no boys allowed in the room!!!!

And I feel a bad even talking about it because it's such a personal thing but it's been bothering me tremendously all day.

Do you like looking at handsome brooding Welshmen? It helps, and I've got a good one.

Who doesn't?

(He is indeed v good.)

(also lol and <3)

I think I've talked before about a friend of mine who works in Probation who was trying to put together a series on "Detoxifying Masculinity and Your Fucked Up Ideas About Women" for male offenders, but that's probably outside the remit of what you're looking for.

But yeah, feminist therapy and that sort of thing. It's hard, when something is internalised on every level.

I am a basically shitty human being for this, but: I have a friend who is currently doing exactly that, doing a feminist form of therapy to repair a lot of damage and I can see her, on social media, trying to articulate things about herself, and practising self affirmation. And *I* find it hard not to react negatively to that. Like, part of it is that whole "ugh, girls and their ~blessed~ affirmations, ugh, gross" - even when I *know* this is therapy to get over some shit, there's still that kneejerk asshole that kicks in, wanting to deny it. Not to mention the whole British "how dare you think you're better than you are" reflex. Kinda peeling that back, and seeing this as something she's working on, and is healthy for her. If it's like that watching someone else do it, I can't even imagine how I'd react to trying to do it myself.

But I dunno, let's talk about crushes and Cillian Murphy's cheekbones and who *is* that Welsh boy and actually ugh I hate to admit it but I'm still nursing my HAAAAAATE crush, like, what on earth does it mean to have a massive throbbing crush on someone you loathe and think is terrible and ugly and ~annoying~ in every sense of the word but my god you want to smash them into subatomic particles crush. UGH.

I think I've talked before about a friend of mine who works in Probation who was trying to put together a series on "Detoxifying Masculinity and Your Fucked Up Ideas About Women" for male offenders, but that's probably outside the remit of what you're looking for.

i dunno that's almost exactly what i was talking about! c

not for prisoners necessarily but in terms of content and delivery

we are all prisoners iirc (lol/sob)

That fellow is Aneurin Barnard, Welsh actor, and excellent object of a Google image search.

I need him to star in a BBC period piece involving cravats, like stat.

Sort of on the seminar topic, this is a fascinating book, even as it is really kind of bleak - http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656

haha carl agatha, no, that just means "sorry, I didn't see it, I was in Cornish class."

Hot damn, this is one fine welshman would be... Splann! Ass yw Kembro pur vrav!

...his name is Aneurin, too? God I love that name.

In 2011 he starred in Hunky Dory alongside Minnie Driver. The film is set in 1976 during the hottest summer recorded, in a school in Swansea. Barnard played the role of Davy and in the film sang songs from the era such as David Bowie's "Life on Mars" and The Who's "Love Reign O'er Me".

I need to stop because my beloved husband lurks on this thread, but I'm just putting that here for no reason.

You're putting it there because I need to know these things, clearly! Let your conscience rest easy, and your husband too.

Feel my PAAAAAAAIIIIIIN. Feel the weight of my HAAAAAAAAATE-crush.
http://media.wix.com/ugd/af1bd4_bc8a0f962db54d27a4e9f7b881cfc579.pdf
I want to punch the smirk off his face*.

*by "punch" I clearly mean not in the awful DV sense of the word but just bear the general heat of my frustration and annoyance and the martyr-saint who is my namesake was known for out-arguing 1000 philosophers who were sent to confound her by evil pagans and basically that is what I want to do to him.

That's a fine looking dude.

That book WHY DOES HE DO THAT? INSIDE THE MINDS OF ANGRY AND CONTROLLING MEN is really good. Like, reeeeeeeally good.

NO HE IS NOT. HE IS HIDEOUS. AND TERRIBLE. AND ANNOYING.

x-post

Just based on that picture and his little hair swoop, but I trust you that he is hideous and terrible and annoying and should be banished.

He should totally be banished. To my vagina.

irl LOL

I can talk about Cillian Murphy's cheekbones all day, they're so dreamy.

So what do we think, Wuthering Heights with Aneurin Barnard as Heathcliff and Cillian Murphy as Hindley?

I don't know, what happens in Wuthering Heights?

Well, it's kind of a terrible story of a bunch of people who live in the moors in northern England and absolutely fucking HATE each other and are shockingly cruel to each other in ways both petty and grand, that for some reason has been recast as a love story, BUT it's a great role for a broodingly handsome Welshman and there damn sure would be cravats.

It's a really good book, too, as long as you go into it with 1) an org chart to differentiate all of the similarly named characters and 2) knowledge that this ain't a love story.

I think I'll pass but let me know if like Guy Richie or someone directs it and puts in more car chases and making out? Thx <3 <3

But... cravats.

Mmmmm...nah. I like 'em scrappier than that.

okay okay okay how about a Baz Luhrmann-esque Wuthering Heights re-imagining with cravats AND car chases!

You and Branwell should be absolutely bursting about there being moors and brooding, though! Happy for u

Filthy, disheveled cravats

You just flat out don't have any work to do, do you.

Oh that Wuthering Heights movie doesn't exist (or I would be watching it RIGHT NOW). I am just fantasy casting.

Actually, I have so much fucking work that I actually cried about it last night.

;_______________;

Go right ahead and have that Aneurin-ism then and leave the work until Monday, pet.

Aneurin-ism haha

Cillian Murphy's cheekbones...sigh. he's so pretty.

re: toxic masculinity, was just reading an article about david carr's memoir --"it’s a tremendous, skeptical book about masculinity and the damage men do to themselves and others in chasing all sorts of cockeyed ideas about what it means to be a real man."(tw/much abuse described)

Not to be all Captain Save-A-Brythonic-Language and ruin your joke with our awful vowels, but it's A-NYE-rin - hence Nye Bevan, etc. :)

Haha. It still kinda works

There's a big cloud of billowing thoughts in my head that have yet to coalesce into something cogent, and maybe I need to write to write it out.

But it's really thinking about the various ways that men perform 'anti-sexism' or 'feminism' and how eye-rolly it can be. But this idea of evaluating people who say they're 'allies' not on what they say, but on what they do. Evaluating them not on what they say or perform about Women and Feminist Topics, but on how they treat actual women, especially ones who disagree with them. This will tell you a million times more than all the posturing on all the threads saying all the Things.

I've been trying to move beyond the endless cycle of outrage and rage - because it's so wearing and exhausting - and accomplishes little. But one aspect of that is noticing how many men use "lookit that terrible sexist over there! that man is bad!" as a way of distancing themselves from Sexism. That (bad man) is sexist. Not "we all exist in a constant background tide of sexism, in which I am myself complicit and carried along by." The actions of the Bad Man can be a convenient stand-in for repositories of bad feelings and exorcising them, rather than a call to action to examine how they may be swimming in the same current without realising it.

This can be broadened to many other situations. I'm trying to do this myself. Trying being the operative word; change is hard, breaking habits is difficult. It's still worth trying.

Actions are more important than words. When words and actions do not align, place more importance on actions.

(This is thinking out loud, and not to be taken as the forever-word of how I feel about things forever, but a work in progress.)

by their fruits ye shall know them

Yep.

On guy tip: I liked this Cillian Murphy lite who played a corrupt & decadent space king in Jupiter Ascending

http://www.tvsa.co.za/images/uploads/thumbs/0057899.jpeg

partly handsome, partly some aspiration fantasy to be a decadent space king who lives in the bowels of Jupiter, bringer of jollity

Ha, Eddie Redmayne is one my mother's top crushes.

Also, you might appreciate that he used to model Rowan knitting patterns.

Hmm. He's not for me but A++ King of Jupiter at such a young age, clearly a rising star.

Also, you might appreciate that he used to model Rowan knitting patterns.

― tokyo rosemary, Wednesday, February 18, 2015 1:43 PM (14 minutes ago)

VERY MUCH YES
LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS GIS AS AN AFTER-WORK TREAT

Don't fancy him much, but I like his clothes and I especially like his RINGS; I seem to be going through a phase of being attracted to excessive rings.

I'm trying to draw the annoying, horrible, bannable Mr D upthread, but I think I have well overdone it with his kiss-curl and especially his mascara. Like, I know he wears a lot of mascara, but I've drawn him wearing too too tooooo much mascara (runs in the dark).

But really, decadent space king is really the way forward, I think.

Where did I go wrong with my life that I am not currently, at this very moment, a Decadent Space King? Boo.

Yes to "we are all capable of bad things, immersed as we are in a culture which makes some bad things seem natural and/or not immediately obviously bad, but we are all also capable of examining ourselves and trying not to do bad things" rather than "doing bad things is for Bad People and I am not a Bad Person therefore I couldn't possibly have done a bad thing and (you/entire section of society) are being mean and possibly Bad Person if you suggest I might have" also. And yes, I need to get better at this too.

I think I noted on ILX before that, even though I blame myself for a lot of things which are realistically nothing to do with me, if I do something bad or if random-inconvenience happens to me my brain does immediately go into stampy-feet wasn't-me that-other-person-did-something mode (e.g. not "I walked into a puddle and got wet feet because I wasn't looking where I was going" but "I walked into a puddle and I wouldn't have if that bike hadn't gone past me thirty seconds ago and made me move across slightly! cyclist is very bad person how dare cyclists even exist!!1" etc). This is just one facet of that but I should do less of it in general.

(I am getting further and further from the point.)

No mine does that too, it's really bad. I've worked on it a lot and consider it part of my having (finally) started becoming an adult (by my own measure).

I blame myself for a lot of things which are realistically nothing to do with me

It helps to stop accepting any responsibility for the things in the above category, I think? Frees you up to take resp for actual puddles.