musingsunderstarlight

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have you seen that tiktok that says "most queer scholars will argue that a femme lesbian has more in common with a drag queen than with an actual woman as they are constructing their own version of femininity" or along those lines

im sorry but that's just fucking insane

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It’s so beautiful when a grown woman unironically says wheeeeee!

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i think a lot of people especially young women fixate on the idea of wanting to get married and have a wedding less bc of the actual marriage and more bc of the big party where they wear a pretty dress and everyone pays attention to them. and i don't say that in a judgmental way, i think it's very human to want attention and to have everyone think you're pretty and say nice things to you. i unironically think the divorce rate would go down if there was something like a quincanera for adults where you wear a nice outfit and everyone pays attention to you and then there's food and alcohol and dancing. like if people could just do that without also signing a legal contract binding them to another person.

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Saw a Tiktok about sucking straps being the most romantic thing you can do (LOL) because of the fantasy of it and how a lot of "queer" sex is built in fantasy and like... yeah, that's your problem, that it's built in fantasy for YOU. For many others, our sex life is not built through fantasy, it's the result of the pleasure in our actual bodies and the interactions with the actual bodies of the people we sleep with! It couldn't be more real and grounded and not fantastical!

But you cannot handle the objective reality that you're someone with a vagina fucking another person with a vagina and that you haven't gotten over the heteronormative mental hang ups that you have about what sex is supposed to be, that you think sex is only possible if there's a penis involved and that everything else is not "real" hence fantasising and calling straps cocks and sucking on them. But that fantasy does nothing but alienate you and your partner from your bodies and really limits the view of what sex can be. Because you cannot start by just looking at your body and figuring out the ways in which you can feel pleasure and your partner can feel pleasure, and then add more things on top. You start by building a heteronormative fantasy on top of it and distance yourself from what's actually going on and that's not only incredibly lesbophobic, or a weird way to look at sex, but it is also pathetic.

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I’m realizing more and more that an understanding of how lesbians are parsed under patriarchy is inherently obscured so long as male homosexuality is propped up as the primary optic through which homophobia is analyzed 🔍 For example, people constantly compare what masculine women must contend with to feminine men, and generally diminish or obscure the kinda of violence masculine women may face because it’s not understood as being “as bad” as feminine men. And this is because men occupy a primacy in the analysis of homophobia. I actually would like to challenge people to see the vast conceptual differences in how female homosexuality is regulated and how that violence can’t be fully understood if women’s sexuality is always being envisioned through the vantage point of male sexuality. 👀📝

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i dream of having a regulated nervous system

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To be clear, I would hate AI slightly less if it led to a "oh well we can automatize so many tasks now let's shorten the work week and have some sort of basic income systems!" but this was built by capitalists whose only purpose is to get even more money and to squeeze every last penny and to automate our jobs so they save money (and please the shareholders!) but they still want to force us to work (at what?) for even less wages and for even more years and under even worse conditions? So no, thank you, but no.

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What in the ever-loving fuck? OP are you fucking serious?

A woman literally just existing as she is is NOT and will not EVER be misogyny. I shouldn't have to do a single fucking thing, and that includes GETTING MY BODY PARTS CUT OFF, in order to be treated like the human being that I am. Fuck off.

radfems point out that a woman choosing to undergo a mastectomy for trans reasons or breast augmentation is rooted in misogyny in one way or another, and I agree to some extent. But why wouldn’t that also apply to women who choose not to undergo these procedures and are satisfied with their own unmodified chests?

That’s still a bodily choice, even if it’s usual, and this choice has causes and consequences. Those things still develop within a social context that’s heteronormative and misogynistic, just like the other bodily decisions and feelings about one's body.

So all those things considered, it's pretty clear that misogyny is still involved, undeniably even. To be breastless (especially out of nonmedical reasons) is to be socially read as abnormal, unfeminine, undesirable and that attracts all sort of worse social treatments, especially from men.

Keeping one’s breasts on the other hand, means the opposite: staying in the norm, so being more feminine, more desirable, more typical, and consequently having a better social/symbolic standing compared to women who removed theirs. Deriving satisfaction from having a 'standard' chest makes sense but still, that feeling is built indirectly on the male gaze, on a system that valorizes & rewards some bodies at the expense of others ouf of misogynistic reasons. The root is still misogyny not matter the choice, really.

Keeping your breasts or cutting them off isn't really any different in terms of misogyny, one could even argue that not removing them is actually more misogynistic than doing so because it would means caring more about being 'properly female' so appealing more to males and being more compliant to sexist cultural comfort

At least, tifs are doing subversive choices even tho they're rooted in sexism, while most of you are choosing to align yourselves with sexist ideals out of misogyny. Honestly, who's worse here ?

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current read 📖

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Wow it's almost as if men hate you on the basis of your sex.

You know, it really is quite frustrating the amount of times I scroll by a post that says "if men experienced [thing that trans men experience], this wouldn't happen [except it does, to trans men, usually worse than to cis women]"

"If men could have periods, tampons would be free" >>> trans man gets beaten up for requesting sanitary products in bathrooms

"If men got uterine cancer, there would be a cure" >>> trans man killed via medical neglect due to being trans as his doctors wanted to punish him for being transgender and betraying womanhood

"If men were catcalled, it would be considered assault" >>> trans man gets catcalled and then sexually assaulted for ignoring their advances

"If men had to worry about being alone at night, there would be a streetlight every 5 feet" >>> trans man murdered while walking home alone from work

But then if I say anything about it, I'm told I'm a misogynist "erasing women's struggles".

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Thank you for saying this. Living in a world where the ultimate celebration is a wedding and everything related to that including the bridal shower, baby shower, etc., really fucks you up when it starts to seem like those things might never happen for you. And because society defines a woman's worth based on her achievement of these "milestones," we grow up wanting and desiring these things more than men and feeling more shame when we don't get them. Why don't we get a giant celebration for our first job, a big promotion, or turning 30? (Even teenagers can get a sweet 16 which is creepy as fuck honestly) Some women are starting to do personal celebrations or big vacations for those things, but society still doesn't expect anyone close to them to take them on. Even gender reveal parties became a thing before anyone thought of making a tradition that celebrates something other than a woman giving her life away to a man or motherhood.

if you are a single woman you really do need to find a way to be at peace with yourself and praise yourself for your achievements because nobody celebrates women for anything but marriage and baby, and either you will be belittled for anything else you achieve on your own or your achievement will be belittled.

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we'll jump off that bridge when we get to it

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professions older than prostitution because i’m so tired of hearing that misogynistic talking point created by a british imperialist witnessing impoverished women in india

1. hunter

2. forager

3. midwife

4. babysitter

5. weaver

6 doctor/healer

7. shaman

8. fisher

9. stonemason

10. navigator

11. sentry

12. butcher

13. cook

14. storyteller

15. woodcarver

16. food tester

17. builder

18. tanner/leatherworker

19. scout

20. fire tender

there is no evidence of prostitution’s existence until the neolithic agricultural revolution, stemming from an unequal resource distribution and the rise of female oppression. for reference, the start of agriculture until now comprises less than 10% of homo sapien history. do not let men tell you misogyny is a natural part of life. it’s not.

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I'm an intersex person and I loathe how much stuff tras have stolen from us. You're absolutely right about them highjacking everyone else's stuff.

No, "Lily". You were not ASSIGNED male at birth. You were born a perfectly healthy boy. They took our words and it doesn't even make sense for them. They use us as gotchas against anyone that calls them out, as if our community doesn't suffer enough.

But the worst part imo, is they sometimes try to act like they're on intersex peoples side, when we have VERY different goals. I want doctors to stop surgeries on children and babies that are barely a week old. I want docs to stop shoving hormones onto kids to make them "normal". TRAs want the exact opposite. They need these doctors to do this stuff for "trans kids". The same doctors that support TRAs are also the same ones "fixing" intersex babies.

I hate them so much. I feel like the intersex community is never going to recover.

"Intersex people exist therefore I, a perfectly normative person with normative sexual development, am whatever I say I am" Is def one of the more crazy-making takes. I can't imagine what it must feel like to actually have a doctor make an executive, surgical, decision about your genitals when you're 2 days old and be genuinely assigned at a sex at birth and then have someone with a totally healthy normative body male or female body also calling their sex "assigned". It's like you're trying to make me wanna bite your face off.

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June 29, 1921 Three female lifeguards at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. They are Gertrude Neumarker, Bertha Tomkins and Gertrude Goodstein. From America in the 1920s, FB.

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I'm confused by what the last question means. What does "doesn't take seriously" mean specifically? Like does it mean just isn't talked about as much compared to victims of male partners? Because the entire reason why feminist theory discussions center on the pattern of male violence is because men are the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of intimate partner violence so obviously a feminist analysis will focus on that.

Does "doesn't take seriously" mean perpetuating a culture similar to the one men have created that enables abusers through things like making jokes about the abuse or not believing the victims or dismissing the victims as having "deserved" it? Because that I have not seen, which makes sense because the entire point of radical feminist analysis is rejecting the culture of violence that men have created and forced on women, so it would be contradictory for a radfem to exhibit those beliefs. I think you need to be more specific about what exactly you are asking.

Poll specifically for SSA women