I thought we made fun of MRAs because they are misguided and misogynistic for believing that feminism is against their interests and they need a movement apart from it. I thought we made fun of them for not understanding that feminism is in favor of men’s liberation from the oppressive patriarchal binary as much as women’s.
But some of you are actually making fun of MRAs because you think men have no problems to complain about, and feminism ISN’T for men, because they don’t need anything, and the patriarchy isn’t the enemy, men are?
Oooh I don’t think we’ve been laughing at the same thing. You have lost the plot.
I thought we made fun of people who said “not all men” in response to women discussing sexism because while they are correct that not all men [insert bad behavior here], saying so in certain conversations is just a defensive knee jerk reaction that distracts from the point.
But some of you are actually making fun of any men who ask to be taken seriously and have their needs met and issues heard, even though they aren’t talking over women? Some of you are making fun of marginalized men for talking about the experiences at their unique intersections of identities and asking for justice because you actually DO think “all men [insert bad behavior here]?”
Oooooh you are failing feminism 101. You do not understand what the patriarchy even is. You do not understand where its power comes from, who benefits from it, and who is harmed by it. You have not progressed beyond “cooties” level discourse. I am not laughing with you.
This is why you sound like a clown if you call transmasculine people talking about their issues “TMRAs.” If you hear men discussing the ways they are harmed by the existing system and the only thing you can think of is obnoxious MRAs, you’re telling on yourself. You’re broadcasting the fact that you haven’t spent enough time engaging with broad feminist viewpoints to know that men’s liberation ideas (NOT the same as MRA) are a part of feminism and have been for a long time.
This is why you sound like a clown if you say “trans men who want feminism to be for them are misgendering themselves” and “trans men benefit from the patriarchy because all men benefit from the patriarchy” and “trans men experience no unique injustices because misandry isn’t a systemic axis of oppression” and “trans men have male privilege so they can’t be oppressed.”
Because even if you take “trans” out of these statements, they’re still incorrect. Feminism is for people of all genders. Men can be harmed by the patriarchy. The ways in which men are harmed by the patriarchy are different from the ways others are harmed by the patriarchy. Having certain “privileges” in certain contexts doesn’t negate the harm of a rigid social structure that punishes nonconformity.
Men can oppose the patriarchy because they want justice for others AND for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that. Giving them shit for talking about that is NOT helping take down the patriarchy.
The patriarchy is not a war of men against women where men are given all the advantages. That’s not what feminism is up against.
The patriarchy is a system where ALL people have rigid roles imposed upon them. All else being equal, certain advantages are more likely to be given to men (or masculine people, or people AMAB, or people with male sex characteristics, depending on CONTEXT). But all else is RARELY equal and even when it is, the range of experiences is vast, and the system is rigged against almost everyone.
Because the goal most individuals have, and the right all individuals deserve, is to be themselves, and to do so by choice. And no matter who you are, the patriarchy stands in opposition to this goal. It tells you who you’re allowed to be, who you’re not allowed to be, what you’re allowed to do, and what others are allowed to do to you. This is an injustice for people of all genders.
We’re ALL trapped. This system can only be dismantled if we understand the WHOLE thing. Which means we need to listen to everyone when they talk about the harms the system is causing them, from where THEY’RE stuck in it.
How are you going to escape the torture mansion if you don’t understand vast swathes of it because you’ve mistaken your brother for the enemy and closed your ears to him? He’s shouting from the torture chamber next to yours, trying to tell you the layout of the room he sees so you can plan your escape together, and you’re refusing to listen because he’s been given more food and water than you? How do you not see that this attitude is only to the benefit of the torture mansion, not its victims?
One of my favourite things when reading fanfiction is when you click with an author’s style so much that you adore the fanfiction you’re reading, and once it’s over you need more. So you go to their page and hope that there’s more for any fandom you might know- only there isn’t any. They’ve written for other fandoms you aren’t familiar with and never would’ve thought about before.
But you’re down so bad for their style and talent that they got you wading in like:
Forever convinced that no matter what, Jin Zixuan is in fact, the BEST man of all the mdzs men. This man started off being described as rich, spoilt, and uptight, as opposed to the Yunmeng boys and also possibly the Lans, and yet he is first punched for being a teenager and not wanting an arranged marriage with a girl he was pretty sure liked Wei Wuxian anyway, and then for standing up for a servant girl whose credit he (wrongly) believed was being stolen by a highborn woman, and he still manages to listen to his wife so much he is a) kept out of his father’s murder plans despite being the principle son and heir, b) invites the boy who punched him multiple times to his son’s celebration and delivers said invitation, and c) actually dies de-escalating something he needn’t even have bothered to involve himself in. For a story which appears to put selfless service to others above all, the spoilt rich boy sure does die doing so, because he had the good sense to appreciate a virtuous woman and it worked spectacularly for him. Jin Ling’s inherent goodness has very little to do with Wei Wuxian, and everything to do with the type of people his parents had been.
the truly unfortunate thing about the Back In My Day phenomenon is that we never listen to the true and important ones, like “back in my day all the children had fucking polio” or “back in my day there were significantly more insects and bodies of water actually froze solid all winter without thawing out” and so on.
AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.
AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”
Owning the servers is a core tenet of OTW/AO3.
Warming up a new database server….
When people involved with AO3 talk about “the cost of servers” they don’t mean “the cost to pay Amazon for space on their servers.” They mean, like, the cost to physically own them, and eventually replace them with new ones. And the operating costs to run them.
AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.
While this is not a solution that can work for everyone who wants to deal with controversial content, it is why AO3ple sneer at alt-righters who complain about getting thrown off hosting platforms.
Because I want us to own the goddamned servers, ok? Because I want a place where we can’t be TOSed and where no one can turn the lights off or try to dictate to us what kind of stories we can tell each other.
AO3 is what a website looks like when you seize the means of production.
Please note that buying new servers and storage just became a shit load more expensive.
Because AI.
To paraphrase a comment on a Gamers Nexus video, the reason computer parts are getting so expensive is that a huge amount of RAM and storage that have not been produced yet were purchased with non-existent money to put in gpus and computers that have also not yet been produced to put in data centers that have not yet been built, to be powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist, to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.
So that’s fun. But it means that already owning computers that actually do the thing is SO MUCH BETTER than hiring other people to build more capacity to buy more computers to do the thing.
How bad is the RAM crisis? The price of ddr3, which is like 10-15yo tech, is going up. The price of DDR5 is now stupid expensive, 4+ times as expensive as it was a few months ago.
Mostly because there’s only one company in the world that is capable of generating the kind of chips needed and everyone uses that company because the modern world is a very precarious house of cards held together by tissue and string and we have a 50 foot toddler playing Godzilla with international trade.
Anyway AO3 is a goddamn miracle people need to respect.
I think this is especially worth pointing out now because if they start fundraising more then this is most probably why they need money. If anyone’s mad that AO3 needs extra dollars then, remember to blame AI.
I keep seeing women online talk about their (valid) postpartum struggles getting anything done with a baby who won’t be put down. My mom always wore her babies in a sling around the house while she did household chores and I’d be curious for people to share their answers AND what culture they’re from in the tags.
You’re probably seeing collision of some different parenting movements as well as generational and cultural differences.
My parents didn’t baby wear. My spouse and I both did, with both sling and carrier, with our babies.
The Boomers, in the general Anglosphere, received and reproduced “Dr Spock” and others, in which babies were expected to become independent and their parents were expected to facilitate their separation and growth as an individual. Women needed to PUT THE BABY DOWN. Babies needed to sleep on strict schedules and be encouraged to sleep by themselves, learning to “cry it out.” The baby should be placed in a cot in a bedroom and the parents should walk away and leave it to cry until it sleeps. Babies, after birth, were placed in a plastic receptacle and placed in a nursery in the hospital, while the husband looks through a window and has his baby pointed out to him for the first time. Pictures of nurseries, of varying containers and receptacles to place babies in. These principles were authoritarian, “behaviourist,” and focused on building a child that would not only “bother their parents less” but would be stronger emotionally.
William Sears then led the “attachment parenting” critique and response, based on theories of attachment. Cloth mother wire mother and the baby chooses comfort; the marshmallow test only showing that children who trust their caretakers are able to delay gratification; etc. The idea is that a child with responsive, attentive caretakers becomes MORE independent in the long run - partly because they’re better able to manage their emotions and relationships. The baby is produced and placed instantly on the bearer’s bare skin for skin time; handed to the birth partner as soon as possible. Attachment parenting stresses major practices like babywearing, breastfeeding, cosleeping. Attachment parenting says things like: ignore the need, and the need remains. Meet the need, and the need goes away.
Attachment parenting was around when our parents were, but mostly mocked. It is more dominant at the moment, being far more evidence-based. it turns out social animals provide lots of scientific evidence for being raised socially. although you can still find behaviourist advice everywhere, and parents/grandparentswho used that style often insist on continuing it. And it’s still controversial! You should see the comments online about cosleeping. You should see how attachment parenting, when it shades too “crunchy,” goes into full-on bonkers behaviour, and how quickly people tip from it into weird beliefs* and next thing you know you’re getting antivax content in your algorithm. It’s a battleground!
As the styles clash, the problems with both are apparent. Attachment parenting rarely comes with acknowledgement of the reality of caretakers needing space, boundaries, The Baby Fucking Off For A Minute.
But anyway - attachment parenting in the Anglosphere is still very much an active battleground. Babywearing is still political. Parents and grandparents who signed on to different practices may take it very personally, tell you to put the damn baby down.
Time will see who is right - but my kids seem to be growing up okay.
* if you want to recommend Mayim Bialik’s otherwise decent attachment parenting book “Beyond The Sling,” (2012) you have to tell the person you’re reccing it to that she changed her stance on that one sentence about not vaccinating her kids. Tell the people that her kids ended up getting vaccinated. And then join her and everyone else in politely pretending that it isn’t in the book. Man, in 2012, there wasn’t Covid and tradwife influencers and all this stuff, it was a little throwaway line in a backwater book for an obscure parenting practice- nobody could have known that CRUNCHY CELEBRITY SCIENTIST WRITING ABOUT BABY SLINGS would have become such a rallying citation for the antivax movement.
Oh, hi, this was the work of my adult life.
So my parents carried me in a backpack (intended for toddlers) by cramming enough towels in with me that I wouldn’t fall out, when I was like 2 months old. That was 1972.
(I look so deeply skeptical in that pic. My dad was a freakin’ baby, he was 21.)
When my eldest was born, circa 1993, I knew I wanted a carrier, my midwife recommended a stretchy wrap, I bought it, and wore it for a little while, but ended up cutting it up to make a simple pouch later, as my baby was VERY heavy very fast.
God damn I was young. (I was 22 in that pic.)
So, I became a doula and childbirth educator not long after that, and while helping out a client she mentioned that she’d been holding her fussy baby so much that she’d fantasized about tying him onto her with a bedsheet like an arm sling, by the corners. And I stared at her and said, “No, not like that, like this” and grabbed a sheet and showed her how to knot it at the shoulder and she used that for a while but it got her through the fussy baby stage. (She was at the point where being able to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a luxury because the only thing she knew how to make one handed was ramen.)
Anyway, I went to a Midwifery Today conference, and they had their usual tricks of the trade circle, and I said, “Hey, I turned a bed sheet into a baby sling for a client,” at which point a whole bunch of midwives from around the world showed us with the same bedsheet how they would do it in their culture, which is to this day one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of. And a Mexican midwife looked at my 20-yo purple striped bedsheet and said, “I don’t need that” and showed us like 20 things to do with a Rebozo.
Not too long after I started working there and ended up writing for them and I put my experience on my website and a version of it went in the magazine, and I got in contact with a ton of baby carrier manufacturers and started reviewing some of them and talking about my experiences.
I say that some people have 15 minutes of fame and some people have 15 inches. My 15 inches was in the babywearing sphere. This thing would happen where I would see carriers “in the wild” and ask people how they liked them (or help them wear them better) and they’d say, “Oh, are you Jenrose?” to the point where my family would laughingly say, “Not THE Jenrose?”
Anyway, circa ehhh 2001 ish I started working more intensively designing baby carriers and working with Maya Wrap on some products and then the babywearing community EXPLODED and there were like thousands of different kinds of carriers being made.
I met with one of the more motivated people in the community in 2004-ish and we came up with an idea for a babywearing organization, called Nine In Nine Out. I explained how I thought it should work, and she made it happen. It grew very rapidly, but not with enough proper corporate structure. In 2005 I had my next baby, and reviewed a billionty baby carriers and designed even more. My eldest wore their sibling, too.
(me with the red hair, kiddo with the brown. Still so goddamn young. I was so tired.)
In 2006, i ran myself into the ground and into adrenal failure organizing the first international babywearing conference. It was amazing. We made baby carriers out of duct tape. I met so many amazing people who are still my friends to this day.
I wore that baby until she was 3. Here we are about to embark on a cruise in 2007.
I got really sick a couple years later and NINO fell apart, but Babywearing International started, at a time when I was not in a position to be involved at all. Meanwhile the wild west of babywearing was over as product standards were put in place.
By 2011, when I was pregnant with my last kid, the question in the parenting group I was in was not “will you wear your baby” but “Which baby carriers will you get?”
And yeah, this baby got worn, too.
He’s 14 now (and has as much hair as I did wearing my first!)
I haven’t worn a baby in years, but could talk someone through it still, no problem. At one point I was grandparented in as a Master Babywearer by BI–they had me evaluate another babywearing instructor on video and used that to approve me. They’d already named an award after me, so… Babywearing International shut down a while ago, but thus far I still see plenty of people babywearing.
For me, it just flat out made parenting easier and more manageable. My arms would get so sore holding a baby for hours, and this was easier on my body. I don’t believe in making babies cry it out, I think the research is pretty clear that there’s no benefit to that and a lot of potential harm, and this is a good way to allow parents a lot of room to function while meeting babies’ needs for physical contact and movement.
One of the things I’m proudest of in my life is that the groups I’ve been a part of have managed to bring babywearing from a niche hippy thing (in the US) to something people are more likely to assume they will do (and something they have easy access to), to the point where it no longer catches my attention to see a carrier in public. The collective understanding of babywearing leapt forward so far between 2000-2008, it blows my mind every time I think about it.
Do I think people shouldn’t use strollers or carseat carriers? Nah, there’s room for both of those things. But I think they can be pretty clunky in a lot of situations and I rarely relied on them. Rarely needed to. And arm-carrying babies was unbelievably hard on my body (because EDS and fibro). Babywearing let me distribute the weight so much better. I don’t think babywearing should be about ideology–it’s a tool, and it’s fun, and it’s fashion, and it makes parents’ lives easier and babies lives happier and that’s a good thing.
Isn’t it interesting how “recent” that all is! Thank you for sharing.
Imagine your rich dumbass parents got scammed out of a ridiculous amount of money because they believed that determining how a bunch of cells would likely score on an “intelligence” test or which hobbies it would be good at once it’s grown into a human child was real and possible, and then they’d hate you for not being be a genius. I think these kids should be legally allowed to kill their parents.
This isn’t a 1:1 by any means, but I feel this is a problem with adoption too. I’m an adopted person and was adopted as a baby due to my adoptive parents’ fertility problems. There’s this assumption that because you “picked” the baby, you get to control the baby to a greater degree than traditional conception (I.e. there was an element of choice with a pre-born child). So when the baby grows up and isn’t what the adopters wanted or they want to look into their bio family (like with donor-conceived children looking into their donors) there’s a degree of possessiveness and animosity directed at you for seemingly no reason for having complex needs, psychological trauma and curiosity into your biological family.
It’s insane these issues aren’t talked about more and I feel the adoptee community and the donor-conceived community have a lot to commiserate on together as well as a lot in common. Children aren’t extensions of their parents. They’re living, breathing human beings with their own wants, needs and desires which cannot be controlled or planned for - and attempting to do so is pure folly which has the potential to cause a breakdown of the relationship between the child and parents.
i soooo want to be filled with someone’s strap… slowly fucking myself on it and whimpering into their shoulder about how good they’re making me feel… messily kissing up their neck and across their jaw and meeting their lips panting and crying out as i cum around them
ALT
