Does anyone else think about gender and that episode of Married With Children where Peggy

neonbluebell:

thepeacockangel:

black–venus:

thepeacockangel:

neonbluebell:

thepeacockangel:

bataillemeup:

thepeacockangel:

thepeacockangel:

redecorates Al’s bathroom in ultra frilly pink a lot?

And like what it says about the “bad wife” splashing femininity all over places men don’t want it but never where men do (her failure to ever cook)?

This one

TBH the picture of Peggy turning into a picture of the Grim Reaper is fucking INTERESTING symbolically, like femininity unmasked is the face of death, which like plays into my theories about the monstrous and the feminine

Femininity unmasked is the face of death

Exactly, femininity unchecked is seen as this nightmarish destructive force, invasive, infecting anything it touches.

Well, it’s not like that’s become the dudebro rhetoric in response to modern feminism, is it? “It’s killing us men.” and all that crap.

It’s an unsettling realization, though. This is the fear-filled psychological process that’s justifying a lot of nasty shit against women; the idea that femininity “out of it’s place” is, to their mind, a mortal threat.

God, men get so irrational when they’re emotional. *snrk*

I mean if you add in their fear that the slightest misstep in their performance of masculinity will render them suddenly magically gay… IDK I have theories about masculinity being an artificial category, strenuously maintained that allows for hierarchical capitalist society… and so like it is sort of an existential threat to their categorization of themselves

omg i could talk about this forever. when i try to engage men about this “masculine” and “feminine”, they outright refuse. in separate discussions they admit they fear/despise their mothers deeply….

and they hate men who are feminine partially because they see them as reflections of their mothers outside of the maternal sphere maybe or something like that… like a vampire that can come out during the day or something

Okay, but. I don’t think Daywalkers is the right analogy. Think more like, zombie apocalypse. This is the hollow and dead shell of a man, gutted by the womanly doom virus. It’s a threat, but not one they’re going to recoil from, but one they’re going to try to kill. Because woo, did embracing the first bits of my femininity literally lead to murder attempts, or what. Unpleasant times.

And it meshes more with the “women aren’t real people” thing they seem to have, because apparently women don’t have internal motivations, just emotions.

But I’d agree on the artificial category thing. Gender IS a construct, and so by default, so are gender behavior categories. There are so many exceptions to the rule, obviously.

The issue is of course that people crave to be socially accepted, and the gendered expectations of men to not healthily express their emotional needs has led to an inability to challenge these expectations, creating a self-replicating loop of emotional and psychological self-mutilation, creating angry, resentful, hateful, repressed and generally more suicidal men in general.

The widespread hatred of women may be partially symptomatic of self-hatred. A spiteful fear of the specter of death living inside of them.

I wish I had any insight on the mother thing. I was raised as a dude, but gosh if I didn’t manage to get to that entanglement of psychological fuckedness. I’d love some elaboration, because I feel like this might be important to understand.

I guess I was thinking of the depictions of feminine men as sly and sneaky (Varys from game of Thrones, Scar from the Lion King). Maybe it’s a “kill while you have the chance” type thing… because if you don’t ‘they spread and get stronger’ or whatever… I used day walker cause I was thinking of it being femininity (already scary to dudes) where they’re not expecting it so it’s extra upsetting to them. I have elaboration on how masculinity is an artificially separated category in part because anything masculine that becomes entwined with the feminine becomes feminine coded (no matter how “masculine” an item is if you put a pink bow on it, it becomes feminine, but conversely if you put spikes on a “feminine” thing it remains girly) and the mother thing I’ll have to go into after i sleep, but I think it has to do with the artificial separation of the masculine and the symbolic possibility of reabsorption… also