Feminism

At first, Luu felt okay with the situation. Her relationship was the healthiest one she’d ever been in, and “we just felt like we were married from the get-go,” she says. They combined finances, and Luu took on more of the household chores. But as time went on, her feelings changed. “I love keeping a clean space, I love cooking, and I love doing the homely duties. But after a while of being the only person contributing [to the housework], it’s like, Damn, if I was making money, I could just be doing this on my own and not have to take care of someone else,” she says. “But you know, he was contributing financially. So then it’s like, How can I speak on that? That internal conflict just got stressful.”

People with common sense probably know this already, but the right wing obsession with "trad wife" or "stay at home mom" often do not work in real life.

At first, Luu felt okay with the situation. Her relationship was the healthiest one she’d ever been in, and “we just felt like we were married from the get-go,” she says. They combined finances, and Luu took on more of the household chores. But as time went on, her feelings changed. “I love keeping a clean space, I love cooking, and I love doing the homely duties. But after a while of being the only person contributing [to the housework], it’s like, Damn, if I was making money, I could just be doing this on my own and not have to take care of someone else,” she says. “But you know, he was contributing financially. So then it’s like, How can I speak on that? That internal conflict just got stressful.”

People with common sense probably know this already, but the right wing obsession with "trad wife" or "stay at home mom" often do not work in real life.

Visibility is often treated like value. But what happens when you stop being reflected in the eyes of others and realize you’re still whole?

This reflection isn’t about loss. It’s about a quiet return to the self.
It speaks to anyone who’s felt the slow fade of being noticed, and still chose to show up with grace, memory, and softness that needs no validation.

She isn’t gone. She just stopped apologizing for existing without being asked to.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30375194

I was looking at the offer of rehearsal.so, a site using AI to allegedly help you rehearse giving job interviews, delivering presentations and such.

A LOT of the content is sociopathic in nature and there are a lot of simulations for "getting her number", but the top offer in the Dating section is this one "getting her number in the middle of a protest".

I think this highlights well the real problem of digital technology in general and of the generative AI domain in particular: applications are being made by selfish people (men, mostly) who think that any situation should serve their goals and that the original point of those can be completely disregarded.

All of this while surely serving a sub-par product, since "training" and condescending AI chatbots don't really go well together: nearly all of the AI chats I had with AI "characters" could be easily jailbroken even into sexual ones.

The founders and other info can be found here.

• Invidious
• Youtube

I'm sharing this in response to Thai transgender YouTuber alleges sexist treatment at Chinese airport

TL;DW:
If you identify as someone in the LGBTQIA+ community, please don't travel to China. It is very unlikely that your human rights will be respected to say the least.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/44765476

Ford at again and again, just another example.

Growing up in Charles County, Maryland, Mel Thomas’ father sparked her interest in agriculture as he grew plants and food for the family.

“My dad and I, we would have a garden every year. I was an outdoor kid. I just wanted to be out there all the time. He taught me about growing,” she said.

What began as a childhood passion has blossomed into a way to foster community, encourage connection to the land and educate Maryland families about the importance of growing their own food.

Thomas, 38, is the owner and operator of Mel ‘n Nem Farms, stretching across half an acre about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C., she and her team have developed a sustainable learning farm that offers workshops and training so that people of all age groups can be introduced to the basics of farming.

“There are so many places in Prince George’s County that are already food deserts, and with the food supply shortages and things like that from the pandemic, kids were starving,” Thomas said.

According to a 2024 report by the Capital Area Food Bank, 50 percent of Prince George’s County residents are experiencing food insecurity, a 5 percent increase from the previous year.

Mel ‘n Nem Farms works with the Bowie Interfaith Pantry and Emergency Fund to donate excess produce from their programming.

Thomas’ concern for Maryland families’ limited access to food highlighted another issue: Many Black and Brown families in her community didn’t have the access to agriculture that she did.

Society often tells women that visibility is value. That after a certain age, if you are no longer seen, you no longer matter.

But what if invisibility is not an ending, but a quiet return to the self?

This piece reflects on what happens when a woman no longer performs, no longer adjusts for the gaze of others. She becomes unreadable. And that unreadability is freedom.

It’s not about vanishing. It’s about shedding what never truly belonged.

It seems you can’t look anywhere without hearing about the growth and profitability of women’s sports. The refrain has gone from “no one watches women’s sports” to “everyone watches women’s sports” in a matter of just a few years. For longtime fans of women’s basketball, women’s soccer and women’s hockey, the meteoric growth of leagues like the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) can feel exciting. But with all this growth comes more complicated feelings too.

The argument for investing in women’s sports often falls along capitalist lines such as “there’s money to be made here, and it would be unwise to pass it up.” A new report from Deloitte estimates that global revenue generated by elite women’s sports will exceed £1.8 billion (approximately $3.3 billion in Canadian dollars) in 2025. With investment opportunities increasing exponentially, women’s pro sports leagues are signing sponsorship deals with major companies left and right. However, which brands these leagues are choosing to partner with now that there is money available is increasingly at odds with the presumably progressive values these leagues have been perceived to have by long-time fans.

The WNBA players, in particular, have made a name for themselves with their commitment to racial justice activism and social justice advocacy cause that they dedicate each season to (there is even a documentary about their activism, called Power of the Dream). In women’s soccer, the U.S. Women’s National Team’s fight for equal pay often transfers to perceptions of the NWSL because many of the same players are represented. Even though those values and actions come from the players themselves, the public perception often applies those views to the leagues as a whole. In the public sphere, the distinction between the league (a corporation with its own interests in mind) and the players (individual workers with their own views) is often flattened.

But why would a league that is being heralded as “a beacon of social and political activism” think that partnering with Amazon would align with its values? Amazon is well known to be a company that, among other things, exploits workers, puts them in unsafe working conditions, helps fund ICE, has a terrible environmental record and is single-handedly responsible for killing bookstores. Perhaps for the same reason they thought their new partnership with Alex Cooper’s Unwell Hydration drink was a good idea? Cooper, the host of the popular Call Her Daddy podcast, is a former employee of Barstool Sports and has done little to distance herself or her brand from Barstool’s toxic and offensive content in the years since she left the company. Not only that, her Unwell Hydration beverage is a Nestlé product, which is currently the subject of multiple boycotts for reasons that include political, environmental and human rights concerns. In Canada, the company faces boycotts from the Council of Canadians and the indigenous rights organization Lakota People’s Law Project for extracting water from watersheds that have recently seen droughts. All of the leagues have at least one official partnership with a company that is on the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) list.

“White nationalist and identitarian movements have strategically used women in their public-facing campaigns to make their ideas seem less dangerous and more legitimate,” Julia Ebner, author of Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over, told me.

She continues: “Fascist ideologies – in the past and today – tend to paint an idealised vision of the human body and women's bodies in particular are seen as vessels for producing the next generation of ‘pure’ and strong children. With the rise of far-right movements, we also see a return of narrow-minded beauty ideals and body shaming.”

For far-right women, there is no such thing as body positivity or body neutrality. Thinness is a moral imperative; it shows dominance over the body and aligns oneself with European beauty standards.

Santiago’s use of the word ‘supremacy’ cuts to the heart of this: the far-right places all bodies into a series of hierarchies – some supreme over others. White bodies over Black and Brown bodies. Cis bodies over trans bodies. Able bodies over disabled bodies. And thin bodies over fat bodies.

Manga review: Akumetsu

https://mangaispolitical.noblogs.org/post/2025/04/30/review-akumetsu/

@feminism

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29144500

There are a lot of words you could use to describe Donald Trump’s leadership style, or what he and Elon Musk have in common. That’s why it’s odd that the phrase chosen by Axios in February 2025 was “masculine maximalism.”

“Trump and Musk view masculinity quite similarly,” authors Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote, defining it in terms of “tough-guy language” and “macho actions.” This definition is puzzling for a few reasons, chief among them the fact that “tough-guy,” “macho” and “masculine” are all synonyms for each other. Elsewhere, we’re told that Trump and Musk want to “let men be men,” another phrase that pointedly begs the question.

To be fair, the association of Trump with masculinity is ubiquitous: He “prizes masculinity above everything,” according to Vince Mancini at GQ. He will help America view masculinity more “positively,” according to his male supporters, as quoted by the New York Times. One especially depressing poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, published in October 2024, found that 41 percent of all voters described Trump as “completely masculine” and 84 percent of that group planned to vote for him; moreover, among voters who do not view Trump as masculine, “his support plummets, even among Republicans.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s critics on the left try to tear him down by saying that he’s not masculine enough: “The least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency,” according to at least one Atlantic column. He’s taunted for getting “emotional,” for wearing makeup, for showing affection to or (gasp) kissing other men, even if that last thing only happens in people’s imaginations. Liberal mockery of Elon Musk, similarly, often rests on the idea that he behaves like a woman. (“Elonia,” anyone?) Disturbingly, neither side questions the idea that “masculinity” should be a requirement in a leader, or that men who are “unmasculine” are unworthy of respect.

Yet it is true that Trumpism is a kind of gender performance—it’s about shoring up a traditional, misogynistic, dominance-obsessed ideal of “masculinity” against social progress, about restoring straight cis white men to their traditional place at the head of the family and the top of the world. Attacks on trans people, who supposedly threaten “masculinity” by existing, are very much a part of that effort.

Whether or not we as queer people believe in that kind of “masculinity,” or aspire to it, it’s gunning for us. In the hopes of understanding the enemy—and restoring some kind of nuance to a conversation that desperately lacks it—I set out to talk to transfeminists about what they think “masculinity” is and what it could become.

Overall 62 percent of these so-called climate voters are women, compared to 37 percent of men. The gender gap is largest among young people, Black and Indigenous voters.

Blue Origin’s “first all-female spaceflight” was framed as a bold step forward, a headline-grabbing moment for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Positioned as progress meant to encourage girls to pursue STEM and inspire the next generation of explorers, the mission missed a critical opportunity: to celebrate not just the six women aboard, but the thousands of others already leading innovation in science and technology. Instead, it became less about honoring their achievements and more about promoting a glossy, marketable image of what female success should look like.

The focus shifted from substance to spectacle. Rather than celebrating these six accomplished women for their courage or contributions, the spotlight fixated on appearance and celebrity. The message? Women and girls can reach for the stars, but only if they look good doing it.

Trying to understand why I had these opinions, I recalled how much different being a man felt at 18 versus 28. I had no money which I presumed meant I had no value to the opposite sex. I wanted the company of women and girls, but I also resented them because I lacked experience in dating and my few experiences were rocky. A lot of magazines and headlines focused on the shortcomings of men and boys in the early 2010s, and it was easy for me to get negatively polarized into thinking it was a personal attack. Academic feminism did and does a much better job explaining patriarchy better than blogs and news sites which boiled down systems of sexism to individual behaviors.

My experience as a resentful teen boy wasn’t unique. It’s the same experience that millions of boys are going through, which they’d ordinarily grow out of by the time they hit their twenties. In my case, it was happening during a period of social revolution on gender and during an evolution in mass communications. Many of these early communities on Atheism, which captured me for their sensibility and anti-orthodoxy, evolved into anti-progressivism and eventually evolved into the Redpill and Manosphere which is how millions of young boys today engage with their gender. At least my period in this mindset was short lived: about two years. By the time 2016 rolled around, I had clearly lost interest in online gender wars as tyranny seemed a greater threat. I was now 24 and actively attending college; I had plenty of friendships and dating experiences with women, and that teenage resentment was forgotten.

The big crisis we’re dealing with today is that the resentment is not only not expiring when men get into their twenties, but it’s being weaponized globally by parties against men’s material interests. What young boys like me didn’t realize when we were being lectured about patriarchy and the problems of men, is that being a man is an extremely privileged position over women, we’re just not old enough to benefit from it yet. This presents a problem on how we teach oppression and discrimination to young people who have little autonomy of their own and feel bad when you imply your immutable characteristics harm people you seek validation from.

Play a game with yourselves. Imagine the silliest reason to ban hatpins, see if you got it right.