Tomorrow's A Sunday And I've Literally Spent My Weekend The Same Way I Spend The Rest Of My Days And

Saw a quora ask where a cis woman is like should I let my 13 yr old son sleep in the same room as my 16 yr old daughter. And another, old, convo thread where cis adult women talk about how they wouldn't let their husbands bathe their baby daughters 🤮🤢

Why do people have to sexualise all this?

If you don't make a distinction between safe touch and unsafe touch, and sexual touch and non sexual tough - like, if there are no clear cut lines/limits, then how do you suppose people will understand consent and stuff properly?

If you classify all touch as bad, you're not only harming people by taking away affection, but you're also sexualising everything! Which is fucked up. This is the reason why innocent hugs and hand holding and cheek kisses and etcetc are sexualised - because people don't make a distinction. Like, no matter what you say about how bad the world is, there should be a basic amount of trust between human beings - otherwise what's the point of _being_ human beings?

How can people sexualise stuff like this, I felt sick.

I sometimes sleep with my grown up, adult vaala uncle when he comes over (he's in Pune), and the first time, everyone was a lil surprised that I was fine with it. But then why wouldn't I be? Why is it "normal" to see everything with a bad lens?

If a person is personally not comfortable with it, that's valid, but then all this shit? I don't know if this is only my opinion, or if it's an unpopular opinion, but I hate this.

Being cautious is one thing, seeing everything as a dirty thing is another.

It's like how adult women tell girls they need to dress "decently" because their dad/grandpa/brother/uncle/male relative is around. That's fucked up in SO many ways.

Kinda lost my train of thought here, I got it back now - - -

Cont. from 'if you classify all touch as bad' : you'll be confusing kids on what good/safe touch is and what bad/unsafe touch is.

when you remember that Niall wrote multiple songs about girls who like to have one night stands, who didn't want to commit or want labels, without victimising himself or slut shaming them, instead promising them unconditional acceptance, respect and non judgement, and you fall more in love with him than you already have 😌

I hate the fact that I'm so fucking fragile sometimes. Like, there are days when I have no energy and I like to make those days lazy days, y'know? I feel kind of numb inside, but light, and really smol™. And on these days, if anyone says or does the tiniest little thing, I get upset. Like, today for example, my socio ma'am raised her voice a little bit at me because she was getting annoyed at our class cause we weren't responding properly, and she was like I'm not talking about that when I accidentally said the wrong thing (she didn't say it in the bad way, she's an amazing person/teacher, she's my favorite) and I felt like crying, but I held it is. And then later on my grandpa scolded me for not obeying him and waking up early AT 7 (WTF, NEVER GONNA HAPPEN), and my grandma was like you better change from tomorrow before he stops saying nicely and starts getting angry and that made me sad. And then I was in a very fragile mood so I was spending a lot of time alone with myself, and then I spent some with my cousin. And after a while I was just feeling reallyyyy tired, so I stood outside looking at the sky and zoning out and she kept pushing my back, and it hurt a bit and I told her to stop it but she kept doing it, so I felt this very flat, no energy vaala anger and I told her if she does it again I'll push her back and she'll fall down because I'm strong, and she said no I won't, I don't mind, do it and I wanted to teach her a lesson so I did and she fell on her butt, and my dad started scolding me eventhough he was watching the entire thing. And that just added on to my fragile vaala mood, but I could control my tears and so I turned around to stare at the sky again after apologizing to her. But she started doing it again and I got upset and I stormed into my room and started crying. I feel so pathetic because I'm so fucking sensitive. Like, no person is this sensitive. WTF is wrong with me. A few days ago, there was this huge conflict at home, and just, I dunno. Whatever. I'm a bad person and I deserve to die.

I have achieved the trifecta of unhealthy coping mechanisms - binge drinking, binge eating and self harm 🫠

how I practice - chewing gum when I feel like binge eating; eating when I feel like drinking; drinking when i feel like self harming; self harming when I feel like dying

alternative coping mechanisms - cutting hair, reading fanfiction, masturbation, sleeping, texting friends/my therapist, waking my mom up and crying to her, and writing in my diary~

adaptive coping mechanisms - safe space imagery, icing, 4-4-4 breaths, texting my therapist/friends, diary writing, chewing gum

I hate it when people do nice things for me on my birthday because I know that I don't deserve any of it and I'm a horrible person and I'm an imposter and I deserve only bad things but then that hurts too, but this hurts also

I feel so fucking lonely

It also kinda perpetuates a negative/toxic view of romantic relationships. Like, y'know how people most of the time talk about their partner in a degrading way (not gender specific, this is gender neutral) - not just when they're annoyed at them, most of the time. It's mostly snarky.

Married couples are the WORST. They talk about how they're "trapped" now blah blah blah (kindaaa gender specific because cis men tend to do it more). Just take the WhatsApp family group forwards - how many "jokes" are made about physically hurting or even killing their spouse?

There's so much bitterness. Majority of the people roll their eyes and shit on couples who post lovey dovey stuff on social media, but to be really honest, I shit on the people who talk shit about their partner openly on social media. Including 'bashing the ex' vaala posts. Like, no, just no. That's immature and disrespectful. It's better to be cheesy than hateful.

It's as if once you get into a romantic relationship your individuality, your freedom, your space, your likes and dislikes are automatically gone/irrelevant - that's how it's portrayed is what I mean, when people say stuff like this. And that just shows how many people are in unhealthy relationships but don't realise it's unhealthy, they're normalising unhealthy patterns and not even educating themselves (and/or others) on how a healthy relationship should be. A healthy relationship shouldn't feel like a trap or any of the above. It's supposed to make you feel _free, safe, comfortable and confident with yourself_, supposed to make you feel good inside.

edit : and this is from a person on the aro-spec

Function and Mechanism of Patriarchy in the Play

Before beginning my essay, I would like to add a warning, since it talks about matters that might be triggering to some - such as sexual harassment and rape.

Everything, from the clothes we wear to the work we do is gendered; the way we talk, the way we sit, what we study, what we don't study is all gendered. Gender roles and norms dictate our actions, define our personality and act as a moral rulebook for the society. All this is supported and perpetuated by a system of oppression, widely common and sadly normalised by all of us. Patriarchy, to put simply, is - "a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it"; it ranges from sexist microaggressions, such as jokes about how women belong in the kitchen and how women can't drive, to violent misogynistic acts such as female foeticide and honor killings.

Girls are taught to be quiet, to not talk until spoken to, to make their presence unknown and to shrink themselves to fit into society, so that they grow up to "wife material". The conditioning they undergo since childhood grooms them to be the "perfect wife" - obedient, subservient and aquiscent. But marriage is nothing but a patriarchal system created to benifit men and suppress women. Dowry deaths are far too common in our country, and even though it is supposedly illegal, people still demand for dowry. This becomes a reason for families to consider girl children a burden which results in female foeticide and infanticide. What is heartbreaking is the fact that women are made to believe that they're at fault for giving birth to a girl child, they're forced to believe that they themselves are a burden to their family and thus, their daughters are too.

Domestic abuse and marital rape are forms of violence that millions of women face daily after moving in with their husband. What is not surprising, but extremely disappointing is the fact that marital rape is still not recognised as a crime, as rape, by the Indian constitution. As if the possibility of women filing false cases against their husband has to be given more consideration than the torture women are forced to go through daily, as if men deserve more protection from false rape cases than the women who're survivors of marital rape. In olden times, what defined the status of a man, or what proved his masculinity was the control he held over his 'zan' (woman) and the 'zamin' (land), both which were considered his property. The same mindset has continued to the present times, in the sense that after marriage, women are considered property of their husband, she has no body autonomy, no right to consent, and since anything done to a person's own property isn't considered a crime, marital rape isn't considered a crime because wives are nothing but objects used to satisfy their husband's needs.

In 'Kamala', we see how angry Jaisingh gets when Sarita tells him to stop his sexual advances. He calls her derogatory terms because according to him, since she was his wife, it was her duty to have sex with him. Jaisingh doesn't consider his wife an equal, she is not treated with any respect, instead she's treated like a personal assistant, an unpaid personal assistance who exists only to obey and serve him. She is nothing more than a trophy wife, someone whom he shows off like a prize at parties and then treat like an object at home. For all his talk about exposing the sex trafficking industry and saving those women, he doesn't treat his wife much better than a slave. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Kakasaheb is no better. When Sarita talks to him about her plans to expose her husband because she can no longer stand to be treated that way, her uncle tells her that he's a man, and thus, it's normal for him to act that way - it's her responsibility to adjust, sacrifice and obey. He even proudly talks about how he ill-treated his own wife because of his male ego, seeing absolutely nothing wrong with how men treat their wives, but seeing something very wrong in the way Sarita wants to stand up for herself.

The way Jaisingh treats his maid, Kamalabhai is a different story, extremely disrespectful and cocky. When we talk about the patriarchy, it's impertinent that we talk about how the patriarchy oppresses women of different social standings differently. Kamala is oppressed in a certain way which is different from the way Kamalabhai is oppressed and different from the way Sarita is oppressed. The way domestic workers are treated in Indian households is shameful and disgusting. Nivedita Menon, in her book, 'Seeing Like A Feminist' states that, "The callousness of the Indian middle classes towards their ‘servants’ outdoes the worst excesses of feudalism. The polite term ‘domestic help’ that has replaced the word ‘servant’ in public usage is perniciously misleading. Make no mistake—these are servants. They are treated as less than human, less than pet animals. Apart from facing physical and sexual abuse—which is common—domestic workers perform heavy unrelenting toil, for they have no specific work hours if live-in; no days off or yearly vacations if part-time. Not to mention the routine humiliation that is their due. Several times now, I have noticed in Delhi restaurants the truly appalling sight of young women who are clearly maids in charge of toddlers, standing throughout the meal that their employers are consuming, ready to take charge of the baby at any point, and not being offered so much as a glass of water."

When Kakasaheb tells Jaisingh that he'll drink his tea along with Sarita so that Kamalabhai wouldn't have to do double the work, Jaisingh brushes it away and tells him that it's Kamalabhai's job to serve them - he has absolutely no concern for her wellbeing. He is a sexist, classist chauvinist who cares only about his name and his fame.

Partriachy doesn't just effect housewives and domestic workers, it effects working women too. The glass ceiling and the wage gap aren't myths, contrary to popular sexist claims. The percentage of women in STEM related subjects is very low, not because their brain is wired in a different way or because they're incapable of logical thinking, but because their entire life they've been made to believe that they are not good enough for the STEM field. Add onto it the discrimination they face by men in their workplace, and its no wonder many women who were toppers discontinue or not go for work at all. Sexual harassment at their workplace is another huge problem women face. Male employers many a time force female employees to do them "favors" for a promotion, threatening them with the possibility of getting fired if they don't listen. In the entertainment/film industry, the casting couch is a looming threat.

Apart from the discrimination they face at their workplace, women also face a lot of discrimination and set backs on their way - the 'mommy track' which Nivedita Menon talks about in her book, refers to when a woman sets apart the most productive years in her life to look after her children, which results in a slower career track upwards. The onus of looking after the children is put on the mother and the father plays absolutely no role. This is harmful not only to the women, but also to the men, since this is why in most divorce cases, the mother gets custody of the children, even if she's incompetent simply because she's a woman and looking after the children is considered her responsibility.

On the other side of the coin, this puts pressure on women to be mothers, it tells women that being a mother is all that you're good at, so that's what you must become, it is your duty, you get no choice. So even those who aren't fit to be mothers and those who don't want to be mothers, are forced to have children solely because they're women and its considered a women's job.

Kamala pities Jaisingh when Sarita tells her that she's unable to have children. She says that Jaisingh invested a lot in her, but he's not getting much in return. Her point of view is understandable since that was the kind of mindset she was exposed to her entire life. But unfortunately, today's urban society shares a similar mindset. If a couple can't have children, shame on the woman and oh, no, poor man.

Toxic masculinity is another aspect of the patriarchy and of the book. Men are expected to be brutes, they're expected to be insensitive, egotistical people who act as the head of household. Otherwise, they're considered incompetent husbands. Toxic masculinity takes a toll on men and women, mostly because the pressure it puts on men is taken out on the women. We see that in Jaisingh and Kakasaheb's treatment of their wives.

Rape culture being another. Rape culture doesn't refer to a culture in which a lot of rapes take place, but it refers to a culture which normalizes and sexual violence. Not considering marital rape rape is rape culture; catcalling and eve teasing women and girls is rape culture; blaming women for being sexually assaulted by telling them its wcause they were dressing provocatively is rape culture; the belief that men cannot be raped since they're stronger than women is rape culture, and the belief that if a man were to be sexually harassed, he must have enjoyed it since all men are considered to be sexual beings is rape culture; telling a gay person or an asexual person that they can be "turned straight" through violent sex is rape culture.

Patriarchy and Brahmanical Patriarchy go hand in glove. Sati was a practice introduced by Brahmans. Honor killing of women to protect her "purity" and "dignity" was also a practice introduced by Brahmanical patriarchy. Women who're SC, ST or OBC face a triad of oppression - for their caste and their gender, that is a result of Brahmanical patriarchy. For casteism to end, it's cardinal that so does Brahmanical patriarchy, which unfortunately isn't considered an actual issue by most mainstream, savarna feminists.

When we talk about patriarchy, it's all these major things and the microaggressions together. It's when brothers are given an extra fish and sisters are made to clean up after their brother, it's when "boys will be boys" is a scapegoat for men, but "you're a woman/girl, so act like one" puts unnecessary pressure on women to live up to a certain societally constructed standard, it's when heterosexuality is considered compulsory and normal for the purpose of passing on the family name and property and its when the honor of the family is placed on the shoulders of a young girl.

When feminists talk about "smashing the patriarchy", they're referring to dismantling the entire system so that none of these oppressive practices exist. So that we can live in a world where there is equity and justice, where there is no discrimination - a utopian world which unfortunately, cannot be reached anytime soon.

Ace/aro books coming out this year that I’m looking forward to!

Is Love the Answer by Uta Isaki - stand-alone manga about a college girl who discovers she is aroace. The same mangaka also did ‘Mine-kun is Asexual’ a couple of years ago which I liked, though it was much shorter, so I’m happy to see a full length release from them. This came out just last week, so I’m super excited to read it when it gets here!

I want to be a wall (Vol.2) by Honami Shirono - manga series - releasing 17th Jan. I already posted about how much I enjoyed Vol 1 of this series, but for recap it’s about an aroace woman and her lavender marriage to a gay man who is unrequitedly in love with his best friend. I’m really excited to see how their non-conventional relationship plays out :) it’s very slice of life and cozy!

I am Ace by Cody Daigle-Orians aka Ace Dad Advice - releasing 21 Feb 2023. I’m glad to see a book about a sexuality actually written for an ace audience, because I feel like a lot of aspec books/articles are aimed at raising awareness with allos. I’m excited to see how this one goes!

Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else - by Kayla Kaszyca and Sarah Costello - releasing 21 Feb 2023. I’ve listened to their podcast a bit over the years and I’m curious to see what they come up with in this book!

If you want to see a fuller list of all the ace and aro books coming out this year, check out this list HERE!