#to be meaningfully feminist in any way.

[ot3]

saw the barbie movie with my family today here's my review

[sophie-frm-mars]

Transmisogyny discourse on here has such an annoying shape to it.

Like I know that a bunch of it is just because it's from people who are / have always been very online / don't have much life experience as with all discourses that take on annoying shapes so I've been trying to not get too fixated on it but like,

Okay TMA (Transmisogyny Affected) and TME (Transmisogyny Exempt) are absolutely useful and valuable terms in the discussion of transmisogyny and how it works, because you need to be able to talk about who transmisogyny directly affects in order to talk about it. The much larger group of the total population is TME people, because that's (broadly) all cis people, and transmasculine people. So the majority of transmisogyny is necessarily directed from TME people to TMA people, but it's important to understand that as a social force it is actually directed from everyone towards TMA people. Trans women also engage in and perpetuate transmisogyny, sometimes incredibly vicious and harmful transmisogyny - the point of these terms is to identify the groups relevant to the discussion, not to identify an innocent oppressed class and an oppressor class who does entirely 100% of the social dynamic.

The next annoying part of the discourse is that in talking as if TME people = the transmisogyny doers, we keep winding up at a transfems vs transmascs discourse. This part of the discourse is like 1 part transfems misidentifying where the fight worth fighting is to 5 parts transmascs wanting to talk about ways they're also oppressed to like 20 parts raw transmisogyny. Yes, people who perform masculinity under patriarchy are more respected by partriarchy and get some benefits from that, and this is reflected in the differences between experiences of transmascs and transfems. This will be true everywhere that there is the basic patriarchal binary gender division between masculine (possessing agency, meaningful subjectivity, power) and feminine (being a type of property that belongs to others). Incidentally this is why the dyke butch/femme dichotomy is just there to sell more gender.

Everyone should get to perform their gender in a way that makes them happiest, and the problem is that we live under a patriarchy, which disempowers some people for the ways they perform their gender. I'm getting really basic here because some people on here talk like they need reminding.

The real reason the discourse is annoying though, just like all online discourses are, is because none of it is about how to organise to actually fight transmisogyny - that is, to make things meaningfully better for transmisogyny affected people.

2 years ago in the UK a teenage trans girl, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed to death after a prolonged campaign of transmisogynistic bullying by her classmates that the adults in her school life were absolutely aware of and did nothing about. Her death was the most important thing to every trans person in the UK for a moment, and then the political energy just dissipated without gaining any momentum. This is because organised structures of trans community, protest, politicisation and direct action just weren't there.

3 years ago in the UK a cis woman, Sarah Everard, was murdered by a police officer. There was an organised vigil which was politicised by Sisters Uncut, a feminist direct action group with chapters across london and the UK which had evolved to embrace police abolition over the course of its existence. The police escalated against the vigil and the spectacle of the police crackdown on women mourning the death of a woman murdered by police became a crucial moment in police abolition discourse in the UK. Because Sisters had already been laying down the organisational infrastructure for years, because it had been holding discussions among members and because it had responded to its members needs, it was in a strong enough position to act quickly and make change in the public consciousness. (You can read more about this in Abolition Revolution by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean.) If there was an organisation half as well put together as Sisters Uncut present in the trans community in the UK when Brianna Ghey was murdered, the organised response could have done something similar and meaningful.

I wrote a bit here about how trans people could use an assembly-organisation model to achieve meaningful change, but that's just my personal proposal for what would make a difference. The larger point is that discoursing over transmisogyny online, just like all discoursing online, is just shadows on the wall of the cave.

[gothhabiba]

can i ask for you to elaborate on your issue(s) with those 'male positivity' posts? is it with the whole sentiment, or just with the "you're allowed to be angry" part? i agree w "you're allowed to be angry" being an oblivious at best statement. but i don't see any issue with the first two statements themselves (the "OP says..." and "commenter says...")

yeah so I already talked about some of this in the tags to those posts but sure, let's get into it.

OP says "if you’re a boy with a mental illness, a boy with a disability, a boy with a history of abuse, a boy who has an eating disorder, a boy with trauma, I need you to know that you are not a burden, that you don’t need to 'harden up', that you shouldn’t just have to 'get over it,' and that you are very brave" commenter says "once I transitioned I saw the change in people being like ‘Oh you poor thing I hope you’re coping alright’ to ‘Just get over it and man up’. Men, you’re allowed to suffer."

the implication of the original post is that men with these issues are told to 'toughen up' or 'get over it,' and conversely that women are not. the commenter then makes this subtext explicit by outright saying that people reacted more sympathetically to his trauma when they read him as a woman than when they read him as a man (at which point they switched to "just get over it"). the OP responds favourably to this addition, proving that the subtext "women don't experience this" was in fact subtext that they intended to be there.

I hope I don't have to explain how utterly absurd it is to claim that women have it easier in this regard, or that their emotions are granted more leeway or sympathy in any meaningfully systematic way. that is just MRA logic.

of course people's ideas about suffering, endurance, trauma, & emotion are gendered! people really do say things about how boys and men should just toughen up and not cry, &c. &c. MRAs, like a lot of other reactionary groups (like TERFs and SWERFs, or antisemites / white supremacists / conspiracy theorists who understand that something's not right with the economy but end up blaming 'minorities' instead of capitalists), take an idea with some truth in it somewhere, but twist it around into a conclusion that the idea in question does not entail on its own (here, "women are allowed to express emotion and garner sympathy by doing so") in a way that leads to resentment, disdain, & hatred for a marginalised group.

so, if it's true that (negative) emotion is thought of as a feminine weakness, why doesn't that translate to women being "allowed" to experience and express emotion, while men are not? for one thing, race has a lot to do with this—the myth of the Black "superwoman," for example, praises Black women for being (read: expects them to be) "tough," "strong," "brave," endless wellsprings of emotional / physical / financial support for others while requiring and receiving no support themselves. the assertion that women receive sympathy for their suffering thus reveals a serious ignorance of Black feminist thought on the part of the person making it.

for another thing, displays of emotion (mostly "negative" emotion, such as sadness) being thought of as primarily feminine means that women have to take especial care to avoid them in many circumstances, not that they're able to freely indulge in them! women's supposed heightened emotionality means that they're less likely to be thought of as capable of serious work, less likely to be promoted or hired, more likely to be financially and professionally penalised for any time they do display any negative emotion (or, rather, the other way around—the myth of women's heightened emotionality is used as an excuse to suppress women's earning potential & make them financially dependent on, and thus exploitable by, men).

on an interpersonal level, you're highly likely as a woman (and especially as a woman of colour) to have fairly mild displays of emotion be interpreted as hysteria, extreme anger, irrationality, volatility. you're highly likely to have your allegations of abuse disbelieved.

on an institutional level, you're highly likely to receive disdain and contempt if you engage in disordered eating habits or try to seek help for them, to have a request for help denied or neglected (disordered eating is just, sort of, what women do). you're also more likely to have a request for help turn into involuntary institutionalisation or psychiatric abuse (a lot of work has been done on the relationship between psychiatry and gender).

also on an institutional level, you are less likely to be believed about the pain you are in as a disabled, chronically ill, or otherwise sick woman (again, especially a woman of colour). you are less likely to receive medical care. you are less likely to have anyone give a shit about the pain you're in, since women are so emotional and melodramatic that you are probably exaggerating, and anyway, being in pain is just sort of women's natural state. you are certainly very unlikely to get any kind of medical care if you're a middle-class cisgender white (read: desirable) woman of 'childbearing age' & the extreme pain that you're in would require risk to your fertility to treat.

there's so much more I could go into here. the basic idea is that properly analysing the relationship between emotion, communication, trauma, abuse, race, class, gender, and the uses of rhetoric that references any of the above (e.g. "boys don't cry") is an enormous undertaking. any claim that implies that women (which women?) wholesale receive more sympathy than men (which men?) do for abuse or other pain that they experience, or that they are more free to express that pain, is both inconsistent with reality on a base level, and incredibly irresponsible. the fact (if it's even true) that "girls" are punished less for crying than "boys" does not a whole picture make.

and, like, think about it. we're living in a patriarchy wherein women are expected to care for and sympathise with men, to forgive men for varied wrongdoings in the family & in romantic relationships, to coddle them in order to avoid or appease their anger, to perform (depending on their class position) various kinds of domestic labour and social / planning work for men without recompense, acknowledgement, or thanks (because knowing how to do and plan housework is just, like, women's natural state of being)—a system where the family and the home faciliate and cover for mass amounts of traumatisation and abuse, including sexual abuse, of girls and women—a system wherein trans women are highly likely to be traumatised and yet disciplined out of expressions of anger or upset under threat of social exile—a system wherein cisgender women cannot be allowed to become too wary of or angry at men (read: too unwilling to continue marrying them and performing a significant role in the social reproduction of their class). how on earth could such a system also enable (rather than allowing for occasional escape valves for, but mostly seeking to supress or transform) women's free expression of upset, sadness, trauma, anger...?

this is the same kind of logic that leads people to believe and spread nonsense such as "people believe women who come forward about being abused and not men," which is just demonstrably inconsistent with everything that we can observe about reality.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

what’s your opinion on the suffragette movement of the early twentieth century?

I see them the same way they were seen at the time; as ridiculous, unhinged and hysterical terrorists, destroying property, assaulting people, planting bombs and making plans to assassinate political leaders.

At the same time they existed, there was also the suffragist movement, consisting of thousands of men and women, all putting forth reasonable arguments that women were capable of understanding the responsibilities of voting and meaningfully participating alongside men. There were fifty TIMES more suffragists than suffragettes, but hardly anyone mentions them today because the mentally ill fanatics were more wacky and newsworthy and the modern day feminists came to hold them up as heroes and role models for their own hysterical, irrational and destructive behaviour.

But actually, the tactics of the suffragettes in all likelihood delayed women getting to vote, because - then as now - governments can't be seen capitulating to terrorists or else they look weak and so will only encourage more terrorism. The suffragists had largely won the argument in the court of public opinion, but the lunatics delayed any change in law for years until 1918 when the British government sneaked it in on the back of giving the vote for the first time to all the young men coming back from the war, who may otherwise have risen up and revolted the same way they did at that time in Russia.

[radioactivewisdom]

I didn’t have special access to resources such as “why the world works the way it does” class. Trying to discredit those who rise above this reality by claiming we’re just lucky, and must have been exposed to some sort of truth that you weren’t is a coping mechanism. Notice how when one behaves like a dumbass there’s a million excuses. They were “conditioned” to be that way. If only they had been shown the super secret material that those smarter than them had seen. Yet, when you live above it all it’s only due to some supposed privilege.

People ruin their own lives on the daily. No amount of education or socialization is going to change that. Why can’t we just accept stupidity for what it is? The way that the average person speaks of themselves when making excuses is like listening to a story about a misbehaving dog. Especially those who are politically minded. According to feminist, we can’t meaningfully consent to anything because of our brainwashing. Women will be told that intentionally putting themselves in harms way is okay because patriarchy made them do it. Fine, but those women have no business becoming mothers or operating motor vehicles. Do you all hear yourselves? “We’re incapable of making good choices or enacting change because of made up systems.”

The world is full of filth that only perpetuated because the masses enjoy it. Even if they complain when things aren’t momentarily going their way. An addict can know that their drug of choice is killing them, but the high is worth it. Those in abusive relationships say that leaving is hard because there are aspects that they still love. People are told by doctors that they’ll die if they keep stuffing their faces but they’re in line at the buffet days later. There’s nothing you can do for someone who doesn’t really want help.

Funny for a population so critical of religion to always be looking for a savior. Once the corporations are gone you’ll finally become successful. Someone else smashing the patriarchy will be when you develop a self esteem. It’s the corn syrup in your Frosted Flakes that makes you incapable of exercise and making healthy choices. Once others do the work of righting all wrongs, you’ll be good.

Outside influences will always exist. You don’t have to believe any of it. Low self esteem leads to an empty existence in which true happiness is always in the hands of someone or something else. Sex addiction, validation seeking, and consumption are all that await those who indulge this reality. An addiction to the physical is why you can’t escape and will always fall back into the collective. Answers are accessible to all of us because the questions come from within. Save yourself or self destruct. It’s your choice and always has been.

[butchmartyr]

surely evidence of a non-reactionary movement, very cool. feminist praxis is burying your head in the sand and ignoring any transphobia or other bigotry that would complicate things. “yeah, they define themselves and their womanhood in straightforwardly bioessentialist ways and foster growing hostility to trans women, but… feminism is important!”

one has to wonder why these tme feminists only ever rehabilitate and try to include radfem politics while talking about working together to fight patriarchy & transphobia, but never meaningfully consider transfeminist perspectives. sure is interesting!

[ftmtftm]

I need young radfems to understand that the goal of the majority of Feminist organizing is to understand and take down Patriarchal control. Not just reform, but actively take down. That is not solely a Radical Feminist goal. You are being actively lied to if someone is telling you otherwise. The only difference is a lot of other Feminist organizing recognizes that Patriarchy is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to discussions on systemic power and violence, rather than the whole picture - which is how Radical Feminism often treats it.

A Radical Feminist lense places the weight and power of Patriarchy inherently on manhood or "maleness" as a concept - rather than actually examining the root causes of our modern Patriarchal society. Radical Feminism doesn't actually examine or question why manhood or "maleness" is actually considered something to be valued or where that notion comes from - it just treats it as a fact of our world, which is so limited in scope because fails to address why the world is currently the way it is.

Radical Feminism doesn't question what kinds of manhood are actually given structural power and what kinds of manhood are punished by the Patriarchy itself. Radical Feminism homogenizes manhood/"maleness" into a big scary boogy man that only exists as a tool of subjugation without considering the ways in which Patriarchy actively subjugates men who deviate from its ideal vision of manhood.

Do you really think the world is so black and white? Do you really think that the socially constructed power structure of Patriarchy is so innate to society that the responsibility for it also falls on your fellow victims of it? Have you, for instance, considered the works of international feminists who discuss the material reality of the fact that Patriarchy is an agent of Colonialism? Have you considered that Patriarchy as we know it stems from world conquest and that for hundreds of years other societies existed outside of Patriarchal influence and control?

Are you so naïve that you cannot conceptualize your own liberation alongside the liberation other victims of systemic violence and oppression? Where is your sense of solidarity with people who have lost their cultures because Colonialist politics were forced into their lives, subsequently enacting Patriarchal control over their societies? Have you considered the fact that scorched earth politics only serve put you in the position of dominance in the same way as any other Colonialist, rather than actually meaningfully liberating anyone from dominance and subjugation.

I understand that it is incredibly easy to view the world simplistically. It is easy to view systems of oppression as separate concepts with one or two that you believe should take priority. It is easy to create a victim complex for yourself when your political theory is constantly telling you how victimized by the world you are. It is easy to internalize this in a way that makes you uncaring towards other causes that might seem unrelated to your own at first, but in reality are intrinsically connected to your own cause.

The world is so messy. These systems work all together and you are not immune from being agents enacting other forms of systemic violence. That is not a moral failure on your part for existing in ways the systems of our world prioritizes without your consent - just like it is not a moral failure of the average man for simply existing as a man in a world that prioritizes him without his consent.

To seek liberation from the Patriarchy without also seeking liberation from Colonialism, from White Supremacy, from Capitalism, etc. etc. in solidarity with other victims of those systems and to also seek that liberation from those systems without recognizing the active role of women in maintaining them is to do absolutely nothing politically meaningful beyond the selfish power seeking yourselves.

There are so many other kinds of Feminists and Feminist theories out there that don't rely on putting womanhood in a constant state of self victimization. That actually address the ways in which Patriarchy acts in tandem with many systems to disrupt the lives of anyone who doesn't conform to it. I promise you Radical Feminism will not give you the liberation you are seeking and there are other avenues for Feminist thought beyond just "Radical Feminism VS """meaningless liberal reform"""".

Anyone who tells you there are only two options for Feminist theorizing - especially if they are creating a "we're right and everyone else is wrong" binary - is a grifter and a liar who wants to take advantage of your pain for their own goals. They do not truly care about you or your liberation, they care about gaining power for themself.

[vexwerewolf]

It is impossible to be feminist or in any way meaningfully left-wing if you're transphobic.

This is not a debate, this is a simple fact.

[mummer]

Is it Rhaenyra's fault that women are not allowed to rule?

well i can try to be as measured as possible here: No. Absolutely not. westerosi society is... yknow... a hyperpatriarchal feudal monarchy, it was that way long before the conquest and it still is long after rhaenyra's death. whatever might be speculated about valyrian gender roles differing from westerosi ones, aegon still makes himself king instead of visenya, even though she's older (also, yknow, not gonna give the slave society props for being progressive). rhaenys' inheritance (through laenor) is passed over by a huge margin by the great council (jaehaerys himself having no faith in female inheritance rights, considering he felt the need to call the great council over it in the first place). there are very few scenarios where i can imagine westeros was ever going to be conducive towards a ruling queen.

patriarchy isn't the "fault" of "bad examples" of women in power. not to mention the history we see in f&b is, yknow, fairly unreliable. it seems fairly clear cut that her government made some extremely bad ruling decisions— treatment of smallfolk leading to the dragonpit, etc— and in this case it feels prudent to mention her disinheritance of the rosby/stokeworth female heirs in favour of their younger male relatives. that's a huge problem for rhaenyra considering her rule relies on female inheritance! however, she also... was subject to overrule by an otherwise male council, and subject to the conditional support of mostly male lords. asoiaf has always complicated the idea that monarchy is solely the will of the ruler and not subject to external pressures. tbh, it complicates the ideas of "agency" and "fault" in general— characters are defined and caged by a society with deeply entrenched ideals and roles. i think she's a tragic character; wanting so badly to do what's right, believing very sincerely that her rule is just. but the series is very clear that no matter our best intentions these systems of power are poisonous! what rule is ever just? any justification for war falls apart at the horror of its human cost!

was she a totally good queen making perfect astute political decisions, slandered by the histories? i don't really think so. was her rule ever meaningfully trying to institute feminist policies? No. do i think that, post-dance, people may have used rhaenyra's alleged misrule as justification for passing over female inheritance? yeah, sure, probably. but that would never be the sole justification. this is a systemic issue and not a personal one! One Perfect Woman is not going to topple patriarchy overnight!

[aronarchy]

Let’s not abolish sex work. Let’s abolish all work

By Laurie Penny 26 May 2016

Is sex work “a job like any other”—and is that a good thing? Amnesty International today officially adopted a policy recommending the decriminalisation of sex work around the world as the best way to reduce violence in the industry and safeguard both workers and those who are trafficked into prostitution.

“Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination,” said Tawanda Mutasah, Amnesty International’s senior director for law and policy. “Our policy outlines how governments must do more to protect sex workers from violations and abuse.

“We want laws to be refocused on making sex workers’ lives safer and improving the relationship they have with the police while addressing the very real issue of exploitation,” said Mutasah, emphasising the organisation’s policy that forced labour, child sexual exploitation and human trafficking are human rights abuses which, under international law, must be criminalised in every country. “We want governments to make sure no one is coerced to sell sex, or is unable to leave sex work if they choose to.”

The proposal from the world’s best-known human rights organisation has caused uproar, particularly from some feminist campaigners who believe that decriminalisation will “legitimise” an industry that it is uniquely harmful to women and girls.

As sex workers around the world rally for better working conditions and legal protections, more and more countries are adopting versions of the “Nordic Model”—attempting to crack down on sex work by criminalising the buyers of commercial sex, most of whom are men. Amnesty, along with many sex workers’ rights organisations, claims that that the “Nordic Model” in fact forces the industry underground and does little to protect sex workers from discrimination and abuse.

The battle lines have been drawn, and the “feminist sex wars” of the 1980s are under way again. Gloria Steinem, who opposes Amnesty’s move, is one of many campaigners who believe the very phrase “sex work” is damaging. “‘Sex work’ may have been invented in the US in all goodwill, but it has been a dangerous phrase—even allowing home governments to withhold unemployment and other help from those who refuse it,” Steinem wrote on Facebook in 2015. “Obviously, we are free to call ourselves anything we wish, but in describing others, anything that requires body invasion—whether prostitution, organ transplant, or gestational surrogacy—must not be compelled." She wanted the UN to replace the phrase “sex work” with “prostituted women, children, or people.”

The debate over sex work is the only place where you can find modern liberals seriously discussing whether work itself is an unequivocal social good. The phrase “sex work” is essential precisely because it makes that question visible. Take the open letter recently published by former prostitute “Rae,” now a committed member of the abolitionist camp, in which she concludes: “Having to manifest sexual activity due to desperation is not consent. Utilising a poor woman for intimate gratification—with the sole knowledge that you are only being engaged with because she needs the money—is not a neutral, amoral act.”

I agree with this absolutely. The question of whether a person desperate for cash can meaningfully consent to work is vital. And that’s precisely why the term “sex work” is essential. It makes it clear that the problem is not sex, but work itself, carried out within a culture of patriarchal violence that demeans workers in general and women in particular.

To describe sex work as “a job like any other job” is only a positive reframing if you consider a “job” to be a good thing by definition. In the real world, people do all sorts of horrible things they’d rather not do, out of desperation, for cash and survival. People do things that they find boring, or disgusting, or soul-crushing, because they cannot meaningfully make any other choice. We are encouraged not to think about this too hard, but to accept these conditions as simply “the way of the world.”

The feminist philosopher Kathi Weeks calls this universal depoliticisation of work “the work society”: an ideology under whose its terms it is taken as a given that work of any kind is liberating, healthy and “empowering.” This is why the “work” aspect of “sex work” causes problems for conservatives and radical feminists alike. “Oppression or profession?” is the question posed by a subtitle on Emily Bazelon’s excellent feature on the issue for the New York Times this month. But why can’t selling sex be both?

Liberal feminists have tried to square this circle by insisting that sex work is not “a job like any other,” equating all sold sex, in Steinem’s words, with “commercial rape”—and obscuring any possibility of agitating within the industry for better workers’ rights.

The question of whether sex workers can meaningfully give consent can be asked of any worker in any industry, unless he or she is independently wealthy. The choice between sex work and starvation is not a perfectly free choice—but neither is the choice between street cleaning and starvation, or waitressing and penury. Of course, every worker in this precarious economy is obliged to pretend that they want nothing more than to pick up rubbish or pour lattes for exhausted office workers or whatever it is that pays the bills. It is not enough to show up and do a job: we must perform existential subservience to the work society every day.

In the weary, decades-long “feminist sex wars,” the definitional choice apparently on offer is between a radically conservative vision of commercial sexuality—that any transaction involving sex must be not only immoral and harmful, but uniquely so—and a version of sex work in which we must think of the profession as “empowering” precisely because neoliberal orthodoxy holds that all work is empowering and life-affirming.

That binary often can leave sex workers feeling as if they are unable to complain about their working conditions if they want to argue for more rights. Most sex workers I have known and interviewed, of every class and background, just want to be able to earn a living without being hassled, hurt or bullied by the state. They want the basic protections that other workers enjoy on the job—protection from abuse, from wage theft, from extortion and coercion.

A false binary is often drawn between warring camps of “sex positive” and “sex negative” feminism. Personally, I’m neither sex-positive nor sex-negative: I’m sex-critical and work-negative.

Take Steinem’s concern that if “sex work” becomes the accepted terminology, states might require people to do it in order to access welfare services. Of course, this is a monstrous idea—but it assumes a laid-back attitude to states forcing people to do other work they have not chosen in order to access benefits. When did that become normal? Why is it only horrifying and degrading when the work up for discussion is sexual labour?

I support the abolition of sex work—but only in so far as I support the abolition of work in general, where “work” is understood as “the economic and moral obligation to sell your labour to survive.” I don’t believe that forcing people to spend most of their lives doing work that demeans, sickens and exhausts them for the privilege of having a dry place to sleep and food to lift to their lips is a “morally neutral act.”

As more and more jobs are automated away and still more become underpaid and insecure, the left is rediscovering anti-work politics: a politics that demands not just the right to “better” work, but the right, if conditions allow, to work less. This, too, is a feminist issue.

Understood through the lens of anti-work politics, the legalisation of sex work is about harm reduction within a system that is always already oppressive. It's the beginning, rather than the end, of a conversation about what it is moral to oblige human beings to do with the labour of their bodies and the finite time they have to spend on earth.

Sex work should be legal as part of the process by which we come to understand that the work society itself is harmful. The liberal feminist insistence on the uniquely exploitative character of sex work obscures the exploitative character of all waged and precarious labour—but it doesn’t have to. Perhaps if we start truly listening to sex workers, as Amnesty has done, we can slow down at that painful, problematic place, and speak about exploitation more honestly—not just within the sex industry, but within every industry.

[kiefbowl]

https://www.tumblr.com/imanes/181546472260/httpswwwtumblrcomdashboardblogluckystrabis?source=share

would you analyze this queen

>bc that one post about attachment to womanhood is still hurting people’s feelings, let’s keep talking about it.

There is a link they have at the top of this post that doesn't work for me, but otherwise I'm not sure what post they're talking about. So that might have some missing context. I also want to point out that you sent me a reblog of the op, and the reblog is dated 2018, so this is more than 5 years ago written.

>radical feminist notions of gender socialization correctly frame it as a traumatizing process.

Now there are two ways of interpreting this: 1. they are actually talking about radical feminists or 2. they are talking vaguely about the women online who may or may not call themselves either radical feminists, radfem, or terfs who might say any number of things.

Generally speaking, the idea that radical feminists talk explicitly about "gender socialization as a traumatizing process" is a little wonky. This isn't a tenet of radical feminism specifically as I understand it. Gender socialization has garnered a lot more discussion relatively recently in more explicit terms by public self identifying radical feminists because of the concerns of transgender ideas, sometimes even developing in response to ideas set forth by transgender activists. I don't think many radical feminists would hold tight to the idea that gender socialization is traumatic to men, since men are socialized to benefit from the sex hierarchy. If it's traumatic to anyone, it's women, though the idea that being socialized into womanhood is always and totally a traumatic experience just feels a little...rote. Not truly grasping the entirety of what socialization is. But to be clear, I don't think a lot of feminists go about making this point first and foremost, but rather talk about specific ways gender socialization is traumatic to women and girls (which is in service to argue the larger point that the sex hierarchy is real and that women are a marginalized class). I doubt op is truly interested in engaging with those ideas meaningfully, despite calling radical feminists "correct" about it.

The other interpretation is, well, "I read some tumblr posts that said this." I'm sure you have. Me, too. Some really intelligent women are on tumblr and they make a lot of intelligent posts about gender and gender socialization. I also know that when you have a little insular pocket online in any community, it's easy for those people to mimic what they say to each other unthinkingly. This is not a moral judgement on my part, and I don't think it's exclusive to feminists...it's inclusive to everybody (finally something that is!! the weak human psychology!! lol). My only point is, if you want to go find someone saying things that will make you mad, you can go do that online because you can find at least one person saying the exact thing you want them to say, so you can respond to it. It becomes an outrage machine, despite not really reflecting what a group truly believes, or what most people believe, or what is meaningfully understood. I only say this to suggest perhaps this post is one of those posts that is responding to a general sentiment they have vaguely seen and not meaningfully tried to understand and have reinforced by reading posts that are just sort of nothing burger but have the right words strung together in the precise way to make op cringe or whatever.

The point is, if you want to understand what someone is saying to truly understand it, you have to ask them. So if someone posts "gender socialization is traumatic" with not much else context, that's already such a vague sentiment it would behoove you to be intellectually curious enough to ask them "what do you mean? can you expand on this so I understand it?" And if you're someone who wants to be understood, it would behoooooove you to welcome the opportunity.

If you were to ask me if I think "gender socialization is traumatic" I would say "It depends on what you mean." So we're already hitting a wall to understanding each other. Anyway...

>a contradiction arises, in that case, when they assign positive moral traits to female socialization

This is another example where I'm not going to say this doesn't happen, but this is not an understanding within radical feminism. That doesn't mean a radical feminist couldn't believe this, it just means that the texts that support radical feminist ideas are not interested in sanctifying being a woman as some de facto morality. That is a ridiculous claim and proves that op is not interested in engaging with radical feminist texts as serious scholarly works. In defense of op, they are probably young and have never had their analytical skills challenged outside of, say, high school class. It does lead me to believe this person is responding only to vaguely feminist ideas they've seen in posts that have made them mad without trying to meaningfully understand them. So, +1 to me for guessing that :)

>(and femininity by extension)

Even more factually wrong than the statement above. op cannot understand when feminists discuss womanhood, that it is not an interchangeable word with femininity. Because in op's mind, femininity is innate, whether they realize they believe that or not is no matter.

>because, much like society in general, they believe that an ideally traumatized woman is able to access moral high grounds that other people cannot.

Truly offensive and in fact betrays that this is what op believes. op believes in a connection between morality and suffering. Why do I know that? Because they interpret this from ideas that have nothing to do with morality. If someone says "women are oppressed" they have not made a moral statement about women. If anything, they've made a moral statement about men. If you read "women are oppressed" and you read "women are moral" you have made that connection.

This is also a good time to point out that if this was something they were writing for school, they would need to then support their claim with sourced quotes. It's convenient that this is tumblr where they aren't compelled to do this. Who said this? When did they say this? How many of them said this? Did they say this explicitly? Are you extrapolating? What was the context? Where was it said?

But the true interesting part is "society in general." It's so fun to see in action MRA points infiltrating supposedly quote unquote liberal/leftist gender ideas...how does society in general demonstrate seeing the traumatized woman as the most moral person? Outside of your favorite genre tv scenes you're able to recontexualize to your heart's content. When a woman kills her abuser, how likely is she to serve more time than he would have if he had been sentenced to abusing her? QUICKLY!

>“i was socialized female” becomes an admission of guaranteed prosociality, a set of traits that are only ever harmful because they are at risk of exploitation via external forces.

Even if I didn't just argue that this point is moot because the previous points are not true or supported by evidence...hwuh?? What are they saying. Does this even follow from what they've said so far. "prosocial" is a word I had to look up, and it's a psychology word meaning "intended to help or benefit another person or group." They haven't talked about this at all. Also, prosociality is not really a form of the word, "prosocial behavior" is a phrase used.

So, to rephrase: "I was socialized female" becomes an acknowledgment (by feminists) that prosocial behavior is guaranteed, a set of traits that do not causes harm but are at risk of exploitation which would then cause the traits to be harmful [editor's note: to whom?].

Again...what? (I also cut the "via external forces" because how are you at risk of exploitation via internal forces lmao).

Even if I was to do a good faith read of this, it would be like "when feminists argue that women are socialized female, they are saying that women are socialized into prosocial behaviors." Which, yeah okay...but what of it? Prosocial behaviors are good therefore women are morally good because of femininity? This is just not a thing feminists really say.

>this is why many radical feminists view trans men as safer & more politically enlightened than trans women

The religiosity of op is apparent all the way through. The talk of morality, "politically enlightened"....etc etc. Feminists aren't really interested in who is more politically "enlightened." Trans men aren't included in feminism because of how safe they are or even how politically enlightened (whatever the fuck that means) they are...it's just that they're female. They could be the nastiest most awful person in the world and they're still included. Like come on now, did someone go to bible camp when they were younger? I think someone went to bible camp when they were younger. (It wasn't me)

>- because of their proximity (imagined or otherwise) to femaleness, to daintiness, to softness and benevolence.

boring sentence

>“male socialization” is synonymous with antisociality, and becomes lobbied at trans women as a whole when individual trans women do things that radical feminists deem “unwomanly,” from having controversial political opinions to committing violent crime.

Feminists don't care about womanly-ness. I know op thinks we do, and specifically "radical feminists" because that's who they said (I haff to laff), because they see the argument that feminists have that "woman are female, and women are socialized into femininity" as saying "women are feminine, which includes being female", but anyway...let's talk about how they include in "unwomanly" committing violent crimes???!!!???!! whuahauhahah???? Is it perhaps not more sane to think that women are concerned about violent crimes men commit because of the harm they cause not that they aren't feminine behaviors???? A deeply unserious post I am regretting writing 1K about it.

>the gender socialization model becomes a way to moralize sex assignment by prescriptively linking particular experiences of trauma to particular personality outcomes.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, it's a way to describe OPPRESSION BASED ON THE AXIS OF SEX!!!! AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MORALITY OF BEING BORN FEMALE!!!! TRAUMA IS A SIGN OF MISTREATMENT HELLO??????

Here's a fun tip when analyzing the work of someone: if they start talking about the moralizing within an argument that is not about morality, they are in fact the moralizing one and do not know what they're talking about. Go ahead and disregard whatever they're saying, they don't do their homework and will never seriously try to understand anyone without bringing up morality.

>it is no longer a theoretical framework meant to honestly and meticulously analyze how children become gendered subjects.

weird online speak, why do people talk like this. how "children become gendered subjects"....okay. Well they become gendered subjects, you weirdo, by gender socialization...they thing you pointed out "radical feminists" were correct about as being traumatic? also why meticulously. again the religiosity...we must suffer through the virtue of hard work by being meticulous. I would guess that when this was written op was 16 years old, had definitely been to bible camp once, and had their own laptop that their parents didn't monitor, and are deeply afraid of being a bad person more than anything in the world (but only as judged by their peers).

>it is now used to reproduce the very gender roles that proponents of the framework claim to be against.

10 second fart noise this conclusion is not supported by your own argument. In this essay, I will talk about how women are always nice and that means feminists think women are always good. In conclusion: feminists meanie weanie actually. Yeah okay buddy.

[feminist-pussycat]

I don’t really know either of you (you or the woman who just asked you a question) but even if she was being aggressive about it I don’t see that ask as hate mail. She asked a coherent question: are you “still” defending KJK/poise Parker — someone who is right wing, anti trans but not meaningfully anti gender or pro woman, pro LGB?

I put still in quotes because I don’t know if you have ever done that.

But anyway it reads like a difference of opinion between two women — you and the woman who sent the ask — who both think they’re radical feminists but disagree about if the other one really is

Which isn’t “hate mail” any more than aggressively disagreeing with a trans activist what the definition of woman is.

No names called, no threats made, just a challenge about if you want to defend an opinion she alleges you hold

You asked far more politely, so I'll give you a genuine answer.

Like two years ago, I posed a question asking why KJK seemed so universally despised by radfems on Tumblr. The consensus here was that she was racist. I googled it myself and found the only evidence being that she was on a podcast with some right-wingers who turned out to be far-right people, and criticized Islam and its treatment of women. The far-right support I thought was weird, but her reasoning wasn't impossible. I actually agree with her assessment that Islam as a whole treats women badly, something that I as a feminist am against.

In no way did I say I supported her or defended her. I asked why people held such a negative opinion with such certainty, given that I couldn't find really any evidence to back that up.

Since I posted that, she seems to have gotten more extremist. I definitely saw her go more gender critical and right wing and way less feminist. I don't really support a lot of her views, and she seems to talk a lot about race now too. I have seen with my own eyes the kinds of things she posts, and I have come to the conclusion that she is way more gender-critical than meaningfully feminist or pro-woman.

If that person who sent it saw that post, her reading comprehension is dogshit. A person asking "hey why does everyone say this person is irredeemably racist, I couldn't find much of anything" and this person interpreting that as "I support and defend this lady" is at best so bad at reading comprehension they need to go back to school and at worst willfully misinterpreting what I wrote in the worst way possible.

You're right, she didn't make any threats or call me names. But it was still very hostile correspondence, relied on me writing something I never did, and sent to get an angry response. I didn't feel it was worth my time to debunk.

[roachliquid]

There's a thing that people need to understand when it comes to gender and presentation - and specifically, the difficulties that queer and intersex people (among others) face when navigating society.

It has to do with categories.

See, people need categories. They need to put things in categories. It's not just a habit; it's a critical tool that helps us wrangle the absolute fuckloads of information that we have to manage to survive as big brained nerd animals. Categorizing parts of the world around us creates a mental shorthand that we can use to understand those parts, and define our relationship with them, in a way that is concise and comfortable to manage.

So when we encounter something that doesn't fit into our current category system, our impulse is to try to make it fit. If we can learn enough about it to fit it into an existing category, or to construct a new category that's meaningfully distinct to put it into, then we're golden.

And when we can't, we get mean.

It's not intentional - it's more or less a panic reaction. Without the tools we've been relying on our whole lives, how do we navigate this situation? We start to feel threatened, potentially even endangered, and the natural response is to double down on the whole category thing, or else lash out at the target of our discomfort in the hopes that we can make it go away.

When you're cis, straight, perisex, allosexual, etc. etc., your gender is easy to categorize. You get assigned one, you fit it neatly enough to get on with, and you go about your day. But if anything about you is ambiguous enough to distress somebody, you're the one who bears the brunt of their fears.

And that fear turns into some nasty fucking beliefs. Like the idea that trans people MUST be wrong about our gender, because the gender we claim to have doesn't match what I know about those genders. Or the idea that intersex people MUST be treated to remove our intersex traits, because we need to be One Or The Other. Bi and nonbinary people need to "pick one". GNC people need to "dress/act more feminine/masculine." And on and on.

When you violate gender binaries, a lot of people assume decide that your true gender is whatever would make them the most comfortable. And what that translates into in a lot of cases is "whatever makes the most efficient attack". Or worse, "whatever lets me categorize you as a threat so that I can make sense of my fear."

This is why transphobic feminists get so rankled when they find out any trans person can face misogyny. You see, their system splits people into Oppressed Women and Oppressive Men, so you have to be one or the other. This is why treatments offered for PCOS include feminization protocols - not just because it's gender affirming for many people, but because we are automatically perceived as Failing To Be Real Women, and those treatments are often necessary to prevent that from happening. And that's the tip of the iceberg on how intersex people are treated - I do not come close to having the knowledge to cover that topic in-depth, but it involves cosmetic surgery on babies, so you know those roots run deep.

Speaking of issues that really hit intersex people, another factor in this habit of mistreatment is that people often think they are helping us. Because if we just stop existing outside of these little boxes, all the meanness and harassment will go away, don't you see? I'm not one of the bad guys, I'm trying to save you! Stop nonconforming and let me fix the thing that's broken!

Sigh.

Anyway, my point is, navigating the world of gender is complicated no matter what kind of divergent you are. Not because LGBTQIA people aren't who we say we are, but because existing categories were not designed to hold us, and most people default to "change the landscape to fit the map."

(Video: The song "If It Says So", from the Winnie the Pooh film "The Search for Christopher Robin." In the song, Rabbit insists that his faulty map is more trustworthy than the landscape.)

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

I came across your post about the book cover/movie poster female protagonist knowing glance, and it reminded me of a thought I’ve casually explored over the last few years. While I think feminist conspiracies are mostly absurd, one of the fun bits about that absurdity is how casually you can flip their logic around.

Take the usual BS about Male Gaze and Objectification, for example. What are the men on these promotional materials *but* objects? You frequently can’t see his face. He’s a piece of meat next to her that she owns, and she’s letting you, the viewer, know that this meat is hers. Maybe if you read/watch on, you can imagine yourself in her shoes as the owner of this meat. His personality is inconsequential. What’s important are the gifts he buys, the dangers he wards off, how jealous he makes your friends, how symmetrical his features are.

While I don’t believe the actual intent of this media is anything close to that sinister, I think the ease with which you can apply feminist logic to it is really telling. Ladies, perhaps before you caterwaul about the horrors of objectification, you might have a gander at the way your popular media portrays these faceless beefcake money fountains, mmm? There are so many universal human experiences that get boiled down to “women most affected”.

The really disheartening thing is how it's impossible to get women to see any of this. Even the most kind and intelligent will maybe engage with it very briefly, while it's directly under discussion, but then, as soon as the discussion is over, the evolutionary hardwiring snaps back into place and 'men' as a group become faceless, disposable, workhorse utilities again, incapable of pain and undeserving of justice, equality or empathy.

Women at large do not see or acknowledge their own desires and workings: they are much happier believing a comforting story about why they do the things they do than actually look at and accept the facts, even when they are right under their noses, and it's very hard to know how to make any progress in a democratic society when one half of the populace will seemingly never be able to rise above their own biological self-interest to truly and meaningfully support equal rights, compassion, care and concern for the other.

[nothorses]

i agree with everything in your transandrophobia primer... and i understand that we're trying to appeal to a broad section of queer and feminist communities; but One thing, which i think we need to start talking about more in our communities, is that cismasculinity is also oppressed.

Not the same way (cis)femininity is, of course, not to the extent. Yes patriarchal power structures exist primarily to oppress women, but men get stuck in a box they can't violate or else (any emasculating or "feminine" behaviour is societally punished). men don't get the same amount of support cis women do. men are always assumed to be potentially dangerous, but also strong and self-sufficient and never in need of support. men are not generally seen as sexually desirable and desiring men is seen as gross amongst many feminists and queer people. etc etc etc etc. it's a different form of oppression for sure, and maybe not as violently coercive as misogyny, but it's also still plenty violent and plenty coercive, and it FUCKS MEN UP. like. not in a 2005 misandry no woman wants to sleep with me sense, but in a sense of most men are psychologically damaged in ways they can't express or seek help for, and this isn't something we can task individual men with solving. It has to be a societal shift, it doesn't mean send every man to obligatory therapy but it does mean change attitudes towards men, recognise men's unique oppression (as distinct and very different from misogyny, but still very much existent) and start the process of healing.

It's tough cus you can't really bring up that you think men have unique oppression under patriarchy without being called a MRA or incel, but we need to start talking about these things in earnest. it's the next step of feminism - in order to break down the oppressive forces of patriarchy, we simply cannot leave out like half the global population.

Yeah, I have talked about this before, but I don't know that I've called it "oppression". I don't think that's an "appeasement" choice, either; there's a tendency to think of oppression as implying the "opposite" group is privileged over that group, and there's also something very... distinctly different, imo, about the way patriarchy sees men vs. women, in contrast to the way any other oppressive system sees any two opposed groups.

The way men and women are positioned against each other is not the same as white people and people of color, for example; while white people do suffer certain drawbacks under white supremacy, those drawbacks are pretty much all directly related to the fact that belonging to an oppressor class comes with an inherent isolation from others. The way manhood is viewed- as dangerous, sexually aggressive, unfeeling, expendable- is very, very different from white people being incentivized to cut ourselves off from vital connections with people of color in order to maintain power and a sense of superiority.

But like, men do also have those same incentives to isolate, and similar rewards and consequences. Patriarchy as a system that positions men over women, as people who "deserve" power vs. people who are not to be trusted with it, is real and does exist.

But imo, that system is less about controlling or eradicating one group while universally uplifting the other, and more about controlling an entire population & fabricating reasons to get them to fight each other- instead of the minority of ultra-privileged, ultra-powerful men who are meaningfully controlling and benefiting from this system.

[tybaltsjuliet]

Do you think there are any Disney movies that *are* meaningfully feminist?

eh. kinda? inasmuch as The Brand can do so, mulan is holding down the fort. the whole takeaway is that failing to live up to your society’s prescribed gender roles does not make you a failure of a person. mulan is not forced to contort herself to become perfectly traditionally feminine for a happy ending, but she also does not have to become perfectly traditionally masculine to save the day. she is a loving child and a skilled fighter and a smart person and all of those things co-exist with no regard for gender or sex.

it pokes fun at the restrictive, superficial nature of both performative femininity and performative masculinity, and it’s also pretty direct about the ways in which patriarchy hurts everyone, with the whole thing about mulan’s disabled veteran father being drafted AGAIN because that is considered to be a man’s duty.

also, shan yu is an ally among action movie villains for not making any weird patronizing comments on the fact that he’s about to get his shit wrecked by a woman. thanks, shan yu!

there are a few other disney movies that, at least, gesture to feminist concerns. nani’s plot in lilo & stitch has a lot to say about the struggles that single mothers/mother figures go through, and i’ve seen comments from indigenuous people appreciating that it tries to address the reality of native families so often being broken up by the system. beauty and the beast does okay, especially with regard to the framing of gaston and the ways his villainy manifests over the course of the movie.

there are a LOT of disney movies that i think COULD have actually been great, meaningfully feminist pieces of media, but if i start thinking too hard about the lost potential in brave or the princess and the frog, i will start screaming and i will not stop.