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A Few Normal Things That Happen A Lot, Gwen E. Kirby

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“The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.

A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an “attention whore”: an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.”

— Hunger Makes Me, Jess Zimmerman

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A man depriving a woman of food, shelter, medicine, money, etc unless she endures rape is always worded as “She prostituted herself for [insert basic need]”. No matter how sympathetic the reason may be presented as, the implication is that the decision and framework of “money for sex” came from her. That it is a natural transaction of resources but one wholly instigated by the woman who mysteriously has no resources. The man (or society) who deprived her of basic needs is completely invisible. There is no simple verb to describe “a man who forces a woman to sleep with him for money” and prostitution is treated (linguistically, culturally and in many cases legally) as something women do to themselves of their own accord.

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I don't see women that way. I was trained by the feminist of all feminist, she passed away. I'm looking for another feminist to serve and obey.

I can’t help you with that. Maybe try necking yourself so you can ‘obey’ her again? Serve us and the necessary extinction of men.

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"I stand on the threshold of new missions and life is making new demands upon me. No matter what further tasks I shall be carrying out, it is perfectly clear to me that the complete liberation of the working woman and the creation of the foundation of a new sexual morality will always remain the highest aim of my activity, and of my life."

-Alexandra Kollontai, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman

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@ terfs and radfems who are pro-gender abolition but don’t believe in nonbinary people, why?

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Letters for Amber

Some of you have asked me these past few days whether a project’s underway to support Amber. Myself and a few others who have a way of directly reaching her have decided to put one together. We’re accepting any letters of support you’d wish to send her, online or physically. Afterwards we’ll pass them over to her.

The letters will have to be reviewed before they’re forwarded to Amber to make sure they aren’t hateful or threatening, as I’m sure many of you know she attracts a great deal of vitriol, so be conscious of that if you’re sharing something you wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone else reading, as I’m sure many of Amber’s supporters can relate to her experiences.

If you’d like to email Amber a letter: letters4amber@gmail.com

Preferably in a PDF format.

If you want to mail one physically: PO Box 101525, Arlington, VA 22210

We’re also accepting any letters in support of Amber’s attorneys, Elaine and Ben, who’ve done a terrific job with the case in spite of the uphill battle they’ve had to fight, both in the court of law and public opinion. As they have separate offices, if you’re planning on writing to either of them, it must be individually - so no “Dear Elaine and Ben” letters (unless you’re watching The Graduate).

The email for the Ben and Elaine letters: benandelaineletters@gmail.com

Preferably in a PDF format.

And the P.O. Box is the same as the Amber one.

If you choose to mail a letter, make sure it’s not too big - so no packages, gifts, or anything large in size, as they’ll be going to a post office box.

The deadline for all letters is July 12.

Amber’s attorney Elaine said on the Today Show Thursday that Amber’s planning on appealing the verdict, though there’s no telling how long that process will take. In the meantime, here are some things you can do to support Amber:

Follow her on Twitter and Instagram; like her posts. It might seem trivial in light of what she’s up against, but there is strength in numbers and it would help even the slightest bit to mitigate the damage Johnny’s done to her career and reputation, especially as much of the entertainment industry is dependent on social media engagement these days.

Post your support for her. Trust me, I know it can be a hassle with Johnny’s swarming fans. I’ve been dealing with them for six years now and it never gets any easier. But the more people publicly voice their support for Amber, the less power his cult has. It can be as simple as a hashtag - #IStandWithAmberHeard. It doesn’t really matter, just speak up. There are countless people who want to but don’t want to be the first to say something. Be that first person.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to myself (@pcd2009 on Twitter; @popculturediedin2009​ on Instagram); @drugproblem on Twitter; @AtheistjLiz on Twitter; @heardverse on Twitter; and @shxnerusso on Twitter.

Thank you everyone who’s been speaking up for her. I know attention spans are lightning quick these days, so don’t let her story fizzle out. Keep fighting!

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What cultural relativism is good for: understanding in some countries bugs are a delicacy and that isn’t ‘gross’, red means luck in some places and war in others, death is a great tragedy in some places and a celebration of life in others, etc.

What cultural relativism is not good for: justifying child brides, justifying domestic abuse and sexual slavery, justifying the generalized rape and harm and misogynistic practices against women and girls, etc.

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‘I enter into a sexual experience if, and only if, my pleasure and my safety are central features of the experience.’

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“Female sexuality” is about the sexual pleasure of women, it is about the pleasure that our vulvas/clits/vaginas can proportionate, it is about our satisfaction, our bodies, our orgasms.Stop using “female sexuality” and “performing to men” as interchangeble things, lingerie is not female sexuality, porn with poor women being put to fake pleasure is not female sexuality, revealing outfits is not female sexuality, high heels and make up is not female sexuality.Erase this idea that female sexuality is utterly and naturally connected to performing things for men’s sexual approval, delete it

Female sexuality is about the pleasure of the female.Read it, absorb it, make a little note about it if necessary but never subject women’s sexuality to servitude to males ever again

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Instead of sexualizing boobs, how about we sexualize the clitoris? You know, the thing that has no other purpose than sexual stimulation, yet many people are unaware of its existence? Let’s do that. 

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i actually don’t think that all women who align with patriarchy or adhere to anti-woman ideologies are actually stupid, and certainly not universally or automatically. male interests are the foremost interests in our society, and we have to do a risk-benefit analysis (consciously or not) for every move that we make. if abuse is a given, or if you are led to believe that abuse is a given, then it makes sense for you to choose scenarios that offer you at least some level of protection—even if that “protection” comes in the form of a husband that might still beat or rape you. women choose to align themselves with men so that they don’t face retaliation, not because they’re dumb. women choose to divorce themselves from womanhood because they view it as an individual cure to the ‘societal ill’ of being female, and many of the choices that they make also act to shield themselves from male retaliation. aligning yourself with women isn’t a politically neutral action, because in a male-dominated society, to do so is to pit yourself against men, which can invite scorn, violence, and dehumanization. is it really surprising that so many women feel fear around that action, since we’re trained to?

you can make the argument that it’s self-defeating, that it ultimately leads to things getting worse or at least not getting any better, that it’s individualist…and those things might be true, but that is part of the pervasiveness of patriarchy and male control of society. part of why it continues is that it is often individually dangerous for women to go against it. this is a huge part of why feminism cannot be about individual choice and instead needs to be collective. 

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i’m sure teenage girls know that eating disorders are unhealthy, but i feel like they don’t really know why. it’s not their fault: they don’t know because they haven’t been taught. they haven’t been taught because we just found out, and we just found out because, honestly, research into women’s health has been extremely lacking, historically.. women are just small, weak men with breasts and uteruses, right? WRONG.

every system, every organ, every cell in a woman’s body moves to a complex symphony of hormonal signaling that is circadian (cycling once a day), mensual (once a month), and seasonal (once a year). this beautiful dance is directed by the endocrine system, which consists of glands. the high chieftesses of these glands are the incredibly sensitive gonads, the ovaries. 

these almond-sized glands are so delicate that they will go dormant at the first sign that the outside world may be a less than optimal environment in which to birth and raise a baby. and only now, in the last decade or so, are we finally starting to understand the devastation that is wrought on a developing girl’s health when this happens.

back in the 80’s, when endurance sports were starting to go mainstream, the saying among elite female endurance athletes was “if your period stops, you’re training enough.” those women are now at the tip of the spear of our emerging knowledge of the long term effects of the “female athlete triad”.

the female athlete triad consists of 1) not eating enough, 2) no menstrual cycle, and 3) low bone density. grouping them together like this is rather misleading, because it makes it sound like these symptoms can occur in any combination. the actual relationship is one of definitive and terrifying cause-and-effect.

when a teenage girl stops eating enough to fill her calorie needs, or deliberately exercises beyond her caloric intake, her ovaries receive signals that there’s a famine afoot, that the outside environment is a hostile place, and they shut down. they fucking shut down! can you imagine a male marathon runner saying “fellas, if your testicles still work, you’re not running enough”?

the ovaries are responsible for releasing estrogen, which most teenage girls probably know is responsible for menstruation, breast development and female fat distribution in puberty. what they probably don’t know, because nobody tells them, is that estrogen is also an incredibly powerful steroid that is the primary hormone, in both sexes, that is responsible for mineralizing growing bones. bones are rapidly expanding in volume during puberty, and if a girl’s estrogen is depleted because her ovaries are on strike, she won’t even be able to maintain the bone density she enjoyed in childhood (and her bones are supposed to be getting significantly denser as she grows!).

if she is ignorant of this, a talented and driven teenage female athlete will write off an estrogen crash with “well i didn’t really want periods, tits and hips anyway, they’d just slow me down”, not realizing that she is inducing permanent osteopenia in herself... because she can’t just remineralize her bones after she’s done growing. once she attains her full adult height and her growth plates fuse, that’s it! 

the same women who, in the 80s/90s/00s, were saying “if your period stops, you’re training enough” now suffer from brittle bones. they get multiple compound fractures, shattered bones, just from tripping and falling on a hike. i know many such women. and this is irreversible.

we didn’t, and still don’t, know everything that the ovaries do. how irresponsible we were, to think we could just kneecap our most important glands, with no consequences.

i know some teenage girls follow me, and i want to say this: research nutritional requirements for girls your age, be vigilant about eating enough, and eating a variety of things. take responsibility for your health now: you will thank yourself in 10 years, when you can still stand up straight, when you can fall on a wet floor at work and just laugh it off and move on. you are the only one who has to live with yourself 24 hours a day, and you’ve got to keep yourself safe. you’ve got to.

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peak news at it again.

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By-and-large, those who argue for the essential liberating aspects of sex work- and thus that sex work is not part of the patriarchy- are either people who have never experienced sex work, or people who possess the class agency to dabble in sex work without any of the repercussions experiences by the vast majority of global sex workers. Thus, someone who owns a property and has a secure job cannot experience what it means to be a sex-worker because her prime vocation is not one where she is forced to sell her body as an economic necessity.

Today, in capitalist society, the myth of the entrepreneurial, independent, empowered, self-employed prostituted woman is in full swing: it is part of the bourgeois vision of the ideal worker, the ‘entrepreneurial’ variety’. The popularisation of the term ‘sex work’, as mentioned above helps to mask the class relations at work in prostitution. It fails to take into account the social context in which prostitution develops and particularly ignores the dynamics of race, class and sex dominance which exist between sex buyers and prostituted women. By erasing the exploitative dimension of prostitution, this euphemism trivialises the violence inherent in the prostitution system, which is now part of a ‘job’. In this respect, the term ‘sex work’ in line with the terms used by colonists to designate prostitution, such as ‘bar girls’, ‘comfort women’ and ‘hospitality girls’, euphemisms aimed at trivialising and justifying such an activity, which mainly affects women in third world countries. In reality prostitution is precisely not a ‘job’, but a system of economic and sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable. The main victims are those who are cut off from the formal economy, who are unable to sell their labour power and forced to sell the last thing they have left: their bodies.

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Today, in capitalist society, the myth of the entrepreneurial, independent, empowered, self-employed prostituted woman is in full swing: it is part of the bourgeois vision of the ideal worker, the ‘entrepreneurial’ variety’. The popularisation of the term ‘sex work’, as mentioned above helps to mask the class relations at work in prostitution. It fails to take into account the social context in which prostitution develops and particularly ignores the dynamics of race, class and sex dominance which exist between sex buyers and prostituted women. By erasing the exploitative dimension of prostitution, this euphemism trivialises the violence inherent in the prostitution system, which is now part of a ‘job’. In this respect, the term ‘sex work’ in line with the terms used by colonists to designate prostitution, such as ‘bar girls’, ‘comfort women’ and ‘hospitality girls’, euphemisms aimed at trivialising and justifying such an activity, which mainly affects women in third world countries. In reality prostitution is precisely not a ‘job’, but a system of economic and sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable. The main victims are those who are cut off from the formal economy, who are unable to sell their labour power and forced to sell the last thing they have left: their bodies.