woman-as-vivisepulture - Tumblr blog

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

i hate that men LOVE to be annoying. like, this isn’t even a “some men” thing, genuinely 999.999% of men absolutely love being aggravating in some way. if some tiny little thing bothers you they will do it. they will tease you and purposefully upset you just for fun. they really think it’s hilarious to bother people, especially women.

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

I don’t trust men who glorify ‘low maintenance’ women who ‘don’t ask for much’. You just want someone you can put in as little effort as possible for, who will be excited over the tinest bare minimum things you do for her because she doesn’t know any better and doesn’t value herself enough

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

people are fine with feminism as long as it doesn’t actually mean anything

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

my friend’s mom met Toni Morrison a couple years ago and when she said “it’s nice to see you,” Toni looked into her eyes and said “it’s nice to be seen.”

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

it’s fascinating to see just how much misogyny impacts even the most progressive and educated of people.

despite their moral crusades, well-read liberals will defend endless droves men from varying backgrounds, from scientists to thought leaders to even celebrities, no matter what they’ve been accused of, just because they have some kind of insight that’s just too valuable to let go of.

he might be horrifically racist, but you can still find some value in what he wrote!

he might be an unrepentant misogynist, but he made a really good point here!

he might be a literal pedophile, but hey, he knows what he’s talking about!

as it turns out, there is no crime a man can commit that would mark his words as nothing more than the insipid scribbles of a wretch. men are allowed the humanity of being both deeply flawed and unmistakably gifted at the same time.

yet rarely does anyone salvage what they can of a woman’s insights once they’ve decided that she’s damned. it doesn’t matter what she’s been accused of nor the clarity that she views the world with. if she’s not perfect, her words are meaningless.

let everything she ever thought fall into obscurity, lost to the sands of time, for if she wanted to be listened to, she would’ve tried to be perfect: no holes in her arguments, no tendency for fallacies, no flaws or biases of any kind.

perfect. she has to be perfect.

before anyone thinks that i believe we should forgive awful women just because they’re women, i’d like to point out my specific choice of language here. i’m not talking about female bigots and abusers, but about the fact that women are held to higher standards than men, as they are punished worse for lesser infractions.

what is a woman’s misstep compared to a man’s? sometimes, all a woman must do is be seen as too backwards to be respected.

backwards. synonyms: archaic, antiquated, outdated.

we read the words of men from centuries ago, trying to fit their perspectives into modern times, but if a woman alive today isn’t constantly updating her viewpoints to align with the ever-shifting landscape of politics, she’s obsolete. she’s fallen out of fashion, so she’s fallen out of line.

other times, her sin is that of her own individuality getting in the way of being a pristine philosophical figure. she’s too hot-headed or too dispassionate, too poetic or too literal, too merciful or too merciless. whatever insight she might have is clouded by the problem of her personality.

while women must have the most well-developed, contemporary and thought-provoking arguments while remaining the picture of purity at all times, somehow the most despicable and ignorant of men are still worth something, regardless of how unoriginal, undeveloped or anachronistic their ideas actually are.

it ties back in to the narrow standards which we hold all women to, like a madonna/whore complex for theorists and scholars. at the core of this, women are not afforded humanity the way men are. we cannot be varied and imperfect, influenced by our own lives and experiences.

our minds, like our bodies and our spirits, must be perfect. of course no woman will ever be perfect, which means no woman will ever be worth listening to.

this works out wonderfully, because the honest truth is that people don’t want to listen to women.

a woman could have the most stunning insights on earth, but if they find her guilty of anything at all, they’ll find any way to discredit and demonize her, all the while picking the carcasses of male intellectuals for any scrap of wisdom, careful to wipe off the rot and the maggots.

maybe that’s a little nauseating for some. here’s something more nauseating: there are those who read women’s words, finding that they resonate powerfully, and then steal them from her because they’ve judged her to be unworthy of speaking them. they didn’t salvage her words but robbed her of them, purposefully eroding her signature so that no one can trace back the source.

if you find a reason to hate her, even if she’s right, then you can take her words and rephrase them, remix them, redefine them. at least when a man’s thoughts are extracted, they’re usually left relatively intact and tethered back to him; women just get our thoughts lifted wholesale, an arguably better ending than having them erased completely.

unworthy of speaking and unworthy of being listened to. is there any surprise that women don’t take their own mental prowess seriously? whether stolen from or silenced outright, it seems our minds are a dangerous weapon that we can’t be trusted with.

female thinkers are a problem, so it’s best if we never wake this beast that lies in every woman, a sleeping giant that can move mountains.

if we keep holding women to impossible standards and forcing them to stamp down their humanity in order to be respected, we minimize the risk that they could ever use those wicked brains of theirs to awaken other women. best to keep them distracted with the obsession of their own purity, maintained meticulously to avoid punishment from others.

thankfully, some of us have decided that we’re done with worrying about purity. i spent too long trying to be perfect, and i’ve found freedom in giving up the hunt for an impossible ideal.

i still worry about it sometimes, fearing that i’m being repetitive or nonsensical when i write posts for this blog. how many ways can i write “misogyny is alive and well”? how many ways can i describe that there’s a war on women, and some of the most destructive battalions are formed by so-called progressives?

am i a broken record, doomed to repeat the same song again and again?

perhaps. but who cares if i’m repetitive, monotonous, clever or wise?

i’ve made the grave error in being both human and female, so there’s nothing worth salvaging from me when i’m little more than a carcass.

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

A coffin is a coffin is a coffin.

i think men love to put women into categories as a way to fool you into acting like there’s a way to be safe and respected around them. you can be a whore, bitch, terf, virgin, the mother of his children, or a cool girl – but really there’s no difference in how they perceive us, because we’re all just women. a coffin is a coffin is a coffin. cool girls fall from grace and men kill their wives and auction off virgins just the same

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

many women (celebrities/”influencers”/regular people) are addicted to plastic surgery and full offense, i will never be convinced that it is empowering and it is my firm belief that it is rooted in porn culture and that’s that.

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

as an aside, no matter how much you enjoy makeup, I highly recommend learning to be comfortable without it. you can only reframe coerced behavior as empowering for so long before it begins to wear on you.

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

When I was 7, a boy slapped me

& I was punished for "inciting violence."

So it began: when I bled, I thought I deserved it.

...

Before anyone fucked with her, Eurydice was just a woman walking alone

through a field of snakes. It's late now, much

too late to hold us back --- you know that ---

pay attention this time when the hiss of our names

ribbons off, white flame against the dark.

-Lines from Emily Skaja's poem "No, I Do Not Want To Connect With You On Linkedin"

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

People who get their period do not need to be embarrassed. They do not need to be ashamed. They do not need to be sorry. 

Our bodies should not be a source of shame. Or a source of stigma. 

It’s time to end period shaming. 

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

porn has a body count

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

May 1, 1974: Cora, a women’s bookmobile and resource centre, began its travels around rural and small-town Ontario. Named after pioneering Canadian suffragist Ella Cora Hind, Cora was stocked with material on feminism and lesbianism.

At the time, gay women in rural or isolated areas lacked access to this kind of information, which was beginning to empower their counterparts in major urban centres. They struggled, often alone and with great vulnerability, against homophobia. By sharing information about the lesbian feminist movement, Cora helped women develop a positive self-image and overcome their sense of vulnerability.

A few years after Cora launched, a group of women based in the Fraser Valley formed the Rural Lesbian Association. Serving small settlements in BC, they provided services that included a lending library of lesbian writings. Their goal was to build “a network of country women” able to undertake the “political and spiritual work” needed for living in rural areas.

(source)

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

I hate to break it to you guys but women simply existing in their natural state will always be infinitely more radical than men wearing makeup or dressing femininely or painting their nails

[woman-as-vivisepulture]

“Good job.” ♥️

[woman-as-vivisepulture]