#its the patriarchy

[justabittraumatized]

revelation of the day: women who experienced a prolonged loss of girlhood and had their childhood innocence robbed are often the bitter mothers obsessed with “the feminine” and passing their flawed notion of femininty onto their daughters. this of course also applies to women who were exposed early on to society’s ideas of femininity 

[uptownthots]

I think if you consider yourself someone who genuinely cares about dismantling bioessentalism and the speaking out about harm it does to society you HAVE to acknowledge that bioessentalism is one of the oldest tools in the patriarchy's toolbox and not something twentieth-century TERFs invented

[mummer]

rhaenyra outsourcing motherhood to rhaena and assigning her that passive feminine role was REALLY interesting….. rhaenyra as a character is at her most fascinating when she is forced to navigate and ultimately perpetuate the gendered structures she despises and wishes she could transcend— the seeds of her tragedy already sewn here. just great character work

[kvetcher2]

by getting botox and fillers and cosmetic surgeries you are actively participating in making the world a more hostile place for the women who choose not to do those things. you are actively applying pressure on those women. you are creating a world where women who don’t do those things are told they are “aging like milk” because no one knows what a normal, unaltered female face looks like anymore.

[tiredyke]

every time queer discourse surges on this site everyone is so quick to jump to “it was actually the evil lesbians who divided us” because y’all heard the term “political lesbian” and never bothered to figure out what that meant

[darklight-owl]

"Mom, why did you give birth to me?" "To survive." how did this exchange come out of a shonen anime. The shonen genre is known for being sexist as Hell how does this one just Get It.

[junotter]

All the jokes about Ken and horses are good but I just wanna say it's such a good parallel to how actual young men get swept into misogyny and the patriarchy.

Like they're told to believe it means men get to be cool and manly and have this power but with that comes extremely rigid commands of what they can be as a man and a cycle of self hatred for never matching those gender roles perfectly. Patriarchy tells men that if they just do exactly what is expected of them, then they get all the "cool stuff" that comes with. That doesn't work though when there's only a small group that actually gets that power, but men will keep trying to fit into those roles in hopes that they can.

In the end there are no horses or the myth men are told, it's just endless cycles of self hatred and ingroup fighting.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

another crazy thing about having been a prostitute is to realise how little difference there has been in how many of my male sexual partners have treated me and how sex buyers treated me, especially since i was an escort where often you get paid to simulate dates. i even had sex buyers beg to see me again meanwhile men in real life often ghost or keep me at armlength especially when there are no romantic feelings involved.

this is why i dont want to have sex without feelings and care for each other anymore - it almost feels like im prostituted all over again, bad in a different way because i actually like the men i sleep with and want them to like and appreciate me too and consider my desires (dont get me wrong obviously prostitution is always worse than sleeping with men im actually attracted to and want to have sex with but it hurts in a different way to realise that ive often also been just a means to get off to them).

like for example, since sex buyers often pay for time instead of sex act (or both combined), they want to get the most out of their money and do the most to you in the set time - but as a prostitute you want to get it over with as soon as possible and it feels like torture. meanwhile so many heterosexual men who dont pay for sex try to reach orgasm as soon as possible and then its over, lmao. like the direct comparison between having been prostituted and having voluntary sex with men will make you feel absolutely crazy but it also made me realise why i thought i didnt even like sex for so long. because i was always treated like an object, not a person. men will do the bare minimum to keep you around for sex if they dont see you as wife material (and then they also do just little more than the bare minimum up until they reached their goal of marriage then usually start neglecting their wives as we know).

which brings home the point that we need a cultural and legal shift. as long as men treat sex as masturbation with another person, and women as objects or tools, there will always be demand for prostitution, and there will always be (privileged) women deluded into thinking „might as well get paid for it“ or even „at least now im being appreciated“, paradoxically. thats how bad heterosexual men treat women in bed.

this also emphasises that yes, #allmen, because even the men who dont buy sex contribute to the system of sexual exploitation with their behaviour. the reason ive heard men say most often why they dont buy sex is not care for women, but pride. they can convince women to get them off so why pay for it? same with porn, they dont stop watching because they care about women, but because their dick stopped working. and then of course you have a lot of sex buyers who dont even want to do the bare minimum mentioned above so they buy sex to go immediately to using a womans body with no „hassle“. the state of heterosex is fucking dire because i know im by far not the only one experiencing this.

and even before prostitution i could feel it but not really put my finger on it, now with this horrible experience and a radical aligned feminist view on things i realise and its really dark. and dont even try talking to men about their inadequacies in bed because they will act like youre the problem and an annoying nag for voicing desires.

[genderkoolaid]

its a cornerstone of radfem ideology that women are incapable of making real choices Because Patriarchy. if a woman likes makeup, its because shes been conditioned to. same with heels, dresses, anything stereotypically feminine, any kink, sex work, etc. etc. and you can literally do this to anything you dislike.

and because of this, women need the Enlightened Radfems to tell them how to think and feel. its justifiable to deny other women's autonomy, because they can't really think for themselves, they are brainwashed by the patriarchy. so it doesn't matter if you violate their autonomy, ignore their wants, and demand that they do whatever you think is morally right. because you know what's best, and they don't. you have taken the red pill and they just can't see it yet. radfems essentially take the patriarchy and just replace cis men with themselves, and all women with non-radfem women (or radfem women who have different beliefs than them). when you build your ideology on the idea that anyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed and you are justified in ignoring their autonomy and opinions because of that, you end up with a pretty fucked up worldview and way of interacting with others.

[mouseratz]

it's interesting how many transmascs on this site can observe the way that feminism has often been derailed by "mens rights activism", because feminism is seen as a threat to men's rights- women's rights are viewed as in opposition to men's rights & therefore incompatible (for the crime of merely admitting how misogyny has a place in our society)

and yet. feel no need to self reflect on the way transmisogyny is viewed, too, as in opposition to trans men. how trans women's rights are viewed as incompatible with trans men's rights, how transfemmes are pretty constantly attacked for expressing their experiences & struggles because merely saying they exist uniquely is seen as an attack on transmascs, is seen as denying the issues that transmascs have.....somehow, the "what about me?" response is all that matters.

that is why "transandrophobia" gets compared to men's rights activism. that is why it's so connected to transmisogyny (which you're apparently not supposed to admit that people within the trans community are capable of); it is a repeat of gendered issues, there is still a refusal to just try to understand what women are saying. a continued insistence of "my issues are more important than yours" (even though that was never really what was being said in the first place. all that was being asked was to listen, to try to understand....but when a woman says it, complains about something, that's what you feel is implied. for some reason. hm, is there a word for that?)

[3liza]

I think it must be for the lack of going outside of your room on this website that debates about personal presentation and appearance literally never have any material analysis. sorry it's counterrevolutionary to shave my legs or wear makeup or a bra or style my hair in certain ways or "worry" about visible signs of aging but have some of you just never encountered real world situations where those things caused measurable problems dealing with other people, jobs, money, respectability, access to resources, or the ability to influence important situations? this starts happening when you go outside a lot. there's a debate on my dash rn about balding and finasteride in which not a single person has mentioned the potential negative social outcomes of losing your hair and how that can affect socioeconomic status and personal risk. maybe someone doesn't need to be "vain" to care about keeping their hair and consider the risks of medication for it. maybe they've seen how bald people get treated and referred to and made a cost benefit calculation that they can't afford, sometimes literally, to eat that cost, with everything else they've got going on. maybe I wear makeup when I have to go talk to doctors and other gatekeepers because people make assumptions about your class and mental status when you have "bad skin" and "eye bags". maybe a lot of women who wear uncomfortable restrictive bras and shave whatever and buy skin products and do gua sha have already been sharply punished when someone saw leg hair or a mustache or puffy greasy skin or god forbid their nipple through their shirt. not everyone can just say "fuck it, I can afford to eat one more social cost that will measurably impact my ability to get medical treatment or pay rent". sorry this sounds like an economics lecture, that's because it is

if you are about to tell me a long story about how you personally have not been affected by perceptions of your appearance actually so you can conclude it never happens at all, please don't. sometimes you get lucky, that's it. and on this website I think it's less likely that you're lucky and more likely that you're oblivious

[spitblaze]

You know I probably would have figured out something was up with me genderwise sooner if people assigned female at birth were not conditioned from a young age to absolutely loathe their bodies in order to sell beauty products and diets and unattainable standards

[femmesandhoney]

male socialization is wild to me because when men deviate it by generally being nice to women and then get womens attention by being friendly and normal to us other men get mad and punish them for it bc they're actually meant to be domineering, rude, and misogynistic to us and if a man doesn't do that they're either gay or trying to unassumingly get with one of the women. like it blows mens minds that they can actually try and be normal and nice to women for no sexual gain, and then they punish men for deviating from it. they're like we see you're getting female attention without abusing the women?? thats wrong and also we hate u for it. like jesus men are so fucked up as a whole.

[gh0st-patr0l]

The build for this AR Nick match is deeply funny btw. Like AR is supposed to be the face and Nick is the heel. And like yes Nick is a bitch and a brat rn hes Obviously a heel just in general. But like. AR Fox DID break into his dead father's wrestling school and beat him until he was lying in a pool of his own blood. And carry around the tanktop he wore that was stained with Nick's blood for weeks afterwards. That DID happen like we all remember that right. And to be quite honest? I think I'd stay mad abt that for a little while too

[liquidstar]

maybe im overthinking, but do you ever think abt how in episode 1, utena justifies wearing the boys uniform by saying its not against the rules? while this was clearly a "gotcha" moment against that stuffy teacher, i feel like it also shows how shes still functioning within the parameters of the ohtori system. like, yeah, shes being rebellious, but its a form of rebellion that isnt actually revolutionary- shes still following the rules propagating the structure built around the patriarchal prince, shes just doing it in the "opposite" way of whats expected, but shes not actually fighting it. though, of course, even this much deviance still tries to get corrected... its still not against the rules. i feel like from the beginning we're told aspiring to princedom isn't a noble goal, and that utena is still part of the system as long as she pursues it

[blueeandyellowmakesgreen]

yall know i love my ronance content but a part of me is also really happy for nancy for finally having a platonic girl friend her age. i imagine ever since barb, shes had a lot of walls she had to put up, and maybe robin practically tearing it down and letting herself in is just what she needed and wanted, so nancy just.. let her. idk im looking forward to more of them in the next season. nancy deserves that