#anti toxic feminism

[kathrahender]

Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks we're making progess in some things, like in science, but as a society we're getting worse and worse every day. Like seriously, we're all humans. We're all living beings. We all deserve to be treated respectfully and we deserve to live without being harassed or hated. We're all in the same side, why people can't see that?

Please, stop hating people or calling them out for their sexual orientation or their sexual identity.

Please, stop hating people or calling them out for being a woman, a man, a non-binary person, or whoever they are.

Please, stop hating people or calling them out for being pro-life or pro-choice.

Please, stop hating people or calling them out for wanting hormone therapy.

Please, stop hating people or calling them out for the ships they like/the ships they don't like in fiction.

Please, stop treating disabled people as less-worthy people.

Just. Please-

Stop the hate. Stop hating each other. I beg you.

Can't you see that despising/hating each other is not fixing anything? Because it isn't solving any problem. Dear God. Hate never fixes anything. The only thing hate does is cause more pain. Hate only makes people disrespectful. Hate only makes people suffer. And people already suffered enough.

Do you think you're making the world better with your hate thoughts? Do you think society is getting better thanks to your hate? No, it's not. You're not making the world more "pure" or whatever you think you're doing. The only thing you're doing is destroying it. The only thing you're doing is shattering people's souls. It's not helping anyone. Why can't you see the world is a mess because of people like you? You say some people are contaminating the world/making the world worse for their opinion about some things, but the truth is you are the problem here, not them.

So please, be more respectful. Be more kind.

Be more human.

We can still stop this. We can still make the world better for everyone. We can still change before it's too late.

Please, don't let this world end because of your inhumanity.

[dysphoriaposting]

Ah, and just to clarify:

Lesbians, gays, men and women, EVERYONE can be anti-trans. These people all equally deserve to GO DIE.

[limerence-leftovers]

I know two men who are currently single. One is 26, and the other is 38.

I’ve spoken with both of them at length about what they want in a woman, seeing as they’re cishet and white.

They both immediately went for physical attributes. Thin, but needs to have a nice butt. Boobs can’t be too big. One likes short hair, the other likes long hair. They also went into facial features for some reason. That was the part that made me really uncomfortable as I hadn’t expected either of them to have been that focused on appearances.

Aesthetics came next. Both want ‘alt goth / witchy’ women. It should be worth noting both of these men said their potential partner can’t wear too much makeup.

Lastly came personality and interests. They both said this is the most important thing to them, but they also ‘have to be pretty’. Oh, and they need to listen.

I have some single ladies I’ve also spoken with.

It’s the opposite. They rarely care about looks. It’s about chemistry, emotional connection, feeling safe, and sharing common goals / ideals.

While I know it’s not ‘all men’ it sure as fuck is a lot of you. Also both of these men think they’re part of the ‘good cishet white liberal men’ who voted for Kamala, despite one of them not voting at all.

He’s the 38 year old. To make things worse, he’s trying to date a 24 year old. 🤷‍♀️ His criteria for a potential partner was also under the age of 30 because it means less baggage and they’re still ‘fun to be around’.

You don’t want to know what he doesn’t bring to the table. Either of them, rather. 😅

We do have a male loneliness epidemic, but it’s not women’s fault. We don’t owe you anything. We’re not vending machines you put tokens into and get sex out of. Male culture made by men and perpetuated by men has made men this way. And it’s your job as men to fix it, not point the finger at us and say it’s our fault for not wanting to be with you. Some of us like myself want to actually HELP you, but you guys rarely want to listen. You instead want to complain to us about our gender and how unfair we’re being by not giving you a chance.

We don’t owe you anything.

On January 20th, 2025 and forward, they’re going to try to take our rights. They may succeed.

Men have to take from us because they’ve gaslit themselves into seeing us as the enemy, despite having driven us away by their own actions centered around self interest.

“It’s not all men. But it sure is a lot of you.”

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

Taylor Swift is a Female Rage icon? Get a Grip.

I’ve just received word that Taylor Swift is calling her show “Female Rage: The Musical.” Here is my very much pissed off response to that nonsense:  

The phrase, Female Rage has an intimately rich history:  

Some of the first accounts of female rage dates to the Italian renaissance. To be clear, women in those days were not allowed to become painters- the arts were seen as the domain of men. They did not believe that women have rich inner lives capable of delivering the type of artistic innovation with which renaissance men were obsessed.  

However, rebels abounded, through the might of their fucking rage. Several women created some of the most compellingly emotional paintings I’ve ever fucking seen. They did it without permission, without financial support, and often under the threat of punishment. They did it as a protest. In paintings like “Timoclea Killing Her Rapist” by Elisabetta Sirani (1659), and another by Artemisia Gentileschi “Slaying of Holofernes” (1612) as it depicts the bravery of Judith as she slayed a traveling warlord out to rape Judith and enslave her city. The painting often is referred to as a way Artemisia was envisioning herself as slaying her rapist. These paintings were used against these women as proof that they were unfeminine- and far too angry.  Both these women suffered immensely for their audacity to call attention to the violation men perpetrated on them. Female Rage bleeds off these paintings- bleeds right through to the bone-deep acknowledgement of the injustice women faced being barred from the arts and having their humanity violated in such a sick way. Both women were hated- and considered far too angry.

In philosophy, also as early as the 15th century, an example of female rage is a philosophical text, often hailed as one of the first feminists works in the western world, written by Christine de Pizan titled The City of Ladies (1405). She wrote in protest on the state of women- writing that “men who have slandered the opposite sex out of envy have usually know women who were cleverer and more virtuous than they are” (“The City of Ladies”). People mocked her all her life- but she stood fast to her convictions. She was widowed at a young age with children to feed and the men wouldn’t let women have jobs! She wrote this book and sold it so that she could feed her family- and to protest the treatment of women as lesser than men. Her work was called aggressive and unkempt- they said she was far too angry. 

In the 18th century, a young Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, A Vindication of the Right of Women ( 1792) upon learning that the civil rights won in the French Revolution did not extend to women! She wrote in protest of the unjust ways other philosophers (like Rousseau) spoke about the state of women- as if they were lesser. She wrote to advocate for women’s right to education, which they did not yet have the right to! She wrote to advocate for the advancement of women’s ability to have their own property and their own lives! The reception of this text, by the general public, lead to a campaign against Wollstonecraft- calling her “aggressive” and far too angry.  

Moving into modernity, the 1960’s, and into literary examples, Maya Angelou publishes I know why the caged Bird Sings (1969) in which she discusses the fraught youth of a girl unprotected in the world. It beautifully, and heart-wrenchingly, described growing up in the American South during the 1930’s as it subjected her to the intersection of racism and sexism. The story is an autobiographical account of her own childhood, which explains how patriarchal social standards nearly destroyed her life. Upon the reception of her book, men mostly called it “overly emotional” and far too angry. Maya Angelou persisted. She did not back down from the honesty with which she shared her life- the raw, painful truth. With Literature, she regained a voice in the world.  

Interwoven into each of the examples I have pulled out here, is the underlying rage of women who want to be seen as human beings, with souls, dreams and hopes, yet are not seen as full members of society at the behest of men. They take all that rage, building up in their souls, and shift it to create something beautiful: positive change. Each of these cases, I have outlined above, made remarkable strides for the women as a whole- we still feel the impact of their work today. They were so god-damn passionate, so full of righteous anger, it burst out into heart-stopping, culture-shifting art. Feminine rage is therefore grounded in experiences of injustice and abuse- yet marked too by its ability to advocate for women's rights. It cannot be historically transmogrified away from these issues- though Taylor Swift is doing her best to assert female rage as pitifully dull, full of self-deprecation, and sadness over simply being single or losing money. She trivializes the seriousness with which women have pled their cases of real, painful injustice and suffering to the masses time and time again. The examples above deal with subjects of rape, governmental tyranny, and issues of patriarchally inspired social conditioning to accept women as less human than men. It is a deadly serious topic, one in which women have raised their goddamn voices for centuries to decry- and say instead, “I am human, I matter, and men have no right to violate my mind, body, or soul.”  

The depictions of female rage over the last few centuries, crossing through many cultures, is an array of outright anger, fearsome rage, and into utter despair. The one unyielding, solid underpinning, however, is that the texts are depicting the complete agency of the women in question. The one uniting aspect of female rage is that it must be a reaction to injustice; instead of how male depictions of female rage function, (think Ophelia), the women are the agents of their art with female made- female rage. They push forth the meaning through their own will- not as subjects of male desires or abuses, but as their own selves. That is what makes the phrase so empowering. They are showing their souls as a form of protest to the men who treat women like we have no soul to speak of.  

Taylor Swift’s so-called female rage is a farce in comparison. Let’s look at an example: “Mad Woman” (2020). I pull this example, and not something from her TTPD set, because this is one of the earliest examples of her using the phrase female rage to describe her dumb music. (Taylor Swift talking about "mad woman" | folklore : the long pond studio sessions (youtube.com)  

The lyrics from “Mad Woman” read “Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy/... And when you say I seem angry, I get more angry”  

How exactly is agreeing with someone that you are “crazy” a type of female rage in which she’s protesting the patriarchy. The patriarchy has a long history of calling women “insane” if they do not behave according to the will of men. So, how is her agreeing with the people calling her crazy- at all subversive in the way that artworks, typically associated with concept of female rage, are subversive. What is she protesting? NOTHING.  

Then later, she agrees, again, that she's “angry.” The issue I draw here is that she’s not actually explicating anything within the music itself that she’s angry about- she just keeps saying she's angry over and over, thus the line falls flat. The only thing this anger connects to is the idea of someone calling her angry- which then makes her agree that she is... angry. So, despite it being convoluted, it’s also just not actually making any kind of identifiable point about society or the patriarchy- so again, I beg, what on Earth makes this count as Female Rage?  

In essence, she is doing the opposite of what the examples above showcase. In letting an outside, presumably male, figure tell Taylor Swift what she is feeling, and her explicit acceptance of feeling “crazy” and “angry,” she is ultimately corroborating the patriarchy not protesting it. Her center of agency comes from assignment of feelings outside of herself and her intrinsic agreement with that assignment; whereas female rage is truly contingent on the internal state, required as within our own selves, of female agency. As I stated above, the women making female rage art must have an explicit agency throughout the work. Taylor Swift’s song simply does not measure up to this standard.  

Her finishing remarks corroborates the fact that she's agreeing with this patriarchal standard of a "mad" or crazy woman:

"No one likes a mad woman/ You made her like that"

Again, this line outsources agency through saying "you made her like that" thus removing any possibility of this song being legitimate female rage. There is simply no agency assigned to the woman in the song- nor does the song ever explicitly comment on a social issue or protestation of some grievous injury to women's personhood.

She honestly not even being clever- she's just rhyming the word “crazy” with “crazy.” Then later rhyming “angry” with “angry.” Groundbreaking stuff here.  

Perhaps Taylor Swift is angry, in “Mad Woman,” but it is not the same type of rage established in the philosophical concept of female rage of which art historians, philosophers, and literary critics speak. Instead, it is the rage of a businesswoman that got a bad deal- but it is not Female Rage as scholars would identify it. In “Mad Woman” I fear her anger is shallow, and only centered on material loss- through damaging business deals or bad business partners. She is not, however, discussing what someone like Christine de Pizan was discussing by making a case for the concept that woman also have souls like men do. In her book, she had to argue that women have souls, because men were unconvinced of that. Do you see the difference? I am saying that Swift’s concerns are purely monetary and material, whereas true examples of female rage center on injustice done against their personhood- as affront to human rights. Clearly, both things can make someone mad- but I’d argue the violation of human rights is more serious- thus more deserving of the title “Female Rage.”  

Simply put, Taylor Swift is not talking about anything serious, or specific, enough to launch her into the halls of fame for "Female Rage" art. She's mad, sure, but she's mad the way a CEO gets mad about losing a million dollars. She's not mad about women's position in society- or even just in the music industry.

She does this a lot. The album of “Reputation” was described as female rage. Songs in “Folklore” were described as female rage. Now, she’s using the term to describe TTPD, which is the most self-centered, ego-driven music I’ve heard in a long time.

Comparing the injustice, and complete subjugation, of women’s lives- to being dumped by a man or getting a bad deal- wherein she is still one of the most powerful women of the planet- is not only laughable, but offensive. 

[nothing0fnothing]

As a young girl in the church I was taught to "respect myself."

We were told it from every angle. Our teachers, our preachers, our parents. "As a woman you have to respect yourselves." "How can men respect you if you're not respectful of yourself?"

I'm not sure why an 11 year old girl needed tips on how to make men respect her, but they felt it was important nonetheless.

So I educated myself and spoke my mind. I wanted to be respected for how clever I was. I asked questions that were thoughtful and well reasoned, I corrected elders when they were wrong and I focused on knowing as much as I could.

They didn't like that.

So I put all that aside, and instead I learned about feminism. I decided I should be respected for how firm I was. I said no loudly and clearly. I made my boundaries known and I reacted loudly when they were crossed.

They didn't mean like that either.

So instead, I put myself in therapy. I wanted to be respected for how self assured I was. I started caring for myself and putting me first. I healed from my trauma and learned how to not repeat old cycles, and everyone who I could, I brought them up with me.

They didn't like that at all.

No, apparently the type of self respect they wanted me to learn was the type where I beleived lies at face value, said nothing to those who crossed my boundaries and wallowed in depression and toxic cycles. But also like, while keeping my shoulders covered or something.

Silly me.

[radifemsara]

If masculinity was not so fragile, they would not be teaching our sisters since toddlerhood to reject politely instead of teaching males to accept and handle rejection well.

[itsdafinalbraincell]

Tradwifes are not on tiktok filming themselves making food at home. They are "arranged" to marry a man and stay in the kitchens of their extended family, dreams forgotten. Like my maternal grandmother.

Tradwifes are not on tiktok filming themselves proclaiming to be anti-feminists. They are harassing and abusing their daughters and daughter-in-laws for not being the perfect, submissive, docile woman. Like my paternal grandmother.

Tradwifes are not on tiktok filming themselves taking care of their children. They are miserable and lost and take it out on their daughters, controlling them in every way possible and crying wolf when the young woman recognises her worth and leaves. Like my mother.

[hoefortoes1]

the toxic masculinity of desi men pisses me off so much, on the one hand, they teach women modesty and how to cover themselves more, while on the other hand, most of these men are porn addicts who get off by seeing women getting degraded and treated like objects.

[lilithism1848]

[abearinthewoods]

If as a feminist the only men's issue you bring up of your own accord is toxic masculinity you don't support gender equality, you just like using the male gender as a bludgeon to make your political points, and we can see right through it.

[shitswiftiessay]

swifties call olivia wilde a “misogynist” and a “woman hater” for seemingly shading taylor swift’s jet pollution.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

re your commentary on swifts feminism

her song the man has always bothered me particularly how it's been labeled and used as some "feminist anthem" when it's not about feminism. she literally says she'd rather replace the man on top and get to get away with all the bad behaviors men do, "if a was a man" means she'd be the one "flashing dollars and getting bitches and models", being a baller and not a "bitch", and referencing leo dicaprio also feels weird to me given his track record of throwing female partners away the second they hit age 25. if it was really about feminism it'd be a song about getting rid of that structure entirely, not having anyone in a position above someone else especially to abuse wealth and social power but instead it's over three minutes of her wishing she could be in that position instead

Hello! Apologies this took me a whole week to get to <3. I totally agree with on "The Man"(2019) though. This song is such a snobby, classless disgrace.

I always forget that people really believe that to be a feminist anthem… and I just don't understand how people think that?

It's not a song about disrupting the patriarchy. Taylor Swift is singing about climbing the corporate ladder, and wishing, simultaneously, that she was privy to male privilege.

Like she's already privileged, and yet she's singing about wanting even more privileges…. LOL

Swift is not a feminist and I will literally die on this Hill. She's not even a LGBT ally either- but that's a post/rant for another day.

She cares about exactly one thing- herself. Absolutely nothing in any of her songs that she markets as feminist music takes about issues facing women as a whole- or even extends empathy towards other women. All of it is so completely self-centered.

Especially, "The Man."(2019) I'm sorry, Miss Swift, but as a real feminist, I really have no desire to replace men at the top of the hierarchy- I want to destroy the hierarchy.

Also, since you're giving me the opportunity to talk about this, can we talk about how gross this line is: " and they would toast to me, let the players play/ I'd be just like Leo in Saint-Tropez" First of all, she's saying that if she was the man she would be applauded for sleeping around so much, and if she was a man she could be like Leonardo Dicaprio who famously refuses to date anyone older than 25?

Like she's really out here repackaging sexist power imbalances, ones that encourage the objectification of other people, in romantic relationships and singing about how she wishes she could do that without being called out? She's romanticizing Leo's creepy dating life, as perpetually single yet using young girls like accessories, and yet in all of her other songs she is crying about how much she wants to get married and be "pushing strollers." Make it make sense.

Also, uhhh… the men are also called out for being creeps? Why would we stop doing that if gender roles were suddenly reversed?

My aim with feminist activism is to destroy gender roles altogether…

Anyway. She's a fraud.

And you have brought up a remarkably good observation in her music- because this theme extends out well past just "The Man" (2019).

God this song makes me so mad- How does she get away with selling this shit as Feminism??????????????????? She's probably never read a feminist text in her life.

I have this ongoing theory that her idea of "feminism" is just being able to climb the corporate ladder. Like she's just so clearly only imaginative when it comes to business. She really should have just focused on becoming a businesswoman, because she's certainly not a poet or a feminist.

[liskantope]

Did I just make a half-joke in my last post about the 2010's brand of aggressive internet feminism being dead? Have I mentioned more than once in recent posts that the I consider it a happy development that the TERFish ideology seems to have siphoned away a lot of the visible "women are fragile because men are so terrifying" mentality in more mainstream feminism? Well, that was before I read the below post that is apparently making the rounds in the last few days about the "bear test" and the oh-so-nailed-it commentary on it claiming that the "bear test" illuminates exactly two fundamentally types of men:

This "bear vs. man" question is obvious to me a rhetorical sleight-of-hand playing on a convenient arrangements of cultural emotion-based ideas of what bears symbolize and how protective a man is supposed to be around his daughter having men in her life and so on. Treating it as a serious thought experiment leading to an obvious conclusion about the patriarchy or something would be annoying enough, but first post has to inject that familiar gleeful smugness about how the simple question is guaranteed trip us men up and expose our toxic mindset for all the world to see and illuminate the writer's perfect black-and-white view of gender relations. (It reminds me of the question designed to trip up atheists: "You're walking down a dark street at night and see some shadowy figures coming your way. If you were to discover that they are people who just came out of a Bible study, would that make you feel better or worse?" Except I think that old pro-religion argument, much as I've always hated it, actually rests on firmer ground.)

As for the follow-up social media post, it's nice to know that, as a man who sincerely believes probability-wise that the bear in the woods is a lot more dangerous to my hypothetical daughter than a randomly-chosen man is (an assessment supposedly no woman holds), I am now properly classified as one of those men who is more dangerous than a bear, or (to a more charitable reading) one of those men who is providing cover/excuses for / not doing his part to stop the men who are more dangerous than bears.

(I doubt very much that there's actual data around on chances of a young woman being attacked in the woods by a human man or chances of being attacked by a bear, but I'm willing to change my prediction if I learn that most species of bear ignore humans who wander into their midst like 99% of the time or something like that. Which would cast doubt on most cultural treatment of bears, of course and also kind of undermine the punchline of the "test".)

[bi-dykes]

Source: Pinterest 💜 Credits: @ amargadaxo

[old-acc-discourseisdumb]

If you’re wondering why men are ‘not allowed’ to be affectionate with each other without being called gay or to have female friends they aren’t in love with, it’s because of hegemonic masculinity.

Raewyn Connel came up with this concept, the ideal which all men are expected to compare themselves to. Hegemonic means dominant in a social or political context.

Outside of hegemonic masculinity, there’s complicit masculinities expressed by men who aren’t ‘the perfect man’ but still uphold it’s ideals, such as the typical virgin gamer stereotype, physically weak men, unmarried middle age men, unemployed men, etc. marginalised masculinities are men who don’t receive as many benefits from patriarchy due to class, race, disability, trans identity, etc. This is a distinct (but often overlapping) category from subordinated masculinities, meaning men who are grouped with women but still have significant benefits of male privilege. These are feminine men, emotional men, gay men, etc.

Psychologists Amy Cohn and Amos Zeichner say there are four dimensions to hegemonic masculinity: competitiveness and dominance; emotional inexpressiveness (except for anger); gender role stress (maintaining the act of masculinity); and homophobia and misogyny. Men who defy these hegemonic ideals, such as men who are open about mental health, men who parent their children, men who are allies and feminists, and men who don’t exhaust themselves with those standards are all written off as subordinated masculinities, grouped with gay men.

Notice all of those standards are essential for friendship. Emotional vulnerability and equality especially. That creates a standard for men where they’re allowed to want sex (and expected to) but aren’t allowed to want emotional connections, so actual closeness is impossible for the man with hegemonic and complicit masculinities.

TL;DR the components which make up ‘ideal masculinity’ contradict close friendships, so men are assumed to be incapable of forming bonds which aren’t sexual in nature.

Btw I got all of this from Gender: A Graphic Guide by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele. Highly recommended book to help deconstruct gender norms and to learn more about this stuff

[intersexfairy]

a necessary part of feminism is acknowledging that any and all cisheteropatriarchal ideas of gender can be used to enact harm - not just masculinity and manhood.

if your feminism denies how people weaponize femininity and womanhood (or even a lack of masculinity or manhood) to harm others, you are not advocating for liberation. if your feminism denies how toxic masculinity and manhood harm men and masculine people, you are not advocating for liberation. if your feminism denies the existence of queer people, their oppression, and any harm they enact through gender, you are not advocating for liberation.

gender based oppression/privilege is not black and white. it does not exist in a bubble, separate from other forms of oppression & privilege. if you act as otherwise, you're ultimately affirming the suffering and oppression of others. gender liberation includes everyone. that's the entire point.