#as feminity is inherently viewed as something to control

[qiqi-guai-guai]

a pretty girl's disgust can strike shame in the hearts of a hundred thousand people. armed with a grimace, pretty girls can subjugate the entire world.

[hopeforchanges]

Institutionalized Misogyny: Why Women Are "Difficult" (and Why Galadriel Deserves Grace)

Can I get something off my chest, friends?

First of all, much like Tolkien, I believe in the inherent good of all people. And I have met more kind, compassionate and assertive people than I have met the other group.

But. I have to say this either way.

Institutionalized misogyny thrives on control—especially controlling how women express themselves. Here’s the catch: when women defend themselves, they’re labeled “difficult.” You can be the calmest, most articulate person in the room, but if you dare challenge someone, you’re suddenly “too much.” Too loud, too angry, too aggressive, too bitchy and snarky and defensive. Because heaven forbid you don’t smile politely and instead dismiss someone’s dumbass opinion.

It’s systemic. When men disagree, they’re assertive. When women disagree, they’re trouble. And this double standard bleeds into how we view fictional women, too.

Galadriel’s unapologetically herself. She is unabashedly unashamed of who she is even though she fucks up sometimes. She lets pain, grief, and rage cloud her judgment and inadvertently coaxes Satan out of retirement.

And yes, she should face the consequences of those actions. But let’s be real: men in similar situations get treated like heroes on an “arc.” A guy screws up? It’s a redemption story. A woman screws up? She’s irredeemable. She’s the problem.

Galadriel isn’t perfect—and that’s the point. She’s grieving, angry, flawed, and still standing. And that makes people uncomfortable because women are expected to apologize for existing, let alone for messing up. When men fail, they’re given room to grow. When women fail, they’re told to go join Hillary Clinton in the woods and never show their faces again.

Yes, Galadriel should be held accountable. But treating her like she is the villain rather than a victim of her own humanity (or elf-ness, whatever) is the exact reason women are held to impossible standards. Let’s allow women the same grace we allow men when they screw up.

Let them be rude, let them be angry, let them feel. Women don’t have to be picture-perfect role models 24/7. They’re allowed to act human in the face of tragedy. Treat them with compassion, not contempt, for their flaws.

And by the way, this is not the fourth wave of feminism hatred post to grab pitchforks and crucify men. In fact, I am ashamed and heartbroken to even say this out loud, but it is mostly women (at least in my life) who I have seen (and both experienced) perpetuating misogyny and unnecessary competitiveness.

This is a post coming from a place of love, calling out a HUMAN, institutionalized behavior, not just male behavior, that hurts women and therefore hurts storytelling which I deeply care about.

Thank you for listening and keep being awesome.

[genderqueerdykes]

I only recently got my mental health under control so now I can work on myself rather than just focusing on getting through the day and wow. This blog has made me realize the absolute fucking damage radical feminism did to me.

I was younger, pinterest was my only social media, and it ended up being my only exposure to feminism posts from tumblr. But most of the screenshots that get uploaded to pinterest don't differentiate between feminism and radfeminism.

So I knew to avoid it when it was clearly tagged! But most of the time it was not so I fell right into the trap 😬 I'm a rather naive(?) person too and it was worse at that age. So. Very easy for the ideals to uh prey on me I suppose

I am still unworking the whole viewing cis men as inherently predatory and evil thing. Ugh. Just. Radical feminism is dangerous. Sorry rant over

hey thanks for taking the time to share your story i really appreciate it!

wow i never considered that type of environment would be on pinterest. it's something i've used sporadically here and there but i never got too deep into it. that's so unfortunate that rad feminism is so common on there and is not differentiated from actual feminism. it's okay though, you had no way of knowing better at the time. most people who start interacting with feminism find themselves listening to some rad fem beliefs because they're just so common. it's not your fault that they're putting that hate out there

but it's good that you've realized that it's not good for you to spread it. that's the only thing you have control over. it's not your fault you were taken advantage of. that stuff really is just predatory. it's here to take advantage of shy and insecure people. it's here to take advantage of people who are new to feminism. it's not your fault you got wrapped up in it. i wish you the best, i'm very proud of you for realizing this! that's a huge step in the road to recovery

[rametarin]

Angry about something

Please, please, please, let movements be horrible on their own without saying, "The're the [previous thing] of [subject]"

We don't say the Nazis were the modern Napoleonic Imperialists. We don't say the Napoleonic Imperialists were their day's Golden Horde of Genghis Khan. We don't say Muslim pirates and abductors from Tripoli cruising Europe for slaves and conquests were "totally Trans Atlantic Slave Trading it." Muslims were abducting Europeans for slave applications for centuries before Europeans did it for

And when people talk about modern day Intersectional Feminists, capital P Progressives and oldschool TERF-flavor feminists get nasty in accordance with their values all over a pasttime, a hobby, or a group of people that enjoys something and tells them they're doing it wrong thanks to a VERY unreliably narrated assessment of what they are and why they are, they tend to treat their behavior as if it's the same stock mindset of previous experience related to Christian puritainism and religious evangelism.

Don't fucking do this. Their values are not the same. They come from a different place, and you doing this helps them do something they SPECIFICALLY like to do. First, muck around acting like assholes in self-righteous quests to control how people interpret reality and see things, and when called out for it, have their own controlled mea culpa where they apologize because, "that's just the old Christian White Supremacist in me, the feminism part of me isn't like that and can't be like that because feminism is just good and can't be bad. I'm sowwy. :C"

No. Fucking no. Do NOT fucking allow that to happen. Feminism is not a simple act of seeing women as equal, it's an entire dogmatic baggage that necessitates Class Struggle Theory, the willful adoption of the idea the only thing that matters in sexual politics is that "Women Are Oppressed (TM)" even when circumstances and culture are entirely equal and even handed with them, and that society owes them something to compensate for this inherent oppression- at the expense of men. And that Society is the third wheel in their relationship, automatically there to redistribute from the man.

Feminism bills itself as simply a phenomenon of 'equality'... for women.. but it is no more this than Christianity is synonymous with The Good(tm). It certainly is a shitty way to see the world, but it is not the definition of seeing the world. It boils down to making some very very intensely specific logical leaps and shortcuts out of convenience and then dogmatically insisting these values are immutable and unquestionable.

From that position, we come to the other little black box in the equation. The idea that something that exists in culture that represents an icon or concept, oppresses and exploits that icon, object or group, and that it is specifically wrong to objectify that, but only if it's a woman, a group that is "oppressed." (it's however perfectly justifiable to objectify an 'oppressor.' See how that works.) Right before they say some apologetics like, "It's not MY fault cisheterosexual Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is sexually binary! Maybe if you agreed in more options we wouldn't be having this conversation!"

And it's because of this shitty point of view, they argue that even having big booby fictional characters that are female, boobily boobing down the stairs for the appreciation of the audience, they jump to the next facet of their belief system. Male Gaze Theory.

Built off their idea that Classes Struggle (tm) and Women Are the Obligate Oppressed Class(tm), and that any reference or participation by women is inherently an act of an oppressed political group in bondage to and beholden to their oppressive captors, AND that works of fiction and literature are part of culture, these facets of culture give groups their marching orders, programming and ideas on what they are, mean and even their existence. They believe, uncompromisingly, that your very perception and understanding of reality is built solely upon what books written by the state have to say about what is real and what isn't. That if society writes books about a murderer and don't go out of their way to omnipotently, omnipresently dictate with no ambiguity that, "Murder is bad, ackshully," that you endorse a society where murder happens. And, no joke, this is how they imagine murder, theft and antisocial behavior happening. Because it exists in that cultural bubble like evil waves of energy, just going unneutralized to warp the minds of unprepared people who haven't been told what is right and wrong by society, making them rapists, murderers and exploiters of those weaker than them (and they only care when the person exploits someone weaker than them.)

So they see sexy drawn women as depictions of an oppressed minority being reveled over by a slavemaster class, exploiting their image and the idea of that group for profit (which they also despise) and believe the women should also be profitting off their "exploitation" in fiction, and some sort of state council should exist that oversees the expression or interpretation of women in fiction, or else abolish the work from existing for not fitting their moral and social view of how literature and culture are "allowed" to see women. Seeing this very dour, extreme interpretation about how all men depicting women is exploitation, and by default society is meant for a male, oppressor perspective, is called, "Male Gaze Theory."

At no point in this equation did their greviance or conceptual principles cross over with Puritainism or Christians. They are their own totalitarian beasts, and like the Nazis are not Napoleonics are not The Mongol Horde, FUCKING TELL IT LIKE IT IS AND ACCEPT RADICAL FEMINISM IS JUST LIKE THIS.

You can somehow see one radical conservative and condemn the entire conservative or right-wing party as inherently racist, white supremacist and homophobic, but you can't acknowledge that radical feminism has more Ls to its name and more bad ideas and more bad values than rejecting the idea that trans men and women aren't men and women. All their ideological supremacism, all their logical leaps, all of their antagonistic marching into any fandom and demanding the fandom most conform to their ideas of what is mentally, emotionally an socially healthy, are their own. They are not Puritans, they're fucking radical feminists. Do not use the bad behavior of past groups as an ablative shield when you fucking mean what you mean.

"Well complaining about feminism makes me sound like some kind of CHUD..."

That's a you problem. In the past, complaining about the Church when it was synonymous with power would've made you a "pagan" or an "unbeliever." And before the T in LGBT got traction, it was just "anti-feminist" for a biological man to argue with a woman, giving them infinite instant Ls, even if they did identify as a woman. It starts somewhere.

Call it like it is and just realize radical feminism is rotten from the top windows of the attic to the foundations.

[gatheringbones]

[“Norwegian academics Cecilie Høigård and Liv Finstad write that the sex worker’s vagina is ‘a garbage can for hordes of anonymous men’s ejaculations’. We once witnessed a sex worker in an online feminist discussion being asked:

What is the condition of your rectum and the fibrous wall between your rectum and your vagina? Any issues of prolapse? Incontinence? Lack of control? You may discover that things start falling down/out when you’re a little older. Are you able to achieve orgasm? Do you have nightmares?

Such interrogation and commentary feels far from sisterly. It doesn’t comfort or uplift sex workers to know that our being likened to toilets, loaves of bread, meat, dogs or robots is all part of a project apparently more important than our dignity. Feminist women describe us as ‘things’ for which one can purchase a ‘single-use license to penetrate’. They gleefully reference the ‘jizz’ we’ve presumably encountered and our ‘orifices’ and tell us to stick to ‘sucking and fucking’ and leave feminist policy discussions to ‘those of us who read the facts’.

Sex workers are associated with sex, and to be associated with sex is to be dismissible. As Jo Doezema writes, within anti-prostitution feminism

the echo … of the pornographic is notable. The prostitute not only lacks … she is lack. What [these] feminists most want of sex workers is that they close their holes – shut their mouths, cross their legs – to prevent the taking in and spilling out of substances and words they find noxious.

Sometimes feminists’ jibes are subtler than calling us ‘holes’, and these responses have much in common with the ways Victorians disciplined prostitutes into ‘appropriate’ modes of femininity and sexual continence. Contemptuous articles link sex workers with ‘trivial’, feminine-coded practices such as fashion, shopping, and selfies, or mock sex workers’ discussions of ‘empowerment’. In an article expressing her feminist objections to the sex trade, one journalist writes that young women who ‘dress like slags’ in ‘tiny skirts’ deserve not to be taken seriously. Rejecting a woman because of her appearance is simple misogyny, based on the idea that women who embody a particular kind of femininity are stupid, shallow or somehow inferior. The focus on feminine frivolities draws on pre-twentieth-century depictions of the prostitute as deviant and degraded in her rampant femininity, obsessed with luxury goods and sex. Through this lens, it’s easy for non-prostitute feminists to portray sex workers as having no political literacy at all. (Indeed, it is likely that a reviewer of this book will report that we claimed the sex industry to be empowering – and a conduit, presumably, to shoe shopping.)

Sex, in these discussions, is positioned as something intrinsically too special to be sold – something intimate reserved for meaningful relationships. Implicit in this view is the sense that sex is a volatile substance for women and must be controlled or legitimised by an emotional connection. One young feminist, for example, writes disapprovingly that sex work is increasingly acceptable to other young feminists because of ‘hookup culture’, adding, ‘It’s old-fashioned these days – almost prudish, perhaps – to believe that sex is somehow … inherently linked to your emotions or necessarily intimate.’ Yet for many people, sex can indeed be recreational, casual, or in some way ‘meaningless’. The meaning and purpose of sex varies wildly for different people in different contexts or at different times in their lives. The sense that sex is intrinsically, always special rebounds on women, who are disproportionately seen as losing something when they have sex that is ‘too casual’.* It is no coincidence that men who sell sex are not the focus of the same kinds of anxieties – men are seen as able to have casual, meaningless, or transactional sex with much less risk to their ‘essential selves’.

In the UK, women ‘rescued from brothels’ are still sent to live with nuns. The ultimate fallen women are sent to ‘restore their dignity’ among the ultimate chaste women. Women ‘diverted’ from the sex trade in the twenty-first century are overwhelmingly taught traditionally ‘feminine’ forms of employment – especially garment manufacture, but also baking, candle-making, and jewellery-making. Motifs of purity are common in the jewellery produced by such projects.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[magicalhideoutengineer]

Alien Covenant, The Agency, Inherent Vice, Fantastic Beasts. Throughout your career, you’ve played characters who are fighting for control and respect in a world that doesn’t really want to give you that…

“Well, I’ve only played women. I’m always looking for roles that are complex enough that I can suspend my disbelief though. I need to be able to fall into the fantasy and it’s often those characters that are frustrated, fighting against something or experiencing tension that do it for me.”

It seems like everyone involved in the Fantastic Beasts films has a different take on whether the series will ever get finished – what’s yours?

“The last two films probably won’t get made, but that’s only based on a gut feeling. I know nothing and I’d probably be one of the last to know if something was happening because with films of that size, people aren’t calling up the performers to keep them updated. Do contracts expire? I’ve never thought about that before, but they probably do at some point, right? At the moment we are bound to them but I think that ship has sailed.”

Did it ever feel like a risk to share your views on feminism and trans rights at a time where people like J.K. Rowling were preaching the opposite?

“I didn’t think of it as a risk at all. And if it had, I would have done it anyway.”

Some people have suggested that’s why Tina’s role was cut down in the third Fantastic Beasts film…

“With these huge films, you never know why anything happens. We are just so divorced from the leadership.”

A lot of Harry Potter fans feel conflicted about watching the films or reading the books now. Where do you stand on that?

“Fantastic Beasts was such a big break for me. Those films changed my life and I learned a lot from working on something of that scale. There’s so much that I’m grateful for and I want to be really clear about that. I do think about the fans a lot though. Harry Potter is a beautiful trans allegory and what a pity for young people [not to feel comfortable] engaging with that.

“There are those questions around the tension of two different things – can you be grateful and critical? Yes, of course you can. Life is brief and rife with pain and suffering, so if something brings you joy… That’s the closest I’ve got to an answer but it’s never felt truly satisfying. I really do love those fans though and the actors I worked with are friends for life. That was the real gift of the experience.”

[boreal-sea]

one of the cruelest parts about radical feminism (to me) is their idea that the roles should simply be reversed, that men deserve to suffer because (in the view) they’ve made women suffer (i personally believe patriarchy is way more complicated than that). i don’t know how any person claiming to be part of a liberation movement can handle having the fact that they explicitly call for and desire the oppression of another group of people based on something they cannot control on their conscience. it is truly baffling to me.

Radical feminism, I have said many times, does not have a "win state" in most cases, and the few "solutions" put forth are draconian to dystopian, unsustainable and unhealthy.

Most of them are bioessentialists, so they believe Creating A Patriarchy is just like, an innate biological urge of men, so men have to be forced into submission to prevent them from just making a new patriarchy.

Many radfems are literally hopeless in the face of the patriarchy because they've built it up as this omnipotent powerful entity that cannot be defeated, so they just promote separatism.

But a female separatist society? Unsustainable. Period.

So like. Men are still gonna be here, unless radfems do a genocide against them, and continue to do genocide for the rest of human existence. That's fucking horrific.

Treating half the population of Earth as inherently unworthy of living because of how they were born is uh... bad.

Believing that no currently living man is capable or worthy of change and growth is uh... bad.

[homosexuhauls]

i realised when i got into radical feminism that, despite being a lifelong feminist and lover of women, i still had a whole lot of internalised misogyny to deal with. women i hated for no other reason than "being annoying", even when i didn't really know them. subconscious assumptions about other women's intelligence, skill-sets and abilities, when those women didn't fit my idea of what a strong woman or feminist is. lack of solidarity with women from privileged backgrounds. an inability to let myself empathise with women who are bigoted or cruel or antisocial - even though these traits are viewed as complex and deep in men.

i also realised that there's possibly a connection between me finding random women unlikeable for no rational reason reason, and my own lifelong certainty that i an inherently unlikeable in some way that's invisible to me but super obvious to everyone else. i think they're two sides of the same misogynistic coin. we police other women; we police ourselves. we cannot be "too" anything, cannot express a single "undesirable" trait, or we become that and only that, in both our own eyes and others'.

these things don't go away overnight. honestly i still catch myself thinking or saying (in the privacy of my own home) "silly cow" when a fictional* or celebrity woman does something i find stupid. i don't think that judgemental streak in me will ever disappear, all i can do is push back when my brain tries to tell me that a woman doesn't deserve my sympathy. but maybe if i could push past that internalised misogyny, maybe i would begin to judge myself less harshly also, to believe that i am deserving of friendship and love, and not unlikeable and an outsider for reasons beyond my control.

(*obviously fictional women can be written by men, in which case, it is the men who are silly oxen)

[the-feminist-philosopher]

Trans exclusionary activism is founded upon a sex-essentialist ideology where the definition of ‘woman’ is reducible to any number of essential biological attributes or characteristics like chromosomes, fecundity, gametes, or bone morphology, where the presence or absence of these essential attributes defines a woman's material condition. This leads to a system whereby trans men are oppressed as women in society while trans women are not. This provides a stark contrast to the feminism they claim to be the ideological descendants of: radical feminism.

Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. Like needing oogenesis to have "femaleness." Bio determinism is the belief that human behavior is directly controlled by an individual's genes. Like assuming that the idea there are two discrete and fundamentally different sexes (men go to Jupiter, women go to Venus kind of shit) that are separate and evident is biological.

Sex-essentialist rhetoric is predicated on "authenticity" morality where there exists a discrete sexed woman who is "authentic" and a "synthetic," "interloping" one that is not. ALL trans people are morally constructed by this rhetoric as opposite cis people. They're grotesque, unnatural, and a danger to everyone around them and even themselves according to trans-exclusionary rhetoric. Under their ideology, they are opposite the cissexual body, making them violence and mutilation as opposed to "holistic" and all-natural (no "plastic"). The mere existence of trans bodies is seen- by cis people- as a violation of an "authentic" body, sexuality, identity and spirit. They're "interlopers;" wolves in sheep's clothing. Under this rhetoric, all trans bodies are "smelly," "disgusting," and "decaying." They're a caricature! They're a mutilation; a monstrosity! All because the trans-exclusionary believes they are "unnatural" and diametrically opposed to the "natural" cissexual body.

However, for the original radical feminist philosophers ‘woman’ was "not a sexed class constructed with reference to an essential or reductive attribute. Rather, ‘woman’ was defined by material conditions within culture." I think a disconnect between this belief and the modern rad-fem ideology comes from what is meant by "material." For the modern rad fem, material refers to a sex caste constructed by an essential attribute; constructed by something corporeal: gametes. The modern rad-fem's philosophical monism has led to a misunderstanding of what was meant by "material reality." But, for feminists like Wittig and Dworkin, the move to “root feminism in an inherent biological, psychological, or reified ontology” would be to endorse the very essentialism upon which the patriarchy was built.

Today's trans-exclusionary rejects all, or most of, this. It rejects the feminist idea that sex is something also ascribed to us; that one becomes a woman. And in insisting on defining "woman" as a discrete biological caste; that woman is formed "biologically," it also rejects the feminist idea that there are no fundamentally separate biological classifications for humans. Rejecting that consequentially also rejects the feminist idea that "woman" is formed socially and politically. And by insisting on defining "woman" as a discrete biological caste, they contribute to the patriarchal system of gender/sex differentiation. So, while the modern trans exclusionary has spent decades promoting the ideological position that a woman is defined by her "nature,” the trans feminist has joined the intersectional feminist, the decolonial feminist, and early radical feminists in “questioning systems predicated upon discrete, natural, and unconstructed body binaries.”

In short, trans-exclusionary ideologies fail to pay tribute to decades of feminist, trans and queer philosophical work debating how to define 'woman' and fails to acknowledge how these works position trans women in relation to the concept.

[understandingbimbos]

Yeah, I'm very much not a fan of Chrissy or this video. At least a quarter of my blog is ranting about her and her (unfortunately) massive influence. I didn't include that in my reblog and I think that was the right call because while I really dislike the whole "bimbo is feminist" thing (it's not) and the "bimbofication isn't a fetish it's being a confident while wearing pink or doing bastardized y2k cosplay" thing, I'm not here to tell people who to like. And I'm really not in a position to either because despite everything my honest feelings about irl bimbofication are very mixed, skewed to negative.

Presenting bimboism as empowering and moral isn't new and isn't helpful to anyone, especially the way Chrissy does it, telling you a bimbo doesn't need to be dumb while playing dumb and affecting her voice. Saying bimbos don't need to be sexual while emphasizing skimpy clothing and sexualizing herself. It creates a situation where someone is being told a "bimbo" is whatever they want it to be while also presenting a very specific image of what a bimbo is. So if you play into that image, even coincidentally, even if you're rebelling against that image and what it means -- you're a bimbo. But you can also be a bimbo and not play into that image at all.

None of what Chrissy has done (is doing?) is new, which makes all the attention from publications and mass acceptance even more baffling. We've been here. We've had these conversations. Framing being a bimbo as an inherently good or political statement is not remotely revolutionary or even sensible especially since what is new and different now from before is that what Chrissy's doing, whether she knows it or not, directly involves and is intrinsically tied to a fetish. And it kind of creates this stupid loop where her shit is both obscuring fetish content and leading people to it, including minors because she's on TikTok. And if they're not finding fetish content the idea and basis of that fetish mentality eventually occurs anyway. Memes and satire don't live in a vacuum. People LIVE by memes. And it happens all the time where somebody does or says something ironically then really starts to believe it, like self-deprecating jokes.

This is the 10th video under the "bimbotok" tag on TikTok. It has 1.9 million views and was posted three months ago. Of course, its a joke, but that doesn't mean people won't take it seriously. I'm not a sociologist but there seems to be a sort of barrier. I feel like people can recognize the frivolity of a joke in a movie or TV show in a more impersonal format but when it comes to something like self-shot videos or social media posts it can feel a bit more real and intimate, and the silly becomes serious. Of course it also depends on how online you are... where was I? Oh, yeah, there's also this song that was apparently a popular TikTok sound for a while.

Again, not helping anybody. This only came out a year after Chrissy's first bimbo tiktoks. You see how quickly we go from "ironic" embodiment and appreciation to explicit fetish content? And while the BimboTok stuff probably led to Alicia Amira deciding to abandon notions of feminism as a whole I know some of the other IRL bimbo women (like Jessy Bunny, I think) embraced it and took as an open invitation instead. Even creepy ass Pink Bimbo Academy is on TikTok.

It's harder for me to find material related to my fetish while the public is basically assaulted by it, its all very silly and fucked up. It's been a "meme" over half a decade now but bimbofication isn't like feet, maybe its weird or seems silly, but its not harmless. Something that could be considered a "mind control" fetish shouldn't be anything but niche, and had literally any other Sortimid sequence gone viral I'm sure it still would be.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[nestable]

Feminism in ACOTAR

(This is a bit long so bare with me)

As a politics student and general member of the public who's curious about feminist themes, I've read a lot of feminist writings which have informed my opinion in saying that none of the acotar books can be described as feminist.

I've noticed that the big motivator behind describing the books as feminist is feyres appointment of High lady. Though that may be pivotal in prythian history, we cant ignore the fact that it is still a fairly patriachal society. Having a few women in places of power like mor, amren, feyre etc. Is not enough because women don't grow up on an island and are also influenced by patriachal views or mindsets. In short, just because someone is a woman and is in a position of power, doesnt mean that they will cater to the needs of women or are feminist. Women, especially white women(this is important because sjms writes white feminism) have often gotten into positions of power and actually ignored women and done the same that their male predecessors have done and often threw other women under the bus in order to retain their tokenism status. And the main flaw of white feminism which is the reason why it coined the term 'white feminism' is that it doesnt encompass all the intersectionalities that women reside in and only focus on a western model of what it means to be a woman and anything outside of that is backward and 'barbaric. We see this in the judgement and disregarding of POC's experiences and outlooks on life because they are different to theirs. There are more than enough examples of the white women in the series judging the illyrians which are seen by the fandom as POC's and how they maliciously drag their customs through the mud. Instead of getting these views from illyrian women themselves, we get them from white women who arent connected to that culture whatsoever and who have nothing to say except judgement and critique instead of actually helping.

We see this with the white characters views of illyrian cultures and their conclusion of the condition of women without even having a single conversation with illyrian women. Illyrian women in this set up have no agency and no voice and that leaves the women of the IC to speak for them which is counterproductive. This is wrong in that many western cultures have misinterpreted different cultures and ignored the women in those societies as being disenfranchised and have used this as an excuse to invade and colonize under the guise of liberating women when in actual fact they dont care about the women at all, and are only concerned in reaping the benefits of that culture and keeping them under their control. An example of this is rhys ignoring the treatment of illyrian women but reaping the benefit of having illyrians fight in his wars.

Feyre as high lady

It's unfair to judge feyres actions as high lady as yet because we've barely seen her act, but from the little that we know, she follows Rhys' every action and decision without question. And rhys hasn't done anything for the improvement of women's position socially or economically at all (we all know the state of the illyrian camps) in all the 500 yrs he's been high lord. Apart from Rhys, the inner circle has 2 women in the highest leadership positions and even they havent done anything and have even ignored the plight of women under their jurisdiction, (mor with Hewn city) I dont even think amren cares about anything besides her jewels tbh. So it's fair to assume that feyre will follow in those very footsteps. She already has biased and low views on the illyrians and people who reside in hewn city to the point where she participates in the 'pimp and whore' act that she puts on t deal with them. And we've never seen her speak to illyrian women so to her their voices and autonomy dont matter.

Male feminism in the IC

The only male who can be seen as being feminist in the series is Cassian because aside from simply declaring that wing clipping is illegal, he actually does the ground work to ensure it doesn't happen by offering the women to train with him. Though this is a weak cure for the issues the women face in Illyria, it's a start and far more work than anything the other characters have done in the name of women empowerment.

Another so called feminist figure in the series is rhysand. Why he's described as such defeats me, but I'll go through some points to prove that hes nothing of the sort.

1. He created a library for sexual assault survivors.

Though this is a nice effort, it can't be described as feminism because he doesnt extend the same courtesy to the other women in his territory and is only concerned with women in Velaris. Supporting women who worship you isnt feminism isnt feminism either and we know that the entirety of Velaris see the IC as blameless gods. Based on mors history, its obvious that the women in hewn city are suffering just as much if not more but hes forsaken them to live under mors parents/abusers rule. And creating a safe house for sexual assault survivors isnt as much feminism as it is human decency. Especially considering how much money hes got.

2. Banning illyrian wing clipping

Wing clipping is still a pandemic in the illyrian camps meaning that he didnt put enough provisions to ensure that it stops. Passing a law and ensuring that it is followed are two different things and rhys clearly dowsnt know the distinction. An additional point regarding illyrian women is that it was mentioned in acofas that they were joining the men in rebelling, and if that doesnt say anything about their feelings with him being high lord and how he doesnt cater to them, then I dont know what does. This also speaks to the point of the assumption that women of color dont have agency in their own societies. He said something like the men 'manipulated' the women into joining their rebellion, which insinuates that they can't think for themselves and are completely voiceless and this is a factor of whit feminism, the belief that WOC colour cant speak for themselves and are meek and susetable to being controlled or manipulated. It is a huge possibility that the women can't really express their opinions because they are suppressed by their men, however we dont see rhys interacting with any women and getting their opinion on things. He assumes that they are forced into everything and though we havent gotten the book yet I'm gonna say this is false. The reason being if rhys was such a good high lord and cared for women's issues, why would the women side with their 'abusive' men instead of their so called benevolent high lord?

3. Rhys appointed women in his IC

First of all, appointing women based on merit and qualifications is feminism, not appointing family members and you underaged bride just because 'you love her'. Though mor and amren may be qualified, and that's a massive 'maybe', they haven't done anything to improve the lives of women. Like their high lord they are complacent and Hewn city and illyria are more than enough to prove this. What rhys has essentially done is nepotism and corruption and no one can convince me otherwise.

Going further on the inner circle women, rhys was willing to sacrifice these very women to achieve his goal and this is self serving and anti feminist. The first being abusing feyre UTM and then using her as bait for the attor, then later making a deal with eris even though he knows his history with mor. If anyone believes that these actions are remotely feminist or excusable, then feminism is not for you and need help because its abusive and patriachal.

In conclusion rhys isnt feminist, mor isnt feminist, amren isnt feminist, feyre isnt feminist, azriel isnt even in the conversation and cassian is the only one scratching the surface. Also, white feminism is an exclusive and limited way to portray and execute feminism, women getting leadership positions based on their proximity to men just advances the false notion that women can only succeed if they 'sleep' their way to the top and just because a woman is in a leadership space, thag doesnt make that state of affairs inherently feminist because women are also carriers of patriarchy.

I tried to sum up my points but for more on white feminism, feminist intersectionalites and how being female doesnt make a person feminist, I advice you read Bell Hooks' writings because she touches on these topics in far better ways than I can.

[seeminglyseph]

I'm gonna say it. There are more reasons for lesbians and trans women to have solidarity than there are for them to be at odds. Like. We're both meant to feel like predators in women's spaces for circumstances we can't control bc straight women see us as inherently perverse for no reason. Tbh guys let's all just chill u know? Idk I just thought I of all people would appreciate the take

I definitely do, I think, I grew into my identity as an adult through the lesbian community. Just the same as my butch sisters I heard straight girls whisper about how they'd rather run naked through the boy's locker than know there was a lesbian in the girl's. I think gnc women know the trauma of forced feminization almost all afab people face as a product of a lot of 'right way to be a girl' situations (how hard do we have to fight with stylists to get short hair? how often do women get assumed to not care or be reckless or slovenly just because they present masculinely? It is traumatizing for everyone trying to be forced into a mold, it's just a different kind of traumatizing when you also happen to be a man.) It just seems like being 'allowed' to be masculine is such a freedom. But the reverse is true for trans women, and part of it is acknowledging the way we raise cis boys is fucked up and deeply damaging, same with women. (and baby boys are still victims, no baby boy has power that he uses to abuse, baby boys are just as vulnerable as baby girls to manipulation, judgement and pressure to fit a certain mold.) So it means admitting there's something traumatic about growing up amab, and that someone will want what I found traumatizing. but really it's the same problem we're all facing. Society has an idea of who we are supposed to be and punishes us for not being it. I've known cis straight allo people who just dress non-conforming talk about how much pressure they are under just existing outside the mold, and I think we keep blaming our own for why people treat us like shit, but it's not our own.

So I feel like instead of arguing how much everyone's experiences differ it would be so important to embrace the things we all know. Trans women and lesbians are often both considered doing femininity "wrong" because it's not the tradwife goals no one actually meets. I feel like ~*somehow*~ ~*very mysteriously*~ the rhetoric that trans women were the reason lesbians face oppression, or that they should narrow the view of femininity again so as to look mainstream and back to the weird tradwife trend but with other women started rising. The term "Lesbian Utopia" floats around and smooshes lesbian relationships into a certain kind of box.

Honestly I think TERFs damage themselves plenty as well, narrowing down the correct presentation of womanhood to a different oppressive standard doesn't fix anything, and honestly most butch lesbians I know are just as victimized by this radicalized idea of the 'acceptable' lesbian. Much as they argue that we're transing their butches, so much radfem ideology identifies butch women as dangerous due to their closeness to masculinity. The idea that either femininity or masculinity is inherently bad or good is flawed to the core, because identity and gender expression is so personal two people could feel the same things and identify different and be completely correct about their own feelings. There are dangerous men and there are dangerous women and there are dangerous nonbinary people. But it isn't because of gender, or sexuality, it's down to the person. People make decisions to do bad things, and all they stand for is themselves. (though identifying as a terf is seemingly drawing your identity from a place of hatred and defines femininity as both ultimate purity and the highest form of suffering. Very catholic. Not a fan. develop some identifying features that don't revolve around hating other people it's weird.)

[luesmainblog]

I think there's definitely something to be said about the culture between white women especially for enhancing this kind of paranoia. I was never afraid to leave my house until i started down the radfem rabbit hole, and i'm very, VERY glad i was pulled out of it before i hit the deeper stuff. discussions of statistics are good, important even, but they can leave one assigning malice in places where it doesn't belong. It's important to talk about WHY the numbers say what they do, and how likely they actually are, and how numbers can be adjusted to project a message. discussions of self defense and home defense are good, especially for victims who can't currently get out of bad situations, but they can also be given as tools to fuel your paranoia when the entire POINT of them is to make you feel safer in the world.

safety measures for a night out on the town are good to have, and frankly more boys should be taught the really basic shit like "tell a friend where you're going" and "keep a hand over your drink". it reflects a certain level of sexism that we don't HAVE these conversations with them, and the reasoning for that is complicated, because "it just doesn't happen to them" is Technically accurate; it doesn't happen to US most of the time, either. but "they're just not talking about it when it does" is also heartwrenchingly true. This video and others like it ALSO perpetuate a kind of sexism, following the same assumptions. Why does she feel safe only when her husband is there? Because we're taught from a very young age to view men as Protectors. That violence is acceptable if it happens to them, that they not only should but WILL step up in the face of danger, and that this is the most normal and reasoned way to deal with it. We're also taught that women - particularly, white women - are valuable in and of themselves; that bad actors want to find us while we're vulnerable and Take or Ruin what value we have. Having a man around is supposed to protect you in this sense because only a fool would try to steal you while the owner is right fucking there. And while it's posed as a silly comment, Rob DenBeykler is right. while certain branches of feminism will perpetuate this kind of thinking, a lot of republican thought is BUILT on the idea that only The Man Of The House can serve as any true protection, and that bad actors are the higher priority to worry about than more common issues like fire safety hazards. the idea of Community is inherently opposed to many of the beliefs they perpetuate to keep control, so of course they want you paranoid as your potential community grows larger. that's all the more people that could hurt you. wealthier people are also more likely to follow republican belief, for a number of complicated political and psychological reasons, and the closer you are to Dragon Wealth the more it's actually likely to see a break-in, which fuels this paranoia further. look, some of these measures can be legitimately good in certain contexts. even the whistle; a popular self-defense item in japan, where getting Grabbed is an honest concern for young girls, is a noise alarm to hang off your bag. the whistle serves a similar purpose; it's a loud noise that immediately draws attention to you and the area you're in. but here, it is literally security theatre to ease her anxiety; it would not actually do any good for THIS situation. to be frank, i really hope posting this video leads her to see comments and seek therapy, because this is a ridiculous level of fear to have when you're alone in a house for a short while. And breaking down where that fear even comes from is a long, complicated path that requires you to question a lot of the things you've accepted as truth.

if you relate to the woman in the video, i URGE you, please seek help. you don't have to be afraid every time you're alone. measures to help yourself feel safer are good in the short term, but in the long term, you really should address that fear. don't treat it as a normal thing you just have to deal with until they come home; the more you learn, the more you'll be even more scared of being alone, because you'll be adding on the ACTUAL reasons isolation isn't great.

[faelapis]

the thing about problematic media is that i was ground zero in terms of being aware of this stuff. like. i thought most media was deeply problematic, especially in its sexism, at age 10. i had a very progressive mom, i grew up being encouraged away from gender roles.

so when people insist that we need to damn people who create / defend problematic media, it reads to me as... not very self-aware, because i was woke before most of y'all. i didn't have the option to disown people, or you'd all be on the chopping block. i taught most of my friends about feminism and how media influences reality, including tumblr friends. 

so it’s weird to me to have people - sometimes people as young as 14, 15, 16 - insist that the door has essentially closed behind them, and that we shouldn't forgive people for making problematic content, or just doing bad things. 

like... people can become educated at any age, and this often happens in social popularity waves: when its addressed in broad cultural spheres. it's not like everyone gets "feminism and intersectionality 101" at their doorsteps automatically at 18. not everyone will have the same learning age. "they should know cuz theyre an adult" reads as unaware of varying circumstances. cultures often have times of broad re-education; boomers and zoomers alike learning about LGBT+ stuff in the 2010s, for instance.

that's not to say that thoughtless and offensive words, actions and media content can't do damage, but like... as a trans person especially, almost ALL media i grew up on has tropes that dehumanize me in some way. i can’t isolate “the bad media” and shame individual creators - it’s most of it. so punishing all the bad individuals is nigh impossible... and most people are still cissexist. i was aware of that early... so i've had to grow up "ahead of the curve." i HAD to forgive to get anywhere with y'all.

and by "y'all", i mean progressive online friends. like. i can't count the times a well-meaning, intersectional friend has accidentally reblogged something cissexist or terfy in implication and i've had to decide how naive they are, which, usually, is very naive. most people are.

so that kinda... has to be my baseline. i don’t berate, and never will berate, my trans siblings for being angry (i get angry too, and thankfully, many progressive friends understand that and accept my criticisms), because we are constantly under attack. i will never demand anyone to be nice. same goes for other “phobias” and “isms”. 

but like... i stand by that you should be aware of your place in a given cultural learning curve. if you are ahead of it, it can really suck! but the people who are further behind may be there for a whole range of reasons: what is the norm around them, where have they been taught to seek out information, what is their identity, what did they grow up thinking (which yes, can be formative), how “shamed” do they feel for not knowing this already, and so forth. 

individual control is relatively small in the grand scheme of things, is my very sociological view of all this... which can be scary when you’re the type of person who really wants to hold the “bad people” accountable (punitive individualism). we have to consider why people are that way - the norms and structures that inform their views, priveleges and decisions (structuralism)... and when you ask why, you gotta ask who you’d be with their socialization and priveleges. what if you’re not inherently better? what if you just happen to be disadvantaged in X way, or love someone who is, and they don’t? then how would punishment vs rehabilitation look to you?

i don’t think people just “choose” to be bad or wrong... i think most think they’re in the right. i think that forgiving others (which you don’t have to do individually, but stay with me) is connected to forgiving your own social mistakes, realizing the “big picture” of socialization and norms - lest we make the fundamental attribution error that others are evil by choice, while we were just shaped by a flawed environment... so even if you don’t “forgive,” i think you should always ask why people are the way they are - beyond the individual. 

[black-banjee-baltimore-bred]

Susan Smith-Pinelo, Sometimes

by kyle vincent scott

Susan Smith-Pinelo’s Sometimes (1999) is a single channel video scored to ‘Workin’ Day and Night’ (1979) by Michael Jackson. In an effort to conjure questions both around the perception of blackness and the function of femininity in a racially abject space, Smith-Pinelo rather directly uses cleavage as a conduit for a larger conversation around class and the hilarity of gender performance. The viewer is presented with a claustrophobic view of what the female body is most regularly reduced to: breasts. After watching the subject adjust her shirt, as if presently in front of a mirror, she proceeds to contort her breast along to the beat of the song. They bounce and shake, almost hypnotically, directing the viewer's gaze to what, in most public social environments, is forbidden to be surveilled. In a world of male domination, the very notion of women revealing their bodies, as a culturally understood phenomenon is a space of precarity. For many of us, either male or female identifying, the public sphere is a space in which we are regularly stripped of the autonomy to control our viewership. The very moment that we exit our homes, our bodies become something else entirely. Rather than these tangible extensions of our own singular identities, our physical selves take the shape of currency almost, in that they welcome a myriad of experiences relating to work, commerce, interpersonal relationships, as well as cultural exchange. What we more personally know as flesh, in communion with the metropolitan, transforms oftentimes into a more symbolic or representational form of selfhood. The dominant racist, social frameworks present within the United States regularly re-code the individual being to be understood through its connection to a larger collective. Our elbows and shoulders, which within the confines of our homes are to be rubbed and caressed, become communal almost – objects that could be bumped into, lusted over, laughed at, etc. Traditionally speaking, for women there is often this balancing act of wanting to celebrate and showcase the body while wrestling deeply with the understanding that this act could be misinterpreted. When first engaging the video, phrases like “eyes up here” are immediately pulled to the forefront of the viewers mind, nevertheless; the artist rather audaciously rejects that even as a possibility. We are made to sit uncomfortably in the strange embarrassment that arises when consuming “sexual content” in the presence of others. In a manner that isn’t dissimilar to accidentally swiping past your own nude photography while in line for a movie, the piece evokes the flush like feeling that infects us when the line between private and public becomes abstracted. Is it better to laugh and embrace the shock of someone seeing something that maybe they shouldn’t have? Or is it more courageous to be confident in the existence of a version of the self that maybe is as regularly offered center stage within our everyday lives? Smith-Pinelo hones both the rigidity and oddity of gender and sexuality while one of our deeply troubled cultural icons bellows out in the background. As a people, navigating towards a future that is free of the sexual subjugation of slavery, we have in a multitude of ways found ourselves at these very particular impasses. Wanting to be fiercely in control of the narrative of our own sexuality and passion, while simultaneously being aware of the history of sexual violence and neglect that has filled so many of our lives. What is to be said of a past sexual awakening scored to that of the tune of R. Kelly in that it is only in our retrospective awareness that we begin to unpack the ramifications of those instances? Is a first kiss seen as sinister if it was born in the low hum Bump n’ Grind? Or do we look at the inception of life differently in that maybe it occurred in a motel at Freanknik or on the backseat of a stranger’s car? In speaking of her work, Smith-Pinelo is specifically looking to add a layer of humor to how contrived and unimaginative the pressures of gendered expectations can be — especially in that, we walk away from the work knowing that the subject is a black woman, holding true the racial, socio-economic, and interpersonal complexities that such an identity can withhold, and yet we only have an infinitesimal glimpse of her exterior. We have the markers to understand that society might be disinterested in knowing who this woman really is and we, regardless of gender, are confronted with whether or not we do the work of perpetuating that erasure. And through this limited scope, Smith-Pinelo provides the viewer with a question of the “male gaze” without the inherent presence of a “man.” As we plainly watch this woman shake her breast on camera, we are forced to ask ourselves who exactly is the powerful force behind objectification? bell hooks and other feminist theorists have critiqued the notion that feminism is a direct translation of all women being labeled as victims, and within hooks’ framework we are to understand that Sometimes looks to ask where exactly women and femmes pick up the torch in regard to their own oppression and sexual objectification. And if the girl gaze was all that we needed to be free, then why weren’t we free yet?