[Feminism] Death of the author's marriage

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Feminism] Death of the author's marriage

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

Men as a group might be lost, but Post readers have a lot of ideas for directions.

Tucked within my Opinions Essay last month was a request for reader feedback: �Who is your ideal of masculinity, and what characteristics do they embody? Tell The Post.� The responses were numerous � nearly 350 readers replied � and unusually thoughtful.

Readers cited a wide range of sources for masculine inspiration, from the NBA to the Bible, PBS to the frat house. At the same time, certain figures came up again and again; men, it seems, really look up to Mister Rogers and Barack Obama, and the Rudyard Kipling poem �If� � has lost none of its power since it was written over a century ago. While almost every respondent expressed hesitation at trying to pin down an exact masculine ideal, a clear set of traits emerged.

Below are just a few of the many excellent responses we received. This selection focuses on replies from male readers. But don�t worry, female readers, I read your takes, too: They might be fodder for a future piece!

1
Story and song

Media matters: Books, movies, songs and television provided many readers with their go-to masculine archetypes. What did these examples have in common? Most were fathers, leaders of men, or a combination of both. All were flawed but purpose-driven � in many cases proving their masculinity as they worked to become better versions of themselves.

Uncle Iroh from �Avatar: The Last Airbender.� He is written to show emotions, deeply troubled by the loss of his only son. He is steadfastly caring for his nephew, whom he views as initially lost but helps guide to a path of belonging. He is not helpless, understands the struggles of others and presents those he meets with kindness first. � John Burgin, 34, Knoxville, Tenn.

The Man/The Father from Cormac McCarthy�s �The Road.� He�s a flawed, fragile, dying man, laboring in a world in which there is no apparent room or need for goodness. He is beset on all sides by hunger, distress, despair and occasional violence. And yet, he is driven to instill in his son a sense of purpose that, hopefully, will one day germinate into hope. � Matt Lacroix, 41, Stoughton, Mass.

King David made a name for himself by slaying the intimidating giant, Goliath, while yet a boy. He was a protector of the people he loved.

But David was as much a poet as he was a warrior. The Bible attributes about one-half of the Psalms to him, suggesting the Israeli king was anything but emotionally stunted. His affection for his friend Jonathan was so deep that it leads many modern readers to conclude he was gay.

David�s adultery was toxic, the murder of Bathsheba�s husband as a coverup was reprehensible. But zooming out on his infamous adultery incident, we see a man broken over his sin: a tender heart that accepts responsibility for his failures.

Real men slay dragons. They also dance, express their emotions, cultivate friendships and write poetry. � Sean Nolan, Albany, N.Y., 37

I�d say Captains Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Archer, Benjamin Sisko, Christopher Pike and, yes, even James Tiberius Kirk.

For me personally, I long for, and set as my own ideal to strive for, the quiet American. Reserved but not unemotional. Hard-working but not to the exclusion of all else. Competitive, certainly, but not win-at-all-costs. Optimistic and hopeful as a goal, but always realistic. Empathetic and caring, but also calm and clearheaded in a storm. A person who appreciates and works on their individualness but knows that the individual can�t be separate from community. There has to be a larger purpose than yourself. � B. Keane, Washington

I�m not sure why, but I always think of Johnny Cash when I think about what being a man is all about. I think it has something to do with the song �Man in Black,� particularly the line �I�ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, till things are brighter, I�m the man in black.�

In some way, this encompasses what manliness is to me, to try to be tough for the sake of others � whom you protect and look out for. � Joel Witkowski, 47, Oak Harbor, Ohio

2
Dads

Fathers (and father figures) matter. A significant number of readers cited their fathers and grandfathers as the closest and clearest examples of masculinity that they could find: dedicated, self-sacrificing, strong (in many senses) and kind. The responses were heartwarming to read but also make America�s rising rates of fatherlessness all the more worrying.

My father, William D., born in 1930 and now passed, was the quintessential man. Why? Because he embraced accountability and responsibility. He never complained, because that was beneath him. He walked tall, looked others straight in the eye and had a firm, strong handshake. He lived the rule of �family first� and that a real man takes care of those he loves, first and foremost.

He served his nation in the U.S. Army beginning at the age of 17 for 21 years, and when he was called to serve in Vietnam near the end of his career, he went willingly, because that was his duty. While there, he was awarded the Bronze Star for physically carrying an injured soldier from an ordnance-littered field, thinking of that soldier before himself. He provided not only for his family but also others as he could afford. He wasn�t an easy man to know, but he embraced the core values that made him the man he was and that his three sons embraced. � William Ramsey, 70, San Rafael, Calif.

My dad is often described as having a rough exterior. At first glance, you wouldn�t expect him to be the sensitive type. If you asked him, he�d likely say that the most important parts of manhood are loyalty and honesty, and that if you have those, you�re good to go. While I do agree with him, there�s a much rarer and softer quality he displays in private moments. Rather than killing insects or rodents that find their way into our home, he does everything he can to return them outside so they can keep living. He�ll buy my mom flowers just because, or mow our elderly neighbor�s lawn and refuse to take credit for it. � Aidan McGuire, 19, Evanston, Wyo.

My dad. He was really smart, loved my mom and us kids, taught me how to hunt and fish, educated me on our ancestry and the things that are important in life, was a gun-safety nut (ex-FBI and enforced it � if I pointed a cap gun at a friend when we were playing, I would lose my gun), taught me about being a Catholic and loving my neighbor (his favorite saying was �Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time�), and believed in me. He has been gone for years, but I still miss his calls on Sunday. � Patrick Donoho, 71, Vienna, Md.

3
Teachers

As I pointed out in the essay, nearly every thinker on the masculinity problem has advocated getting more male teachers into classrooms, as a way to build healthy relationships of mentorship and uplift from a young age. That point was borne out by readers: Many respondents told heartfelt stories of the teachers who had modeled positive masculinity � often in the absence of father figures in readers� own lives.

My ideal of masculinity was my high school English teacher. I was never interested in sports or cars and trucks. I�m still not and find them to be a waste of money. But my high school English teacher demonstrated that you can be mature and, dare I say, attractive to women and have intellectual interests, be creative, and travel to places that are interesting. My English teacher was in the Army, so I joined the Navy that he supported, which led to free education. � Gregory Harshfield, 50, Phoenix

I attended a one-room schoolhouse from fifth grade on, and that first year, my teacher was Guy Stockwell, actor and brother of Dean Stockwell. He was a loving, compassionate man and an excellent teacher, juggling all eight grades masterfully: primary grades in the morning, fourth through eighth in the afternoons. Every Wednesday afternoon, we�d go outside, weather permitting, and he�d read to us under a large pine in the schoolyard. I particularly remember Tom Sawyer, Twain�s prose and Mr. Stockwell�s superb reading, which brought it all alive. A dozen-odd kids who could�ve been unruly instead hung on every word. He seemed to me to have it all: intelligence, commitment and boundaries, although this was a much-delayed realization. � Patrick Bell, 77, Sacramento

4
Public figures

Despite increasing polarization, there are still public figures whom men respect, and many of the same names came up repeatedly. While these men come from various fields � sports, politics, Hollywood � they were cited as masculine ideals because they displayed certain common traits. Strength, responsibility, hard work and toughness were cited often. But so were emotional awareness, moral uprightness, care for others and respect for women, with many readers lauding these figures for being family men.

Fred Rogers of �Mister Rogers� Neighborhood.� The man spent his entire career striving to cater to and teach the world�s most vulnerable: very small children. His lesson was simple and threefold: You are unique, you are special, and (most importantly) you are loved. I look at Fred as espousing the more covert masculine traits, including emotional awareness (men might not talk about it, but we definitely feel emotions!), contemplation, gentleness, eye-level contact, sensitivity, compassion, love � you know, all the things we look for in an archetypal father figure. � Ryan Buchmann, 50, San Diego

Confident, smart, unafraid of emotion (good and bad), tolerant and understanding. We are generally more aggressive than women (thank you, testosterone), but the best of us channel that aggressiveness in nontoxic ways to improve ourselves and the world around us. Some public figures who embody this might include: Anson Mount, Barack Obama and LeBron James. In all of these cases, these are people who do not blur the line of their own gender or take on feminine characteristics but are able to thrive in the world we are in now. � Belton Myers, 58, Wheaton, Md.

David Robinson, the celebrated retired center from the San Antonio Spurs. He graduated from the Naval Academy and thereafter served his country before pursuing his Hall of Fame career in the NBA, where he eschewed the limelight and dedicated himself to righteous causes he pursues to this day. He also had the ramrod military straightest posture in the NBA. � Kennard Machol, 72, Salt Lake City

Barack Obama. I don�t know him personally. But he has been under such intense scrutiny that I think I can be sure he is the real deal. He has the ancient Roman virtues of honesty, fortitude, grace, strength, protectiveness, respect, vision, individuality, self-confidence, persistence, focus, and fidelity to law and custom. He is also very, very funny: the best witticisms in the history of the presidency. He�s a family man. � David Nelson, 76, Miami and Asunci�n, Paraguay

George Clooney: a man who exhibits the �traditional� aspects of masculinity but does so with a modern interpretation. He embraces all of the things men are conditioned to enjoy: sports, motorcycles, cars, a night out with �the boys,� attention to fitness/appearance, a passion for his career and an appreciation for beautiful women. As he�s aged, he�s taken on the responsibility of being a loving partner who supports his wife�s career and a dedicated parent who has adjusted his career ambitions to better support his family, and he�s stopped riding motorcycles because of the risk to his health and the impact it might have on his family. Clooney does not lack self-awareness � he understands his privilege. He is principled and an advocate for those without a voice. � Philip Wyman, 43, Washington

Jesus Christ. He learned from his adoptive father how to work with his hands as a craftsman. He spent much of his time mentoring other men. He respected and valued women � he listened to them, taught them, included them among his followers and accepted support from them. He openly expressed all kinds of emotions, including joy and sorrow. He showed love and compassion to all kinds of people, including the outcasts of society. He enjoyed a good party and on one occasion even provided the wine. He boldly stood up for his beliefs and never backed down, even when opposed by powerful people. He suffered and sacrificed his life to save billions of others. He proved to be stronger than all his enemies, including death (by his resurrection). � Robert MacEwen, 58, Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands

5
The importance of character

In the modern moment, masculinity is too often represented by physical attributes: a certain height, a particular look, the right set of �masculine� accessories � whether that�s Andrew Tate�s sports cars or Bronze Age Pervert�s weightlifting regime.

But a better ideal of masculinity is, as I put it in the essay, �a vision of gender that�s not androgynous but still equal, and relies on character, not just biology.�

Readers agreed. Even if some couldn�t name a specific man as their masculine exemplar, they had a clear idea of what the ideal would be. I was fascinated by how many of the responses highlighted a very particular set of values: self-knowledge, honesty, responsibility, duty and a dedication to helping others, especially those weaker than oneself.

As a gay man, I have often been dismissed from discussions about masculinity. Few understand that we had no male role models to guide us in defining masculinity as we grew up. We had to figure it out on our own and define it in ways that resonated with us.

In my view, true masculinity requires a man to know himself deeply and live honestly, without apologies or concerns about the judgments of others. Masculinity is like a buffet, offering a wide range of options from which we can choose. Hobbies and work are not gendered, and men would do well to accept this fully. � F. Michael Bremer-Cruz, 57, Gaithersburg, Md.

Be competent in a career of choice. Be kind. Be open-minded. Be clean. Be fit. Be a solution. Own it. � Jerry Hall, 67, Scottsdale, Ariz.

To be a 21st-century male in America means:

You are independent, strong in your beliefs, but have an open mind. You can sit and debate politics and socioeconomic trends but know who the winning QB was in last year�s SB (Mahomes).

You cook. You love it, actually � because it�s creative � and you get to use fire and provide something delicious for you and your household.

You�re self-sufficient. You change your own oil.

You�re genuinely curious about things that you don�t know anything about.

You. Don�t. Cheat. Ever. Nothing is sexier nor more powerfully affirming than being a rock-solid mate for your partner. It�s not that hard, guys.

You help in any way possible. Your neighbor needs a tool? Done. Another parent needs a pinch hitter because they�re working a double shift? You�re there for their kids. Your neighborhood needs hands to clean up the block? You get after it.

You�re not afraid of hard work � but it�s not your everything. You balance those things so that you�re present for your partner, your family, your friends. � Ben Eberle, 42, Conway, Mass.

Men should listen attentively, keep an open mind, use their strength for the betterment of all, use words instead of fists, not play with guns, and never, never, never strike a woman. Men are at their best when protecting and defending women. � Bennett Werner, 71, Cape May, N.J.

To be a �man,� one must be a mature male human being. It�s that simple.

When does one become mature? When one accepts and executes the responsibilities of the mature person to the very best of one�s ability. Those who depend on you are certain you will do your duty of responsibility or die trying. Males who threaten and bully those who are weaker or not in a position to defend themselves are not men but cowardly boys beneath contempt.

The things I speak of here are traits of character, not muscle. You can sit at a desk all day and still be a man: honest, fair, dependable, pay your debts, keep your word, have the courage of your convictions and, above all, quietly take responsibility when it is yours to take. Then you are no longer a child, you are no longer a boy, you have earned respect, you have become a man. � John Lunde, 73, St. Paul, Minn.

6
Anti-idealists

As I wrote elsewhere, some of the consistent pushback to this essay came from those who believed that the search for a �masculine ideal� was an unnecessary and self-defeating project. I disagree, but it�s a point worth considering.

I don�t think I have an �ideal of masculinity� precisely because I reject the term. When I hear the term �masculine,� I shudder because the likes of Josh Hawley and the incel movement have taken over the term. I see �men� driving enormous trucks � clean and sparkling because they�ve never been used for actual work � and I think, �He�s compensating for something.� � Peter Hornbein, 70, Boulder, Colo.

The very question of what constitutes ideal masculinity is, at best, a fool�s errand and, at worst, dangerous. It also might lie at the heart of why we are losing young men to cults of toxic masculinity. The minute you define this false ideal, you are falsely defining those who don�t meet the ideal. � Craig Culp, 63, Gaithersburg, Md.

7
A final word

Readers� responses frequently mixed uncertainty with idealism; as the essay says, it�s not always easy to give voice to what a man should be. But even if masculinity is hard to grasp, many of us clearly still see it as a worthy goal. And, perhaps, manhood is forged in the trying.

I don�t have an ideal and I don�t know why. I wanted one, that�s for sure. I grew up without a dad, and in the workforce, I only met guys like me. I�ve had male friends who were older-brother types, but I had to abandon the friendships because of some serious bad habits. There have been movie actors who seemed to provide a masculine image, but you were fooling yourself if you latched on and did not understand that it was �playacting� and fake.

So, at the end of the day, in my 60s, I look at myself in the mirror; I�ve worked my whole life, never took a handout, was stoic during tough times, tried not to gossip or talk smack as it is known, and did things I thought were masculine: repaired roofs, helped friends move, stood up to bullies, played sports, fixed cars, etc. I look at myself, shrug at myself and walk away from the mirror, thinking, What does it matter anyway? We live alone, we die alone. Maybe that�s as masculine as it gets. � J. G. Falco, 61, Austin

didnt read

# ¿ Aug 17, 2023 03:25

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 05:01

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

didn't read that

# ¿ Aug 31, 2023 03:16

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

so ive been reading this book the farm for a feminist book club the premise is that theres this high end surrogacy farm theres four perspective characters two surrogates at the farm one from a genteel new york background the other a poor filipina mother both young then theres the manager of the farm and then theres the significantly older cousin of the poor filipina mother whos taking care of her baby

the book itself is fairly inoffensive although how it goes out of its way to be antichina is a little eyebrow raising the whale surrogacy client whos implied to be kind of a bitch is this chinese billionaire the manager of the farms father escaped chinese tyranny at some point in the past i dont think was clearly stated when and theres an offhand line about the terrible baby killing pollution in beijing fun china facts not mentioned include how china bans surrogacy which you could debatedly justify as this not being something that the generally pro surrogacy characters would ever mention but all the other stuff is presented noncritically

whats bugging me is the feminist book club itself and specifically the framing of the whole plot as being patriarchal despite the almost complete absence of any male characters the capitalist reading of the story is straightforward enough all the characters are talking themselves into thinking that surrogacy or other dubious obsessions with money are good ideas by rationalizing the more sentimental aspects of surrogacy stories with their own material or emotional needs

but like how can a story that is demonstrably not about men at all still be about men im trying to envision what the plot would look like if it took place in a girlboss barbie utopia with no patriarchy at all and its...not appreciably different? the poor filipinas moms husband is a deadbeat dick and the genteel new yorkers dad is maybe kind of patronizing to her mother who has turbo alzheimers but neither of these specific plot points are all that important and the characters themselves barely ever discuss them

realizing this disconnect as i get closer to finishing the book is just making me realize how feminism seems to have drifted from conceptualizing stories as not needing men to conceptualizing them as requiring men like we need to care what the men are thinking at all times which is just really weird because were not even discussing actual men were discussing abstract patriarchal representations of them and were discussing them in such a way to imply that women dont have any real agency outside of what men tell them to do

this is just a really strange position to take in regard to a story where the central plot device is the commodification of childbearing and women negotiating their relationships with other women within that framework technically speaking you could do this kind of plot in a postapocalyptic setting where men literally dont even exist so how can this fundamentally be a story about men

Some Guy TT posted:

i dont think that is what the book is about which is why im really confused that the book club seems to be presenting the book as if it were while also defining this as the feminist interpretation as far as i can tell because theyre using the word patriarchy a lot to describe it

but yeah its a feminist book club the book itself is presented neither as feminist nor as a book club book theres no discussion questions in the back wait the author is a staff writer at the economist who worked in investment banking and private equity investing??? the gently caress was this actually intended to be a pro surrogacy story???

did not read

# ¿ Oct 4, 2023 22:12

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

real feminism is telling men you did not read their long rear end post

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 03:43

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Gravid Topiary posted:

and yet you're part of poppers porno reading club smdhh

a critical issue with books by men is i cannot quote them at the author and say "did not read"

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 06:50

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

tristeham posted:

skill issue

i guess i could hit the amazon reviews

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 07:22

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

puncturewound78 posted:

confused. That post implied Some Guy is a woman? So maybe you should have read it...

always check the profile

# ¿ Oct 5, 2023 07:43

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

was watching a show the other day and was kind of unnerved when one character described volunteer work as being about telling kids to take what they want and not to let anyone get in their way

like he phrased it almost identically to lean in girlboss feminism so it was weird when his date responded by going but what if it belongs to someone else which ive never heard as a follow up to that kind of rhetoric before

fortunately his next line was about how he believes in alpha philosophy so i understood that the reason his worldview was wrong because he was a man

almost a length im willing to read but not quite. good hustle

# ¿ Oct 6, 2023 01:58

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

this is how we know putin runs the forums because most of us are porpoises

i read this whole post congratulations

# ¿ Oct 6, 2023 08:01

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

loquacius posted:

Laughed at this tweet so hard I had to resurrect the thread

https://twitter.com/dnalerinrehtron/status/1715463513815105564

lol

# ¿ Oct 22, 2023 18:04

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

On October 3, the New York Times published a recipe for �Marry Me Chicken� � a buttery and creamy recipe that is so good, the recipe's author claims that men have said that they�d marry her for that chicken.

The recipe is different from �Engagement Chicken,'' which made its debut in the pages of Glamour in 2004. But its functionality and its title are essentially the same � a meal so good that the person you cook it for will fall in love with you. These recipes are simple; the ingredients are usually inexpensive. The idea is that it�s a meal any woman can create, and by doing so, become the object of enduring love.

The lore of Engagement Chicken holds that in 1982, Glamour fashion editor Kim Bonnell, gave her trusty chicken recipe to an assistant who needed something to cook for her boyfriend. The boyfriend proposed a month later.

When the recipe was published in the magazine�s January 2004 issue, it became a celebrity. A 2012 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reads, �Glamour editors went on NBC�s �Today Show� to demonstrate how to make the dish. Print headlines soon followed as word spread about the recipe � chicken stuffed with whole fresh lemons, basted with �marry me� drippings from the pan and fresh herbs.�

A 2011 New York Post story claimed that Howard Stern�s then-girlfriend Beth Ostrosky made the recipe for him; when he described it on air, someone called in to tell him he'd been fed engagement chicken. When Stern asked Ostrosky if she had made the recipe, she confessed. She even said she�d torn the headline off so Stern wouldn�t see what she was up to. Stern and Ostrosky married in 2008 and are still together.

It hardly seems like coincidence that Engagement Chicken peaked at a time of post-feminist backlash to the women�s movement. A time when the goals of feminism were conquered, or so we believed. The pay gap had been closing. Women were entering and graduating from college at higher rates than men. The radical Riot Grrrls of the �90s had been replaced by the less angry pop stars � Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears. And even Hillary Clinton had long since repented of her infamous line about not making cookies and had published, in Family Circle, a cookie recipe that beat out one submitted by Barbara Bush.

Part of this post-feminist backlash was the idea of the empowered woman as the lonely woman. The woman more likely to be hit by a bomb than married. The woman who had it all, except love.

In the post-feminist discourse of 2023, it�s still the woman as the one eating that draws our most unnerved responses. A woman feasting, especially on the dime of a man, is unruly in her appetites for sex and power and pizza. She must be restrained either by looking as if she never feasts or by becoming the producer of food � sublimating her desires into dishes that communicate all that she is not allowed to say.

That nearly 20 years later, the New York Times is wink-wink-nudge-nudge reviving the marriage chicken trope in a time of feminist backlash, where women are experiencing a restriction in their reproductive rights and healthcare access, doesn�t seem like an accident. It comes after other sections of the paper have suggested that the answer to male loneliness is for women to just have more sex or get married. It comes after other sections of the paper have exhaustively reported that women still do more of the domestic labor.

Of course, anyone can make a Marry Me Chicken. But anyone doesn�t. A 2019 Pew study reports that in heterosexual couples, women �spend 52 minutes a day on meal prep, vs. 22 minutes for men.�

And because cultural scripts for love put women (willingly or otherwise) in a passive role, engagement isn�t something a woman initiates. In 2019, 97 percent of engagements were initiated by male partners. A man wants an engagement, he asks. A woman wants an engagement, she makes a chicken.

Food as the stuff of courtship is nothing new. Male birds often use offerings of fresh or regurgitated food to lure females into partnerships. In invertebrates, the act of gift-giving between breeding partners is called the �nuptial gift.� For example, in hermaphroditic land snails, one partner will shoot a mucus love dart at the other partner. This gift can often result in the death or injury of the recipient. But for the love-dart-shooter, it increases sperm capacity.

Animals aren�t the only ones. In Nora Ephron�s Heartburn, she documents her special vinaigrette that kept her cheating spouse coming back to her. In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, food becomes a vehicle for communicating the despair and passion of the main character, Josefita de la Garza.

Food is such a ubiquitous metaphor that in Mythologies, Roland Barthes writes, �To eat is a behavior that develops beyond its own ends, replacing, summing up, and signalizing other behaviors. What are these other behaviors? Today we might say all of them: activity, work, sports, effort, leisure, celebration � every one of these situations is expressed through food."

In her 2020 book The Mating Game, a study of modern courtship rituals, Ellen Lamont, associate professor of sociology at Appalachian State University, notes that no matter how liberal or progressive a person identifies as, it�s in romance where we cede our radical politics. Lamont spent time with 107 dating individuals in California�s Bay Area, all of whom identified as liberal, and noted how those radical politics went out the window when it came to courtship. Cis heterosexual women who professed to want equality become strident about gender norms when dating. Men have to ask a woman out. Men have to pay on dates. Men have to propose.

It�s a complicated dance that�s more about the appearance of an acceptable relationship than the actualities of one.

One woman told Lamont that if her boyfriend wasn�t ready for marriage but she was, she would simply tell him to propose. �I would say, �You need to propose.� But I would never ask him myself� So, I would informally ask him and tell him what I need him to do but I would never actually do it myself.�

But a woman�s desire for marriage is still perceived as manipulative. Men, it is assumed, have a right to propose. But women don�t. Women are supposed to want marriage but not ask for it � to want love, but not pursue it.

One of the women Lamont studied talked about making the Engagement Chicken recipe, which she describes as generic and boring. She explained, �So, I�m going to make it for [my boyfriend] and then he�ll just hurry up and propose. I was like, but then I would feel like I kind of like coerced him into it.�

Lamont concludes, �This taboo against women�s influence is so strong that even making a basic chicken dinner is framed as manipulative.�

When I first began dating my ex-husband, I�d go to his parents� house on breaks from college. There, I made a sour-cream apple pie, which my future-father-in-law declared made me marriage-worthy. It was a joke ha ha ha. But it also wasn�t a joke. My ability to produce food was a marriageable trait. And later, when I�d look around at the lopsided labor of my marriage, I�d know it began there: with this idea that it was my ability to feed that had been the first concession (of many).

Years later, as a divorced woman dating men, I�d always offer (and I still do) to split the cost of dinner and drinks. Sometimes I�d even pay for everything. It felt equal to me. And even though a lot of my female friends think it�s stupid, I don�t want to feel indebted to a man financially. The whole issue is extremely fraught, but that�s how I feel.

Meanwhile � and almost unbelievably � some people still believe that women are going on dates for a free meal. (For the record, if you are hungry, this is perfectly fine.)

It�s an exhausting dance of consumption and offering. And through it all, I ask myself: Who gets to consume, and who has to feed? Whose offering is one of love? Whose taking is greedy?

The question is not who cooks. Not really. But it�s about who has to produce and who gets to produce.

It�s ironic that almost 20 years after its publication in Glamour, Engagement Chicken has been rebranded as Marry Me Chicken. A dish that is harder, more intricate, and yet still rife with all the same expectations.

It�s no coincidence that the dish is making a comeback, as the forces of our culture try to force women back into traditional roles by rolling back reproductive rights, health-care access, and LGBTQ rights � attempting to force people into heteronormative roles.

In the post-feminist discourse of 2023, it�s still the woman as the one eating that draws our most unnerved responses. A woman feasting, especially on the dime of a man, is unruly in her appetites for sex and power and pizza. She must be restrained either by looking as if she never feasts or by becoming the producer of food � sublimating her desires into dishes that communicate all that she is not allowed to say. The trick of Marry Me Chicken is that it pushes us back under the guise of choice.

After reading the Marry Me Chicken article, I joked that there was no equivalent for men. No, �End Male Loneliness Eggplant Parmesan.� No �Get the Girlfriend Gnocchi.�

But it�s less about equivalency and more about expectation. I do not want to stop making chicken, but I do want to renegotiate the terms of my existence as a consumer of food and a producer of food. I want to be able to say my own desires aloud � with the same mouth I use to consume my food.

not even a chance

# ¿ Oct 25, 2023 19:19

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

War and Pieces posted:

the secret ingredient is menstrual blood

shut the gently caress up

# ¿ Oct 27, 2023 05:24

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

i think it depends on whether they have kids i suspect a lot of divorced person energy is because theyre unwilling to acknowledge that the real reason their marriage collapsed was because kids and everything that goes along with them were completely incompatible with their previous lifestyle

divorced guy energy is fundamentally resentment yeah. it manifests as doing a bunch of independent expensive poo poo as a reaction against the resentment

# ¿ Oct 27, 2023 21:17

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

I am the creator of a girl empowerment business. We created curriculum kits that use the stories of notable women in history to teach girls about their worth and potential. I am the writer and researcher, and B, my business partner (and one of my favorite guy feminists), is the creative and marketing guru.

We work well together. When there is a disagreement, we listen, find common ground and solve problems together. Sometimes finding a solution feels impossible. Sometimes the solution turns out perfect.

Before the pandemic, we partnered with schools to deliver our curriculum. When the shutdown occurred, we lost those partnerships, but we found the homeschool crowd. This community accepted us wholeheartedly.

For the past three years, we�ve traveled to more than 20 homeschool conferences. Our company has a lot of supportive and excited customers. We even get return customers whom we love reconnecting with at these events.

However, there is a faction that prickles at our presence. B and I try to brush it off, but even the smallest splinter, when not addressed, can cause an infection.

A mom enters our booth in the exhibitor hall in Missouri. �OK, my daughter loves Harriet Tubman. Tell me what you got!� she says.

I explain our product, how we use historical women to teach girls about their worth and potential. The mother says: �But is it woke? I mean, I don�t want to teach my daughter about woke.�

I look around at our curriculum kits. They are all women who fought for equality. I think to myself, Hell yes, it�s woke. The irony is lost on this potential customer.

I pause and take a different approach.

In my head, I hear Inigo Montoya from �The Princess Bride�: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I understand what she thinks she is asking. She doesn�t want anything liberal, progressive, or written by �snowflakes.� But does she know that �woke� is not a bad thing?

�What do you mean, �woke�?� I ask.

She opens her mouth. Half-words and phrases stumble and tumble around. A few talking points from news sources fall out. Finally, she sighs. �I don�t know. Just tell me again what you write.�

In Ohio, a mom breezes into our booth.

�Oh my goodness, I love this. I am going to have to buy this for my girl!� she tells me. �I do have one question, though ― do you teach feminism? I mean, I believe in equality, but I am not a feminist, and I don�t want to teach it to my daughter.�

I take the approach I used in Missouri.

�What do you mean?� I ask her.

�Well, do you teach that women are better than men?�

�No, I teach all genders are equal and should be treated as such.�

She buys three kits.

I am in Texas, my home state. A mom wanders in, picks up a journal, and reads about Kate Warne, the first woman detective.

�Where do you do your research?� she asks. I give her several sites. �That�s good, that�s good,� she says.

�Now then,� she begins again, �what is your slant?�

�Slant?� I ask.

�Which way do you lean?�

�Just historical facts,� I tell her.

�OK. But listen, I need you to do something for me.�

She reaches out and takes my hand. Apparently we are best friends now.

�Write about Biblical characters,� she says. �We need that. Especially the men.�

I tilt my head to the side.

�Well, we focus on actual women from history,� I say.

Wrong answer.

�Well, I will have to think about this.�

She drops my hand. The friendship is over.

I am sitting in my booth in South Carolina. It�s been a long morning. Suddenly I feel a presence. I turn around, and slowly, into my sights, the face of an older man scrolls down. Chin, nose, glasses.

�You gonna do more?� he asks.

I hold off a grimace caused by his coffee breath.

He glances up at an illustration that highlights our historical women. I stand up and take two steps back, putting the chair between us.

�Yes, we hope to add two more women. In the fall, we will add the first Asian American woman accepted into the Army. Then we are working on a Latina in 2024.�

�Well, hopefully not Frida Kahlo,� he says.

�You never know,� I reply.

�No, she�s no good, a communist,� he tells me.

�She did a lot of good.�

�Not all women are good,� he explains.

�Not all men are good,� I respond.

He walks away and I exhale. I didn�t realize I had been holding my breath.

I�m still in South Carolina. A couple comes to the booth. They were here yesterday, and I talked to the wife. Yesterday, her husband stayed silent. Today he sees B and gets excited.

�Here�s a guy,� he says. �He is ready to answer all of my questions.�

I side-eye B while welcoming the couple back. I talk to the wife, and they wander over to look at our product.

A few minutes later, the husband walks over to B.

�My wife doesn�t know the story of Rosie the Riveter,� he says. �I�m gonna tell her, but I need you to fact-check me.�

B glances my way.

�Actually, Heather is the one who wrote the biographies.�

�Yeah, I know, but check me,� he tells B.

No one else is in the booth, so the husband stands in the middle. Center stage. He spreads his legs wide, slightly bending his knees, and his wife preps for the show.

�OK, he and I...� he begins. With both arms, he dramatically gestures to B and himself, a platoon of two. �We are off fighting the war. You and her �� he indicates us girls � �stay home and support us by making airplanes. We �� another swing of the arms to indicate the platoon � �use the airplanes to win the war and come home.�

He looks triumphantly at B. �Is that right?�

I am baffled by this 10-second World War II reenactment. An awkward giggle escapes me. B looks at me and I shrug my shoulders. B�s on his own with this guy.

He clears his throat and says, �Well, there�s more to it than that, but yeah, I guess.�

The couple buy the curriculum and tell us they are opening a co-op school.

Back in Texas, a woman walks by. She stares at the booth and looks at me. There are tears in her eyes.

�This is amazing. Please give me one of everything,� she tells me.

She does indeed buy one of everything. She thanks me for the diversity and representation. She whispers: �You don�t see this type of curriculum at homeschool conferences. Instead, you see those types of things.�

B and I look at where she is pointing. At the next booth, a company is selling books with rhyming Bible stories. Their banner sports a cartoon version of white Jesus with six-pack abs, biceps for days, and nail holes in his hands. Around him are brown-skinned people with large, crooked noses.

We are stunned into silence. Later, B and I wonder what rhymes with Jerusalem.

Another city in Texas. A woman and her older mother walk into the booth. They pick up products and make comments, but neither acknowledges me.

One picks up a journal that tells the story of Sarah Grimk�. On the cover, it says �Follow Your Heart.�

The younger woman turns to her mother and says, rather loudly: �You know what (insert daughter�s name) said to me the other day?�

�What?� her mother asks.

�She said in Sunday school she learned you can�t listen to your heart, only to the Lord, because your heart lies to you.�

The younger woman finally looks at me and says: �Even my daughter gets it. She is only 9.�

She puts the journal back, and they leave. I don�t tell her a girl�s heart is the only thing that speaks truth.

We�re in Florida. I walk down an aisle and notice a red glare, a tinge that no other aisle has. It takes me a moment, and then it hits me: This whole aisle is political organizations. None of it has to do with education � just politics � and every booth has some red in it.

I pass some signs that read �Ron DeSantis World.� B says it looks like they�re mimicking the Disney font. Several booths are conducting podcast interviews. I look up the podcasts on my phone and see that each one spreads conspiracy theories.

I pass another booth where a man and a woman are talking about gun rights... at a homeschool conference. Then I pass a Moms for Liberty booth. My stomach drops.

We�re in Missouri again. We are selling a lot of product � in fact, we had our first mother and son make a purchase so he could learn about Sacagawea. It made me happy.

A voice comes on the intercom: �All boys are welcomed to the _____ booth for a push-up contest.�

Boys of all ages go to the booth and form a circle. Their heads are in the middle, feet on the outside. The contest starts. There is a lot of yelling and grunting. Girls stand around the circle watching. I wonder what they are thinking as they watch the boys. There isn�t a contest for girls.

I�m in California. It�s our last conference for the season. I threw up again from the anxiety of anticipating more offhand remarks and rude questions. This morning I am presenting to a full room. I am discussing ways to build confidence in girls. I am 20 minutes into the presentation when a woman interrupts me.

�When are you going to talk about God in all of this?� she asks.

Her rudeness throws me off. I take a breath and smile.

�God is wherever you want God to be. I can�t tell you that,� I reply.

Two other women get up and leave.

Later, one lady comes back to apologize. She admits that walking out of my presentation wasn�t very Christian-like. Sometimes I forget I am around Christians � �Do unto others� doesn�t get universally applied at these conferences.

That evening, I finally tell B that I am throwing up before the conferences. He asks if we need to stop going. I want to say yes, but I don�t.

Although throwing up is new, this conversation isn�t. One thing about B � he will follow my lead. He gets the double standard without me needing to verbalize it. Deep down, neither of us is ready to be forced out. So once more, over drinks, we hammer out reasons why we want to be in places that cause strife.

�We make a lot of money at these events,� I say. It feels dirty coming out of my mouth. B nods and orders another round.

�Your thing is changing the conversation,� he says. �Changing the conversation on beauty culture. Changing the conversation on how we raise empowered girls. How about we change the conversation about feminism at these events?�

He gets that look in his eye, the one that signifies he has a wildly genius thought.

�What if we actually start talking about feminism instead of avoiding the conversation? Maybe the workshops you give could be why feminism is good. You could be the woman that blatantly teaches about feminism... at a conservative homeschool convention. It�s brilliant!�

I laugh out loud, partly intrigued, partly because I think he is insane.

�We will get canceled,� I tell him.

�For all the right reasons,� he replies.

The bartender brings over two dirty martinis.

didnt read this but the generous line breaks are a good start

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 19:50

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

57001 posted:

Tried to search the thread but I don't have platinum or whatever but Catharine MacKinnon recently published a (imho) great article in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism entitled "A Feminist Defense of Transgender Sex Equality Rights" further proving that TERF-ism is fringe and trans women rock.

I find her analysis cathartic, especially as it pertains to my own pet theories of gender (basically, straight cis white men are men, everyone else is some degree of woman, in the sense that there are only truly two categories: those who are afforded the full privileges of being perceived as men and everyone else) (not saying it's a particularly good or novel way of categorizing, but it helps explain to some of my non-theorypilled friends why traditional feminisms still have worthy arguments).

And, my last highlight, from "Exploring Transgender Politics: A Conversation with Catharine MacKinnon":

hold on boys this is what real cooking looks like

i read this first one and its good. gonna work on the second later.

the point she drives to at the end is interesting and i'm going to need time to fully digest it, but it tends to agree with my own priors: a rights-based feminist assessment of sex work/prostitution is subject to the same issues as any rights-based feminist framework, in that it neglects the social content and coerced nature those rights are exercised under. i do think she is collapsing the broader sense "sex work" is used in to a more specific word with a negative and extreme sense, "prostitution", along with missing the importance of the word "work" - a labor relationship rather than assessment of dignity and value.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 22:19

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

a real intriguing point is made early on in this about how the act of physical transitioning isnt really particularly helpful or useful its just technically easier to accomplish than the complete reordering of society is why transpeople do it and not even as many transpeople do it as everyone tends to assume the act only really exists at all as a concession to the biological determinist argument to prove dedication to the concept of gender but as we can see terfs arent even slightly persuaded by this if anything the focus on biology has just given them an extra weapon in that they can argue that transpeople are engaging in self mutilation

one useful way to conceptualize this is to try to imagine an actual person and not an abstract concept like lets say youre a transteen kicked out of your house maybe for being trans maybe for having oppositional defiant disorder maybe because mom cant make rent this week the exact reason isnt really important what is important is that lacking options turning tricks seems like the best possible option so thats what you start doing

now did you really choose to do sex work or was that just the only option available to you i think most of us would agree that in this situation a real choice isnt being presented however within the context of the sex work itself there is a choice for a wider possible presentation of gender roles which can definitely be appealing but this doesnt fundamentally change what sex work is anymore than being able to work remotely fundamentally changes your job

the big problem with a lot of popular so called feminist rhetoric imo is that it presumes that everyone is basically a cis bougie white male and it also assumes that any analysis which does not presume that level of agency is misogynist because it implies that men and women are different which like they are this is literally the entire premise of gender studies and i genuinely dont know what a lot of these people even think oppression is if they consider nearly any possible choice a person could make as being a means of expressing meaningful agency

youve unlocked the secret to getting me to read these long rear end posts with no line breaks: quote me and respond to my point

# ¿ Nov 1, 2023 08:29

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

the presumption of the importance of becoming a mother is something thats always bugged me in more popular feminist rhetoric you can hate marriage you can hate men but you should still want to be a mother even if youre using a surrogate and also a nanny and basically outsourcing pretty much anything you could describe as being a motherly or even parental task to some other person with the most absurd part being that these same people are perplexed when their kids grow up and basically want nothing to do with them as theyve never made any real emotional connection

on the flip end of it theres also the extent to which motherhood has been simplified into an emotional commitment with no materialist concerns whatsoever and since women just naturally have built in emotional superpowers any woman is presumed to be mother material if they bootstrap it hard enough this is an implicit assumption of the safe legal and rare centrist abortion plank that hillary clinton put into vogue in the nineties and the real frustrating thing about this superficially girl power position is that it actually increases the social burden women are expected to shoulder for childrearing since the same fetishized role doesnt apply to fatherhood

i read this one but id have been a lot happier about it if you included literally any punctuation or linebreaks

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 03:53

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

i won't be watching lain

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 08:31

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

kids are basically subject to the same progressive creep of isolation and ownership as every other aspect of society. if a kid is exposed to something which isnt part of the Plan, thats a problem, because the kid is Mine. so childhood is now reduced to the experience of an indoor cat or garaged car: often comfortable but not independent or growth-oriented

# ¿ Nov 3, 2023 08:52

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

if not for that, how would we be posting on the something awful forums

# ¿ Nov 3, 2023 09:02

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

we make this joke all the time but i think theres a distinction to be made between actually having conversations with people on a bbs message board and just communicating via roblox comments or parasocial youtube obsessions or maybe having "friends" in the sense that you might recognize certain user names that show up in splatoon lobbies even if you know basically nothing about who they even are

yeah definitely and i think people whod still post on the something awful forums long for that slower more personal internet. but societally speaking, its not coming back any time soon

# ¿ Nov 3, 2023 09:21

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

jacking off is on the bds list

# ¿ Nov 12, 2023 04:25

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

that one could have been one paragraph dude

# ¿ Nov 13, 2023 20:48

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

one short paragraph to be clear

# ¿ Nov 13, 2023 20:48

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

i read long retarded essays if a woman wrote them (chatgpt does not count)

# ¿ Nov 13, 2023 22:20

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

You would think a Bollywood actress who has faced the trials and tribulations of Bollywood's sexism, ageism and general discrimination against women would understand the true meaning of feminism and stand by it. But welcome to 2023 where everything and anything is possible in the world divided by 'traditional vs liberal'.

In her appearance on Ranveer Allahbadia's podcast, Neena Gupta talked about women's empowerment by recalling her old statements on women navigating in the patriarchal world. She recalled stating 'It's a curse to be born a woman' over a decade ago. In the very next line, the veteran actress said, ''Yeh faltu feminism, jese mard aurat ke barabar hoti hai, yeh sab sochne ki aur vishwas karne ki koi zarurat nahi hoti hai''.

She proceeded to list out a couple of things that she wants women to achieve—which, by the way, are a result of feminism in India—by stating, ''Become financially independent, apne kaam par dhyaan do, if you are a housewife then don't belittle that job. Have some self esteem and don't belittle yourself''.

She firmly opined, ''We are not equals. When a man starts to get pregnant, only then we'll be equal. We can never be equal''. To this, Ranveer asked, ''Do you think boys have it better?'' to which Neena ironically agreed. When asked about her opinion on the mission of feminism, the veteran actress laughed and replied, ''I don't know. But I just want women to be financially independent''.

After this, logic and irony walked hand-in-hand to die a slow and painful death atop a hill. A simple Google search and a brief read-up on the history of women would make one realize that feminism stands for the 'social, economic, and political equality of the sexes'. Which, in layman's terms, would translate to women attaining financial freedom and having an individual identity in society, something that patriarchy would not allow to exist.

While many instances of radicalism may have changed the perception of the movement, it does not change the original intentions and motives of feminism. Not to mention, the rise in popularity of figures like Andrew Tate have amplified misogynistic voices on the internet, hence, manipulating the narrative of the movement.

But wait! It's not over yet. Neena Gupta went on to opine that women 'need a man' to protect them from other men. She recalled an instance when she was young. She was supposed to catch a flight early in the morning and was followed by a man when she stepped out of her house. She got scared and returned to her house.

She then revealed that she stayed the night at a male friend's house who then dropped her off. She went on to exclaim, ''I need a man''. One of the biggest issues that women are battling in today's world is safety. The so-called 'alpha males' love to use the 'Male being a protector' narrative against women to restrict their freedom. On the other hand, women are begging men to simply stop attacking them.

After her quote went viral, the internet was divided. Many people supported Neena Gupta for her views while many called her out for the irony in her statements.

not even a chance

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 08:30

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

now thats a post. keep it coming

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 23:58

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

watching an old episode of law and order svu (s10 e10) about a serial rapist with some kind of magical mind blanking roofie that doesnt show up on a toxscreen his one weird trick to beating rape charges is to film them and claim hes acting out mutually agreed upon rape fantasies and the final act is him blaming porn as his defense

old svus have really discouraging gender politics mostly because theyre just...the same aside from the specific actors who are onscreen theres hardly ever any strong clues whether the story is taking place in the aughts or the twenties

it occurs to me that the whole premise is actually drat near perfect for workshopping modern feminism and all its grotesque contradictions because when you start from the point of "police care about rape and rape makes them angry" your framework is already so fundamentally flawed that nearly any conclusion you come up with is so abstract as to be completely useless

didnt reas

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 01:29

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Whirling posted:

I learned something really funny in another thread which is that gacha games have to make absolutely sure nothing resembles the "🤏" emoji in South Korea because some Korean radfem site used it to make fun of right-wing dudes online and it collectively traumatized them so badly that they will have a meltdown if they see it again.

lol

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 20:27

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

Twenty eight years ago, I was sitting on the dusty rose carpeting of my childhood bedroom, staring at the cover of the latest issue Seventeen. This particular issue isn�t available on eBay, and only certain articles from inside have been digitized, so I can�t tell you the exact wording of the Editor�s Note, but others have a similar memory of its contents: look at this non-model on the cover, which I interpreted as look at this non-ideal body on the cover.

If this body was non-ideal, I remember thinking, then what was mine? I had just turned twelve years old, and was about to finish sixth grade. I was starting junior high in the Fall. Somehow both bodysuits and massive, baggy flannels were popular. My body, like a lot of other girls at that age, was beginning to rearrange itself. I felt so alienated from it, so unmoored from any sort of solid sense of self.

Three months later, I read the Letters to the Editor (which, miraculously, have been digitized), which framed the cover model �as a body you can relate to.� The first letter, written from a dorm at Wheaton College, expressed �relief�; the second thanked Seventeen for putting someone �who forgets to do their step aerobics from time to time,� and the third argued that if you�re going to put someone in a bikini on the cover, �she ought to have a better figure.�

Again, the message I received � and why the original cover and the letters to the editor remain fixed in my brain � was that this body was somehow �normal� (and thus desirable/obtainable) but also undesirable (insufficiently controlled, not for public display, un-ideal).

Reading these letters now, it�s striking that they were all authored by groups of girls and/or women � suggesting that they came together, talked about the cover, came to a consensus, and decided to submit their feedback. But it�s also striking that Seventeen chose these three letters as the ones, out of hundreds, maybe even thousands, to highlight. They represent the two postures that pervaded the pop culture of the �90s and 2000s: you should let go of old fashioned ideas of beauty and femininity, embracing your own understanding of what liberation and power looks like�.while also conforming to new, often equally constrictive standards of girl and womanhood.

Of course, these two postures are in direct opposition. But most ideologies are contradictory in some way � and dependent on pop culture, from the Seventeen letter section to actual celebrity images, to reconcile the contradictions and prop up the ideology as a whole. In the �90s, feminist theorists immediately called bullshit on this practice, which they referred to as a �postfeminism� (I cannot tell you how many pieces of feminist scholarship from the early �90s I have read on the postfeminist quagmire that is Pretty Woman) but that didn�t stop it from becoming the backdrop of Gen-X�s early adulthood and millennials� childhoods.

In �The Making and Unmaking of Body Problems in Seventeen Magazine, 1992-2003,� design scholars Leslie Winfield Ballentine and Jennifer Paff Ogle point to the ways in which teen magazines work as illustrating texts � filling in the �contours and colors� � for readers trying to figure to what it means to be a young woman. At the time of their research, Seventeen was �reaching� a whopping 87% of American girls between the ages of 12 and 19.

�Reaching� is different than �reading� or �agreeing with,� but what the magazine communicated, in concert with similarly voiced texts, like YM and Teen, mattered. (At least to white teens: Lisa Duke�s illuminating work found that while white adolescent readers viewed the magazines as sites of �reality,� Black readers primarily used the magazines as opportunities for critique).

In their analysis, Ballentine and Ogle delineated two types of body-related articles. The clear majority were concerned with the �making� of body problems, but they were often accompanied by articles �unmaking� those same problems. In other words: there was an abundance of articles introducing something that the reader should be worried about (cellulite, wrinkles, blemishes, bacne, �flabby� areas, stretch marks, �unwanted� hair, body odor) and how to address it in order to achieve the �ideal� body�.but also, often in the same issue, there were articles instructing the reader to let go of others� ideas about what beauty or perfection might look like. (See the cover of that June 1993 Seventeen: �You are so beautiful / Celebrate your heritage, celebrate yourself)

As any past or present reader of these magazines knows, the framing of imperfections and their reparation is rarely as simple as �your legs are hideous, here�s how to make them not hideous.� It�s more like this passage, from 1993:

Or this 1998 advice column response to a reader to �work [her] butt off� after voicing concern about its size:

Or this 1996 confessional from a high school student after returning from �fat camp� having lost 30 pounds:

As in so many other instructional texts, the body becomes a project in need of constant maintenance in order to achieve its ideal, attractive form, which is slender (but not too skinny), petite, toned but not muscular. Over the course of the �90s, that (woman�s) ideal was gradually refined until reaching peak form in the video for �I�m a Slave 4 U.�

There is no accounting for genetics, for race, for abilities, for access to time and capital, for even the existence of actual diverse body shapes. The ideal shifts slightly from decade to decade, but it never disappears; if anything, the sheer number of products and programs available to help it arrive in its ideal state proliferate. And if you can�t arrive at the ideal body, it�s not because your existing physical form cannot achieve it. It�s an implicit or explicit failure of will.

I have the skills to disassemble and analyze these images now, but at the time, I was just trying to drink from the cultural firehose of MTV and Seventeen and My So-Called Life. I didn�t have the internet. Sassy wasn�t on my radar, neither was Riot Grrl. There was no Tumblr, no Rookie. I had a Top 40 station and a mom with feminist inclinations but not a lot of feminist language. I had a fairly conservative youth group and because I wasn�t good at basketball or volleyball, the only other organized activity available to me was cheerleading.

As for alternative visions of femininity, I had Lois Lowry books and Go Ask Alice. I had the Delia*s catalog and the Victoria�s Secret catalog and �The Cube� at the local Bon March�. I was middle class, my home situation was never precarious, and I was largely unchallenged in school � which is another way of saying that I had a lot of mental energy to dedicate to thinking about the ways I failed to fit in to the narrow understanding of what a teen girl should be and look and act like in Lewiston, Idaho in the 1990s.

Which also means I was incredibly susceptible to the understanding of what the ideal should be, and eager for any and all advice on how to achieve it.

https://twitter.com/clhubes/status/1395061523274506242

I like to think of phrases like the one above � along with images like the Seventeen cover above � as a vernacular of deprivation, control, and aspirational containment. It�s the language we used to discipline our own bodies and others, and then normalize and standardize that discipline. For Younger Gen-X and Millennials, it includes, but is by no means limited, to:

Britney�s stomach and the discourse around it (1000 crunches a day)

The ubiquitous mentions of the Sweet Valley Twins� size (6)

TLC in silk pajamas for the �Creep� video

Jessica Simpson�s �fat� jeans

Celery as a �calorie negative food�

Janet Jackson�s abs in �That�s The Way Love Goes�

The figuration of certain foods as non-fat and thus �safely� consumable (jelly beans, SnackWells, olestra chips)

�Heroin chic� but specifically Kate Moss saying that �nothing tastes as good as skinny feels�

The reign of terror of low-slung jeans

The �going out top� whose platonic form was a handkerchief tied around your boobs

The phrases �muffin top� and �whale tale� and �thigh gap�

Ally McBeal, full stop

The Olson Twins, full stop

Kate Winslet as �chubby,� Brittany Murphy in Clueless as �fat,� Hilary Duff as �chubby,� one of the cheerleaders in Bring It On as fat, America Ferrera as �brave,� Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada as fat, Gisele as �curvy,� Alicia Silverstone as �Fatgirl�

Tyra Banks as �Thigh-Ra Banks�

The entire loving discourse around Bridget Jones� supposedly undesirable body

The Rachel Zoe aesthetic

The Abercrombie aesthetic

DJ Tanner eating ice �popsicles� on Full House

The �Fat Monica� plotline on Friends

The pervasive idea that bananas will make you gain weight

Reporting on stars� diet secrets, including but not limited to soaking cotton balls in orange juice and swallowing them to make you �feel� hungry

�A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner!� aka Slimfast, whose advertisements were everywhere

Maya Hornbacher�s Wasted as instructional text

Miranda pouring dish soap on the cake she put in the garbage on SATC

�Diverse body types� articles where �diversity� was a shorter girl with a size-C cup boobs

Messaging from our own mothers, grandmothers, and elders that stigmatized fat, normalized hunger and deprivation, and praised the skinniest (and often least healthy) versions of ourselves

Gwyneth Paltrow�s 1999 Oscar dress

The hegemony of the strapless J.Crew bridesmaid dress of the late �00s

The obsessive documentation and degradation of Britney�s pregnant and postpartum body

Valorization of the �cute� pregnancy / Pregnant Kim Kardashian as shamu

I�m starting to get into more recent territory here and could go on for some time, but I wanted to cover foundational, formative language. (Please, feel free to add your own memories in the comments). To be clear, I�m in no way suggesting that young Gen-X/millenials are the first to internalize this sort of destructive body messaging. And I know there are different ideals and messages that have disciplined and damaged men and their relationships to their bodies.

But instead of shouting �BUT TWIGGY!� and �My grandmother survived on saltines and cigarettes!� I think it�s useful to return to the formation of the tweet referenced above: �If any Gen Z are wondering why every millennial woman has an eating disorder�� The author is trying to elucidate a norm (the desire to discipline and contain your body) that, over the course the last twenty years, has become slightly less of a norm. Her tweet, like this post, is a way to explain ourselves, but also to make the mechanics of the ideology not just visible but detectable � if in slightly different form � in their own lives.

It�s one thing, after all, when you hear that your grandparents did something � that feels old-fashioned, foreign, and distant. It�s quite another when it�s the primary practice of people just five, ten, fifteen years ago � when the ideology is still thick in the air. Fat activism and the body positivity movement has done so much, and in a relatively short amount of time, to shift the conversations we have about our bodies. But there�s so much work still to be done. I spent a lot of time thinking about this exquisite Sarah Miller essay:

That last sentence is a sentence of mourning. There is deep and abiding sadness here, the sort that so much of us are processing (or, you know, refusing to process, and submitting to their continued quiet torture) everyday.

As someone still doing this work with myself every day, what I crave � and where Virginia Sole-Smith, Sabrina Strings, Aubrey Gordon, and Michael Hobbes are already leading the way � is something more akin to a deep excavation, a social genealogy and cultural archaeology, of these ideas: where they come from, how they gain salience and thrive, how they adapt and acquire new names (hello, intermittent fasting, I see you!)

Why, for instnace, did Bridget Jones need a particular sort of body to make its narrative work? Why does it feel so revelatory and familiar and deeply sad to hear Taylor Swift talk about the gray area of disordered eating? What made it so easy to fall in love with the postfeminist dystopia? What ideas are passed down through our families, and how do we even begin to reject them?

We can�t unlearn noxious, fat-phobic ideas if we can�t even begin to remember where and how we learned and normalized them. We can�t stop the cycle of passing them down to future generations in slightly camouflaged form if we can�t even identify their presence in our own. And we can�t unravel these ideologies without acknowledging the deep, often unrecognized trauma they have inflicted.

https://twitter.com/thekuhlest/status/1395880183589003265

When millennial women shudder at the prospect of the return of the low-slung jean, we are not being old, or boring, or basic. It�s not about the loving jeans AS JEANS, and I wish people could actually understand that. It was about the jeans on our bodies. We are attempting to reject a cultural moment that made so many of us feel undesirable, incomplete, and alienated from whatever fragile confidence we�d managed to accumulate. We are trying to avoid reinflicting that on ourselves, but more importantly, on the next generation.

The jeans will come back. They already have. I know this. Whatever the style of fashion that made you feel inadequate and unfixable, it will likely come back too. You might have the strength to refuse to allow it � and the ideal body it imagines, � to have power over you. Some young people are acquiring more of this strength every day, facilitated by TikTok and Billie Eilish and other forms of internet communication I probably don�t even know about. Many are learning a vocabulary of resistance and analysis that I simply didn�t have access to, at least not until late into college.

But twenty years from now, will Gen-Zers be excavating their own relationship to TikTok�s beauty norms and midriff fetishization, to Kendall and Kylie Jenner, to Peloton and pandemic-induced eating habits, to the faux empowerment of the �Build a B*tch� video and their moms� and grandmothers� fitness and �wellness� routines? I mean, yes, certainly. But we could also start having those conversations now. Because as Sarah Miller puts it, �I�m pretty sure we haven�t �arrived� anywhere. And why would we have? The material conditions of being a woman have not been altered in any dramatic way, and seem to be getting worse, for everyone.�

As I�ve said before in reference to my relationship to work and burnout, I am trying to and failing and getting slightly better and backsliding all the time. The same is true with my relationship to fatphobia. That doesn�t mean the work is bullshit. It also doesn�t mean I�m �succeeding� at it, or that I don�t periodically think, like Miller, that it�s too late for us.

It just means the work is hard � but that it does gets easier, however incrementally and imperceptibly, when you don�t feel like you�re doing it alone.

didn't read this.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 01:09

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

In Ovid�s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is a sculptor who is so horrified by the existence of prostitutes that he begins to hate and revile women. He then sculpts himself a marble woman, later dubbed Galatea, who is so beautiful he falls in love with her, fondling her cold stone parts and kissing her. He begs Aphrodite to bring her to life, and she does. Galatea and Pygmalion get married and have a child.

Pygmalion is a potent myth (Ovid wasn�t even the first to tell it) � the fantasy of a woman created in a man�s ideal specifications. The story has been told and retold: George Bernard Shaw�s Pygmalion, which became My Fair Lady. The book Stepford Wives. The movies Mannequin; Lars and the Real Girl; and even She�s All That, along with so many others, play off the myth of a man using his skills to create a perfect simulated woman � innocent and untouched, who will meet all his needs without any of the complications of a real-life woman�.

Each iteration of the story rests on the creator's fundamental dissatisfaction with women as they are now. Women are imperfect: slovenly, ugly, mouthy, slutty, frigid, or otherwise distasteful. Woman must be created again, in man�s reimagining of all that is beautiful and desirable. Each iteration of the story � even the satires � is in a way a warning to women that they have fallen outside of what is acceptable. You women who are fully alive and aware must be less. Do your hair. Fix your attitude. Or the men will build your replacement.

The most recent iteration of the Pygmalion myth is the movie Poor Things, starring Willem Dafoe and Emma Stone. In the movie, Dafoe plays a maniac scientist named Dr. Godwin Baxter with a heart of gold in a steampunk world of the past where everything is lit in garish and vibrant colors, both real and unworldly, familiar and strange. Dr. Baxter finds a woman who has attempted suicide and resurrects her by giving her the brain of an infant. The woman, Bella Baxter, played by Stone, becomes a tabula rasa brain in a smokeshow body. Things get sexy very quickly, as Stone discovers masturbation and sex at the hands of Mark Ruffalo�s delightfully caddish Duncan Wedderburn. Together the two go off together, until Bella becomes bored with Wedderburn�s controlling nature and she disappears off into the world, where she discovers herself as a prostitute in Paris. It�s a clever gently caress-you to the original Pygmalion that the ideal woman in this instance becomes a prostitute by choice.

Each iteration of the story � even the satires � is in a way a warning to women that they have fallen outside of what is acceptable. You women who are fully alive and aware must be less. Do your hair. Fix your attitude. Or the men will build your replacement.

The movie has been declared a feminist masterpiece � a story of a woman finding freedom in a restricted world.

But even in this fun, weird romp of a movie, where Stone�s animatronic body movements provide slapstick relief, the creation never rises above her creator. When Bella returns to Dr. Baxter�s home, she makes peace with his decision to create her. She calls him �God� throughout the movie. And she takes up the mantle of his work in a violent, vengeful way, by putting a goat�s brain into the head of her abuser � the man who had driven her to attempt suicide in the first place.

Bella, in the end, is still doll-like. Still completely ensconced in the world of men. The critic Angelica Jade Basti�n, writing in Vulture, calls BS on the �liberated� sexuality of the movie, noting, �The primary failure of Poor Things� sex scenes is rooted in the decision to make Stone�s character mentally a child, blasted clean of history. I want to see what a grown woman thinks and feels about sex! Show a woman with a body and brain above the age of 40 getting gloriously railed.� Basti�n concludes, �This isn�t a sincere treatise on female sexuality, it�s a dark comedy for people who carry around an NPR tote bag.�

I don�t think it�s insignificant that the other hot feminist movie of 2023, Barbie, is also about a woman created to be perfect. Barbie was invented by a woman, but we all know no one carries more water for the patriarchy than other women � enforcing the rules of desirability, correct behavior, and obeisance to men.

But in that movie, the doll created to embody perfection chooses to become human; chooses to embody flaws and imperfections, and eventually death. And, whatever else you may criticize about the movie � and it is a rich text �the creation does surpass the creator by choosing to be something else. The thing created comes into her own.

I loved Poor Things, but I found in it an anemic version of feminism, one that suggests a glorious, sexy harmony of liberated women espousing the ideas of the men who made them. Here, the tensions between creator and created are swiftly resolved in a deathbed scene. The image of subversion is sex, but it�s not even very subversive sex. Stone�s body adheres to thin, white beauty standards; the sex is all very pleasing and very hot to the male gaze. Cool and fun. But not subversive. Not particularly messy or revolutionary. And then it all comes to an end when Bella returns to Baxter�s home. She was wild, but now she is mostly tamed.

�Every story men love to tell,� Rebecca Solnit once told me in a whisper, before we did an event together, �is Pygmalion.� She was being quippy. But I haven�t been able to stop thinking about it.

I see it everywhere. In the trad wives of TikTok, whose beauty and bodies are mere marionettes, the strings guided by wealth, class, and help � glorious, behind-the-scenes help. These women are self-made creations intended to become popular by appealing to all the disgusted Pygmalions of the world.

And they are disgusted. Men are trying so hard to get women back into that box of desirability, obedience, quiet. Journalists interviewing me about the release of my book keep asking me, what brought us to this moment in culture when so many male pundits and politicians are pushing a return to traditional marriage? And my answer is that women got out of control. We cannot forget that 2017 was a watershed year for women � it saw the largest single-day protest in American history, which was driven by women*. And then the #MeToo movement came into full force and a few men were forced out of positions of power. There was a reckoning. An anemic and incomplete one, but more consequences than we had ever seen before.

In addition, more and more women are refusing to marry and opting out of dating. It�s not insignificant that there are entire movements of men designed to bully and harass women into love. Get back in the box, they say. You are not pretty, you are not worthy. If you don�t comply, we will find another.

But I think they should go ahead. Find another. Build your bloodless, fleshless, ideal of a woman, if that�s what you want. The rest of us will keep pursuing life in all its messy, beautiful, disgusting, rebellious glory.

my fair lady is pretty good. i didnt read this though

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 01:42

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

i wonder sometimes if these kinds of feminists have ever spoken to literally any man in their lives if they genuinely believe we all fantasize about loving sticks with cantaloupes

you do

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 05:07

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Gains in women�s rights haven't made women happier. Why is that?
Anna Petherick

Women are outliving men in every country in the world, despite facing higher levels of poverty than men, greater odds of encountering sexual violence and many additional, diverse forms of discrimination.

But while women are living longer, it�s unclear whether their wellbeing is showing comparable strides. As women gain political, economic and social freedoms, one would expect that they should feel even more contented relative to men. But this isn�t so.

The �paradox of declining female happiness� was pointed out by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, who also happen to share a house and kids. They analyzed the happiness trends of US citizens between 1970 and 2005 and found a surprising result.

Stevenson and Wolfers discovered that American women rated their overall life satisfaction higher than men in the 1970s. Thereafter, women�s happiness scores decreased while men�s scores stayed roughly stable. By the 1990s, women were less happy than men. This relative unhappiness softened after the turn of the century, but men continue to enjoy a higher sense of subjective wellbeing that is at least as high � if not higher � than women�s.

Those 35 years saw advances in American women�s rights and financial power. For example, in 1974, Congress outlawed credit discrimination based on sex; in 1975, states were prevented from excluding women from juries. Until 1976, marital rape was legal in every US state. Over the 35-year period, women working full time went from earning less than 60% of a man�s median salary to earning about 76% of it � still an embarrassment for a country that aspires to be a meritocracy but an improvement nonetheless.

Of course, things happened during the period in question that probably made American women less happy. Take, for example, the massive rise in incarceration rates among their actual and potential male partners. (This rise wouldn�t have left traces in the male happiness data because prisoners were not included in life satisfaction surveys.)

The 20 years between 1980 and 2000 saw a five-fold increase in the number of African American men in jail, leading to more black men behind bars in the US than were enrolled in colleges and universities. Those kinds of statistics imply big changes to the marriage market.

Although increased incarceration has affected African Americans more than others, even when all Americans are considered together, the rise in male incarceration between 1970 and 2000 has been held responsible for a 13% drop in US marriage rates. The reduced pool of free men has also encouraged many women to accept marriage proposals from men they would have otherwise rejected, an effect that has been shown to be sufficient to shift the economic advantage of marriage away from women and toward men.

But putting more men in prison cannot fully explain the lessening happiness of American women, because women in other industrialized countries � which do not lock up nearly as many of their men � have also become less happy in recent decades. Stevenson and Wolfers found the gap between male and female happiness in Europe, over approximately the same period, had a strikingly similar trend and magnitude to the US gender happiness gap.

So why is this? Evidence supports the idea that women�s rights and roles in the home in the US and Europe have not moved in step with changes in the workplace. Therefore, because women with jobs often do most of the chores and childcare, they shoulder a dual burden that cuts into their sleep and fun. Long commutes are thought to make British women more miserable than British men because of the greater pressure on women to meet responsibilities at home as well as work.

When the dual burden is carefully measured � as it has been across European countries � the results illustrate the influence that expectations have on how happy we feel. Experiencing the dual burden leads working women in Sweden, for example, to feel more miserable than their counterparts in Greece, probably because Swedes� expectations around gender equality are more ambitious. (Fewer than 35% of Swedish women do three-quarters of the housework, compared to 81% of Greek women.)

Expectations also lie behind the curious finding that performing household chores makes men statistically less likely to become depressed but contributes to depression in women. Taking on housework seems to encourage men to judge themselves as generally likeable, fair-minded dudes, kindly reducing their wives� load. On the other hand, taking on housework seems to make women feel exploited.

The social history of Switzerland, where women weren�t allowed to vote until 1971, reveals the subtleties of employment expectations on happiness. A decade after Swiss women gained suffrage, the country�s citizens voted in a referendum on whether the constitution should be amended to state that women deserve equal pay for equal work.

Different parts of Switzerland voted very differently. Unsurprisingly, cantons (Swiss states) with a high proportion of votes in favor of the amendment were recorded as having a small gender wage gap some years later. But strangely, working women in areas with strong traditional values � where most people had voted against equal pay � were happier than working women in liberal cantons.

Even though their salaries were further below those of the men around them, the women in more traditional communities were less likely to report discrimination than their countrywomen in more liberal areas.

This inside-out result probably arises from different cognitive comparisons. Women in liberal communities are less happy and notice discrimination because they automatically compare their opportunities and salary to everyone else around them, men included. Traditionally minded women perhaps base their identities more firmly on their gender roles, and think only of other women when they evaluate their privilege and opportunities.

This kind of difference might explain the lessening happiness of American women. As women�s rights and opportunities have increased, it seems reasonable that women in industrialized countries have internalized ever more complex and optimistic expectations, and judged reality against these. Asked how satisfied she is with her lot in life, the housewife of the early 1970s probably just reflected on whether things were going well at home. The same question today evokes evaluations across many areas of life.

Declining happiness among women may seem depressing. But who ever claimed an expanded consciousness brings satisfaction?

not a chance

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 20:28

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

Some Guy TT posted:

JK Rowling has donated �70,000 to a feminist group to help its bid to obtain a �historic� Supreme Court ruling stating that men cannot become women.

The Harry Potter author pledged the cash to For Women Scotland, which is going to the UK�s highest court in a long-running legal battle with the Scottish Government over whether biological men can legally become female under UK law.

The group won an earlier case in which it was found that the SNP�s position that anyone who identified as a woman should be counted as one, for the purposes of gender quotas introduced for public boards, was unlawful.

However, it has lost a case which challenged rewritten guidance, which stated that biological men counted as women if they had acquired a gender recognition certificate (GRC) reflecting a female identity.

While the issue centres around Holyrood legislation intended to boost the number of women on public boards, the case will have wider ramifications for the legal status of trans people in Britain.

Rowling donated the �70,000 sum within hours of the Scottish courts granting permission for the Supreme Court appeal. So far, more than �125,000 has been raised towards the group�s estimated costs of �200,000 in an online crowdfunder.

�You know how proud I am to know you,� Rowling wrote to the group in a message after she made the donation. �Thank you for all your hard work and perseverance. This is truly a historic case.�

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, she mocked trans activists who had criticised her for making the donation.

Some attacked her for not spending that cash on something else, and argued that if For Women Scotland succeeded the case would drastically erode the legal rights of trans people.

After one X user sarcastically said she bet Rowling hadn�t asked her husband�s permission first, she joked that he had told her that the money was �coming out of next week�s housekeeping allowance�.

In a controversial ruling in December 2022, the Scottish courts found that biological men can legally become women and share in their legal protections, if they obtain a GRC.

This is mainly because the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, UK-wide legislation, states that the documents mean a person becomes a member of their �acquired� sex �for all purposes�.

However, For Women Scotland argues this was superseded by the 2010 Equality Act, in which trans women and women are treated as two protected, but distinct, groups.

The later legislation allows even trans women with GRCs to be excluded from some women�s spaces and activities, if certain conditions are met.

For Women Scotland said it had obtained legal advice indicating that it had �strong grounds� for an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Scottish Government did not oppose the application to appeal, conceding there were �arguable points of law of general public importance�.

not reading this

# ¿ Feb 18, 2024 22:40

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

not gonna click that

# ¿ Feb 26, 2024 03:08

Ohtori Akio: Jul 15, 2022

tokin opposition posted:

Good call it's just "why aren't people having kids???????????" with a fresh spin of blaming it on the author's imaginary understanding of men. Skip it

lol you read it

# ¿ Feb 26, 2024 04:27