Posts tagged gender
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What's alchemy? The hoax of charlatans?
We almost expect women athletes to not be classically beautiful or feminine, and therefore we’re not surprised to learn they’re gay. Male professional athletes, by contrast, are thought to be our most masculine specimens. So when they come out as gay, it seems they’re playing against type. Even more than with femininity, masculinity and heterosexuality are widely perceived to be linked. For all the progress that’s been made, there’s still a perception that the bullied gay kid is spending his after-school hours curating a Lana Del Rey Tumblr, not practicing with the varsity basketball team. The bullied teen lesbian? She’s the one on the court.
(Source: annfriedman)
A man once asked me how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. “Well,” said the man, “I shouldn’t have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.” I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
jesusfuck
I don’t know where this is from, but…
Between this and that Toyota commercial-
Man, I hope genderfuckery of this highly attractive magnitude just INVADES popular media until privileged heteronormative cismen who unthinkingly dominate the world around them through objectification of women and shaming of homosexuality are forced to think.
Forced to think because when they see an attractive ass in panties, they can no longer instinctively flap their dicks at it and say, “I’d own that” without having to think about gender or sexuality. Torn between their habit of reflexively objectifying women and gay-shaming themselves and others, they would have no choice but to open their eyes a little wider and actually think about the people they share the world with instead of living in a neverending reel of imagery that reinforces a narrow reality where they are king.
i second all of the above
and i also just like to look at hot dudes in lingerie
(Source: eberles, via detectivebuttcop)
This is why it’s so funny/tragic when people degrade Kim Kardashian for the fact that she made a sex tape, calling her a worthless slut, gold-digging whore etc (literally everyone ever’s reaction when someone mentions Kim Kardashian. Congratuations, you’re so original! And such a charming person!)
Like.. she doesn’t care. She was horny and she felt like it. What other reason does someone need to make a sex tape with their boyfriend? The fact that he was then evil enough to completely violate her privacy and release the tape without her permission is his bad. That’s on him. He’s a cunt, as is any man who publicizes naked photos and video footage of women against their will. Also a criminal.
And it was one of the most shattering things that can happen to a woman. If someone released a video of me then god, I’d be heartbroken. I’d have crawled under a rock and never come out again. But she recovered and then made a hugely successful career for herself, her mother and all four of her sisters, and… people portray that as a bad thing? “Her whole family is only famous for her sex tape!!!” Yep, and? Go on, keep calling her a pointless whore. She can’t hear you over her multiple successful businesses, tv shows, endorsement deals and the guaranteed-safe futures of herself and her entire family.
hadn’t thought of it this way
YEAH MAN, TEAM KARDASHIANS!
I don’t even really like Kim at all, her personality grates me a little and fine, she’s not joining Mensa anytime soon. I would much rather hang out with Khloe because I feel like I would really vibe with Khloe. But I respect Kim, and I roll my eyes so hard at everyone who calls Kim a dumb bimbo and uses the Kardashians in general as an example of how our society is crumbling. I have read so much stuff about how the Kardashians are just airheads who symbolize a gross consumer system that has ruined America. Let me tell you why that’s bullshit.
First of all, people who are saying that stuff…usually are also participating in “the system” in some way, so unless you’re growing your own food and sewing your entire wardrobe out of cloth woven on a loom in your basement, that’s pretty hypocritical.
And more interestingly, people who hate the Kardashians are usually either men, or women afflicted with “not like those other girls” syndrome. Those vocal Kardashian-haters are the women who are proud to say they have no female friends, who play right into society’s ridiculous gender norms by essentially saying “yes, all women are the same, and they are all silly creatures that I have nothing in common with, so please don’t treat me the shitty way you treat women, a shitty treatment I am able to recognize, on some level, but will uphold instead of fighting.” It gets tiring to hear women not only judging other women for no real reason, but also actively enforcing their own oppression.
It gets tiring to hear people ridiculing women for enjoying allegedly frivolous pursuits such as fashion. The main criticism I hear about the Kardashians is that they are vapid and shallow, and I really have never heard an argument that convinced me that clothes and hair extensions are more vapid or shallow than hobbies that are arbitrarily considered masculine, like video games and sports. Do the Kardashians shill products that uphold a patriarchal standard of beauty? Yep, that’s a valid criticism of them. “They like fancy outfits and they enjoy getting fucked and they seem stupid by my narrow definition of what smart people act like” is really not a valid criticism. Like, at all. Also, we have to admit they are pretty smart in at least some areas. The point I’m arguing isn’t that the Kardashians are actually intellectuals who sit around discussing existentialist literature. The point is, first of all who cares, but the main point is…a person can be intelligent without being intellectual. A person can be “slutty” and still be worthy of your respect, and you probably wouldn’t respect a man any less for being openly sexual.
I don’t know, it’s late and I’m tired so this probably isn’t as eloquent as I’d like it to be. From what I can tell, even pre-sex-tape the Kardashians were ridiculous human beings. They had a good chunk of money and did silly things with it like arranging professional family portraits each Christmas and having individual photos of themselves blown up to giant sizes hanging on the walls and just in general they have always been celebrities in their own minds. But they also work hard and love each other and the “fame” that the entire family has received post-sex-tape would not have lasted if they weren’t knowledgeable about, and skilled at, branding and marketing. Reality stars pop up and then disappear from the public eye all the time because they don’t captivate anyone. These women, on the other hand, have created a media empire. People can go to one of their retail stores and spend $10 for a tiny water bottle with their faces on it. People DO spend $10 for a tiny water bottle with their faces on it. That’s what it means to have a successful brand.
This still might seem gross to you if you’re fundamentally opposed to how businesses work. Now if you really have a problem with capitalism, I don’t hate you for that. I was 16 once, my copy of “In Defense of Anarchism” is still floating around somewhere in my parents’ house. So go on, rage against the machine, protest McDonalds and Walmart and all the other evil corporations you want to protest. But this problem, if you see it as a problem, was not created by the Kardashians. Materialism and conspicuous consumption have existed since like, forever. The Kardashians are not the downfall of modern civilization. And if you think they are, you’re probably a misogynist.
Study shows watching TV boosts self esteem of White male children, decreases self esteem of Black male and all female children. (x)
Boys making the transition from elementary to middle school are probably exposed to superhero cartoons, Jordan said, adding, ” ‘Superman,’ ‘Batman,’ X-Men.’ The lead characters of these shows tend to be male.”
But Jordan added, “In recent years, creators of children’s programming have worked hard to improve diversity and include strong female characters.”
For white boys, “regardless of what show you’re watching … things in life are pretty good for you,” Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington, said in a statement. “(White males) tend to be in positions of power; you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there.”
It’s easy to be considered a misandrist when men are socialized to feel entitled to women and our time. So, if you ignore them, you’re a misandrist. If you insist they leave you alone, you’re a misandrist. If you focus on building healthy female-centered relationships over relationships with men, you’re a misandrist. Misandry is basically, prioritizing your agency, autonomy and fellow women, over men in a society that teaches you that being feminine relies on giving into men’s feelings of entitlement.
(via westerlies)
As a society, we encourage girls and women to be emotionally accessible, and in touch with their feelings; we say that it’s an innately feminine trait. We say it, that is, until they have feelings that make us uncomfortable, at which point we recast them as melodramatic harpies, shrieking banshees, and basket cases
(Source: queerintersectional, via hipbonesandheartbreak)
For as long as I can remember, there’s been this sub-breed of girls and women who seem to think that not having female friends is a noteworthy, noble way to live. “Guys don’t cause drama,” they say. “Girls are catty/ jealous of me/ the devil,” they say. To those girls, I have a response: the problem is you, not every other woman in the universe.
We’re talking a very specific group of women, here. The ones who glorify their friendships with men — who are more than capable of exhibiting the same negative traits as any other human — while simultaneously demonizing women, as though we all took a pact at birth to be one unified, reprehensible force. I’m speaking of women with this attitude, specifically: not shy women, not introverted women, but the women who paint every other gal with the Petty Bitch Paintbrush and call it a day without getting to know them as individuals. (Hint: it turns people off to hear that you aren’t open to being friends with people “of their kind.” That isn’t the kind of sentiment that makes people feel all warm and tingly, and it’s probably the one thing preventing you from having female friends.)
So, ladies who think men are the antidote to ~dRaMa~ fueled vagina holders — the attitude that all women are evil, conniving, and not worth your time is just, statistically, silly. You can’t get along with roughly 50% of the population? That sounds like a You problem.
(Source: disparatre, via catronicon)
A veces gender is so exaggerated here that it becomes a parody of itself. If only we were post-patriarchy then it could be-ah, forget it.
(Source: curledfingers, via westerlies)
Society has put up so many boundaries, so many limitations on what’s right and wrong that it’s almost impossible to get a pure thought out. It’s like a little kid, a little boy, looking at colors, and no one told him what colors are good, before somebody tells you you shouldn’t like pink because that’s for girls, or you’d instantly become a gay two-year-old. Why would anyone pick blue over pink? Pink is obviously a better color. Everyone’s born confident, and everything’s taken away from you.
(Source: thefader.com, via spacemarried)
(Source: mc1rk)
Being born a woman is an awful tragedy… Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…
(Source: raccoonwounds, via meelzyeexplainsitall)
Teenage girls are the least-respected musical fanbase, even though they often have pretty good taste as far as picking out catchy melodies. (Speaking as a former teenage girl here, I might be biased, but I also know that right now I’d much rather listen to “I Think I Love You” than, say, something off Dark Side Of The Moon.) Yet they get relentlessly mocked by the cognoscenti for having bad taste, which really means “liking artists who aren’t as macho and real as the big guns approved by the canon.” Of course, there have been more than a few instances where aging out of their young phases has resulted in teen idols garnering respect—from Justin Timberlake to the Beatles—while other teen idols’ biggest hits have over time turned into vertebra on the adult-contemporary backbone. But it would be nice if more of the people who dismiss One Direction and their ilk as “fluff” when they’re first coming up would at least inspect the politics behind their disavowals, instead of just making snap judgments based on haircuts and the people who happen to be in the front rows of concerts.
THIS, BASICALLY.