sweet thing

peacozy:

maryfagdalene:

sorry didn’t mean to moan like that when you stabbed me

halfhardtorock:

someclevermoniker:

bizarropurugly:

luvyourselfsomeesteem:

theseriouscynic:

editingatwork:

halfhardtorock:

Straight men who infantilize women’s friendships have no fucking survival instinct. Like my uncle is always making fun of and rolling his eyes at my aunt’s friend lunches and telephone dates with her lady friends, teasing her like she’s a gossipy teenage girl in high school drama. And my aunt just laughs about it but I know for a fact that if it wasn’t for her best friend K, she would have probably set him on fire by now. 

Like straight men are capable of maybe a quarter of the indepth emotional labor and support women do for each other. Like men can literally have one friend named Bob that they go fishing with once a year and still be content for life. Then they think it’s cute and girlish that their wives have these long term, integrated, emotionally intense relationships with women but like…LOL, it’s not because men don’t need those kinds of relationships, it’s just that they get it all from their wives while offering peanuts in return. PEANUTS.

Like if your woman is on the phone for 2 hours with her friend and you think that’s childish of her, just know that she spent half of that time getting the support that you should be giving her (but are incapable of) and the rest lamenting what a giant fucking baby manchild you are.

This is how homophobia and misogyny hurts men: it makes these kinds of in-depth, deeply emotionally invested friendships a feminine thing to do, and therefore unmanly (and un-straight) for men to do. Men are brought up to shy away from cultivating these kinds of deep and platonic friendships with other men. Because, you know, if you talk to your male friends all the time and hang out with them and cry in front of them and hug all the time and lean on each other (emotionally and physically) when you need support, it makes you gay and womanly. Which is, apparently, the worst thing you can be.

I’ve read articles and personal stories about and by men, talking about experiences they’ve had that have shown them how painfully out of touch they are with their own emotions and their own ability to open up and connect with people, including themselves.

I worry about men a lot. I worry about the number of men who find themselves incapable of providing emotional support for their friends, their significant others, and themselves, all because of how they’ve been raised to bury and ignore their more vulnerable emotions and tactile tendencies because they’ve been taught that this kind of closeness has to be stamped out at all costs.

!!!!!
So important.

So so so important

Studies have shown that this sort of emotional shallowness is a leading factor in why men are more likely to be violent, to drown their sorrows in drug and alcohol abuse, and to successfully commit suicide.

They throw all their eggs in one basket with a significant other, or at times a parent, and when problems arise in that relationship, because they have no other relationships to speak of, they quickly turn to destruction.

This is why I often give out advice that people need to expand on their relationships. You literally CAN’T have it all hinge on a single person, it is a horrific idea and it will destroy you and the things and people you love. You HAVE to have relationships with other people.

Anyone with any mental health issue can tell you that the inability to talk it out, the lack of having someone to turn to, makes things go careening downhill, faster than we can catch them back.

Somehow this is considered an acceptable way of being for men, and their lashing out is “just how men are”. It’s more masculine to shoot yourself than to take medication. It’s more masculine to beat your partners than to have a conversation with them. It’s more masculine to bottle everything up until it erupts and people die, than it is to simply ask for help.

And people want to blame women and feminism for it, for “making men afraid”, or simply try to list the likelihood of surviving suicide and avoiding drug abuse as “female privilege” or something that is a nature-given trick of “biological sex”, rather than address the very serious issue of toxic masculinity and extreme, self-destructive hatred of being perceived as anything like women.

- mod BP

these are all very important and valid points and I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to minimize them but how did a post about the emotional labor women go through for men and how men expect it and give nothing in return and mock women for receiving emotional support elsewhere (at all) end up being about how masculinity is bad for men does anyone else see the irony in this?
Like yes, these things are important and we do need to fix them, but this post literally became an example of itself

Lollll. Yes thank you

halfhardtorock:

Here’s the reason why your “POOR MEN!” comments on my “men don’t know how to do emotional labor and rely solely on their wives to do it for them,” post are GARBAGE. Like, shut upppppp.

Do we live in a society that socializes a lot of young men to not have the foundational tools they need for their personal and emotional wellbeing? YES. Does that suck? YES. Is everyone in society responsible for recreating, over and over again, toxic masculinity? YES.

But what all those comments completely ignore are the BENEFITS of men not being expected to do emotional labor. Men benefit GREATLY from this shit. ALL THE TIME.

They benefit from not having to do the incredibly exhausting legwork of emotionally caring for their children. Dad is the “fun one” and mom is who you go to talk through all your life shit with. Doing emotional labor for your children is beautiful work but it is honestly a 24/7 job and it is exhausting and intensive and requires a great deal of patience. I know a shit-ton of people my age (myself included) who had little to no emotional labor support growing up from their dads. That means their moms (and grandmas. And sisters. And aunts.) were doing the bulk of this labor.

(Also it’s pretty sad when a girl child in the family is expected to do the emotional labor of her siblings cause dad can’t get his head out of his ass to show up and listen for 5 minutes)

Men benefit from not having any expectations on them that they do any other kind of kinship work too. Like calling their moms on their mom’s birthday. Like writing christmas cards, inviting friends to dinner, scheduling healthcare visits for their kids (and sometimes even for themselves!), making sure dinner is on the table for a family dinner, getting presents for family birthdays, etc etc. Many men are completely oblivious of how their family actually functions, because they’ve never had to do kinship work like this in any real, substantive way.

When men are exempt from kinship work and emotional labor, they have a shitton of free time and energy on their hands to explore other activities, activities that their busy, emotionally taxed wives cannot explore. This is a huge benefit for men and it has a huge cost for women.

I honestly think that this is the cause of many straight relationship breakups/divorces, because men have all this time to pursue personal projects and women are fucking E X H A U S T E D and busy doing all the emotional labor, and men end up looking at their wives and being like “You’re boring now. All you think about/talk about is being  a mom. I need a ~partner~. Someone with more interests.”

So before you’re like POOR MEN fucking recognize that POOR MEN benefit from not being expected to do emotional labor and that these POOR MEN are GROWNASS MEN who are capable of changing that up and learning but DON’T. They’re not children anymore. They can actually do this shit if they want to.

postcardsfromspace:

lierdumoa:

lierdumoa:

dirtydarwin:

thentheysaidburnher:

All men benefit from women’s reinforced fear of being hurt for saying no.

read it again and again

Understand that this applies even to non-sexual situations. Women are more likely to be asked for favors from coworkers. Regular “can you file this for me” / “can you cover my shift” / “can you finish up this paperwork” workplace favors. Men are less likely to return those favors. Women are more likely to be seen as “difficult to work with” if they refuse to do favors when requested. Being viewed as ungenerous has negative social and professional consequences.

So yes, even gay men benefit. All men benefit from women’s reinforced fear of being hurt, not just physically, but also socially and professionally, for saying no to anything at all.

Re: above; just in case it looks like I’m just pulling facts out of my ass, here are my sources:

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/10/29/women-work-and-the-girl-scout-tax/

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/10/30/2858091/women-workers-favors/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/06/women_do_favors_more_than_men.html

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/men-are-less-likely-be-asked-favors-workplace-get-more-appreciation-helping

This is important.

Thinking a lot lately about how this stuff plays out in two circles where I spend a lot of time–the comics community, and the development / implementation of CoCs and harassment policies; and how it intersects with both of those for freelancers in particular.

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

You have got to stop being shitty to trans people who looked conventionally attractive as their assigned gender.

Nobody on this earth exists solely to be looked at. Nobody exists for your consumption. Period. Your opinion on someone else’s appearance is irrelevant nearly always.

I got an ask the other day, when we were all talking about weird dreams you guys have had about me, that said, “I had a dream you were still pretty,” and, like… Fuck, man. Seriously?

I spent a long time being pretty, and I deserve better than pretty; everybody does. I deserve happiness and authenticity and the raw and blinding relief of just being, and it’s so goddamn weird that people don’t get that. That people think being hot is the best thing you can be, or that I’m foolish to give that up, that anything that takes me further away from fuckable is self-mutilation, or a mistake, or worse, a personal vendetta against their boner in particular.

I don’t know. I’m just angry and tired, I think, so like, in conclusion: FUCK THAT GUY, and as a follow-up, GENDER, AM I RIGHT, GANG?

Every cis man in my inbox right now: “I am sorry you feel like people are objectifying you and not respecting your identity, but if it makes you feel better, I’d still fuck you even if you aren’t a girl anymore.”

Dude.

cookinguptales:

I think, after all these years, I have identified the worst “positive” reaction to coming out as a queer woman. This guy was very supportive. He was totally okay with me being into women. And to show his support, he’d try to bond with me like he would with a straight guy — by talking about hot women.

And oh my god, I don’t think I ever quite realized the way most men’s heads worked until then. This guy is older but relatively progressive. He used to work with victims of sexual abuse so he’s usually pretty sensitive to things like that.

AND YET

Suddenly we were having horrible conversations like:

“Hey, I saw a drunk girl outside. She’s so drunk that her top keeps slipping off and she’s flashing everyone.”
“Holy shit.” *checks outside to make sure she’s okay and has friends to take care of her*
“Yeah, I know you’re into women now so I figured you’d want to take a look  too, haha.”

And I just! That reaction is just chilling! Suddenly I was having a straight guy joking with me about women in all kinds of compromised sexual situations, suddenly he was nudging me about every tit in media, suddenly he was talking in graphic objectifying detail about women’s bodies.

It was like I’d been inducted into a boy’s club and it was horrible in there. And all I could think was like… is this genuinely the way you guys talk about us? Are these really your bonding rituals? Do you think all queer women do this to other women?

Like, I’m not going to say that there aren’t any women who are creeps about other women (or hell, even about men), but the sheer lack of shame was kind of shocking. It’s not just this one guy; I’ve gotten it from other “woke” guys, too. This shameless, casual dehumanization of women, like it’s normal, like it’s the only way you can be sexually attracted to a woman. There’s a strange undercurrent of violence to it that feels utterly foreign to me.

I can’t look at a woman too drunk to consent and get excited about seeing her accidentally bared body because I’m thinking “What if that were me? What if that were my friend? What is she going to feel like later? Is she safe?” It’s a scary thing, not a hot one. And it’s kind of disturbing that empathy isn’t the first thought for the men who look at her, too. If anything, there was a sort of aroused disdain for a girl that “sloppy”. (But not so sloppy that they wouldn’t stare at her breasts.)

As a queer woman, I spend so much time fretting about being accidentally weird towards women. Staring too long or too hard, being too close, crossing boundaries. Because I think about all the times men have harassed me and made me feel small and scared and alone and I never want to do that to someone else. I’m not some awkward preteen who’s unsure about sexual boundaries anymore; I’m a grown-ass adult who has a responsibility to not be a creep.

And it’s always so bizarre and frankly kind of horrifying to realize how many other adults do not feel that same responsibility. As much as I hate the simultaneous desexualization and oversexualization of queer women, I found that being treated like “just one of the guys” was so much worse. I try to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking my own sexuality is innately predatory because of its queerness — and then I’m confronted with sexuality that actually is predatory and it’s like a slap in the face.

God, what must it be like to never worry about the feelings of the person you’re staring at? How liberating. How horrible. How terrifying.

heavyweightheart:

every mother who’s critiqued her daughter’s appearance based on ~what men do or do not like~ owes that child an apology

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

You have got to stop being shitty to trans people who looked conventionally attractive as their assigned gender.

Nobody on this earth exists solely to be looked at. Nobody exists for your consumption. Period. Your opinion on someone else’s appearance is irrelevant nearly always.

I got an ask the other day, when we were all talking about weird dreams you guys have had about me, that said, “I had a dream you were still pretty,” and, like… Fuck, man. Seriously?

I spent a long time being pretty, and I deserve better than pretty; everybody does. I deserve happiness and authenticity and the raw and blinding relief of just being, and it’s so goddamn weird that people don’t get that. That people think being hot is the best thing you can be, or that I’m foolish to give that up, that anything that takes me further away from fuckable is self-mutilation, or a mistake, or worse, a personal vendetta against their boner in particular.

I don’t know. I’m just angry and tired, I think, so like, in conclusion: FUCK THAT GUY, and as a follow-up, GENDER, AM I RIGHT, GANG?

Every cis man in my inbox right now: “I am sorry you feel like people are objectifying you and not respecting your identity, but if it makes you feel better, I’d still fuck you even if you aren’t a girl anymore.”

Dude.

homojabi:

The amount of lesbians who know that they’re lesbians from a young age versus the amount of gay men who know that they’re gay from a young age shows a staggering difference in that most lesbians take way longer to realize that they’re gay.

Girls are told that dating men is supposed to be hard and essentially unfulfilling. That it’s normal to expend emotional and sexual labor without receiving anything or feeling anything in return. Girls are told that their attraction to men and relationships with men should be difficult and sometimes feel forced because men are so emotionally lacking or otherwise “hypermasculine”.

Realizing that you don’t like men because you’re gay versus just feeling emotionally exhausted or unable/unsure of how to “please” men is part of the reason why compulsory heterosexuality is so damaging. It forces many girls to continue to date men and to keep trying to feel attraction to them long after they’ve realized that there’s nothing there—particularly blaming themselves for the reasons why relationships with men don’t work out instead of thinking it’s an indicator of being gay, which most (though of course not all) gay men are able to recognize as an initial indicator.

fvture-coast:

I still can’t believe you’re mine forever.

sapphic-affirming-memes: