Those last two posts are why I have a pretty different perspective on the concept of male entitlement than a lot of other women seem to.
[Epistemic status: tentative, but approaching something quantifiable.]
Most entitlements are invisible. They only really stand out as entitlements when we think the person in question is acting *unduly* entitled. For example, we don’t think of a person who wants to walk their dog without being hit by a drunk driver as “acting entitled”, because our social contract considers that something we *are* entitled to. When we decry someone as exhibiting entitlement, there’s an unspoken “unjustified” hovering there. This makes sense: calling someone “entitled” for, say, wanting to be able to vote is technically not inaccurate, but since the law and the broader culture consider it a *legitimate* entitlement, it becomes an example of Scott’s “worst argument in the world”.
When we say men are acting entitled, we’re saying they’re demanding access to things they aren’t *actually* entitled to. We lack a similar concept for women. I think this is because the things many women act entitled to are things most of society *actually does believe* they deserve. It’s not obvious to the world at large. To most people, these women are merely acting within conventional female scripts. To the people on the receiving end of that entitlement, though, it reads very differently.
Many women believe, or behave as though they believe, that they are entitled to a certain degree of intimacy from other women. Unlike entitlement to specifically *sexual* intimacy, this is mostly not coded as threatening. It is considered part of normal womanhood, to the point where we don’t actually recognize it as an entitlement. It’s just part and parcel of Sisterhood.
This phenomenon includes but is not limited to:
The normalization of trauma as a casual conversation topic
Physically fixing another person’s clothes or hair without asking (tucking in tags, etc.)
Commiserating over body issues, periods, etc.
Casual discussion of weight and calories
The near-ubiquity of hugs as greetings
All of these are things to which many women are socialized to feel entitled. Remember that I’m not calling entitlement an inherently bad thing. Food and shelter are entitlements! I do not want to belittle the importance of these particular feminine norms for those who find them enriching. What I am saying is that this constant white noise of emotional (and sometimes physical) intimacy that women are expected to share is more damaging to some women than the expectation of male sexual intimacy. This is very, very rarely acknowledged in a feminist context.
Predictably, the women for whom this is especially difficult tend to be neurodivergent. Autistic women who can’t be touched, eating disordered women who can’t handle calorie talk, women with PTSD who don’t feel safe in a space where assault is constantly discussed. Even women who are “just” private, or gender-nonconforming, or, hell, even just kind of weird can find these norms burdensome. But they are so integral not only to large groups of women but to the structure of feminist activism that it’s no wonder so many of us feel alienated.
And the thing about entitlement is that it’s invisible. Many men who act entitled to women’s sexual attention do not realize there is any other way. It’s simply the nature of things. If you call them entitled, they honestly won’t understand what you’re talking about. It’s the same for many of the women mentioned above. They don’t see how their expectations of entitlement might be burdensome or unfair, because that’s just what being a woman is all about. It’s a blind spot they don’t even seem to realize they have.
I’ve heard people on the internet complaining about this guy they seem to find really annoying, describing him as:
– fat – has a neckbeard – wears silly hats – is angry at the church – addresses women as My Lady and uses archaic flowery language – but is actually a raging misogynist underneath – who makes creepy advances in inappropriate settings
Greensleeves, tho. Basically a petulant guy whining that he has been lusting after this woman for weeks now and she still hasn’t put out.
Then sixteen aggrieved verses listing all the expensive shit he bought her.
You kinda wish it really was written by Henry VIII, suits his character.
Six more ballads followed in less than a year, one on the same day, 3
September 1580 (“Ye Ladie Greene Sleeves answere to Donkyn hir frende”
by Edward White), then on 15 and 18 September (by Henry Carr and again
by White), 14 December (Richard Jones again), 13 February 1581 (Wiliam
Elderton), and August 1581 (White’s third contribution, “Greene Sleeves
is worne awaie, Yellow Sleeves Comme to decaie, Blacke Sleeves I holde
in despite, But White Sleeves is my delighte”).
what a blazing hot meme that only 1580s kids will remember
This is Simon.
He’s supposedly 18, has a mass on the top of his head that oozes/bleeds from time to time, has vampire fangs, talks A LOT, and likes very much to sleep. Even more so if he can sleep on or right next to you.
I rescued him from a shelter exactly 3 weeks from the date that I sent this in and I think he’s pretty much given up on life but now he has a nice home, food of his own, his own blanket, and a mostly clean bill of health.
He is my little talkative asshole son and I love him.
In 1941, Manfred Lewin (left), a young Jewish man living in Nazi Berlin, made a small book of poems and pictures. He gave this book to his boyfriend, Gad Beck (right), as they waited out an air raid together.
Today, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a beautiful online exhibit where you can view this book in its entirety, along with translations and additional information. It’s a wonderful little piece of queer history, and I encourage you all to check it out here.
ADHD vs. autism prescriptivists are the worst like hate to break it to y’all but hyperfixation is not a medical term…. Special interest is used in both diagnoses whether you want to act like it’s autism exclusive or not
There’s literally constant debate over adding adhd/add to the ASD diagnosis so let’s focus more on the collective ableism both groups face; rather than performative activism over terms.
This wouldn’t be such an issue but that’s the only ableism activism y’all care about and it’s so fucking obvious that y’all only engage in this debate for ally points
Bringing this back because I’m starting to see this spread again, as well as the whole “only autistic people stim!! uwu”
This is important to address in nd communities because of the comorbidity between both disorders, and because horizontal aggression and prescriptivism contribute to intracommunity ableism and misinformation (something tumblr is very good at)
30-50% of people diagnosed with ADHD or ASD have symptoms of both disorders. Difficulty with paying attention and social interaction are the dominant chatacteristics of both- which should lead to a discussion and acknowledgement of common ground between the two. Hell even the treatments used to “treat” both disorders are generally similar or even the same- depending on individual symptoms.
Instead of “only autistic people stim and have special interests uwu” or “these Disorder Symptoms™ are present in both ASD and ADHD” (I cringed writing that sentence), we should be saying that as long as no one is harming anyone else, non-neurotypical traits and ways of being are okay no matter how society labeled the person in question.
The pathology paradigm is a form of violent ableism. Please don’t use it in your anti-ableist advocacy.
good psychiatry-critical discourse: diagnosis and psychiatric medication are imperfect and are sometimes used to punish people. at best, diagnostic labels are social constructions we use to try to describe real experiences. there is a long history of psychiatric abuse that continues today. it’s completely valid to mistrust psychiatrists. many psychiatrists are arrogant and unwilling to learn from their clients.
bad psychiatry-critical discourse: all/most diagnostic labels [especially adhd and autism] were made up by big pharma shills so they could get rich selling you drugs you don’t need
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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