#still feminist as fuck

[elisaenglish]

She Whose Voice

“When he doesn’t want to look at it, to rest his cheek against my thigh and peer into the pink tenderness, to examine where my body becomes and unbecomes itself, I can only assume that it is true what they say about God: it is impossible for man to look upon the face of the sublime and not be ruined by it. The splendour would be insufferable. How soft and quiet it is, where the world begins.”

-Sierra DeMulder, Exodus 33-20-

I’m emerging from a tiny intellectual hibernation to say grace for the ones who understand the weight of being she who says the things that no one else wants to—or can, as is oft the case. And I know it’s fine, it is fine. But for the thousand or so people I’ve addressed today, I do feel it. I felt it in March; I feel it now. That doesn’t change with any perceived wisdom—not on my part or in the impart. I am a woman nonetheless. Though still we grow, honest in discomfort.

[butchlifeguard]

we need to destroy the idea that girls should wear makeup. normalize bare faces on prom queens and flower girls and cheerleaders. no products at all instead of '7 product simple makeup routine.' no more 10 step skincare and regular facials and dermablading and gua sha just to be comfortable with yr natural face. i want to see eye bags on the funny librarian and acne on the swim coach and wrinkles on all our adult role models. i want to see a 16 year old girl that has never tried putting on eyeshadow. i want to see a 7 year old girl who doesn't have to go out and buy powder for her dance recital. i want to see trans women and girls everywhere to never have to wear makeup, regardless of how well they 'pass.' no more 'contouring to look masc' either. a post-beauty industry world is possible

reblogs are on but if you bring up the stage makeup point that i have addressed three times yr blocked on sight ☹️

[sleeeepy-demon]

Part 8 babeeeeyyyy the return of Jaheira now with Minsc!!! I love them. *punches a hole in the wall*

(bg3 memes i drew on paint) part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

[inkskinned]

there's this video you've probably seen already where a woman is shaking in front of a microphone and delicately tries to ask - how can i make my husband listen to me, i've tried everything, i don't want to seem ungrateful and the other man laughs - the problem is that you married a man, we're only listening 25% of the time and we only understand 5% of that! and the audience laughs and the woman laughs and you just sat there, phone in your hand, letting the sound of it echo

and the thing is that people make think-pieces about it (isn't this one of them) and satire versions and "flipping the script" which is good and fun but at the end of the day, there's some truth in that man's response about men-not-listening. and you have tried to language that feeling for years, this sense that you can only take up 33% of a conversation before others view it as being "dominating".

it's not that they aren't listening, it's that the action they're taking is purposefully silencing. it's different. you accidentally-don't-listen a lot; just because the world is loud and you're distracted. you don't mean anything by it. and the truth is that the man who spoke is relying on that to be true of you; the way it's true of everyone. but there is a different undertone to his kind of not-listening. what he means is they don't respect you and you shouldn't expect them to. there is a difference between oh shit i forgot to take the trash out and why didn't you remind me to do it, just like there is a difference between i didn't realize you wanted to go out this weekend and why do you expect me to plan things why can't you just tell me where we're going.

and the thing is that it isn't just him, and it's actually not just because of your gender - your skin, your class status, your weight, their ableism - it happens often. so often it feels like a tightness around your throat and a weight in your stomach. you're not even "really" allowed to be upset about it, because to them it's a joke. and they laugh. and you know exactly the amount of work that goes into every conversation. how you have to work to condense down your thoughts into intelligent, crisp soundbites; worried someone will try to swoop in and cut you off. and there's this sense from everyone else - oh stop being so sensitive, are you really upset just because they weren't listening and you don't know how to say the way that feels when it happens constantly.

there's that video of the science summit where a woman in the audience finally says let her speak please! and the whole crowd bursts into applause and the man leading the summit holds up his hands and bows his head and says oops, sorry! like what he did was awkward and embarrassing, a little social gaffe that happens easily. later in your meetings, you're asked to take notes, and you don't say anything, you just hear let her speak please! ringing in your head and know that you'll never be brave enough for that kind of thing. and besides. think of all the people who agree this was a one-off, he just got excited and all of the people who say one man is not indicative of all of society

at the dinner table you're talking about someone you don't like and how he's not good to his girlfriend and how she always has to remind him to put the effort in and before him, she was glowing with curiosity and passion but now she just seems... tired, unhappy. that he likes the way she burns out; she stays home and takes care of him and their 2 kids. and your father sniffs and says that men take a while to learn those kinds of things. and you just stare at him and think about your childhood and are like - no wonder i turned out like this

and you want to say - there's no fucking secret school or mystic form of communication. i was not sent to Rearing a Child University. i did not graduate from Getting Chores Done College. i ask questions and i listen and i pay attention, because that's basic fucking human decency. it stems from respect, and how i respect others and their agency. i clean the house because someone should clean. not because it comes "naturally".

hell, you had to google "how to boil an egg" the other day, just because you usually make them scrambled. you can never remember which of the 2 bathroom cleaners make chlorine gas, only that two of them definitely do. you've accidentally bleached your clothes. it took you like 3 years of self-teaching before you figured out how to actually cook things correctly - for that whole time, you burnt or undercooked everything. but you did teach yourself; just like you taught yourself how to listen with empathy. just like how you taught yourself to think before you speak. to be kind first, to be better at communicating. it seemed like a good thing, an adult thing.

the joke the man in the video makes is that women say i'm fine! when they are not fine. and you think about the 150 conversations that happened around that; about how she probably has had so many arguments with her husband. how she said i'm upset you don't take me anywhere and he got mad at her because of course i do, you made me go to that stupid restaurant like last week and she probably said that's not what i'm saying and he said now i'm supposed to be psychic or something and she said no of course not and he said how am i supposed to know what to do when you don't even like everything and she said i do like things and he said well how am i supposed to win? and her pastor probably told her to be more grateful because they do things at all, even if she has to plan them and her mom probably told her that's just how men are honey and she probably cried over her journal, trying to figure out why the fuck she "has everything" and is still so bitterly, horribly unhappy

and how, in your life, for so many reasons, you looked down the barrel of another argument; of explaining yourself and being vulnerable and begging for help again. how many times you just said i'm fine because it was better than doing that again; it was better than wringing yourself out when it's literally easier to just pretend. because he wasn't going to listen. your father wasn't going to be better and your boyfriend wasn't going to be better and your boss wasn't going to be more respectful.

and you sit in front of a video of a woman shaking, looking horrible and guilt-wrought that she's even asking this question. and you know; deep in your heart - that's you. in a different life, you are her. you've stood in her spot. and you had to listen while someone else cackled - why would we bother to notice when you talk?

[blackpilljesus]

I saw this from the female separatism subreddit & the responses are some of the biggest reasons for separatism et al (or extinction if I'm being candid here). Moids cant be reformed they are fully aware of the hell they force women to live in. MaIe achievement & happiness is rooted in female exploitation & life. Their glory days are based on our horrific days. No amount of love, kindness or facts will change maIes and we cannot happily or even neutrally coexist with them.

Main points across answers:

Many want to experiment but not permanently be women

They dont want to be in constant danger or lose their autonomy at the hands of maIes for merely existing

They dont want to deal with childbirth (& periods)

They dont want to have to share spaces with species much stronger than them with ulterior motives

It makes me go crazy seeing people give moids benefit of doubt for their evil like "maIes just dont understand", "we need to teach maIes", or claiming that maIe violence is a result of maIes struggling with (expressing) their feelings. I get that women love maIes and it can be hard to imagine that people can intentionally be so evil but it is what it is. MaIes have no problems expressing themselves, abusing women is what maIes choose to do because they enjoy & benefit from it - that is their expression.

MaIes see the same news of women being abused, raped, and killed like we do except rather than be disheartened or alarmed they're either apathetic or satisfied. It isn't aliens that's committing GBV it's maIes & maIes have no problem reminding women of this when women anger them (such as rape threats & threatening women they'll end up on the news/true crime). The victim blaming, denial, and derailment of misogyny is part of the game to keep the system alive, they know the events occured & are a systemic occurence they just dont care. Hell not only do they not care, they rejoice in it or get off on it.

MaIes set up environments that work in their favour which simultaneously ensures that women will lose. They know women are set up to live in damn near impossible conditions for us. It's normalised for women to defenselessly share personal & private spaces with beings much more stronger than them with ulterior motives for us, it's trap. It's interesting how these moids aren't saying that they'll just cover up and *poof* harrassment gone, or they'll just pick a nice guy & they'll be okay. MaIes know the net negative they are towards women.

MaIes know that childbirth is a painful process & what do they do? Demand it happens and make it even MORE painful for women. MaIes that impregnate women do not love or care for them. Pregnancy itself is dangerous & sometimes lethal, often comes with a range of health issues, to cause someone to be in that condition especially in a environment where abortions are illegal is reckless & unloving. Now imagine how sinister & full of hatred one has to be to impregnate someone and abuse them on top of that. Many women risk their health & lives to reproduce with a Y and they get abused by said Y instead of being taken care of. Deranged.

Realising that maIes are aware of the evil they inflict is one of the things that radicalised me. It isn't a miscommunication or ignorance issue, their violence is intended. They want control. The cruelty is the point. Instead of wasting time & energy trying to change maIes or hope that they "understand" one day, focus on yourself & other women (who prioritise women). Moids aren't oblivious to female pain they enjoy it. A lot of women treat maIe evil like it's a mistake on maIes part but it's calculated terrorism. I know that this will go over many womens heads as they refuse to hold strong negative sentiments about moids as a collective so if you're not a woman like that, take this post as a sanity check. You aren't crazy, it isn't all in your head.

[newwavesylviaplath]

a modern day woman with a weak constitution

[shadelorde]

Why do so many people unironically think the Fire Nation is the misogyny-less “girlboss” nation. What the fuck.

[fluffytimearts]

Jaden from Lease bound if she bothered to research and learned about others instead of being close-minded.

[marsconer]

i hate how this fandom treats calypso. like we know why percy forgot about his promise, we know all of this but she doesn’t. she’s trapped in a island with no sense of time and when a hero she loves promised her he would free her, all she knows is that he didn’t when she was naive enough to believe he would. and about the curse, girls are allowed to have nasty cruel thoughts and the way some people expected percy to act around her is really telling to how they see his character.

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[sunnist4rs]

I hate men because today after years of my brother mocking me whenever I talk about something I’m well informed on by saying I did no research I finally told him how much it upsets me. So straight after he brought up my male assault statistics and called them fake before leaving.

[elisaenglish]

-Judy Chicago, Entryway Banners from The Dinner Party (1979)-

[fluffydice]

And the truth of it all is Yumehara should have been allowed to continue being a workout fanatic…yeah maybe she wouldn’t have kept that ‘feminine’ shape she wanted but think about it. Straight, boxy frame of ripped. Thinking Nikki Snelson in Legally Blonde:

Yeah that’s the one

EDIT: I know Saiki K might seem like the only thing I do but I also love musical theater and. Come on. This is insane. I love her:

[forgetful-river]

Muppet joker is fueled by hatred of women so to get him to ship aradia and jade you must convince him a relationship between them would cause them intense distress. Likely by drawing some fucked up evil yuri…. no other reason why I would be trying to get you to draw fucked up and evil yuri trust me

Thank you for the advice totally unmotivated anon! Unfortunately I don't think they're very beat-each-other-up toxic, they're more recreate-old-trauma-over-and-over-again toxic, which is less visually striking :/

[blackpilljesus]

Can we not just stop birthing men like... women have to stop giving life to men.

I'm doing my part ✌️ and I agree but collectively most women wouldn't. I remember when there was discourse over a radfem having & celebrating giving birth to a baby boy. I've seen radfems praise lesbian couples adopting baby boys.

Tbh a lot of women are sellouts, they sellout other women & even betray themselves for love or having a slightly higher social status in society. When forced to cohabit with predators that have more power & essentially want to reproduce a copy of themselves, women giving them that could elevate or secure their status in society - it's an incentive & many would go for it.

Another thing to consider is that many women birth maIes to spare their lives, there's been cases where maIes would kill their partners & daughters for the woman not having a son (even though the sperm determines the sex). Part of me considers maternal instincts of women not being able to kill their maIe offspring bc that's still their child but then I think of post partum psychosis & cultures where daughters are routinely killed when they're born. If these instincts applied to maIe & female children I dont think things would've gotten this bad. Also a lot of women treat their sons much better than their daughters.

In a patriarchial society, birthing sons lets boymoms live out their power fantasies through their sons. They 'borrow' power from their sons or use their sons as a proxy for power. Like toxic mother in-laws treating their daughter in-laws like shit bc it's through the association that this woman is married to their son, women that cover up their sons sex crimes, in some cultures; boymoms look for women who've undergone FGM for their sons.

Bear in mind so many women still have faith in maIes as a collective, they think they'll raise the "good ones". This notion is popular in feminist spaces, women think they'll magically train & raise maIe allies. There's a saying of how several boymoms have emotional incest with their sons, they see there aren't good maIes in society so they want to create their own one(s).

However I think the biggest issue is that women are never going to be sociopathic or apathetic enough to moids. It would take a high level of apathy to abort maIe fetuses & refuse to birth another xy solely on the basis of their sex, to get to this point you'd need to have this feeling towards maIes generally and most women dont have this. MaIe survival is contentigent on female subjugation, women dont need to subjugate maIes to survive, we carry life, we can also provide for ourselves & maIes know it which is why they've set up societies the way they are and they're brutal about it because they and their bloodlines would be dead anyways if they dont have a system forcing women to rely on them to survive. That said; In the end despite everything, many women still want to partner with maIes, many women still love & believe in maIes. Most women wont disassociate with maIes collectively, catherine mckinnon goes into this in her book "the second sex" where she speaks about how women are scattered everywhere & identify with the tribes maIes put them into as opposed to seeing themselves as a sovereign group.

I personally dont think birthing another oppressor is worth it but people are different. Of course this can (& does) backfire against women but by the time the damage is realised it's too late. Ultimately for a shift in gender ratio & for women to refuse to birth maIes at any cost, they need to think bigger than themselves individually. Think of womankind instead of maIe supremacy & its structures but this will never happen & I wont kid myself otherwise.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

But Caitie, why are you so pressed about bad faith criticism from book fans about the wheel of time show? Great question I’m glad you asked.

From what I have observed book fans who are saying that it’s a bad adaptation and not worth watching have criticisms that usually boil down to one or all of these three objections.

1. They’re spending time in the show on characters who aren’t the ta’veren boys/Rand

2. Any changes have been made at all in order to adapt the story to film

3. There are too many queer characters and actors of color

All three of these talking points became a common refrain during season one, largely driven by the hilariously un-self aware manpilled alt-right shitheads in the /r/whitecloaks subreddit which got shut down for harassing other subreddits in 2022. It should be obvious that a lot of the motivation there was a misogynistic and racist misreading of a deliberately feminist and multicultural book series. If you think RJ would find this diverse show full of badass and well fleshed out women a poor adaptation of his work you are kidding yourself.

And regarding the other less obviously white supremacist complaints: Rand is not the only important character. Anyone who has read past like book two should be well aware that every main character’s point of view is important to the overall narrative. There are only 8 seasons in which to get through all of those main characters’ arcs. Of course they are starting them all now. Are the boys getting less screen time than they get pov chapters early in the books? Sure. This is necessary because once again, the ta’veren boys are Not the only characters that matter. I don’t know why people are so surprised that ALL of the main characters of a book series with over a dozen recurring pov characters are going to have character arcs.

And again if you’re just mad that it’s more queer and polyamorous. Fuck off.

There are valid criticisms to be made about this show if you engage with the show in good faith and judge it by its own merit instead of just comparing it scene by scene to the books. For instance I think it’s fairly obvious that the first season suffered as a result of late stage rewrites made to account for a shortened episode count, and Perrin’s arc in particular was off to a rough start.

But in season 2 I think they are doing a lot of things right, and the change of speeding up his acceptance of his wolfkin powers is a Very good one I think.

And the rest of this season rules to be totally honest. All of the Moiraine and Lan stuff is Great and really sets up for later events so well. And I am enjoying Everything about how the show is handling the Forsaken so far. Episode 4 was my favorite yet, Lanfear is fucking Perfect. This season is absolutely nailing character beats for all the most important characters, and doing excellent character work around the major themes of the book series and setting up for future key events. Every scene with any of the Aes Sedai is my favorite. And some things have been markedly improved by the show over the books. I cannot get over how good the team up of Mat and Min is so far. And the normalization of polyamory in the culture of randland is Brilliant for the long term series.

If this show gets cancelled because so many of the book fans refuse to even try to engage with it for what it is instead of what isn’t, it will be a goddamn tragedy. And if you’re just really disappointed that you can’t as easily skip the scenes with the girls the way you skipped the POV chapters of all the women when reading the books then please take a big step back and ask yourself if unchecked misogyny is a good look in 2023.