This is heavenly...

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
mzminola
thedreadvampy

male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

radley-writes

:whispers: also Death of the Author means you have to exercise self-criticism and recognise the bias YOU as the audience bring to interpreting a piece of work. Yes, your reading is valid. But to what extent are you extrapolating from your own experiences, privileges & lacks of privilege, past traumas, etc.? How might this affect your interpretation of the text?

More people need to understand that part, too.

capran-mischief

Ooh now do ‘emotional labor’.

thedreadvampy

emotional labour is the demand for people doing certain types of work (usually customer-facing) to subsume any negative or unappealing emotions and perform happiness, friendliness and so on as part of the labour (eg a barista is required not only to make you a coffee but to smile and pretend that the only thing they've ever wanted in the world is for you to come in talk shit to them and buy a drink; a flight attendant is required to suppress their own feelings of panic when things go south and to perform calmness)

that was coined by Arlie Hochschild, who connects it particularly to immigrant and working class women working as eg nurses and nannies, who are expected to suppress their feelings about their own families and lives and instead perform love and contentment in other families.

what people call emotional labour online is a combination of:

  • Mental load: that's the thing where the actual labour of household tasks (eg laundry, washing up, shipping, cleaning) is split but one person (usually a woman) ends up being responsible for planning, managing and overseeing all of it - so she's doing twice as much work as her partner but it doesn't get seen because it's the work of, like, to-do lists and time management and reminding people to do things.
  • Emotion work: this is like emotional labour but the difference is that emotional labour is performing/suppressing emotions as a condition of your job (ie if you look too sad you don't eat) whereas emotion work is performing/suppressing/regulating emotions for your own benefit (ie to smooth relationships - you might act calm because you don't want to send your child into a panic, or hide your own sadness so you can comfort someone else, or work to regulate your emotions and talk frankly and calmly about something upsetting, or hide your true feelings so you don't look weird)
  • Emotional management: this is a subset of emotion work where you might take on responsibility for managing other people's feelings as well as your own. which can be toxic as hell but still isn't emotional labour unless you're getting paid for it.

emotional labour is not "someone asked me to consider their feelings :(" it is "I have to perform a specific emotional state as a condition of my job"

fanks bye

jsands84
bloglikeanegyptian

one thing you won't know until you experience it for yourself when you create art out of love is how it feels when people receive it with love. when you post a doodle and someone keeps it as their lockscreen, or when you write a story and someone tells you they were thinking about it all day, or when you post a poem and someone shares it with a touching caption. doesn't matter if it was objectively good or not. matters that someone spent time with it, that someone really, really liked it, and you made it. this kind of interaction, i think, it can really sustain you for weeks. it can sustain you through a lot of terrible things. its confirmation that you exist, and that (however briefly) your existence was appreciated by someone else through your art.

bludragongal

i am resharing this wonderful post and its words while also adding on the greatest, best, most precious experience like this i've ever had

image
image
grabnok

Heck. I have been perceived in a positive way! My heart can't take it!

I'm really happy my bumbling made you happy, tho!

bludragongal

gently takes ur face in my hands

you are who I think of when I am struggling

pokemeown
mostweakhamlets

I really hope people online aren't getting the wrong impression of unions and that they're flawless Things that will protect them from any and all mistreatment and that strikes are fun little treats union workers get

mostweakhamlets

Unions are People not Things. Union leaders can fuck up. Unions can definitely operate in a way that gets you low wages and poor benefits if you're not being represented well.

A union by itself does not guarantee you anything. Unions take work and money to run. You pay dues, you go to meetings, you vote. You protect each other in a union. You don't join a union and magically have everything taken care of for you.

Strikes are a powerful tool but are scary. They're not a goal to achieve. Unions don't aim to go on strike during negotiations.