I Fucking Hate True Crime So Fucking Much

Guess who's fucking sick again.

It's me. My immune system fucking hates me.

I redid this older comic I made for my storytelling class based on this post. Have some cute wlw love in your day.

It’s hard, if I had more free time I could make it so pretty, this is what I could throw together for the assignment.

I'm sorry I was gone, but look, I made you some content. Dragon Age 2 content specifically.

https://www.twitch.tv/therobichaud

Okay, so here's my problem.

I have issues and criticisms of Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis that I would love to actually discuss with people who would actually know who and what I'm talking about, which excludes everyone in my real world life.

But I also can't really discuss this sort of thing online either because both of these women have hatedoms that will glom onto any reason to harass them and I really don't want them using anything I might say to do so.

Like, look at the contrapoints tag here on tumblr and, aside from the fans just enjoying stuff they like, you'll find that most of the criticism is either full TERF bs or quickly attracts full TERF bs.

And I want nothing to do with that. I don't want to read the nasty vitriol they spew out or in any way contribute to their gross bigotry.

My issues/criticisms really don't have anything to do with either of these women being women. And I don't want to get mixed up with the crowd for whom that is their issue.

I just really don't like feeling like I need to bite my tongue because bigots want to act in bad faith

The absolute panic when one of your favorite tumblrs changes names and you didn't know about it so you think they deleted

Some good feminist YouTubers for y’all!

Annamarie Forcino

Tara Mooknee

Shanspeare

Chad Chad

Noah Samsen

Ro Ramdin

Samantha Lux

Kat Blaque

Jessie Gender

Ethan Is Online

Feel free to add!

I think I'm done with podcasts made by men

I love listening to podcasts while I work. Especially ones related to history, film, and literature.

And damn near every time I try listening to ones that are made by men, I end up hitting a point where I have to stop listening and switch to something else. There's always a point where they say something that is so ignorant, blatantly sexist, etc., that I just can't take it.

Often times it's the host buying into a very male-centered lens of interpreting whatever it is they're discussing. And, you know, that's kind of expected. They're men. They're viewing things as men. I get that and I'm usually willing to just roll my eyes and move on. But then it keeps happening, or gets much worse than what can be excused by simple ignorance. And then I can't just roll my eyes anymore. I just want to start yelling. And that's not a good energy to have while I'm trying to do my job. So I switch over to something else.

A good example of this happened today. I was listening to a podcast called History by Hollywood. I found it because I'm a huge fan of History Buffs on Youtube. Comparing historical fiction to the actual history is fascinating to me. I love learning about the real event and how it's translated into fiction. But...it got bad. Real fucking bad.

Now, I can't place all the blame on the creators of HbH. They had guests who do a podcast that I think is called Green Screen, which discusses films through an environmental lens. And I definitely will not be listening to that podcast after hearing them today.

The episode was about Gorillas in the Mist, which is biopic about Dr. Dian Fossey. If you don't know who Dian Fossey is, look her up. She was one of the group known as the Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels. The group consisted of three women who were expert primatologists: Birute Galdikas, who studied orangutans; Jane Goodall, possibly the most well known of the three, who studied chimpanzees; and Fossey herself, who studied gorillas. I would love to write hundreds of pages about how awesome and unbelievably badass these women are/were. Seriously, learn about these women if you haven't already. They are amazing.

Anyway, the episode was about Dr. Fossey. My first issue is that, despite her PhD, they never once referred to her with her proper title. This is upsettingly common with women who have earned doctorates. Men never want to call them Doctor. It frustrates me to no end. But that's not nearly the worst of it. They went on to discuss how she became pregnant twice during her time in Rwanda. She chose to abort both pregnancies because she did not want pregnancy or motherhood to interfere with her work with the gorillas. One of the GS guys commented on this saying "I suppose her reasons could be considered valid." Um, excuse me? First of all, why do you think that you get to decide whether or not she had valid reasons? You don't. Second, of course her reasons are valid. Whatever a woman's reasons are for having an abortion are valid. She's the only one who gets to make that decision. So fuck right off with that. Sorry for getting a bit heated here, but that really pissed me off. There was no need for a comment like that. Especially since it makes it sound like he doesn't actually think her reasons are valid, but is scared of catching heat so tried to sugarcoat it.

Moving on, TW: rape, they also got into the fact that Dr. Fossey stated that she was repeatedly raped by soldiers in 1966 over the course of two weeks. People freaking love to claim that this is "disputed" or "exaggerated" and some go as far as to claim that it was an outright lie. Why? Because she originally claimed that she was treated well and then escorted to the border. Later on, she admitted that she was actually beaten and raped. I'm not going to delve too far into this because a) this post is already way longer than I intended, and b) I will get SO MAD. For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to say that I believe that she was raped, and that she initially lied because she was not ready for this information to become public. The hosts however...well, they'd like to claim that they didn't come down on either side of this "debate" and simply presented facts. But they totally don't think she was raped. They went on and on about all the reasons that she would have lied about being raped, such as political clout, publicity, propaganda, and other dumb reasons. But just couldn't seem to think of any reason that she would have lied about not being raped. Gotta love how men are always able to come up with fifty million reasons why women would make false accusations. It's absolutely not in any way revealing how they think of women.

They also got into the admittedly shitty things that Dr. Fossey did during her time in Rwanda. She wasn't perfect, and she did do some rather bad things. Her approach to conservation work was very much steeped in a colonialist mindset. I'm not about to deny that. And they did do a good job of explaining some of the more overlooked facts of poaching--most African poachers aren't cartoon villains who want to destroy nature. Many are farmers who are killing animals that threaten their crops and/or livestock. And then they get offered lots of money to do it. It's not a simple issue, and doesn't have a simple solution. I don't have a problem with them addressing this, and I'm glad that they did. However, and this is a pretty big HOWEVER, they also didn't discuss any of the great things she did. She saved a huge number of gorillas. She helped improve the Rwandan economy. She fought against multiple colonialist organizations trying to exploit Rwanda and it's wildlife. She helped to revolutionize the field of primatology. There's so much that we know now that we only know because of her. They also decided that the fact that she's a heavily revered and respected figure in Rwanda was worth a few sentences and that was it.

They referred to her as cold and unfeeling multiple times, largely due to her relationship with Bob Campbell, who was married when they met. Apparently the fact that she didn't stick with him for her whole life means that she's cold and uncaring. Ugh. I just fucking can't with this.

And the cherry on top, they made jokes about her murder. Yep. Dr. Fossey was horribly and brutally murdered with a machete in December of 1985. And they apparently think that's funny. Now, I know that some of the people who were close to Dr. Fossey have also made jokes regarding her death. However, there are several Grand Canyon-sized differences between someone using humor to cope with the death of someone they loved, and some assholes with a podcast making jokes about the brutal murder of a woman they never met. They also said that it doesn't matter who killed her or if they're ever caught. Which...no? It very much matters who snuck into this woman's home in the middle of the night and used a machete to brutally murder her. It very much matters if this person is caught. I can't even imagine trying to say that it doesn't matter if an actual murderer is ever caught.

All of this goes into a huge problem when it comes to studying history, especially the history of science. Women are always scrutinized more heavily, always criticized with more vitriol, and always have their enormous accomplishments either left out entirely or pushed to side. I almost never see male scientists given this treatment. Edison comes close, but he always gets quite a bit of "Yeah, he was awful, but let's not forget all the awesome things he did!" Women however get "Yeah, she did a few cool things for science, but let's not forget that she had an abortion!"

I just can't handle this shit anymore. If you managed to get all the way to the end of this wall of text (yay) please recommend me some good history/literature podcasts created by women. I will love you so much.

Just started watching Loki and I already kind of hate the entire premise of it.

Anything that suggests the idea of a deterministic universe already annoys the crap out of me. And that fucking awful line about how Loki just exists to bring suffering and death to people just so that the Avengers can be good guys made me want to punch my screen.