littleradfems

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[littleradfems]

The New Testament scarcely mentions Mary. She is brought into the story mainly to emphasize Jesus's divine conception and birth. Her presence is noted once or twice, but little is made of it. In the centuries that followed, however, Mary was exalted to ever-higher positions of glory. She is the subject of many of our most famous and beautiful works of art. In light of what we have learned about the Goddesses of the ancient Near East, it is interesting that Mary is shown not only as the Madonna with her child, but standing on the crescent moon or with stars circling her head. She takes on many of the ancient Goddess symbols and is often painted as a larger-than-life figure. She is also shown being crowned Queen of Heaven, absorbing the title of the Goddess. It may be that the need of the people for a female deity was so great that the Christian Church might not have survived without the elevation of Mary to this exalted position. We need to look carefully, however, at just what aspects of the Goddess Mary was allowed to retain and what the results were in the lives of women.

Mary was taken up to heaven and seated with god the father and his divine son Jesus. She became the main intercessor between human beings and the divine. She was called Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, but she was not made a full-fledged member of the Godhead. The Church used her to satisfy the need for a female presence in Christianity but also to keep women in a subordinate position. Her purity as a virgin was exalted and women were taught to strive for that purity and to obey the divine (male) will. At the same time she is, of course, a mother, and women were taught to bear as many children as possible. But Mary did it while remaining a virgin; other women, in order to be mothers, must be tainted by sexuality. If they remain pure they cannot be like Mary the Mother; if they become mothers they cannot be like Mary the Virgin. No matter what they do they are guilty and inferior.

Mary's stance is: "Let it be to me according to your word." She is passive, obedient, and pure. She sits on a throne but has little power, certainly none of the power or independence of the earlier Goddesses or their free sexuality. Nevertheless, the doctrine of her virginity gave women a way out of the role of submissive wife and bearer of children. When the cult of Mary was at its height, thousands of women escaped into convents, communities of women. There they developed skills and talents in the arts and in the administration of large estates. Many abbesses wielded significant power and controlled sizable amounts of wealth.

It is interesting that, just as the veneration of Mary reached its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Protestant Reformation reasserted the dominance of the male divinities. One of Luther's major reforms was the closing of nunneries, and Mary is notably absent from all formulations of Protestant theology and ritual. Whereas Catholic women have suffered from their attempts to imitate an impossible model, Protestant women have had no exalted female model of any kind. Mary's presence has been used by the Catholic Church to reinforce the subordination of women, and her absence has been used by Protestantism to reinforce their insignificance.

-Shirley Ann Ranck, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

[littleradfems]

I caught up with She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat (both the manga and the live-action drama) and it's so disappointing, at this point it's so infantilizing they're basically mocking lesbians 🫠

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TiM finds out that not every place will accommodate his ‘gender identity’, including clinics

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"The Daily Dyke Cartoons" No. 1 & 2

Intaglio with Chine Cólle 

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Disgruntled and confused porn users demanded the hard research data, so I went into the basement to find my dusty copy of Zillmann and Bryant’s book. It will take me a while to screenshot, caption, and post it all.

The two photos above reference a 1982 experiment which measured the effects of prolonged pornography consumption on test subjects’ recommendations for rapist prison terms.

Male and female subjects were divided into three groups and exposed to either 6 regular films (control group), 3 regular films and 3 porn films (intermediate exposure), or 6 porn films (massive exposure).

Three weeks later, they took a variety of questionnaires and inventories. One asked them to recommend the prison sentence for a hypothetical rapist. The chart above shows the difference in what they recommended by group. 

Conclusion: both men and women exposed to porn recommended reduced sentencing for rapists compared to those in the control group.

Consider that in 1982, watching 6 porn films was considered “massive exposure.“ 

Also consider whether the judge and or jury members deciding your rapist’s fate may have watched more than 6 or more porn films.

Source: Zillmann and Bryant, ”Pornography: Research Advances and Policy Considerations.“ 1989

[littleradfems]

An activist from SCUM, a French radfem activist group, crashed the red carpet at the Cannes festival to call-out surrogacy, often used and promoted by movie stars.

Btw she's the same one who did a similar act last year.

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when i was in jail, my roommate in holding was a middle aged woman who was arrested for battery against her live-in boyfriend. she told me that it was a “mutual” situation, that he hit her even worse, but they locked her up anyway because she was giving the cops attitude rather than acting like the perfect dv victim. of course i was dubious, since this was just a random person in jail, and at the time i knew little to nothing about domestic violence other than what i had experienced myself. we were released from jail at the same time, and when she got her phone back she had hundreds of missed calls and FaceTime requests, texts from the guy apologizing to her, love bombing type messages…all the kinds of things a shitty ex would say to get you to stay in the relationship. fast forward a year later, when i was doing a research paper about domestic violence. i found a randomized study of hundreds of women who committed violence against men. the study showed that 92% of those women experienced violence themselves from the male partner first. more than half of the male partners had already spent time in prison for domestic violence against women, which is significant because usually only the worst types of abusers ever see prison time. a more recent study concluded that most of men affected by domestic violence had also been violent toward their partners themselves, confirming this existing research, and that their injuries (if any were sustained) were minor. the study showed photos of representative injuries of what looked like nail scratches on a man’s arm. a situation where a man is attacked, unprovoked, and as the primary victim by a female, is thus a statistical anomaly. of course, the response to this will be “but men probably don’t report abuse.” in general, domestic violence is extremely underreported across gender lines, but there is no research to suggest that there is a hidden epidemic of men not reporting grave incidents of violence. between 3 and 8%, depending on the study, is the average rate of reporting for both sexes. but if the men who do report are going to the hospital and calling the police for nail scratches, common sense would suggest they would go for black eyes and bone fractures and stab wounds.

[littleradfems]

some advice especially for women who have male acquaintances (but it's just general)

i kinda hate to say this because i don't like to think that people have bad intentions most of the time, but imo if anyone has any kind of sensitive information about you, you should always have something on them too. just for good measure yk. an old friend i had an argument with (coincidentally the same TIM from my last post) threatened to spill something about me, so i gathered some old screenshots of him talking in depth about his mommy kink and just ominously sent them to him alongside a picture of his mom's Facebook. bro went real quiet after that 💀

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[littleradfems]

not to brag but MY porn bot follower is discussing feminist theory with me and we’re really bonding 😌

[littleradfems]

If I have any women following me who are in addiction recovery please be aware that men in NA and AA have a thing called “13th stepping” where they try to sleep with vulnerable newcomers in early sobriety, and then if they do they will brag about it with other men in the group. There are also many cases of these men encouraging women to relapse.

and this isn’t an uncommon fringe thing at all - it actually happened to me. when I went to a meeting for the second time a much older man approached me and asked if I needed a sponsor. I was very young at the time and naively said yes and agreed to exchange numbers. He seemed well-liked within the group so I thought he had good intentions. Fast forward a couple days and I was struggling with thoughts of relapsing so I texted him asking him to meet at a coffee shop near me and he said “sure but can we mess around first?” I was stunned at how disgusting it was and I never went to an NA group again after that.

Please only go to women’s groups and if there are none near you, have a trusted friend drive you to and from meetings and get a female sponsor. I’m sure you all already know that but I certainly didn’t know how big of an issue this was when I was in early recovery.

[littleradfems]

i want to clarify a common misconception: unemployment benefits in germany (despite all the bad things) do not get cut if the woman refuses to prostitute herself.

the agency for work will send people registered as unemployed who get benefits job ads, and if the affected person refuses to apply or take the job, their benefits can be cut. but brothel owners etc are not allowed to enter job ads to the agency for work registry! the agency does not connect women to prostitution.

https://m.faz.net/aktuell/karriere-hochschule/recht-und-gehalt/neues-urteil-arbeitsamt-muss-keine-prostituierten-vermitteln-1799450.html

here is an article (in german) explaining that a court ruled that the agency for work is not to get women into any kind of sex work.

the reasoning is that the prostituiertenschutzgesetz (prostitution protection law) which liberalised and legalised prostitution in germany is meant to protect women, not foster „business“.

you know i am very critical of germany especially in regards to prostitution but ive seen this misinformation circulating and wanted to set the record straight.

but there have also been cases where brothel owners registered job ads as „waitress“ or something to lure women in since the job ads in the registry are not checked by the agency, anyone can put in an ad. but its not legal and if a woman refuses the job the benefits are not cut.

[littleradfems]

Is it just me or is this comment insanely funny

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Ladies, if you are looking for a TV show that

talks about period stigma

arranged marriages

purity culture and virginity

the hold Catholicism has on Polish culture today

misogyny and how GNC women are treated in Romani culture

racism against Romani people in Poland

then you should look up Infamy (or Infamia), it's only 8 episode long, it's on Netflix and it's about a Romani teenage girl in Poland in 2023. It's very good, the creative team worked with Romani consultants, and although the main characters aren't played by Romani actors, the secondary and background characters are. You can also hear actual Romani language in some scenes!

It got barely any promotion and after the show was released, Romani male antiracist activists attacked it and tried to boycott the show, calling it racist because it criticizes Romani cultural misogyny. That show is so important because you barely see Romani protagonists in media; it is the first time a big platform, like Netflix, does something like that, while also being careful to consult Romani people and work with them; it discusses incredibly important issues that are usually invisible; but instead of hyping it up, those Romani males attacked it.

[littleradfems]

seed of lodoicea, or coco de mer. the largest seed of the plant world. native to the seychelles