It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”
Like.
No?
Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.
Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)
Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.
Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.
But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?
Real talk: realizing how common it is for female characters to be punished for on-the-page sex with death was a big part of my embracing the romance genre. Once I noticed it I couldn’t unnotice it. It’s everywhere. A woman having sex in literature or non-romance genre fiction is the literary equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek.
It’s not just the sex thing, though that’s a key element. It’s that, in romance novels, the heroine gets to be cared for the way she normally would care for everyone else. It’s wish fulfillment in that her romantic partner will do emotional labor, spend a great deal of time thinking about her, or sacrifice his desires or fortune or reputation to be with her, or spend days nursing her back to health, or risking his life to save hers. In romance novels, you’ll find men taking care of children, talking about their feelings, putting effort into their appearance—even if they are adorably bad at it. Watch how many romance novel protagonists fall in love with a man who happens to be rich or handsome, but she didn’t give in until his behavior changed and he starts mentoring her, or providing for her, or being gentle toward her, nourishing her, listening to her, appreciating her… I suspect romance novels are looked down upon not for being juvenile formulaic “beach reads” but because they paint a fantasy world that leaves men feeling uncomfortable or even emasculated. But whether you’re a Midwest housewife or a big city CEO, women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty. Great sex they don’t have to die for is also a huge bonus, but the *romance* part of the novel is genuinely more about the woman being appreciated (for her beauty or spunk or intelligence at first, and then for all of her by the end).
call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.
@ everyone in the notes talking about physical performance: if that were the case, then sports would be divided by physical performance. that’s a thing you can measure. that’s a thing that varies by individual. a weak man and a strong man would be an unfair fight in boxing/wrestling/MMA, which is why they divide those sports up into weight groups based on physical performance. but they also further segregate them based on gender. chess is segregated by gender for no reason but sexism. if it’s actually about skill and physical ability, then measure those and separate people by those metrics. don’t do some bullshit gender segregation and pretend like men and women are inherently on different levels no matter their individual abilities.
💅
Remember that time a teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth? That’s fucking why. Men are afraid of being beaten by women.
omg I’m doing research for one of projects for college, and apparently, girls learn better when they’re in an all girls class, but boys learn even worse when they’re in an all boys class, because all the negative things become even stronger of there are no girls to act as “buffer”
get rid of the boys and let girl learn in peace, i couldn’t care less about them
It’s not our job to be a “buffer”
Separate boys from girls then, they don’t have to be acting like mothers at age 12, if boys ruin the education of others boys, um, idk, fix their behavior maybe?
I work at uni. My program is very competitive. Like you need a 92% or more to get in. We get 10x the applications than we can accept. So. This means our program is 95% female. Simply because girls do better in highschool than boys. Its literally that simple. However. This is a HUGE deal in the administration! Because OMG all those poor boys with less than a 92% can’t get into our program and woe is me, those poor poor boys. Every year we meet to talk about ways to “rectify” this “problem”. One year they’re going to stop inviting me to these meetings. Because I always ask questions like “how do we get boys into the program with lower GPAs without denying girls with higher GPAs? And how is giving boys preferential treatment not sexist?” Keep going good ladies, I’m saving your seat!
This type of thing always happens when women are dominating something, protocols are changed to accommodate and benefit men, and if this strategy isn’t successful the field is devalued.
Keep the good work!
The amount of times I heard my grandfather talk about the ‘feminization’ of schools because he wanted to blame the system for boys under performing (or, more accurately: girls out performing the boys) instead of, ya know, boys’ entitled attitudes and overall piss poor behavior when at school.
When women fail at something: there must be something wrong with women When women succeed at something: there must be something wrong with the system
I think I’ve talked about it before on other posts, but I once had an anthropology class that, completely unintentionally, was all women and one man, and he dropped the course after two weeks. The other section of the same anthropology class, taught by the same professor, was mixed with men and women. So, since it was anthropology, she asked if it was cool if she took notes. She said right away that the all female class had a wildly different vibe, that we spoke and acted differently and had different social expectations of her and the rest of the class, and that we let students complete their thoughts before disagreeing, while the mixed class was highly traditional and almost entirely male dominated because every time a woman spoke, a man jumped in halfway through to “correct” her by saying the same thing. Its a very small sample size, but I think about this a lot
So all those “girls shoulders and knees distract boys from learning” policies…..
I agree john mulaney is probably an immortal akin to beings such as keanu reeves and jeff goldblum but he’s like a new born baby immortal who is looking at the long long expanse of a lifetime he has in front of him and is already tired
jeff golblum is thousands of years old and loving it. john mulaney was born in 1901 and ever since 1924 it’s gone downhill for him
So to be clear, the immortal timeline seems to be:
John Mulaney – early 20th century
Eric Andre – Probably 17th century or so.
Taika Waititi – Elizabethan age, probably hung out with Shakespeare
Keanu Reeves – We think sometime around Alexander the Great, but he seems to have just sprung up fully formed.
Jeff Goldblum – 100% Biblical times, may or may not be King Solomon.
Tommy Wiseau – Indeterminate, may be the first Homo Sapiens.
I have been informed of a few additional immortals in my studies.
Oscar Isaac – Renaissance era, good friend of Da Vinci and Michaelangelo. We have no proof that he was not the model for David but I suspect.
Dwayne Johnson – Ancient World, helped to build many of the Seven Wonders with his prodigious strength. Had a reputation as a ruthless and fearsome warrior, but wasn’t really into it, so he played dead after this kid hit him with a slingshot and went off to follow his passion for the arts.
This is so funny because there’s a phrase in Middle Egyptian commonly translated as “forever and ever” or “forever and for all eternity”. The Mummy is the best thanks for your attention
Reblogging for that rare case of a female character “Well actually-ing” and being badass while doing so
Superheroes that are like “if we kill them we’re just as bad as they are uwu” ? Micro dick energy
The only exception is Aang, whose whole “I’m not gonna kill him if i can find another way” thing is less false moral equivalency and more “I’m twelve and I have been through way too much bullshit this year to add ‘commit my first murder’ to the list.”
And Aangs alternative ended up being WAY better. What better punishment is there for a villain drunk on his own power… than to cut him off from that power forever and let him live out his days with nothing left?
Captain-Radioactive-Mentality 