#Men exploiting women

[tea-earl-grey]

can 2024 please be the year where we stop acting like Jadzia's bisexuality was subtextual and that her queerness should be treated with the same validity as other common headcanons. i love queer headcanons! i love thinking about gay subtext (intentional or unintentional)! but i cannot possibly understand how kissing a woman, professing your love to her, and risking your future to spend your lives together is somehow subtext. (well i can understand because 1) fandom doesn't like to focus on queer women nearly as much as queer men and 2) seeing queer women who later marry men as somehow not "actually queer" is just. classic biphobia.)

[burningtheroots]

IDK who made this but it couldn’t be more true.

[ayaahh00]

Every day, I come across news of the terrible things men do to women, and many of these acts are sexual in nature. Sexual assault and harassment are pervasive. Recently, a man ejaculated on a girl who was shopping at a dollar store, and not shockingly, he had done this to three other women before. In New York, there's a man who punches women in the face and insults them. Reading about these acts makes me question how men have held power and control in society for so long. How is it that, for centuries, men have maintained such dominance that dismantling the patriarchy now feels like an impossible task.

In the case of the Dollar Tree incident, the perpetrator wasn’t even charged with sexual assault, even though it clearly was. Why? Because the police force, like many other sectors, is predominantly male. The justice system and government positions are overwhelmingly held by men. Even where women are present, their numbers are so low that their influence is minimal.Why does the justice system and the government fail to protect women? Where is the control, the safety, and the protection for women? How can women ever feel safe when we read about police officers who themselves commit acts of sexual violence? When men hold most positions of power, how can we expect women to be safe? How many more stories should we hear of men in power raping, sexually assaulting, and abusing women? Exploiting their power to abuse women. How many more of those stories should we hear? Until when will you keep having men in power? Until when?

[hadesoftheladies]

it's normal to be insulted by femininity as a girl or woman and it's really simple why.

the core philosophy of patriarchy is that men and women are not defined by their sex but by their sexual roles in the male sexual hierarchy (a naturalistic fallacy). the philosophy of patriarchy cannot allow for equality at any given point, because a man ceases to be a man if he is not dominant and a woman seizes to be a woman if she is not submissive. keep this in mind.

so a woman as defined by patriarchy is a complementary thing (non-human, like animals or "nature") to a man's estate. the woman identity, as construed by patriarchy, exists solely for male pleasure and estate. that means the woman is only a woman if (it/she) is an asset to a male's estate. so it/she must be a wife, a concubine, a tradeable daughter (this is opportunity for wealth), a prostitute or mother. please note, in all these roles, a woman is always meant to be subordinate or she/it is not a woman.

now remember, this is only patriarchal philosophy, but this philosophy/worldview needs to become an ideology and way of life. so patriarchs, in order to justify their made-up bullshit about the sexes and their right to exploit without consequences, must naturalize this worldview. they can create patriarchal religions (for whichever has the power over life and death defines the value and purpose of a soul) and language (whoever defines the world controls how it is perceived).

but CLOTHES are an expression of both. clothes, aside from simply being utilitarian (even in ancient times), were visual symbols denoting things like class, age, sex, nationality, and beliefs. NOW UNDERSTAND, the first class distinction in human societies was between men and women. men were higher humans hence were to be treated as a distinct upper class, and women were lower-class.

class distinction via sex was the first kind of class distinction. so it became increasingly important to the patriarchal state that women and men had to dress according to their class (the Old Testament of the Bible shows that this was indeed important to early patriarchal states in the ANE via verses like Deuteronomy 22:5 which reads, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.”) In short, clothes do not have sex (no garment can chan he your chromosomes), but they do have sex-class (which is gender).

in the development of patriarchy, the veil in the ancient near east, became a symbol of women's sexual status, publicly announcing them as married, concubines, virgins, etc. (i encourage you to read The Beginning of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner for more in-depth information on all this). clothes then, and today, have always been about determining women as a sexual class and what role they performed in that sexual class (modest, up for sale, married, low-value, lesbian/deviant).

because men get to define what women are, they get to define what our clothes mean. they get to decide if something is modest or if a woman is "asking for it."

what does this have to do with femininity?

patriarchal belief= a woman is a thing, defined explicitly by her inequality to man, that exists purely for the pleasure and purpose of the man. this means a woman can only be a sexual slave (whether as a mother/wife or a whore) and cannot live or exist outside of this male-defined sexuality (temptress/justified sexualization of underage girls) without becoming something other than a woman (a monster, a witch, ungodly, mentally ill). since it was made for man, it cannot pursue interests outside of pleasing him and still be a natural, healthy thing.

enter gender.

femininity (and gender) is how women are regulated by the patriarchal state. it is a costume, a uniform, that signifies an obedient subordinate, but it is also a performance that is constantly tested and scored. women with low scores get re-educated or removed from society (via death or ostracization). femininity is how women are policed. all you have to do is to look at the traits of femininity and it's rules.

the natural female face/body should always be palatable, pleasing and presentable to the man and what he specifically finds attractive (so it doesn't matter that you're from a different culture or of a different class, if you're dressing "modestly" or "promiscuously"--this is the only primary rule: that you please men and that you are tasteful to the man who fancies you)

this means that the woman's health is secondary and her body should be editable, adaptable, picked apart and put back together on a whim, on any and every level to appeal to any man who wants her (cosmetic surgery, corsets, trends)

nurture is paramount to the character of a woman (because a woman is meant to be an excellent breeder)

softness and smallness (signals submissiveness, passiveness, defeat, weakness--all of which are proper womanly behaviour)

martyrdom (a woman exists for the preservation of the man and his estate)

silence (this communicates mental submission which is important, women should not voice their experiences, grievances, frustrations, desires, stories because she is showing agency and none of these qualities aid her identity as a sexual servant)

i want you to look at and analyze, even within your own cultures, what femininity is defined as wherever it exists, and then see if you can find any connection to how it enforces the idea of the patriarchal woman-thing. the entire performance, clothing and behaviour, is enforced in order to justify the fictional woman-thing in patriarchal imagination.

but you are a human being.

you have always been able to think, feel, disagree, feel anger . . . because you are a person with a sense of dignity, history and purpose outside male-defined sexuality. so when you as a girl or woman express disdain at femininity, it is not because you think "feminine" women are beneath you. it is because you know femininity is beneath every woman and yourself.

the capitalistically driven insecurity market that pushes women to seek out the security of male validation is beneath all of us. the performance is beneath all of us. we were human before we were mothers, wives, sex workers. we were beautiful and wonderful before makeup. we were human before men looked at us and called us fuckable. we were powerful and divine before men told us we were demonic and simply angelic, servants of gods rather than goddesses ourselves. we had the capacity to create and invent the world before men told us we didn't have heads for learning.

we have always been human and always will be.

femininity is a patriarchal polemic against our humanity. it's fundamental philosophy disagrees with the reality of us. that's why there's so much anger and fear around this culture.

some of us, as girls, resented the fact that our mothers asked us to swallow the fact that they accepted (as right) their humiliation and ours. that they wanted us to show men and boys that we accepted that we were made to be humiliated. of course we got angry. of course we felt confused. didn't our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends care that this performance was never-ending humiliation as we were forced to parade ourselves in order to compete for male approval? in front of the eyes of men and boys we knew mocked us for everything? so we said, we're not like other girls. other girls want to keep up with this. maybe they like humiliation? but we can't live this way. something must be wrong with us, or with them. they're sheep, or we're disgusting lesbians. but the truth is that we're all just in a world of pain and desperation.

your (feminine) clothes are not made with you in mind, but they are also made to keep you minding yourself. checking yourself. making sure your bra doesn't show. your underwear doesn't slip. your belly isn't too prominent. it keeps you eager to perform your role. to win against a race you can't even define because you haven't ever questioned if it ends. you get approval from the state because you are trained to self-regulate, and you have been trained well. the relief you feel at the approval of other girls or boys is that they are giving you a high score. which means you are safe. you are beautiful, you are a good performer. you will be picked and not left behind.

you may say you dress for the girls, but that's part of the problem, still. you and the girls are. you are still agreeing with the political philosophy of patriarchy when you uncritically wear the uniform of the woman-thing. you think of yourself as the woman-thing. you think of your face and body as infinitely editable. delete the breasts, delete the pores, enlarge the eyes like you're a doll on a Wii avatar creator. and so other girls are scared of being themselves because you all know there's something here to fear. there's rejection and punishment waiting for pretty ladies who don't comply.

but you're a living, complete human being, darling. you are an ecosystem with mysteries as old as the universe in you. you are a person that deserves to be here fully and freely. this is your world, too. our world.

so you see why gender cannot be reclaimed by us in a meaningful sense? it is a performance that is invented, re-invented and validated by the philosophy of our dehumanization. it will never be independent of it in this system.

you are worth the freedom and strength you can give yourself. you are worth the fight out of this.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

we need more feminist horror

[coochiequeens]

Showing concern for an exploited woman is not homophobia"

The woman has three kids and a mother that needs her? Surrogate mothers face an increased risk of pregnancy complications. If something were to happen to her that would leave 3 kids and her sick mother without her.

[womendeservehumanity]

If you ever need a reminder of how much men hate you and how little empathy (really none) they have for you. Look no further than Mason Greenwood. A footballer who has literally got more famous and more support AFTER he was exposed with audio clips and photo evidence of abusing and attempting to rape his girlfriend. So many man that like this man not even in spite of his crimes but BECAUSE of them and their inclination to support and protect even the most depraved of males. Go on any of his social media accounts and he gets nothing but love and praise. He has collective support from men. And the few outliers that condemn him and support for him get called simps and white knights. You are considered a white knight as a male for saying that a rapist is bad and shouldn’t be able to represent the hugest sport globally. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about that gender idk what will.

And yes. His girlfriend forgave him. And they now have a daughter together which is terrifying. But to this poor woman is nothing but trauma bonded to this man and her forgiveness doesn’t make him any less of a monster. She has NO ONE but him. When she came forward she got so much harassment and vitriol. Her own fucking family told her to forgive him because he’s a rich footballer. She had no resources, no support system, nothing. And what’s crazy is to this day this woman gets more hate and harassment than the man that abused and raped her. They hate her for being victimized by him and exposing that. They hate her for staying because she made a big deal for “nothing”. Again, men hate you. So much. I pray this woman finds healing and can get out of this situation. Sadly, I think it will have to take another escalation. No matter what, trust and believe males will have more vitriol towards her.

This is why I cannot for the life of me care about false accusations and men’s supposed fear of it. They try to convince us they’re not silencing victims when they immediately dismiss every woman who comes forward with a story of abuse/rape as a liar. They simply want to make sure innocent men aren’t getting their lives ruined. Meanwhile men that they 100% cannot deny did it (greenwood, playboi carti, Chris brown, etc.) literally face no repercussions. They still support them. It has never and will never be about the insanely rare instances of false accusations. It will always be about silencing women and protecting men.

Because if it was truly about the truth they’d be doubting males. When they’re accused of abuse or rape and obviously lie 99% of the time and say they didn’t do it and it comes out they did in fact do it, no one generalizes males as liars. No one is like “oh he said he didn’t. But so many men have and it turned out they were lying” but all it takes is a handful of women lying for every woman to be a possible liar. What a joke

[gothhabiba]

maybe this is a quibble, but saying that e.g. Black men or gay men are not oppressed or marginalised “for” being men but rather “for” being Black or gay—as much as I agree with the basic idea that “men” writ large are not an oppressed group, lmao—is treating “identities” as though they are more discrete and purely additive than they are.

but e.g. Black men are not oppressed “for” being Black but not “for” being men—they are oppressed as Black men. “Black masculinity” is created, fetishised, vilified, mythologised &c. in specific ways that go beyond what you can understand through analysing “Blackness” as though it is unrelated to gender. these things are always more than the sum of their parts

[motherjanerainy]

colleen hoover is the female version of a male author

[twilightarcade]

if I was a character I would've gotten non binary headcannoned so hard

[dykesynthezoid]

I know that talking about Louis’s history as a pimp can very quickly become an extremely touchy subject, and for good reason, but the idea that pimps have not historically been exploitative is. Just sort of not at all grounded in reality. Obviously there’s certainly a lot of variation in exactly what the relationship between a pimp and their employees can look like. But it should also be obvious that even if a pimp is not behaving in a way that is personally exploitative, that the system they’re a part of is still placing them in a position of power over the people who are working for them.

This isn’t bc sex work is inherently bad or that it can’t be ethical, it’s bc things like misogyny and classism and misogynoir still exist when you work in the sex industry.

[filmswithoutfaces]

Blonde (2022) dir. Andrew Dominik

[coochiequeens]

A woman wanted to have a relationship with the child she gave birth to. And the men's response "was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family." But the kid was created from her egg. She is the kids biological mother.

5 June, 2024 By Julie Bindel

This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

There is a contradiction at the heart of the international surrogacy industry. Its participants pretend that surrogates’ feelings for the children in their wombs do not exist, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent them acting on those feelings. Many commissioning parents broker the babies in jurisdictions that allow restrictions on surrogates’ rights.

In the UK, this contradiction was recently laid bare in a Family Court case (citation number: [2024] EWFC 20). A gay male couple were engaged in a long-running legal battle with their son’s surrogate. Rather than vanish after handing over the child, she wanted a role in the boy’s life. The men’s response was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family. There was “no vacancy” for her to occupy in his life, they claimed, and it was prejudicial to gay families to suggest otherwise.

At the start of this story, G, the surrogate in question, was a 36-year-old single mother of a teenager and naive about what surrogacy entailed. The commissioning parents were friends of her sister but not people she knew. Aged 43 and 36 and married, they were members of an agency, Surrogacy UK, and very familiar with its protocols — which included a “getting to know you” period — and support. However rather than go through the agency, the men chose to fast-track the process with an independent arrangement with G.

Following a failed transfer of a donor egg, the trio decided to use G’s own egg. The men agreed that G would have contact with the child, but none of the parties properly considered the implications. The relationship between the three deteriorated during G’s pregnancy. G gave birth to a boy in September 2020.

After the birth, G would not initially consent to the parental order, under which she would lose parental responsibility as she feared being cut out of the child’s life. But during a lengthy online hearing in which she was alone and unrepresented — unlike the men — G was pressured by the judge to agree to the parental order along with a contact agreement called a child arrangements order.

After obtaining parental responsibility, the men quickly reneged on the agreement. When G turned up at their house for a pre-arranged visit they threatened to call the police. She recorded the meeting. The Family Court judge later declared of the recording “what was said has rightly been described as ‘horrendous’”. The men told G she was “harbouring a desire to have an inappropriate relationship” by wanting the boy to recognise her as his mother and accused her of having “rejected the role of surrogate”.

In January 2022, the men refused to allow G to visit her son and applied for the contact agreement to be changed. G then made her own application for the parental order to be overturned. She won her case in November the same year. This restored her parental responsibility for the child and removed it from the man who was not the child’s biological father.

The men redoubled their efforts to remove G as a parent, this time applying for an adoption order. During court proceedings, they claimed their son’s identity was that of a child of same-sex parents being raised within the LGBT community and that he belonged to a “motherless family”.

As a lesbian who came out in the 1970s, I’m only too aware of the history of demonisation of lesbian and gay couples. Parents who conceived children in heterosexual relationships were often denied custody and contact if they came out as gay after separation. Foster and adoption agencies were openly prejudiced. But times have changed, and same-sex parents are now a common sight at the school gates in some parts of the UK.

Claims that the children of same-sex parents are disadvantaged in some way have largely been defeated with an expanding body of evidence (e.g. Zhang Y, Huang H, Wang M, et al., BMJ Global Health, 2023) showing their outcomes are similar to those of heterosexual families. Gay rights are robustly supported in most public institutions and private organisations. For a gay couple to call on historic prejudice to justify excluding a mother from a child’s life is unforgivable.

In any case, the men’s argument was fatally — and obviously — undermined by its own logic. If the boy did not have a mother, there would be no need for the court case.

As the jointly-instructed clinical psychologist in the case recognised, the driver of the men’s case was the “elephant in the room” — G’s existence as the child’s legal and biological mother — and the men’s fear of her maternal bond with her son. The men had difficulties “accepting the reality” of the child’s conception, the psychologist found, and considering what sense the boy might make of the situation as he grew up.

“They have strongly held to the surrogacy agreement and the narrative of [G] being a ‘surrogate’ because in that narrative there are no, or hardly any feelings from the surrogate for the baby,” the psychologist wrote. He described the men as attempting an “erasure of the mother”, which he said was not in the child’s best interest as it did not reflect reality.

Refusing an adoption order that would likely have resulted in cutting G from her son’s life, the court ruled that G should have direct and unsupervised contact with him. The judge criticised the men for blaming G for everything that went wrong. The judgment also raised questions about how an adoption order would be explained to the boy, given it would have been made without his mother’s consent.

To some extent, history repeated itself in this case. There are multiple examples of legal battles involving lesbian couples who created a child with the help of a sperm donor who later inconveniently insisted on contact or on playing the role of father.

As the Court of Appeal ruled in one such case in 2012: “What the adults look forward to before undertaking the hazards of conception, birth and the first experience of parenting may prove to be illusion or fantasy. [The couple] may have had the desire to create a two-parent lesbian nuclear family completely intact and free from fracture resulting from contact with the third parent. But such desires may be essentially selfish and may later insufficiently weigh the welfare and developing rights of the child that they have created.”

What’s concerning in this case is the language used — the “erasure” of the mother

Contested surrogacy cases are little different from these wrangles and, indeed, from any other contact disputes. What’s concerning about G’s case, and what makes it different from the case of the lesbian parents above, is the language used. The psychologist explicitly referred to the men’s attempted “erasure” of the mother. They simply refused to acknowledge G’s existence in any of the forms in which she fulfilled a maternal capacity: legal, genetic and as the person who gave birth. They were supported in this illusion by the professionals who weighed in on their behalf.

In the space of a few years the term “motherless” has moved from an emotive description of absence to a positive identity argued for in court. This shift is entirely consistent with the narrative that surrogacy participants feed to the public.

When celebrity couples introduce their surrogate children on social media, the women who gave birth to them are rarely mentioned. The new babies are “welcomed” as if they have been sent by special delivery. That is in line with the attitude of the international surrogacy industry, which reduces the role of the birth mother to that of a “carrier” or rented womb.

For commissioning parents, it must be very easy to regard the woman who bore their child for nine months as a mere service provider, someone to be gratefully forgotten as soon as the final instalment is paid and the product handed over.

Meanwhile, parts of the NHS are determined to de-gender childbirth, routinely referring to “birthing parents” rather than mothers. As an example (there are multiple) the Royal United Hospital Bath’s “information for families” on labour induction refers to dads, but there is no mention of mothers — only birthing parents.

Feminists have long campaigned for gender-neutral language to reflect roles that are indeed, or can be, gender-neutral. But the uncoupling of sex from the necessarily female processes of pregnancy and childbirth is a step towards a dystopian future. In 2015 Victoria Smith wrote, “Gender-neutral language around reproduction creates the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy — when what you really end up doing is ignoring it.” I would go further. Gender-neutral language around reproduction — just like any language that obscures reality — reinforces and helps establish hierarchies of oppression.

To the men, G was simply a surrogate womb to a motherless child. But to G and to Z, she was his mother. As the psychologist said, “‘Motherlessness’ does not exist. The child was born from two people, biologically, and from three people, psychologically … The mother certainly played a part, biologically and psychologically, in the conception of the child.”

The case — unremarked and unnoticed by the media — will do nothing to change popular opinion of surrogacy. It is likely to encourage intending parents to explore dubious overseas jurisdictions, where surrogates have fewer rights. The surrogacy profiteers will continue to cheerlead wealthy couples in their exploitation of impoverished and naive women.

As for the word “motherless”: in time it may lose its negative connotations and become solidified as an identity. Will it become a badge that straight children can use to signal their connection to LGBTQ+ community? Or an oppression card that can be deployed by the children of wealthy men to explain bad behaviour towards women? Either way, Disney and Dickens are going to need a lot of rewriting.

[allsortzofcrap]

i feel like for the rest of my life i will be walking around totally normal and then periodically, i will be absolutely brained with a metaphorical anvil falling off the side of a building that represents the absolute bafflement i have towards modern adaptations of sherlock holmes and their treatment of irene adler. bbc's most recent adaptation in particular.

im so sorry. please repeat. she was stupid u say??? and i'm sorry, IN LOVE with him u say??????

i'm a feminist so i think women are capable of being in love and also of being stupid. they can do anything they put their minds to ofc ❤️. but this is too far even for me.

it's just that i can't understand why you would choose to write a narrative that is more mysoginistic than the source material when the source material was written in 1891.

was it intentional? did they somehow not pick up on the implications? was it random?

i can't fathom it. it keeps me awake.

[senior-management]

Okay but what if SSA women aren't men and being SSA isn't some kind of proof we have male tendencies and what if women can appreciate women who are vulnerable losers without being directly attracted to exploiting that vulnerability because, again, we're not men and don't think like men??