#female oppression

[medusa-fem]

I know this is an odd post to make, but in case someone needs to hear it, rad fems have been in your shoes, and still chose to align with radical feminism.

I started wearing makeup and push up bras in middle school. I discovered bdsm in 9th grade and loved it, I based my identity in it. I've dated/slept with 8 different trans women, and my longest relationship was with a trans woman just a few years back. I identified as a trans man from 16 to 21, and started medically transitioning when I was 19. I used to look at porn every day because I didn't understand the harm it did, and I actually used to post sexual videos of myself online for praise and approval. I was so vehemently pro "sex work" that I would've pursued it as an income had I not been so aware of how it'd affect my future career.

I was radicalized when I realized how much all of these things were based on who I was trained to become by the patriarchy, or in reaction to trauma it had caused me. I slept with so many TIMs for the validation and to feel like a good person, I was into kink because I had been sexually assaulted since infancy and it felt like an escape from normal sex while still fulfilling the male fantasy, I was transitioning to escape all of the expectations put on me as a female who just couldn't be "woman" enough. My life has been ruled by the patriarchy, and opening my eyes to the amount of brain washing I went through, from Christianity as a kid all the way through being a queer teen on the internet made me a rad fem. We were just like you, and we still became radical feminists.

[butch-reidentified]

nobody has ever been forced to stay in a menstrual hut because they had a cramp and got moody. because that's not a period. die.

[manie-sans-delire-x]

Men: *ban girls/women from education even under threat of death*

Girls/women: *dont know anything*

Men: See? Proof that women are stupid

[balkanradfem]

people@women: have you tried loving and trusting your oppressor?💕

[chlorinatedpopsicle]

Recently, there's been a popular post on radblr discussing how women aren't allowed to have fun like men are, and how men get applauded for doing stupid shit while women get mocked.

I just stumbled upon an example of this in the wild.

Someone on r/stupidfood posted a vid of this woman who filled a fanny pack with spaghetti and ate it while skydiving. It was funny. She was clearly just being silly for silliness' sake.

Not only was the post tag calling her "stupid", the comments were like 95% making fun of her, calling her an idiot, criticizing her skydiving etiquette, saying the spaghetti looked gross, and just generally bitching about anything and everything.

I was SO GLAD to see these people in the comments pointing out how weird that is:

They're absolutely right. If it were a guy doing this, people would just think it's funny!!! People would be in the comments calling him a legend and a mad lad.

Filthy Frank could eat ravioli out of his shirt pocket as a stupid joke, and people could understand that he was doing a deliberately stupid thing as a funny bit. But when a woman does something similar, it must just be because she's stupid and annoying and probably trying too hard to be quirky. Fuck off.

[haggishlyhagging]

Mother says the doctor let her hemorrhage all through the night I was born. The pool of blood that splashed around her hips on the rubber sheet until morning is symbolic to me of the life she, and her mothers before her, have bled away for others—making vampires of their husbands and children and leaving their own inner selves anemic and ravaged.

Dad first saw her in the summer of 1923, galloping bareback over the Idaho plains in men's overalls, her hair whipping behind her. Because there were so few sons and so many daughters in the Howell family, Mom helped with the outdoor farm work. The labor was often so heavy and so almost impossibly hard that it made the small, slender girl weep as she did it. Despite that, Mom still preferred it to the work of the women in the house: the endless cooking and scrubbing, sewing, soapmaking, preserving. Just washing clothes was a superhuman feat, boiling water over an outdoor fire and stirring and wringing and hanging and ironing—a two-day chore that had to be done every week by all the women of the house.

Her mother, short and plump and silent, was the first one up in the morning to build the fire, put the bread in to bake, and prepare the huge breakfast, and the last one to bed at night. Mom says her mother was always tired and didn't talk much, but confided to her once that she only wanted to live to get her children grown and then to die. She got her wish. Mom's father, whom Mom idolized, lived through two more wives after her mother died.

Mom filed all this away in her unconscious.

Late one summer night, three years ago, in the kitchen of my house in Virginia where womanhood finally found and claimed me, for the first time my mother looked squarely at what it had meant in her life to be female. On the farm in Woodruff, she confided, the men came in from their work at dark, ate supper, sat around and talked a little, perhaps, and then went off to bed, while the women, who had been up in the morning before the men, wearily washed the dishes (without soap, so the water could be fed to the pigs) and got to bed an hour or two later. I asked her what she thought of her near-perfect father for behaving this way. Her eyes filled with tears and she whispered, "It wasn't fair."

Since that night she has regained some of her defenses against recognizing the blatant injustices of such a system, so when I've reminded her of what she told me that night, she's insisted that she hadn't remembered correctly, and that her father often had helped with the dishes and had not gone to bed leaving the womenfolk still hard at work. But I remember that night in my kitchen and the terrible things that were dawning upon both of us, and I know she remembers what was required of her as a girl. After a bonebreaking day in the fields, she was to drag her exhausted body and her screaming muscles about the kitchen to help the women with the supper and the washing up while the men were allowed—even expected and encouraged—to rest. And despite going to bed two hours later than the men, she had to arise earlier than they did the next morning to begin it all over again. There was no rest for the women—only endless drudgery until the children were reared, and then death.

-Sonia Johnson, From Housewife to Heretic

[she-is-ovarit]

Afghan women and girls are being sent to "prison" for "their safety" by the Taliban, who are making Afghan men essentially pinky-swear in front of other Afghan men that they won't hurt women and girls. This comes after girls are forbidden from receiving an education higher than the 6th grade, are barred from entering public spaces, required to abide by a dress code and have a male chaperone at all times.

[radical-thots]

Every time I speak up against trans/gender ideology, I'm terrified of being harassed and doxed like many other women have been. I'm terrified of being stalked and cyber bullied like countless other women have been for sharing our opinions on our own reality and sex. This is not normal. I and other women should not feel terrified talking about female oppression and biological sex. The fact that we feel this scared in 2023 talking about feminism because it will offend men, blows my mind. Seeing trans people on tumblr and twitter make violent comments like 'shoot a bullet through every terfs pussy' or 'every terf should get raped' or 'women should stfu about oppression because it's terfy' and the fact that no one calls them out and the minute they do, they're instantly doxed and bullied off by being called a bigot? When trans people make comments like this towards women, it's no wonder, we do not want to share our spaces with you people. Our concerns are valid and not born out of bigotry or transphobia like so many claim it to be - it is an exact reaction to the violence shown by tra/trans women. At the end of the day, trans ideology is more about male entitlement, male violence and further oppressing the female sex.

[radicaltorch]

My journey with radical feminism

as a woman with autism I always felt a disconnect with femininity and womanhood, this resulted in me hanging out with males exclusively and soon adopting their ideologies. I was a 4chan dwelling, woman hating, individual. I was an extension of the males around me and was not my own person in their eyes or my own. I wanted to be accepted by them so badly I took on the most extreme opinions to be a dream girl for them. soon i became interested in reading, I was recommended lots of radical feminist literature and once I shared this with the males I was friends with they began to lose it. they seemed afraid, that I would be "ruined" if I read any of these books. I was disturbed by the things they said to me and I want to share them with you

my name is lubov and I'm a radical feminist.

[medusa-fem]

How many women find bdsm appealing simply because it feels less associated with abuse than vanilla sex? What does that say about normal sexual experiences in our society?

It's a sad reality but I know I would rather be hurt "consensually" for intimacy than have sex as of now, simply because of trauma, and that is extremely disordered. Luckily I've not participated in bdsm in over a year, but it took finding radical feminism to open my eyes to how abusive bdsm really is, and now I'm left with the fact that past abuse is the only reason it ever appealed to me in the first place. Abusive men benefit from the actions of other abusive men.

[manie-sans-delire-x]

Funny how pregnancy is the one "bad decision" youre not allowed to back out of and correct. Imagine if people acted like that about anything else.

"Aw man I picked the wrong major" "I dont like where I live" "I want to break up with my partner" "I dont like my job"

"It was your choice!! Take responsibility and have it dictate the rest of your life now!"

[lilithism1848]

[haggishlyhagging]

Stop helping men. Stop going out of your way to share knowledge with them. Ignore them if you can do so safely. If that’s not possible, shrug your shoulders when you can get away with it. Act dumb. I don’t know how long that’s supposed to cook for. I don’t know what cleaner to use in the tub. I don’t know where Melvin filed the papers for that big project. I don’t know where Kevin went. I don’t know how to get stains out of a shirt. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Stop enabling them. Just stop it. Just stop. If they can weaponize incompetence, so can you.

[queerism1969]

[radmalenia]

If anyone on radblr has interacted with this "taythewhom" account, I would advise just try not to engage with them; because it likely won't be possible to have a productive conversation and will just piss you off.

Caution: this post is a lengthy breakdown/rant about the horrible reading abilities and the critical thought-killing mentalities of so many "TRA's", and the dangerous and tragic ramifications of being taught next to no reading and thinking skills.

TLDR: this person is a prime example of it. And the problem they have is a disturbing sign of how the education system is fundamentally failing to teach youth to read, to critically think, to stay out of echo chambers, and to know enough to articulate their stances - this is also why so many fall for trans ideology, too; and why they are more easily manipulated away from genuine feminism.

~ This is not a usual type of post for me but it brought up a couple of key things I think people need to be discussing more overall; so here goes.

So this "taythewhom" clown has bought the bullshit about radical feminists not being feminists and also about them being transphobic, and (surprise surprise) are apparently not willing to read more than one sentence at once that has been spoken by someone whom they've been told is "the enemy".

No better way to keep someone in an echo chamber, to make sure they never question or analyze their beliefs or those of anyone else; than convincing them not to read anything that a person outside of their own ideology says! Convincing them that "well this person is wrong no matter what, so you shouldn't even care to read their words"! What an unbelievably thought-killing and sheep-creating form of manipulation. Very cultish, too.

Anyway, this person suddenly DM'd me. I've seen them before in comment sections; contributing nothing and generally being shockingly dumb. I was a bit harsher overall than I maybe could have been, but it deeply frustrates me to encounter someone who has so thoroughly bought these types of thought-stopping cliches.

In this instance, they were on a "this person's apparently transphobic so don't listen to a thing they say...but yet engage with them anyway to tell them off ." (??) As it continued I got more confused by that; by why they were even in my dms at all while not willing to have an actual conversation... And wondering what do they think they get out of it. What do they think they're doing?? (I wish I'd manged to ask that!!) But the gist is that they kept insisting they didn't care to read what I was saying...yet they still kept messaging. At least for a few minutes.

And then a block? Too cowardly and/or egotistical to consider they could be wrong. To even discuss it. Notice of course how they never explained anything about what they're claiming. Never said why they say I'm transphobic. Never said why they claim radical feminism isn't feminism. NO THOUGHTS - NO CONTENT - ONLY BUZZWORDS.

They also seem to be so horrendous at reading that they saw me mention male supremacy, I presume in my bio; and somehow concluded I support it?! And that it means I want the sexes segregated?!?! How??? How are these people so quick and willing to proclaim a strong opinion on something they're literally so ignorant (and usually always wrong) on?

Even female separatism, which I fully support (but do not mention in my bio) is not a total separation of the sexes (except in an ideal and unrealistic utopia;) and even that would not be actual "segregation".

And if this person can't understand that the sentence about male supremacy in my bio is calling it the status quo that needs to be overturned by genuine feminism; then ...wow. I just don't know what's going on in schools this past decade. Why are so many of these kids unable to properly read?? 🤦‍♀️ Why are so many unable and/or unwilling to analyze something complex, or even simple - unwilling to critically think and see what conclusions they draw, to challenge their own views by analyzing a disagreeing view; to even learn enough about their own stance to articulate it beyond a basic slogan or buzzword?? Do they even know how they choose a stance? Not specifically with taythewhom but I've seen instances of other people like them admitting when questioned that they don't know why they have the stance they do, they just felt "it's what everyone else is doing" or something like that.

Like, I...cannot even imagine basing my opinions off popularity alone like that.

And honestly I do consider a large part of this person's state to be this failing of the modern public education system. For someone to call a moderate paragraph a "novel" is fucking mind-blowing. Whether you disagree with the subject or not, even if you find it totally boring; you can't call a mild size paragraph a "novel" unless something pretty bad is up with you.

No wonder these Tumblr TRA's are so often woefully uneducated about issues women face, and so woefully incapable of learning or understanding new concepts and things that they're presented with. So uneducated about how to analyze things and use critical thought. Even so uneducated about trans issues (with them often having no idea the meanings, ramifications, and realities of the trans stuff they talk about); so uneducated about gender roles and how they've been used on people, so uneducated about history (and so willing to rewrite it to fit their narrative but that's a whole different post...), so uneducated about actual feminism; about misogyny, patriarchy; about homosexuality and the gay community. So uneducated about how many of these things relate to each other, and how stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum and therefore stuff like so-called "choice feminism" doesn't work.

No wonder their reading comprehension is fucking abysmal (where does my blog say anything about sex segregation????) They either CAN'T or DON'T read...so they don't even understand the issues and stances that they're trying to support - much less the ones they've been told they're in opposition to!!

This is why we see so many of them being trans ideologists. Gender ideology necessities people who do not think, question, or read. Because as soon as one does that, it begins to fall apart.

Also - because genuine feminism ideally requires educating onself on feminist philosophy, and going on a journey through the study of feminist texts to arrive at the conclusions all of us radical feminists do, to be able to articulate these facts to others and to raise female class consciousness and have impactful discussions - it is a lot less appealing to kids who don't want to read, who don't want to think or put in effort. Who would rather be told that they can think and behave exactly how they already do, but just call it "their choice" and therefore "feminist", and be done with it. No class analysis, no understanding of the way males oppress them specifically because of their sex and have done so for hundreds even thousands of years; no - that requires long paragraphs, and very heavy subject matter.

To be clear I do truly empathize with young women feeling turned away by how heavy it is emotionally to face and accept the actual realities of their oppression...the realities of who does it, how severe and all encompassing it is; the reality of what it is based upon. It is a horrible thing to face; and once you've seen it you can never stop seeing it. It permeates everything around us in our entire culture, it overshadows and undertones everything and every situation and etc etc etc. But - to use the overdone matrix analogy - would you rather take the blue pill to make you forget that you ever peaked behind the curtain, or would you rather take the red pill that shows you the grim truth in full - and live the rest of your life in proud resistance against the oppressive force? That red pill is what radical feminists all choose...and it is certainly worth it emotionally.

(NOT to be confused with the fucking "red pill" that far-right males sometimes refer to!! They have entirely different views from radfems, this cannot be overstated - and their "red pill" views of hateful misogynistic nonsense; and often of other hateful and stupid views like antisemitism or homophobia; are entirely incorrect. The ONLY similarity is the matrix pill analogy itself.)

Anyway... going back to the younger people who won't read. They don't read and they don't think. And it considerably contributes to keeping them inside an echo chamber as well, as I'm sure one can understand - if they read nothing from the outside, they've obviously been successfully placed in an echo chamber where they just keep supporting and agreeing with their own stances...which again are often so shallow because they don't even flesh out what they're supposed to believe in themselves.

This is also so concerning for so many reasons; I've already glossed over some and am sure I don't need to list them all... Essentially - being able to read, to effectively properly read and do the thinking that comes with it; is SO DAMNED IMPORTANT. Being able to read multiple paragraphs is VITAL. Books are vital, for a start. If you want to have a stance about a serious and complex issue, for example feminism; you need to be able to read books, studies, articles, news reports, and complex discussion threads. Otherwise you have your stance in name only, with no substance behind your label; and so it would be more beneficial if you don't say a word in these discussions and debates and instead let the people who can actually read and learn and think and speak do the reading, learning, thinking, and speaking...otherwise you'd just be derailing the conversation and adding pointless or even detrimental words.

Like taythewhom does in the notes on multiple feminist posts I've seen 🙃 and they don't mean well at all, certainly not when it comes to women's rights. It's people like this who turn the word "transphobia" meaningless - and into a joke or even into a compliment, depending on context.

Anyway, to wrap this up; while this is a post about the importance of being able to read well (and that's still undeniably true), I admit this also has a level of irony because it is somewhat longer than it needs to be. However there are multiple places where I could have brought up other topics and tangents that were relevant, though - so is it really longer than necessary?? To me that's an incredibly cool thing about writing; no matter what you're discussing there are so many ways you could expand upon what you're saying if you were so inclined to. And how abundantly rich the world is with subject matter is something everyone deserves to be able to access and experience; and the way the school system is degrading the literary level of children is just so tragic and disgusting for so many reasons.

Well - if you made it this far through my 4am adderall comedown vent; congratulations, I think - and thank you! ADHD, which I have, is often awful to live with - but sometimes it can be very handy; although not always in the most productive manner.

Reading and writing are a never-ending source of enrichment, intrigue, revelation and knowledge; and the last one in particular can easily be your greatest source of personal power. All of them lead to personal growth, so don't neglect them. To be a little petty - the moral of this post is, in its simplest terms...be a reader - don't be taythewhom.

[redditreceipts]

I'm very pessimistic about the oppression of females.

I think males are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy. The solution would be to reduce the male population to 8% (through abortions for example) and bioengineer them to destroy these biological predispositions.

yeah, it's an interesting idea. I personally don't really think that they are biologically predisposed to do that, I think that patriarchy is dependant on the principals of ownership in our society, and when the social construction of ownership changes, the oppression of women changes as well. I don't really see much proof for a biological predisposition of patriarchy. we could look at our nearest ancestors, chimpanzees and bonobos, but they both have very different ways of displaying sexually dimorphic behaviour. and who's to say that homo sapiens sapiens didn't evolve in a completely different manner somewhere along the way? there have also been a lot of matriarchal societies in human history, or at least societies that have not been patriarchal (because the term "matriarchy" is disputed in ethnological circles I guess)

but even if it's the case that men are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy, I think we can adopt other methods to reach the same "bioengineering" goals (and these are actually realistic and applicable today).

Let's assume that the tendency to create patriarchy is genetically predisposed in men, then we could "genetically change" them in the following ways:

encouraging women to only have children with men who lack oppressive behaviourial patterns

encouraging the abortion of a fetus if the father is an asshole

mandatory castration of all sex offenders

this way, the "patriarchy genes" would just not be passed down. and look in the animal kingdom: female peacocks found males with blue feathers, a crown and a beautiful tail sexy, and the males complied. female baboons found that ugly ass blue and red nose sexy, and what did the males do? they evolved to have it. if female birds can get their men to get crazy dances to perform for them and to evolve in every color of the rainbow, then female homo sapiens should get their men to behave imo