#And being feminized? COOL!!!!!!!!

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Body Horror and Internalized Misogyny

This post showed up in my "for you" feed, and I commented that 63% of people have internalized misogyny, to which two other people asked how being afraid of getting pregnant was misogynistic, so I thought I would explain.

First, the option that the majority of people voted on was this: Pregnancy "sounds like unreal terrifying body horror". Not just something scary or dangerous, but body horror. So lets talk about that first.

Body horror comes from taking something normal and natural about the body and twisting it. Putting teeth where there should not be teeth. Grafting dozens of arms onto every part of the body. Faces in odd places. Limbs bending the wrong direction. Think Dark Souls et al.

Now, one could try to describe normal bodily processes as horrifying, but I wouldn't call this body horror. Take puberty, and all the crazy things your body goes through during it, or describe exactly how each organ keeps you alive in detail. Or take "Skeletons", by Ray Bradbury. This is a horror story in which a man feels aches in his bones and becomes convinces that his skeleton--all skeletons--are some form of Other, some entity inside people that is trying to get out. He describes seeing his wife's skeleton peering out of her mouth each time she smiles, and seeing the shape of people's bones poking out just below the skin.

The thing about this story is that the skeleton is not actually what is horrifying, but rather the man's phobia of the skeleton. It's one of those stories where the protagonist is clearly not in his right mind. It only veers into body horror once the inhuman doctor that first stoked his fears into a phobia shows up and sucks the skeleton out of the man, leaving a gasping, jelly-like mass with nothing to hold it up.

Body horror inherently comes from something being unnatural, something a body is not supposed to have or be able to do.

If one were to view a racial trait, such as more or less body hair, darker or lighter skin, or the presence or absence of epicanthic folds as horrifying, we would call that person racist. If they viewed their own racial traits as horrifying, we wold call that internalized racism.

So now we can circle back to pregnancy. True, pregnancy can be dangerous and scary, and one's body goes through some pretty crazy changes during and after it, but it's also something that female bodies have evolved to be able to do. The potential to become pregnant--the specific gametes and organs and hormones--is literally what makes a body female, at least for placental mammals like humans. Pregnancy is a normal, natural, uniquely and definitively female biological process.

You don't have to want to get pregnant, and it's totally fine to be scared about being pregnant. But to treat it as something unnatural, or as the original poll said, as "unreal terrifying body horror" is to see the capabilities of the female body as somehow Other and alien and twisted. That is misogyny. When women view our own bodies this way, it's internalized misogyny.

[dawnsmp3]

lisa frankenstein and jennifer's body both have an inviting traumatic incident and i think the way that both of the rest of the movies are centered around how two teen girls react to it is soooo choice. with lisa it's all about being changed to be unacceptable to society, to have something fundamentally wrong with you and unable to be fixed. and w jennifer it's all about continuing to pretend everything is fine, the internal normalization and the moving on too fast in a way that leads you to becoming further from yourself.

[brendonloverurie]

I don't wanna generalize an entire website because there's some really nice people on here, but sometimes it's reeeeally scary and obvious how much most of tumblr hates women. (It's definitely not just tumblr, but that's the only website I use.) People constantly make gross violent threats towards Taylor Swift because apparently she's the devil herself, and Swifties are just brainless npcs who couldn't possibly be Real People, right? People on tiktok or wherever the hell were mad at Chappell Roan because *checks notes* she doesn't want to be stalked or harassed. Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber haven't been together in like, 12 years or whatever, but people are STILL pitting Selena against Hailey Bieber. Not to mention the bodyshaming and endless fakes nudes made without consent that get posted and reposted all over. Maisie Peters was on the Eras Tour, but people started bullying her about her voice. It was all fine and well to like Sabrina Carpenter, but only up until she got popular. Because popular = bad, right? Apparently choosing to wear more makeup than other people is a punishable crime on tumblr.com. People are trying to find "acceptable" ways to be awful because they can't get away with calling women sluts or whores anymore, but I literally see right through it, and it's not cute.

[left-the-room]

Some people have blood type A, some have B or AB or O. That's a neutral fact about their bodies and it might be important information in medical settings. That's not biological essentialism. Some people have organs that produce/ could produce large gametes and the associated secondary sex characteristics. That's also not biological essentialism.

[massiveladycat]

me watching girls who justify themselves with feminism hate on men just for breathing too loud near them i'm sorry, isn't feminism supposed to be advocating for equality among the genders??? how are you achieving feminism by villainizing and attacking men? do you think that makes it okay because they were born a man? edit: yes, i acknowledge many girls are angry over the mistreatment by men, and i am not saying their experiences are invalid. i'm saying attacking men who've done nothing wrong is horrible. putting them in the same level as men who've actually hurt women is cruel. i'm saying believing that one gender should be superior over the other is just plain bad, or that men only want one thing or that they are inherently horrible people is absolute shit.

[sieglinde-freud]

WHERE WERE THE AWAKENING SECOND GEN ON JULY 21ST 2023

[is-this-really--life]

Its the idea that fucking off to a commune is doing anything for wider society that does it for me...

[silvermoon424]

Sometimes my political/rant posts from like 10 years ago get recommended to me and god I was such a fucking cringe-ass loser

[mariemariemaria]

Credit to manchanmagan on Instagram.

Photography credit to Carmel Winters.

[aceoffangirls]

Happy International Women’s Day to all the amazing, strong, beautiful, smart, funny, awesome women out there.

[radelenagreco]

i'm #newtoradblr i've spent so much time these past two weeks scrolling through radfem blogs i knew i had to make an actual radfem side of tumblr blog for my own sanity. the way i "peaked" is kinda funny 3-4 months ago i liked a radfem post without realizing and all of a sudden i had other radfem posts recommended to me by the algorithm and i was so annoyed because i was very anti-terf etc but for a couple days i read through a bunch of radfem blogs and it was actually such a relief to encounter FEMINISM not some watered down version of it but i felt guilty due to 5+ years of conditioning (and also because i had a nonbinary friend sitting right next to me in class as i was doing this) and i also didn't like the prominent use of the word moid? but anyway, 3 months later, i'm not sure why but the mra nature of the trans movement has grown so much more apparent to me i have like three mutuals who are trans men on my other blog and i would find myself rereading the few feminist posts i would reblog/write because these people are literally reblogging shit like "don't think like a terf. men aren't your oppressors, they're your friends/neighbors/brothers/fathers. if you think that any man could harm you you have been fooled by terf rhetoric" like actual morons/meninists. anyway two weeks ago i saw a post made by someone i knew was a radfem on my twitter tl and i don't know why i knew i was ready i went through her blog and through many others and now here i am.

[girlscience]

I hate getting into something that has a canon(ish) sapphic couple, but I only end up caring about one of the two women 😭😭😭

[blonkk]

“so sad being a harry potter fan/jkr stan and a transphobe pick a struggle” ok but how’s it a struggle? ?? because weird losers i don’t know will try to bully me on the internet ??? y’all are just smug because you were nobody in high school and now you feel like you win at life because you have internet clout from tweens and perverted adult men plus the duds who jumped on the bandwagon because they have zero values and beliefs of their own …. like stop projecting i promise no one gives a fuck that you’re “different” it’s still annoying and your green shaved head and mushroom tattoo aren’t punk or even really that cool at all….get a grip fr …anyways i’m gonna struggle by A) being objectively right and B) enjoying my childish stories that have no shortage of material (and more on the way!) to keep me entertained

[butterflyrocks]

I hate when some men englove all feminist in one type. The liberal feminist.

And then they think they are destroying all the arguments of all feminists when some article or study says that men and women are not equal biologically speaking. When radical feminists have been saying that, a while before these guys.

[elfyprincess]

Missing being known as the Wednesday Addams terf & longing for Wednesday season 2.

[coffincoitus]

sorry but this was in the euripides medea tag and it's exactly what I was talking about the other day irt ppl targeting anything that depicts female anger/violence in any way and deciding it's a threat to public safety and that it's up to them to save the world from the notion that such things are not what feminism should be. as if there's any chance that fandom girlies having sympathy for a murderous fictional character will create a systematic agreement that it's okay to commit murder or infanticide if you're a girl!!!!