now.
Like straight men are capable of maybe a quarter of the indepth emotional labor and support women do for each other. Like men can literally have one friend named Bob that they go fishing with once a year and still be content for life. Then they think it’s cute and girlish that their wives have these long term, integrated, emotionally intense relationships with women but like…LOL, it’s not because men don’t need those kinds of relationships, it’s just that they get it all from their wives while offering peanuts in return. PEANUTS.
Like if your woman is on the phone for 2 hours with her friend and you think that’s childish of her, just know that she spent half of that time getting the support that you should be giving her (but are incapable of) and the rest lamenting what a giant fucking baby manchild you are.
This is how homophobia and misogyny hurts men: it makes these kinds of in-depth, deeply emotionally invested friendships a feminine thing to do, and therefore unmanly (and un-straight) for men to do. Men are brought up to shy away from cultivating these kinds of deep and platonic friendships with other men. Because, you know, if you talk to your male friends all the time and hang out with them and cry in front of them and hug all the time and lean on each other (emotionally and physically) when you need support, it makes you gay and womanly. Which is, apparently, the worst thing you can be.
I’ve read articles and personal stories about and by men, talking about experiences they’ve had that have shown them how painfully out of touch they are with their own emotions and their own ability to open up and connect with people, including themselves.
I worry about men a lot. I worry about the number of men who find themselves incapable of providing emotional support for their friends, their significant others, and themselves, all because of how they’ve been raised to bury and ignore their more vulnerable emotions and tactile tendencies because they’ve been taught that this kind of closeness has to be stamped out at all costs.
!!!!! So important.
So so so important
Studies have shown that this sort of emotional shallowness is a leading factor in why men are more likely to be violent, to drown their sorrows in drug and alcohol abuse, and to successfully commit suicide.
They throw all their eggs in one basket with a significant other, or at times a parent, and when problems arise in that relationship, because they have no other relationships to speak of, they quickly turn to destruction.
This is why I often give out advice that people need to expand on their relationships. You literally CAN’T have it all hinge on a single person, it is a horrific idea and it will destroy you and the things and people you love. You HAVE to have relationships with other people.
Anyone with any mental health issue can tell you that the inability to talk it out, the lack of having someone to turn to, makes things go careening downhill, faster than we can catch them back.
Somehow this is considered an acceptable way of being for men, and their lashing out is “just how men are”. It’s more masculine to shoot yourself than to take medication. It’s more masculine to beat your partners than to have a conversation with them. It’s more masculine to bottle everything up until it erupts and people die, than it is to simply ask for help.
And people want to blame women and feminism for it, for “making men afraid”, or simply try to list the likelihood of surviving suicide and avoiding drug abuse as “female privilege” or something that is a nature-given trick of “biological sex”, rather than address the very serious issue of toxic masculinity and extreme, self-destructive hatred of being perceived as anything like women.
– mod BP
people need to expand on their relationships. You literally CAN’T have it all hinge on a single person, it is a horrific idea and it will destroy you and the things and people you love.
Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.
As a teacher, I give girls what I hope is a lot of attention. I don’t know if I give girls their fair share, but I aspire to, especially after noticing that boys are willing to use their greater share of teachers’ attention to get girls who they feel aren’t being quiet and docile enough punished. I have therefore acquired a reputation for “caring more about the girls.” This has had two marked results: Some straight boys have gotten more hostile toward me, and most girls have gotten more confident around me. This makes me think I’m doing something right.
Longer thoughts on how this phenomenon relates to sexual harassment in classrooms, if you’re interested: The girls figured out I won’t report them if they hit boys who are sexually harassing them, I’ll only report the boys. This led to an increase in how often girls got the last word and boys got smacked in my classes, and, also, to a DECREASE IN HOW OFTEN GIRLS GOT SEXUALLY HARASSED. The sexual harassers seem to have been depending on the sort of “equal blame” and “retaliation is never warranted” and “don’t hurt others’ feelings” perspectives so many schools try to instill in kids; the sexual harassers were usually the ones bringing me into the situation by saying, “Miss, she hit me! You should write her up!” Once they figured out I was only ever going to respond, “If you don’t treat girls like that, they won’t hit you,” the girls got more confident and the sexual harassers largely shut the fuck up.
In schools, fighting against sexual harassment is often punished exactly the same as, or more severely than, sexual harassment — a lot of discipline codes make no distinction between violence and violence in self-defence, and violence is ALWAYS the highest level of disciplinary infraction, whereas verbal sexual harassment rarely is. Sexual harassers, at least in the schools I’ve been in, rely heavily on GETTING GIRLS IN TROUBLE WITH HIGHER AUTHORITIES as a strategy of harassment — creating an external punishment that penalises girls for and therefore discourages girls from fighting back. Sexual harassers are willing to use their greater share of floorspace to ask to get girls who won’t date them punished. By and large, teachers do punish those girls when they swear or hit. Schools condition girls to ignore sexual harassment by punishing them when they speak up or fight back instead.
Once the sexual harassers in my classes understood that girls wouldn’t be punished for rejecting them, they backed off around me. And there started to be a flip in what conversations I get called into — girls are telling me when boys are being nasty (too loud and dominant), instead of boys telling me when girls are being uncooperative (louder and more dominant than boys think they should be).
New rule, non muslims can’t say the word jihad. Until you stop conflating a word that means personal struggle with faith and temptation with terrorism youre just not allowed to say it.
I’m not a Muslim but I just thought I would reblog this because I think it’s definitely worth listening to.
It’s totally okay for non muslims to reblog this, and i encourage it. Im just glad you’re listening.
Oh god, finally someone said it. Every time I see words like “jihadist” I want to scream, but I’m not Muslim, so I wasn’t sure I should say anything.
Jihad means struggle. It doesn’t mean holy war or anything like it. In fact, there is no word in Islam for holy war, because the nature of Islam does not leave room for holy war. Islam has a juridical system, not a Pope who can just say “Go wage holy war.” Conflating the personal nature of jihad with violence is so very gross and it needs to stop. Period.
Actually, there’s another word non-muslims in the media shouldn’t use:
Allahu Akbar. It’s not a statement of terrorism. It means “god is great”. It’s something we say to praise our lord. It’s what we say when we pray. It’s not a statement of terrorism. Allahu Akbar doesn’t mean terrorism stop using it as one
every single negative stereotype about women was dreamt up by men who were projecting. fight me about it.
“women can’t drive”
It is so well known that women are better and safer drivers than men that OUR CAR INSURANCE RATES ARE LOWER. Women get into fewer accidents, get fewer DUIs, and receive fewer speeding tickets than men.
“women never shut up”
Several scientific studies have shown that not only do men talk more than women, they also think that women have been talking for much longer than they actually have. Men interrupt and talk over women, dominate conversations, and still think women talk too much.
“women are shallow”
Lol next
“my wife is my ball and chain lmao”
Multiple studies have shown that marriage between men and women: Increases male lifespan, decreases female lifespan Decreases male depression rates, increases female depression rates Decreases male stress levels, increases female stress levels Increases male health and happiness, decreases female health and happiness Increases a man’s chance of getting a raise or promotion, decreases a woman’s chances of getting a raise or promotion
“women are too emotional”
Men love to say this about women after hurting them, in order to shift the blame and dismiss their feelings in one go. In reality, women are taught to hold our tongues and control ourselves quite literally from birth. We’re taught to put men’s needs and wants ahead of our own emotions regardless of the personal cost. Men are taught to do more or less whatever the fuck they want to women. Men take their emotions out on women while women are expected to shove theirs down.
I could go on and on but I don’t really think I need to.
“women are shallow” (just read the book, Dataclysm. by okcupid founder (?) that includes data about sex, gender, race, in finding online romantic partners)
This is something I’ve been meaning to talk about, and I may do a full blog post at some point, but here’s a capsule version:
The Benign Violation Theory of humor, which is probably the best one out there, suggests that something is perceived as funny when it is simultaneously perceived as violating how the world “should” work and as benign. Something like the “gun” meme, for example, is funny because it violates our sense of how a joke should progress, and at the same time it’s harmless.
Racist/sexist/etc shock humor violates our sense of how the world work–in either a “that’s not true!” or “you’re not allowed to say that!” way–and therefore whether you find it funny is based on whether you find it benign, which is to say either you think it’s harmless or you don’t care about the people it harms. (This is the root of the punch up/kick down distinction–jokes that punch up are funnier than jokes that kick down because the people they target are less vulnerable and therefore less likely to experience harm.)
So yes, science agrees that if you think racist jokes are funny, the reason is that you don’t care about the feelings of the people the joke is about. There’s a word for that.
VERY IMPORTANT: THESE TECHNIQUES ARE DESIGNED TO HELP YOU ESCAPE – they won’t incapacitate an attacker, but they will give you a crucial moment to get away. Don’t expect to win the fight, just use it to get out of the fight
In Finland, speeding tickets are calculated based on your income – causing some Finnish millionaires to pay fines of over $100,000. Source
This is what “equality” looks like in that liberal fairy tale land of Finland. They punish you proportionately to how successful you are. Sounds really “fair.”
Except… it is fair? Because it’s proportionate. I don’t get what’s difficult about that. An impoverished person paying $400 dollar fine isn’t the same as a millionaire paying the same amount. For the poor person, $400 dollars could mean starving. Would you really claim it would have the same consequence for a rich man? Would it even be noticeable to him, while the absence of food in their stomach would be glaring to a poorer man? Would it be fair for a man to starve for the same crime as a man that would be having a three course meal?
By taking income into account, it allows the impoverished able to still survive while paying any fines they may incur. And, ultimately, while $100,000 dollars would be noticeable to a millionaire, they would still get by. And, assuming the law is properly implemented, they would be paying the same equivalent of their yearly income that a poorer person would. That’s what makes it fair. They would be impacted the same way – but you are looking at the amount rather than the equation.
Also, it’s important to make sure that even the rich would pause at the cost of a fine. They need to fear the law just as a poor man does.
Oh no… rich people facing fines that might actually make them consider not doing illegal things because the punishments might actually hurt them… how unfair… -V
Finnish person here. Our speeding ticket system owns and only people who bitch about them are people who wanna break the laws – the loudest whiners are the rich people who think they can just pay their way out of trouble and that’s why we have laws like that.
400 dollar ticket.
Person making 10 dollars an hour: “Fuck, I better slow down”
Millionaire driving a Jaguar: “LOL 400 DOLLARS, FUCK THAT, NYOOM”
Compared to a proportional ticket.
Person making 10 dollars an hour and must pay 400 dollar ticket: “Fuck, I better slow down.”
Millionaire who must pay 100,000 dollar ticket: “Fuck, I better slow down.”
Like wtf. Some people have been so brainwashed by capitalism and worship of the rich that they literally can’t tell the difference between fairness and unfairness anymore.
It IS fair. The fact that it flies in the status quo so much should make you think about that status quo.
Nothing but My Aching Soul 