Cherry

The Tims who are like "ohhh, I never knew how bad misogyny and make privelege was until I started transitioning it's sO bAd sissss omgghgg" I fucking can't stand them. Yes you did fucking know. All men know women are treated like shit by society. That's why they shake with terror at even a hint of being humiliated/treated like a woman for even a second. You absolutely know. All boys figure this out at least by puberty. You just didn't like admitting you benefited from male privelege and probably participated in sexism too. Fuck off.

it reminds me of that vine that’s like “I’ve decided to go undercover as a woman for a day to see what they go through” then it cuts to night time and the guy says “i’ve discovered that women are called faggot a lot”. bc it’s all a big joke to them.

Blog Post #2

Mean Girls Analysis - Spoiler warning ahead

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Despite reaching icon status and becoming essential to pop culture with all its iconic references, Mean Girls is ironically yet unironically a caricaturistic yet accurate portrayal of internalized misogyny.

We watch Cady Heron enter high school as basically a social virgin and she makes her first encounters in the western world.

With meeting her first pair of “friends“ - Janis, a more alternative girl, and Damian, the token gay best friend - she meets and learns about the social hierarchy that is ingrained into the high school world.

After becoming familiar with Regina George and her clique „The Plastics“, her new “friend“ Janis Ian suggests that she should enter the friend group as a mole to „destroy“ Regina‘s life. This is motivated by solely personal reasons of Janis, as she and Regina had a bad past.

In no time when Cady has her first hangout with The Plastics we subtly see some of the many instances of internalised misogyny in this movie.

Beginning with the small set of imaginary rules the clique set up to remain prestigious and exclusive. These rules all surround beauty or fashion choices. They are high level performers (for the patriarchy) with beliefs that must have been ingrained into them since childhood and we can see that they gain the most respect by following these rules,which unironically displays how women gain the most respect when conforming to gender roles.

When The Plastics and Cady go shopping they catch the boy (named Jason), that Gretchen is currently seeing, at the mall with another girl. Regina immediately goes to help Gretchen - but how Regina handles this situation is interesting. She calls the mother of the girl that Jason is betraying Gretchen with and makes her believe she is pregnant.

In this situation Regina decides to punish the girl when it’s actually Jason doing wrong, isn’t he? It may not be noticeable in the moment but the more you think about it, the more you realise there is literally no reason for her to do that, except that we live in a world where the woman is made responsible for wrong actions that.men fully decided to do on their own.

During the same hangout, they went to Regina’s home and Cady got a first impression of it. When they are in Regina’s room the three plastics simultaneously look into the mirror and complain about small and redundant things about their appearance without even reassuring each other that they are completely fine and that there initially is nothing wrong about them or the way they look. They even look at Cady, expecting her to do the same. It symbolises the unnecessary standards society brings upon women regarding their appearance (and how that translates into a billion dollar industry).

I would like to analyse some other instances of this in the movie and another one is definitely Cady's crush on Aaron Samuels who is Regina’s ex boyfriend. When Regina finds out about Cady’s crush, she ensures that she is not mad at her and would even like to help her to get with him. Then at the Halloween party that was mentioned before in the movie, Regina encounters Aaron and when she learns that Cady maybe does have a chance with him (I mean at the end of the day she only invited Cady into the clique because she is threatened by her. She is in internal competition with Cady!!), she lies to him saying embarrassing things about her to get him to like her less. She then gaslights him and kisses him, leading to them getting back together. In this moment Cady cracks - she now wants to see Regina fall. Regina didn’t only betray her trust but also now competes with her over Aaron Samuels, a boy.

From this scene on Cady works with Janis and Damian to sabotage Regina and take away all the power she has - they make a list of three things Regina has to lose in order to lose her power as well and two of these are her boyfriend and her “hot” (slim) body. This indicates how a woman's value is perceived through her appearance and the validation she gets from other men - in Regina’s case Aaron, her boyfriend.

When Cady finds success in sabotaging Regina throughout the course of the movie, she also gets Gretchen - who is basically Regina’s right hand - to spill secrets about her that Cady could maybe use against her. In one scene Gretchen reveals how Regina forbids her to wear hoop earrings because it is “Regina’s thing”. Despite being a small and seemingly unimportant scene, it shows something interesting. Regina sees her own friends as competition. The only reason for her to keep them close is to control them and ensure they aren’t deemed as better than her. This is ultimately also the reason why Regina invited Cady into the clique. She represents how women are often conditioned to be in competition with one another instead of being in solidarity with each other (which is also something that slows down the feminist movement, definitely something purposely done to uphold the patriarchy).

After doing all the sabotage Cady becomes the head of The Plastics. This illustrates the pinnacle of Cady's transformation into a mean girl. She doesn’t even notice how she has changed. From dumbing herself down so she gets to talk to a boy to lying to her parents and friends and constantly gossiping about other people, she has become a true Plastic. She herself stated that all she can do is talk about Regina all the time. She becomes obsessed with Regina and slowly mimics her to the core. Her hatred towards Regina is clearly rooted in jealousy, Regina’s initial betrayal that broke Cady’s trust but also internalized misogyny as she hates Regina for taking Aaron Samuels from her.

When Regina found out that the nutrition bars Cady gave her are actually to make her gain and not lose weight, she crashes out. She is sick and tired of not being the one in control anymore. Here, the Burn Book becomes important. We see Regina‘s iconic scene where she puts herself in the Burn Book and then brings it to the principal’s office to get her lick back at Cady. The situation escalates as Regina copies the pages of the book and spreads them all around the school, basically starting a massive fight as the meanest things are said about all the girls in the school and nobody knows who it was.

And in that moment I thought to myself… notice how it’s just girls being insulted and dehumanised in the book? How only girls are catching strays? How they are sneakily mean to each other with no sense of solidarity? That to me IS a prime example of internalised misogyny. Subtly yet also integrated in a genius way into the movie.

As the principal realises the severity of the situation, he collects all the girls and makes them reflect and hold accountability with the help of Ms. Norbury, a math teacher at the school, who is in the Burn Book as well because of Cady after just showing love and concern to her.

In that scene Ms. Norbury points out something very important: „You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores.“ confirming my impression of the showcase of internalised misogyny in this movie. Because why do these girls have the urge to insult and shame each other to such lengths if it weren’t for the ideologies they have all been taught since day one? That’s why they did those exercises after the Burn Book disaster to reflect and look into themselves, so they can take the first steps to unlearn those deep complexes, hatred and misogyny.

The spring fling is now approaching but Cady has no intentions of attending it anymore after all that happened. She has taken accountability even to the point of taking the full blame for the book (even though she doesn’t carry all of it) and never wants to talk behind peoples back again. She joins a math competition with the Mathletes at her school to get some extra credit. As the two teams are tied, she is being put on a 1v1, that determines the win or lose, with a female opponent. Here her first instinct is to judge the opponents appearance and she realizes that judging her and especially her looks won’t make her win the competition or even make her feel better about anything. She realizes that it doesn’t even matter what she looks like.

Here we see a very important character development. A development that also indicates how she is slowly unlearning the extreme internalised misogyny she has carried within herself for almost this whole movie.

As she then decides to attend the spring fling anyway, she wins the crown for „spring fling queen“ and holds an important speech, highlighting how what she did was wrong, how there is no reason for the girls to judge each other and be in competition to one another and how every girl is actually remarkable and beautiful in her own way - she then breaks the crown she won and throws the pieces to the girls she has wronged and into the crowd symbolising how every girl is and should be a „spring fling queen“ in their hearts but also recognising how little worth this award holds by saying „it’s just plastic“.

At the very end we witness how The Plastics don’t exist anymore as they did before and everyone went their separate paths. They have all (except Gretchen who is a very interesting character with deep insecurities yet little development) have gone their own paths and formed their own personalities without relying on each other, their stupid rules or peoples opinions. This is their first yet probably most important step to subconsciously and very slowly unlearn the deep internalised misogyny they have had throughout the whole movie.

If you read until this point - thank you and I love you. This movie has so many brilliant and subtle instances of the (internalised) misogyny that I noticed and if I named them all, this review would never end.

Mean Girls is a brilliant yet subtle (or maybe not so?) critique on our society and the patriarchy and shows how all art is political.

It perfectly combines witty humour, basic cliches, iconic lines, drama with comedy and the criticism of our society to make this the perfect movie for me.

When I first watched this movie 4 years ago when I was 15, I didn’t get the misogyny or criticism aspect - the reason I loved it so much was because it ironically gave me the confidence to dress how I want and not care how other people think. This movie came to me in a transformational phase in my life which is why it also holds sentimental value to me. I was even against the character development back then and wanted for the main characters to stay plastics forever.

Yet no matter what age or what stage of life I am in right now, Mean Girls is still my favorite movie of all time. And that is because of the nuance of its brilliance, may it be the amazing outfits (and the symbolism of them), the extremely well written characters, the iconic script and scenes which are still referenced till THIS DAY or just the witty yet dramatic but also funny and easygoing nature of this movie.

I wish this review was better and I wish I was smart and eloquent enough to perfectly explain what I mean - yet I hope that you, most importantly, understood this review and why I said what I said. It may seem like a stretch but art is there to be analysed. My points may seem nitpicky at first but if you really think about it really starts with even the smallest things until it gets to the bigger picture. If I had named all examples this review would just be way too long (it is way too long already). Yet I hope you got the gist and understand that I am not throwing the words “misogyny” and “patriarchy” around as buzz words but that I actually evaluated my message and somehow know what I am talking about due to my radical leaning feminist beliefs.

And honestly if you really love something why not analyse it to the core?

Something that makes it even more meaningful is that this movie is based on a non-fiction book advising parents about how to handle girl-on-girl bullying.

The Plastics' rules about outfits are quoted verbatim from one of the girls who was interviewed for the book - it sounds like satire but this friend group really did have those rules.

The Cool Mom archetype that you see with Regina's mother is also closely referencing the book; the author says a lot of mothers try to be the Cool Mom but it causes problems, which the movie demonstrates.

And the intervention is based on what the author herself did for a living - she visited schools and tried to raise awareness to prevent bullying prevention, and ended up writing a book about it. The movie really glosses over what an ongoing task it is; you don't get rid of all bullying with one assembly, especially since no one addressed how teenage boys treat teenage girls!

(Also the homophobia is unfortunately accurate for that time.)

okay so I'm having a debate with my flatmates

are these all different things and if so what do you call them

Funny how “biphobia” is just lesbians not dating bisexuals out of a personal preference but lesphobia is like. Family kicking you out of a house. Men attacking lesbians in public because he wanted them to kiss for them (this is a real incident that happened in my home city london btw). Lesbians getting sent to psych wards and conversion therapy. Lesbians getting bullied. The list goes on.

Let’s be real, your “biphobia” is NOTHING compared to what lesbians have to deal with.

bisexual women are more likely to be attacked by a man than lesbians for our sexuality. i’ve also personally been hatecrimed over it. most of my family refuses to speak to me, and i’ve had therapists try to get me to not like women anymore. sorry but idgaf about you being bullied if you’re going to use it to say that nothing bad happens to bisexuals ever.

how come everyone onlines “safe foods” are always nasty junk food and never like. an apple. a smoothie. salad. risotto. herb crusted chicken. brussels sprouts with a balsamic glaze.

Not to sound crazy, but I swear the lack of male given cunnilingus in films drives me nuts. Like BJs are so common in films. I’m so sick of seeing male pleasure in films.

I think most of the white women who watch The Handmaid’s Tale think they identify with the struggle of the Handmaids when really they’re way more like the wives and the aunts.

omg way to miss the point of the show.

the show tells us that men have class solidarity that transcends their racism and classism. that at the end of they day, they will do absolutely anything to ensure control of women.

all of the women were forced to do labour, the wives: emotional labour and mothering both the husband and child regardless of whether they wanted to be mothers or wives as well as sexual labour, women in the colonies: manual labour, the handmaids: reproductive labour, the women at jezebels: sexual slavery, the marthas: domestic labour, the aunts: they too are slaves who are forced to train women and children to take up different roles.

the whole point is that no woman has it good under patriarchy. when serena (wife) tried to talk to the council, they cut her finger off as a punishment for daring to suggest a minor change. when lydia (aunt) failed to brainwash june into submission, lydia was tortured for 18 days.

the men however kept telling women they should be lucky to have what they have. fred repeatedly told serena she should be thankful she has so much freedom unlike handmaids, meanwhile lawrence took june to a deportation centre and told her she should be lucky she gets to be a handmaid instead of being sent to the colonies. men kept pitting women against each other, to keep them from focusing on the male supremacy.

the show also emphasise how dispensable the women are and that if they ever step out of line they’ll be pushed into the worse category, like the wife who helped june was forced to be handmaid as punishment, while the handmaid who attacked the commander was sent to the colonies.

if you cannot even tell that all women suffer and all men enjoy male supremacy, we’re never making it out.

as much as i hate libfems and conservative women, i know we’re all in the same sinking ship.

it’s important to point out that it’s easier for privileged women to be anti-feminist, and easier for women who like their gender role to be anti-feminist, but it’s absurd that you think privileged women do not fear being forced into reproductive slavery.

men have really succeeded in making sure we have 0 class consciousness.

men have really succeeded in making sure we have 0 class consciousness.

Goofy asses acting like poor white women aren’t forced to surrogate for money, or white women aren’t pressured to give up their babies to adoption, or that white supremacists don’t want forced abortion for poc but forced birth for white women 🙄

Also, remember that one wife, the white teenager who was being raped by her old ass husband’s friends so she could get pregnant. They did that because she’s a woman.

Ackshually OP I went “wow we really don’t talk enough about the Middle Eastern women whom this book is clearly based on” and now Afghan girls are banned from going to school and Afghan women and girls are not allowed to speak or be seen through the windows of their homes and when British feminists organised an event to raise awareness, the suuuuper progressive Western left, which just last year lauded a white American man for setting himself of fire for Palestine, told them they were “fetishising the girls’ oppression”.

Anyway, I am once again asking my fellow left wing women not to wholesalely trust what left wingers have to say about feminism because the left hates women too.

ok heres my hot take: women can make whatever fictional content they want i trust them to still be normal irl. men are mentally fragile, easily influenced and should not be allowed to read

women will write someone being graphically mutilated and killed and then go to their job in a grocery store and make friendly small talk with the customers. men will see one movie with a morally grey protagonist and start torturing small animals about it

For example Frederick Douglas’ wife did so much for his ungrateful ass. She helped him get on his feet, gave him her last name, and supported him financially and took care of house and home. And in return was does this nigga do? He lets white abolitionists tear her down and treat her like a slave in HER HOUSE. Moved two bitches into HER HOUSE over a span of 20 years. Belittles her for being illiterate while using HER MONEY. Not even in death does she get the respect she deserves. His last wife is more recognized as being apart of his life than she was. Just trash. And y'all still normalize that shit as if it’s a black woman’s job to struggle. Fuck that.

Fuck Frederick Douglas.

That negro was a massive hypocrite. How the fuck you wanna abolish slavery and support women’s rights, then treat your own wife like shit?????????????????

^^^^ history left her out of his story too. Claiming his parents have him money to start up when it was her.

Don’t forget MLK and Malcolm X

My heart broke a little but I’m not surprised. What did Malcolm do ?

I don’t know about Malcolm X, but I know that Martin Luther King was in love with a white caferteria lady name Betty that he was seeing while he was attending college. The only reason why he married Coretta and not the cafeteria worker is because his dad frowned upon it. Not only that but his best friend Ralph Abernathy and Jackie Onassis exposed him for being a sex craved phony that loved cheating on Coretta. I guarantee that if black women from the civil rights era could talk now, our heads would explode. 

I mean if we’re gonna spill tea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UG7YCgkXTo

Our community has always treated us like shit no matter what. Not to mention Miss Claudette Colvin who was the actually pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. She was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus 9 months before Rosa but she was a dark skinned single mother so she wasn’t good enough. 

Let’s not forget Black Panther’s leader Eldridge Cleaver and his famous book “Soul On Ice” where he recounts how he practiced raping black women because he knew no one would care and when he “mastered his craft” he starting raping white women. Also let’s never forget that he said that there is no more love left between black women and men and that everytime he embraces a black woman, he embraces slavery. Y’all gon’ get this history lesson today!

Wow… and somehow I’m not even surprised.

I knew all of that. Martin was constantly cheating with white prostitutes even a German exchange student while protesting civil right. Cleaver was the worst. Preying on and raping young black girls in the hood as practice for raping white women. Claudette is still referenced as “the other rosa parks” when the light bright brigade “NAACP” weren’t gonna let her share her story to begin with.

Let this post never die. Black women were NEVER respected back in the day, and we’re STILL getting disrespected every minute.

Wow….

[reasons why I think most Black dudes r performative when it comes to being *proBlack* n only know how to mirror yt ally theater/chase yt validation. n nonBlack ppl better back the fuck off this post and start combatting the antiBlackness before they even think of comment.]

Just a reminder that Claudette Colvin didn’t get pregnant until 3 months after refusing her seat on the bus. She was a poor dark skinned girl. In her words “they wanted someone PEOPLE would sympathize with and I didn’t look like that.” Colorism AND Classism waaaay before Instagram 🙂

Bruh I learned all of this and more in my civil rights history class last semester. My professor actually got her doctorate in black women in the black power movement. Even though two black men from California started the radical group as we know it, black women did most of the work and kept the group afloat. By the 80s it was largely female led. Also, elderidge cleaver wrote an essay after getting out of prison where he recanted everything he said in soul on ice and this was largely due to the fact that women were running the bpp and told him he couldn’t join if he was to co tibie to perpetuate this rape nonsense.

Also also claudette Colvin wasn’t the only one who was forgotten during the Montgomery bus boycott. Do y'all know who Jo Ann Robinson is? Home girl was the backbone to the whole movement tbh. Yeah rosa (a trained activist btw) was the igniting flame and yes in her documents and Jo Ann’s Claudette was credited as the inspiration, but jo Ann really kept the movement running. She organized car pools for all the black folks in Montgomery. Y'all the Montgomery bus boycott lasted for a year! People still had to get to work and shit. Jo Ann was on it! Plus she had a whole committee that was pushing for regulation changes and the end of segregation in busing. And hell, Montgomery buses were damn near reliant on black commuters so they eventually had to give.

Plus my all time fave is the homie Ella baker. Home girl ensured the founding of sncc when fuckboy Mlk tried to make them the youth chapter of the sclc. SNCC is the group that made sit ins a popular form of protest during the early civil rights movement. They founding students had their first sit in in 1960. Ella baker was like these students need their own separate movement and the sclc ain’t it. Plus she was a true proponent of self determination which was clear in everything that sncc did.

Basically what I’m trying to say is black women been the backbone of society and they still are.

Let’s also talk about how Huey P Newton, the founder of the BPP ordered the severe beating of Regina Davis. Regina Davis was an administrator at a BP school and was literally jumped for reprimanding a male BP member. She was beaten so bad that she was in the hospital for a broken jaw and had to flee to LA for her own safety. Her attack was a deliberate message to all female BP because the men were getting  upset with the increasing power black women had in the party and wanted to put them in their place.

In 1974 Huey P Newton also shot and killed a 17 year old sex worker in Oakland named Kathleen Smith in the face for calling him “baby” and because she didn’t give him the “respect” he wanted (x) 

and who could forget good ol’ Harry Belafonte and how he treated Ertha Kitt way back when 

Ellen Holly was a super light skin soap opera actress who claimed to have a similar experience with Harry Belafonte before he married a white woman and called him out in her autobiography about his behavior towards black women

THIS IS WHY WHEN PATRICIA ARQUETTE SAID WOMEN HAVE HAD TO TAKE A BACKSEAT TO OTHER GROUP´S PROGRESS SHE WAS RIGHT! 

BUT Y’ALL WERE SO UPSET WITH HER

That white woman ain’t got nothing to do with this. We’re talking about black women’s treatment here.

How dare you bring Patricia Arquettes white feminist ass on a post about the treatment of Black Women

That was a much needed thread. Reminds me of the first time I discovered Tumblr and learned so much about feminism and women’s history. To add my 2 cents to this, I put the pictures of most of the ladies mentioned above (I couldn’t find a picture of Regina Davis, if you have one that’d be great), so that anyone discovering these wonderful women can put a face to their name. 

unfortunately there are no known or publicly available pictures of Regina Davis or Kathleen Smith

Keep this thread going and share the stories of how Black women have been degraded by black mens sexism 

Just to add some more, let’s not forget the importance of Shirley Chisholm. She was an unapologetic black feminist who fought for the rights of women and the poor in her community.  She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus. 

She was the first black women ever elected to the US congress and was the first woman and black american to ever run for the president of the US. Her campaign to be the democratic nominee was treated like a joke, and although she had the support of her loyal husband she received NO SUPPORT  from black male leaders. Her campaign went underfunded and the men of the black caucus rallied around white male candidates instead because they were pissed off that she was getting attention and wanted a black male candidate instead.

“They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn’t mean the black woman must step back.“(x)

what type of sorcery is this thread….not claiming none of this is a perspective worth understanding but Black women…when you openly shame your men like this, it will be used to not only justify harming our men and boys as we constantly see, but YOU are also a target because you’re claiming to your enemy that you don’t make efficient men in your womb which means YOU’RE ALSO WORTHLESS!!! 

LMFAOOOOOO!!!!

God the hotepery in that second to last comment!! 🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️ I knew about half of these. I’ve never heard anything about Malcolm (post NoI) but I did know about King and Belafonte. And then I learned something new! Whew. And my parents get mad when I say “the movement has to be intersectional” in response to “women are the reason black people can’t move forward”…..as if we don’t make up half the movement -_-

they love the “black women stop us from moving forward” nonsense.  they believe were the reason for not being able to move forward because they’re definition of progress is being white men with all the benefits and privilege.

black women have always done the work to sustain movements while black men end up being the face of the movement, reaping benefits and scrape up whatever amount of power they can just to abuse it. then when you bring up the bullshit that they’ve been able to do because they’re men, they’ll try manipulating you by telling you your being divisive and that its not about gender but about black people… as if we don’t live in a patriarchal society that would rather suffer than listen to the voices of women… its the same shit they did a few months ago during the BLM protests, silencing black women when we brought up the fact that were not only being killed by police but by them too, reassuring us that fighting for the black men that died is a fight for all of us then called us divisive for making it about gender…

if black women would take even an ounce of the blood, sweat and tears they put into protecting black men and put it into themselves for once, just imagine the shift… we have the voice, the reach, the intelligence to fight for ourselves and the people who fight and stand for us… so why don’t we normalise that??

all this post shows me is a history of manipulation and pain against black women while normalising the expectation that black women are only useful when birthing children and putting in work to protect everyone before themselves because “black men have it rough”. i’m tired of us being expected to protect and standby the same black men who would, if given the chance, completely disregarded me as a human being just for the opportunity to lick a white mans balls… its disgraceful…

this reminds of that posts going around telling non-blacks to center black men in BLM converations. Black men have always been the center of those conversations, I don’t know why that post even had to be made.