This thread puts the finger on why I've always balked at defining masculinity or femininity. You just end up describing qualities that are human, regardless of gender. Putting boundaries on them is absurd.

the HR lady is firing you or the dude who sexually harassed you based solely on what protects the company’s interests better, but since that might mean the dude that sexually harassed you might get fired, it’s actually very bad, btw I am a communist, I promise.

“leftist” men who joke like “oh does platner remind you of your abuser huh?” or say “obviously the heritage foundation lady is lying” as if it was absurd to think that a blackwater dude who enjoyed his time in iraq was violent towards women with a likelihood of approx. 100% are telling on themselves

veterans, famously a demographic with no problem of domestic violence. blackwater, famously not fascist ghouls, male US soldiers, famously not raping their female colleagues so much that it’s seen as a liability to people who don’t care about rape but want female soldiers to be efficient murderers.

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And yet I've almost never heard this reality deployed to excuse women's behavior, and women are overall far less prone to violence than men, so the idea that PTSD explains abuse can take a hike. For me violence, outside self-defense, always begins with entitlement to harm/control others....

Officially about one in five American women has survived rape or attempted rape, but about five in five are impacted by violence against women in how, among other things, we have to think about in striving to avoid it. We avoid it by curtailing our liberty. The paragraph preceding the one above:

Since PTSD is being invoked to excuse any and all abuse and misconduct, let us acknowledge where it is most common. .... From my book Recollections of My Nonexistence.

At least we know for a fact that the global geopolitical death cult is a choice the West is making and that people in charge are actively choosing to reject a better world.

for reference and comparison: conservatively, the United States spent two-thirds of that figure in the *first week* of the war on Iran. it's genuinely difficult to overstate how many world-historical own goals US politics has accumulated over the past few decades

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Despite Reform cutting funding for Durham Pride, the local community, including unions, stepped in to make it the "biggest ever".

This is appalling. I have reached out to Mount Sinai for answers. Healthcare institutions have a duty to do no harm and protect their patients. There should be zero cooperation with the fascist Trump administration as they continue to target trans youth and their families.

"It has not yet been confirmed that Mount Sinai received such a subpoena, said Karen Loewy, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, one of the nonprofit law firms that filed the class-action suit....Mount Sinai declined to comment."

Thinking about the letter Kegseths mom wrote about him people.com/pete-hegseth...

"HR Lady" is just a distillation of "everything I don't like is feminized and also my mom telling me things I don't want to hear"

"boys need someone to teach them how to be a man!" why tho. what would happen if they grew up to be a woman or non-binary or something else. would that be so bad?

imo the primary anxiety behind "boys need positive male role models" is the necessity of ensuring that boys grow up to be men rather than something instinctively felt to be worse, i.e., not a man. you know. like a woman or a queer lol

I would disagree. The latest articles about the shock value of straight wives microdosing T or w/e are just that--shock value. The average cis opinion is that HRT has barely any visible or tangible effects and simply makes trans people feel better

Like the average cis person still thinks that if a trans woman has breasts over an A cup, it must be implants

they were pretending to want efficiency and cost savings, so he pretended to believe the goal was efficiency and cost savings, and produced plans for efficiency and cost savings this forced them to admit, out loud and in front of witnesses, that their real objective was to ruin people's lives

Hi I'm posting a 54-page PDF to the only app where when I post a 54-page PDF people sometimes read it everyone should read the ENTIRE whistleblower statement about DOGE attempting to falsely "kill off" 2.7 people through the SSA Death Master File. www.washingtonpost.com/documents/be...

this example is an EXCELLENT insight into two things: 1. why the opinion "we should run government like a business" should be treated similarly to the opinion "we should kill and eat more human infants" 2. how even a single node of friction in a system can halt a more powerful person's evil plan

this very evil thing appears to have not happened in large part because one guy just refused to do it for as long as he could hold out until he couldn't hang in there anymore and quit his job, at which point the Do More Evil Machine had gotten bored and moved on to other ways of doing evil

do not read this PDF and let it make you even more dismayed and despairing about how evil the evil people in it are you knew they were evil, you've seen the numbers on how many kids shutting down USAID already killed read this PDF and let it make you hopeful about how the word "no" saves lives

I’ll ask a provocative bonus question: can you imagine autonomy that doesn’t default to patriarchal masculinity? What does autonomy look like without possession. Without exploitation. Without borders. Without the marginalized. What does it look like, when you are a human being with agency?

So what we really need is autonomy. We need to say goodbye to the parental stand-in and discover our strength. Take up space. Set boundaries. Be vocal. For the possessed this is essential.

Systemic trauma under patriarchy starts in childhood, so we often wish for a parent to step in. We wish for someone to deal with the part of us that was dependent and had no chance to protect itself. But in working through that as an adult we learn that we have to be the one.

The short answer is no. We are still hung up on a patriarchal myth of “man is the protector”. But under patriarchy men are not protecting equal human beings, men protect the lesser, the possession. Men protect what they own and have a right to have access to.

I think something that would be good to look at is that often the call for positive masculinity stems from a wish to be protected under the current system. We as the possessed want someone to protect us from the violence we’re dealt, daily. But is that what we should ask for?

"Now people are self-identifying as model boats to swim in a no-swim pond. How far will this gender madness go?"

Thread. Tl;dr - that's not picture of the Ladies Pond, it's a picture of a non-swimming area that members of the public swam in on a hot day.

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New day, new goal. Please clap, I'm trying to be funny. itch.io/b/3691/brigh...

arts and crafts are so important

Young men need more positive female role models.

if people could leave some nice messages for Jess, (either under this post or Talia’s), that would be very nice. we’ll make sure they see your kind words <3

I've been in touch with Jess. For anyone wondering about them, they're safe but they're not doing well and they don't expect to return to Bsky anytime soon.

Can MPs overturn the EHRC Code of Practice? Nearly 100 MPs sign a motion calling for it to be disapproved 👇 www.wearequeeraf.com/can-mps-over...

true story, i started talking to a guy im close to about stuff he hadnt tried bc it seemed too feminine and it was the weirdest shit. like, chocolate ice cream. tank tops.

If your sons can’t find role models in women, there is no hope for them to grow up into anything more than just the next generation of misogynists. If you can’t teach them women are human the same way they are, you’re failing to raise them as anything more but the beneficiaries of the patriarchy.

another win for @butchanarchy.bsky.social 's "cry like a f*g! scream like a woman!" butchanarchy.medium.com/cry-like-a-f...

Hegemonic masculinity is usually defined as autonomy, independence, leadership---that which women are not supposed to possess nor aspire to. Gender is in and of itself an act of excluding women from humanity and agency, drawing a boundary between those who possess and those who are possessed.

This is something I struggle with. I appreciate that men want models of how to be. But when we try to populate “positive masculinity” with traits — strong, smart, kind — they are all equally available to women. Masculinity and femininity are empty concepts, absent gender hierarchy.

Yeah I mean, that whole "vibecession" thing was just insulting. People know when they're feeling the pinch.

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