#feminist tourism

[lilithism1848]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Ribu's anti-imperialist feminist discourse would later manifest in its solidarity protests against kisaeng tourism. This sex tourism involved Japanese businessmen traveling to South Korea to partake in the sexual services of young South Korean women who worked at clubs called kisaengs. Ribu's protests against kisaeng tourism represented how the liberation of sex combined with ribu's anti-imperialism and enabled new kinds of transnational feminist solidarity based on a concept of women's sexual exploitation and sexual oppression. From ribu's perspective, this form of tourism represented the reformation of Japanese economic imperialism in Asia. They were not against sex work by Japanese women, but opposed to the continued sexual exploitation of Korean women as a resurgence of the gendered violence of imperialism: Ribu activists hence connected imperialism and sexual oppression of colonized women to the continuing sexual exploitation of Korean women in the 1970s. In this way, they were able to expand the leftist critique of imperialism and, at the same time, point to the fault lines and inadequacies of the left.

In her critique of the left, Tanaka points to its failure to have a theory of the sexes.

Even in movements that are aiming towards human liberation, by not having a theory of struggle that includes the relation between the sexes. the struggle becomes thoroughly masculinist and male-centered (dansei-chushin shugi].

According to ribu activists, this male-centered condition infected not only the theory of the revolution and delimited its horizon, but it created a gendered concept of revolution that privileged masculinist hierarchies within the culture of the left. Ribu activists decried the hypocrisy of the left and what it deemed to be the all-too-frequent egotistical posturing of the "radical men" who "eloquently talked about solidarity, the inter national proletariat and unified will," but did not really consider women part of human liberation. Ribu activists rebelled against Marxist dogma and rejected these gendered hierarchies that valued knowledge of the proper revolutionary theory over lived experience and relationships. Moreover, ribu activists criticized what they experienced as masculinist forms of militancy that privileged participation in street battles with the riot police as the ultimate sign of an authentic revolutionary. While being trained to use weapons, activists like Mori Setsuko questioned whether engaging in such bodily violence was the way to make revolution. Ribu's rejection and criticism of a hierarchy that privileged violent confrontation forewarned of the impending self-destruction within the New Left.

...

News of URA [United Red Army] lynchings, released in 1972, devastated the reputation of the New Left in Japan, and many across the left condemned these actions. This case of internalized violence within the left marked its demise. Although ribu activists were likewise horrified by such violence expressed against comrades, many ribu activists responded in a profoundly radical manner that I have theorized elsewhere as "critical solidarity." Ribu activists had already refused to lionize the tactics of violence; hence, they in no way supported the violent internal actions of the URA. However, rather than simply condemning the URA leaders and comrades as monsters and nonhumans [hi-ningen), they sought to comprehend the root of the problem. They recognized that every person possesses a capacity for violence, but that society prohibits women from expressing their violent potential. In response to the state's gendered criminalization of Nagata as an insurgent and violent woman, ribu activists practiced what I describe as feminist critical solidarity specifically for the women of the URA. Ribu activists went in support to the court hearings and wrote about their experience and critical observations of how URA members were being treated. By visiting the URA women at the detention centers, consequently, ribu activists came under police surveillance. Ribu activists enacted solidarity in ways that were tot politically pragmatic but instead philosophically motivated. Their response involved a capacity for radical self-recognition in the loathsome actions of the other. Activists wrote extensively about Nagata - for example, Tanaka described Nagata in her book Inochi no onna-tachi e [To Women with Spirit] as a kind of "ordinary" woman whom she could have admired, except for the tragedy of the lynching incidents. In 1973, Tanaka wrote a pamphlet titled "Your Short Cut Suits You, Nagata!" in response to the state's gendered criminalization of the URA's female leader, the deliberate publication of such humanizing discourse evinces ribu's efforts to express solidarity with the women who were arguably the most vilified females of their time. Hence, ribu engaged in actions that supported these criminalized others even when the URA'S misguided pursuit of revolution resulted in the unnecessary deaths of their own comrades. Through ribu's critical solidarity with the URA, they modeled the imperative of imperfect radical alliances, opening up a philosophically motivated relationality with abject subjects and a new horizon of counter-hegemonic alliances against the dominant logic of heteropatriarchal capitalist imperialism.

While the harsh criticism of the left was warranted and urgently needed given the deep sedimentation of pervasive forms of sexist practice, it should be noted that, at the outset of the movement, there were various ways in which ribu's intimate relationship with other leftist formations characterized its emergence. At ribu's first public protest, which was part of the October 21 anti-war day, some women carried bamboo poles and wooden staves as they marched in the street, jostling with the police." Ribu did not advocate pacifism; its newspapers regularly printed articles on topics such as "How to Punch a Man." During ribu protests from 1970-2, some ribu activists-as noted, with Yonezu and Mori - still wore helmets that were markers of one's political sect and a common student movement practice."

- Setsu Shigematsu, “'68 and the Japanese Women’s Liberation Movement,” in Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68. London and New York: Verso, 2020. p. 89-90, 91-92

[lolaze]

This is a short YouTube documentary that I really recommend. The topics that it talks about are: children abuse, pedophilia, sex abuse, children market, non-con sex work, and so on. I’m a western woman, and the situation here is different , but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t educate ourselves about what goes on in other countries where women are still treated like they’re not humans. Feminism is about uplifting the minorities and putting everyone on the same page, we shouldn’t be self-centered and selfish, please don’t feed into white feminism or rad-feminism beliefs, always educate yourself on what is going on around the word.

[lotusindiaholidays]

Famous Kerala backwater tour – Lush landscapes, tranquil waterways, and unique culture

The famous Kerala backwater tour is a serene and enchanting journey through the backwaters of Kerala, a state in southern India known for its lush landscapes, tranquil waterways, and unique culture. The backwaters are a network of interconnected canals, rivers, lakes, and lagoons that stretch along the Arabian Sea coast.

[natandacat]

I wish all radfems using the pain of iranian women to feed their fucking agenda a very die

[mangopodcast]

NEW EPISODE, PASSPORT BROS

[haggishlyhagging]

When it is asserted in Germany that in vitro fertilization and similar technologies are all about helping infertile women, German feminists impatiently brush that claim aside. They are irritated at any suggestion that they ought to take such a claim seriously. It is, they say, a "Deckmantel," which means "cloak," "disguise." In conversations with them, one hears occasional references to the political naivete of Americans who accept such a "Deckmantel" at face value.

German feminists have known all along that the stakes in this issue are high. They are particularly sensitive to the ways in which these technologies can and are beginning to be used to manufacture human beings to specifications and, in the process, to reduce women to breeders or, less elegantly, to raw material for a new manufacturing process.

Unlike U.S. feminists, they organized as a movement on the issue and began spreading their critique beyond the feminist movement.

That the stakes are indeed high became dramatically evident in December 1987.

The German equivalent of the FBI (the 'Bundeskriminalamt") staged thirty-three simultaneous raids, many of them against feminists, throughout the Federal Republic of Germany, December 18 at 4:30 p.m. A total of 430 heavily armed police burst into the workplaces of activists. Fifteen to thirty in a group, the police swept into homes in Cologne, Dortmund, and Düsseldorf. In Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, and Hamburg, the raids were directed overwhelmingly against feminist critics of genetic and reproductive technology, according to Prozessgruppe Hamburg, a watchdog group.

The targeted critics have written and spoken on such issues as in vitro fertilization, amniocentesis, sex predetermination, and genetic engineering. They have actively opposed surrogate motherhood. Many worked together in a massive coalition to stop Noel Keane's attempt to open a branch of his U.S. surrogate business, United Family International, in Frankfurt. (Keane's New York firm arranged the Mary Beth Whitehead surrogate contract.) Their campaign to stop the sale of U.S. women to European men for breeding purposes ended successfully January 6, 1988 when a West German court ordered Keane's business closed, three months after it had opened.

Grounds for the police raids? In many cases, the women were not given any. But the next day, newspapers reported that the police conducted the searches to ascertain whether any of the individuals were members of a terrorist organization. They were specifically looking for a group called Revolutionaren Zellen and its feminist wing, Rota Zora.

The police were operating under Paragraph 129a of the terrorist act, "Support or Membership in a Terrorist Organization."

The women raided were forced to undress. All "non-changeable marks" on their bodies—scars, moles, etc. —were noted down in police records. The women were fingerprinted.

Two well-known and widely respected women were arrested: Ulla Penselin, active in two groups in Hamburg, Women Against Genetic Engineering and another group critiquing population control policies; and Ingrid Strobl, a journalist for eight years with the national feminist magazine, Emma. Strobl is accused of buying a clock used in a bombing attack against Lufthansa offices in Cologne to protest the exploitation of Third World women in the sex-tourism industry. Both women were charged under the terrorist act, Paragraph 129a. Strobl remains in prison while Penselin has since been released.

In the nationwide raids, police confiscated materials from an archive on genetic and reproductive technology established by women in Essen and from private homes and apartments. They seized drafts of the women's speeches, material prepared for seminars, names and addresses of those attending seminars, published work, videos, tapes of radio programs, scientific articles, postcards, brochures and private address books.

The police raids appear to be an attempt to stop the widespread antigenetic technology movement in Germany by linking legal organizations with more militant ones, Maria Mies, author of Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale and professor of sociology at the Fachhochschule in Cologne, told me in a telephone interview from her home.

"No concrete accusation or crime was being investigated," she pointed out. "This means that women doing 'Aufklarungsarbeit,' that is, researching reproductive or genetic engineering or talking about it or giving seminars, are already doing enough to provide a pretext for the attorney general to launch such a police action."

Mies, an organizer of the world's first massive feminist conference against reproductive and genetic technology in Bonn in 1985, said of the police action: "We think it is an effort to criminalize and intimidate the whole protest movement of women against reproductive and genetic engineering and frighten others away from participating in order to prevent the movement from spreading even more widely."

Mies added: "We are planning another conference against reproductive and genetic engineering just to demonstrate that we are continuing our work."

-Gena Corea, “The New Reproductive Technologies” in The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Haunani-Kay Trask! (October 3, 1949)

A leading figure in the movement for Hawaiian independence, Haunani-Kay Trask was born in San Francisco before her family moved to O'ahu. She pursued an academic career, earning her PhD in political science in 1981. A Native Hawaiian, Trask founded the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and heavily promoted and pioneered Hawaiian Studies as a discipline. Politically, Trask identified with left-wing currents, protesting against the Vietnam War and supporting the Black Panther Party. She utilized feminist theory, although she criticized mainstream American feminism as overly focused on white womanhood, and opposed the US military's presence in Hawaii while also opposing tourism to the islands. She was also opposed to efforts to group Native Hawaiians together legally with Native American tribes, and any efforts to further erode Hawaiian sovereignty. Her book From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi is considered to be a seminal work of anti-colonial literature. Trask continued her advocacy and work until her death in 2021.

"Our story remains unwritten. It rests within the culture, which is inseparable from the land. To know this is to know our history. To write this is to write of the land and the people who are born from her."

[hussyknee]

it’s rare to find a sinhalese person (online atleast) who is supportive of tamil self-determination. genuine question: among leftist circles in sri lanka, how common is such a stance?

I don't know whether I'm a reliable source to answer this question because I'm very jaded about this in general. A couple of days ago, someone on the Sri Lanka Reddit started up discourse about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's choice to reject identifying with the country that tried to genocide her people, which I'm still chewing wire about. I'm a very isolated person with a very small social circle of like-minded leftist friends. They're mostly not SinBud and anti SinBud nonsense, but none of them are Tamil and I'm the one who really convinced them about Eelam I think. The people I learned from, who are out there doing the work of building inter-ethnic dialogue and overturning Sinhalese propaganda, might have a more hopeful view.

Thing is, there's no one "leftist" faction here because "left" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the West. The Rajapaksas' party SLPP is socialist, a legacy of their ancestor the SLFP who was the party aligned with the USSR. They and their voters and their saffron terror acolytes (Buddhist priesthood) are all for public infrastructure they can rob blind and central government they can use to crush minorities, and build on the nationalist fervour of genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism that's served both major parties independence. There's quasi-communists, descendants of the ethnonationalist Marxist JVP that rose in opposition to the class corruption of ethnonationalist USSR-aligned socialist SLFP and enthonationalist US-aligned neoliberal UNP. They've since distanced themselves from their ethnic myopia, possibly due to suffering much of the same state terrorism as minorities via militarisation and policies like the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. They're the most vocal about the abolition of the executive presidency, the defunding of military and police, and restructuring and executing the long-mismanaged socialist infrastructure. These are usually the working class and university students, but their base has been growing in other demographics too, since we "held our noses and voted" for the Yahapalana government in 2015 and it ended up fucking us over. But despite their sympathy with the suffering of Tamils and Muslims and favouring the devolution of power, most still cling to the idea that Sinhalese majoritarianism is a fair result of democracy.

The kind of pro-LGBT, anti-racist, feminist liberals that would pass muster with the western left otoh, are a minority of urban, English-speaking professionals. Their panacea for enthofascism is voting for the neoliberal party, whose idea of reducing corruption and increasing efficiency is privatizing everything, are against racism because it's bad for tourism, and coasts on the promise of never actively feeding ethnosupremacy, even if they won't do anything about it either. Both these groups hate each other but are equally deeply uncomfortable with if not entirely resistant to the idea that the North and East are Tamil lands colonized by the Sinhalese. Both groups are aware of the corruption and complicity of the Buddhist priesthood and are prepared to do exactly nothing about it.

What I'm trying to say is that Sinhalese Buddhist ethnosupremacy is baked in to the Sri Lankan political fabric. "Left" means jack shit when it comes to whether Tamils have rights, in much the same way that the western left agrees on everything except Palestine. It's a political no man's land everyone tries not to look at.

The fundamental problem is that Sinhalese people who know enough about 1958, 1983, or the full scope of genocide perpetrated against Tamils during the last push of the war, let alone all 26 years of it, are very much in the minority. It takes a particular education to understand that "Sri Lanka" is a post-colonial invention that took over from "Ceylon", which was nothing but a construct for the ease of British administration. As far as I know, this education is confined to activist organizations and whoever followed my sociology program. So my kind of anarchist leftism that calls the war a Tamil genocide with their whole chest and the priesthood saffron terrorists and recognises Eelam is, afaik, vanishingly small.

To be honest, I never really questioned the propaganda and narrative we've been spoon fed myself until I went to Canada when I was 23 to complete my anthro degree (became disabled and dropped out after). One thing that struck me was how racist the Sinhalese diaspora was. I was raised SinBud, my school didn't admit any non-Sinhalese, half my uncles were in the military, but these people that had left the country decades ago still hated Tamils and Muslims in a way that nobody else I knew did. I wondered whether this was what it had been like when it had all started; whether this hatred that seemed to have been preserved in amber was a true taste of what had ignited Black July. Suddenly the attitude of the Tamil diaspora towards the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese people didn't seem so unreasonable.

Then, later in the same uni term, I went to an art exhibition of a white artist who travelled the world collecting information about their genocides and made art about them, and found a painting depicting Sri Lankan Tamils in 2008. Promptly had a meltdown. Went to the lady and told her tearfully that it was all propaganda, we didn't really hate Tamils, not even my uncles in the army hated Tamils, it was a war, the LTTE had terrorized us for my whole lifetime. Bless the woman, she didn't fight me, just let me cry at her and patted my hand and pretended to take me seriously. This made it easier for me to really think about what I knew once I'd stopped wailing and stamping. It prompted a years-long self-interrogation and fact finding that made me unearth how much brainwashing had been done to us by everyone, from our families to our school textbooks to news media. It's like the air we breathed was propaganda. And I still didn't know a fraction of what life had been like for Tamils (or Muslims) and the scope of atrocities perpetrated by the Sinhalese until I began my Society and Culture degree at the Open University when I was 30. The first year textbooks were only broadstrokes facts, but at last I found out about Gnananth Obeysekera, Prageeth Jeganathan, Stanley Thambaiya, Malithi DeAlwis. Their work on nation-making, ethnicity, historical revisionism, genocide and ethnic conflict and state terrorism...everything I should have been taught as a child. The chapters on the rapes and murders and shelling and war crimes and IDP camps were..indescribable. That was what properly radicalised me about Tamil self-sovereignty, because there's clearly no possible way the Tamil people will ever be safe and safeguarded under a Sinhalese majoritarian government.

I had to drop out of that programme too because of my health. But during the mass protests against the government in 2022, I learned even more about Tamil indigeneity, the extent of JR Jayawardena's crimes, and the persecution of Marxists and victims of the '71 and '89 insurrections. So much of the protests and their encampments were directed and galvanized by social media, that organised online and in-person lectures, teach-outs, and live discussions that anyone and everyone could attend right alongside the protests. I've never seen that kind of truly democratized, free, egalitarian civic education and discourse before. That was the very first time I saw academics, survivors, refugees and human rights activists being given a respectful platform, the masses hearing firsthand accounts from people of the North and East and witnesses of Black July. April to July 2022 was a truly golden bubble of time where I saw people finally start listening, believing, and challenging all their convictions. It was the closest we ever came to realising the hope that things could be different; that we could, as a society, understand how Sinhalese ethnosupremacy had been the black rot killing this country from the first, stop being racist Sinhala-first cunts and actually hold any of these murderers accountable.

Teach us to hope, I guess.

But I suppose it's no small thing that I learned about the Tamil resistance and struggle and taught all my friends about it. I'm sure they're informing their own circles in small ways too. These tendrils are hard to see, but they exist and grow. Especially with the fall of the Rajapaksas and their Bhaiyya contingent, more people can see ethnosupremacy for the grift that it is, and the younger generations are less defensive, more willing to listen and eager for justice and change. So I guess the answer is: not very common, but less uncommon than it used to be.

[intersectionalpraxis]

If you want to see how harmful this “digital nomadic culture” is, you just need to look at what they’ve done to Bali, Indonesia. They have completely displaced local residents and pushed them out of their communities because locals can no longer afford to keep up with the COL. Original post: "They bore me so much🫥" with the caption from an Instagram story of. woman dining: "GIRL MATH: You've figured out the ultimate life hack as a millenial is to make you money in the US and live abroad where the cost of living is more affordable."

There's so many layers to unpack here. 'Tourism' in the Caribbean, for instance, is something I think about as well whenever I see people acting like this -these industries, which are highly exploitative towards the people and their communities and environments is one element -but the 'travelling to paradise' market itself is based in neo/colonialist frameworks and current mentalities and that itself is something that needs to be addressed much more. Especially with what is happening in Jamaica where so many Jamaicans are being pushed out of their own land when a tourist 'resort' wants to build or 'expand' because these 'ideal' locations are near the sea, where Jamaican people have been/are fishing for their own livelihoods and survival. I posted a video about this, but for those who haven't looked into these issues -I implore you to look into this.

I also think of Hawai'i, which has had many devastating impacts to their islands this past year -irreparable damages to both Native Hawaiians and the environment (and ongoing issues, such as the water being contaminated/and scarce there and yet tourists are prioritized for access to clean water sources) -and STILL people remained and traveled there during the Maui fires, and just overall despite countless pleas for them not to go they still do.

Among many the 'desirable destinations' marketed specifically to Europeans/Westerners as 'a getaway to' where they can detach from their busy lives, or to live permanently because it's 'too expensive' where they live -I sincerely wish they would come back down to earth and realize their imperialistic mentalities -especially when going to countries whose economies they perceived as 'poorer,' without looking critically at the country's infrastructure and history is just willful ignorance at best.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

i dont talk about trafficking as much when it comes to the legal debate regarding prostitution, not because its not important - i would actually say that it is not talked about and problematised enough in broader society, like sex tourism - but because prostitution advocates will always say trafficking is already illegal and they make a clear distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution (which in itself is questionable because its actually not clearly distinguished at all, and trafficking would not exist without prostitution and men willing to pay for sex with women).

i will never tire to emphasise that the whole premise of buying sex should not be enabled or embraced, because a society that treats sex as a service is directly at odds with justice for marginalised groups (impoverished, immigrants and/or affected by racism, single mothers, drug addicts, mentally ill, gay/trans, female, grooming and abuse victims, etc etc), especially considering that men have always used penetration as a tool of enforcing and exercising their power. a society that treats sex as a service instead of a mutually desired act is directly contributing to the ideas creating rape culture, and contradicting the principle of freely given consent.

prostitution advocates want liberalisation and regulation instead of abolishment. there is no possible scenario where this has a net positive effect for women and other marginalised people, because the demand increases, and because it exists in the first place. the demand exists because sexuality is being commodified, the demand exists because men dont care about their sexual partners desires and wishes. because men treat others like objects and vessels for their selfish desires.

and women embracing their own objectification for one reason or another (be it privileged women who see prostitution as an adventure or less privileged women who dont see an alternative for generating income) is not a valid reason for me to support it and accept men being legally allowed to buy access to the bodies of women; which is what most prostitution is.

it doesnt matter that there are women who claim to love it because they could never meet demand, and them spreading this narrative which is often accompanied by glamorisation, trivialisation, normalisation and straight lies about prostitution could actually count as grooming, thats why it has to stop. the fact that there are individual women embracing prostitution does not mean it has merit, from a societal/feminist point of view.

[trans-corvo]

Youtube Video Essayists part 2

I made one of these lists years ago, so if you're wondering why big names like hbomberguy and Kat Blaque aren't here, that's why.

Science and Tech

Miniminuteman - Archaeologist and science educator whose content focuses on archaeological mysteries and debunking pseduoarcheaology. Videos average about 20 minutes to an hour and a half.

Adam Something - Most of his videos focus on urbanism and transport (it's more interesting than it sounds, I promise), but he also occasionally covers politics and culture. His bread and butter is tearing apart impractical billionaire passion projects (hyperloop, the cybertruck, Munger Hall). Big fan of trains. Average video playtime is 10 to 20 minutes.

Petal Palmer - A pre-med student and cancer patient who covers true stories of medical oddities and malpractice. Some of my favourites are on the Tylenol murders, the woman who froze alive (and survived unscathed), and fraudulent cancer awareness orgs. Videos run from 10 minutes to an hour and a half.

Politics and Culture

Caelan Conrad - Their channel mainly covers gay and trans rights, with a focus on debunking right-wing narratives and commentators. Videos average 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

Fundie Fridays - Started as a channel where Jen did her makeup and talked about various figures and sects of Christian fundamentalism, has since grown to include her husband and to cover politics. Very respectful in her tone, and very funny. I'd recommend their videos on the Miracle Mineral Solution (bleach), Eugene Scott, Duck Dynasty, and Gwen Shamblin Lara. Their early videos are only around 10 to 20 minutes, but these days they run as long as an hour and a half.

Khadija Mbowe - Honestly, her channel could fit under any of these categories. Her content varies wildly, but is always engaging and thought provoking. I'd recommend her videos on meritocracy in health and weightloss, Poor Things and engaging with 'problematic' material, and Barbie and white feminism. Videos average 20 to 40 minutes

F.D Signifier - Very well researched and presented commentary on politics, media, and black manhood. I'd recommend his videos on Eminem and white rappers, what makes men desirable, white men and edge lord movies, and how black athletes are exploited. Videos average 40 minutes to an hour and a half.

Foreign Man in a Foreign Land - Commentary on race and Caribbean culture. I'd recommend his videos on racism in gaming, tourism as the new slavery, and Elizabeth II and english colonialism. Videos average 20 minutes to an hour.

Arts and Entertainment

Broey Deschanel - Channel focuses on film and film criticism. I'd highly recommend her videos on the problems with method acting, feeling cynical about Barbie, and the 'death' of cinema. Videos average about 20 to 50 minutes and have a high production value.

Jane Mulcahy - Film and tv analysis, with a focus on media aimed towards female audiences. Lighthearted but thoughtful. I'd recommend her videos on the Red White and Royal Blue movie, Lifetime 'Daddy' movies, and the 'psycho biddy' genre. Videos average 20 minutes to an hour.

Verily Bitchie - Examining movies and tv through a queer and feminist lense, along with occasional videos on culture on politics. I'd recommend her feminist critique of Doctor Who, a look at bisexual representation on TV, and her video on trial by tiktok. Videos average 10 minutes to an hour and a half.

Coldcrashpictures - Pretty standard long-form film analysis. I'd recommend his videos on the current state of Hollywood, Freaks (1932) and old school horror, the 2020 dumpster fire watchlist, and cinematic masculinity. Videos average 20 minutes to an hour.

Internet Culture

WURLD - Commentary on internet trends and culture. More lighthearted and off the cuff in her presentation. Best videos include Is Booktok Ruining Reading?, the obsession with reusable cups, and hustle culture is a nightmare. Videos run from 15 to 45 minutes.

Gabi Bell - A lot of variation in her content, ranging from internet culture, to (bad) movies, to (bad) tv. I'd recommend her videos on tiktok drama and fake verification. Videos average 10 to 50 minutes.

Tiffany Ferg - Content focused on internet analysis. I'd recommend her videos on concert culture, learned helplessness and tech illiteracy, and 'body trends' and plastic surgery. Videos average from 20 to 40 minutes.

Salem Tovar - Nuanced commentary on internet culture. I'd recommend her videos on gen Z's aesthetic obsession, millennial parenting problems, and filming strangers in public. Videos average from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

Ro Ramdin - Probably the funniest person on this list, I can't recommend her enough. Videos are thoughtful well edited. I'd recommend her videos on Hogwarts Legacy and financially supporting JK Rowling, the NFT island, the metaverse, and XQC. Videos average 20 to 40 minutes.

Also, misc. video essays: 2010s Pop Feminism: A Painful Look Back, We Need to Talk about TikTok's Obsession with Face Reading and its Dark History, Transphobia: The Far Right and Liberalism, You're Wrong about Modern Art, Who is Killing Cinema? - A Murder Mystery, Transition Regret & the Fascism of Endings, I Debunked Every "Body Language Expert" on Youtube, These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us, How Conservatives Created (and Cancelled) Gender.

[stillarandom-radfem]

So, something that irritates the ever-loving fuck out of me is when I'm chatting online with another woman/make a post about some feminist topic (for example, child marriage of underage girls to adult men, or female infanticide), and some stupid lefty moid jumps in with some dumbass comment about "oh, that doesn't happen here, that only happens in (name of foreign country or region of the globe)." Always with the tone and general insinuation of "oh, you don't know those women, that doesn't happen here, don't worry your pretty little head about it." And I'm just... ugh. I can't be the only white, Western woman who is disgusted by this patronizing and incredibly racist (not to mention misogynistic) "argument."

Not only is it not even necessarily true (if we stay on the topic of child marriage, for example, then we would have to acknowledge that there are multiple states right here in the U.S. where child marriage is perfectly legal with parental permission), but ALSO, even if that was the case, the insinuation is also that if a woman or girl is from a developing country, if she is poor, if she is a minority, if she is far away from where I am, then she is an acceptable target to be treated as lower than an animal and to be stripped of her human rights. That is disgusting. And often, these are the same moids who will join the libfems in shouting about "white feminism" and attempting to counter feminist arguments with some racialized psychobabble about black men or some shit (usually on a topic that affects black women just as much, if not more, than white women). Please. You don't care about racism; your attitudes about WoCs are incredibly racist. You're merely virtue signaling about MoCs, and we both know it. You don't actually care about them. As for women, no matter their color, class, or what country they live in, they deserve basic human rights as much as I do. Making not being denied basic rights into a privilege that is only to be enjoyed by white Westerners is disgustingly racist. And yes, I have every right to be concerned about women's treatment "over there", too, because I am a woman. Like, let's say that I wanted to travel. There are definitely places on the globe where I would feel unsafe traveling alone because of my sex (for example, Afghanistan). Why? Because women in those countries are treated horribly, and I wouldn't want that to happen to me. Their treatment still affects me, albeit indirectly, because of my sex class. It's fucking patronizing as hell to act like women who don't live there should just not worry our pretty little heads about a topic that limits all women (yes, some more so than others), just because some male decided that anything far away isn't relevant to him. It's still relevant to me; I am a woman, and all women deserve basic rights. The reason you're uncomfortable with me talking about it is because you're a misogynist, and you therefore don't think we do. You see women as property, and why, in your mind, would property deserve human rights? You would behave that way to us, too, if you were given the chance; the only reason you don't is because we have enough power here to stop you, and you don't want women there to get that kind of power, too, or else what would happen to your sex tourism plans or whatever? So, yeah. The argument is racist, it is patronizing, and it is deeply misogynistic. I have no interest as a woman in listening to that bullshit. Fuck off, moid.

[jeunefillerangee]

Some self-proclaimed anticolonialist feminists seem as they don't know (or don't care) that rich Latin American men also travel to Europe for "sex tourism". I'm aware of the objectification we suffer from Americans and Europeans, but you will never catch me defending Latin American men in a discussion. I'm a woman above all else, and my solidarity is with other women.

[haggishlyhagging]

"I did it for me," reads the plaque held by the woman in a Botox ad. There's a sense that she's presenting the plaque to us, the audience, and it's kind of unnerving. The makers of the ad are conversant in the basic language of both body acceptance and choice feminism, and this ad is an attempt to make an end-run around any existing skepticism about cosmetic surgery, by appealing to free, market-savvy choice and its result, empowerment. This woman who paid a tidy sum of money for a smooth forehead and nonexistent nasolabial folds is not a dupe of the patriarchy, dammit! She's not doing it for a man; she's not doing it for a woman; she's doing it for herself, and those are the magic words. Variations on “I did it for me” appear and reappear in ads for Botox and breast implants; they're present when Vogue suggests—you know, just puts it out there—that you could shorten your toes in order to better fit them into Jimmy Choos; they exist whenever morning talk-radio hosts give away free breast implants to the woman with the best small-boobs sob story. "I did it for me," "I did it to feel better about myself," and, "I'm not doing it for anyone else" are defensive reflexes that acknowledge an imagined feminist disapproval and impatiently brush it away.

It's been twenty-five years since Naomi Wolf wrote, in her bestselling book The Beauty Myth, that "The ideology of beauty is the last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the power to control those women whom second-wave feminism would have otherwise made relatively uncontrollable." For all the gains that various women's movements have made possible, rigidly prescribed, predominantly white beauty standards are one site where time has not revolutionized our thinking. Concurrently, it's also where the expansion of consumer choice has made it possible to bow to such standards in countless new ways.

Choice has become the primary way to talk about looks, a phenomenon that journalist Alex Kuczynski called "an activism of aesthetics" in her 2006 book Beauty Junkies. In the book, the cosmetic surgery industry in particular is portrayed as a kind of Thunderdome where the waiting lists for a new injectable climb into the double digits, impeccably spray-tanned celebrity doctors jostle for prime soundbite space in women's magazines, and speakers at surgeons' conventions end their speeches with a call to "Push plastic surgery." With a rise in options—more doctors, more competing pharmaceutical brands, the rise of cosmetic-surgery tourism that promises cheap procedures in tropical locations—the landscape of sculpted noses and liposuctioned abs has been defined by choice. The "activism," too, is one of individual choice—it refers to being proactive about one's own appearance, vigilant enough to be able to head off wrinkles, droops, and sags at the pass. Framed within our neoliberal discourse, an activism of aesthetics doesn't dismantle the beauty standards that telegraph worth and status, but advocates for everyone's right to purchase whatever interventions are necessary to achieve those standards. The individual world shrinks to the size of a doctor's office; other people exist only as points of physical comparison.

Though we often think of beauty and body imperatives in their prefeminist form—the hobbling footbinding, the lead whitening powders, the tapeworm diet—the ostensibly consciousness-raised decades since the 1970s have brought a mind-boggling array of dictates, standards, and trends to all genders, but most forcefully to women. When capri pants were the move of the moment in the 1990s, Vogue was there to suggest quick surgical fixes for knobby knees and undefined calves. Less than ten years later, the clavicle was the body part du jour, balancing the trend of voluminous clothing with reassuring proof that, under all that material, the wearer was appropriately thin. (One clavicle-boasting woman stated to The New York Times that the clavicle was the "easiest and least controversial expression of a kind of sex appeal"—not as obviously sexy as breasts, but evidence of a physical discipline coveted among the fashion set.) A handful of years after that, the focus moved south again, to the "thigh gap" coveted by a largely young audience, some of whom blogged about their pursuit of the gap with diet journals and process photos.

Though certain types of bodies have historically come in and out of fashion—the flapper dresses of the 1920s required a boyish, hipless figure, while the tight angora sweaters of the '50s demanded breasts, or at least the padded semblance of them—the pace with which bodies are presented as the "right" ones to have has quickened. The beachy girls-next-door of the 1970s were elbowed out by the Amazonion supermodels of the 1980s, who gave way to the heroin-chic waifs of the '90s, who were knocked off the editorial pages of the early 2000s by the Brazilian bombshells, who were then edged out by the doll-eyed British blondes. Meanwhile, the fashion industry selectively co-opts whatever "ethnic" attributes can be appropriated in the service of a trend. Black and Latina women with junk in the trunk who have been erased by mainstream glossies, overlooked as runway models, and ill-served by pants designed for comparatively fat rears were rightly annoyed to hear from Vogue, in 2014, that "We're Officially in the Era of the Big Booty" thanks to stars like Iggy Azalea, Miley Cyrus, and Kim Kardashian. There is no wrong way to have a body" wrote author and size-positive sage Hanne Blank, but that sentiment will always be contradicted by a market, and a media, that depends on people not believing it.

-Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once

[loki-zen]

early marriage anon guy here:

thanks for not publishing the other asks, they got a bit wordy and I don’t want to bring Discourse down upon your house.

to clarify what i was getting at a little bit, I don’t think that it’s a causal thing. I think it’s much more likely that what I’m seeing is a combo of “people who emotionally mature quickly are more likely to be happy & successful adults, and also more likely to form stable relationships at a relatively young age” and “if you’re in your late twenties, everyone you know who’s in a successful LTR got together fairly young, because of how math works”

What I’ll absolutely argue is that getting into an LTR comparatively young doesn’t seem to be incompatible with becoming a happy and successful adult, and I wish we didn’t discourage people from that path in the states. Many young men seem very hung up on the societal expectation to have a womanizer phase, and a lot of them don’t seem to benefit from it too much, even if they pull it off.

overall benefits of sexual revolution that I think were good and important: kids somewhat later in life seems good, even for couples who paired up young, access to birth control helps women not get trapped in bad relationships, as does greater societal acceptance of divorce.

We haven’t done anything real effective to reduce sexual violence, but people seem to take it more seriously. I’m not sure how much it was ignored in the past though, other than marital rape being very much glossed over in the past. idk if that really has to do with the sexual revolution, but seeing it as unacceptable is a good change.

Overall, “barefoot and pregnant at 20” is a bad thing to encourage as a society, I just worry that we’ve shifted to encouraging conditions that lead to a lot of people being “single and childless at 32”, which is also not ideal for people being happy.

I honestly just hadn't gotten around to it! im busy:/

I think the main point I wanted to make in response was basically that while - like everything that gets sufficiently mainstream does - it's obviously been very much captured by the "there should be A Normal and there's something wrong with you if you're not it" crowd, the real point of sexual permissiveness was supposed to be permissiveness, not mandating.

Your female friends shouldn't feel antifeminist for not having a 'hoe phase'; it would be antifeminist of them to shame others for having one, but entirely feminist of them to enjoy settling down early as something that is no doubt safer and more enjoyable to do in a world where it can be a choice - moreover, a world where if it doesn't work out, they can call a divorce lawyer instead of looking up "undetectable poison for husbands" on Ye Olde Lady-Google.

Also, it's important to get your history right so you know what you're comparing shit to.

It used to be expected for a lot of men to have womaniser phases in the past! There's never been any strong expectation that a man be a virgin on his wedding night. Since for the most part Respectable Ladies that wanted to get married couldn't openly have a hoe phase, for men of the middle classes and up this took the form of economic sex tourism; patronising sex workers mostly drawn from lower economic classes. Because of the concentration of this activity into a relatively* small subset of the female population, and the state of protection and medicine available, this practice spread hella venereal disease which men then took back to their eventual wives and then your kid gets born with syphillis. Or you could fuck with women your own class and wind up getting sued because of you do it wrong, you've just scuppered that woman's access to financial stability and social acceptance for the rest of her life. Sounds stressful!

*relatively, meaning that there were far more sex workers than there are today. Stands to reason - compared to today's sex workers, they made bank!

Anyway, long story short this is a classic case of blaming modernity for something that's been around a long time.

What else - you talked about doing work in a relationship as if it was something you could get out of the way if you started early. Sadly that isn't how it works - when people say relationships take work, they mean the whole time.

It being harder to meet people in your thirties - the actual meeting part can be harder, but working out if you're compatible is typically a lot easier. You know a lot more about who you are and what you want than you did when you were barely not a teenager, and so do they!

And of course, people have always been single and childless in their thirties. Which is not that old!

And holy shit, there was a lot of sexual violence in the past. We've certainly reduced that a lot! You hear more about it because, as you say, people take it more seriously. But in a lot of pre-sexual revolution relationships, people, especially women, basically didn't have a choice about getting married and didn't have the right to refuse sex with their spouses. Plus the economic sex tourism was a hotbed of sexual violence.