Bye

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Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after

I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.

Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.

One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation. 

The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.

And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.

In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives. 

How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.  

There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.

Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.

What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.

The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society. 

As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:

The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.

So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.  

In the immortal words of the bard himself: fucking annihilated.

instead of reporting the murder, i would like to help you bury thE BODY CAUSE DAAMN

Big ADHD mood

Big anxiety/depression mood as well

I saw this on instagram today and I thought it was funny so I want y'all to see it too

Die mad about it.

This is truly what yu call going to 0-100 “real quick” typeshit😂😂

She’s amazing

Mood

I asked @leannrimes to give me her definition of man and she couldn’t make a video because she’s filming a movie right now. But she was kind enough to put it into words. My favorite part is “someone who is willing to do the work to become the man he is capable of being in his lifetime”. . Email me your video definition of a man. theangrytherapist@gmail.com

a concert is like a constant battle between “I WANNA SCREAM THESE DAMN LYRICS AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS RN!!” and “I wanna get a good video of this without my disgusting ass pterodactyl screeches in the bg”

#same

cake with fondant literally isn’t even food it’s like a play dough sculpture with cake trapped inside its vile

thank you for your bravery in speaking the truth about this

No shade but is everyone okay?

:(

Reminder that protesting is worth getting suspended for

#yeah a walkout is disruptive but you know what’s more disruptive? FUCKING SHOOTINGS

I’m reblogging this again because I wanted to add a note: PROTEST ANYWAYS.

If your schools threaten to suspend you, protest anyways. En masse. Because you know what gets tracked by district, state and federal administration? Suspensions.

Schools and schools systems *must report* their suspension levels etc. Every year all this data from the state gets compiled into a huge report and presented to the State Board of Education and the state legislators. By. School.

You know what happens to schools districts with unusually high rates? Big Trouble.

So if your principal/superintendent threatens to suspend any student participating in a walkout? Still do it. Because here’s what will happen: You’ll walk out, get suspended, the school will be empty basically for *days* effectively starting a strike, the principal will have to report it to the district, the district will have to report it to the state and there’s a solid chance your school’s administrative team could be replaced.

YOU HOLD ALL THE CARDS HERE. Don’t let them think otherwise. There is literally nothing they can threaten you with that won’t come back to bite them square in the ass.

holy shit what an upgrade

Someone tell me, who is this woman?

roxane gay wrote world of wakanda one of the greatest modern comic books (shes a writer outside that, of course, but thats what i know her for)

Roxane Gay is an AMAZING feminist writer, most know her for Bad Feminist, an anthology of essays about her experience as a black bisexual woman interacting with feminism. She really is a fucking badass and I suggest y’all read her works at some point!

no human being on this planet needs a fucking assault rifle for any reason

when i posted this (in october, by the way, a couple days after the vegas shooting) it capped at 9k and fizzled out, gaining one or two notes every few days. then the stoneman douglas shooting happened on valentines day, and 2 weeks later it’s exploded to 30k.

the guns used in the vegas shooting were semi-automatic rifles modified–legally, in ways that are lawful–to fire like automatic rifles using something called a bump fire stock. the mod itself is illegal in a handful of states with unclear legal status in a few more, but it is legal in most states(including nevada) to use them to mod those semi-automatic rifles into automatic rifles.

AR-15′s, as i’ve been told eight million times by people who think they’re the first ever person to say this, are not considered assault rifles by legal definition. AR-15′s do not have selective fire–the ability to switch between automatic and semi-automatic fire– and for that reason do not classify by definition as “assault rifles” but by modding one with a bump stock, they can be fired like automatic weapons. 

here’s the whole point of this reblog of my post:

i don’t give a shit that vanilla AR-15s aren’t ~technically~ assault rifles. I don’t give a shit that you passed your semantics class in ninth grade. i really dont give a shit about how desperately you want to own a practically useless rifle AND the tool that allows you to turn it into the same weapons that the most recent shooters have used. there are more appropriate tools for hunting and self defense.

you don’t need it. no one on the planet needs it. it’s not a difficult concept to absorb.

there’s nothing on this earth that needs doing by you that only an assault weapon can do, unless its murdering several people at once. and if you feel like you need to murder several people at once, call your therapist and get assistance working through your crisis plan.

1-800-273-TALK

body positivity in theory: celebrating all bodies with extra attention and centering on folks who are less celebrated (trans women, fat, darker skinned and/or disabled folks)

body positivity in real life: a very thin white woman with 3 stretch marks crying into a video camera ‘I LOVE MY BODY IDC WHAT ANYONE SAYS! THATS WHY I CREATED A CLOTHING LINE CALLED FAHTBISH! IT GOES UP TO A SIZE 10 FOR ALL MY PLUS SIZE LADIEZZZZZZZZZ’

If I may go farther…

Body Positivity in Theory: dismantling oppressive systems that are attacks on bodies that do not meet societal standards, as well as the people who have these bodies (everything from challenging beauty and diet culture to challenging police brutality, genital surgeries on intersex infants without their consent, etc.)

Body Positivity in Real Life: “Um excuse me but how dare you try to talk about oppression as if I’m not insecure too? You’re attacking me for being thin by telling me I have privilege. Telling me not to oppress and bully you is oppressing me and violating my human rights. Go away you fat b!tch. Anyway, as I was saying, I love all bodies and all bodies are beautiful! End body hate!”

Body positivity could be one of the most important and useful activist movements ever if privileged people only just… stopped doing this and learned to give a fuck about other people for two seconds. 

-Mod Bella

He having a splosh

[captions]

Person filming: There - there’s a bigger one there, mate. Don’t want to ruin your day or nothing.

Cape ca. 1905

From Whitaker Auctions