#it’s just normal for women to be subhuman. it’s just normal for women to be raped and lied to and violated. that’s just normal!!!

[animentality]

In response to your post about radfems and men, a few years ago I started going down the radfem rabbit hole, a lot of this came from being in a community of men who actually /were/ psychopaths, along with having a father and grandfather who were too. I have PPD as well, so seeing these men act this way and having radfems whispering in my ear "All men want to kill you, all men want to kill you" was DETERIORATING me like acid. I cannot describe to you the hell I was living in each day due to paranoia eating away at me. It felt like my own spirit was a chain link fence turning into rust.

Then I met my husband, and he completely changed my life. And yes I know women can save themselves, we aren't all damsels in distress, but I honestly /was/ too bad off to just pull myself out of it. Since fear of men was the biggest thing killing me from the inside out, a man coming along and showing me that I can both trust people AND at least some men, seriously subdued a massive chunk of my rage, hatred and fear. And he really goes above and beyond too! Every problem I have had he has helped me to fix, along with showing me how to do things myself. Some people may not like that it was a man who "rescued" me, but I don't owe it to anyone to be an idyllic girl power success story, I owe it to myself and to our son to not be a terrified wreck.

I mean I have always suspected that radfems and terfs were like this.

Like my going theory is that if you believe men are irredeemable monsters who can only hurt other people all the time, you clearly don't have good relationships, with anyone at all.

That kind of mistrust of your fellow human beings comes from a well of hurt and paranoia that you're not addressing properly.

I'm glad you found someone to help and love you, though. And I don't think it's anti feminist to need someone to rescue you either.

what's so wrong with being saved, no matter who or what does it?

nice metaphor with the chain link fence btw. that'll live on in my mind for a bit.

[livvyofthelake]

struck fear into my soul. tee don’t do it… don’t do it you don’t have to do this…

[space-apples]

this isn’t me trying to hate at all, however.

the princess leia outfit that scar was drawn in is highly sexualized and it’s normally done to diminish them as subhuman.

it’s a harem-style clothing that heightens violence against swana women. and drawing a white man with orientalist clothing is just a bit wild to me. of course i’m giving people the benefit of the doubt, but yea.

here’s a resource: https://themaydan.com/2020/08/enchantment-orientalism-and-modern-mysticism/

again, no hate at all !! i’ve just seen a whole lot of gtws art with this and i feel like people are either not aware or just not thinking about it!

[dressed2k1ll]

I’m giving up on men because

1. The fact that they all assume they’re experts in everything

2. The fact that they all assume they’re smarter than me immediately

3. The fact that they allow and use slurs to divide women like Karen, Pick Me, Terf, The Main Character, SWERF, prude, slut bitch

4. The only slur they have is incel which relies on the premise that they’re entitled to sex

5. Moms are expected to be perfect and if she makes a mistake she’s a bad mom. Dads are considered perfect despite their mistakes and even being a poor parent

6. They think sex is a service

7. They cannot have a magic sexual moral barrier that divides children from teens from women. I refuse to believe it. And the media sexualizes kids and infantilizes female sexuality… so what now?

8. That porn is so normalized and teen is a category and yet we can’t check a man’s porn viewing history before allowing them to coach, treat, or be alone with vulnerable people.

9. That some will and can and do have sex with corpses. That deadness is sexualized in fashion photography as arousing

10. That choking has become normalized in porn

11. That we know porn becomes increasingly more extreme through algorithm and capitalism

12. That they hide behind plausible deniability and think we are too stupid to see it - like the devils advocate position

13. That they convince themselves their plausible deniability is a moral standard

14. That even the normal married ones with little girls for kids are shitty

15. That they think their pleasure overrides the civil rights of a person

16. That they believe consent magically changes abuse into kink

17. That they don’t even know what misogyny is

18. That they think misandry is somehow comparable

19. That they think my hurting their feelings or making them feel uncomfortable is a violent act. That pointing out violence makes me the violent one.

20. That they defend Johnny Depp

21. That they’re afraid of false accusations

22. That they defend the reputations of men they haven’t met more than the reality of the women who report them lmao

23. They don’t take care of themselves physically

24. They can choose to be civilized but use animal evo psychology to defend subhuman actions

25. They believe that women’s sexuality is an economy for them

26. They created religion to usurp creative power from women

27. They convinced other men that humans came from a man’s rib, from a patriarchal god, when literally no man has NOT come through and from a woman.

28. They have sexualized every aspect of women’s existence including pain and crying

29. They’ve convinced women that empowerment is a feeling and not a change in power position

30. They blame their antisocial loneliness epidemic on us

31. The tried to use the Love Languages on us

32. They created psychiatry as a way to at least in part control women just as they created medicine to control and destroy midwives

33. They place the locus of responsibility outside themselves which makes them perpetual victims

34. They created purity culture

35. They created porn culture

36. They buy and use and masturbate to trafficked and vulnerable women and it doesn’t matter to them

37. They corner me in the workplace

38. They are always looking at us - I want to not be perceived sexually at all

39. They use women for all of their emotional dumping and we aren’t certified to handle it

40. They resent our happiness (shaming it)

41. We had to create laws to keep them from marrying and having sex with kids. Like, everywhere. We haven’t even succeeded globally

42. They hold women in power to an entirely separate standard than men

43. They’re lazy

44. They can solve complex problems and be incentive and self-improving at work, but are seemingly really incapable of doing this for relationships

45. They won’t see something unless it directly impacts them personally

46. They are emotionally unintelligent

47. They are violent

48. They are wilfully ignorant of the constant threat of sexual violence women face

49. They are making and using technology to get past consent

50. They believe women have a use value

51. They’re lying when they say they can’t show emotions : art, culture, music, etc belie this. And this is aside from the fact that we acknowledge their pride, nationalism, anger, boorishness, sulkishness, entitlement, jealousy, etc. these are emotions too.

52. They use power to get or pressure or coerce sex

53. They don’t mentor women professionally unless they’re sexually attracted to them physically

54. They’re bad and aggressive drivers

55. They’re predatory and some don’t know it ???????

56. They play dumb

57. They owe us reparations and refuse to even consider this - we were left out of Das Kapital

58. They try to turn their wives into their mothers

59. They moderate men and women differently in social media spaces

60. We can’t trust them as soldiers or peace corps

61. We can’t trust them alone with kids period - who do we tell kids to go to if they’re lost?!!

62. That they’ve turned violence into sex “body count” “fuck the shit out of you”

63. We can’t be honest with them - we have to tiptoe around them

64. I’m pissed more men aren’t speaking out about the obvious loss of civil rights of women globally - what the hell! It makes me believe that they kinda want it to happen (plausible deniability of course) because like it’s not gonna hurt them right?

65. At any given time I could pull up incidents where instead of intervening while a woman is being assaulted, the assault is filmed by other men. The reverse simply doesn’t happen.

66. They love borrowed authority

67. I hate them because when they ask “what do you want me to do about it?” And you say the most slacktivist thing, they won’t even do that. They’ll do NOTHING.

68. Because the most unsafe place for a woman in the world is the home

69. Because a woman is killed by an intimate partner globally every 11 minutes

70. Because the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the states is murder

71. Because they believe their morals are their best intentions. It’s like they all think they’re brave but he’s anyone done anything brave ?

72. They use weaponized incompetence to control people and be lazy

73. They believe sexism is benevolence

74. Because someone taught them that it’s the thought that counts and it almost never is the thought that counts

75. That gang rape is a thing

76. Because only a handful of men have most of the global wealth

77. They move goalposts: you can say what your experience is but they’ll discount it as one. You can say it’s others that have experienced the same thing and they’ll discount it as over represented.

78. There’s no acceptable way to be really angry with them, and express that, as a woman

79. They feel comfortable making comments about women’s physical appearance, touching us without our consent and bank on us not rocking the boat.

80. They refuse to believe in the wage gap

81. We could have child care as being mandated but because women are primary childcare givers, we don’t have this.

82. Medicine was only tested on both genders recently because it was too difficult to do apparently

83. Our medical issues aren’t taken seriously

84. Mass shooters are almost exclusively men

85. Because they moan about suicide rates and forget to mention all the women and kids and sometimes strangers that suicidal men take with them

86. They believe they’re entitled to sex - through payment guilt or force

87. They rarely care about what girls think unless they have a daughter

88. Cultures abort girl babies and before they just exposed them to the elements. As a result there’s India and China and the Middle East Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan Vietnam etc there are more men than women

89. They don’t stop female genital mutilation. And they could if they wanted to.

90. More than 100 million women are missing - the shortfall of the number of women in the world we would expect in the absence of sex discrimination

91. They desire us to be dependent on them. Independence terrifies them.

92. They let women leave the workforce during the pandemic.

93. They see male history, male writing, male law as standard and they aren’t. They’d freak out if the USA had 9 woman Supreme Court justices

94. They are more sexist than even racist

95. Male over female Domination is the first and most primal form of oppression

96. Prostitution is the first form of trafficking not the worlds oldest profession

97. They can compartmentalize the pain of others - especially if it doesn’t impact them or their family (their own private kingdom)

98. Every man assumes he’s the king and grows up taught that they deserve to own things, people and property

99. They see women as girls all as potential sexual objects. Especially if they’re mad.

100. They treat sex workers as a different class

101. Women don’t keep men as sex slaves

102. They’ve made the law such that women cannot logistically perform murder in self defence

103. They say porn is free speech and that it’s not real when it’s convenient

104. Despite all of this: all of the proof and every experience logged and litigated… that they don’t believe that women still are being oppressed under male supremacy.

105. Because someone has said it’s okay for drag queens to use “bitch serving cunt” as an expression of femininity- and claim it’s not misogynistic

106. Because of the so-called “husband stitch”

#misandry #misogyny #feminism #feminist

[parasiticacidic]

A NonBinary Visor I made at work for Pride!

I work at a leather shop and we get to make special projects for the store so I really wanted to make this enby one specifically because even though leatherworking is very lgbtqia+ friendly you also have the other end of the spectrum being conservatives who make their disgusting opinions very evident whenever they come into the store so to deter those interactions I've been trying to make more pride items for our really amazing lgbtqia+ community along for us staff members :3 idk why people look at me with red hair square pink glasses while I'm wearing capris and think lemme "debate" them on people using they/them pronouns >:[ BABE GET A GRIP!

(Also the amount of disrespect and hate I get for just being/presenting as a young women working at this store is insane)(so I know it's just as hard if not harder for the other lgbtqia+ workers in our chain putting up with bullshit customers will say to us)

(Example of an interaction i had: I was just tending the register when someone comes up with his wife and son and the first thing he said was "Do you work here" and I'm like obvi ? Then he said "No, do you work here work here like do you actually know anything about this stuff" and I was like "I do this is my name badge" (also I was trained?? Extensively bc we also do leather classes so I need to understand and know different things) and then he was like "well I'm just wondering bc I have a question, is there actually a difference between leather paint and acrylic paint" I said "yes they are formulated differently but if you wanna know specifics read the ingredients on the label" like tf I'm not gonna be nice all for that build up of your question like I'm not qualified to answer just for it to be about paint (I'm also a painting major?!) bc if it was my male co worker working the register you wouldn't have lead with "do you work here" you would've just asked, like NO IM JUST STANDING BEHIND THE REGISTER BC I WONDERED IN OFF THE STREET uuuguggjrhrhrhrhr, also his wife and son just watching this interaction??? There's so much that could be said about that but whatever my beef is with him, like it's not a big deal but it's the way men feel like they can come up to me and immediately question my credibility working here) *steps off my soapbox*

Anyways (ToT) happy pride! The amount of ridicule we face in the work place is beyond disrespectful they don't even need to know anything about you they just size you up and immediately come to their own conclusions about you and treat you a subhuman when they are the actual animals, in the end we have a better understanding of ourselves, humanity, honesty, and bravery when they will never be able to escape from the cage society has put their minds in (which ultimately is sad for them but if you're a conscious being there's moments in your life when you can reflect on your self and the environment around you and find your truth instead of continuing to "play your part" but the animals that benefit from the system will never seek change and will hate on the ones who defy their "normal" always out of fear)

[bloomshroomz]

Some people can't seem to decide whether it's more stigmatized to get bottom surgery as a trans person or not get bottom surgery as a trans person. I'm here to say that both are incredibly stigmatized, because being trans is stigmatized, and there is no "right" way to do it. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Transphobes think that bottom surgery is mutilation. They think that it poses a threat to society. They think that it's horrific and disgusting. They think that it couldn't possibly be consensual, because trans people consenting to these surgeries apparently isn't enough, no matter how insistent or persistent we are. They think that it's medical malpractice. They think that post-op genitals "don't count" as real genitals. They think that post-op genitals are inherently inferior to natal genitals in both visual appeal and function.

Transphobes think that pre/non-op trans people are predatory, especially trans women and transfems. They think that trans people are trying to "force" people to touch their natal genitals. They weaponize other queer identities: "You're not a woman; what lesbian would want to touch a penis?" / "You're not a man; what gay man would want to touch a vagina?"

But above all, transphobes think that no matter what you do with your genitals, you're a freak. A monster. A predator. A danger to society. A sign of the end times. A subhuman thing which forfeited its right to respect when it decided to deviate from the norm.

A transphobic comic comes to mind, which demonstrates this pretty well. The comic featured a caricature of a gay transgender man, "invading" a space for gay men.

It was visually apparent that his arm had been used as a graft for phalloplasty; this was a clear dig at bottom surgery. Transphobes love pointing at trans men's post-op arms and going "Eww! Look at how mutilated that arm is! This is what the trans agenda is doing to our precious, innocent, confused young girls! And also trans men are evil and are grooming little girls into being like them! But let's call it the 'trans agenda' instead, so we can remove their humanity and pretend this is a feminist statement. I swear I loooove trans men they're my sisters, take pity on them xoxo they just need help :3"

But despite the caricature's phalloplasty, he still referred to himself as having a vagina, and insisted that the gay men in the room had to enjoy touching it. Clearly casting pre/non-op trans people as predators who just want to pressure people into touching their natal genitals. And, if we interpret the caricature being a Salmacian, that's just another added layer of stigma.

The caricature both had bottom surgery and didn't have bottom surgery, because they needed to demonstrate that both options are horrific. Because, it's not about the surgery. It's about being trans.

We need to destigmatize bottom surgery. We need to destigmatize pre/non-op trans bodies as well. We need to normalize bodily autonomy. We need trans rights and acceptance for all trans people.

[velvetvexations]

Honestly my biggest awakening re: how the radfem/TERF mindset works was when I saw JKR's ilk REALLY pushing the idea that it was perfectly reasonable to be terrified of all men and suggesting otherwise is silencing victims or whatever, because my trauma also left me scared of men...and women, and everyone, but I recognized that I literally cannot live my life under the assumption that everyone around me is a Threat and thus went to therapy to learn how to feel safe in a healthy way because my unreasonable fear is not someone else's problem, and that's something TERFs and radfems refuse to accept or acknowledge because with "men" it's apparently justified. But like I have read their stories of their trauma and seen the way they use it to justify their bigotry and it just reads as an unhealthy coping mechanism. Like if you are legit SO scared of men that you genuinely believe all men(and people they say are men) not only can hurt you but will do so immediately if given half the chance and thus you must be hyper-vigilant at all times and constantly treat innocent men(and trans women, intersex folks, ect.) like subhuman monsters...then yeah I'm sorry you're living in your trauma and need help. Being terrified of half the population isn't normal or healthy, even if you weren't using it as an excuse to be a raging bigot.

And god it pisses me off even more when queer people start pulling that shit and using it to attack masc queers of all stripes, like I'm sorry assuming all men/masc people are dangerous is not healthy. It will not keep you safe. And more often than not it leads to marginalized people suffering, and it is truly wild to me that anyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, would not only be fine with innocent people being crushed to protect their feelings, but claim it's praxis. Using your trauma as an excuse to harm people who never did anything wrong isn't progressive it's genuinely kinda evil and it should not be normalized!! Please figure out the difference between a trauma response and normal, healthy ways of protecting yourself that don't harm other people.

I also feel like if these types met a man who was abused by a woman and thus has trouble relaxing and feeling safe around them, even if it didn't effect how he actually treats real living women, they'd call him a raging misogynist, but when the roles are reversed it's actually fine?? Make it make sense.

Very well said, anon.

[lexivass]

what changed your mind about the Israel/Palestine conflict?

Hello, anon! I got this ask this morning, and it took me some time to respond to it because this is a delicate issue and I wanted to measure my words the best I could. As I was writing this I realized many of my beliefs were rooted in antisemitism, so I apologize in advance. If any Jewish person reads this, please feel free to correct me, and again, I’m sorry. Some of the things below really make me feel ashamed.

I wouldn't say I "changed" my mind about the conflict, but that I've begun to see things in a wider perspective, especially when it comes to the October 7 attack and the veiled (but not really) antisemitism that’s been growing lately (I don’t mean to say it didn’t happen before, but that people are getting more comfortable doing it now under the guise of being pro-Palestine. Many people aren’t even trying to sugarcoat it anymore, they’re straight up saying “the jews are to blame for everything and they control everything”).

It’s clear that the government of Israel has been conducting brutal attacks in many parts of Gaza and killing innocent civilians since October 7 - no one can convince me the 20.000+ people who died were Hamas terrorists and that every single building bombed was a Hamas hideout, and that a ceasefire is not the best solution.

But at the same time there has been a lot of misinformation (and insensibility)  going around, and the way people react to it shows that antisemitism is still very present, it is still very easy to look at jewish people with distrust or to ignore what they say because we think that after the Holocaust their troubles ended forever, and they shouldn’t complain about anything. Basically, that they are not a minority, therefore what they say shouldn’t be taken into consideration. But that is not the case.

The government of Israel has done terrible things in the past decades, no one is denying that.  But a government doesn't always represent its people. It’s a very old saying, one that we preach so loudly but when it comes to the people of Israel we tend to forget about it. Like many others, when October 7 happened I thought Hamas was a resistance group, and that the hostages were not being hurt or murdered. I believed it without even running a background check on them. And whenever I saw Jewish people saying that a new wave of antisemitism was growing I simply didn’t believe it. It’s not something I’m proud of but I genuinely believed that they were only saying this because they didn’t want people to criticize the government of Israel. 

It was only after I swallowed my own arrogance that I realized this was not an exaggeration. There are people who frankly think jews are subhuman, that Hitler was right, that the Hamas hostages deserved everything they went through. I saw a post with a link to an article about the victims who were violated by Hamas terrorists. I did not read it because I heard it was extremely brutal, but I saw the comments and the insensitivity in those comments was disturbing. I saw people saying it was pure propaganda, that nothing happened to them because they were just “lying jewish women”, that even if it happened it was “resistance against oppression”. I cannot say if it happened or not, but it’s not normal to look at someone who was kidnapped, kept away from their families for months and put through God knows what and claim publicly and out loud, with 100% conviction, that everything that comes out their mouths is a lie.

Why is it “believe the victims” until they’re jewish? Or “listen to minorities” until the minority in question are jewish people? Why is it that we wave an anti-nazi flag over our heads but still treat jewish people like shit? We, and by we I mean people who believe in social activism, don't do this to black, queer, indigenous people, so why do it to jews?

As I began to read more about nazi rhetoric and antisemitism I came across a reblog from one of my (now former) favorite poets, in which the OP was basically preaching for the “ruin” of Israel. They didn’t say “I hope Netanyahu leaves office”, “I hope the army soldiers who were filmed practicing brutality towards civilians are punished”. They said Israel as a whole, forgetting that there are people there. Civilians who are against violence, protesting in the sake of Palestine, people who do want Netanyahu out of the office, and people who have nowhere else to go. How do you expect to move millions of people to another country? What guarantee that this country even wants them? We see it every two months tragedies that occur involving mass immigration. “Oh, but the US can help them!” Do you think the US gives a shit about jewish people? Do you think the UK put Israel in the middle east because they wanted jews to have a home? Look me in the eye and tell me you believe that.

Palestians have the right to recover their seized territories and to live dignified lives. Israelis have a right to have a Jewish state. Both peoples deserve better, it’s not a competition about who suffers more. I’m not a diplomat, expert or judge of an international court of justice, but it’s clear that the minute people start to take sides one of the sides will be seen as the victim and the other as the villain. When people preach for the “ruin” of Israel they are no better than the people who say Palestinians deserve to die.

[neotrances]

“i mean it happened like 100 years ago it doesnt matter anymore” i am still 70% more likely to die during childbirth today compared to white women directly because of slavery. do you have any idea how close we are to those times. my great grandmother and all of her siblings were slaves as children . you are so tone deaf and disrespectful “you gotta get over it at some point” the slaughter of my people is normalized today because we are still seen as subhuman because of slavery, it’s like they truly can’t grasp how bad slavery was it’s like they just can’t empathize

[souvlakicocaine]

I don’t believe “cis” women exist. no one organically aligns w an artificial design that males spent hundreds of thousands of years emasculating subjugating and starving female humans into. the organic woman is literally just a “man” (connotatively known as the neutral default) w a vagina (+ female sex characteristics etc). honestly and unfortunately I believe the most promotive thing women can do in earth’s current state is transition. this way you’re demanding humanity regards u exactly the same as a man, but w a vagina. females are starved thru diet culture, shaved like mole rats, and preen themselves 2 b sexually selected by men through either rape or manipulation who produce traits men want to see in female offspring this way. we gotta eliminate sexual dimorphism honestly. we’re already the species with the lowest degree. women take roids grow beards bulk up eat more abandon feminine neuroses dress normal unlearn that stupid high pitch 2 ur voice in fact actively make it lower get more violent commit more crimes right now. leave women addicted 2 acting subhuman n braindead in the dust we have no time 4them

[cannabisbutch]

Would you mind explaining/elaborating on what you mean when you say that human is a political term? I saw your tags on that Nonhuman identity poll and I've never heard of that concept and I'm incredibly intrigued! Especially bc a lot of our other values and beliefs are similar, I would be grateful for the opportunity to expand my perspective if you had the energy to impart yours! (If not and u need to delete this ask tho, absolutely no worries!)

Yea! So 1 i did fuck up a bit in that is sociopolitical not just political, bc both law and social attitudes are connected to how person is a political term, as in, who is considered a Person. Historically, a person (lawfully) was a white, property owning cis man. This can be seen by how laws in many Western countries were geared towards that specific group. Everyone else, even white women to an extent, were basically considered lesser beings. I see that same sort of logic reflected in how we, as a society, talk abt humanity. Like what is considered "human"? Bc a lot of what (western) society consider normal human thoughts, behavior,and actions, are based solely on the behavior and opinions of white wealthy cis men. When this is the only group who's opinion matters and is seen as the ideal, anyone who can't match up to that (people of color especially Black ppl, women, queer people, disabled people, homeless people) are automatically put in the subhuman/nonhuman category.

A particular horrible example is when a sex worker is murdered/killed, cops often report it as a "no humans involved" bc to them (and society) a sex worker has failed to be properly Human. [Link]

If someone can fail to match up to what is considered human while still being the same biological being, then human is a political category, not just a biological term.

[briarpatch-kids]

(Tags say # yep! # and you guys are amazing! # you're totally not less human #disabilities are normal)

This is kind of what im talking about, nobody anywhere on the post said anything about us being less human for using incontinence products. This was a "hey this is a more common issue than you thought and if you know 3 women who gave birth you probably know somone with incontinence" type of post not even positivity or talking about stigma. Just "this is totally normal"

But no, the person leaving these tags had to remind everyone that they totally don't think we're subhuman. And that's so awkward and uncomfortable like you might as well be the lady at the farmers market who said "bless you for coming outside" to me last week.

[ciderjacks]

can we please please actually talk about women’s rights beyond abortion bc I feel like that’s all that gets focused on. Like why is it so normal for women to be treated as subhuman in every aspect. You guys have to recognize like there’s a systemic issue in all of this not just the obvious law enforcement stuff right. Like why are we abused so much more frequently and yet it’s never taken seriously, i understand men can face abuse too but i feel like you really really need to be able to recognize that it’s an issue primarily affecting women and it’s because women are viewed as subhuman. Like that’s what it all comes back to. At what point did we decide we were over talking about women’s rights I feel like I’m going insane.

[mintedwitcher]

I just had two transphobes attempt to insult and degrade me by calling me a tranny, because I said I wasn't going to stop referring to cis people as cis. Then they got absurdly angry that I didn't react in the way they wanted when they called me a tranny. Because I've been calling myself that, proudly, for years now. I've reclaimed that term for myself, because fuck yeah I am a tranny. I think it's a funny term and I like it for myself. And these transphobes lost their goddamn minds because I didn't react the way they wanted me to.

See, this is what exposes them, though. They compared being called 'cis', a scientifically accurate term describing their relationship to their gender, to a transphobic slur, implying with that comparison that the terms were of equal moral value and impact. They're so mad about being called 'cis', because they see 'trans' as an insult, and therefore assume 'cis' is an insult. Their worst fear in this world is being assumed to be trans, or being called trans, or even being accused of being supportive or accepting of trans people. Because they see trans existence as inherently subhuman.

They don't even try to cover that up. They demand we use terms like 'normal' or 'biological' when talking about cis people, implying once again that being trans is subhuman. They cannot stand the thought that they could need to be classified in the same way that we classify transness.

This is also, btw, why their arguments and their composure absolutely shatters when you compare the terms 'cis' and 'trans' to terms like 'tall' or 'short' or 'blonde'. Because 'cis' and 'trans' are adjectives, they're descriptors, that's all they are. They're a way to classify groups of people into mostly accurate categories to make discussions simpler.

If I wanted to give a lecture about the commonality of blonde hair, for example, I would be wasting time and breath by trying to describe blondeness without using the word blonde, and I'd most likely end up accidentally excluding some types of blonde hair while accidentally including some types of hair that would be better suited under the 'redhead' or 'brunette' categories. The same can be said for discussions of gender and sex, which is the only context where these terms are actually widely used.

If I wanted to talk about cis women, I would say cis women. Because that includes all women who were born female and still identify as women now. If I wanted to talk about all women, cis and trans together, I'd simply say women. Likewise, for discussions involving only trans women, I would say trans women. Notice how in none of these circumstances anyone is being incorrectly categorised. Discussions of cis women stay about cis women, discussions of trans women stay about trans women. Discussions about women stay about women.

Categories are helpful. Adjectives are helpful. No one is hurting you or excluding you by calling you cis, unless you're not cis.

And really if you have this much of a visceral reaction to being called cisgender, maybe it's time you do some self-reflection, because you might not be cisgender.

[highpriestessofchildsacrifice]

Rambly thoughts under read more, sorry if this doesn't work lol

Yk the more I think about it i don't think it's anti-psych stigma that drives women to explain away their cis male partner's abuse as the result of armchair diagnoses of narcissism, bpd, etc as opposed to readily apparent misogyny and patriarchal ideology. It's cis men's misogyny and patriarchal ideology that naturalizes, essentializes, and MINIMIZES itself & drives women to seek out literally any other explanation for what society perceives as an aberration/deviance from the norm (in spite of cis men's domestic abuse of women being one of the most powerful tools of patriarchy + cis men's poor treatment of their female partners being a standard demonstration of misogyny). Re minimizing: in 2023 ppl r more readily calling out verbalized misogynistic statements (like denying the wage gap, calling women slurs, etc) than, like, unspoken bad behavior

And ofc lesbians cheat, women cheat, women abuse, men abuse men, etc - there are a range of reasons for all of these behaviors. That being said: cishet men do these terrible things to women far more than anyone else does it to anyone else. bc patriarchy is not just one of many reasons; it's the most powerful reason. It's the one that organizes our entire society and oppresses over half the world in some way. "insecurity complex bc of dead dad" often causes the same result but it's just never gonna compete numbers wise lol. Also patriarchy has helped normalize many of the toxic and abusive interpersonal dynamics that we see replicated within LGBT relationships

Also beyond pinning this on indoctrination, internalized misogyny, etc - it is so important to give proper and thoughtful consideration to the emotional dynamics at play. That is such a crucial hallmark of feminist politics. Bc at the heart of what we're talking about is a painfully intimate contradiction. your partner who says he loves you, wants to be with you, wants to fuck you, wants you to carry his children, etc - he is not only abusive, not only wanting power over you --- he is also subscribing to, entrenched in, carrying out, & inflicting upon you an ideology, behavioral standard, & way of thinking/life that fundamentally sees you as subhuman, not human

It's the difference btwn "he is harming me and that's not okay; I deserve safety and life and respect" and "whether he realizes it or not, and regardless of all his other motives and issues, he believes that bc I am a woman, I do not deserve safety and life and respect, and that I deserve to be harmed by him". the latter implies an ideological indoctrination that is uniquely disturbing, maybe even intentional. It so forcefully exposes the political in the intimate/domestic. It is horrible and more crucially it is extremely and understandably difficult for a woman to accept as true. So the armchair diagnosis culture thrives 😑🚬

weirdly this also helps me articulate my own boundaries about supporting female friends who r in abusive/toxic relationships that r very obviously shaped by the guy's misogyny. That shldnt need a political rationale ofc but now that I think about it I've literally had to say "your constantly cheating boyfriend clearly hates women and views us as disposable so I don't want him to be at dinner with us and he's not invited to my apartment" to multiple people lol. And I know some of my friends have had to say this too. Bc up until that point the poor treatment seems to only exist within the context of the relationship. But like, no, he's literally a bigot :(

[coochiequeens]

Old article but worth sharing today for International Day of No Prostitution

October 5th is International Day of No Prostitution. In 2019 we are marking it by remembering the women who didn’t survive prostitution – including all the women whose disappearances and deaths were unmarked and unnoticed – as we resolve to not rest until the vicious system of prostitution is brought to an end.

Remembering the Void by Rebecca Mott

This is written to all the lost prostituted women, whether gone through death or disappearance. I write as one who was lucky enough to exit alive and relatively unscarred.

To write as an exited woman, is to be surrounded by ghosts and the knowledge of death being a norm. So if you choose to say “prostitution is just sex work,” never express that to exited women, most of whom have seen death in the raw, and know of many of our prostituted sisters who have been erased from existence.

To understand prostitution, we must look directly into this abyss and stop turning away from this genocide. Look with courage and fury into the void and show respect to our forgotten sisters by learning from their disappearances or deaths.

To start this journey, we must know and understand that the sex trade has had centuries to become experts at making the prostituted vanish.

The sex trade usually picks females they can easily isolate from family and friends. This may be because of previous abuse, because of being inside a natural or man-made disaster, or the isolation of poverty or racism. These are just the tips of the iceberg that isolates females.

An isolated female is easy to manipulate and gradually make into sexual goods. The main advantage of this isolation is that she becomes a non-human and from there it’s easy to turn her into sexual goods. Sexual goods that will be consumed and then thrown away.

This must be understood: that to be prostituted is to be made subhuman and throwaway. This cannot be stated enough, if we are to get hold of the scale of the deaths and disappearances of the prostituted.

It is claimed that at the minimum, prostituted women and girls are about 12 times more likely to die from male violence than other groups of females of a similar age and background. This will always be an estimate, for most disappearances or deaths of the prostituted are unrecorded.

When I was prostituted, it was common for punters to play at killing me – often saying:

“No-one will look for a dead whore.”

What other job is this normal in?

We get this message in all parts of the culture, such as the trope of murdering whores for crime novels, TV and film scripts. It is ingrained that the deaths or murders of the prostituted are so unimportant, that any serial killer will aim at the prostituted, knowing few will care.

The sex trade is expert at vanishing acts. Most of the disappeared prostituted females have been moved into other areas and more than likely more dangerous aspects of the sex trade. Internal or external trafficking are the main routes to control and silence the prostituted. Every prostitute lives with the threat of more sadism or death as their norm.

The sex trade has learnt over many centuries to clean up after punters kill the prostituted. These deaths are made invisible, for all that matters is more profit and making punters happy. The murdered prostituted are thrown away with no name, no past and no recognition that they were human.

So as we remember the deaths of murdered prostituted females, we will be surrounded by nameless and faceless ghosts crying out to be seen and known.

All the time there is moving remembrance of women murdered by male violence, especially domestic violence. But rarely does this include or even mention the silent genocide of the prostituted.

We let the sex trade win when we ignore these deaths and disappearances. We need to have memorials, marches, and constant reminders for those who lost their names and routes back to a non-prostituted life.

To end, something I wrote long ago:

To be murdered in prostitution is to go from being made sub-human in life to nothing in death.

Crossbones Graveyard

All of the images in this article are photos of Crossbones Graveyard, an un-consecrated plot of ground a short walk from the Globe Theatre in Southwark, where ‘outcasts’ were buried from the 12th century until its closure in 1853. The graveyard’s other name, the ‘single woman’s graveyard,’ hints at who these outcasts were – women not under the patronage of a named man.

The centuries following the late medieval period were a time of brutal disruption for ordinary people as the communal subsistence economy was transformed into a wage-based monetary one. The disruption affected women quite differently from men. The work that women had traditionally done in having and raising children, maintaining (and often also making) the family’s clothing and home environment, growing, gathering or purchasing the family’s food and preparing it, etc. was now defined as non-work and was not remunerated. Men’s work on the other hand was defined as work and was remunerated. As a result, women as a group were systematically deprived of independent means of supporting themselves. This drove women into deeper economic dependence on men.

If they didn’t have a father or husband who could or would support them, many women had little choice but to turn to prostitution. This made them outcasts from mainstream society and defined them as unfit to be buried in consecrated land – while the men who bought them for sexual use were deemed upstanding citizens fit to be buried in the churchyard.

But the hypocrisy didn’t stop there. The brothels in Southwark were licensed for centuries by the Bishops of Winchester who grew rich on the proceeds – which means that the wealth of the Church of England is based in part at least on pimping women.

The development of capitalism was predicated on stripping women of their previous relative economic independence and forcing their dependence on men – either individual men in the family or the free-for-all of prostitution, while the men were given (almost absolute) power over women in return for compliance with their wage masters. This is what Carole Pateman calls the sexual contract and it is the bedrock of the capitalist system

Neither women’s poverty nor prostitution are inevitable. They are a direct result of the deliberate disenfranchisement of women in the system of patriarchy, which slowly morphed into capitalism and now the terrifying no-holds-barred neoliberal capitalism, which threatens to destroy the entire ecosystem on which we all depend.

Crossbones Graveyard is now run by volunteers as a garden of remembrance. Women tie ribbons and mementos to the fence in remembrance of all the outcaste women who are buried there.

If you visit the garden and raise your eyes, you can see the Shard, that modern phallic monument to neoliberal folly and the brutal exploitation of women and colonised peoples everywhere.

Meme for International Day of No Prostitution 2019