As bad as most of the misogynistic ideas I write about on this blog tend to be, they at least have a certain perverse logic to them; if you accept their deeply flawed premises, at least long enough to try to parse the arguments, the conclusions make a sort of rough sense.
But when I wander into the online worlds of the so-called “involuntary celibates” I can quickly lose my moorings. Most incels are hugely depressed, and as I know from my own experience dealing with depression of varying degrees of severity over several decades, deep depression not only distorts your thinking; it also can make you weirdly self-obsessed, assuming that everything that happens in the world has something to do with you — both with your own imagined failings and with the alleged injustices the world supposedly imposes on you.
When you combine all this with the standard bad ideas of the misogynistic manosphere, incel “logic” can quickly become very strange indeed.
I say all this as a sort of introduction to this little “true story”I found on the Incels subreddit, a story that starts out with an awkward not-quite-interaction on a largely deserted bus and ends with a plot twist I have to say I never saw coming.
So let’s take a look at the post titled “Feminism’s fault I’m incel,” (archived here) by a fellow calling himself Brazierlord.
I was sitting next to this girl on the bus the other day and as the bus starting emptying out, I stood up to change seats like a good male is supposed to. I would be labeled as a danger to females if they saw me continue to sit next to that innocent female when I could easily move – obviously I was preparing to stalk her and rape her as soon as we got off the bus.
Obviously what he means by that last bit is that the others on the bus might consider him a bit creepy if he continued to sit next to the girl in question when there were now plenty of open seats. But his choice of words here, while meant sarcastically, make him seem even creepier than he intends.
So I stand up and I see her look at me through the corner of my eye. I move to the seat behind and at angle of -45 degrees from the horizontal to her. The entire time she is tracking me. Once I am seated she looks away and lays her head on the window.
Maybe she’s “tracking you” because you’re “tracking her” as you move to a new seat.
We get to our stop and she glances back at me. I am standing at this point and she hurries off the bus and nearly breaks into a run in the opposite direction.
Either she’s in a hurry, is nervous about being out alone, or our narrator really is giving off a creepy vibe.
So far, this seems to be a relatively straightforward story of a guy who may be giving off more of a creepy vibe than he realizes.
Then we get this:
If it weren’t for feminism I wouldn’t have changed seats and she wouldn’t hate me for breaking her heart. She probably would have followed me to my apartment and asked me if she could have sex with me and I wouldn’t be a virgin anymore
WHAT.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You didn’t break her heart. At best, she barely noticed you; at worst, you creeped her out. That’s it. Everything else is going on in your head, and nowhere else. Women do not follow strange men to their apartments to ask them for sex because they happened to sit next to each other on the bus. This is the sort of fantasy you come up with when you can’t imagine actually interacting with a woman as a real human being.
Get off of r/Incels and into therapy. Please. For your sake, and for the sake of every woman you sit next to on the bus.
Oh, almost forgot:
I don’t care if people sitting next to me on the bus move or stay put when it clears out. I don’t like sitting next to strangers (people I know is just fine), but I’ve put up with it so far. I’ve acclimated. I move, but I’ve no need for others to
HOWEVER, choosing not to move means, you are obligated to turn intangible if I need to get off before you. If I hafta squeeze past you, I’ll despise you for the rest of my days. And I’m little, sliding along the seat isn’t an issue for me physically. But the fuckin cheek of people just barely shifting their knees to let me thru after refusing to switch seats is intolerable. Coulda been easier for everyone, but nooo! Hope the bus misses your stop, fucker
Franscesca Torpedo:
I don’t do fandom, but I suspect the bigots were there all along. With the move to the right, they feel emboldened, and they no longer bother to hide what they are. It’s up to decent people to push back and make it clear that that shit isn’t acceptable.
@Brony
Honestly, Zecora is a racist mishmash of tropes about African people, I agree with them.
That is why I created Zebra Empires styled after Benin and the North African monarchies with beautiful works of architecture, science, engineering, mathematics, and writing systems. They don’t use magic, speak normally instead of fucking rapping when they speak, and wear Muslim-inspired dishdashas and burqas.
My personal signature OC (the oc that is meant to represent you) is a Zebra mare who is a space Marine hailing from one of these empires, who speaks with a English accent (patterned after my real-world speech; my parents came from a former British Empire African colony and have pronounced British accents, as do I. It causes me a lot of problems with racist white people, but that’s another story).
She started out as just a little filly who sells hotdogs, but people started drawing her as an adult and I let them run away with her as a concept. She wears a hijab and a skintight spacesuit, like Talizorah NAR Rayya.
I’m probably outing myself here.
Also, I invented her before Tracer the British Time Traveling Sexy Space Marine was created.
@Troubelle
Please don’t worry about it. I was merely a little confused.
@Victoria
I write fanfic but have participated in National Novel Writing Month with original fiction. I have yet to publish my works, though.
I am teaching myself to draw with instructional books.
@Fruitloopsie
Thanks you. A little correction, it was my Aunt, not my grandmother.
Those native steampunk designs look so good, are there any stories that feature them or someone like them?
@Moggie
Too bad the 5 Geek Social Fallacies make keeping fandoms from toxic people a bit difficult. That and the belief that all points are valid points worthy of debate and discussion.
“We should be calm and rational over the discussion that people with mental illnesses should have their brains altered as a government mandate.” smh
Oogly
Oops sorry just now saw that
Francesca
I don’t know if showing a cis woman’s body in a bikini is considered porn. Like I don’t ever hear anyone say that men wearing nothing but swimming trunks is considered porn. I wish our bodies are not seen as sexual espesically our breasts. But it’s still gross to make ponies look like that.
This is what they’re fapping to:
So gross
Oogly
Oops sorry just now saw that.
@ Fruitloopsie
No, you’re right, I could have worded that better, I’m sorry.
In all actuality, what I meant was that I was giving an example of what they find titillating. It’s not actually porn per se.
No, porn would be the pictures of Aryanne spreading her large, hyper-realistically detailed (that the artist took extra time drawing) equine vagina over a human’s penis. I’m obviously not going to put those here.
Really that picture is just cheap cheesecake. Breasts and exposed ciswoman bodies are not pornographic at all so much, except in the eyes of horny male children.
Franseca
No need to apologize sorry I didn’t mean to get the jump on ya. But sadly not just men but women too who have internalized misogyny see cis women’s bodies as sexual too.
Reminds me of this one lady who I had the pleasure of talking to (insert sarcasm here) at Walmart (I’m still working at Walmart and I’m in the apparel department now) who argued that porn causes sexual violence and abuse. I said to her that doesn’t make sense that’s like saying guns and gun shops are to blame for gun violence. We should blame the people who choose to hurt and kill and not anyone or anything else.
Then she claims that I never been molested so I don’t understand, I wanted to tell her I was molested but she stormed off to look for a manager to take down the pictures of women in lingerie off in the lingerie department.
I was so upset I told and hugged my job coach.
These people don’t realize they’re not helping they’re hurting us. They are no better than the people who blame the victims for their attackers and abusers actions.
Back when I was still into FiM, it really bugged me that they kept introducing non-Pony species coded as people of color, because it seemed to me to imply, even unintentionally, that Ponies themselves were white by default.
Nuts to that. In my headcanon, Rarity is a gorgeous black woman, Twilight Sparkle is South Asian, and Rainbow Dash is Latina.
Re: mlp porn.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with it in the abstract.* It suffers from the same problem that regular porn does, sexual objectification and the complications of how it relates to the surrounding culture.
While the example that Franscesca Torpedo posted was not as problematic a casual perusal of many archives of furry art reveal many horrors (e621 for example). Consider that “pedofoalia” became an in-group term.
*Full disclosure I have a collection of my own and have been a furry since about 7. Given the above problems and being helpful in a social context I tend to keep it to myself. Hopefully things improve at some point. There are some fascinating patterns in such material.
Warning: run-on sentences.
I was also caught off guard by the apparent 180 turn at the end of the incel’s fantasy story, but then an XKCD comic came to mind and I’m wondering if he meant it as a fan fiction of that. Of course, while not getting the point of it. Like all that “I’m so creepy” stuff was in his head because of feminists planting “don’t be creepy” messages into our increasingly feminized culture, causing him to miss an opportunity to lose his virginity with a girl who was secretly lusting after him but also indoctrinated with feminist “all men are rapists” messages and thus in denial. Therefore the “it’s Feminism’s fault I haven’t gotten laid.”
@Fruitloopsie
I am so sorry you had to deal with that.
Reminds me of the people who lost their shit because Cortana was naked and had a large butt and breasts in Halo 4.
“THIS IS PORN!” they cried.
I wanted to ask them if they never saw any of Peter Paul Reuben’s paintings, which feature naked full-figured women and are obviously not for you to masturbate to.
Of course, the developers probably made her like that to titillate little kids, so their intentions may not have been pure.
I liked Realistic Cortana, though, from a purely aesthetic standpoint.
@Princess-Knight Hambeast of the Royal Mammotheer Army of King David’s Realm
Consider it done. I intended to get big horses anyway because knights rode large, powerful warhorses.
I know my Medieval European History somewhat! 😀
@Moggie
You may be right. Let me explain.
Fifteen years ago, when I used to roleplay more frequently, I was told that there was no possible way I could be black in real life, because “black people don’t know how to roleplay and don’t use computers.”
This was before the Internet really took hold in the public sphere – before Twitter and Facebook, and to be honest there were not as many black people on the Internet, but there were quite a few online, including myself.
This specter has come back to haunt me now that I am a transwoman who is attracted to both men and women.
I am now informed in 2017 by dumbass cishet white dudes that people like me are collections of stereotypes and Tumblr memes and too ridiculous to exist.
Like, Laverne Cox? Someone made her up. She’s a meme.
We’re just fucking memes to these people, like how that poor woman Chanty Binx is. We aren’t living creatures.
This is what anti-sjw white kids consider funny:
Disabled Jewish Black Transpeople who are Queer. HA HA, right? THAT CAN’T HAPPEN IN REALITY, RIGHT?
Burn the Internet down. It was a mistake.
@Karalora
I plan to cosplay as Princess Celestia when I have time to go to a con.
Those white dudes are gonna be mad that their waifu is a gorgeous black transwoman.
Franseca
Thank you for the sympathy, I’m ok I’m just upset people just don’t want to sit down and listen. It’ll be easier for everyone so we know how to fix problems.
I imagine twilight sparkle being Native American/Canadian/etc
Fluttershy- Black/African American. I’m kinda tired of the whole mean, rude and loud stereotype of black women. I met quite a few very shy and sweet black girls and women so it’s a tribute to them.
Rainbow Dash- Hispanic
Applejack- a native too. But can be mixed with Jewish and Romani
Rarity- Fat, dark skinned hijab wearing Middle East woman (not sure where in the Middle East)
Pinkie Pie- Asian and Jewish
But they can be whatever I or someone else wish them to be. Except Nazis.
@Brony
I let people draw my personal OC in a titillating manner (i.e. in a bikini posing provocatively), so I’m not really troubled by all the MLP porn per se.
I feel like Fruitloopsie was rightfully upset that people turned MLP into Nazi Porn Central, though, and I agree with her that not everything needs to be le sexy sex sex.
@Fruitloopsie
I like these ideas.
I imagine Pegasids as being Jewish because the Jewish lady I mentioned had a Personal Signature OC that was a Pegasus.
I’ve seen one or two pictures of Twilight as a nervous book-loving black woman which I think is awesome and goes against the “SELF CONFIDENT LOUD BLACK WOMAN WHO AINT NEED NO MAN” stereotype we all dislike around here.
I’m not saying black women can’t be strong, but they aren’t universally like that.
Still confused about all my bus seat neuroses. OK, I’m a nondescript middle-aged woman with a kind face, so nobody will be finding me threatening, but if possible I like to be on the left-hand side of the bus so that I can knit without bothering my seatmate or jogging them with my elbow. But if I move from a shared seat to a free one in my preferred area, I worry that I’ve hurt the previous seat-mate’s feelings by implying I think they’re smelly or something.
I should just get over it and go with the more space for everybody option, right?
That sub-reddit is solid gold haha
Everyone talking about the Mane 6’s human-transposed races is making me think of the cast from VVVVVV and how I did a Similar Thing.
See, I like the game. I like the characters.
But since the game is a throwback to the Commodore 64, well…none of them really have any features.
When I was younger, I decided to fix that–but they were all white. And cis.
So more recently, I decided to revisit that.
Viridian: Transmasculine nonbinary (he or they pronouns accepted). (Since they’re only referred to as “Captain” or “Viridian” or “Captain Viridian” in-game, anything goes anyway.) Born mixed-race with middling-shade skin and curly dark brown hair, but an accident when they were a preteen left them looking like hamburger meat, and the only artificial skin they had was the blue-tinted white stuff they used for service androids and gynoids, so…they got that, plus implanted chestnut hair. (Still curly, though.) Also, they never got around to giving them back their nipples, so there’s just marker circles where they would go. …Also, they’re doubly pan.
Violet: A black trans woman (who, like most people in this future [I’m saying because why not], were transitioned before they hit double-digits). As in canon, she likes handing out lollipops. Primarily androphilic.
Verdigris: Cis male. Features comparable to a South Asian human (but this is space, what’s even Earth?). Demisexual, heteroromantic. (He’s still got a crush on Violet.)
Vermilion: Cis male. Mixed-race (and possessed of natural hair). Primarily androphilic. Ever-exuberant and adventurous, as usual.
Victoria: Cis female…I mean, she thinks. (She’s waffling with the precise terms, but she’s not uncomfortable with she/her pronouns.) Features comparable to an East Asian human (but again, spaaaace). Slight gynophilic bias. She’s quiet and easily upset, as usual, but…don’t touch the Shiny Trinkets. She’s doing research, dammit.
Vitellary: Cis male. The only white guy on the crew; naturally dirty-blond, but dyes it to a yellower shade if only for color coordination. Slight androphilic bias. Still wants to take home a checkpoint.
This is OT, but…it just came to mind. Sorry.
Francesca Torpedo – Yay!!! I’ll muck out the stall of the horse I get to ride, groom, and put on tack. After, I’ll take off/put away the tack, hotwalk, and pick out the hooves. I had to do that when I took riding lessons many years ago and I really like doing stuff with horses.
I’ve done ren festivals for a long time and my character, Linden, is the second daughter of an Irish country noble who married a merchant due to my sister’s dowry and wedding impoverishing my parents. So I’m no longer a noble and my only legacy is my mother’s wedding dress because my sister refused to wear it. Oh, and a sword I found buried in the stables and never told anyone about… The point of that being, I’m definitely no princess!
Our local renfestivals have all sorts of people. When there are guilds of fairies and orcs as participants, people of color in Scots guilds are really NBD. Most of the faire folk I know are a bunch of old hippies and are glad of anyone of any lineage in our midst. No Nazis/fascists/racists/sexists*, tho.
*One of the royal guilds does have rules about Ladies not wandering the festival unattended (by a male guild member) but they are hyper vigilant about their authenticity in manners and dress. A lot of the rest of us think they’re a bit too rigid, but it’s their guild, I guess.
@Franscesca Torpedo
That’s why I take complications with the surrounding culture seriously. Now that you mention it I can remember someone mentioning an objection more unique to mlp porn, encounters by children. People need the tools to avoid it and monitor what thier children encounter. I’m no prude by any stretch, but I try to be sensitive to what is going on.
The world your OC inhabits sounds fascinating. I liked Tali stylistically and what you describe sounds awesome. Beyond love of the show itself it’s the complexity of the interactions between the show and the fans that interested me. I loved the experiencing the whole process of it even as I dispised the bigots in the fandom. There was quite a transphobic streak to the place even as it was largely gay friendly. Very complex and worth experiencing (I have a very odd way of interacting with society and tend to focus on how social conflicts functionally occur, it’s an instinct thing).
Totally out of the blue questions but why is celestia a princess? (And other princesses in the show) When you rule an entire nation you’re a queen. And why is pinkie pie’s cutie mark two blue balloons and one yellow balloon? Shouldn’t it be red, blue and yellow? My OCD is acting up.
@Troubelle
Please, don’t be sorry. Your ideas are awesome.
I also love that you included a black transwoman because, you know, we aren’t real, according to Edgy White Internet Bro #9001. You win the Internet points for doing this.
On a mildly related note, some Tumblr people have introduced the “YOUR FAVE IS TRANS” meme and I love it.
In my headcanon, TFA’s Finn and Rey are FtM and MtF, respectively, and they’re in a relationship.
@Hambeast
Tell you what. You can work part-time at my stables if you like! Obviously I’ll hire help, but a place will always be open for you.
I really like your character. She sounds totally awesome.
@Brony
Thanks! I am glad you like her.
I understand entirely.
I’ve written some titillating, risque fics myself that were quite well received, so it’s not like I’m a prude either (I, too, am a veteran furry and into some really kinky things), but I try to be considerate.
@Fruitloopsie
Celestia is a Sun Goddess, in all actuality, but I guess DHX was scared to make religious references.
DHX said girls like princesses, so she’s a princess.
They really handled the show like rubbish. They left the door open for the racists, bigots, and misogynists to run in, and it seems like they only recently realized it.
The Zecora debacle and the god awful Over A Barrel episode are the prime examples of this.
@ Fruitloopsie I heard that Lauren Faust wanted Celestia to be a queen, but the higher-ups didn’t want that. Doug Walker has pointed out once that lot of media seems pretty anti-queen, probably because too much power is too threatening. Princess sounds more dainty with less implication that she is a leader.
@ fruitloopsie
I’m glad someone went first. I’m curious as to how big the ponies are? I mean, if I went to Equestria would things be to scale with me? Would I be able to use the kitchen or get on a train and stuff? They sort of look like they should come up to hip level.
@Alan
They’re big enough for you to have consensual sex with, if all the human-on-feral-pony porn pics and fics are any indication.
Sorry, that was lewd of me. :X
You ask me why I mentioned them being feral? Well, some people draw them as humans:
The person who drew this appears to be one of the people who insists that Pones are Deffo Bo Beffo White People.
Its so frustrating and makes no sense. Whatever I’m gonna to call her a queen.
And I’m curious about age and height as well. They’re all in high school I guess and maybe pony or horse size in our world maybe?