#honestly i see someone discuss separatism on here and i'm like

[hadesoftheladies]

do you have anything to say to assuage the concerns of women who are afraid that misogyny will only get worse if women stop interacting with men?

please allow me to let marilyn frye respond:

"If these, then, are some of the ways in which separation is at the heart of our struggle, it helps to explain why separation is such a hot topic. If there is one thing women are queasy about it is actually taking power. As long as one stops just short of that, the patriarchs will for the most part take an indulgent attitude. We are afraid of what will happen to us when we really frighten them. This is not an irrational fear, It is our experience in the movement generally that the defensiveness, nastiness, violence, hostility, and irrationality of the reaction to feminism tends to correlate with the blatancy of the element of separation in the strategy or project which triggers the reaction. The separations involved in women leaving homes, marriages, and boyfriends, separations from fetuses, and the separation of lesbianism are all pretty dramatic."

it's not that separatism is easy-peasy, it's that being in a patriarchy is dangerous for women either way. sometimes feminists get beaten up for speaking out, but women also just get beaten up for being women in general. people wouldn't hate feminists if they didn't hate women, so whatever the feminists get is what women are getting. it's a lose-lose, except fighting back eventually becomes a win.

also, i mean this respectfully, but i already answered your question in the post you reblogged. if a man will get violent with you for separating, he's exactly the kind of man you must separate from (think domestic violence). the kind of men that will get angry that you're divorcing are the kind of men you must escape because remaining with them will only make it more dangerous for you, not less.

believing that women might be able to mitigate misogyny via interactions with men is not the same as saying “men are the solution to male violence.”

there's a beloved quote of radblr's by audre lorde, i believe: "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." what are the master's tools? what perpetuates patriarchy? why does it work the way it does? what keeps it strong? marriage to a man, premature/forced/pressured impregnation (as a weapon of violence and also an economic destabilizer for the woman), relationships with men (psychological and financial toll), femininity, etc. how then can these things be empowering or feminist? at best (and rarest) they are neutral, but when they exist in a patriarchal context, they are patriarchal, hence weapons wielded against women. no matter how they feel about it.

I don’t know of any solid evidence supporting the idea that interacting with men or refusing to interact with men will reliably improve women’s lives

I'm surprised that you haven't read about the studies documenting the mental and physical health benefits of not dating or marrying men. Especially because the exploitation of women in marriage has been a huge topic in feminist literature and politics for centuries! I'm surprised you haven't observed this in your own life too bc I see it every day. It's kinda common sense that interacting with your oppressors is hardly ever a health-boost, but here's a paper that talks about the nuances of marriage and cohabiting with men and why men are the ones who keep benefitting.

but i fear i may be addressing the wrong things here. one, separatism is very niche feminist discourse so not a lot of academics are competing to conduct studies on issues pertaining to it.

two, what we DO know is that marrying, befriending and catering to men in any way has not amounted to more rights for women. what we DO know is that men use sex to exploit and oppress us. what we DO know is that patriarchy is upheld by the institutions of marriage, prostitution, surrogacy, etc . . . all which entail sexual access to women, however regulated. what we DO know is that men are always disproportionately benefitting MORE from relationships with women than women with them. Etcetera, etcetera . . .

three, separatism isn't about "non-interaction." it's about divesting from patriarchy and de-centering men. that's the goal here. to stop boosting men at the expense of ourselves and our movement, which is most effectively done through disengagement on a myriad of levels.

but I’d like to know if you have any arguments against the actual position of the people who doubt the effectiveness of separatism.

scroll through my blog. i've made plenty. :)

It seems most likely to me that it’s a lot more complicated than that, and that different approaches are required for different situations, and using multiple strategies might be most effective

separatists agree with you :)

"if we separate, the men will get violent" is the new "if women aren't prostitutes, men will rape the rest of us"

men cannot be the solution to male violence if men are the problem. it's really that simple.

[loser-female]

Lmao last anon was right. Women like you really believe that “it’s not all men” because if it were you wouldn’t have found “a good one”. Not saying het women can’t be feminist but why call yourself rad if your very lifestyle goes against the entire ideology? I know you already have excuses ready to explain it but at least you people can admit that it is hypocritical and that it doesn’t make much sense. Relationships with men will never be equal or even beneficial to the woman in said relationship. You can pretend that your boyfriend is an outlier but he is not, at least admit to the cognitive dissonance. Besides women will never be liberated in our lifetime, matter fact things are getting worse so I kind of get the logic behind not wanting to give up being available to men (and other oppressive institutions) it would be too uncomfortable for a lot of women to genuinely fight and take serious actions, that would mean giving up many lies too. I don’t even think separatism is going to liberate women (not in our lifetime or the next or the one after that either) maybe one day but we’ll long fkg gone so I don’t see why women making this argument makes people so angry? Neither male-partnered women or separatists will be liberated or free. Not to say that feminism is useless or that we should all give up and lay down but liberation for women is (at the moment) an impossible goal so what’s the purpose of these discussions anyway? Personally I just want to look out for myself and the women in my life because clearly we are not going where we want to be, the only thing we can do I think is to pave the way for the next generations of women and girls and keep our fingers crossed. Women in this day and age will never attain the financial and political power necessary to really truly liberate women, c’est la vie. Male partnered or no, we are not getting out of the patriarchy anytime soon (or later). Besides I’m not the one who’ll deal with the consequences of inviting males into my life, it doesn’t affect me and y’all don’t seem to care either so why should I or other women who are simply fed up? You have no integrity but honestly? Barely anyone does.

Ok. I'm not your therapist though, so I can't help you.

Take care.

Edit: if you have a problem with me just... Block me. I don't care about your assumption about me, I don't care about your insults or whatever thing you might think about me, wrongly, because I clearly never said anything about my boyfriend in positive or negative on this blog and you have clearly not even the smallest clue about my beliefs on relationships.

Genuinely, grow the fuck up and get help. I'm not here to read your useless rants about things I didn't do or say. Go to bother someone who cares. I don't.

[cat-sapphics]

Queer history and labels are my special interest so imma ATTEMPT to educate you, as someone who used to identify as bisexual, and now chooses to identify as pansexual.

Now, I'm not sure how much you know, so I'm gonna start from square one! First off, pansexual has been a label for a very very long time, longer than you or me has been alive! It's been in the queer community for a long time as well. It's been used many times in old queer writings.

Pansexual is something called a microlabel. It's a label that fits underneath another one, but specifies it a bit more! Another example of micro labels would be nonbinary, demiboy/demigirl, genderqueer and anything under the trans umbrella. A good non-queer example is dog breeds, specifically I'm going to use corgis. We all know what a corgi is, but there are two kinds of corgis, the Pembroke Welsh and the Cardigan Welsh. Very similar, and the corgi first thought of is the Pembroke (tailless). But the Cardigan Welsh also exists and is lesser known. Neither are harmful to the other.

Now, you wouldn't say nonbinary is harmful to the transgender label, would you? Because it isn't! It can stand on its own or be paired with trans because it specifies what you mean when you say you are trans.

Now! Pan is a mircolabel for bi. The only sense in which it's harmful for the bi community is when it's misdefined. The "gender blind" definition is wrong, and was made to confuse people. It's not the widely accepted definition, which is just "all". Bi is two or more, which can mean all but doesn't necessarily mean all. Not every bi person can id as pan, but every pan person can id as bi. It really depends on what is more comfortable for the person.

All the "pan is harmful to bi" arguments I've seen rely on assumtions, which are never good. A lot of panphobia relies on the assumption that someone who is pan ids that way out of biphobia, which wouldn't make a lot of sense since both are mspec labels and could, in a sense, be interchanged easily. I've yet to see any actual proof that pansexuality is harmful or biphobic.

Now, we're going to discuss "dismissing" someone's sexuality. Saying you "dismiss" someone being pan is, quite literally, like saying "she's a lesbian but Im dismissing that". Pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it go away, and doing that is, honestly, childish. In the end, the pan and ace flags are hung at stonewall. Both labels have been used in history. I'm assuming you're very young, so I'm hoping you can learn to drop the misguided hate in your heart and try to learn about actual history. Have a pleasant day <3

this is... super disinforming for "queer" history supposedly being your special interest (not to invalidate it as a special interest because trust me, i know all about getting my favorite things wrong quite a lot) - but anyway, how many times do i have to tell y'all NOT to call us ALL queer just because YOU have no issue with the word?? i couldn't care less if you want to reclaim the slur for yourself but calling everyone queer is not the way to go.

but to start off, no, pansexuality has no great time period of history behind it and i have no idea where you even got that idea from. the way you talk about it makes it sound like it was around when lesbian separatism was a big deal and it wasn't. if i recall correctly, it first existed as a term on a blog in around 2005-2010, give or take (that's extremely recent comparatively - we're talking a decade or two here), and its initial definition was problematic - y'know, the "bisexuals can't love trans people like we can", "hearts not parts!!", things like that.

secondly, i've heard many times that pansexuality is simply a microlabel under the "bi umbrella" and initially when i was newer to this side of discourse i wasn't so bothered by it, so long as those identifying with it understood that they were still bi at the end of the day and accepted that pansexuality really is no different. but that doesn't change anything, because the pansexuality we are against is the kind that stands out on its own claiming to be different at all. regardless of the number of people now identifying with it as a microlabel, it's not enough. the damage has been done. it is still seen after your attempt to "reform" and "redefine" as the "woke" bisexuality and inclusive of trans people, implying that no other sexuality can be, which obviously is anything but true. it is still preferred by inclusive self-identifying queers, still preferred by those experiencing internalized biphobia due to harmful stereotypes and assumptions that have not largely stigmatized the pans so much. too many pansexual people refuse to date bisexuals because of how they view us as being inferior to their "progress" in the lgbt community and it's quite frankly disgusting as hell. this is no thing of the past either, mind you; the rising spike in which this all started has of course passed, but these are still things that very much happen and won't stop for as long as pansexuality is praised, accepted, and preferred as much as it is. i've seen this shit go down in real life within the past year and i am admittedly not of much experience beyond online discourse.

i'd honestly have to say that i'm confused by your comparisons to nonbinary gender identities being under the trans umbrella and uh... dog breeds?? i think the difference you're missing here is that nonbinary actually is always inherently trans, and that both groups mentioned actually have noticeable definitive differences among them, not to mention that being nonbinary really is so vast and that being such is in no way harmful to the (binary) trans community, nor does it imply anything negative. the two trans categories are meant to coexist, hand-in-hand, because nonbinary truly is a microlabel under trans, as well as an umbrella term of its own - and yet even then, [they aren’t always inherently intertwined all the time, as the “distinction matters to some��� argument actually holds quite a bit of decent weight here]. it has its own categorical system and was never before used to imply a deserving space above transgenderism as a whole. this isn't comparable to bisexuality as an umbrella term because it has no definitive subset, as not all trans people are binary but all nonbinary people are trans - until pansexuality has a difference to bisexuality, it cannot be reasonably classified as bisexuality "with more detail" because every single pansexual person IS bisexual. in addition to that, bisexuality is incredibly fluid, so there isn't a way to define pansexuality as being broader when bisexuality could not possibly be any broader or fluid. the former has absolutely no difference to the latter in any way at all except a problematic history and flag design - i challenge you to define pansexuality in a way that is not bisexuality, AND does not imply harmful things about the bisexual community. never before have i ever seen someone give a decent response to that, only something circular that just proves the point.

the thing is that anti-pan arguments do not rely on assumptions, they are based on what has actually happened over time and how it continuously weakens the bisexual community. the internalized biphobia argument is based on the fact that panphobia isn't real, which is based on pansexuality being exactly bisexuality but a deemed less-valid label. serious panphobia that y'all face is biphobia, but i'm assuming what you mean is criticism towards the label itself, which... is not a bigoted -phobia in and of itself. i don't know what proof you're looking for in terms of pansexuality being biphobic because you can't possibly have missed it by now. do you need statistics? i can give you some sources at the bottom, considering you gave me none.

before that though, i really want to personally address your last bit and why it frustrates me. ignoring minx identifying as pansexual is not comparable to saying that if she was a lesbian because lesbianism is a real sexuality that doesn't require woke identification to be. i'm not dismissing her sexuality because i acknowledge her as bisexual seeing as they are the exact same thing to the very last letter. by “dismissing”, you obviously seem to mean not openly validating something i criticize with solid reasoning, but that doesn't necessarily mean disrespecting her as a human being with a potentially complex relationship to her sexuality, either. being "childish" would be going out of my way to be petty towards her, obsess with her personal choices, make fun of her for the hell of it, harass her and her fans for disagreeing with my stances, and the like; obviously i do none of that and consider myself to be the opposite. could i still be more mature yet?? probably, although i don't see how except to just continue on silently ignoring it the way i did before getting anons asking for a reaction to how she identifies.

i also don't know how young you consider to be "very young", but i'm 16. i assume you're probably several years to a decade older and you consider yourself some "queer elder" who knows better than someone like me, and i find those people annoying because they make it crystal clear that they were very much not present during stonewall. i don't care as much as you seem to think i should that pan and ace flags are waved at pride, because who am i to stop that? there are also plenty of kink and sexual flags, nude & crude adults being indecent, misogyny, biphobia, cops, and plenty of other things that i am against being there (and that's not to compare cops to pansexuals, so i'm sorry if it comes off that way, i'm just making a point that there are plenty of things at pride events that i wish weren't). all i do on this hellsite is speak my mind against pansexuality as a valid label separate from bisexuality and the inclusion of cishet aros & aces into the lgbt acronym. i never claimed to have the power to act, shown by how i say time and time again that i am passionate about discourse topics but i don't take them seriously to the point where they negatively affect my day-to-day life or who i interact with regularly.

lastly, i'm not hateful. i was never hateful. i'm critical. i don't despise people who identify as pan and i don't hold anything against them personally unless they are intentionally biphobic, as i expanded on in [this post here]. and i'm certainly not misguided either. not everything is valid and not everything has to be, nor should it be. your personal feelings about your labels are not more important than the negative effect that pansexuality has had on its parent basis, and if you truly can't see that at all then you're a part of the problem, whether you mean to be or not.

anyways, here are some good sources, and i hope you also have a good day/night. please do not twist my words and paint me as some hateful stupid child if you're going to reply:

[the cultural impact of pansexuality] (google doc, with even more resourceful links within it)

[debunking pro-pan arguments] (google doc, a table of contents that address harmful misconceptions)

[why pansexuality is inherently problematic] (courtesy of @femmebisexuelle)

[addressing the reality of label preference vs. label impact] (courtesy of femmebisexuelle)

[the history of pansexuality] (it mentions the word's first definition coming up in the early 20th century, which i think is what you meant anon, but it did not have the same meaning of an individual sexual orientation as it did a hundred years later and absolutely nobody identifying as pansexual now is resonating with it because of its earliest mention, nor do they state so)

[an entire overview timeline of pansexual history] (describing pansexuality as either an instinctual behavior or... well... bisexuality)

[panphobia is not a real thing outside of biphobia] (what i said above about that in particular, but better tbh)