no boys allowed in the room!!!!

not at all, i knew it was going to get some folks riled up and that I prob wasn’t going to able to respond adequately as I’m on a whole different time zone to the rest of ilx

thank you though, I really appreciated your posts

It’s not even that, it’s like, I don’t think I even knew your background and I immediately got where you were coming from because I read your fucking post. But, you know. I was just really annoyed reading all that. So much bloviating.

lol yeah this is why I generally don’t post on film threads

I just couldn’t ignore it today because people were saying careless things about a film with a very careless ending

bracing myself for the response to me saying its not chill for a band to write only violently misogynistic rape anthems on the metal thread, but i know it, having been posted by me, is more likely to just be ignored :)

i do remember the last time i brought this up being condescended to by jd for not understanding trauma or whatever

Hey!

I am not in that thread but yeah. I totally feel you. It is bad, right? It’s not just me?

it is bad

Ps on an entirely different note, I need to know, do you still like classic Tim Lincecum?

about 10 years ago i brought up the fact that folks didn't respond to the things i said in there, that then someone else would say the same things and get a response, and someone said it (my sentiment) "felt like high school"

YES i still live for The Franchise lol

Yeah. I know most of the replies are probably not gendered per se but fuck me if the tendency to bloviate and talk over people isn’t so very male.

It didn’t even happen to me and I’m still angry a load of American men queued up to tell Roz the racism in Tár was explainable through increasingly convoluted explanations.

xp ok I am into him like a million years late, I have a thread in baseball that is about me getting into baseball and is strongly likely to be relevant to your interests

PS did you know he attended the women’s march????

PPS
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11573497/D4rn4kA.gif

(Suggest we take this part of the convo to my thread? Or email? Idk!)

about 10 years ago i brought up the fact that folks didn't respond to the things i said in there, that then someone else would say the same things and get a response, and someone said it (my sentiment) "felt like high school"

i did not know he attended the women's march but i love that!!

i know what you mean with the responses not being specifically gendered...but also its like, the context is heavily gendered, we live in a society!!! lol. to not consider that makes your message fucked up. you cant opt out

It’s also Quite The Thing for people to be like, oh you complain too much, like

do you want things to get worse? Clearly you would prefer my silence

Idk idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lol y'all talking about my "homeboy" ... Tim L is like Steph Curry ... he not only plays/played for the Bay, but reps the values the area is known for.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Let’s just say I understand those of you who stopped bothering a lot more today!

"young pussy" ...

i remember people making fun of momus (+ occasionally actually criticizing him) for fetishizing asian women, but did ILX ever come at momus for being a rapist / "dating" a 14 year old child when he was in his 30s

ew.

The old thread where this is discussed has some incredibly eyebrow-rasing defending going on in it too.

So yeah I guess some ppl did? (JW in particular)

I don’t remember that thread!

gross.

I didnt either, I googled Momus dating 14 yr old and an old ILX thread is one of the first hits lol

I didn’t encounter much first-hand momus back in the day (was he mostly on ilm?), and definitely wasn’t aware of this but i dunno, very much in character maybe? Fucking ugh just NO

Is this the thread where it’s discussed?

Britain's youngest mother

oof that whole thread :/

had no idea about this either. and he married her when she was 17? fucking hell

Shazna said: "I was only 14 and I had a crush on a boy who was a fan of Nick's music.

"But the relationship never got off the ground and I wrote a letter to Nick telling him. It was a kind of agony aunt letter.

"He wrote a very nice letter back to me and said that we should meet some time and talk.

"Months later we met and got on really well."

Sounds like….. grooming. I’m never ever going to believe there’s any reason a mid-30s man would be friends with a 14yr old girl.

Jesus this is horrible. I agree that there is no valid reason for a grown adult to “”””befriend””””” a 14 year old. I watched the final portion of Surviving R Kelly a few days ago and have no tolerance for enablers. I didn’t before watching it either but it’s so clear people had to create the space for him to do the revolting things he did. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

I've actually thought about the lack of pushback on this a fair bit over the years, and it's definitely horrible. The narrative was that he married her to save her from forced marriage, and it was all very noble and honourable. It was all nicely packaged to not just be acceptable but to play into a white saviour complex. It's one of the many things that makes me question just how easy I find it to believe people when they confidently state that they have done nothing wrong - why did I, personally, not push back on this narrative harder? How often am I still accepting things that I should not, or making excuses for people who I should not be?

yah, 16 yrs ago i'm sure i'd've said stuff on that thread that would now sound horrifying as hell, and in the 90s? lord, teen me would have thought momus was a freaking hero & wld prob have tried to wrangle an underaged marriage for my own fool self. "woah how rebellious & romantic & glam & subversive! how do i shot matrimony w/ louche indie darling"

can't wait to look back in another 20-30 yrs and be aghast at all my current bad opinions (does that sound flippant? i mean it, actually, tho. i want to perpetually become a more kind & conscious cat)

i was always vaguely confused by the whole momus thing, but i remember thinking he sucked and was wildly offensive constantly when i encountered his posts. it was...bewildering how many otherwise smart and decent-seeming dudes on ilx had his back.

and i know what you mean, emil.y. particularly when i was first on ilx in my 20s there was so much ambient objectification and thoughtless sexism that confused me, and i was so ready to be like, but so many of these people are smart, so i must be missing something.

xp very much before my time but literally every time I read an old post in some old thread I’m like, seriously?

Yes — I remember trying to understand that thread that was about “girls on bikes in skirts with beers” or whatever it was. I remember thinking that in order to be attractive one must also be carefree & easygoing, which I was not bc I felt inflamed by the monolithic “girls”
I realize it’s not chill or cool to feel this but it always strikes me as informative at the very least when “girls” are invoked.

I can’t speak to that but I found it illuminating to look into that male antihero thread and find someone trying to hijack the discussion with “what about female antiheroes”.

That was also a fairly mild thread comparatively, light and breezy objectification

fuck being carefree & easygoing is how i break it down to an extent

I can’t speak to that but I found it illuminating to look into that male antihero thread and find someone trying to hijack the discussion with “what about female antiheroes”.

― Everybody's gonna get what they got coming (gyac)

not just trying but succeeding! i did try do my own thread hijacking but nobody bit, which is probably just as well because i feel like i phrased it really poorly and if someone did bite it'd just turn into a huge clusterfuck

i'm much happier with people saying "well, what about cersei lannister?"

there's this short story by casey plett (she writes stories about trans women) where the protagonist is going through her old stuff and sees a tucker max book she used to own, and that's just, like... a whole mood.

emil.y and cat otm - i was very young and thought some pretty dumb shit when I first started posting on ilx, and it wasn't until much later that I learned to push back or question certain assumptions. and even now there are times where I see things being said that feel... off but can't find the right way to phrase my discomfort.

but re the male antiheroes thread - i thought about posting there but i can't be bothered, such a boring discussion imo. there are so, so many female antiheroes on TV - Villanelle on Killing Eve, Cookie Lyon on Empire, Claire Underwood on House of Cards, heck even OG Gossip Girl's Blair Waldorf. And never mind Cersei - House of the Dragon is led by two women who arguably both fit the anti-heroine bill.

The only reason men struggle to identify them is because they don't actually give a shit. Also women-led "prestige dramas" so often get seen instead as "prestige soaps".

xps it was this post actually

m0stly clean (Slowsquatch)
Posted: 15 April 2023 at 19:10:48
Are there any despicable female antiheros?

And it’s like, literally had to see male filmbros shit up the Tár thread and behave disgracefully towards Roz of this thread not that long ago?

Besides that, the thread is not interesting per se except that that question is like, who is this for?

Anyway, Roz, Blair is an all time favourite of mine, the time she preemptively cuts Jenny off in the school corridor with “wasn’t me, wish it was!” is all time.

I think the thread is interesting… it’s kinda weird complaining about an ilx thread not being interesting when you aren’t obligated to read it?

I was going to post this in the No Way NYT thread but decided to post about this here because my "no way" response is mostly due to feminist stuff. This is the first paragraph. I got angry and stopped reading. I then thought, why is this so aggravating, and is my anger problematic? Is it coming from a place of privilege?

One afternoon in 2020, early in the pandemic, I met Syl’violet and Matthew for a virtual session. Young, idealistic, deeply in love, they were also prone to dramatic fights. In this session Syl’violet, a vivacious essayist and spoken-word poet, was trying to describe the ways she felt Matthew, a measured medical student, was trying to control her, in this case by trying to dissuade her from buying a slushy. He thought they should keep to a tight budget until after he became a doctor and achieved financial stability. Then she could have “all the slushies you want later.” Syl’violet found his reasoning maddening, especially since he seemed to imply she was reckless.

Number one, this is so fucking petty. I hear about arguments like this and I feel like yelling at both people to grow the fuck up. It's not like I'm affluent, but, if I were in her position, (and I have been on occasion), I would just politely say, "It's my money, this is what I want, and I'm getting it, and it will work out." Maybe it becomes a topic of light bickering in the future, but going to couples therapy and focusing on something like this? ... idgi

Number two, if it isn't her money then it pisses me off (in this day and age) that a woman is expecting a man to financially provide for her. (Except in the case where she is disabled or dealing with an infant.) Or ... maybe she isn't expecting him to provide, but she doesn't keep her own money under her own control. But still, this is a bad power dynamic. I see women who are otherwise radical feminists engaging in it ... the dependence on a male partner for income and the comingling of money in inequitable ways. I know I have personal baggage on this topic, and some of the anger is coming from that place.

Number three, the paragraph itself ... it is lowkey infantilizing the woman (or at least positioning her as childish) ... "vivacious" "wants a slushy" ... the article is supposedly about how recent feminism and racial equity movements have changed relationship dynamics, and the first paragraph is positioning the woman as childlike ... maybe not a good thing to start with? Unless, the article wants to argue that these things are "not good" ... which uh, ouch. Not that.

apologies if any of the following is out of line, i know that as a trans woman i don't have the same experiences with reproductive health that (i hate this term but i can't think of a better one here) "afabs" do, but this morning this asshole cis dude was trying to mansplain women's healthcare to me and i kind of wrote this up, just to talk about the way my experience with healthcare has changed since my transition

---

if it's ok, i want to say something respectfully about my experience, again, as a trans woman and the way my experience with medical care has changed since my transition. there are a lot of things medical care providers benefit from knowing, and sometimes i get asked them and sometimes i don't. one question they _always_ ask me since my transition, though, is if i'm pregnant or there's a chance i become pregnant. what's interesting is that if i have a uterus, my answer to the question doesn't matter. if someone has a uterus, they have to take a pregnancy test, even for a procedure (for example, a nasal septoplasty) that has no relation at all to reproductive health.

quite honestly, the way doctors treat me is pretty shocking. in my experience, the overweening interest in my reproductive capacity is _qualitatively different_ from any other questions people ask about my body. honestly, i sometimes get the impression that providers are interested in the question of whether or not i am pregnant more than they are interested in _my own body and well-being_. and i _particularly_ have had this experience with (redacted), which, as i'm sure everyone here is aware, is a catholic organization, is affiliated with a church which seeks to restrict women's reproductive rights as a matter of religious doctrine.

and i think that, speaking from my experience as someone who formerly _didn't_ have those experiences and now _does_, it is extremely important to me that cisgender men listen and take women (and gender expansive individuals who find home in women’s spaces) seriously when we talk about these experiences. and it is important to me that they acknowledge that our lived experiences give us knowledge and expertise on this subject that they simply _do not possess_, knowledge and expertise that _i_ did not possess before people started treating me as a woman.

My experience with medical care as someone who has a uterus is when they ask if I'm pregnant or could be pregnant, and I say no, they have just taken my word for it and dealt with the non-babby stuff that I was there to see them about. So, it sounds like it varies depending on provider.

However, I have a friend who is a trans-man who had the most traumatic experience with the US medical system regarding the female parts he was born with when he was around 50. He did not want to go into detail and I respected that but .... that is a whole other thing that I know you, Kate, have probably also experienced as a trans person.

However, I have a friend who is a trans-man who had the most traumatic experience with the US medical system regarding the female parts he was born with when he was around 50. He did not want to go into detail and I respected that but .... that is a whole other thing that I know you, Kate, have probably also experienced as a trans person.

― sarahell, Saturday, July 15, 2023 1:07 PM (eleven minutes ago)

i haven't experienced that sort of thing firsthand, honestly! i don't have any horror stories. no massive trauma. no wanton cruelty. it's one of those things... i think of myself as lucky, but then i have a friend who _has_ experienced massive trauma and she considers herself lucky because it's something she can't deny, dismiss, diminish. i've just had an endless series of what they used to call "microaggressions". i never liked that term, that phrasing, because it implies both intent and sort of minimizes the impact of this stuff at the same time. it's the kind of stuff, honestly, i figure most women will know the sort of thing i'm talking about - the assumptions, the careless comments, those little tells that just reinforce the underlying message women have gotten since birth - the idea that women are inferior, women are flawed versions of men, women have a _role_ and that role is and always will be _defined_ by men. transphobia just adds on top of that the message that i'm "not a real woman".

it's a difficult needle to thread... marginalized groups, everybody's experience is different. i'm talking with a friend, she's processing the abuse she suffered in her marriage and through that lens i'm kind of trying to process and come to grips with the way i was abused, and the framing she's looking at it through is the lens of transmisogyny. it's a term i have reservations about, mostly because i'm a descriptivist and "transmisogyny" to me evokes a decade of tumblr arguments, mostly between transfems and transmascs.

so in some ways yeah, as a cis woman you're not going to understand a lot of what i experience because that's not part of your lived experience, but at the same time it's important to me that we _do_ have a lot of things in common. "transmisogyny" implies a categorically different form of misogyny and i don't experience it like that. i experience certain _forms_ of misogyny that cis women don't face, but mostly it's kind of the same misogyny that cis women face, there's just more of it.

cis women, or AFABs if i wanna generalize it more, i believe that they categorically do experience forms of misogyny that i as a trans woman don't, and i think there's sometimes some resentment about that. like AFABs get consistently beaten down with the whole "women are inferior" message in _so_ many different ways from _birth_ and for me, i only started getting that message at age 43. (structurally i had privilege and a certain amount of ignorance but i never viewed women as being inferior in any way to men. my view of women was mostly, i mean, envy and imposter syndrome.) and probably there are certain advantages to not having gone my whole life being told i was inferior _because of my gender_. (i have a long history of abuse and of being told i was inferior, that's an idea i deeply internalized and am still trying to heal from, but _most_ of it wasn't because of my gender.)

that said, in practice it's just _not_ the advantage people who talk about me having "male privilege" or being "socialized male" think i have. in some ways it's a real _disadvantage_, even though i was raised to be a feminist, to be aware of patriarchy and the ways it oppresses women, the sudden, actual experience of that, and more than that, of knowing how _completely arbitrary, stupid, and pointless_ misogyny is... that does hit me pretty hard, and me trying to express that sometimes gets interpreted as me trying to talk over the experiences of cis women who have experienced this all their lives.

plus, a lot of normative masculinity is stupid and i was kind of conditioned to do and think a lot of stuff that became actively dangerous to me the second i started transition. any "male privilege" i'd been socialized with is shit i had to unlearn real fucking quick. going for a walk alone on the streets at night? not anymore you're not! most women my age have decades of experience learning how to keep themselves safe in a world that's systemically hostile to women. i don't have that experience. i don't envy anybody who's spent decades being systemically beaten down by misogyny, but someone like that _is_ going to have survival skills, honestly, that i just don't.

basically i think women, and even more broadly _all_ marginalized groups, _do_ have a lot of things in common, and while it's important to acknowledge our differences, seeing those differences as absolute, as us as being alien to each other, it frustrates me because what i really want is for us to be able to stand together to oppose the oppression we all face in differing ways. sometimes it is appropriate for me to step aside, for cis women's experiences to be centered. criminalizing abortion, that affects me as a trans woman, it's not just about "reproductive rights" but about actively asserting control over the bodies of women and gender minorities. in practical terms i don't have reproductive freedom and never have. most of the time i choose not to assert that, a ban on abortion affects trans people but it isn't a Trans Thing.

the same way, transphobia _does_ affect cis women, the way transphobia gets justified just seems to keep coming back to defining women as baby factories, which, maybe some people call that "feminist" but it isn't. these aren't different things, our experiences of oppression aren't alien to each other, we do have a common interest.

i'm talking a lot because i'm putting off taking a shower and going to pride. it's fucking _hot_. really fucking hot.

anyway. it varies, but i really do think this stuff affects all women and gender minorities in some form or another. even if we're not overtly aware of it.

Oh it definitely is a thing ... I should have phrased it as "I must be extremely lucky because I haven't had that experience!"

A lot of the oppression aimed at cis women isn’t even universal - restrictions on reproductive rights only affect women of reproductive age with that ability, not every cis woman is capable of pregnancy or wants to. I grew up with family close who have difficulties with some of these matters, so due to this I maybe have a little less essentialist view of the subject than I might otherwise have.

I don’t think that this is a difficult ask of any cis woman.

The point about these oppressions often crossing between different groups is a good one. In the UK anti-trans groups targeting various measures are open about their desire to eliminate Gillick competency (the right of a child to opt for their own medical treatment in certain circumstances, the case that this hinges on was a young girl who wanted to take the pill against the wishes of her highly religious mother). I think also growing up in Ireland where the groups keeping abortion illegal are the same as the group pushing against trans rights makes things clearer.

Kate I want to think about your other points which touch on some difficult territory and I think have been exploited successfully by anti-trans groups. I’ll come back to this.