#genuinely i do unfollow people who i deem reactionary and who engage with too much petty discourse so

[carpathxanridge]

with all the current radblr discourse i chose the perfect time to be finally reading bell hooks’ the will to change (men, masculinity and love). i’ve wanted to read this book for a while because of a quote from it: “Lying in my girlhood bed waiting to hear the hard anger in his voice, the invasive sound of his commands, I used to think, ‘If only he would die, we could live.’” and visiting my dad right now pushed me over the edge and made me go: i need to read this book now, urgently. but i’ve only just started it and it’s kind of hilarious how much of bell hooks’ analysis and insights into the shortcomings of the second wave and the blind spots of separatism would get her called a handmaiden if she were posting on radblr. it’s both funny and depressing that we are really all just rehashing the same debates that feminists have been having for decades, since the start of the second wave. (bell hooks writes in the preface that wanting to have feminist discussions including men has had her accused of being “male-identified” and “sleeping with the enemy.”) and i also find it funny, cause i remember when it was more popular on radblr to discuss womanism and name drop bell hooks (as well as audre lorde) as proof that radical feminism can be intersectional and it’s the tras who are racist! and i just wonder how many women on this site have actually read these women’s writings and engaged with the nuanced debates of the second wave… i do think there was a time, though, when radblr was having more complex and thoughtful debates? or perhaps i was just following smarter, less reactionary people then, most of whom are now inactive or have become like me and only occasionally post sincerely about feminism, and mostly just use their blogs personally, because radblr has just become such a shallow and negative space. and it makes me sad, i miss that time when i used this blog as an actual means for digesting feminist thought, and when i was engaging with the intelligent thoughts and diverse opinions of interesting women in my phone…