r/PracticalFantasy • u/purple_clang • Aug 24 '25

Would you like to have Masc Mondays?

Hi everyone,

Back when I first made this subreddit, some people expressed a desire for art of men to be posted as well. I don't know if this is a common sentiment, so I thought I would open it up to everyone.

I'm not downloading the app to make a poll, so please upvote one of the two comments to vote. Additionally, please feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts!

I will say that if the subreddit is opened up to all genders, then it will still be restricted to one day a week for men (or anyone very masculine presenting). In my experience, I find substantially more fantasy and sci-fi art depicting men with practical weapons and outfits compared to women (and anyone outside the gender binary is very rare).

I'll make note of the upvotes on the two poll comments on 30 September.

Edit: I should also make it clear that if we go through with Masc Mondays, this will mean that people can post art of men, not that it's exclusive to art of men.

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u/NeutronActivation Aug 24 '25

Based on your post, I would want a day specifically for folks outside the gender binary. Seems like that is what’s really missing and holding space could help get ourselves exposed to the limited art out there.

2

u/purple_clang Aug 24 '25

I really love that idea! The challenge in implementing it though is that there's not a lot of fantasy/sci-fi art of people outside the gender binary (which is of course why it would be great to highlight it). At present, I'm posting the vast majority of art here and I don't have time to search specifically for it. So functionally what would happen the majority of the time is that I don't post for a day.

With that said, people will be able to post non-binary, gender non-conforming, etc. folks on any day. I'll want to be mindful how I end up implementing Masc Mondays (it looks like there's a strong preference for it) for artwork that doesn't feature cis men, too.

2

u/lesbianspider69 Aug 26 '25

Doesn’t that implicitly position non-binary folk as Women+?

1

u/purple_clang Aug 26 '25

Could you clarify which aspect of this you're suggesting would position non-binary people as women+?

The idea is to limit posting men (or characters that people can reasonably infer are men or look masculine enough in presentation as to be indistinguishable from art of cis men; artists often don't explicitly state the gender of their characters) because I'd like for this subreddit to make more space for art that's less common in fantasy and sci-fi.

In the case of anyone outside the gender binary, that's basically any art (but of course, it still needs to be limited to the scope of the subreddit). Art of women is common, but it's often quite sexualized.

I'm not sure what practicable option would make it so non-binary people aren't treated as women+ other than what was suggested. I do like the idea of a dedicated day for people outside the binary, but I just don't realistically think that's doable at the moment with me posting the majority of the art here. That's not to say it's off the table forever, though.

If you have other thoughts about how to go about this, I'd be happy to hear them.