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America’s Next Top Best Friend

@illegalaustralien / illegalaustralien.tumblr.com

Andrei / 102 / Australia
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Insta: @pickyyy95
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enki2

We still see this language in the modern world where it's full-scale bullshit. In a period or pseudo-period context it's doing some of that but typically reflects the (deliberately disenfranchising) legal norm that he owns the farm or the inn or whatever it is, and she doesn't and can't because property rights are gendered; maybe as a widow she could own it or maybe she couldn't, but she's a wife, and that's her actual legal status.

if you avoid that language without altering that underlying structure of the scenario, you aren't necessarily doing anything but sanitizing and erasing it. applied carelessly, labeling this kind of language as 'bad' and solving it by 'getting rid of it' is worse than useless; you just get worse art and vaguer history.

so ideally we check in with ourselves like, in this specific sentence, is it useful or desirable to perpetuate and/or invoke that paradigm by using this language, or not?

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kawuli

my grandma listed her vocation as "pastor's wife" because that was/is a goddamn full time job. and also distinct from the job of pastor. shit's complicated.

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gamebird

All three of these takes are subtly different and true.

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