extrapenguin: Lin Jing from Guardian, head thrown back in frustration. (linjing)
ExtraPenguin ([personal profile] extrapenguin) wrote2023-12-23 05:06 pm

Heteropessimism & Rey Palpatinism

Yes hello, am very busy IRL still, proooobably shouldn't have signed up for [community profile] ficinabox or [community profile] swrarepairs but hey, I managed to complete my assignments and comment on my gifts! Even if I didn't manage to read a single other thing from the collections. But! I exist. And I even wanted to make a post!

1) I discovered a link to Tara Mooknee's video essay on Heterofatalism: WHY straight women aren't okay and watched it, though as always I think text is nicer and headed straight for her sources document. Of those, I enjoyed/found intriguing Indiana Seresin's original essay, Yuhe Faye Wang's essay, Sophie Lewis's related thoughts on the architectural enabling of hedonism (this one was kind of brain-bendy) and the WTFery of straight culture (looking at it from the outside with an exotifying tone), and this excerpt from Jane Ward's book that deals with how heterosexuality itself is new and how the idea that men could/should love women, rather than just exploit them via marriage, is new and the transition to this paradigm is still incomplete. It's 0% applicable to me, but idk, it's also completely new as a theoretical framework and I desperately needed to think about something unrelated to [list of things making me v v busy IRL].

2) While clipping through RotS for Reincarnation, I noticed that Palps uses the same saber technique in his one lightsaber fight that Rey uses in TFA, so I've been thinking about vidsongs for a vid about negative family relations/rejecting the family legacy for a bit. Nothing already in my music library has struck me, so I've looked at my [community profile] vid_bingo bingo card and gone hunting for 00s songs. (I already know what I'll be doing for character study, have a WIP I could plonk for the free square, and metal/rock is, like, 99% of everything I vid and listen to.) So far my backup plan is to vid something to one of Apocalyptica's instrumentals, but the Rey Palpatine vid feels like it needs vocals, ideally female. I'll be going through the 00s discographies of Stratovarius and Apulanta anyway, as well as re-checking out albums from the 00s already in my music collection (Indica, Katra, Xandria, etc), but if you have any recs for female-fronted metal/rock bands active during 2000 to 2009, please share. (Metal Archives advanced search reveals 1270 albums from the period. Halp.)
mecurtin: fandom compass: porn/wank/spoilers/meta and so around (fascinating)

[personal profile] mecurtin 2023-12-23 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
1) Jane Ward's essay is fascinating, especially the bit about 19th C Iran. But then I think about The Tale of Genji, and The Dream of the Red Chamber--both works from HIGHLY patriarchal cultures, centering on male characters and the women they love, with male-male friendships a distant second. These male characters are heterosexual, or so it appears.

But they also spend much of their lives inside spaces (houses, palaces) with more women than men, they don't work in traditionally male-dominated spaces like the military.

As a bi woman married to a man, I see a lot of gender essentialism in these posts. My answer to "why a man when there are woman?" has a lot to do with "they're not that different!" Men, women, and people who are neither can all be beautiful, sexy, smart, funny, kind, and all the other attractive qualities.
mecurtin: Rodney McKay sees stupid people (stupid people)

[personal profile] mecurtin 2023-12-23 09:16 pm (UTC)(link)
thrilled in her womanhood when she was unable to open a jar
thank you for leaving out that essay, that was definitely a thing I did NOT need to see. OMG.

I've been thinking recently of patriarchy's misogyny paradox, but on a psychologically deeper, dare I say Freudian level. Under traditional patriarchy, the infant's first source and object of love, the very definition of Love, is Mother & Mother only. But Mother isn't respected in the family, she's subordinate to Father in a way that social mammals will pick up on really quickly, even if she isn't treated to outright abuse.

So love itself becomes suspect, untrustworthy. But human beings *need* love, so patriarchy has made it extremely difficult for people to satisfy their basic needs.