I was talking to my mom the other day, and she said she was going to start going to the gym, because its important care for your body. I’m disabled w/ multiple chronic illnesses, so going to the gym is impossible for me. She seemed to realize this, and started to backtrack, saying like – its part of taking care of herself, and I interrupted and said, “Its okay mom. You and I taking care of ourselves look very different”. And thats what I would like you to know.
Taking care of yourself looks different.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like fruit smoothies and gym visits, cutting out sugar and weight training.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like hospital visits, feeding tubes and ports. Needles and tests.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like taking medication and lying down in a cool dark room.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like getting any calories in their body that they can.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like adding in more vegetables and trying to go outside to get sun more often.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like seeing a therapist, keeping symptom journals, and practicing mindfulness, meds, or grounding techniques.
We all have different needs. Please don’t feel bad about how you care for yourself just because someone else is able to do “more”, or their care is more performative or obvious. Please don’t look down on someone for caring for themselves in a way that you do not. Medication and rest are just as important as exercise and vegetables.
Keep doing your best to care for yourself, the best way you know how. Your self care and health is important, no matter what it looks like.
women who prioritise men and spend most of their time with men will never understand me and i’ll never understand them. it makes me sad sometimes because obviously i’m always going to want sisterhood with other women and i’m still gonna look out for them but on a really fundamental level we’re starkly different and that’s just the reality of it
you know what! im gonna say it. this post is nasty and cognitively dissonant and just flat out wrong. you cant say you care about women if you other the very women who are most often victims of male violence. no women “prioritizes men.” and women who do think mens opinions of them are important are victims of harmful socialization, not
your other or your enemy. i really encourage you to read over this post and think about what you’re actually saying. about yourself and other women. Bye.
did you ever think that maybe this post is about women treating me and women like me as the other and the enemy? that because i’m gender non-conforming and a lesbian they don’t view me as a woman at all? did you read the part where i said i’m always striving for sisterhood with these women and looking out for them despite our differences? the reality of it is that some women do prioritise men, because every force within the patriarchy is driving them to do so. i’m not blaming them for that, i’m mourning the loss of common ground and connection that comes out of pervasive misogyny.
Anyway no woman “prioritizes men” of their own accord and if you think that you’re literally a smelly misogynist bitch! you’ve been blocked weirdo go cry about it
“you’re literally a smelly misogynist bitch”
@bogwomen have you like… ever heard of lesbophobia? Particularly the kind of lesbophobia that non-lesbian women reserve for butch lesbians?
“Anyway no woman ‘prioritizes men’”
Looks like you certainly do.
Radfems arguing with eachother is interresting
Imagine thinking women who hang around mainly with men are hostile towards you cos they’re helplessly brainwashed/trapped in fear instead of sensing your patronizing bullshit from miles away.
“no woman “prioritizes men.”
Finally, someone said it.
If you equate “has sex with” with “prioritizes people like” I just… I don’t even know where to start with that, it’s lenticularly wrong.
yeahhh both the radfem Takes on display here are weird but…
I don’t “prioritize men”. I do prioritize my most important relationships with individual specific people. Some of those people are men, because I’m not stuck in bullshit that makes me think that one gender is inherently and always superior to the other…
…and if your attitude is “having male friends/lovers and prioritizing those specific people over strangers means we can’t have Sisterhood”… we’re just not gonna get along.
K like… I am not a woman. But I am a pre-op transmale. And we know that radfems generally consider people like me a “gender traitor” yeah…? and it’s… interesting…? To see this kind of thing??
Because yeah I do tend to “prioritize” men over women, because I AM one, and because I kinda feel like a lot of modern feminism doesn’t leave space for men to improve themselves, OR offer any support?? “lol male tears” “but WHY aren’t men more emotionally available???” “all men suck ew I hate them” “why does no one wanna date meeeeee???”
Like…?? Maybe if you treated them as PEOPLE instead of faceless strawmen you can poke at for hours and then pretend you did NOTHING, maybe we might get some real equality? It’s kind of easy to get to a point where you want nothing to do with people who deny your basic humanity~ Same reason why I don’t count myself as a feminist. The second I came out, I was part of the “outgroup” and a toxic Evil Manperson, OR a Misguided Gender Traitor. *cringe*
I’m also gay af. Of COURSE I’m going to prioritize my male-presenting/masculine-identified partners over some stranger regardless of gender presentation/sex/identity?? They’re my family. They’re my Partners. We’re a support network who care about each other’s wellbeing…?? We don’t know you from Eve lady~ of course I’m going to prioritize their mental and emotional wellbeing over yours.
I’m going to post one of the replies in the notes, because it’s really on the nose about something I keep saying – namely that antis end up sounding horribly similar to religious fundies:
Quoting Colossians 3:5-6 precisely (New International Version), because I want people to understand why my hair stands on end so badly when it comes to antis and purity culture, as a queer person who was nearly stomped into the dust by religious conservatism:
And I hate that you’re even put in a position where you have to doubt yourself like that. There’s nothing bad about finding a character hot. Nothing bad about writing about that character having sex. And if we want to look for the people responsible for sexual violence let’s go for actual sexual predators (shocking, I know), not whoever else is just minding their own business, especially in fandom. There’s no logical link there.
The arguments against “sexualization” and “fetishization” are buzzwords, they’re not used to mean the same thing they mean on the dictionary, and antis need them because if they can convince others that sexualizing their NOTPs is bad, then they won’t have to deal with their NOTPs anymore. You don’t need to look far to realize that those accusing others of fetishizing and sexualizing characters actually do the very same thing, but if they do it then everything is good because their OTPs are conveniently also the only ones morally allowed to be enjoyed.
It’s a ship war with a moral crusade hat. The sooner you realize that it’s about that and not about somehow fighting sexual violence by not…finding fictional people attractive (?) the sooner you’ll be able to tune them out and go on your merry way.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.
This is why I break out in hives at the sight of a bunch of young LGBTQ+ people effectively parroting the thoughts and attitudes of Christian fundamentalism, a lot of them without even realizing it! They raise up the moral framework that was used (and is still used) in order to destroy the lives of queer people, of sex-workers, of women who lived our lives outside of the very narrow confines of religious conservatism, of individuals of different faiths, etc.
Breaking free from the brainwashing that took place in my early life was the thing that genuinely saved my life. Realizing that I could freely acknowledge and work with my fundamentally queer, kinky, hedonistic nature, while finding safe harbour with progressive religious groups, was the best thing that I could have ever done for myself. Which makes this ‘backsliding’ on the part of young LGBTQ+ people all the more horrible to watch.
On a less depressing note, please don’t give them any further ideas. Considering we already got to my discourse prediction of ‘people will start saying that your gender and sexual orientation should dictate what kind of erotic content you’re allowed to enjoy’, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got here as well:
…objectification is viewing someone as a sexual object and ignoring / erasing their personhood. Not just ‘finding them sexually attractive’.
Like the commenter screenshotted up there said: Of COURSE you can value someone for who they are and be physically attracted to them – that’s relationship goals!
I mean, think about it. Would you rather be romantically/sexually involved with someone who thinks you’re awesome in general and also is enthusiastic about the idea of having sex with you? Or someone who thinks you’re cool but just can’t quite get into thinking you’re sexually appealing too and they’re just sort of having sex with you feeling like it’s a weird chore?
Not that there’s anything wrong with valuing someone for who they are but not wanting to have sex with them, either. But those are what we generally call “friends” and you probably shouldn’t have sex with people you don’t want to have sex with, even if you otherwise like and get along with them.
It’s even ok to value someone for who they are and also be physically attracted to them even if they don’t reciprocate the physical attraction. You don’t have to stop thinking someone’s hot just because they don’t want you back, you just have to respect their no and not sexually harass or assault them. What you think in the privacy of your own brain is your business.
I’m gonna add here that fetishization and objectification CAN BE DONE WITH YOUR PARTNER’S/s’ CONSENT ANYWAY~ It’s called a KINK, kiddos, and consent makes it ok!!!
Some people like to be objectified by their partner[s], with their full consent! Some people like to be reduced down to a single aspect of their being and sexualized for it… WITH THE FULL AND INFORMED CONSENT OF THEIR PARTNER[S].
It’s not an either/or of morality. It’s “Yes, AND” where “and” implies consent.
I mean, hell, I’m one of them! I am loved and respected as a fully realized human being, AND YET I am also capable of enjoying and being fulfilled by being one Partner’s sexual object, and simultaneously taking a VERY DIFFERENT ROLE with my second partner. Embrace the “Yes, AND” and the “Yes, OR.” {as in: Yes that is a thing that we could do, OR “insert alternative here” if the implications of the Yes squicks you out.}
(note: I have no romantic or sexualized experience myself, so I admit *some* of these points rely entirely on secondhand stuff and media)
One thing I think is not talked about very much is that straight men live pretty much desexualized lives if we’re not actually having sex at that moment, and then there’s not much room to be the object rather than subject.
As I’ve said before, we men don’t have clothing options for “dressing sexy” in masculine clothing (there is cross dressing but that is different). There’s no male equivalent to the short skirt or low cut top. There’s no male lingerie that isn’t seen as a joke.
Further, we just don’t get validation for our sexuality outside of a sexual partner. We are almost never complimented for our looks or sexiness from platonic friends like women are, especially same sex friends.
There really aren’t many straight male role models for raw aesthetic sexiness in mainstream culture (besides unnaturally muscled men). In fiction, male characters are almost never attractive for embodying sexiness but rather for doing things (saving the world, being extremely witty, being a genius, winning the tournament, etc.). Their sexiness is non-aesthetic and sometimes is in spite of their aesthetics.
Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of men aren’t even called physically hot and sexy by their own sexual partners, who themselves focus on personality. There’s not much room to fulfill the role of passive sexism object for you partner for many/most men.
I think it is telling that a lot of porn for men ignores the man’s personality and has a woman just throwing themselves at the man, overcome with lust.
Also there the fact that women seem to rarely approach men and some seem to often expect the man to do most of the sexual escalation, especially in the early stages.
We talk about women of color or women who are disabled being sexualized, but we don’t talk about how all straight men are desexualized and denied the ability to be sexualized object.
oh my god… that’s why they send dick pics
“witness me!”
There are occasional reddit threads about things like this: “guys who send unsolicited dick pics, why do you do it?”
The answer always seems to be some combination of slot machine mentality (“maybe this one will like it, and make the other 50 worthwhile”) and a desire for witness. Surprising numbers of people admit that it’s validation even if the reaction is negative, simply because they’re still being viewed in a totally sexual context.
At the very least that has obvious consequences for people trying to reduce dick pic sending. There’s some core of people who can’t possibly be reached with “it’s not attractive to women” because that was never their expectation.
More broadly, I think efforts to get (Western?) men to emphasize with objectification wildly underestimate the challenge they’re facing. It’s not just a sympathy shortage, it’s a totally unfamiliar feeling. Making things even harder, it’s a feeling a lot of men say they wish they could have.
The usual narrative on not (politely) complimenting the appearance of unknown women is “sure, it’s nice if it happens once, but think about how annoyed you’d be if it happened all the time”. Fine in general terms, but I think a lot of men don’t have any way to intuit the emotional difference between too-frequent compliments and being pestered with too much of something totally innocuous like requests for the date.
The comments on those articles are frequently from men saying they’ve literally never received a single compliment from a stranger on their appearance, and can’t imagine what it would be like. The ones who have are often talking about a single, years-old compliment they still cherish. That’s not a framework that supports more than a purely theoretical understanding of what’s it’s like to be valued for your appearance too heavily – or at all.
Obviously that’s not universal, any more than all women are catcalled, but it seems like a really serious communication failure to appeal to a sense of objectification that much of your audience has literally never felt, and desperately wants.
Reblogged because thefutureoneandall describes exactly why I have trouble empathizing with feminism columnists.
Can confirm, I’d take literally any compliment on anything at this point, and would cherish it.
one day we gotta get all the men and all the women to sit down together and hash this stuff out between them, how hard can it be.
This discussion kind of reminds me of a story that made the rounds about a year ago, where
a woman, after having gotten a bit tired with dick pics, decided to try to get her “revenge” of sorts, by sending unsolicited vagina pics to 40 random men:
Let’s be honest: while I enjoy penises, I don’t necessarily want
unexpected visual boners intruding on my day. I wondered, “What would
guys do if I turned the tables and sent them an unexpected vagina pic?”
And so, in my own twist on revenge porn, I sent 40 unexpected vagina
pics to men on Bumble.
This … didn’t work out the way she apparently expected it to:
Overall, I was surprised that I didn’t get my, “Gotcha!” moment. I’d
initially hoped the guys would see how invasive it is to receive such
intimate photos from a stranger. When I’m excited to get to know a guy,
his penis isn’t the first part of him that I want to know. But given
that men like to send dick pics, I suppose their enthusiasm for v-pics
makes sense.
So, basically, women experience dick picks as a net negative, as an intimacy violation, while men experience v-pics as a huge positive, as validation and an indicator of interest.
This seems consistent with the above discussion, where it’s a pretty common male experience to basically never receive any sexual attention ever and thus respond really strongly positively to whatever scraps come their way (or to start trolling for attention – with the point of some of these dick pics apparently being to get any attention at all, no matter how hostile), while a common female experience seems to be more like being flooded with unwanted sexual attention and wanting a way to make it stop –
resulting in an absolutely massive inferential gap – with the result that if you’re on one side of the gap and try to describe your feelings and experiences to the people on the other side, whatever words you have will just fall on deaf ears because the feeling and experiences you describe are … not just unfamiliar, but outright alien, to the ones on the other side.
This alienness is … mutual.
For men, it feels like no men are sexy to women.
For women, it feels like all women are sexy to men.
It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.
“It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.”
the conversation has gotten longer, so i’m reblogging
… This is so cool. It actually makes sense.
but of course women are wary of just giving men compliments, because attention-starved men are likely to take it as a come-on. what a dilemma.
So what I’m getting from this… Is that my idea of taking popular types of fiction and essentially ‘flipping the script’ so that there are sexy male characters as ‘damsel in distress’ types would actually be very good and help a lot of people become comfortable with their sexuality?
it could well! i’m not the guy to answer this really, i’m queer and also i’ve always been pretty comfortable with being the one giving the compliments (and just asking for validation when i need it). but i do think there’s a place in the world for fiction where The Sexy One is male.
consider chris hemsworth in ghostbusters. that one’s a bit mean-spirited, with him being hilariously clueless, but you’ve got that dynamic where what he contributes is, he’s hot. that’s it. and i found it kind of a breath of fresh air, not because it was a fuck-you to sexist tropes, but because it’s never, ever enough for a guy to be attractive, but here it was, and that was fun to see.
i once thoughtlessly complimented a guy on his jacket, because he and his friend rounded the corner and suddenly i was confronted with an extremely handsome young man in a very fashionable black leather jacket, and i blurted out ‘whoah, nice jacket, you’re looking good!’ and the look on his face was just this explosion of surprise and delight– he actually kind of missed a step. the next minute i was like shit shit SHIT what if things get weird JEEZ but he and his friend were already walking past, and his friend just started laughing. kind of this ‘whoah, cool, what the hell’ laugh, and when i glanced back they’d both kind of lit up and were elbowing each other as they walked away. i was extremely relieved to have like dodged a bullet of ‘if you let a man know you are attracted to them at close range GOD KNOWS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN BUT IT’S GONNA BE OBNOXIOUS PROBABLY’ and then also pleased that i’d made that guy’s day. but also like. i guess now i’m realizing i probably made that guy’s decade…
i wish it was more common to compliment people– especially guys– in a casual way. but when you live as a woman you can spend a lot more time dodging men’s attention rather than soliciting it…
maybe male poledancing is like, the next big fad to cash in on? guys can enjoy getting hit on and girls can enjoy there being a specific space for that, that they, the girls, can leave afterwards.
I’d honestly never considered this before; it makes a lot of sense. *internally recalculates a bunch of stuff*
House Of Crows 