So the other day we looked at some, well let’s charitably call them myths, about the human vagina. Today we’re going to look a matched pair of other cis female body parts that are the source of a lot of curiosity and confusion. I am referring, of course, to the boobies.
Here are six completely incorrect notions about boobs that are going around, courtesy of the BadWomensAnatomy, NotHowGirlsWork and MenWritingWomen subreddits.
Women deliberately get pregnant to make their boobs bigger for birthday photos.
Boobs can function as a mobile Starbucks in a pinch.
If a young girl has saggy breasts, it’s probably because she’s having sex with lots of guys.
Sorry, I meant to say that if a woman has big boobs it’s because she had too much sex in her teen years.
You can purse your nipples like you purse your lips. Indeed, you can do all sorts of things with your breasts because they’re secretly prehensile.
Your boobs can get sucked into someone’s butthole if you get too carried away during sex.
Time for a nap. My brain hurts.
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@Jenora Feuer
Ooh, that makes me think of a story I’ve been working on in which a godess bestows her magic only on women, and this magic is seen as the strongest gender indicator that exists in this world. Doesn’t matter what your body looks like, if you can do these magical things, you’re a woman. I’m not quite sure if I want to make it so that this godess just knows whether someone is a trans woman, or if it’s more of a very strong cultural perception, but I thought it would be an interesting way to play with cultural ideas of what “makes” someone a man or a woman.
Hmmmmm… substitute magic for science/education. I.E. In most societies in our history women get the short end of the stick as far as STEM or education goes, in many cultures not even being taught much beyond basic reading and writing. So, it would be easy to have a world where magic is treated in a similar fashion and women are thought to be weaker, more inclined to heal and use water spells, their accomplishments are appropriated by men, so on and so forth. Any woman who gets a real education/is naturally gifted and proves to be as powerful and skilled as any man is thought of as an anomaly.
This reminds me of a book I read a long time ago. I don’t remember the title or much about it, except that it was Indian or possibly Middle Eastern flavored, and the focus was on a young woman who could use magic. For a reason never explained, something changed and only women could use magic. The male magic users didn’t take this well, and pretended they still had magic, belittled and attempted to control/oppress female magic users, etc, etc, a not unpredictable series of events.
At the time I was sheltered and didn’t really understand the themes. I imagine now I might have a better chance of relating it to the current situation in India or just society in general.
@YlVi
I getcha, no worries.
That story idea of yours sounds interesting. I think I’d like it if the goddess could identify trans women. Could be a source of drama if some guy being trained from birth for Super Important Manly Job suddenly develops magic powers.
@Lumipuna
Damn that Librul Hippie Water Conspiracy!
@Cyborgette
All great ideas, and yeah, at least it would give an excuse for the sexist system. But the sexist authors can’t see what’s wrong with what they’re doing, so it’s just magical Gender Essentialism.
@Dalillama
Oh, I just remember the Monty Python jokes.
I knew Artemis and some other goddesses required virginity, but I never heard anything about it being tied to magic.
@.45
Interesting comparison.
R.e. the WoT discussion: I read a lot o fantasy, but like the SOFAI books, I never read them. I think I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of novels even in about 1998 when I started reading from the adult section of the library. A friend at university (2001 -2004) tried to get me into them but I was too busy barely coping with my degree to devote time to them. I read Discworld books instead and occasionally re-read LOTR. I also avoided HP. I tried reading the books because my uni friends were so into them, but I gave up half way through the third one. They have no literary merit and frankly the racism (only thing I really noticed at the time) appalled me. Tamora Pierce and Sir Terry Pratchett had/have their questionable points (fatphobia, power imbalances in relations) but I definitely dodged a bullet avoiding WoT, ASOFAI and HP. And I’m not watching the TV series or films of any of them either. I tried with GoT, but wasn’t fussed.
I finished a book yesterday, Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao, which is science-fantasy. The magic is based on Xi and girls are deliberately weakened but nobody knows until the main character Wu Zetian and her partner Li Shimin torture the information out of someone. They then go home to their partner, who is making buns for the three of them. Zetian is such a bad-ass. The book is decidedly ‘this shit is misogyny, why do we do that?’ and I highly recommend it.
Define “literary merit”. Apparently, at least in your usage, it’s distinct from both “popularity” and “a big legacy publishing house deemed it worthy of at least one print run” …
I can get the whole ‘must be a virgin to operate magic’ thing if it was presented as a condition of getting said magic to begin with, aka Equivalent Exchange. ‘In order to get access to this magic you must give up the idea of ever having intimate physical relationships with anyone’ could work as a workaround for having only virginal magic users running around.
And now all this discussion of female magic is reminding me of a young adult book I found years ago called Nameless Magery. The main teenaged character, whose name translates into English as ‘Nameless’ (all female successors to the throne get renamed that when they’re chosen) finds herself on a world where there are seemingly no female magic users, only male ones. Why this is is one of the plots of the book. And while I can see the reasoning behind what happened to the female magic users on this world (basically they’re all in hiding), there’s a fair bit of WTF in this book’s setup that aren’t addressed at all as to how horrible they are.
IIRC (it’s been a few years since I read this thing) the culture the main character comes from is ruled by a male Year King and a female whose job title I don’t immediately recall, but she rules for 10 years. The male ruler rules for one year (hence the name) and makes all the decisions that need to be made in the heat of the moment, something along those lines anyway. At the end of his year the YK is ritually killed and eaten while his memory is honored by the rest.
The female ruler makes all the decisions requiring thought and deliberation, that don’t have to be made in the heat of the moment. She has one kid by each of the YKs that rule beside her in that decade, and it is from those ten kids her successor is chosen. At the end of her reign she is stripped of her rank, kicked out onto the road and treated as a pariah by her former subjects. And when she dies her body is left alone, and the place she dies in is avoided by all as a cursed place.
As I recall it, none of that setup is ever questioned by the protagonist, who is next in line for the ‘honor’ of female ruler. Nor do I recall any explanation of why this ‘matriarchal’ culture is set up like this. No gods that I recall saying ‘rule yourselves like this’, no mention of a long-ago conquer setting up that system as a way to keep protag’s people in line, nothing.
Oh, and did I mention that the True Love Soulmate of the teenager protagonist is not only old enough to be her father, but an asshole who, amongst other seriously jerky things, set her up with his teenaged son just long enough to show the noble daughter-in-law he REALLY wanted that yes, his son is straight and thus able to have a proper relationship with her? >.<
*facepalm*
@Redsilkphoenix
That sounds like all kinds of nasty. I’ve read a few bad books in my time, but it sounds like I’ve been dodging bullets like Neo considering some of the garbage out there.
@Redsilkphoenix:
I can see that part, at least, making sense if it’s presented as (a) a ritual scapegoating, just another part of the ten-year-queen’s religious duties and parallel to the year-king’s (admittedly much quicker) sacrifice; and/or (b) something that frees her up to make unpopular but necessary decisions, since she’s going to be cast down at the end of her ten-year term of office no matter what.
Hadn’t considered the idea of the Queen’s eventual fate being a ritual sacrifice before. When I dig that book out of the pile of sacks/boxes I tossed stuff in when I moved last year, I’ll give it a reread. I don’t recall the ruler deaths being presented as a ritual so much as ‘this is how we run our government’, similar to how I might present the workings of my local government to an outsider.
The book still had a fairly high WTF rating, though.
If you know a child of any gender who wants to read about kids learning magic, kindly give them Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series which begins with “So You Want To Be A Wizard”. An ordinary girl and boy from Long Island (not rich, popular, gorgeous, super-smart, nor all-white) discover magic.
It literally eventually spans the universe, and all the people and alien people are regarded as valid, whether they know magic or not. The parents and other grown-ups are involved, and everyone has real-life joys and sorrows. The kids text each other on their phones after school.
No weird-ass boarding school rituals, no looking down on “muggles” or non-humans, the kids still have to go to middle school, people worry about bills, and there are moments of transcendence and beauty that Rowling couldn’t even dream of, plus genuinely funny humor and lovely writing.
The kids will thank you. You should read them, too.