#fuckmensfeelings

[reignof-roses]

Making women feel bad for wanting to be seperated from the people who’ve dehumanised us for thousands of years across the globe…is an insane amount of misogyny.

Not only are we expected to carry the burden of the patriarchy and the burden of fixing the patriarchy (for women AND men - because evidently, despite the delusional narrative of most men being good (what tf does that even mean), most men are obstacles at worst and lazy, oblivious cowards at best when it comes to feminism). We’re also expected to carry the burden of not expressing our understandable rage and resentment. Not putting up defensive walls, which is a natural protective response for any organism that’s been hurt. No, as always, women are supposed to transcend our messy humanity to be perfectly forgiving mommy/caretaker/slave objects. And if not, we’re the worst, right? We’re JUST as bad as the people who’ve been oppressing us, right?

It’s easy for me to see the misogyny as a black woman, because I experience the double standard across the oppression line. We don’t make black people feel bad for wanting safe spaces, we acknowledge that we’ve been subjected to a considerable amount of brutality and deserve to have black-exclusive spaces. We allow and even expect black people to be angry. Even if it might not be effective on a large-scale, long-term basis, on our quest to achieve equality and harmony. It is necessary in the short-term. It is necessary for people who’ve been silenced to have their voices centered.

Women deserve to be centered. Women deserve to be/feel safe. And when they’re taking away our right to speak in public in certain countries, that safety certainly isn’t coming from men anytime soon. Women are under no obligation to put our lives and bodies on the line in unisex spaces to ‘prove a point’ or allow men to adapt to our presence. Bitch, we make up half of the population - if they’re not already adapted to us, when will they be?????

A part of being an ally to any marginalised/oppressed group is to accept and hold space for how they express anger towards the oppressor. It’s understanding that women are under no obligation to forgive men, to empathise with them or to share space with them. It is time to actually expect men to be emotionally intellegent and selfless. To go : ‘we’re such assholes that they’re literally fleeing from us. maybe we should be better.’

The presence of sex-specific spaces doesn’t negate unisex ones. The two can co-exist. Seperation also doesn’t mean silence, as this rhetoric seems to imply (that women who choose to avoid unisex or male dominated spaces are somehow giving up). Seperation can be the biggest form of critique, especially when *a lot of patriarchal oppression is founded on male entitlement to accessing women (!!! +our affection, unconditional love/forgiveness despite their abuse) and especially when both genders are so implicitly intertwined, unlike other oppressive dyads (see : the strides in female rights accomplished by seperationist tactics in sweden and korea, if i’m not mistaken). It is also creates an opportunity to build new societal structures, away from patriarchal paradigmes, which isn’t possible when so many women are obsessed with ‘getting a seat at the table’ instead of building our own damn table. New, better tables more adapted to us and maybe to everyone.

What is fucking insidious is implying that women don’t have the moral right to create woman-exclusive spaces, which consequently forces them into interactions with men that could be potentially dangerous or damaging to their mental health. Maybe don’t gaslight a generation of women who’ve been brutalised, assaulted, raped, demeaned and dehumanised by men for their entire lives, maybe focus on raising a better generation of men so the next generation of women aren’t fucking scared of them.

Maybe Audrey Lorde should have called a babysitter or left her son with a family member and told him : « Your gender has raped, pillaged, brutalised, forcibly impregnated, enslaved, dehumanised and mocked mine for a milinia, across the globe. For 6000 years. They denied us of our basic rights, systematic power, education - they told us that god was a man to strip us of our existential power. They leave baby girls to die alone and cold in india, because they’re not seen as valuable. women can’t speak in public in afghanistan. Hundreds of generations of scientists and artists and mathematicians and philosophers we’ll never know. Is it biology or environtmental/constraints that lead to increasingly arbritrary societal norms? A mix of all of the above? We don’t know. Either way, we deserve communities where only women get to speak, where only women are present, in a world where we are often rendered invisible, ok sweetie buns? 🥰☺️💕👍🤷‍♀️ Maybe if I raise you well and you don’t grow up to be a fucking asshole, women will be more open to dialogue. You can come to the unisex convention they’re having next month yada yada yada. but in the meantime sit down and watch some cartoons. »

See how easy that was? obviously just joking, you wouldn’t talk to a kid like this. but you get the gist. and since i’m an advocate for exposing children to feminism young, i feel this shouldn’t apply to young boys, but rather men. i digress.

Living in a patriarchy already makes me feel bad enough. I don’t need to feel bad about my understandable fear and suspicion of men. Again, it is not the responsibility of the oppressed to change their perception of the oppressor. It is the responsibility of the oppressor class. And for some reason we understand that with every other oppressive dynamic (race, sexuality, disability, transness, class), but for some reason gender oppression just makes people short circuit. *Because the idea of women/afabs having boundaries or being anything more than doormats just doesn’t compute.*

To summarise : it doesn’t matter if seperationist rhetoric isn’t effective (it is), or pro-harmonious (who cares), or for the greater good. **Women are allowed to respond to the patriarchy in an imperfect way. ** We have a right to. And we should be given the grace and space to do so.

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.