I have doubts that [a femslash meme] would be very long-lived

[frogfriend]

img source // post quote source

INAUGURAL MOB POST

feedback welcome in the meta thread!

now taking mod applications

spoiler cut html:

<div tabindex="-1"><b>spoiler title</b><div>Spoilers live here.</div></div>



rules | kinkmeme | friending meme

post image discussion | meta thread | post img/quote suggestions | wank containment area | top level comments | latest flatview page

Comments

Re: wank containment area

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

If it had been about a man, we would have said "Dad racist." I guess the point was more to evoke the frustration many of us have had with well-meaning but kind of clueless parents, rather than malice. My point there was more along the lines of, "her heart is in the right place but sometimes she does not come across in a good way." It would be the same if a man had done the same things. Sorry if that in itself came off as offensive! There are definitely some generational shifts in what's talked about/how certain wording comes off. One of the examples was when Lana talked about how in the past, the civil rights movement had to fight for the right to use the bathroom, and now black voters are telling her she can't pee. I think she meant that as a call to solidarity, but it ended up making it sound as though black voters were more responsible for transphobia than other voters. It would have been better to have positioned decent people as opposed to both these injustices, instead of implying black people went "fuck you got mine" as soon as racism was "over." Or that they're all cis, for that matter. Some people on my tumblr dash were angry about that, but I more felt that was really unfortunate wording on her part but something I sort of hoped that, in an imaginary scenario where we're pals with Lana Wachowski and can just go ask her what she meant and explain why we hope she didn't mean it like that, it'd be cleared up in five minutes.

And I know they're not that old, I just meant that the ideas themselves were big in that era. People can rediscover older ideas through media from that time or friends who were there, and go, "Wow, this blew my mind!" 30 or 40 years later. To some extent this is a good thing! There's a lot of merit both in understanding history and in the ideas themselves. Sometimes there was a lot of great stuff going on that should have caught on but didn't. But the risk of that is missing how something can be absolutely revolutionary for its time in its challenge of the status quo, but have flaws that fail people within the movement that become apparent over time. "Free love" as an idea was about liberating women from the expectation that their deed of ownership passed from father to husband, and that dalliances with men deserved to be punished with unwanted pregnancy and either forced adoption or forced marriage. You had a whole variety of themes converging: women's ownership of their own bodies, the Pill, the fight for abortion access, interracial marriage, destigmatization of single mothers, the possibility of divorce, and non-standard relationships of all types: swingers, casual hookups, orgies. You had the idea of sex for pleasure and women's bodies not existing for reproduction and love mattering, all of which was meaningful to the nascent gay movement as well. But somewhere in that, all this radical yes and reclaiming pleasure, sometimes it was lost that not everyone wants to have sex all the time, even if it's super radical to do so, and you did have people pressuring others to have sex or be sexual in ways they weren't comfortable with, and told they just had social hangups or brainwashing if they refused. This was something later movements addressed--not that the later movements were perfect either, but I think that response was important! Consent needs the ability to say no, and that no shouldn't be interrogated or wheedled or pressured.

Kind of relatedly, but I have friends who have parents who subscribe to that era's ideology, and sometimes those parents have issues with boundaries, things like telling their (adult, by this time) kids they have hang-ups and body issues if they don't feel like being nude, or not understanding that their kids want some distance between theirs and their parents' sex lives--that there are certain things they don't want to hear about or talk about. These parents aren't otherwise abusive, they just believe there's a political value in being totally open about one's body and one's sexuality, which, there can be, if everyone there is freely consenting to be, and if you don't take a no as "you're brainwashed, so I'll ask you again."

The way Kala's consent was handled in the storyline, and like how Sun basically told her sex is awesome so get over yourself and fuck, instead of listening to the fact that Kala felt uncomfortable and that matters, did make me think of that 1960s sexual liberation, and an era of sf/f in general with the concept, "If everyone just lost their individualism and became this ideal thing, humanity would be Perfect!" But humans aren't like that, we aren't one-size-fits-all. I'm very for sexual free-for-alls, but I get tense when even the tamest "I'm inexperienced and nervous and not sure I want this" is met with "Sex is awesome, deprogram your mind!" And assuming that PIV was obviously the first and most required sex act also felt bizarrely heteronormative on such a non-heteronormative show. If Kala was my nervous virgin bride, I wouldn't assume she's gotta get over herself and learn to be fisted on the first night!