#feminism essay

[claraameliapond]

Violence against women is a MENS ISSUE.

We will never be able to stop this and live in peace and safety unless the underlying cause is identified, addressed and fixed : it is a valuing issue. Cultural, institutional. While institutions are slowly changing, cultural value systems that circulate about women in men's circles are not catching up.

We can't solve this.

You have to.

It is a human rights issue.

If you do understand that women are human beings equal to you and treat them as such, please understand it is your duty to circulate and normalise that, and culturally correct misogyny in any form it presents itself among your fellow males.

I'm really sick of this. All women are.

We can see who these people who do not see us equally are. Often it's people who think it isn't them.

It's everywhere.

Culturally males are fed particular messaging about genders that present in their unconscious and conscious behaviour, bias, subjectivity. Please work on yourselves. Even if you think you don't need to. Check your privilege. And when and where you see it in others - CALL IT OUT. THEN AND THERE.

We can't fix a culture we aren't part of. Only you can.

[libratalks]

The (absent) demise of the "Riot Grrrl" genre!

Disclaimer: this text was created for an essay submission, so the prose may not be similar to my other blog posts. Nonetheless, it is still incredibly important to me, along with being one of the best pieces of work I have ever had the honour of constructing. Thank you for reading.

What essentially birthed the genre of 'Riot Grrrl' music was the exclusion of women in musical spaces regarding the punk-rock persuasion and punk movement throughout the 1970s. Although the involvement of women began to become prevalent during the second wave of feminism, with bands like X-Ray Spex and The Slits being formed, punk-rock was still seen as ‘cock rock’, a loud and predominantly male genre. It seemed as if there was no room for the inclusion of female artists within the genre of punk-rock. That is, until the start of the 1990s and the third wave of feminism, where the formation of a specific band called Bikini Kill began the rise of the Riot Grrrl movement, dedicated to tackling feminist issues and providing a focus on the political, social, and economic disenfranchisement faced by women. These weren't bands consisting of heavily skilled musicians, for half of Bikini Kill's members played their instruments without any prior experience or knowledge. This wasn't entirely unspoken of, for there were many boy bands who were getting up on stage without knowing how to really play a note. The difference is, Bikini Kill believed possessing musical talent within skill wasn't important; the true talent lied in using their music as a tool for activism. This is why one of the most influential aspects of the Riot Grrrl movement was the usage of zines to spread the feminist manifesto and the rise of these upcoming bands, for zines were the perfect tool of visual art that best emphasised the 'do it yourself' persona attached to the Riot Grrrl and punk movements. By creating sources of media that highlighted issues of sexism, patriarchy, abuse, sexuality and rape, especially through the female gaze, the Riot Grrrl movement was further strengthened by the formation of bands such as Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy along with Bikini Kill. Although incredibly influential for women's liberation and shining a light on the issues they face, Riot Grrrl is infamously known for its exclusion of intersectionality within visual representation: there were issues of racism disclosed and explored in Riot Grrrl zines, however Emmanuelle Mphuthi reiterates that 'none of the revered figures of (the) movement were Black or women of color.' Despite this, there is a huge question surrounding whether the movement has died or if there is a resurgence occurring in contemporary society for the 'Riot Grrrls' of this generation.

Replacing the "i" with three r's, allowing a growl paired with "girl", "Grrrl" is a forceful reclamation of girlhood, by reiterating it in the stance of female anger perfectly paired with the genre's howling vocals in a bid to reject female subordination and accept female animosity. Along with this, it is the re-establishment of the naughty, confident and curious personalities young girls possess before they begin their venture in society as young women, demonised and degraded by the patriarchy to stop being loud and to stop playing with boys and to concentrate on learning how to girl. Due to the genre's innate rejection of gender stereotypes, it is no surprise that it is filled with aggressive displays of women empowerment and girl power. Arriving at the end of the second wave of feminism, where the debate regarding the legalisation of pornography was existent due to anti-pornography feminists wanting to limit the porn industry as it catered only to men and encouraged violence towards women, some feminists deemed this as repressive as there were women who chose sex work, and to limit the porn industry would be to limit their work. Already, before the start of the third wave of feminism, there is debate regarding a woman's choice. With the third wave of feminism beginning with the 1991 Anita Hill testimony, a sense of liberation is tied with intersectionality for the first time, this new wave of feminism focusing on race and gender and political representation and equality for women.

This only helped prompt an emphasis on reproductive rights for women, much like the second wave, hence the brutal honesty surrounding female empowerment through punk rock to begin discussions of patriarchy and body image for the female youth. Thus, the Riot Grrrl movement is constructed and strengthened, paving a way for the female youth to be involved within the punk movement; for youth has always been a motif in the punk milieu because its attitude naturally rebels against authority. Best depicted in the genre's lyrics, there is an obvious distinction between the male perspective and the female perspective: Blink-182 writes 'I want a girl that I can train' in one of their songs; the Ramones write 'well, you're a loudmouth, baby / you better shut it up! / I'm gonna beat you up', perpetuating elements of physical violence and harmful hegemonic-masculine attitude towards female subordination. In contrast with this, Bikini Kill writes 'Just cause my world, sweet sister / Is so fucking goddamn full of rape, / Does that mean my body / Must always be a source of pain?', highlighting the normalisation of rape culture and the issues regarding the female body. In doing so, along with the use of the word "sister" to address their female audience and the brutally explicit drop of the word "rape", Bikini Kill emphasises the fact that Riot Grrrl is all about being raw and not being afraid to have those conversations. It is this unfiltered, gritty and brave attitude of Riot Grrrl bands that allows the movement to be influential and inspiring for (young) generations of women.

In accordance with themes of feminism and girl power, the usage of zines in the nineties helped convey a tinge of individuality to the Riot Grrrl movement. In its entirety, the movement was a personal and brutally honest conception, best depicted in zines' manifesto-like nature, emphasising the youthful framework attached to what these zines were highlighting with their messy hand-written font and eccentric colours, such as hot pink paired with black. One of the zines published by Bikini Kill featured a hand-written flier, acting as a feminist manifesto, with lines such as 'Resist the temptation to view those around you as objects and use them' and 'Burn down the walls that say you can't' - the latter underlined aggressively in black marker juxtaposed with a crimson red background. This further highlights Riot Grrrl's ambition to focus on the individual's responsibility not to perpetuate the system of oppression and how to tackle the personal in political terms. With the use of a crimson red paired with black, there is a sense of feminine urgency attached, depicting the nature of a woman celebrated through her menstruation.

Another reason why zines were the perfect tool for the Riot Grrrl movement is because when analysing the movement now, there is a sense of nostalgia attached: in the age of no advanced internet or technology, zines were the best tool for quickly and locally disseminating information beyond and before web content, especially in youth culture. Along with this, zines had a unique way of portraying a confrontational style of in-your-face politics, which was perfect for the third wave of feminism, portraying a sense of belonging for the individual as anyone could make a zine about anything. The entire essence of the Riot Grrrl movement was that it was an opposition of the mainstream, best conveyed with the use of zines as they helped capture a culture in a way that mainstream, conventional and often exclusionary models of publishing couldn’t.

As influential as Riot Grrrl was for advocating for women’s liberation and sexual freedom, one of the strongest criticisms of the movement was that it lacked the emphasis on women of colour entirely. Highlighting female anger, it is no coincidence that the movement gained a large fanbase after the 1991 Anita Hill testimony, for female thought was provoked and encouraged by the case’s emergence; a movement that was kick-started by the abuse of a Black woman possessed so few Black representatives at its helm. Furthermore, the punk-rock genre was deemed a predominantly white, male genre - a common misconception due to the silencing of many Black musicians. Dating back to the early 1900s, music composed and released by Black individuals was categorised as 'race music' in order to profit off communities of color whilst also restricting the music played on white radio stations.

In terms of the punk-rock genre, however, many believe it has become whitewashed; there were Black punk bands pioneering the punk movement with their fresh new ideas long before The Clash and the Sex Pistols, such as Death, a band composed of three young black brothers who have gained a large cult following today. Retrieving attention back to the Riot Grrrl movement, there is also X-Ray Spex, with the frontrunner being a young Black woman, refusing to adhere to society's objectification of her body. Yet, despite this, it is a sad fact that although X-Ray Spex paved the way for the Riot Grrrl movement long before it was constructed, Bikini Kill is the band connected to the movement the most. In addition to this, there is the inclusion of Courtney Love’s band Hole as one of the most influential bands within the Riot Grrrl Movement, with a discography full of songs that advocated for badass and unapologetic feminists. Despite this, Love has been heavily criticised by many intersectional feminists for her racist comments, where she previously demanded the crowd at one of her concerts to 'scream the n-word', along with asking a Black woman whether she really does enjoy rock music, for she is Black and that would be synonymous with Love, a white woman, 'being into Lil Wayne.' Highly detrimental to the nature of the Riot Grrrl movement, Love has also been criticised for her victim-blaming comments, where she asked a woman who had been raped why she didn’t expect it to happen. It is often a shock for many Hole fans when reminded of this altercation, for Love wrote the feminist anthem ‘Asking for It’, a song highlighting the brutal nature of rape and the long-term effects of assault on victim-survivors; many victim-survivors refuse to acknowledge Love as a feminist icon, for her comments surrounding victimhood and victim-blaming remain harmful.

Further supported by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hannah, Love was called out by the queen of the Riot Grrrl movement, only to be met with physical violence by the hands of Courtney Love. This best highlights the damaging notion the Riot Grrrl movement advertised that if a woman is strong and opinionated then she is, by default, the poster girl of feminism even if her so-called feminism ignores racism, transphobia, ableism, classism and so on. On the other hand, what frustrates many women of colour who are consumers of the Riot Grrrl genre is the lack of representation within the movement for themselves. Described as a movement for the 'young, white, suburban and middle class' women in society, many feminists would wholeheartedly disagree, for that is only what the media focused on. The real riot Grrrls were those of all ethnicities, especially the black women that participated in (and out of) the movement. These black women carved their own feminist pathways into the hard core scene solely because they were rendered invisible by the movement itself, such as Ramdasha Bikceem, a young Black woman who constructed a Riot Grrrl zine in the perspective of a black Riot Grrrl. It is an inspiring and influential notion tied to the nature of Riot Grrrl, yet it is also heart-breaking, for no woman of colour's contributions to the movement should be swept under a rug of whiteness and should instead, be at the forefront of the movement along with their white peers.

Embedded within the celebration of all women and unapologetic female anger, the Riot Grrrl genre would thrive in contemporary society – or would it? The movement itself is as relevant today as it was back when it was formed, especially tied with the #MeToo movement, however the entire essence of the Riot Grrrl movement is an opposition to the mainstream, and with the rise of pop music towards the end of the nineties, therein occurs the loss of interest by the media and the 'death of Riot Grrrl' in 1995 and 1996. Yet, despite this, many believe that Riot Grrrl never truly met her demise, visiting a resurgence within the music of Alanis Morissette, igniting a celebration for angry women, along with the brutal lyrics of 'Bitch' by Meredith Brooks, and the ‘howling vocals' of Fiona Apple. This label of ‘angry woman rocker’ attached to the aforementioned female artists within pop music originated with the Riot Grrrl movement, especially as their songs helped espouse feminist values and protest violence against women.

Along with this, female rage was selling music and magazines, which coincides with the obsession contemporary society has with celebrating the rejection of female subordination and the right to rage. Gone are the days of asking women to be gentle and kind, to avoid overt displays of negative feelings such as rage and aggression in fear of appearing “unfeminine”, for there is now a rejection of this societal conception that women who defend themselves, hold strong opinions and are competitive and verbally self-assured are “rude” or “belligerent”. The themes circulating why the Riot Grrrl movement was made are still present today, hence why the movement is still very much alive. What’s perhaps the most exciting aspect of this is that there are now women of colour at the forefront, such as Olivia Rodrigo, Willow Smith, and the band The Linda Lindas, conveying Riot Grrrl's uniform 'over-it attitude' and the 'howling vocals' aforementioned. The best example of Riot Grrrl being present today is through The Linda Lindas’ song ‘Vote!’, written and released as a public expression of the young women's dissatisfaction with the Trump administration.

Stripping the movement of its white-feminism and retrieving all art that was pushed under the rug of whiteness, the Riot Grrrl movement is essentially at the strongest it has ever been in today's age, due to the easy-access of the internet, along with the fact that there is now an inclusion of women of colour: Alice Bag, a Mexican-American punk singer, being one of the opening gigs for Bikini Kill's recent tour, along with Shamir, a black indie-rock musician. These artists have one thing in common: the hunger to defeat oppressive powers, highlighting the essence of Riot Grrrl. As society progresses, we see a shift in the Riot Grrrl movement - it isn't as explicitly referenced as it was in the nineties, but the mentality remains because feminism remains, in all its layers of intersectionality.

Although the Riot Grrrl movement possesses its criticisms embedded within racist connotations, the sudden shift into intersectional feminism in contemporary society allows a resurgence of the genre. First constructed to allow a space for women to essentially rock out and meet the horrors of girlhood in brutally explicit lyricism, by reconstructing the label of 'SLUT' in a female gaze to allow sexual liberation and autonomy after decades of being stripped the choice to, Riot Grrrl helped highlight the importance of placing taboo subjects like rape out in the open. Essentially, the movement celebrated the idea of women loving women, warning one another about dangerous people and providing community and support to survivors. To take part in the movement, there is the acquisition of being vocal about other important issues that were once rare or invisible such as gender variance and racism, issues that are visited today.

Although the movement is seen through a new lens with today’s digital age, there is still the usage of zines in terms of blogging and creating graphics on Pinterest and Tumblr, especially using the app Shuffles, which takes your pins from Pinterest, cuts them out, and clips them together. Along with this, there is also the use of zines on Instagram, paired with online activism and blogging – further implemented by feminist scholars and blogs. This new age of zine culture can be traced back to the pandemic, where it has been an outlet for those dealing with boredom and extra free time in quarantine. With zine culture being reborn in the age of intersectional feminism, there is a fresh new face for the Riot Grrrl movement, one that tackles the many criticisms it first faced during the nineties. Due to possessing similarities to how it was first conveyed in the nineties in contrast with today, there is an inclusive space for women of all ages and all ethnicities to erase the “i” in “girl”, and replace it with three r’s, as a celebratory growl within their liberation. With the rise of upcoming girl bands and women artists who are unapologetically unafraid of being raw and brutal, the Riot Grrrl genre (and movement) experiences an absent death, in the sense that it never truly died.

[habken]

who thinks I can write an essay in the next five hours

[feuillesmortes]

Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman's politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging and changing themselves or the culture.

— bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

[dolphin-diaries]

Who Gets To Talk Detransition?

Originally published on Dolphin Diaries

The story is supposed to go like this: a trans cult, or maybe the medical establishment, steals a young girl under its ghastly wing. A wounded girl, a scared one, desperate for reprieve from a violent world that has whipped her into self-hatred. The kidnapping cultists promise an escape. A cure to the horror of her body. Then, mutilation follows, which a brave few will eventually try to undo—only they never quite can.

No, wait.

The story is supposed to go like this: some people are trans men. They are assigned female at birth, but they are men, and so some want to make their body male. But sometimes, a select few regret their transition. They aren’t trans men. They’re actually cis—in agreement with their sex—but they’ve made a mistake for whatever reason. They are very scarce. A statistically inconsequential minority to which we ought not cede ground. After all, why should a society be concerned with a statistically minuscule people?

Regardless of which way you tell it, two constants remain. One: the trans and the detrans are antagonistic; the detrans have been hurt by transition care and now threaten its existence. Two: those that detransition are seeking to correct a prior mistake. Be it from the right or left, the story is always that of failure and regret.

Part I: When Your Worst Fears Come True

September 2023 marked the eighth anniversary of me starting testosterone. Getting HRT was something I’d fought for with great difficulty and determination: I’d burned bridges with an abusive family; I’d come out a year prior to the entirety of my university class and had already lived as a man; I then dropped out of university so I could work a full-time job to afford HRT. I did all this with full knowledge that I could not access the legal transition system in my country. I’d be unable to change my gender marker and would have to deal with that fact in a place where most people barely know what ‘transgender’ is, let alone accept it. But I was willing to weather all of that, and to my luck, I had no trouble passing for a man, and the vast majority of friends and acquaintances accepted me.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to start testosterone. In adolescence my masculinity had been denied to me, the feminine traits of myself and my body forcibly exaggerated to put me in my (woman’s) place. Now, it felt like having all the features I’d come to despise overtaken by new growth. Like a ruin reclaimed by fresh ivy. I wasn’t entirely content—I wanted to be indistinguishable from a cis man, untouched by any insidious womanhood whatsoever. Only I found most cis men either uninspired-looking or repugnant, so… a pretty cis man? Androgynous, but not too androgynous, so I don’t get gay-bashed?

The real end goal I wished of my body was nebulous. There was no man I could cite as the Ur-Man for me, trans or cis, neither in character nor appearance. It wasn’t for lack of the much maligned Good Male Role Models in my life; I simply resonated with none of them. But there was life to be lived anyway. So I put one foot in front of the other, and sometimes, I knew my steps were dictated as much by fear of transphobia as they were by my own desires.

There are many things to fear while living as trans. One of my most personal anxieties was detransition. A forced one would be most horrid; to be put in a position where my bodily autonomy, so hard-won, could be stripped away as if it never existed.

But my strangest fear was that I would want to detransition. Not from some cruel necessity or right-wing brainwashing or what have you; genuinely, rationally, actively want it.

I knew why I feared that. Whenever I met another trans man or heard of their stories, some jigsaw puzzles would simply not fit. I never once desired to be a man until I learned of trans men’s existence. Never sought to play the role of a man and only half-enjoyed them now, if at all. Never, not even now, dreamt of myself as a man. At times another trans man would have the same ‘odd’ pieces, but then something else would find itself amiss again. On and on that list went.

One might call this a foregone conclusion in retrospect. Shouldn’t I have known? Shouldn’t a doctor have known? But this rather ignores that the psychology and study of transsexuality are hopelessly warped with attempts to eradicate it. My country’s procedures were dated. The questionnaires I took to have my doctor conclude I’m transsexual? Those were lousy with decades-dated misogyny (do you like housework? do you get aroused by housework? or maybe by cars?) and with voyeuristic, invasive questions (how do you have sex? how do you masturbate?) There were correct answers; there was no variation, which is only allowed for the cisgender. That procedure has since improved, especially in the West, but the traces remain. How does one introspect on one’s gender when that was the model for it? How does one even attempt to unravel the relationship between misogyny and desire to abandon womanhood when to do so threatens access to medical care? What sign ought I have looked for to distinguish myself from trans men when it was demanded no distinctions exist?

One does not exit a hostile care system with a healthier, more stable identity. That is nothing short of a miracle.

September 2023 marked the eighth anniversary of me exiting hostile care with a coveted prize in my grasp. It also marked the moment I looked in the mirror and saw exactly what I’d sought to win in that hellscape: an indisputable man. Not a cis man, of course, but one bereft of all the features that had haunted me to the point of self-harm. I was free, I had won; no one would ever look at me and think me a woman—no one ever did, those days.

I had won. And in my victory, I felt nothing at all.

Part II: Failure and Regret

The Right invests much bombast into transition regret. Loud ring the warning bells: this could happen to you! Your child! A girl with so much to live for, rendered barren, flat-chested, a misshapen man-thing! You, too, will live to regret it!

It amuses me. Queerness and butchness had marked me long ago; I was never particularly buxom or fecund. Never, in the heterosexist sense, something worthy of desire. I was a misshapen man-thing far before I asked people to call me ‘he.’ The people who made sure I knew I was a monster man-woman were precisely the kinds of people that now warned me away from turning myself into what—according to them—I already was. The sheer parental panic with which I’d been forced into makeup and dresses, you’d think I transitioned already.

Even more amusingly, sometimes the Right claims to care about butch lesbians. Tomboys are being mutilated, they say. It’s an imposition of gender stereotypes; women can be masculine!

But if the Right believes women can be lesbian and masculine, what’s with the whole fixation on ruined femininity and birthing wombs?

Indeed, the Right’s acceptance of detransitioned women is full of little caveats. They are to be paraded as damaged goods at conservative rallies. Their lost breasts and ovaries will be ever-ogled, figuratively if not literally, and the ‘irreversible damage’ left by testosterone examined with morbid fascination. They are the Right’s Magdalenes. They’re proof there’s good in the transgressive—that is, that the enemy can be pitied, assimilated. As an underclass, of course. They’re never to truly cease being damaged, for they must be proof that sex can only be ruined, never changed.

For a detransitioner, there is temptation in the Right’s conditional acceptance. It offers an easy answer to their current pain. The past choice they may regret or suffer under—why, it should’ve been prevented! If only you listened to the right authorities, all would’ve been well. Not altogether different than regretting a marriage or college major. Many an adult decries stupid choices of youth—and those certainly happen—but what’s scariest of all is the notion you weren’t making rash or ill-informed decisions. I know I wasn’t. And if that is so, then it means the current self—the mature one, the one with 20/20 hindsight—could make a mistake, too.

Right-wing detransitioners take for granted there exists a guardian angel that could’ve healed them of the gendered distress they once felt and showed them a path to contentment. That is a very tall order, considering how misogynistic and hostile psychiatry and psychology are, historically speaking. And that’s to say nothing of religion. But at least they would’ve been prevented from transitioning; misery averted—right?

My guardian angel, you could say, was lack of funds. I wanted top surgery—double mastectomy—but there was no way I could afford it, not in many years’ time. Now I realise I would’ve come to regret it and would’ve likely sought to reverse its effects. So I’m all good, right? I benefitted from how flawed trans healthcare is, didn’t I?

Perhaps. But there was a reason I wanted a mastectomy, and not a frivolous one. Every time I needed to see a doctor for a respiratory infection, I did so in fear of transphobic malpractice. I would minimise the time I spent in places where my chest could be exposed—gyms, pools, beaches, goddamned corporate retreats. And then there was the way my body, breasts included, had been used to prove to me I was not just a woman but Woman, a biodestined vessel for coy giggles, cookware, and pregnancy. And how that made me feel.

Indeed, I would later find out there are women and nonbinary people that do not identify with manhood yet seek the exact same top surgery I once wanted, for similar reasons. With no regrets. They wish to take control of their body and do so. And I know that, had I been able to get top surgery in the past, it would’ve made me happy for a good while.

So what’s more important: years of constant anxiety, or lack of hypothetical regret?

The right-wing detransitioner assumes one’s current self to be the ultimate judge of one’s choices—but take that principle to its logical conclusion, and it will seem like no decision should ever be made. There is always a prospective Future You which possesses more knowledge. Always the possibility of regret. Of course, decisions in life are sort of inevitable, but don’t worry about that—the powers that be will handle that. Ancestral tradition, or a caring authority figure. That’s also all humans with exactly the same issues, but don’t worry about that either. Maybe God is speaking through them. You never know.

In the end, the prescripts of the Right march to the same grim conclusion. That the only decision you can ever make with total certainty is death.

Part III: Death, the Tarot Kind

Queer culture delights in tales of transformation. We were all once larval—in the closet, often abused and scared. Trapped in a world of rigid roles and brutal dominion. But one day, we hope to metamorphose into our true shape and to take flight above a blissful, lawless, ever-shifting sea of change.

Most queer people are cisgender, and more still do not seek to transition, but the nature of all our transgressions is intimately entwined with gender anyway. We’re all doing it ‘wrong,’ by the wider society’s definition, even the most masculine of cis gay men or the most feminine of cis lesbian women. Unsurprising, then, are the queer community’s various attempts to embrace gender variance and to lay bare the plasticity of sex.

There is nothing per se about detransition that does not fit this mould. If gender is to be fucked with, why not take it for a swing? Indeed, in my experience most queer people would agree it’s entirely possible to detransition without weaponising transphobia or lapsing rightward.

But that’s usually a hypothetical thought exercise that ends exactly there. Maybe that queer person knows a detransitioner, maybe they don’t; regardless, the lives of the detransitioned do not interact with queer ideas of sex/gender, or indeed queer ideas about anything. The only time the detransitioned are really remarked on is only to state our statistical insignificance—or rather, the statistical insignificance of transition regret. I don’t personally regret my transition for the most part, so I wouldn’t even count there.

Whereas the Right sings lyrical about all the motivations and trials and tribulations of the detransitioned (and deftly twists the verses to fit the chorus), the Left does not usually consider the lives of the detransitioned at all. Mistakes happen, they suppose. Kind of funny we ‘failed at gender’ twice. Too bad we’re so miserable, they guess. What, ‘the patriarchy made you do it’? BuzzFeed feminism is so-o-o 2010s, bro.

It would be accurate to surmise the queer community has ceded the concept of detransition to the Right. The queer stance is, in effect, ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’—a defensive and reactive one.

That is not to say the Left as a whole is to blame for grifting detransitioners or the Right itself—the blame is always, first and foremost, on the ones that actually do the harm. And the negligence of the Left doesn’t really harm those that happily push others under the bus—sadly, some people are just assholes. No, the consequences are felt instead by detrans people that have no desire to participate in the transphobia circus, and after that, trans people themselves. The Right’s deathgrip on the detransition narrative means detransition itself is conceptually tied to the Right. Because there is no alternative trans-positive narrative, there is no way to exist as detrans and not affirm someone else’s transphobia, no matter how many times you say you don’t hate trans people. After all there is only one thing people think of when they hear ‘detransitioner.’ And now you are it, whether you like it or not.

I feared I would detransition because, on some level, I knew I might. But why fear it? It’s hard to be trans. There are clear privileges to socially presenting as your birth sex. Doctors will readily help you undo transition. I didn’t want to grift—well, fucking fantastic. Easy enough to not do something. What’s the problem?

I feared it because it’s soul-crushing to know your existence hurts the people you love most. Your friends, partners, mentors. So many cis people in my past knew me as The Trans Person—and now what? How much of the good I had done would be ruined? And by what possible example could I imagine my life as a detransitioner? What is there to even aspire to? And what about everything I’d sacrificed to transition in the first place? All the strife and ridicule I endured, only to have it whispered to me from leering faces: “See? We were right all along.”

All that, to face alone.

At a certain point my resistance to the idea of detransition was motivated only by this. Only by what others would make of me against my will. Not my personal desires. Nothing else at all. To be turned into such a spectacle, a public property of a person, felt like nothing short of death.

Part IV: Afterlife

I decided to start this substack after listening to every podcast appearance by Lucy Kartikasari I could find. She is a detrans woman with a similar yet different story; she transitioned much younger, but went through a similarly arcane approval system and years of waiting; she is not a lesbian; she has detransitioned, and she speaks in favour of trans healthcare and trans rights. The name Dolphin Diaries also originates with her—or rather, with a different, anonymous user, whose idea she broadcast on her TikTok. A dolphin as a symbol of detransition; a mammal that evolved from the ocean to walk on land and then returned to an aquatic life. I find it an appealing and pithy comparison, one free of unnecessary gendering or judgement.

There are precious few voices that speak of detransition in a positive, non-right-wing light. It’s a perspective fraught with thorny, uncomfortable questions. A perspective which is easier to ignore—unless you can’t. If for no one else, I write this for people that felt the same way I did. Trapped, not by ‘mistakes’ or by ‘gender ideology’, but by the image others have painted of them before they could even protest.

I do not write this for the Right. There is nothing I can say that would sway you, and there is nothing you can say that would sway me—and believe me, I have listened more carefully and with far more good faith than you ever have. Feel free to comment how much you pity my womb, or something. I promise to leave its fertility a mystery. I’m a tease that way.

As for other potential readers of this blog: while I do believe it a failure of queer rhetoric to adequately synthesise detransition into the overall gender politic, I don’t believe it’s everyone else’s job to create that synthesis. Who better than a detransitioner, after all? I ask not that you solve my problems for me.

I ask only that you listen.

[amarguerite]

honestly I think there's a huge generation of readers who read 'the song of the lioness' at an impressionable age and it rewired their brains

[guulabii]

susan sontag, on women

[ladycharles]

Occasionally JK Rowling says or does something so offensive to my sensibilities that I must speak. Sadly, today is one of those days.

This post, and the "male" she is referring to is a cis woman boxer from Algeria. There is an unconfirmed report that she might have an intersex condition in which one's chromosomes are XY. She may not even have this condition, but even if she does, it does not mean anything but that she has an unusual DNA quirk. We do not call Tom Cruise a woman for having an extra X chromosome, for example (nor would I expect Rowling to accept it if he decided to compete as a woman in the Olympics).

Now Rowling, upon being pointed out that she essentially pulled the twitter equivalent of Austin Powers punching that old lady because she "looks rather mannish", moves the goalpost. She claims, against evidence, that she an unfair advantage, going so far as to imply that simply by competing with a rare condition this woman has cheated.

This might seem bizarre coming from a self professed FEMINIST. It is the contention of anti trans "feminists" like Rowling that womanhood is being erased and destroyed by "trans ideology"; Yet here a cis woman achieves a olympic victory and they accuse her of being a man, of cheating. They erase her achievement, they erase her womanhood.

The subtext is racist and misogynistic - a strong Algerian woman with features that do not reflect Western beauty standards is being denied the very womanhood that TERFs claim to protect. She has lost to women before, she has no clear advantage... Yet by virtue of her looks and a possible rare genetic condition, she is now a "man" and a fraud.

This doesn't surprise me, and I suspect that anyone who has had to deal with TERFs will agree. But in case anyone is shocked here's my take:

TERFism has always been a reactionary movement. While it draws from second and third wave feminists and has an ideology on paper, any space with TERFs will tend to feature mad crusades accusing cis women of being trans on looks, attacks against sex workers that are harsher than those on the men who make that industry dangerous, few towards actual men, and a sense of outrage that trumps any real ideology.

It is feminism much like how "National Socialism" was socialist. And like the Nazis did with socialism, it uses the idea of feminism to legitimize attacks on perceived enemies while preserving the status quo. For TERFs that's traditional gender roles, which they have twisted into something that protects women rather than subjugates them. (This is not to say TERFs are Nazis, but it is a decent comparison because fascism is the ultimate reactionary ideology; full of symbolism and mythology yet devoid of any substance but machismo and hate.)

In a nuanced, good faith society, we might discuss trans women in sports using science to determine whether there are unfair advantages, and consult stakeholders and experts in sport and biology. We might study if chromosomes do impart an advantage, and weigh that against the other myriad genetic advantages like long reach or faster muscle gain to determine if there is any problem with current regulations. We might not do these things too, considering we have gone the entire history of sport without a single women's league collapsing from secret "male" invasion.

In Rowling's world, we first attack the winning woman as a "man in disguise" and rail against her without evidence. We have people replying "just look at HIM, he is clearly male". We have people writing violent revenge fantasies in which the Algerian woman gets beaten by a man or a gang of women to "teach her a lesson"... and JK does not once jump in to say any of it is inappropriate or hurtful to women who happen to have androgynous features, like some less fanatic people sharing the story have done.

When this is how their "ideology" reacts to an apparently "male looking" woman winning, we have to ask whether the liberation of women was ever the goal.

And the one thing that makes it all make sense, IMO, is that it's the lashing out that's the point. These people seem to enjoy calling a cis woman a man in much the same way they enjoy calling a trans woman a man. They enjoy the feeling of power as together they act cruel towards a woman who had the audacity to beat a white European. They seem to relish the ability to present themselves as feminists in one breath while brutally harrassing and demeaning women. Unlike ordinary bigots, they constantly bring up their crusade, as if they're growing dependent on the thrill. The cruelty, as they say, seems to be the point.

The danger of these ideologies is really becoming obvious ahead of the US election. Years of social media bubbles and astroturfing have made people like Rowling convinced that they are a silent majority, ironic for people who can't shut up.

Times like this I think are important reminders of where this can really lead. They may spin about being gender critical or concerned about women when the pressure is on; This is what these people do when they think they can get away with it.

This is the dark heart of their movement, beating loud enough to hear.

[thediaryofarevolutionist]

Sometimes I just wish I was ignorant and didn't know anything. I wouldn't care about politics and would no longer break down when I find out about injustice against women. I just can't do it. I'm not strong enough and this misogyny is getting to me. It’s tearing me apart. I feel paralyzed and don't understand why women must go trough this. All i want is women to be safe and liberated but i dont see any hope.

[papenathys]

**Trigger warnings for mentions of honor killing, rape and systemic oppression of marginalized peoples**

So many things in fiction and popular culture are just not funny when you are not white and more specifically live in the global south.

That astrology post by @timetravellingkitty reminded me how little Westerners are acquainted with our social realities. Astrology isn't some quirky indie holistic branch of faith for us, it has gotten academics and secularists killed, it dictates the oppression of marginalized castes, it has been a powerful weapon in dehumanizing women in our society. I have had female friends with a gold medal in postgraduate studies told to initiate wedding rituals with non-human subjects (including animals and plants) to cleanse themselves of impure astrological foundations from their birth charts. I have seen weddings called off and women being made to starve because of wrong astrological compatibility. Sorry I am not amused by your twee soulless gentrified astrology dark academia and pinterest posting.

(Brief tangent: Another thing that interests me is the almost gleeful joy invested in the marriage and forced relationship/proximity trope in recent fiction. Here, the governing fantasy revolves around a storyline where a young woman is literally being sold to or abducted by a man or woman with significantly more power in hand: for they can obtain her as a commodity. But of recent, this is being rebranded as feminism, as a young girl's sexual awakening, as freedom from the benevolently bland childhood best friend and a reawakening as a young Persephone under adversity, whereby the captive has to fix and educate their captor, and in return of emotional labor is rewarded with power and prestige. That's something so insidious to me, because all fantasies aside, what is so cute exactly about it. Women and marginalized genders are at a risk of marital rape because of forced marriages across India. Kangaroo courts and honor killings dominate when it comes to interfaith and intercaste marriages, to unions based on autonomy. Anyway let's go back.)

Dgmw, fiction is fiction etc etc. "Writing is not condoning" that age old sentence now parroted like a hivemind by white fiction authors across genres. But, in what conceivable way are we expected to react in the same way as your white audience, to your supposedly harmless fantasies grounded in ideas of very real, very uncritically romanticized social structures.

I literally don't give a fuck if you are a Libra moon, or that you seek comfort from personal rituals and escapist fan fiction. You do you!! God knows I like reading books about questionable topics and defining myself in easily relatable categories and labels too!! I'm not speaking against faith, or religion, or spiritual lifestyles of any kind, I'm speaking of the commodification and institutionalization of these spiritualities.

But I do care when white people come online on public platforms and rebrand these practices as a radical reclamation of power, or some powerful, unsanitized, "problematic and flawed queer stories" when their very nature is rooted in pseudo-science, misogyny and capitalist exploitation– in the real traumas of underprivileged people repackaged as fanfiction tropes and as aesthetic personality traits for Westerners and anti-rationalists.

And finally, coming back to astrology, in the words of Adorno (The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture, 1975):

Society is made up of those whom it comprises. If the latter would fully admit their dependence on man-made conditions, they would somehow have to blame themselves, would have to recognize not only their impotence but also that they are the cause of this impotence and would have to take responsibilities which today are extremely hard to take. This may be one of the reasons why they like so much to project their dependence upon something else, be it a conspiracy of Wall Street bankers or the constellation of the stars. What drives people into the arms of the various kinds of “prophets of deceit” is not only their sense of dependence and their wish to attribute this dependence to some “higher” and ultimately more justifiable sources, but it is also their wish to reinforce their own dependence, not to have to take matters into their own hands.

Closer home, in the words of the late Narendra Dabholkar:

Yeah man. Please fucking think.

[Note: this post was written by a trans person and is inclusive of the experiences of trans folk, in India and abroad. This post is not grounds for you to segue into "gender critical" trans exclusionary bullshit.]

[longreads]

Fresh Meat

"The resistance to women in butchery goes further: we associate butchery with blood and gore, and dealing with blood and gore is not a place for a woman.”

Regular #longreads food writer Olivia Potts is back! Explore how women are breaking into the male-dominated world of butchery in our new feature.

Blood, craft, and sexism. Read it here. 

[vaspider]

Feisty Lady Anger and other things about me you hate

My mother prizes her anger, for all that she doesn't express it openly. I tell stories about her spiteful, steel-spined responses to people who told her, "You can't do that," and I point to them as Why I Am How I Am. Her father told her he wouldn't pay for her college because "women only go to earn the MRS degree," and she could "get married and have babies" without college. In response, Mom got her bachelor's in Mathematics in 1970 on her own dime, back in the days when in-state students didn't pay tuition at state schools (just another thing Reagan ruined). She worked and paid for her books and housing, got her degree, paid for her own wedding because he wouldn't do that either. Taught school, got her Master's, had three kids, started her Ph.D. with 3 under 6 and became a professor when the youngest was 5.

Tell me I can't, my mom told the world, and I'll show you that I can. I won't just do it, I'll become a department head and a Distinguished Professor and retire after 30 years of teaching other math teachers with a list of achievements as long as my arm.

There is an anger that runs deep in the women in my family. Tell me I can't, and I'll show you I can. Show me injustice and I'll tear at it with my teeth and hands, staring you down while I do. Backwards and in heels.

I can't tell you the moment I crossed out of Feisty Lady Anger in the eyes of the people close to me, but I can tell you the moment I noticed. Maybe it was when my voice started dropping or the growing muscles on my shoulders pulled my stance more square and upright. Maybe it was when I moved from they/them to he/they, and somehow I stepped from Diet Woman to Too Close To Man in their eyes.

It's a funny thing when all of a sudden your anger becomes real enough to be startling to people. Your anger is no longer feisty, charming, and attractive. This thing that people liked about you, that people who say they love you said they loved about you, suddenly becomes frightening, upsetting, and terrible. The way you didn't let people mow over you and fought back used to be a thing that people admired. It was actively attractive. It was one of your best qualities.

Now? It's ugly. It's disgusting. It's scary. The thing you were is gone, and now your anger is real to them.

It's in that moment that the blade cuts back towards you. You realize the reason your squared shoulders and set jaw drew people in couldn't be squared with the stubble on that jaw or the newfound strength in your arms. Feisty Lady Anger isn't real, not in the way a man's anger is real. Feisty Lady Anger is admirable, sure, but it is admirable because of its essential ineffectual nature. At most, Feisty Lady Anger fixes minor problems for the kids at school, gets the principal to back down from scolding your child when she politely asks the kid calling her a faggot on the bus if he knows what that really means, pushes a woman to achieve for her family, in appropriately neutered ways.

When you stop pretending to be a woman and become who you really are, when your anger becomes real, you realize both that the thing about you that people loved is gone and that this thing was attractive in the first place because of its ineffectiveness. Your anger wasn't scary because it wasn't real enough to be threatening.

Now you have Man Anger, and, you're told, you should apologize for that. It doesn't matter if it's the same anger you've always had, or that you're angry about the same things. It comes now in baritone, with belly hair and bellowing, and now it's both real and disgusting.

The worst part is watching it come from people you thought should know better, the people who should understand. You spent nearly 40 years being told to sit down and shut up because the men in your professional career were speaking, assured that if you just waited your turn, you'd be given a place to speak eventually, and now here you are being told within a community that claims to love and understand you, by people that claim to be in community with you and love who you are, that you actually don't have any real problems to speak about, also your Man Anger and Man Privilege (when do I get that, please?) are Scary and mean you should sit down and wait, and you'll be given a place to speak eventually.

It is the Transmasculine Catch-22: if you become Man Enough to no longer fit into Almost Lady, your anger becomes Real, which makes you realize that your anger wasn't Real before, but because it's Real now, you're not allowed to have it. And by the way, you're not allowed to be neither Man or Lady - now you're Man Enough, and that makes it all the more clear how you were simply Kirkland Signature Lady right up until the point you weren't.

There will be a few people who Fucking Get It, who don't see you as either a Failed Lady or a Broken Man, and you'll love those people all the more for their rarity. It won't take the sting out of realizing that the things people you love loved about you before now disgust and repel them, but it'll make it enough to keep going.

You couldn't stop, anyway. You've never felt more yourself, and the people who don't love you, the actual you, the real you... the loss of that hurts, but not nearly as much as the idea of pretending to be something else did.

[devoutvesta]

A Deep Dive Into Disney’s Most Underperforming Princess

Princess Aurora can’t even be described as controversial. To most, she’s simply boring, too passive, and a continuation of the bland cycle of white princesses who wait around for magic or a prince to save them. Although no one hates her, they find her irritating at the worst, uninteresting at best. In the fifties, they must have thought the same thing. Sleeping Beauty was a commercial failure, and led to company wide annual loss. Sleeping Beauty had followed several other financial flops, such as Bambi and Alice in Wonderland, the latter costing Disney around half a million dollars. Due to her lack of popularity, Aurora may be one of the most neglected Princesses. Many cling to her out of nostalgia, or because she has a nice design, and they find it hard to defend their love for the movie. But the movie’s turbulent history and the amount of detail that went into Aurora herself is what really makes her so incredibly fascinating.

Starting with her design, Disney hired Marc Davis as the supervising animator for Aurora. He also animated Maleficent. The intention was for them to be realistic enough to be placed against the heavily detailed backgrounds of the movie. Davis had embraced this artistic direction, while many of the animators found it, and especially Aurora, laborious and tiring to work on. Both Maleficent and Aurora had to be refined and dynamic. Davis was Disney’s go-to animator for ‘pretty girls’, examples being Tinkerbell and Alice. His knowledge of anatomy and the human body brought both Aurora and Cinderella to life, two of Disney’s most visually iconic characters. Davis had also incorporated Art Nouveau and Art Deco into Aurora’s design, while the tapestry-like art style of the movie was chosen by Eyvind Earle, who was inspired by pre-Renaissance European art. The score and songs were based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet.

Aurora alone required more effort and attention to detail than any princess before her. It took Walt Disney and his team three years to choose a voice actress. They nearly scrapped the project until they discovered Mary Costa, but Disney himself avoided interacting with her in person early on in the project, fearing that she’d influence his vision of the movie.

Aurora was loosely based on her voice actress. Her appearance and her habits (such as gesturing when speaking and singing) were both incorporated into Aurora’s animation. She was also drawn to resemble both her live action model, the same one as Cinderella’s, Helene Stanley, and actress Audrey Hepburn. Davis took inspiration from Audrey Hepburn’s slender physique and elegant demeanour.

In the book Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment, author Douglas Brode referred to Aurora as “a model of modern (50’s) female glamour” and compared her to Brigitte Bardot. He also compared her gown to the work of Christian Dior.

As a character, she was described by Nerve as being “the apex of women who made no choices for themselves.” Aurora is a member of the “Golden Era” of Disney heroines, the original Princess trifecta. Her dreams are the same as those before her. But it’s possible that Aurora’s dreams of true love derived from the need for companionship outside of her three fairy godmothers.

On their website, Disney describes her as, “graceful and kind. She knows that a wonderful future awaits, if you just have the courage to dream it. Aurora enjoys using her imagination and sharing stories with her forest friends. She is also loyal in her relationships -- to her animal friends, her fairies, and her kingdom. Aurora believes in a wish and remains hopeful that she will find the adventure she is looking for.”

Walt Disney himself described Aurora as being “a very layered character/different. She’s calm, yet playful. She has a sense of humour, and she has an imagination.” We can not argue that she was considered layered through the lens of the fifties, because many critics disliked all three of the original princesses for their passive personality, or lack thereof. But from the perspective of the team working on the show, they saw much more to her.

This was the film that Walt Disney worked his hardest on, it took ten years to complete. It was also the very last Princess film he was involved in. Her ‘layers’ were very much intentional. Disney tried to do the same thing with Cinderella.

With Cinderella, they attempted to make her less passive than Snow White, and they showed this through her rebelling against her abusive stepfamily. Maurice Rapf said, "My thinking was you can't have somebody who comes in and changes everything for you. It can't be delivered for you on a platter. You've got to earn it. So in my version, the Fairy Godmother said, 'It's okay till midnight but from then on it's up to you.' I made her earn it, and what she had to do to achieve it was to rebel against her stepmother and stepsisters, to stop being a slave in her own home. So I had a scene where they're ordering her around and she throws the stuff back at them. She revolts, so they lock her up in the attic. I don't think anyone took (my idea) very seriously."

The toned down version of Cinderella, although rebellious in her own way, is still toned down. That part of her character was written out. In comparison to what she would have been, she is passive. Aurora and Cinderella are both less passive than their predecessors, but passive nonetheless. All three of them are the staple damsels in distress.

However, Mary Costa described Aurora as “very strong”, citing her urge to defy her guardians as a display of independence and an example of her strength. Aurora was raised by three women, and had never met a man in her life. Costa believed that because of this, she was ‘innately romantic’ as opposed to lonely or depressed with her sheltered life. To quote, “there was a certain part of her that maybe she didn’t realise, that was just so romantic and maybe expecting something that–she didn’t even know what.”

She believed that her being raised by three older women rather than her parents made her “a little bit older, and yet, she…had this young, outreaching spirit.” Author Douglas Brode points out that the fairies’ independent raising of Aurora mirrors “precisely that sort of women’s commune numerous feminists experimented with throughout the seventies.” Aurora living in an isolated, female-only space, with female authority, is reminiscent of the bold and liberating radical feminist movement. In her own way, as a peasant, she was independent. And that independence and autonomy was taken from her upon discovering that she was royalty and betrothed to a prince. She was leaving her home and the presumed man of her dreams behind, and not of her own free will.

Aurora had enjoyed her simple life, it had fulfilled her, even if she desired more. She had dreams of finding romantic love, which she talks about in the movie’s song ‘I Wonder’. Additionally, her close relationship with animals demonstrates her loving and kind personality. She has a whimsical imagination, and it’s scenes like the ones from Disney’s Enchanted Tales series and ‘Once Upon a Dream’, that would support Costa’s claim of her being a romantic. Where she’s changing in and out of pretty gowns with a magical wand, and giggling to herself. Or dancing happily with the forest animals, thinking about her imaginary prince. In ‘Keys to the Kingdom’, she proudly sings about wishing to make decisions with her heart.

Her independence is demonstrated on multiple occasions in Disney’s discontinued Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams. Aurora graciously accepts responsibility of her kingdom while both her and Philip’s parents travel away for a business trip. All on her own, she is determined to get all of her Princess duties finished on time, the hard way. She refuses to take the easy way out, time and time again, even when she doubts herself. She works harder than even her father, who would take the easy way out by signing royal documents without reading them. Even when Meriwether gives her a magic wand to help her out, she reads and fills out every royal form diligently, and helps out all of her subjects. She manages to complete her tasks on time and throw a banquet for her family and Philip by the time they return. The lesson here is to ‘stick to it’ and to ‘persevere’. But her insistence on doing everything on her own is shown once again in A Kingdom of Kindness, where she must plan a surprise party for Philip. The three fairies attempt to help her, but she continues to tell them that she wants to do it on her own. This series was cancelled, and it is difficult to find any clips of it online. But this short-series gives us some insight into Aurora’s character.

She is assumed to be the protagonist by most, but many consider the three fairies to be the protagonists. They help move the story along, they protect Aurora, and they have distinct, in-your-face personalities. Many consider Aurora authentic, or the title character, but whether she is the protagonist or not has never been agreed upon. Her lack of role in the story has been criticized by many. But some take it as an allegory for the lack of control

The most lengthy debate surrounding Aurora has to do with how feminist her character is. She may have been an improvement from the previous princesses, but she is not regarded as a particularly feminist character.

The three original princesses, all being pale-skinned European princesses with a naive and endlessly forgiving (an unrealistic standard), sends a message to their viewers that this is what princesses should look like, how they should behave. All three classic princesses are deeply intertwined with Disney’s long history of racism and bigotry. In an attempt to amend this, Disney has released back to back live action remakes of their movies, all receiving mixed reviews. Maleficent was Sleeping Beauty’s remake, focused on a maternal relationship between Maleficent and Aurora. Many people interpreted the scene where Maleficent’s wings get cut off in her sleep as sexual assault. This inclusion made many survivors of sexual assault feel represented by the character.

From my perspective, the original Sleeping Beauty is technically a movie centred around women. A teenage girl lives with her three surrogate mothers, who end up saving her in the end from the female antagonist. Although Prince Philip’s role in the story is still a large part of what moves the plot along. It is Philip who is captured, as Maleficent knew that he would go looking for her. He courted Aurora, defeated Maleficent with the help of the three fairies, and kissed the princess awake. But he still doesn’t get as large of a role, or nearly as much screen time, as the three fairies.

In short, both the movie and the princess fascinate me. And although there is depth if you squint, a character does not need to be fleshed out to be lovable, or at least endearing. Aurora is my favourite Disney Princess, and I find the history behind her and the film to be more interesting than what meets the eye.

[f1ghtsoftly]

While, I don’t hate the women that express “doomer” ideology, I do think it’s Really Bad for a wide range of reasons. One of the most important of which is the all or nothing type of valuation it places on resistance, we either destroy all patriarchy, or we’re all doomed, and the way it negates our power as living breathing adult women to do anything at all the change our circumstances, because I can’t change all of it-I change nothing instead.

There are thousands of women on this website that are alive right now who want a better world-do you seriously believe none of our efforts, do you believe the efforts of all the women who’ve ever lived amount to nothing just because we haven’t achieved a post-patriarchal society? Think about all the ways women’s resistance, big and small, has nurtured you-even before feminism was a thought in your head. Did that not matter to you? Did it not help protect you? To warn you? To feed your soul? Not enough of course, but all of that effort was enough to make you brave enough to dig for answers, to not immediately give in to all that was expected of you, to find a place here on this website, surely. It did matter, even just hearing or seeing something that made you feel seen for the first time in your life-that does matter.

I think one of patriarchy’s most pernicious effects is the way it corrupts intimacy between women. We are trained to play act images of women that men create through media and social control we end up worrying if we’re successful in our impersonation of this being we call “woman” always trying to be nice enough, tidy enough, small enough etc…and disrupts our images of woman’s actual humanity and personhood. Remember how crazy you felt before you discovered feminism, imagine all the other women and girls who already do and will one day feel like you. You thought no other woman was like you, until one day you went to a secret place, somewhere men didn’t control, and discovered, it wasn’t true.

Women’s ability to resist patriarchy is a gift to us, it lets us know, even hundreds of years into the future, that we have never really been alone. Women who acted out to the point of being disciplined via religious, psychiatric or state institutions. Women who worked in secret as men to be able to write, create, make and live independently. Women who pushed politically for their rights. Even just women who survived and gained power for themselves in environments that were hostile to it. They all gave us a gift and that gift is the knowledge that they were alive, they mattered and they didn’t like it-they weren’t these images of women that men created-they were human, just like us. More than just giving us comfort, these big and small acts of resistance allow us to more fully understand not only the totality of what we’re up against-but also to appreciate the incredible fortitude of women who persisted against incredible odds. They didn’t know what their fates were going to be either and it probably felt as bleak, if not more, than it does right now. We can find women like this in the historical record, even if Big Patriarchy is still around.

It’s true that individually we don’t have a lot of control over the Really Big Historical Picture, but the good news is we don’t have to-we just need to control our slice of it. There are so many women just waiting to find women like us, there are girls growing up who need to see us to know that they’re not alone and that there is a community of women who feel like them and who are worth fighting for. Focus on making yourself visible as a human being to the women around you, on trying to make a mark big enough so that women in the future can find you. We are alive and we matter-and I really think this is enough. It’s a very worthy effort to live by and for other women and usefully it’s also a really critical step in building solidarity, so even if some of us get crazy ideas about doing something to change the Big Historical Picture, they’ll have a much better chance of achieving it.

[hairtusk]

Andrea Dworkin, 'Pornography', from Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)

[shamebats]

So we do need political change, but I feel like I'm failing my boys if I'm somehow giving them the idea that revolution is their only hope. Cause here's the other thing, even if we did succeed at ending capitalism there would still be gender. And my boys would still need some model of what it is to lead a good life as a man. Now the other option the left has for disillusioned men is the feminist tranquilizer. We say "look, toxic masculinity is the reason you don't have room to express your feelings. And it's the reason you feel lonely and inadequate." So while feminism tells women "you hate your body and you're constantly doubting yourself because society did this to you and needs to change”, we kinda just tell men "you're lonely and suicidal because you're toxic. Stop it".  We tell them that they're broken without really telling them how to fix themselves. I think what we need is a new, positive ideal of manhood. Which I don't think is something that women cannot create for men, even if they wanted to. And honestly the best way for that to happen may actually be some kind of men's movement. But on the left the whole idea of a men's movement is basically taboo, because the men's movement we all know is basically just a backlash to feminism, and at worst it's just straight-up misogyny.  I think what would actually improve life for most men is a positive ideal of 21st century manhood (...) You have to help each other. So find each other in the comments section, meet up on Reddit, make friends, clean your room, leave the house, fuck each other. I don't know. It's worth a try.

- Men | ContraPoints