#not all third wave feminists were/are like this

[transatlantic-reads]

I just think that when a famous 3rd wave feminist inevitably goes down the rabbithole of various conspiracy theories and straight into far right, white supremacist ideology, we should all stop acting so damn surprised (like, this is the exact same shit that happened with Joanne, why are we still so blindsided by what has clearly become a pattern?)

these are the people who constantly reference Gender Trouble, but refuse to gender Judith Butler correctly; who celebrate Ms Magazine and Gloria Steinem, while conveniently forgetting all about Dorothy Pitman Hughes; who insist that sex workers are inherently oppressed, that sex work is inherently demeaning, regardless of what actual sex workers have to say; who are so quick to treat racism like a hypothetical intellectual debate; who like so much to claim that anybody with a penis is inherently a wannabe rapist, a predator by nature, by birth; who say that womanhood is inextricably linked to victimhood, that heterosexual sex is (nearly) always akin to rape;

they're carceral feminists, gender essentialists, (trans-exclusionary) radical feminists, they are anti porn, anti sex work, anti sex worker.

their entire philosophy is predicated on what women deserve - yet the equality they want isn't for everybody, it is for the ever-shrinking category of what they consider a 'woman' (read: not trans, not black, not a sex worker, not muslim, etc.)

is it really so surprising then, when one of them decides to yet again move the line on what constitutes a righteous cause, on what constitutes a real 'man', an acceptable 'woman'?

[countingprimes]

sometimes i see queer people make low hanging anti straight jokes, and they'll often pre-defend themselves by saying straight people don't need defending as if the queer community isn't populated by tons of straight people, straight trans people, straight ace people, straight poly people. queerness doesnt exclude exclusively opposite sex attracted people and it bothers me to see these jokes and their subsequent defenses because normative society certainly rejects these folks because of their queerness and now you are inside the queer community rejecting them for who they desire. i think about straight trans folks the most who are out here under fire from normative society who turn to the queer community for support only to be inundated with sentiments like straight people are actually the real lesser than folks, and it's easy enough to say straightness is valorized in normative society so shitting on straight people is punching up, but i can't help but be keenly aware that the queer straight people tend to be queer in the ways which are often excluded from queer community. so actually yeah i do think straight people need our protection, not heteronormative culture, but individual people? yeah. the "coming out as straight" jokes are all haha good times fuck the straights until you think about the fact that straight trans people when they come out are functionally doing that. after all how many straight trans people used to think they were cis gay people. and we, inside the queer community, turn their experiences into a mean spirited punch line designed to reject them from queer community.

like sorry i just don't think we are gonna find queer liberation by trying to figure out which group we are allowed to make fun of for having the wrong sexuality.

[azelf98]

As someone with a big interest in Old English, please allow me to join in on the "baeddel" hate. Because the fact that these motherfuckers took a legitimately interesting OE word, "bæddel" and turned it into an identity name of hate & idiocy, honestly makes me so mad. So even if it's for completely different reasons, I'm right there with ya with the baeddel hate.

if you call people "baeddels" who do not call themselves baeddels (or openly agree with/defend them by name, at absolute minimum), I am taking you by the shoulders and turning you firmly towards "TIRF".

baeddelism is a very specific movement and group. the ideology is based on radical feminism, and falls under that umbrella, but it doesn't encompass all of trans-inclusive radical feminism by default.

if you encounter someone espousing baeddel-like ideas, who doesn't appear to know what a baeddel actually is (or who openly denies ascribing to or agreeing with their ideas), you can just call them what they are: a radical feminist. specifically, a trans-inclusive radical feminists.

we have a word for it. we don't need to invoke a rape cult to talk about it. please.

[ohsalome]

love seeing people (westerners) WHO HAVE NEVER EVEN MADE A SINGLE PEEP ABOUT UKRAINE AID, EVER, reblog russian lgbt aid funds after the recent news.

i'm very anti whataboutism but holy hell. when it comes to a certain country we all agree that liberation comes before improvement of lgbt issues. *i* agree with that, at least. but then the same people would rather pay to save lgbt people from a country that's actively besieging another country, it's just... beyond words how hypocritical it is.

I have so many things to say, none of them being nice.

Ukrainian army is, so far, the only force that is presenting challenge to "putin's regime". Wouldn't it make sense for people who "want to protect russian lgbt+s" to support us then? We are conctantly being degraded for "not allying with good russians" who are supposed to be our "natural allies" because they are "anti-putin".... Funny how it doesn't work the other way around, doesn't it? And yes, I have personal experience with russian lgbt+ and feminist circles (prior to the full-scale invasion), and I remember clearly how they explicitly ignored all pleas from ukrainians to speak up on our behalf. And how can one forget the famous "women have no nationality"...

This is, from my memory, the third time russia has "banned lgbt+s", and I believe I have a good reason for being sceptical about the real consequences of russian laws which, as we all know, are worth a little more than toilet paper. It is common knowledge which people of russian elite are gay, and I sincerely doubt their life will change in any way with this new law. As a matter of fact, most of them are a part of russian propaganda machine, like the infamous Anton Krasovsky. Also, what is the point then of this law, if it functionally duplicates all the previous ones already existing and brings nothing new to the table? I will not repeat the conspiracies about "diverting attention from Ukraine", because you've probably already heard of them. My own conspiracy is that its goal is to further the international reputation of russians as innocent victims of the regime, all while ukrainians are being actively slandered and forced into fake opposition with palestinians. One example relevant to the discussion I've seen recently is a post of a russian "war refugee" who has fled from russia either when the war started, or during one of the mobilisation waves. She was complaining about how much she dislikes living in the West and how she plans to return to russia, fully knowing that it is an authoritarian hellscape, and she will have to collaborate with it, because "it is more comfortable there"... This is what I think about russian "victims of the regime" - this is all masquerade for them, which they are ready and happy to take off once they are tired of play-pretending being part of the civilized world and want to return to their comform zone swamp.

Just like pussy riot monetizing Bucha imagery for their fame and profit, russian lgbt+s jumped on the oppostunity to appropriate the suffering of ukrainian war victims to earn more $$$$$. And I blame western media which has for day one has put us on the same scale, equating ukrainian civillians to russian ones, even though only one side has to live under constant bombardment, only one side had to seek refuge due to the threat of occupation, only one side is being actively genocided... But russians are having meanie mean words said about them on the internet, and this is just as bad - nay, mayhaps even worse! Remember how during the first months of full-scale invasion westerners were claiming that russians will starve to death due to sanctions, and I was preaching to the choir trying to explain that we are literally dying due to west feeding the russian war machine that is exterminating us? Well, almost two years have passed, no russian have famished because Chanel has left the market, they are successfuly importing all the missiles components through Kazakhstan, and Ukraine cannot even count all the losses we've had because how much of our territory remains under the occupation. But westerners have already congratulated themselves about how they've "immediately gifted ukraine all the weapons they need once the war started" (hahaha!) and moved on to playing with their new palestinian toy, all while for some reason pitting us against each other (and stealing footage from Syria and Ukraine to misrepresent them as Palestine)

Oh and don't get me started on western "political activists" who go out of their way to mention every single conflict happening on planted earth, excluding Ukraine. I will never forget that.

[very bitter and pessimistic conclusion censored]

[pyxes]

I hate to sound like an obnoxious grandmother, but the amount of people who have no clue how to sew a button is shocking and disappointing.

I could go on a long rant about capitalism and the mass extinction of practical skills. Or even the loss of said skills being viewed as “women’s work” which were demonized by both men and third wave buzzfeed feminists alike but I would never leave this draft. DO NOT get me started on both parties feeling entitled to your labor when they find out you have a semblance of knowledge.

What I’m saying is that I urge everyone to learn simple garment repair. It’s not expensive and it’s not hard no matter what asshole online tells you otherwise. It doesn’t even need to look nice. I am completely self taught and it all started when I wanted a lanyard that would match my greasy, pre-teen, vampirefreaks.com aesthetic. I made that shit out of left over Christmas ribbons, an old keychain, and rotted thread. And guess what, it was so badass that it inspired me to dig deeper into sewing and diy in general.

There is so much pride in taking care of what you own. What you own is meant to get beat up, so beat it up, fix it, then beat it up again. Your body grows, it shrinks, you expand out, you contract in… That’s how your body works. Deal with it you can’t prevent natural function. Instead of consuming on mass learn to adjust your clothing to your needs!!

I wish the world was more resourceful and considerate. Please if you read this consider messing around with a needle and thread. I am open to helping anyone if they have any questions. I have worked as a tailor and alterations specialist. I have worked on everything imaginable; men’s suits, patching jeans, adding gussets in jeans, gun holsters, chaps, wedding dresses, doll dresses, pants with literal shit, and yes, buttons.

Please hear my plea and discover a whole new world of a forgotten form of resistance to capitalism. Fight against mass consumerism. Pick up that pack of needles and tangled thread and sew something awful.

[keytonesworld]

Hot take.

I think some Christians are opposed to feminism as a whole because a completely wrong precedent has been set with third wave feminism. So let me just say.

Man hating is not feminist. Abortion is not feminist. Sex work is not feminist. Using each other for sexual gratification without consequence is not feminist. Putting work above everything, including God, your family life or health, is not feminist. (That goes for men too, actually.) No matter what they say. All of this hurts both men and women, of course, but especially women.

Feminism at its core was to protect women and give them rights. Feminism fought for an equal vote, a right to be able to sustain ourselves in a society in which a woman's survival was only guaranteed if she was married, many times being forced and unwanted and loveless. Feminism fought for women in abusive marriages and relationships. Feminism fought for a right to be seen as a human created in the image of God with desire and aspirations and a worth and story written by God and not a sexual slave/baby making machine with no life of her own and one set path in life. A lot of women who are anti-feminist as a whole forget that we are where we are and we can say what we want to say about these topics because of the women who were beaten and women who stood up to the tyranny that unbiblically and immorally put us down.

I will wear the feminist badge still, but let it be no mistake that it is not because I support this third wave of feminism, the one that is ironically anti-feminist, but because God brings women to many different places, places like the amazing stay at home mom and wife who serves her home and husband beautifully, and the woman who wants a career or wants to own her own business and loves and follows God in his plan for her life. In my humble opinion, we shouldn't think that feminism was a mistake at its core, because it most certainly wasn't, and I believe that it still isn't, only what it's become.

But that's just me.

A suffragette in 1917. (One of my favorite pictures.)

[connoroaks]

Hot take #2: Femcels don't really exist

A few days ago I received an angry anonymous message from someone, referring to me as a "racist cvnt" and telling me to kms. I obviously didn't respond to this, as doing so would just be feeding the troll's ego (rule 14 of the internet), and anyone with common sense knows this, but it did get me thinking about another thing, with that being what type of person would've gone out of their way just to call some random guy online a racist and hopefully get the attention they desperately wanted out of it. As a straight cis male who decided to make a Tumblr account to join the tcc and now post long paragraphs like this one, I'm obviously part of the minority here, as most people who use this site are either women or trans men who are in reality also biologically female, and this site is home to some of the most radical of feminists, as I stated in my previous post. Most of these women (and trans men) identify as femcels since they struggle with dating, sex, and finding a partner just like incels do, but I think the latter one is definitely less voluntary than the other, as women are way more respected in society and could find a bf or gf almost instantly if they really wanted too, whereas it takes most average looking straight men years to find a partner, and even longer to lose their virg1nity and sh1t. Now obviously I'm not saying that femcels can't exist, as there are some women who suffer from things like severe facial deformities or are just unfortunate enough to be in the bottom 1% of women, what I'm saying is that they're a lot lot rarer than people make them out to be, and male incels are wayyyyyy more common because for example, if you're like a 3/10 woman who's not very attractive at all and you want to find a bf, there's still gonna be plenty of 5 even 6/10 men who would be willing to date you, whereas 5-6/10 women mostly refuse to date men on their level, and instead sleep around with Chad and Tyrone for their entire late teens and 20s until their 30s when they finally realize that their actions have consequences, and from here they will either settle down with the 5/10, who probably now doesn't want her knowing that she has a body count in the hundreds, or they can just become a cat lady and die alone and childless, wishing they could go back in time and do it all over again. There's even 7/10 men who are struggling with dating in today's world because the 7/10 women are all in the 10/10's harem of b1tches that he talks to. Most women here on Tumblr however are average looking (4-6/10s), and they could easily pull a man on their level (like me) who shares similar common interests and wants to build a family and grow old and die together, and for almost all of history, that's how it was. However, starting in the 1960s and 70s second-wave Feminism led women to become more career focused and less family oriented. This in itself is not a bad thing, as women of the time still maintained a healthy balance between their work and their family, and were not just fvcking around with a bunch of different guys, but third-wave Feminism in the 90s and early 00s told young women that starting a family and having kids was bad for their mental health and that they didn't need a man and should just fvck, party, post borderline n@ked pics online, and completely focus on work and their careers. This effectively made it extremely difficult for average looking men to find a loving wife who's actually loyal and not a degenerate and made it impossible for below average men to ever even feel the touch of a woman other than their own mother without doing something like hiring an esc0rt or some sh1t. The top 20% of men get 80% of all women, and it leaves the bottom 80% to have to either find a non-feminist woman, which is not very common in today's day and age, or to compete for the bottom 20% and probably still fail anyways. There is really no such thing as a femcel, as even "ugly" women have it way easier in the dating market than 6-7/10 men do. And also, I don't really consider myself to be an incel either.

I may be average height, and I'm definitely not as attractive as Chad is, but I'm not below average either, and I have a bigger pen1s than most men at my level do. I'm more of a cutecel than I am an incel, I'm like Elliot Rodger but taller and with a much bigger d1ck, fluffier curly hair, and blue eyes. Take that information as you will, but girls never even look at me, not even gay guys either. I've been told by my parents a few times in my life that girls were checking me out, but I don't really think that's true. For example, last spring break we went to some Japanese garden while on holiday in Florida, and both my parents said that this one girl in front of us was really checking me out, but when I started being more aware of this random girl in front of us as opposed to only looking at the flowers and sh1t, not even once did she turn around and look at me, and she couldn't have heard them either, as they whispered it to me, and we were pretty far away. I don't think they're lying to me, but I do think they tend to overexaggerate things like that. Another time we were at some restaurant and my dad mentioned that these girls were looking at me, but again there was no sign of anything, and if they really liked me they probably would've just gone up to me and asked me for my number or something. However, to be honest even if they did I wouldn't have given it to them. I don't trust normie women, as I've been wronged by them many times in the past, but that's a story for another time. I'd rather find a girl that actually loves me and shares common interests, even if she's average looking or crazy. I'd rather take the crazy yandere who texts me to see if I'm ok every 5 minutes and starts imagining bad scenarios if I don't respond right away than a "normal" girl who I share nothing in common with and who'll leave me the second she finds a more attractive guy.

[spiderfreedom]

historical revisionism of second-wave feminism

I'm wondering where this idea that "second-wave feminism" didn't bring up race came from. It seems to be conflating liberal feminism, starting with Betty Friedan's "The Feminist Mystique", for the entire movement. But "second-wave feminism" refers to an entire era of feminist organizing, including lesbian feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminist, and numerous Black feminist works with multiple intersections. Why should Friedan and NOW's 'liberal feminism' be the representative of an entire era of feminist writing? What do we have to gain from pretending that there were no Black feminist writers during the second wave?

The US women's movement has always had ties to anti-racist movements like abolitionism and the civil rights movement, as well as the New Left and socialist/anti-war movements. White feminists tried to include racial analysis in their books - to mixed effect, e.g. Susan Brownmiller's book "Against Our Will" proved to be contentious for its treatment of interracial rape of Black men against white women (example).

It feels like there's been a wave of historical revisionism to make the second-wave seem more limited and single-issue focused than it really was, in order to make "third-wave" feminism seem novel, exciting, and necessary. It's resulted in a whole generation of feminist writers and cultural critics who don't read or quote or engage with the feminist works of the second wave. They are dismissed out of hand as irrelevant or limited. It feels like another way to say "stop paying attention to women's history, just believe me when I say the first and second waves were irrevocably damaged and that the third wave is the only way to go."

I think this article does a good job of capturing one of the reasons why an interracial feminism failed to form, which is that white women assumed Black women also wanted an interracial feminism, when many Black women, especially at the start of the movement, were not interested in solidarity with white women. The fantasy of a racially integrated society was often much more important to white organizers than to Black organizers, who may have instead wanted Black self-determination. I disagree with some of the points of the article (can elaborate if anyone is interested) but I recommend reading it anyway for a retrospective on why white attempts to reach out to Black women failed - white feminists did attempt to reach out, but failed to focus on issues that were relevant to Black women, failed or were offensive in their racial analysis, and failed to understand the importance of racial solidarity for Black women.

Correcting the record on the racism and failures of white feminists in the second-wave is necessary work to building a strong movement. But there's a difference between correcting the record and pretending that white feminists didn't try to talk about race at all. They did! They were participants of anti-racist movements! But they failed to understand their own racism. They failed to understand the complex dynamics between white men, white women, Black men, and Black women. They failed to focus on issues that resonated with Black women. They were failures of bad attempts, not that no attempt was ever made... and that's the part I find weird.

The idea that there was no racial analysis made during the second wave, by white women or Black women, flattens a complex history. Like fun fact - the Combahee River Collective Statement which is the foundation of intersectional feminism and third wave identity politics? Is a second wave text! It was published in 1977, in the late era of second wave activism in the US!

I have more to say later, but for the moment, I'd like to present you with some examples of second-wave feminist texts written by Black women. Read them, and avail yourself of another myth - that there is One Black Feminism. Black Feminists have always had internal disagreements, which frightens white feminists, because white feminists want to know The Correct Answer On Race. I highly recommend reading these (and modern Black feminist texts too!) to understand the situation Black feminists faced in the 60s and 70s. All of these texts were published between 1960 and 1980. They are all essays or excerpts - links provided where possible.

Black Women’s Liberation group of Mt. Vernon, New York - Statement on Birth Control

Mary Ann Weathers - An argument for Black Women’s Liberation as Revolutionary Force (https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/mary-ann-weathers-an-argument-for-black-womens-liberation-as-a-revolutionary-force/)

Frances M. Beal - Double Jeopardy: to be Black and Female

Doris Wright - Angry Notes from a Black Feminist (https://yu.instructure.com/courses/49421/files/1918241/download?wrap=1)

Margaret Sloan: Black and Blacklesbian

Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens

Angela Davis: Joan Little: The Dialectics of Rape (https://overthrowpalacehome.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/ms.-magazine-from-the-archives.pdf)

Michele Wallace: A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood (https://www.amistadresource.org/documents/document_09_03_010_wallace.pdf)

The Combahee River Collective (https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/)

Barbara Smith - Racism and Women’s Studies (https://hamtramckfreeschool.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/smith-barbara-racism-and-womens-studies.pdf)

[susansontag]

I think people who are actually serious about using the term gender-critical (especially those who make claims to using it in a merely descriptive way) need to be honest and acknowledge that broadly speaking, every wave of western feminism excluding the third wave(? which there’s still no real consensus on when that began or how it’s different from the second wave, but that’s a question for a few generations down the line) has been ‘gender-critical’, in the sense that it’s been about the advancement of female people.

the second sex should be considered a ‘gender-critical’ text, as should the suffragist movement. of course it can be argued that they were only incidentally ‘gender-critical’, because ideas about gender identity hadn’t yet the achieved the prominence it now has in the public consciousness. but regardless, if you’re going to be using the term descriptively, and many people make claims that this term is merely meant to be descriptive, then you should use it that way, and that means applying it fairly. if you really believe western feminism has had a crucial issue in not including ideas of gender identity from the beginning, even if this was solely accidental, then you should be all-encompassing in your critique of it. it’s not as though many modern feminists of all shades don’t argue past incarnations of feminism have had blindspots - most feminists probably believe it has.

I think the real reason this term isn’t applied fairly is because people who claim to use this term descriptively are, let’s be honest, using it as a pejorative. and therefore acknowledging honestly how most of the history of feminist thought has not really included a concept of gender identity, because it simply didn’t exist in people’s minds as it does now, would be a bit inconvenient, because 1. it would mean feminism had to have been based in part on a different way of recognising the difference between women and men, and 2. if ‘GC’ was applied fairly, it would look too much like a war was being waged on the foundations of feminism itself, and no one really likes the look of those optics.

but many movements and ideas in the history of humanity have been felled by later generations in the grounds that they were offensive, ill-informed, or blind to various factors later regarded as important. so why not feminism? if it really had been so incorrect about something now deemed so fundamental, why not let it burn? why not write the book about how simone de beauvoir was misled? why not the suffragettes? I would respect critics much more if they were honest and consistent. if it’s so wrong, say it with your whole chest and defend it.

[bossymarmalade]

I generally don’t write much in the way of serious topics on tumblr because I don’t find it a useful platform for that, but I’ve seen a number of posts/talked with mutuals lately about what we’ve been noticing in the erosion of feminist theory and how it’s discussed.

To me the culprit is the nature of tumblr itself. There’s no one stationary place for a conversation; people reblog a conversation that has branched off in a bunch of directions. They argue a point that could’ve been addressed by the OP except the conversation continued without the OP. They end up in places that were never intended.

Add to that: a) the way a pithy phrase captures attention faster than a thoughtful analysis and b) the number of ppl reblogging to point out that their particular group was not specifically taken into account, and you have an attempt at discussion that’s hobbled from the start.

I wish we could have discussions here like we used to on lj/dw but we can’t. So instead any discussion of feminism has its teeth cracked out one at a time with “but men can be abused too” and “what about transmen” and “eyeliner so sharp it could kill a man” and “WOMEN!! She!! Her!!” and look. All of these things have their place in the discussion. 

But when people generally don’t even know what the core tenets of feminism are, don’t understand the kyriarchy, or multiple axes of oppression, don’t understand second- and third-wave feminism, and just choose to make everything binary all over again? Right now in tumblr discourse, either critique of Men is wrong bc it doesn’t take into account these particular men, or All Women are Right All the Time Actually. And neither of these is useful in dismantling what feminism is intended to dismantle.

Feminism is for everyone, yes. But feminism is also an ideology intended to make people uncomfortable with and outraged at the status quo, the kyriarchical messages we grow up with and live under. It’s all right if your feminism isn’t mine, but if yours doesn’t actually stand for anything and is more concerned with empty virtue signaling or pat catchphrases, then does it actually benefit the cause? Or is it just lip service in between nitpicking? Is it just window dressing for oppressive systems? Is it doing those institutional systems’ work for them?

I don’t have any concrete suggestions about this; like I said, I don’t think tumblr as a platform can provide any repair. But who knows. Maybe a bunch of like-minded feminists talking about it more (and by like-minded, I just mean “invested”; the faces of feminism are legion) will help rejuvenate something that’s been pretty good to a lot of us (or at least offered a helpful framework to build our senses of self on). Maybe I’ll go back to talking about feminist topics myself. Maybe that’s not quite a bridge called our backs but it’s more than being the second sex. Maybe maybe may be.

[probablyasocialecologist]

When it comes to gender theory, scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were informed by eugenics “made strong statements about the social and political role of women, claiming all the while to speak for the scientific truth.” They typically referred to women’s reproductive capacity as a natural indication of their divinely ordained social role. Social, political, and religious ideologies informed the scientific beliefs of this time period, which is not dissimilar to the widely held beliefs of current gender/sex psychologists. It can be argued that the father of modern psychology himself, Sigmund Freud, in his quest to validate psychoanalysis as a legitimate science, reproduced the social opinions of his time in his psychological theories. His theories about femininity, in particular, have been criticized by feminist thinkers for the ways in which his frameworks position femininity as fundamentally incompatible with subjectivity, thus cementing women’s passivity and subordination as a psychological disposition that explains and justifies their social position under patriarchy. Although psychology has developed considerably since Freud, his work remains foundational to the field, and informs the ongoing structural violence of psychiatric pathologization experienced by marginalized subjects. Psychoanalytic concepts have become embedded in clinical, academic, institutional, and colloquial language, influencing the epistemologies of neurosexists and feminists alike. We continue to see bioessentialist reasoning about sexual difference employed in the name of feminism. Notably, bioessentialism informs contemporary discourse about trans rights. For example, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF) refers to a radical ideology that equates womanhood with biological sex, and maintains a bioessentialist stance to discriminate and incite violence against trans women, and to exclude trans women from women’s spaces.  Proponents of trans exclusionary radical feminist ideology espouse the conviction that women are a group with a singular shared experience of womanhood based on the patriarchal violence experienced by people with vaginas. It arose out of the work of anti-porn feminist writing like that of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon in the 1970s, which centered the ways in which cisgender women’s bodies are uniquely subjected to sexualized violence. The objectification and sexualization of the cisgender female body was the main concern in this discourse, and as such, postmodern perspectives that disrupt bioessentialist ideas about gender and the body have been received as an existential threat to the objectives of this radical ideology. Third wave feminist discourse and theories, like intersectional feminist theory, have disputed the idea that bodily or physical similarities are experienced in the same ways socially and culturally (e.g., at intersections of race, class, ability, nation, gender identity, and sexuality). When it comes to trans discourse, it is important to recognize the ways in which non-normatively gendered bodies with any perceived association to femininity or womanhood are subjected to patriarchal and sexualized violence. Heteronormativity and rape culture affect more than just cisgender women. To weaponize a binary understanding of gender against women with diverse experiences of womanhood is to collude with the oppressive forces of the colonial, white supremacist hetero capitalist patriarchy.

[haggishlyhagging]

The past cannot be recreated, but any future for lesbians depends on whether we can rebuild a mass radical feminist movement for women as a sex—one that defends past rights while challenging the myriad contemporary faces of patriarchy, capitalism, and backlash. It also requires that lesbians declare our independence from the "LGBTQIA++," which not only no longer speaks for us but that is actively challenging the very idea of a lesbian life.

The fight to preserve and extend women-only spaces and programs and our right to self-organization is key. We must create intergenerational networks of feminists where we can share this history so younger women do not have to reinvent the wheel. And we must break out of the underground nature of the resistance to transgender ideology by speaking out collectively and in solidarity with each other, i.e., having each other's back. They cannot silence all of us.

Already this is happening, with radical feminist groups forming in various countries around the globe, including groups collaborating in connection with the Women's Human Rights Campaign/ Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights. We must also separate the "L" or the "LGB" from the "T," as the activists both in the UK and Brazil have already done with the founding of LGB Alliances.

It is not enough to recognize the dangers of transgender ideology. We also have to keep our eye on all of our enemies, especially the powerful religious Right, which has been taking advantage of the absurdities of transgenderism and the betrayal of so much of the Left to woo some feminists into thinking the Right can be allies. However, their primary purpose is to pursue a misogynist agenda of rolling back the LGB, reproductive rights, and women's rights generally. And when the Right turns the tables on us, we can be sure that lesbians will feel the brunt of their attacks.

We must go beyond purely defensive battles to regain the radical edge of radical feminism and begin to envision once again what it will take to make women truly free. Because lesbians are women after all, and lesbian liberation and female liberation are deeply intertwined. Until women are free to love other women without penalty—without suffering stigma, violence, or economic privation—we cannot be free as a sex.

It's time to organize and fight back, sisters. For thousands of years men have had unimpeded access to and control over the bodies and lives, reproductive and productive work of women. Our bodies have been seen as a resource to use and abuse as they saw fit. Men defined who we are and who we could be. And lesbians were demonized and the lesbian possibility rendered invisible or impossible.

But we amazons are still here. Many of us are old Dykes, but we are not dead yet and are crucial voices in the new struggles now unfolding. We are determined to pass the torch to our younger sisters, just like we built our movement on the shoulders of the women who came before us. We were among the leaders and co-creators of the Second Wave of feminism. We are here as mid-wives to the Third (real this time). We women-loving-women did it before and we can do it again.

-Ann E. Menasche, “We Were Once Amazons: Mourning and Rebuilding Our Lost Lesbian-Feminist Communities” in Spinning And Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century

[colorpickinglesbian]

History of the Lesbian Flag

Since I run a blog that's all about appreciation for lesbians and our current flag, I thought it'd be fitting to make a post about lesbian flags of the past and how we (more or less) settled on this design!

The first lesbian flag was designed by Sean Campbell in 1999, who was working as a graphic designer for the Greater Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Times [1]. It has a solid violet background in reference to the tradition of violets as a symbol of sapphic love. The inverted black triangle is used to represent remembrance and reclamation for the lesbians who were marked "asocial" during the Holocaust, much like how the pink triangle was a common symbol in the gay men's community [2]. The labrys was already an established lesbian-feminist symbol of women's strength and self-sufficiency due to its association with the Amazons.

This flag was more of a niche success than the versions that would follow, for a number of changing reasons. The first is that this flag was created at a time when it was just starting to become commonplace for individual identities to have their own flags as opposed to everyone being under the rainbow; the bisexual and transgender flags were both only around a year old. The second reason this flag hasn't seen widespread use is the controversial use of the black triangle. To an uninformed viewer, the inclusion of a Nazi symbol on a flag can be alarming. There is also debate on if lesbians should reclaim the black triangle, as it was most commonly applied to Romani people. The third and most contemporary criticism of this flag centers around its adoption by transphobic radical feminists, due to the lesbian-feminist history of the flag.

There is a current movement to revive or slightly redesign (by removing the black triangle or adding trans-positive imagery) this flag, as some people connect with the empowering and historically significant symbolism or simply think that the most widespread design doesn't reflect their aesthetic or connection with lesbianism.

The second flag wasn't meant for the whole lesbian community, but it became pretty widespread: the Lipstick Lesbian flag. This flag was created in 2010 by lesbian lifestyle blogger Natalie McCray to represent the hyperfeminine sub-community of "lipstick lesbians" [3]. The shades of pink and red, fittingly, represent common shades of lipstick, and the kiss mark is in the upper left corner in the tradition of the bear and leather flags.

In 2013, a version of the flag cropped to exclude the kiss mark was posted on Tumblr, where it was described as a general lesbian flag representing the whole community [4]. In 2015, a DeviantArt account dedicated to uploading high-resolution versions of pride flags posted the version without the lipstick mark, mentioning that it is a variation of the lipstick lesbian flag but still framing it as a flag for the whole community [5]. The admin later revealed that the omission of the lipstick mark was simply due to the difficulty of upscaling the image to a higher quality without the original vector.

This design was moderately successful until racist, biphobic, anti-butch, and cissexist comments from the creator were uncovered c. 2018. The flag was already facing replacement efforts due to its "lipstick lesbian" association making it uninclusive of butch lesbians.

2017-18 was a very fortuitous time for lesbians to be in search of a new flag. Social media use was reaching new peaks and the microidentity boom came with a huge wave of new flags for the queer community at large. Concurrently, there was a big push for inclusivity in the queer community that birthed the Philadelphia Pride flag to explicitly include people of color, the first time the LGBT rainbow flag had seen a revision since it was cut to six stripes in 1979.

It was not difficult to find lesbians willing to try their hand at making The New Lesbian Flag. There were so many interested parties, in fact, that multiple community surveys were conducted to pick a design! (I had the joy of participating in some of those surveys in favor of the 7-stripe flag that this blog is dedicated to.) On the DeviantArt account that posted the lipstick lesbian flag with the kiss mark removed, there are 212 variations under the "Lesbian WLW" category.

Pictured above are three of the most successful variations that came out of this lesbian flag explosion. The design on the left was created by Jace (AKA anurtransyl), with 5 shades of blue and purple representing community values like trust, freedom, and pride. The design on the right won the which-lesbian-flag survey; it was created by Marion (AKA apersnicketylemon), and the four stripes represent different subsets — trans, femme, aspec, and butch — of the lesbian community. The center flag was created by Lydia, the same woman who brought Natalie McCray's bigoted comments to light. It is commonly referred to as the Sappho flag because its violet shade is a direct reference to Sappho's poetry, while its other shades represent the community values of strength, fragility, and healing.

Separate from the evolution of the community lesbian flag, some lesbians were making flags for subsets of the lesbian community. While I won't cover these in detail, the one relevant to this story is the butch flag created by Mod Q of butchspace.

People were naturally attracted to the idea of smashing the butch and lipstick flags together to create one representing the whole community. Olivia (AKA shapeshifter-of-constellation) created a very familiar design (alongside some proposed variations) in July 2017 to little fanfare [6]. No meanings were provided for the stripes, but Olivia mused back and forth with some other community members about meanings that could be ascribed beyond 'butch, femme, and other'. She proposed a couple more variations, but ultimately seemed to abandon the design.

The current design originated in June 2018 and was designed by Emily Gwen [7].¹ By the end of the week, the meanings for the stripes were finalized: gender non-conformity, independence, community, unique relationships to womanhood, serenity & peace, love & sex, and femininity.

There are many reasons why this flag was successful.

The retained stripes from the lipstick lesbian flag allowed it to retain recognizability; someone who has only seen the previous iteration can see those stripes and infer that the flag has something to do with lesbianism.

The stripe meanings were decided with input from the community, resulting in associations that include lesbians of all kinds in a respectful way. Olivia's design faced criticism for implying that all lesbians exist on a continuum from butch to femme, so Emily Gwen's uses "gender non-conformity" and "femininity" to include butches and femmes while including all lesbians on every stripe. Trans lesbians provided feedback in the replies of the original post as well as sadlesbiandisaster's ask box stating that they felt having trans and nonbinary lesbians on their own stripe separated them from the rest of the community, so the white stripe was changed to "unique relationships to womanhood."

Marketability. Emily Gwen allows people and corporations to make and sell merchandise with her flag design on it. Despite the community's attitudes towards rainbow capitalism and the unfortunate financial impact on Emily Gwen personally, this allowed the flag to proliferate.

The color combination is pleasing to the eye. This is obviously a matter of opinion, but it seems to be a widely shared one! This design received its "sunset flag" nickname very early on, which tends to be a positive indicator for longevity of a pride flag.

Catherine Becker created a five-stripe derivative of this flag to facilitate printing [8]. Oversized flags have been a historical issue for the LGBT community, most notably with Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag which had the pink stripe removed due to poor availability of pink fabric and the turquoise stripe removed to allow for it to be split in half on each side of the San Francisco pride parade route. The simplification turned out to be a good move, as it is the most popular design used by corporations like Disney and Spencer's Gifts.

Anecdotally, Emily Gwen's design is still the most popular at pride parades and online. It's the one we see handed to celebrities like Lucy Dacus and LOONA. It's the one we see proudly displayed in the icons of lesbians online. It's recognized by governmental organizations, universities, news and entertainment publications, and gay heritage organizations.

To close out this recounting of lesbian flag history, I leave you with two of my favorite memes about lesbian flags.

¹ Despite its visual similarity to Olivia's flag from the previous year, both designers attribute this to convergent evolution and deny any claims of plagiarism.

[itsallmadonnasfault]

Eighteen years ago, Madonna observed: “Once you pass 35, your age becomes part of the first sentence of anything written. It’s a form of limiting your options and almost putting you in your place. For women, naturally.” She was 47 when she said that and intent on challenging the cultural script that suggested women, especially female performers, had a use-by date.

“Why is that acceptable?” she asked the music writer Brian Hiatt nearly 10 years later, still battling critics who told her to dress her age, act her age — in short, pack it in and retreat from the spotlight because she was past her prime. “Women, generally, when they reach a certain age, have accepted that they’re not allowed to behave a certain way. But I don’t follow the rules.”

To the question “Is she still relevant?” her Celebration Tour, which concluded this month, is proof that she is. Madonna performed before the largest audience ever gathered to watch a female artist and mounted the single biggest free stand-alone concert in history: 1.6 million people turned Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach into a dance floor on May 4. According to Billboard, her six-month, 80-show tour grossed $225.4 million, making her the only woman in history to gross more than $100 million during six concert tours. (The only solo male in that category is Bruce Springsteen.)

But there’s so much more to her triumph than numbers. That a 65-year-old female pop star pulled off this tour and, despite our increasingly intolerant times, the performance was her most relentlessly and delightfully queer since 1990’s groundbreaking Blond Ambition Tour would be unimaginable, except that it was Madonna. The Celebration Tour proved that Madonna wasn’t afraid of drawing attention to her long career; she owned it proudly.

All of her past selves showed up, in role and in costume, to help celebrate the many ways she has evolved and the many ways she and her collaborators have explored and expressed gender throughout the years. It was a beautifully inclusive, encouraging spectacle. If history is a guide, the social and artistic ramifications of her performance will extend well beyond the numbers and long after her tour.

Madonna’s 1985 Virgin Tour, her debut, included only 40 shows in North America and grossed about $5 million. But its impact on young lives is immeasurable. The young women and girls in her audience were on the cusp of unleashing their sexual selves and embracing their independence, which is what made them so terrifying to a broader society intent on keeping them polite, passive and manageable.

Madonna’s message to her young audience was: Embrace your power, dream big and dare to be your own damned self. That message would resonate through a generation and across the globe, as aspiring Madonnas grew up to be politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, members of the armed forces, Third Wave feminists, Riot Grrrls and pop stars themselves.

Madonna was, in fact, the lead author of the female pop star playbook, and she continues to write the unexplored and perilous back end of it while artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish adapt the front end and more established stars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift refine what’s possible in the middle. Madonna’s continuous career represents a universe of possibility for their own, despite the entertainment industry’s willingness to jettison midcareer women in favor of artists with younger faces and bodies.

But for women not named Madonna (or Beyoncé or Taylor Swift), growing older and maturing in public is much more fraught. Older men are considered wise, but older women are often ignored or discounted. Thanks to the intervention of the pharmaceutical industry, men are encouraged to have an active sex life into their 80s. The idea of older women having sex remains, for many, repellent.

Madonna has challenged our notions of what a woman should do and be on all those counts: She chooses to age as she sees fit, she says what she believes loudly and forcefully, and she is as proudly sexual as she was in 1985.

With her Celebration Tour, Madonna demonstrated night after night for six months that an older woman can exhibit power and strength — joyfully, generously and defiantly. Her glorious performance was perhaps even sweeter when we recall that hip and knee injuries disrupted her Madame X tour four years ago and a bacterial infection threatened not only the Celebration Tour but also Madonna’s life.

Forty years ago, Madonna showed audiences, particularly girls and women, that they could mute the killjoy chorus keeping them from self-realization. On the Celebration Tour, Madonna doubled down on this idea, encouraging fans to follow their hearts, minds and inner freaks by both being herself onstage and employing diverse and talented dancers to carry that message in their own convincing and resonant ways.

If this were the last tour of Madonna’s career — and we sincerely hope it is not — she would retire as the most influential female pop star of all time, a legitimate legend who wowed audiences, defied expectations and broke records. Having served more than 40 years in the public eye, she could take a holiday, take some time to celebrate. It would be, it would be so nice.

NY Times

[ladyamanda123]

Whoa! Okay look at this….

When I google “tortured poet” one name keeps popping up….Sylvia Plath.

I must woefully admit I didn’t know much of anything about her so I started reading. Going over this I can see some major parallels to Taylor that I’m sure could make her feel a strong connection to this woman. Both poets, both feminists, both with mental health struggles, both with the deep need to write and create. Insomnia. The idea that depression and poetry go hand in hand. This whole bio reads like Anti-Hero in a lot of ways.

So definitely wondering if Sylvia Plath is a poet muse of sorts for this album. Could there be a mental health theme thread to this new album?

“While Plath’s work expertly dissects her personal pain, part of her powerful legacy is that she spoke for every woman by undercutting gender norms in society. Plath perfectly articulated the tension between personal artistry and domesticity. She began a dialogue which rejected the notion of a mother and an artist as being mutually exclusive. “There was a lot of banality and absurdity about women’s lives in the mid-20th century,” confirms feminist poet Jeanne Marie Beaumont. “There were a lot of women ready to break out of a world that would have them considering nothing but the menu for the bridge luncheon next week. Plath explodes out of all of that. She resists it, although not without paying some psychological price.” American poet Emily Bobo describes Plath as a third-wave feminist: “She wasn’t just writing about herself,” Bobo argues. “She wrote about what it was like to be a woman and a poet. She wrote like a man, with all the entitlement of the title ‘poet’, but she did it without apology and fully, as a woman. That remains extremely powerful.”

[sweaterkittensahoy]

hi i just want to say i love love love ur blog and thank u for all the info on “rad feminism”. although i very much believe in / support / LOVE feminism (of course!!!!) i wasnt really aware of the term but i do hear it thrown around a lot so i’m shocked to hear that this type of “feminism” is discriminatory towards transgender people. feminism should be the complete OPPOSITE of that. calling urself a feminist and forcing ppl into boxes is CRAZY.

So, here's a post I reblogged today that looks at how radfems and TERFs are doing shit on tumblr to try and indoctrinate people, and I just want to share that because there's further good information about their tactics.

The history of radfems is 100% wrapped in gatekeeping and control tactics. Very short history: Radfems were birthed out of second wave feminism. Up until that point, feminism was something pursued in the public sector most often by women who had the means and time to focus fully on activism. So, upper middle-class white women. There were BIPOC women in every aspect of feminism from the beginning, but due to socioeconomic factors and just plain old racism, those women were rarely listened to outside their own sphere of influence.

In second wave, BIPOC women had finally gained some upward mobility economically and socially that opened the doors to do more in the wider world of the feminist movement. When they went to the white women in charge of the movement and said, "Hey, we have supported and worked for your concerns for decades. Here are things that are especially affecting BIPOC women, and we would greatly appreciate the reciprocation of everything we've put into the movement.

To which the upper middle-class white women who had the power in the movement basically said, "No, those things don't affect us, so we don't care."

Out of this schism came a lot of white women who couldn't believe other women were "betraying" them by putting the needs of their communities ahead of what white women wanted. And that was the birth of radical feminism, the idea that anyone who called themself "feminist" disagreeing with these women were the enemy and had to be silence and stopped.

Several decades later, third wave feminism was able to really start discussing intersectional feminism where even if your concerns aren't mine, they are valid because you are speaking from an experience and a community I don't have. But we are all striving for human rights, dignity, and respect, so fighting for the rights of one woman is fighting for rights for all of us. Third wave isn't (wasn't? I'm not sure if we've actually rolled into fourth wave at this point) perfect. White Feminism is still an issue. Getting people who say they believe in the rights of all women to realize that means women they find fundamentally terrible deserve the same human rights is a problem. People wanting to put Western Feminism Ideals onto other cultures like Japan and the Middle East is a problem.

Meanwhile, Radical Feminists have built a walled-off city where they can all yell about how they're the truest and purest feminists and anyone who disagrees with them is mentally ill, or hates women, or is an abuse apologist. Amongst many other claims.

The difference between Radfems and Feminists is that Radfems don't want to bring in anyone who doesn't absolutely agree with them on every point. Feminists want to open the doors and welcome anyone trying to genuinely help all women achieve human dignity. It's not a perfect system. As listed above, there are issues in the movement to this day that will likely persist until the universe ends, but at the core of it, Radfems want total agreement and loyalty, and Feminists are seeking to build a community where we understand one another and support one another even if my problem isn't your problem.

The most important thing to remember, I think, is this: The number of radfems is actually pretty small. They're just fucking loud. And I think the reason they've gotten so loud is that more and more people are realizing their goals aren't to educate or help but to shame and control, and so they're getting louder about how they're the real victims and MUST fight back against people who disagree with them, whether directly or not because they're trying to "save" the "real" feminists. They're not trying to save anyone except themselves and the rest of their cult, and to hell with the rest of us. But, there's more of us seeking real community and care than radfems, so I think we'll win in the end. We just have to remember that we're in this together, and that keeping the door open to new ideas and information is a very powerful tool.