reblog to kill him faster, like to kill him slowly
Look, i know we throw around the words “toxic masculinity ” and “toxic heteronomativity” a lot, but THIS.
If your ideas of gender and relationships and women renders you of being incapable of normal friendships with women because their pressence is “killing you” …that’s suuuuper unhealthy.
I’m seriously concerned for any woman in this dude’s life.
woman: *shakes hair out of her face*
man: BE GONE YE HARLOT WITH YOUR INSIDIOUS TEMPTATIONS
(also, “why are you his friend” fucking blows my mind because this implies that friends are automatically people that you fuck)
amy santiago is so well written. she’s the first female nerdy character ive ever seen that isn’t simultaneously a killjoy, and you’d think that dating a slightly immature, wild & reckless guy would make her like that, but she joins in the fun with him (i.e halloween heist!!!) instead of perpetuating the whole “girls dont know how to have fun” thing and she really does have two sides to her, her whole binder and numbers enthusiast face and then she turns around and takes absolutely NO shit from anyone. and even though i dont have much in common with her she’s easily one of my favorite characters ever
and rosa diaz. it is so hard to find a badass woman that is just badass because she wants to be, not cause she went through some tragedy that made her that way (unlike male characters) and it’s just such a joy to see a woman celebrated as this fearless, leather jacket wearing, motorcycle-riding, mysterious, property-destroying character that is also so protective of their friends and would most likely kill for them. women aren’t often celebrated for their ability to destruct and their recklessness and the fire inside of them, and rosa diaz is a perfect encapsulation of that.
and god, last but not least, gina freakin linetti. i have NEVER seen a female character be allowed to be unapologetically cocky and self absorbed without any sort of demonization or consequence. instead, you LOVE gina linetti. you aspire to BE gina linetti and have her state of mind. and the fact that she’s the only non-cop civilian in the squad, but she’s arguably the bravest and/or smartest out of all of them (i.e “gina are you scared?” “scared that you won’t let me use a flamethrower. and use it to throw flame.”) and while it seems on the surface that she doesn’t care about anyone, her bond with every one of the characters is so strong you know she would do anything for them. let more female characters be snarky assholes.
(also douple points for not having these latina & italian women be stereotyped)
A story that may have relevance for others, or then again, maybe not:
When I was in college, about ten or so years ago, I was a history major. I wanted to learn to dance, so I joined a swing dance club on campus. To my surprise, this club had about twice as many men as women (in high school, the last time I’d tried dancing, the ratio had gone the other way–lots of girls, and boys only that you could drag by their ears).
But apparently, there had been some kind of word spread specifically to the STEM guys that dance was a way that they could meet girls.
So anyway. I joined the swing dance club, and met a few guys. And at one point, when socializing with the guys outside of dance class, one of them asked me what my research was on. (I had already established that I was an honors history student doing a thesis, just as he had established that he was an honors… I’m not sure if he was CS or Math, but it was one of those.)
So I gave him the thumbnail sketch of my research. Now, to be clear, an honors senior thesis, while nothing like what a graduate student would do, was still fairly in-depth. I had to translate primary sources from the original late-Classical Latin. (My professor said, basically, that while there were plenty of translations of my source material, that I’d only be able to comfortably trust them if I had at least made a stab at a translation of my own. And he was right.) And there was so much secondary material, often contradictory, that I had been carefully sorting through.
But I was able to sift it into a three-sentence summary of my senior thesis work, you know, as one does.
So I gave him that summary, and then asked–since he was also an undergraduate senior doing an honors thesis–what his research was on.
“Oh,” he said, “you wouldn’t understand it.”
Reader, I went home in a frothing rage. Because I had thought we were playing one game–a game of ‘let’s talk about what we’re passionate about!’– and he had been playing another game, which was, one-upsmanship. I had done my best to give a basically understandable brief of my research–and he had used that against me. As if my research, my painstaking translation, my digging through archives and ILLs of esoteric works, my reading of ten thousand articles in Speculum (yes, the pre-eminent medievalist journal in North America is called Speculum, I’m sorry, it’s hilarious/sad but also true), and then my effort to sum it up for him, was nothing. Because his research into some kind of algorithm or other was just too complex for my tiny brain to conceive of. Because I just couldn’t possibly understand his work.
Now, the important note here is that the person I went home to was my senior year roommate. She was a graduate student–normally undergrads and graduate students couldn’t be roommates, but we’d been friends for years, and the tenured faculty-in-residence used his powers for good and permitted us to be roommates that year. Anyway. My senior year roommate was basically… in retrospect I think possibly an avatar of Athena. She was six feet tall, blonde, attractive in a muscular athletic way, a rock climber and racquetball player, sweet but sharp, extremely socially awkward, exceptionally kind even when it cost her to be kind, and an incredibly brilliant computer science major who spent most of her time working on extremely complicated mathematical algorithms. (Yes, I was a little in love with her, why do you ask? But she was as straight as a length of rope, and is now happily married, and so am I, so it worked out.)
(Still, yes, she is my mental image of Athena, to this day.)
Anyway, I came home in a frothing rage to my roommate, the Athena avatar. And I said, “He made me feel like such an idiot, that I could sum up my research to him but his research was just too smart for stupid little me.”
And she shut her book, and smiled at me, with her dark eyes and her high cheekbones and her bright hair, and said, “If he can’t explain his research to you, then he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”
Now I hesitated, because I’d be in college long enough to have sort of bought into the ridiculous idea that if you couldn’t dazzle them with your brilliance, you should baffle them with your bullshit. But she said, “Look, I’ve been doing work on computer science algorithms that have significantly complicated mathematical underpinnings. What do I do?”
And I said, “Genetic algorithms–that is, self-optimizing algorithms–for prioritization, specifically for scheduling.”
“Right,” she said. “You couldn’t code them because you’re not a computer scientist or a mathematician. But you can understand what I do. If someone can’t explain it like that, it isn’t a problem with you as a person. It’s a problem with them. They either don’t understand it as well as they think they do–or they want to make you feel inferior. And neither is a positive thing.”
So. There.
If you are looking into something and have a question, and someone treats you like an idiot for not understanding right away… here is what I have to say: maybe it isn’t you who is the idiot.
ATTN: ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS EVERYWHERE PLS READ
HEED ATHENA AVATAR’S WORDS BBCAKES EVERYWHERE.
As an academic working in academia: this this this. Never buy into the elitist bullcrap of ‘oh, you wouldn’t understand.’ And never perpetuate that crap yourself, either out of pretension or even simple laziness. If you can’t explain it to a ten-year-old, go back and hit the books again cause you’re not there yet.
I noticed the other day that girls usually adapt to their bfs hobbies like if they enjoy idk surfing the girls will start learning facts about it and buying cute things related to it for them and being so proud of their bf like they’re a star even if they aren’t that great at surfing just out of pure love and joy ….. But men never fucking adapt to their gf’s interests like they can’t possibly care less about makeup for example or they’ll just complain about them taking too long to get ready instead of sharing the passion for it and watching them create something beautiful and being interested in why is it that it makes her feel better to do her makeup. Men are so used to not trying at all fuck that tbh!!!!
yall are just dating the wrong fucking people lmao
Seriously, you ARE dating the wrong people. I work in a makeup store and the sheer amount of guys that are fully engaged in what their girlfriends/wives are doing with makeup surprised me. Yes there’s a lot of guys who scoff and roll their eyes about being in the PRESENCE of makeup, but there’s sooooo many that are consistently engaged, looking at colours wanting to help (even when they’re visibly confused and you can see they want to help but don’t know how). My boyfriend even knows more than I thought just from listening to me talk.
Find better quality guys that take interest in your interests and stop settling for assholes.
the person you’re dating should be your best friend. Not as in, date your best friend, but as in if your partner doesn’t engage with you at the same level as a best friend (or even just a friend), there is something wrong. It’s not long term material.
Couples that act like men and women are ‘opposite’ sides in the relationship game are such a weird concept for me. ‘Oh, we’re married, my wife is basically an obstacle to me getting a nice night out with my friends haha’ or ‘oh my boyfriend doesn’t do any of the housework ahahaha boys am I right?“
like, ?????? you,re not supposed to be on opposite sides, both pulling to get what you want. You’re supposed to be a TEAM. that’s, like, the whole point of a relationship.
Like, not only does my boyfriend know and care about my interests, even the ones I rant about that know bore him a little (and vice versa – I now know a lot about Eve Online and he knows more than he has probably ever wanted to know about star wars fanfiction), he also knows about my day to day stuff. Like, I’ll ask him to do the laundry and he’ll answer “okay but where’s the little net bag you put your bras in so they don’t get stretched in the washer?” because he fucking LISTENED when I bought it and told him what it was for.
like I said. You’re a team, conquering adult life together. That goes for everything, from getting excited and calling him over when I spot a simulator game on sale at the store (even though wtf simulator games I will never get the point of them) to figuring out the most efficient way to keep the living room clean.
*high fives my boyfriend, cartwheels out of the house*
-My boyfriend learnt how to plait hair because he knows that I struggle with it and now he is better than most girls I know. -I try my best to learn about classic cars and stuff because he loves stuff like that. – He can do my makeup better than I can – I’m trying to learn Spanish because he lives in Spain now. – He watched a full web series I love even though he hated it because I got super excited about it and he wanted to understand what I was excited about. -We went snowboarding in Bulgaria because I wanted to try a hobby of his.
We are a team, we have separate interests, the same interests and we create new interests together.
Date someone that supports you, date your partner in crime. Don’t date someone that doesn’t support your interests dude.
Like I actually do know the social pressures and bullshit that lead to women settling. As a culture it IS normed for women to learn about his interests, while making fun of men who reciprocate, and that’s a shitty thing that can be hard to overcome. But gods, it’s WORTH DOING SO; don’t settle.
my spouse watches my shows with me (even when he doesn’t care for them), he actively asks if i want or need new make up when we pass my favorite makeup stores, he likes it when i read excerpts of my current books or movies, he asks after my succulents.
When I first encountered the literary classic Lolita, I was the same age as the infamous female character. I was 15 and had heard about a book in which a grown man carries on a sexual relationship with a much younger girl. Naturally, I quickly sought out the book and devoured the entire contents on my bedroom floor, parsing through Humbert Humbert‘s French and his erotic fascination for his stepdaughter, the light of his life, the fire of his loins — Dolores Haze. I remember being in the ninth grade and turning over the cover that presented a coy pair of saddle shoes as I hurried through the final pages in homeroom.
Although I remember admiring the book for all its literary prowess, what I don’t recall is how much of the truth of that story resonated with me given that I was a kid myself. Because it wasn’t until I reread the book as an adult that I realized Lolita had been raped. She had been raped repeatedly, from the time she was 12 to when she was 15 years old.
As a young woman now, it’s startling to see how that fundamental crux of the novel has been obscured in contemporary culture with even the suggestion of what it means to be “a Lolita” these days. Tossed about now, a “Lolita” archetype has come to suggest a sexually precocious, flirtatious underage girl who invites the attention of older men despite her young age. A Lolita now implies a young girl who is sexy, despite her pigtails and lollipops, and who teases men even though she is supposed to be off-limits.
In describing his now banned perfume ad, Marc Jacobs was very frank about the intentions of his sexy child ad and why he chose young Dakota Fanning to be featured in it. The designer described the actress as a “contemporary Lolita,” adding that she was “seductive, yet sweet.” Propping her up in a child’s dress that was spread about her thighs, and with a flower bottle placed right between her legs, the styling was sufficient to make the 17-year-old look even younger. The text below read “Oh Lola!,” cementing the Lolita reference completely. The teenager looks about 12 years old in the sexualizing advertisement, which is the same age Lolita is when the book begins.
And yet Marc Jacobs’ interpretation of Lolita as “seductive” is completely false, as are all other usages of Lolita to imply a “seductive, yet sweet” little girl who desires sex with older men.
Lolita is narrated by a self-admitted pedophile whose penchant for extremely young girls dates all the way back to his youth. Twelve-year-old Dolores Haze was not the first of Humbert Humbert’s victims; she was just the last. His recounting of events is unreliable given that he is serially attracted to girl children or “nymphets” as he affectionately calls them. And his endless rationalizing of his”love” for Lolita, their “affair,” their “romance” glosses over his consistent sexual attacks on her beginning in the notorious hotel room shortly after her mother dies.
This man who marries Lolita’s mother, in a sole effort to get access to the child, fantasizes about drugging her in the hopes of raping her — a hypothetical scenario which eventually does come to fruition. Later on as he realizes that Lolita is aging out of his preferred age bracket, he entertains the thought of impregnating her with a daughter so that he can in turn rape that child when Lolita gets too old
Lolita does make repeated attempts to get away from her rapist and stepfather by trying to alert others as to how she is being abused. According to Humbert, she invites the company of anyone which annoys him given that the pervert doesn’t want to be discovered. And yet, he manipulates her from truly notifying the authorities by telling her that without him — her only living relative — she’ll become a ward of the state. By spoiling her with dresses and comic books and soda pop, he reminds her that going into the system will deny her such luxuries and so she is better off being raped by him whenever he pleases than living without new presents.
Given that Humbert is a pedophile, his first-person account is far from trustworthy when deciphering what actually happened to Lolita. But, Vladimir Nabokov does give us some clues despite our unreliable narrator. For their entire first year together on the road as they wade from town to town, Humbert recalls her bouts of crying and “moodiness” — perfectly understandable emotions considering that she is being raped day and night. A woman in town even inquires to Humbert what cat has been scratching him given the the marks on his arms — vigilant attempts by Lolita to get away from her attacker and guardian. He controls every aspect of her young life, consumed with the thought that she will leave him with the aid of too much allowance money or perhaps a boyfriend. He interrogates her constantly about her friends and eventually ransacks her bedroom revoking all her money. Lolita is often taunted with things she desires in exchange for sexual favors as Nabokov writes in one scene:
“How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had done her morning duty.”
Lolita eventually does get away from her abusive stepfather by age 15, but the fact that she has been immortalized as this illicit literary vixen is not only deeply troublesome, it’s also a completely inaccurate reading of the book. And Marc Jacobs is not alone in his highly problematic misinterpretation of child rape and abuse as “sexy.” Some publications and publishing houses actually recognize the years of abuse as love.
On the 50th anniversary edition of Lolita, which I purchased for the sake of writing this piece, there sits on the back cover a quote from Vanity Fair which reads:
“The only convincing love story of our century.”
The edition, which was published by Vintage International, recounts the story as “Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel” but also as having something to say about love. The back cover concludes in its summary:
“Most of all, it is a meditation on love — love as outrage and hallucinations, madness and transformation.”
“Love” holds no space in this novel, which details the repeated sexual violation of a child. Although Humbert desperately tries to convince the reader that he is in love with his stepdaughter, the scratches on his arms imply something else entirely. Because the lecherous Humbert has couched his pedophilia in romantic language, the young girl he repeatedly violated seems to have passed through into pop culture as a tween temptress rather than a rape victim.
Conflating love or sexiness with the rape of literature’s most misunderstood child is dangerous in that it perpetuates the mythology that young girls are some how participating in their own violation. That they are instigating these attacks by encouraging and inciting the lust of men with their flirty demeanor and child-like innocence.
Let it be known that even Lolita, pop culture’s first “sexy little girl” was not looking to seduce her stepfather. Lolita, like a lot of young girls, was raped.
I was going through this at age 11 when i got my hands on the book, and i never read it as sexual. I cried and related to her on such a deep level. Anyone who thinks lolita is a love story is gross.
Too real. Lolita means so much to me, because I was raped by an older adult man when I was 15 and years later when I came forward about it people said it was my fault because I flirted with him. A friend of his even teased me with the comment “weren’t you his little Lolita?” Lolita. Is Not. A love story. The continuous sexual abuse of a teenage girl is not love.
What chaps my ass is that NABOKOV didn’t see it as a love story. He found Humbert repugnant and went out of his way to make him so.
He hated that people saw it as romantic when he’d meant to write a fucking horror novel.
Nabokov literally wrote Lolita to show how disgusting these abusive situations are but nOOOOoooooo pop culture decides to immortalize the scared little girl as a SEX ICON and call this messed up “relationship” LOVE.
Eartha Kitt speaking truth to power at a 1968 luncheon at the White House hosted by Lady Bird Johnson which resulted in Kitt being blacklisted in the US for nearly a decade.
let it be known that on January 18th, 1968, Eartha Kitt stood in a room full of white women at The Women Doers Luncheon, GOT IN LADYBIRD JOHNSON’S FACE, and told her that the government was sending the best of the youth off to be shot and killed and, in not so many words, that THAT was the reason the youth were rebelling. She ALSO stopped President Johnson after he made a statement claiming that mothers should be responsible for stopping their kids from becoming criminals and asked about “the parents who have to go to work, for instance, who can’t spend time with their children as they should”. It was brushed off by LBJ who only mentioned the funding for day care centers put in place by the recently passed Social Security bill, and then more or less said that the women at that luncheon should figure it out for themselves.
She was blacklisted, but she defended every word she said that day.
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