Supportive Supehero Boyfriend Steve Trevor, Patron Saint of Anti Toxic Masculinity.
Tag: relationships
“The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.
A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an “attention whore”: an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.”
Christ, this article made me legit well up in tears at work…
“Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.”
THIS. SO FUCKING THIS.
You’ve mentioned your parents a bit — how do you deal with interacting with them? I confronted mine and it’s been “resolved” cause they promised to be better but spending time near them or thinking about them still makes me so miserable. I know there isn’t a magic way to vanish all the hurt but do you have any tips for family holiday time?
I moved 4000 miles away from mine. That’s it, that’s my coping mechanism.
I’ll level with you, I’m 30 and still trapped in a toxic cycle with my parents, even 4000 miles and an ocean apart. They are manipulative, guilt tripping fuckers and I still love them dearly and would be devastated if anything happened to them. And while I’ve had many conversation with them over the years which should have lead to progress or emotional growth…if the other people aren’t willing to heal with you, you need to concentrate on yourself.
I’m going to start therapy soon. For this exact reason. Cause I’m 30 and a phone call from my mother who is 4000 miles away can still send me into a depressive week long spiral because we have, quite literally in my case, a lifetime of knowing how to hurt each other on the tip of our tongues and while I try (oh my god do I try) to be better and not rise to the bait, it still leaves me exhausted and hollow feeling some days. Some days are indeed magical and great and I’ll spend the whole time laughing and joking and I’ll wonder why I ever felt like I needed to move quite so far away.
Other days I’m more than fully aware.
And I know the holidays in particular can be stressful, and I wish I had something more reassuring to say, but this thing you are going through is a process and it will take time. And sometimes all you can really do is just try to breathe and remind yourself none of this is permanent. Pain, guilt, anger, the feeling that you’re never going to escape or get better…these are all temporary things that will pass and you’ll be able to step away from it at some point and heal. Which is hard to do. I know it’s hard to bite your tongue and take the emotional baggage people heap onto you. But you’re stronger than how you feel in those moments and you’re going to be okay.
Self care. Make sure you have things to do that give you reasons to not be around them 100% of the time unless you want to be. It’s also okay if you don’t feel like you have the strength to fight and argue back. It’s okay not to engage, and to do whatever it takes to preserve your emotional well being. And remember, you’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.
No matter how tempting it is to burn it all down.
“You’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”
That is one helluva statement, and I agree wholeheartedly.
So I don’t usually like to respond to people’s interpretation of a character because I sure as fuck am not the authority on what is and isn’t canon but I ran into an Alucard (Castlevania) fan blog and there was a post that just… treats Sypha and Trevor really unfairly.
It goes on about how they must not care about him because they couldn’t tell he was hurting and blah blah and look. Kids? Kids. I need to tell you a thing: I’m married to a person who I’ve known more that half my life and we don’t always know when the other is upset, especially when we’re trying not to project our feelings. And even when we do know, there isn’t always anything one of us can do to comfort the other in any real way and if there was we don’t always know how.
That’s just… people. Every person in the world is a whole universe in themself and even the people you’ve known forever are going to have parts you don’t know about.
In this case, we have three people who’ve basically just met eachother and Alucard is the most composed of the three of them. It’s very possible that while they clearly have some sense of him being upset, that doesn’t mean they would know if or how to comfort him.
Trevor DOES flat out give him a reason to live by way of handing over what Alucard would respect as a major responsibility and treasure.
I see this kind of sentiment in so many fandoms, and honestly it comes from such a toxic ideal of co-dependency masquerading as “true friendship/true love”.
ETD and I have been together for 10 years. We do everything together because I am his best friend and he is mine and we love spending time together. We do that annoying sappy thing where we finish each other’s line of thought. We’ve been through literal hell and back with my health issues, and he’s held my hand through all of it. Sometimes he’s even held the sick bag when I’ve been too weak to do it.
And we still sometimes miss when the other person is feeling upset by something, particularly if the other person isn’t projecting it clearly or is making an attempt to hide it. There are times when I have to ask him outright “hey is anything wrong” because I can’t read his body language. Sometimes it’s something as simple as him being tired and not having the energy to be “on”, other times it’s something more serious like work stress or a major life concern we both need to deal with together. Sometimes I don’t even notice something is wrong until he says “hey, I need help with this.”
And that is because relationships of any kind, romantic or otherwise hinge on communication, and not predictive emotional labor. Which is to say, you cannot possibly anticipate or predict the needs of everyone around you all the time, and nor should you be expected to do so. You are a person too, with thoughts and feelings and needs, and people do not exist to absorb or absolve the pain of others. They can only try to help where they can.
Someone missing a social cue, or not picking up on something you are not being open about, doesn’t make them a bad person, and nor is it indicative of how much they love you. It makes it a failure to communicate, or an inability to perform certain emotional labors you are not equipped to deal with. And that’s okay. No one is put on this earth to burn and keep you warm.
Prince Aladdin
i just rewatched aladdin with the roommates and it got me thinking
aladdin wishes to be made a prince, but all genie does is get him a lot of stuff and money. that’s not what a prince is. a prince is the son of the king, someone in line for the throne. someone with a lot of money is just – rich. so what i think is:
genie goes okay, that’s a big one – and i can do it! but not on my own, not if you want to do it right. not if you truly want a chance to marry your princess for real, as a prince. and aladdin is a foolish, moral, kind boy – and he agrees. he’s fallen in love with jasmine, an innocent all encompassing love, and he’ll do anything for this sweet, clever girl he only knew for a few hours. so genie takes him across the desert, far from agrabah, and plops right in the middle of a skirmish and is like okay, good luck! and aladdin is like ?????
but there’s assholes with swords attacking a young girl, and aladdin doesn’t even have to think about that, just like when he stood in front of the whip for those little kids. there are three men against him, but he’s fast and clever and has been against a dozen trained palace guards. so it’s not easy to get out of there alive, especially with the little girl to protect, but he manages it with only a thin slice on his upper arm, and he’s endured worse for less. so he picks up the little girl and says “i think we should get out of here, hmm?” and she’s in a pretty red silk getup with tiny jewels encrusted on her like stars against sunset. and she nods and throws her arms around his neck. she won’t talk, only points in the direction of home, but aladdin’s okay with that, he’s used to quiet, scared kids. so he keeps up a steady stream of stories of agrabah, which seems almost like this other desert land. but there are more men with swords and aladdin is like what the fuck is going on, but he hides the girl in a corner and fights them too. and that’s how it goes all the way home. there’s no one on the streets really, and they all scatter when the men attack, and they keep on attacking, he fights his way all the way through the city with the girl on his hip or hidden away.
and he should have known, of course, but he was tired and bruised and bleeding by the time he realized the little girl is silently guiding him to the palace and he’s like why can’t you princesses stay inside??? but he walks up and the guards get one look at the child in his arms and whisk him through and multiple people try to take the girl away but she won’t budge from him, a stubborn pout to her lips as her hands remained locked behind his neck. and he’s finally tossed into a throne room where a tall old man is sitting in agony and two young men pace in front of him, each at least a decade older than aladdin. “they’ve taken our sister!” one of the younger men hiss, “i don’t care about their power or their connections, they’ve taken esfir, and we must go get her!”
“uh,” he clears his throat, “hi?”
and all three men whirl on him and the old man stumble-runs to him. esfir finally lets go of aladdin to picked up and twirled around by her father. the two men are rahim and shapur and they look in wonder at this dirty boy of fifteen who’s returned the girl to them, and he speaks with an accent and clearly is not from here and they get the story from him – he’s traveled across the desert because those in his own country want him dead. “you know,” rahim says as the king clutches at esfir in desperate relief, “you could have held her for ransom. you almost died saving her, and we would have paid handsomely to have her returned safely.”
and aladdin gives him a flat disapproving look, appearing in this moment four times his age, and says “people are not objects or bargaining chips. especially not lost little girls.” and rahim and shapur share an impressed conspiring look and they each grab one of his arms and lead him away. “hey! what are you -”
“do be quiet little brother,” shapur says cheerfully, “we really have to get you out of your rags.”
unsung hero of venom 2018: doctor dan lewis
the man who for once, in the entire history of movie boyfriends, does not give a shit that his girlfriend is within 100 yards of her ex, only that her ex is very ill and needs some tender loving care because wtf is that black space blob
THIS! And even at some point when Anne started to launch into explanations of ‘I swtg nothing is going on between me and Eddie’ he was quick to be like ‘that’s not even an issue. the issue is that he’s about to die and we need to find him????’ At no point was he ever jealous or possessive and he was always very kind and nice to Eddie because he feels secure in his relationship with Anne and trusts her.
Also important: Eddie doesn’t talk shit about Dan. Most of his interactions with his ex’s new boyfriend feature the phrase “Thanks, Dan”, uttered without sarcasm. Eddie doesn’t treat Dan like crap, and he doesn’t try to convince Annie that Dan’s a bad guy. Instead, there’s just a lot of respectful boundaries and genuine concern from everyone for everyone else.
(Except the symbiote because, really, a ravenous parasitic alien that reverse-Stockholm bonds to its host does not understand what boundaries are, much less how to respect them.)
i’m so done with the way girls in twenties are treated. i’m so done with people who literally create timetable for us. 20- 24 find a guy, 24-26 make him propose to you, 27-29 get married. i’m so done. i’m do not want to get 2 a.m texts from my best friend who is freaking out that she is gonna die alone. i do not want see my 20 years old friend wasting her time on some guys who are not even interested in her. i do not want see us falling for every nice guy who does not look creepy. i do not want to see girls get sad or paranoid just bcos they do not fill in the schedule. you are ok. you should enjoy your life at its fullest and one day you will find 10/10 so do not pursue 6 just because you do not want to be single. it is ok and one day you will find someone. do not split your love with people who does not deserve it. keep it for yourself and when time will come you will know. i know it hurts. i know you wish u could just open part of yourself and release the buzzing love. but not every kind of love is romantic. show it to your family, friends, plants, yourself.
Not a real criticism, just an expansion really, but … it’s not just the timetables we need to get away from, but the goal itself, I think. “One day you will find someone,” sounds comforting, but the reason it doesn’t lay fears to rest is because we are all smart enough to know it’s not necessarily true.
My aunt is over sixty, never married, and never, so far as I am aware, ever even had a great romance. She dated a lot, but never clicked and now seems to have given up. My mentor is over seventy, divorced her asshole husband more than half her life ago and has never found anyone since.
We all know women (and men) like these. And because we know them, we know that “one day you will find someone,” is just … hogwash. Because sometimes you just … don’t. Or sometimes you do, but he turns out to be a cad. Or you do and the universe rips you apart in the most unfair way possible. And because society has us so fixated on finding “our other half” or whatever, we view these women as cautionary tales.
But …
My aunt trains dogs. Her schipperke is the national champion for his breed. She spent so much of her life as a librarian, nurturing the love of books in kids, myself among them. I ride horses because of her, and it’s one of the very few things I do that makes my soul feel at peace.
My mentor is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in her state. She has devoted her life to fighting to ensure that everyone gets a vigorous defense. Because of her countless people have had the opportunity to turn their lives around. Because of her, they’ve had a life to turn around. Because of her, the prosecution and the police in her jurisdiction are forced to behave ethically and adhere to the rule of law. She’s still, even now fighting to abolish the death penalty. It’s because of her that I am pursuing the life I am.
These women’s lives are not nothing. In fact they are a whole lot of something, and it makes my heart hurt that I ever, in my dark 3 am’s, thought of their lives as something to be avoided at all costs.
So love your family, your friends, your pets, your gardens. Love your job or your hobby or your raison d’ etre, whatever it is. Love sunsets and the smell of rain and yourself, and don’t love these as something to do as a placeholder until the buzzing, romantic love comes, but love these as things worth loving all in themselves.
It’s fucking hard some days. The dark 3 am’s still come sometimes. But most days, I am so much more at peace knowing that I am not incomplete or waiting, but that my life, if it ended today, is worth it because of the platonic, familial, friendship love I have shared. And if the other kind does come someday, that’ll be nice, but it won’t make any of the others less. It’ll just be caramel sauce on a sundae–tasty and wonderful, but the sundae was perfect without it too.
I needed this today.
Concerning Juliet’s age
I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Juliet’s age. Juliet is 13 – more precisely, she’s just on the cusp of turning 14. Though it’s not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her – perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Juliet’s age by saying “that was normal back then” or “that’s just how it was.” This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.
In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their father’s permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papa’s consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the father’s goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.
In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parents’ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose – but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. They’re still a kid, we think to ourselves – why would their parents agree to this?
This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Juliet’s clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.
Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Juliet’s suitor Paris that “my will to her consent is but a part.” He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the lady’s consent was of CRITICAL importance. It’s why so many of Shakespeare’s plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?
Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a woman’s health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy – sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girl’s health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result – was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.
In Shakespeare’s plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J – Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.
Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent – all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she weren’t so young.
When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juilet’s consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the prince’s favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Juliet’s marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didn’t ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathers’ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England – basically everyone non-aristocratic – the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.
tl;dr:
Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Hell no!
Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Not without dad’s consent – Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.
Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?
A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girl’s consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.
Q. How should we explain Juliet’s age in modern terms?
A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl who’s close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? We’d say she’s still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that she’d be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd – she’s still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.
Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?
A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over – Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason.
Romeo and Juliet is the Elizabethan equivalent of ‘won’t someone please think of the children’ it’s a romantic tragedy not a romance romantic in that it’s a love story but not a romance in the sense that it is supposed to be emulated and is likely a social commentary of something happening at the time whether it was ongoing religious feuds which did tear families apart uprisings across the country or just general malaise with how the world was going in the 1590s it’s also worth noting that R+J was based heavily on a poem writen some 30ish years prior by Arthur Brooke known as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet which in turn was based on the work of Matteo Bandello who supposedly based most of his work on real life events making his association to Lucrezia Gonzaga an Italian noblewoman who was married off at the age of 14 likely to solidify some sort of alliance during turbulent times all the more poignant Shakespeare was and never has been the reserve of the intellectual and elite that we are taught his work without historical context robs us of the true value of his work social commentary and this social commentary would like to have a few words with your false ideas of ‘historical accuracy’ (via @thebibliosphere)
I saw this in my emails and couldn’t see why I’d been tagged in it (all the while nodding vehemently along) and then I saw my tags and ah. Yep. Still forever mad at how badly Shakespeare is taught in most schools.
Start with trans rights, an alternative idea.
I’ll keep this somewhat short. I think in terms of the huge queer spectrum there has been an excellent idea to start the push for equal rights with gay marriage, on the basis that you have to start focusing on one thing, and gay marriage is a quick and easy win (relatively). Okay, a huge struggle, but as things go it was easier for a lot of people to accept.
Anyway, I’d like to suggest a selfish alternative idea, which is starting with recognizing trans people with all the necessary legal abilities to change name and genders and treatment being protected and not gatekept and making it not legal to murder us and stuff. Here’s my thoughts why:
We need rapid change, not incremental. If you start with trans rights, it has to pull all the rest along with it. If people can change gender, you have to recognize a fluidity and spectrum. If gender is fluid, you have to recognize a fluid sexuality as well. If people can go from a heterosexual marriage to a queer one, you have to recognize marriage equality. If you have to start recognizing equality for queer people generally, you have to start realizing there’s a pretty big problem with racial equality in the queer world. And so on.
I think trans rights nets the whole thing in one catch, and this is probably very naive and full of problems I didn’t think but also – I am absolutely this selfish.
This isn’t even selfish anymore, just a necessity.
This works in reverse too by the way so if we lose rights you know they’re gunning for everyone and will use it as precedence to knock down every bit of progress since the 1920s.
Queer Fiction Writer 