#on male-partnered so-called 'feminists'

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Jane Fonda (Barbarella, Sunday in New York, Barefoot in the Park)��Feminist icon, LGBTQ+ rights activist since the 70s, Civil Rights and Native American rights advocate, environmentalist… she really is THE woman ever

Rita Hayworth (Gilda, Cover Girl)—Absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. She steals every movie she’s in; she was Fred Astaire’s favorite dance partner, as you can see in clips from their movies [link][link]. Born Margarita Carmen Cansino, Rita's story had its tragedies—her father was awful and had her performing in nightclubs way, way too young; the studio totally remade her look because they were afraid of her hispanic image, putting her through painful treatments and diets; she had a string of failed marriages. But beside all that, I think there's something about Rita that still glows through—an inner beauty that has nothing to do with the studio, or the men who pinned their dreams on her. Rita brings an incandescence to roles that's impossible to replicate, and was truly a great actress in that she could switch from herself—shy Margarita—into a bold and glamorous femme fatale so convincingly everyone fell in love with her as Gilda. She's my favorite movie star, and I think she was a beautiful human through and through—Rita, gorgeous and real and shining bright.

This is round 5 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Jane Fonda:

" I assume she's already been submitted but I gotta make sure. I think there's an element to movies like Barbarella or her segment of Spirit of the Dead of those having been directed by her husband, who famously made movies about her being hot, and the incredible costume design also helped, but good lord. Look at her"

"She was so pretty, dear lord! She was and still us stunning. She’s great at comedy and drama."

"Shes so hot im so gay for me i will let her hit me with hers car"

"Gorgeous and also still getting arrested at climate protests, which is sexy behavior"

"Watching her in Barefoot in the Park seriously made me, a straight woman, question things"

"PLEASE I LOVE HER SO MUCH"

"Her vibes in these movies are so interesting because she, the daughter of an Old Hollywood star, went on to make both poignant dramatic movies and the some of the silliest things you've ever seen but even in the silly space adventures and sexploitations there's always this undeniable gravitas to her. It's like she's able not to take herself very seriously but at the same time never stops having this grace and elegance and makes it all work together. And she's always been very politically active which is also sexy. Her famous mugshot is from 1970 so right at the cutoff mark but come on"

Rita Hayworth:

Do you need any other propaganda? Here’s the video.

She was not called "the love goddess" for nothing: beautiful, glamorous, despite playing sexy and provocative roles her inherent shyness somehow also would shine through sometimes, creating this contradictory and incredibly attractive image

Often played "the bad girl" who tempted the male hero away from "the good girl"; but did have roles that broke her out of that mold. She was also the inspiration for Jessica Rabbit. THE pinup girlie.

HELP

She was soo beautiful when she was young and she MAINTAINED that beauty into her later years and I think that old lady glamour is hot. bombastic sex appeal

every line she delivers in gilda is so flirty and passionate or absolutely desolate and it's so good

I just have a lot of feelings about her

[femconstellation]

Yes, male-partnered women on TikTok are still trying to take over the 4B movement because they cannot stand being excluded from something. They truly believe their Jakey is the one good man. They call it gatekeeping to be told that, to be in a movement that is inherently separatist, they must, shockingly, separate from men. Instead of supporting the South Korean women fighting against misogyny in South Korea, they’d rather take it over and say that YOU don’t care about women for not supporting their intrusion in a movement that they are not part of because they go against the very meaning of the movement. It’s frustrating.

If you want a movement about refusing to date republican men, then make your own. Don’t take over and change the meaning of an already-existing movement. You know why so many radfems support 4B? Because we know why it exists and support the South Korean feminists fighting for their rights. These fake ass leftists don’t care about SK feminists until it’s time to take over a movement that they, by definition, aren’t part of.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This post reminded me of it, but my partner has observed that in contemporary gender discourse, maleness is so linked to adulthood and femaleness is so linked to childhood, that there are no "boys" or "women," only "men" and "girls."

This isn't exactly new -- for as long as patriarchy has existed, women have been infantilized, and "adult woman" has been treated as something of an oxymoron. Hegemonic beauty standards for women emphasize youthfulness, if not actual neoteny, and older women are considered "too old" to be attractive without ever quite being old enough to make their own decisions. There may be cultural allowances for the occasional older "wise woman," but a "wise woman" is always dangerously close to being a madwoman, or a witch. No matter how wise a woman is, she is never quite a rational agent. As Hanna K put it, "as a woman you're always either too young or too old for things, because the perfect age is when you're a man."

But the framing of underage boys as "men" has shifted, depending on popular conceptualizations of childhood and gender roles. Sometimes children of any gender are essentially feminized and grouped with women (the entire framing of "women and children" as a category). In the U.S. in the 21st century, the rise of men's rights and aggressively sexist ideology has correlated with an increased emphasis on little boys as "men" -- thus slogans like "Teach your son to be a man before his teacher teaches him to be a woman."

Of course, thanks to ageism and patriarchy (which literally means, not "rule by men," but "rule by fathers"), boys don't get any of the social benefits of being considered "men." They don't get to vote, make their own medical decisions, or have any of their own adult rights. They might have a little more childhood freedom than girls, if they're presumed to be sturdier and less vulnerable to "predators," but, for the most part, being considered "men" as young boys doesn't really get boys any more access to adult rights. What it does get them is aggressively gender-policed, often with violence. A little boy being "a man" means that he's not allowed to wear colors, have feelings, or experience the developmental stages of childhood.

This shifts in young adulthood, as boys forced into the role of "manhood" become actual men. As I've written about, I believe the trend of considering young adults "children" is harmful to everyone, but primarily to young women, young queer and trans people, and young disabled people. Abled, cisgender, heterosexual young men are rarely denied the rights and autonomy of adulthood due to "brain maturity."

What's particularly interesting is that, because transphobes misgender trans people as their birth-assigned genders, they constantly frame trans girls as "men" and trans men as "girls." A 10 year old trans girl on her elementary school soccer team is a "MAN using MAN STRENGTH on helpless GIRLS," while a 40 year old trans man is a "Poor confused little girl." Anyone assigned male at birth is born a scary, intimidating adult, while anyone female assigned at birth never becomes old enough to make xyr own decisions.

Feminist responses have also really fluctuated. Occasionally, feminists have played into the idea of little boys as "men," especially in trans-exclusionary rhetoric, or in one notorious case where members of a women's separatist compound were warned about "a man" who turned out to be a 6-month-old infant. There's periodic discourse around "Empowering our girls" or "Raising our boys with gentle masculinity," but for the most part, my problem with mainstream feminist rhetoric in general is that it tends to frame children solely as a labor imposed on women by men, not as subjects (and specifically, as an oppressed class) at all.

Second-wave feminists pushed back hard on calling adult women "girls" -- but they didn't necessarily view "women" as capable of autonomous decision-making, either. Adult women were women, but they might still need to be protected from their own false consciousness. As laws in the U.S., around medical privacy and autonomy, like HIPAA, started more firmly linking the concepts of autonomy with legal adulthood, and fixing the age of majority at 18, third-wave feminists embraced referring to women as "girls." Sometimes this was in an intentionally empowering way ("girl power," "girl boss"), which also served to shield women (mostly white, mostly bourgeois/wealthy) from criticism of their participation in racism and capitalism. But it also served to reinforce the narrative of women as "girls" needing to be protected from "men" (and their own choices).

I'm still hoping for a feminist politic that is pro-child, pro-youth, pro-disability, pro-autonomy, pro-equality, that rejects the infantilization of women, the adultification of boys, the objectification of children, the misgendering of trans people, and the imposition of gender roles.

[molsno]

I find the notion that trans women's oppression is at least partially based on a systemic hatred of men and masculinity troubling for many reasons. the biggest reason, of course, is that misandry is not real no matter how you attempt to label or define it. but moreover, it's just flat out wrong.

it is true that many forms of transmisogyny consist of some form of misgendering. however, it's ludicrous to call it misandry just because the underlying implication is that the trans woman in question is really a man; if that were the case, then cis men and trans men would be subjected to the same oppression on the basis of their manhood. but no, the misgendering is always simply a cover for something else - something far more insidious.

if a trans woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's accused of demonstrating her "male socialization". she's told she's guilty of "mansplaining". when a trans woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of expressing "male entitlement" over them, and being "manipulative" and "controlling". when a trans woman is attracted to cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory". she's told she's being "misogynistic" by reducing women (cis women, or "real women" as is usually the implication in this scenario) to just their bodies and valuing them only for their worthiness as sex objects.

if you think about it, though, these arguments mirror regular old misogyny pretty closely! if a cis woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's a "bitch", she's "bossy". she's told she needs to "know her place". when a cis woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of being "crazy" and "obsessive". and indeed, when a cis woman is attracted to other cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory"!

so why, then, if these statements are really a form of misogyny, does the justification for them hinge on trans women's supposed "maleness"? the answer is simple: biological essentialism. this ideology, in no small part popularized in feminist and queer spaces by terfs, states that "biological males" are predestined by their very nature to prey on and dominate "biological females". and since trans women are "biologically male", it follows then that they are wolves in sheeps' clothing. any presumption of innocence or harmlessness is discarded, and trans women's actions are painted in a new light.

if you accuse a trans woman of being an infiltrator in women's spaces due to her supposed "maleness", then what you've effectively accomplished is the subjugation of an underclass of women. trans women are not considered deserving of respect, compassion, or dignity whatsoever. if you paint a trans woman as a threat to other women, then you can drum up as much outrage and violence against her as you want, and she will have no recourse. and the simple fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this is to draw attention to her alleged proximity to "maleness".

perhaps you might be thinking that proximity to maleness being used as a justification for oppression implies that misandry actually is real. after all, aren't women of color, butch lesbians, and even black men also subjected to violence due to their perceived proximity to "maleness"?

I understand how one could make that mistake, but that notion fails to engage with the actual material reasoning behind the forms of oppression these groups face: they pose a threat to the cishet white man's absolute dominion. the root of these disparate but related forms of oppression, biological essentialism, is inherently a white supremacist, misogynistic, and conservative ideology. its purpose, much like its ilk, eugenics and phrenology, is to establish a hierarchy in society that places cishet white christian men at the top by asserting that they are inherently biologically superior to all others in every respect.

if you observe people's behavior, you can see that this ideology permeates almost every level of society. cishet white men are elevated to positions of authority without question; their motives are never scrutinized and criticized in the same way that trans women's are, or any of the other oppressed groups mentioned above. if one of these men is misogynistic, if he views women as mere sex objects to be controlled to suit his liking, he will not be punished for it; he is exercising the right that has been given to him by the society people like him have created through centuries of colonialism. even in queer spaces, men are regularly coddled, their misdeeds forgiven or excused for no real reason other than that many queer people have not questioned the assumptions they've internalized.

the notion that trans women are oppressed by misandry is laughable, really, because we are constantly made aware that, due to biological essentialism, TME people will always trust a man over us.

[femsolid]

I watched the movie Strange Darling tonight. Great rating on IMDB. Positive reviews all around. It was sexist propaganda à la Gone Girl. I'm sure it'll be called a feminist movie.

The story is about a serial killer hunting down his last victim. During the first part of the movie we see a young, skinny, blond woman being chased by the killer, a big man with a rifle. She's in pain and has lost an ear. The man is not hurt and every time he appears on screen, some big scary music plays, telling us "he's the killer!"

Then we see a flashback of their first encounter. They're on a date, drinking in his car, she gives him a lecture about how a one night stand can be a life or death situation for women, so women aren't prudes they are careful, but he can't understand that because he's a man. Unlike in real life, he patiently listens and doesn't object nor scream Not All Men. A little feminist lesson. She then tells him that her "kink" is to be strangled and beaten in bed... okayyyy what was the point of the feminist lesson exactly? He's flabbergasted and reluctantly agrees to indulge her. Because we all know it's women who want to be abused, men are just following our lead and have no sadistic bone in their bodies. She starts crying and tells him to stop during it, she tells him that just because she said yes at the start doesn't mean she can't say no later and he should respect that. He feels bad, and suddenly she starts laughing, she was just messing with him pretending to have boundaries and stuff, what a turn on! She toys with him, keeps inviting him to have sex and then says no at the last second because women are just twisted provocatrice, I guess. What a tease! She's giving him "mixed signals." Then she drugs him and tortures him, and we discover that she's the serial killer, and he's a cop! HA! You thought women were abused by men? You thought her little feminist lessons were sensible? You were wrong! Never trust a woman! Men can be victims, too! The reason we didn't see his injuries at the beginning of the movie was because she tortured him with a knife on his chest. See? Men have hidden scars. Don't assume they are the abusers! Since he's a cop, he has a secret gun and manages to escape her by shooting her ear off. She runs from him, and he chases her, and we're back to the beginning of the movie. He catches her eventually, handcuffs her and calls her a cunt.

She still manages to kill him, right as the police arrives because he called for backup. She puts her pants down and lays on the floor ass naked, crying, pretending that he tried to rape her, and she defended herself. False rape accusations, guys! Don't be fooled by women playing the victims! There are two police officers that arrive: a woman and a man. The woman is immediately sympathetic to the fake rape victim, something her male partner questions. She responds "it's obvious what happened", takes the handcuffs off the killer and helps her get up, while the male cop tells her to wait because things don't look right. Blinded by her female solidarity and her defence of rape victims, the stupid female cop doesn't follow the procedure. She tells the male cop that just because she has a vagina doesn't mean she's wrong, another little feminist lesson rendered voluntarily ridiculous by the fact that we all know she's gravely wrong and will likely get both of them killed. He tells her it has nothing to do with her vagina, he speaks from experience because he's older. Eventually the truth is revealed, the victim is the killer, the male police officer calls the killer a bitch. The killer lets the female officer go because she helped her, and kills the male.

The entire movie had a clear message that we all know too well by now: men are the real victims, don't trust women who report abuse, feminism is laughable. I mean, the propaganda wasn't even subtitle or anything. The killer spends a good portion of the movie in lingerie too. Instant classic. True cinema. Would you be surprised if I told you this movie was directed and written by a man?

[genderkoolaid]

Hi. You always post a lot of info so I'm wondering if you might be able to help me. Is there a difference between radfems and TERFs? Are they both bad? If so, why are they bad? Are there any dog whistles to look out for when it comes to these groups? Please ignore this if it makes you uncomfortable. I've seen a lot of people pointing out that they're bad, but never really saying why. I want to make sure I follow intersectional feminism and not those groups.

Radical feminism is the name of a branch of feminism. It originally got its name because it advocated for extreme changes to society to address female oppression, but developed into a specific worldview which I (off the top of my head) would define by certain traits:

Oppositional sexism. Men and women (or "males" and "females") are fundamentally opposed. Oftentimes this is bioessentialist, arguing that this opposite comes from biology, but it may also be framed as a political necessity; a radfem might argue that gender and sex are fake BUT we need male vs female as political identities in order to identify our "allies" and "enemies". Regardless, males and females are physically distinct and political enemies. You can tell a man from a woman, either from their body or their behavior, the two categories cannot overlap, and no other gender/sex-labels are relevant.

Fatalistic perspectives on patriarchy. Not only are males and females opposed, but this cannot be changed. This may be bioessentialist (the opposition comes from something in our nature, which cannot change) or gender-essentialist (the opposition comes from socialization which occurs as a child due to outside pressure and/or internal gender identity, and cannot change.) Focus is not placed on an ideal future where men and women are equals and social partners. Instead, there is a sense that there is no way to truly have a society with men and women where males do not oppress females, or try to. Sometimes this is more implicit and other times you have people who explicitly believe in creating & enforcing female-only societies.

Misogyny as the source of all oppression, or at least the most important & the one people should identity themselves as before anything else. Those who call themselves intersectional generally only really care about other issues to the extent that they affect women in some way. Part of the downfall of the original radical feminists was the fact that the dominant groups were upper-class white women, who ignored racism and classism and silenced poor women & women of color, insisting that anti-racist and anti-classist action distracted from The Movement & that calling out other women's bigotry was anti-feminist.

A general suspicion of sexual desire and sex, often expressing itself as whorephobia (anti-sex work) and anti-kink attitudes, specifically under the argument that they are inherently misogynistic and abusive. Sex is associated with men and maleness, which again, are inherently the enemy. Sex WITH men, or with a person or object that could be construed as male, is especially bad.

The impetus to make your personal life As Feminist As Possible– "The personal is political." That isn't a bad slogan on its own (it's true), but with radical feminists it expresses itself as a high standard of Radfemmaxing. You should be celibate if you are attracted to men, or become a political lesbian, you shouldn't be masculine OR feminine (anti-butch & femme sentiment), you should reject makeup and shaving, you should cut off male relatives and even abort male fetuses– and you must identify with womanhood and femaleness, while rejecting any identity related to manhood and maleness. It's not just that you should examine your desires and choices and question why you feel the way you feel (again, this is a good thing). Radfems have the belief that they already know the correct answer to that Introspection, and if you come to any other conclusion than theirs (I like wearing makeup because it's fun, I want to be a man because it fits me), then it's taken as proof you are still brainwashed.

TERFS are trans-exclusive radfems. They believe that being trans is not real, or at least not healthy or an acceptable feminist stance. TERFs tend to use the language of "sex" and "males vs females." Many use the term "gender critical," meaning they see gender as fake and damaging, while sex is real and the proper platform for feminist analysis. I once saw a TERF define her stance as "it's not degrading because its feminine, its feminine because its degrading." They believe in things like autogynophilia and rapid onset gender dysphoria, and attribute transgender identity with sexual trauma, internalized homophobia and internalized misogyny.

TIRFs are trans inclusive. They believe that transgender feelings are natural and should be listened to and followed, and that feminism should take gender identity into account. However, they still have a "male vs female" worldview. They may argue that transgender men's internal gender feelings led them to internalize male socialization, while trans women internalized female socialization, meaning that all trans people's experiences with gender and misogyny align most with cis people who share their gender identity.

In both cases, anti-nonbinary exorsexism and intersexism are unavoidable. TERFs will label intersex people as "males/females with a disorder" and attribute nonbinary identity either to internalized misogyny (FTX) or to avoid being held accountable for male privilege (MTX). TIRFs similarly fail to acknowledge how someone's socialization can be affected by intersexism. MTX people are either trans women in denial or flamboyant cis men; FTX people are either trans men avoiding their privilege, or cis women avoiding their privilege*.

Not everyone who uses radical feminist arguments or shares the general perspective openly identified as radfem. There are many "cryptos" who purposefully obscure their political identity to spread radfem ideas in queer & feminist spaces. Other people adopt the general ideas of radical feminism without consciously identifying as one, because of cryptos and how pop feminism often adopts their flashier ideas. So it's important to understand these qualities as on a scale, with some versions being more subtle while others are explicit.

Radical feminism always reduces trans experiences (& experiences in general) to a simple, uncrossable binary, based either in gender or sex. Nuance and cros- or non-binary gender experiences are seen as anti-feminist and aligned with the patriarchy, if not part of a targeted plan to hurt feminist movements.

*the idea of "AFAB privilege" is. a thing in some people's analysis of transmisogyny.

[lizbethborden]

There's a post on r/relationship_advice about a young woman whose boyfriend asked her if his was the biggest penis she'd ever had sex with. She told him objectively no, but that bigger penises hurt her physically and make sex painful and unenjoyable, and his penis is perfect for her.

The boyfriend has been obsessed with this answer since, repeatedly demanding reassurance from her and constantly revisiting the topic even when she becomes frustrated. She describes one time they were on a call and she hadn't slept, and he was keeping her up at 5 literal AM making her reassure him about his penis.

This is how she frames the issue--shocker:

The responsibility being hers, to "do enough" to help her incredibly insecure and in-need-of-therapy man to get over an issue that she did not cause.

Men are being incredibly normal about it in the comments and making sure we know how severely oppressed and harmed they are by penis size comparisons:

Of course, further up in the selfsame post, there are multiple comments from women talking about how they dislike big penises, how their best lovers were indifferent to size; there are even men talking about how they're average-sized or small but have long-term female partners who love their bodies.

This generous male individual commented multiple times, but expressly stated that he didn't even finish reading the post:

His additional comment elsewhere:

In case it's unclear, the basic thesis of OldSoulMillenialMan's comment is that all men have a deep and profound insecurity around their penises, and need, emotionally, to hear "your penis is so huge, I'm terrified of it, it's going to ruin me, it's the biggest ever" from their women on this issue.

Putting the whole emotional labor aspect of this post aside, I took away a few key findings.

Despite women commonly and frequently remarking that they like average-sized penises, not just in "coed" communities like relationship subreddits, but in female-centric communities like the TwoXChromosomes subreddit, etc (which are all full of men, often moderated by men, and are definitely trolled, brigaded, and read by men, given how often women are solicited via DM from their posts in female-centric subreddits), men simply do not believe them, and believe there is no parallel for the "body positive" movement for them--the "body positive" movement which was begun by women, for women. The implication, here as always, is that the onus is on women to provide positivity for men, to provide help and comfort for men, to fix men's problems for them. Men never generate an internal movement directed at each other in order to heal the wounds they experience that center on maleness and manhood. They only ever want women to do the work for them. (There is also 0 recognition of how the "body positive" movement as such has been completely co-opted for profit by the beauty and fashion industries; nor any recognition of how beauty standards for women have actually intensified in the past 5-10 years.)

Men's insecurities around their penises and penis size can only be balmed by knowing that they're big enough to scare a woman, that they're big enough to "ruin" a woman. This really highlights the function of sex for men and the interpersonal function of the penis in heterosexual relationships: the function being penis as weapon. The penis is not just a genital organ a man happens to have, which he happens to use for pleasurable sex with his female partner. The desire is to use his penis to harm her. He wants his penis to be the penis that makes her suffer, that makes her scared and worried she cannot bodily accommodate him, that makes her "ruined" by the sheer size and suffering he causes with his penis. As feminists have discussed for a long time, this is a fundamental element of hetero male sexuality. "Fuck" is not just a word that means "to have sex"; "you're fucked," "fuck you," and other uses of the term clearly outline how to be "fucked" is conceptualized as an aggressive, violent, and degrading thing. Even when men are in loving partnerships with women, their deep-rooted desire is to be the ultimate violation and degradation their female partner experiences, because that is the meaning of sex to them.

[wintertidewater]

I like separatism, but I don’t practice it fully. After calling three different places to fix the A/C, I’m bound to just go with cheapest and fastest.

I ask, “do you have any female workers that can come out?” The man on the phone seemed flustered by my question. “My dog is aggressive towards men”. But no women work there. Except for the office. Which does employ women, he reassures me, as he stutters.

Clearly, I am the first to ask.

Separatism is psychologically freeing. Why not invest in each other? Anything a man can do, a woman can too. Maybe not every woman—many of us stay in our roles at least partially and this limits us—but enough women pave paths. I offer myself as proof.

But it’s far from convenient. Every day it becomes more difficult to band together… as our language is ripped from our tight hands. White knuckles. Desperation. “It didn’t used to be like this”.

Today the public sphere is online, owned by men and male ideology. Women cannot speak freely, despite the protected right to spew abuse that our male counterparts enjoy.

“We used to be matriarchal, earth-loving”. Can we go back? Is it that simple?

Perhaps if all women just meet on farms and regain independence… “Dependence fosters abuse”. Is a homestead and female community enough to escape it all?

It’s hard to say. How many of you follow through? Why not join one of the 50 or so women’s lands in the United States (where most of us reside)?

In the ’70s and ’80s, there were around 150 such communities in the US. Today, these lands are dying out. Many of the people running them are in their 70s or older. Within a decade, will these women and these lands still be here? We don’t know.

How did this happen? Is it just a cultural shift? Why does women’s culture seem so fragile and fleeting compared to others’? How are we surrounded by ancient male religions and centuries, if not millennia, of redundant male philosophy?

A large part of this has to with how culture is spread. There is a current success rate of 81-89% for political belief transmission from parents to teenagers. Men don’t live as long and yet they are more influential because they are experts at this. It’s why they’re all so desperate to have a partner. To have a “legacy”. It’s why men being unpartnered is considered a crisis.

By having children for free through women’s labor, yet remaining the highest family authority, men get to succeed in spreading their ideologies. Having two children is the baseline, enough to “replace” the parents. More is power. Either way, reproduction is used as a tool of ideological expansion.

To create change, we must ask who is having and teaching children. If over 4 out of 5 children are going to occupy the same political space as their parents, who are the women and men who are raising the future? Or more importantly, why is it not us?

Perhaps it’s worth considering that a woman’s land dedicated to fostering girls is the answer. To keep our rights, we must consider raising feminists. As of 2021, there were 191,037 girls in U.S. foster care. Why not have them be the future?

[happysharkintensifies]

Booktok makes me sick, not just because of all the shitty books. It's the prevalence, no, the celebration, of toxic masculinity. Every single booktok book features some variation on the same man. And without fail, against all sensible reason, these characters are portrayed as handsome and charismatic and desirable.

It makes me sick when these authors hold up these toxic, predatory traits and put them on a pedestal as some kind of Ideal Man.

It makes me sick when their aggressiveness and possessiveness is treated as romantic. It makes me sick when these shitty men forcibly grab women, invade their personal spaces, and render them helpless by 'purring' in their ears, every. single. fucking. time.

It makes me sick that these misogynistic, heteronormative, and hypermasculine social conventions keep appearing in so-called feminist literature.

Strip away the idealized elements and you have what is basically the rich, white, cishet, alpha-male archetype. He's tall, usually six feet, physically fit and muscular with obligatory six pack abs, and conventionally handsome, with a chiseled jawline. He's usually clean-shaven, and any hair he may have on his body is minimal. He maintains composure at all times and rarely shows anxiety or uncertainty. He exudes raw charisma and charm and navigates social spaces effortlessly.

His hobbies, if he has any, are stereotypically masculine. When it comes to sex, he's confident, skilled, exclusively dominant, and always knows what to do without communicating with his partner. The sex he enjoys is usually rough, animalistic and overpowering. He may have been with several women in the past, and he may be regarded as a sex god, both in-universe and out.

His toxic traits are rarely portrayed as negative. But when they are, they're usually held up as some edgy, anti-hero persona and the reader is inevitably manipulated into sympathizing with him. He'll be portrayed as a tortured, wounded animal, and his female love interest (and, by proxy, the reader) will decide on some variation of 'I can fix him'.

He is essentially the unrealistic standard the ideal Proper Man; the one that men are expected to emulate, and that women are expected to swoon over.

But what really irks me is the lost potential.

If there are men who don't fit into this mold, they are depicted as pathetic, ineffectual, or any number of negative traits.

The narrative quietly and passive-aggressively mocks them and portray them as boring and un-sexy.

After all, is this the kind of man who will bravely swoop in and sweep a helpless woman off her feet? Of course not. Such men are boys. Wimps. Cowards.

These books are supposed to be fantasy: a genre in which easily anything can be explored. If faeries, magic, and contrived mating bonds can exist, then why can't we also have male characters who exist outside the stereotypical, hypermasculine mold?

Why is it that we can have so many fantastical, impossible, and wondrous magical forces, creatures, and peoples, but we can't have men who aren't possessive, abusive, or controlling?

Why is it that male characters, have to be so innately dominant, abusive, and violent? Why do they have to be so fit and muscular and strong?

Even worse, why is it treated as something that is so natural, so inescapable, even in the realm of fiction?

Where are the men who aren't tall and fit? Where are the men who don't have sculpted abs or chiseled jawlines? Where are the men who aren't lean and muscular?

Why can’t we have men who are skinny or overweight? Why can't we have men who aren't handsome or attractive, but just average looking? Why can't we have men who are shorter or just average height?

Why can't we have men with non-stereotypical hobbies? Why can't we have men who love to read, or paint, or write, or sing, or dance, or build model kits?

Why can’t we have men who are timid and shy? Why can't we have men who feel anxiety, fear, and sadness? Why can't we have men who aren't afraid of crying openly?

Why can't we have men who aren't sex gods? Why can't we have men who aren't confident in bed? Who are anxious, or even scared, at the prospect of sex? Who are passive instead of dominant? Who want to experience intimacy and affection?

Why can’t we have men be kind and gentle and sweet for once?

I'll tell you why we can't. Because booktok says men like these are not 'man' enough. Booktok says men like these are the 'boring' option, and completely devoid of interesting quirks, traits or personality. Booktok says men like these are underserving of attention, and only fit to be background noise.

As far as booktok is concerned, men like these can't exist.

[psychotrenny]

One of the more absurd pieces of anti-polyamory rhetoric that you'll sometimes encounter is that it's inherently misogynist because of... whatever tangential links that they feel like making up today. This sort of argument is obviously completely backwards if you have even the loosest understanding of the Family as a Patriarchal construct to facilitate the accumulation of private property, but the more you get into the specifics the more ridiculous it gets.

Like one entirely vibes based argument you'll see is that polyamory is just an excuse for awful men to cheat on their girlfriends. Putting aside the existence of gay people and how they comprise a disproportionate amount of polyamory, you don't even need structural awareness to know how stupid this is. Like by virtue of living in a Patriarchal society you've probably noticed that asshole men do not need an excuse to cheat on their partners. In fact, there's a widespread misogynistic double standard with women having affairs being viewed as much more serious than the other way around, with female offenders generally receiving a much greater deal of social castigation than their male counterpart.

On a similar note you'll also see the implication that women are always the most concerned with cheating and so any critique of monogamy means you view women as "whiny reactionary bitches". Once again mere social experience disprove this pretty definitively; one of the most common justifications for femicide is real or suspected infidelity. Like the institution of monogamy literally gets women, many women in fact, killed*. Attacking the sanctity of monogamy, "destigmatising cheating" if you want to call it that, does not empower misogynist abusers. It in fact it does the opposite, which is very obvious if you put the smallest amount of thought in

*Sometimes men are also killed by their female partners, as well as gay people by same sex partners, over cheating too. This is still pretty terrible too but of much lesser concern because systemic misogyny means than men have much greater power to both murder women and avoid meaningful consequences for it. The biggest issue here is people cheering these actions on and acting like it's a meaningful expression of "girl power" for women to murder male partners over infidelity. Because as I keep repeating Monogamy is an inherently Patriarchal institution; it is not meaningfully feminist to have women play an equal role in violently enforcing it

[crosby-interesting]

i love ur blog so much. u allow truth. sadly it seems these days on gossip blogs u aren’t allowed to reveal facts, decipher lies, or knock down the white picket fence of perfection without being accused of being misogynistic. Since when did women holding other women accountable become misogynistic? Since when did exposing male cheaters who have sex with random women from restaurants, hotels, & clubs while they have pregnant girlfriends, wives, children, & dog moms waiting at home become misogynistic? Since when did exposing escorts & prostitution services that essentially promote human trafficking become misogynistic? As a feminist i believe the word “misogynistic” is sadly being diluted & loosing value, bc people carelessly throw it around to defend against any negative accusations surrounding women who’re linked to players they admire. I like this player so u aren’t allowed to call out him or his woman’s bullshit & if u do then ur misogynistic. U discuss Auston Mathews having TWO former prostitute girlfriends & CURRENT ex prostitute gf Megan Turner? ur misogynistic. U discuss Adam larsson cheating with girls the past THREE years on Vera soderberg while he’s away traveling for games? ur misogynistic. U discuss Lauren Kyle ignoring video evidence of Connor Mcdavid cheating with a college girl & accepting the public humiliation of the the scandal just accepting an “Im sorry” engagement a year later? ur misogynistic. U discuss Nico Hischier & Timo Meier hiring a spain prostitute to spend 3 days with them on a yacht LAST WEEK & following her on IG while she has pictures for the prices of lap dance, private dance, & “extra services” on her IG highlights? ur misogynistic. U discuss Elias Pettersson prostitute call girl -girlfriend Katelyn Byrd exposed on surveillance video kissing & being fondled by married musician Alex Pall, then his wife crying on IG stories after exposing the affair while Katelyn is getting her paparazzi pics with Alex outside of Nobu a week after the scandal? ur misogynistic. U discuss Katelyns other scandal of the ex sugar daddy FIANCÉ who publicly accused her of secretly taking large sums of money out of his accounts after he had already bought her FAMILY a house & discovered she was cheating on him with a younger man? ur misogynistic. U discuss Kasperi Kapanen intentionally make Dubai prostitute Matleena Laakso his girlfriend, so he can finally cheat with peace & understanding? ur misogynistic. U discuss Penny Liarakos cheating on William Nylander at the start of their ex relationship & running secret puck bunny tumblrs with her best friend & currently leaving Willy weird comments using fake accounts on IG? ur misogynistic. U discuss Mathew Tkachuk being given an ultimatum and forced by Papa Kieth to prospose to the blonde( who he unfortunately is just not that into) on the back of a fishing boat in an old t shirt & swim shorts while she’s wearing a white bridal shower dress bc she was actually involved in Papa Kieths plan, & Papa set up the whole proposal himself at 9am on a random Thursday because Papa was tired of Matt cheating with the mixed girls & latinas from the Miami bars? ur misogynistic. U discus Kathy Leutner working for a man who provided prostitution services & has victims accusing him of trying to recruit them into prostitution? ur misogynistic. U discuss Sidney Crosby's public humiliation ritual fcked up relationship? ur misogynistic.- Let’s be honest girls, none of those discussions are misogynistic no matter how much the truth hurts, as much as you want to deny it pls stop mislabeling facts as misogyny.If u can’t face the truth ur lucky enough to have the option of logging out & going back to living ur delusions of grandeur & perfection. Holding women accountable for their actions or lack there of is not misogynistic & calling out their male partners deceptions is definitely not misogynistic . I will be gathering any info of the NHL prostitution /cheating circus & sending it in. im tired of the bullshit.

-🇲🇽

This all sounds like a blessing! Thank you!

[bulldyke-rider]

In another universe, people are saying men were designed to work and then die because their body strength and small, quick and easy contributions to reproduction makes them ideal for being worked to death.

But I had to be born in the one where every variety of woman believes, in some form, men were built to overpower us.

Coulda been born into a world where men haul lumber and then we kill them off when they become useless, but instead, I was born into a world where even feminist women cry about not being as good at weightlifting.

Coulda been born into the world where women's bodies were seen as the centers of creation and men were seen as empty and incapable of creation. Coulda been born into the world where men are seen as existing for women, less valuable. The world where a man is killed for not giving his wife a daughter. The world where all gods are female, or a world with no gods because women are right there being the creator. Coulda been born into the world where man is divorced from God and has to go through his wife rather than the other way around because woman is closer to God in heaven by being God on earth. The one where women outliving men in harsh conditions is testament to the fact that it's better for men to die than use up our resources. The world where women are seen as natural leaders by leading their children. The world where lineage is purely matriarchal. The world where only the most fit and good looking men even get the chance to reproduce because male's role in reproduction is an expendable cheap resource, so you only need the most fit men. The world where women are choosing partners because of this. The world where men are the ones questioning their worth because their looks have been called to question for thousands of years, not ours. The world where women are described as "visual creatures" with our superior color vision to back it up.

Or I could've been born into an equal society where we don't get philosophical about muscle mass and pregnancy and small physical differences.

But no, had to be born not only into a world where men have warped the value of women, but also the world where like every woman buys into it and believes the bullshit.

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

Honestly I do not believe them for a single second but Hot Take : even if their jakey was 100% the most perfect dude to ever breath they should still stfu about it. Like stop going on a website full of young girls telling them that they too can get the perfect husband if they just give men a chance. Stop that.

This is going to sound mean but I don't believe it when het radfems talk about how good their bfs are. They could be lying. This is the internet, they could be lying or they could be overlooking their bfs misogyny to make a good post. I don't believe your bf is a feminist alley and I think you don't believe it either. You're just telling that to yourself bc some people online hurt your feelings and made you question your decisions. And it's not a nice feeling so you get defensive.

And listen, I personally don't care if you call yourself a radfem and you have a bf. But if you have any knowledge about radical feminism you know we're critical of men, heterosexuality and marriage. Don't come to our spaces and expect full acceptance. We will question you, we even question our own choices. You can't complain about radfems criticizing your relationship when you know what you are getting into. Like coming to a vegan party with meat and expecting people don't look at you weirdly.

I think it's ridiculous some het radfem will come here, see others saying "yes all men" and jump to say "not my bf" because what are the chances you, a random woman, happen to find a good decent man. Come on. Be realistic. Don't expect others to cuddle you. You're heterosexual, if you don't like to be questioned then go outside! There's nothing people love more than a woman happily providing her bf with emotional and sexual labor and saying he's the best man ever!!!

literallyyyyy!!! i’m sorry but every het-partnered woman on here speaks high praises of her boyfriend/husband. like no one on here is like “yeah my boyfriend is somewhat misogynistic and he makes me do most of the housework and uses the word bitch and thinks the pay gap is a myth” or whatever… no he’s always the best man ever who does everything right somehow. i don’t blame them for framing their men in this way because as you said, they’re defensive. but i don’t buy that every het-partnered woman on radblr seems to be dating the same perfect most feminist male possible. i don’t particularly care either bc i’ll never know their amazing boyfriends/husbands anyways, i just don’t get why they have to claim to be radfems at the same time

[cuntess-carmilla]

Alright, let's try a thought exercise!

This thought exercise requires us to start by agreeing that women are an oppressed class (cis women, trans women, non-binary people who at least partially id as women or woman-adjacent).

If you can't concede that as a basis, then keep scrolling, this post isn't for you. I'm not here to convince MRAs that systemic misogyny – aka the patriarchy – is real. Alright? Alright.

I think we can all agree that, besides the institutional oppression faced by oppressed groups, they all also face acts of individualized concrete violence (which are then vindicated by institutions and/or sociocultural disinterest or even active acceptance).

You know, that thing we call hate crimes? Acts of violence committed against an individual by mere reason of an aspect of who they are which makes them oppressed and/or marginalized.

We discuss women as an oppressed class as well, but, save for specific feminist factions (largely, non-liberal feminists from the global south), no one really talks about misogynistic hate crimes.

Even though misogynistic men murder women and girls for no reason other than their own misogyny every day. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time, when a man kills a woman it's not to steal from us, not as revenge for something shitty we did to them, not because we were in an altercation and it simply happened. No.

It's because "if I can't have her, then nobody can have her" (women as property), "she rejected me" (woman denied sex or romance to a man who wanted it), "she was trying to leave" (culmination of domestic violence), "she made me feel emasculated" (reaffirming masculinity through violence).

We're raped and otherwise sexually abused ALL the time as well, and our perpetrators are by far mostly cis men. I hope I don't have to go into detail on how that's related to misogyny.

Chile has pretty progressive femicide legislation as of somewhat recently. The legal definition of femicide went from being "male partner or ex-partner who murders his female partner or ex-partner" to "any killing of a woman for reason of her gender", which explicitly includes:

Women killed by men they were never involved with but who acted out of jealousy/possessivenes or as revenge because they were rejected.

Women being killed by men for being gender non-conforming.

Women being killed for being trans, lesbian or bisexual.

Women killed by men because they were sex workers.

(So, no, before the MRAs who kept reading get their panties in a twist, femicides in Chile are not defined as every single time a man kills any random woman. The motive for the murder has to be patriarchal bigotry in some form and that has to stand to scrutiny in court.)

If we accept that, like in the Chilean legislation of femicide, any act of violence committed by a man against a woman due to patriarchal bigotry is a misogynistic hate crime, shouldn't we be more alarmed with how astoundingly common and NORMALIZED hate crimes against women are?

How many women and girls do you know who have been sexually abused by a man or boy? How many which have been beaten? How many women do you know who have controlling and violent boyfriends or husbands or fathers or older brothers? How often do you hear about a woman who made it out alive by the skin of her teeth from the hands of a man who was absolutely going to kill her? And the ones that didn't make it? How about when misogyny intersects with race, disability, transness, gayness, socioeconomic class, religious minorities, and so on?

I firmly believe that the only reason we don't talk about these things as misogynistic hate crimes is because, despite being oppressed, women aren't a numerical minority. But, rather than that giving visibility to the violence we face, it invisibilizes it even more. It became society's normal to have approximately half of its population constantly subjected to hate crimes, to the point that there's whole TikTok trends dedicated to turning it into a joke (the "joke" where men pretend they're trying to suffocate their girlfriends with a pillow for being annoying) and until very recently it was perfectly ok for standup comedians to joke about it too. Precisely, because women are an oppressed class and violence against us is both socially sanctioned and encouraged, when it's hyper-visible, it becomes at best a fact of life that deserves no one's attention, and at worst it becomes a recurrent joke.

I, personally, believe that femicides and the largest portion of rapes suffered by women are misogynistic hate crimes, as are many other instances of violence women are used to now and that we deal with as a natural(ized) aspect of living as a woman. Which I know will get me called all sorts of names and slurs, but I can't see where my logic is failing.

[femconstellation]

https://www.tumblr.com/femconstellation/766094901879488512/oh-sucking-cock-is-dehumanizing-now-is-it-but?source=share

"Oh, sucking cock is “dehumanizing” now, is it? But I thought we were allowed to love men, give them kissies and nuzzles and cock suckies! If you really thought sucking cock was feminist, why would you think being called a cocksucker was an insult? We never said anything about you not being human, hmm... maybe, even cocksuckers like you know EXACTLY what kind of acts dehumanizes you? Is that you admitting that you know the truth deep down? And yet, still you suck away! :)"

Writing an elaborate ask about cocks is kinda cock-obsessed, why do you think about cocks so much, secretly a cock lover? Imagine typing "cock suckies" if you didn't love cock, couldn't be me. If you didn't like cock you wouldn't think about it

See how insane it is to make all these leaps in judgment and not use my brain because insulting people who want to be treated with respect gives me instant gratification? Cocksucker is dehumanizing because you take a full ass woman and dwindle down her personhood by defining her whole existence and worthiness of respect by singular sex act she may or may not even perform, because how dare she be SSA!

You hate women who aren't you, plain and simple, despise them, in fact. This whole insane, ridiculous ask is clear proof of that. And hated of any women for simply having sex with/being attracted to the "wrong" kind of person is anti-feminist. Sure, women partnering with men is not a feminist act and never will be, but neither is your hatred and othering of those women

You can dislike the act of het-partnering without hating the women who partake in it for simply wanting to love and be loved romantically. Het-partnered and OSA women in general have and will always be a part of the feminist movement. We have been here from the beginning, in fact, and we'll be here until the end. Your dislike of this fact is your own problem to cope with, not ours

THIS!!

And to any ‘radfem’ reading this that likes to call OSA women ‘cocksuckers’, you are not fighting the patriarchy. You are actively helping the patriarchy. You can criticize heterosexuality without bashing a woman and calling her misogynistic vitriol.

I am a lesbian. And even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t date men. And I might not personally feel very happy about a woman being with a male, but I find it abhorrent to throw abusive comments towards her for it. Just be normal!

[dichromaticdyke]

SKWISGAAR DOESN'T HAVE A TYPE AND I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING HE DOES

yeah, yeah, he's the guy who loves fat women and gmilfs. but he's not. fandom greatly overblows skwisgaar's "type" in women, and as the CEO of skwisgaar i won't stand for this anymore.

reminder before we get started, i'm not denying that skwisgaar is attracted to fat and elderly women, because he is. instead, this is a response to the way in which fandom acts like those are the only women he's attracted to.

because i have no life, i scrubbed through every episode and kept track of every woman who skwisgaar expresses interest in, whether with sexual comments, sexual encounters, making them his groupies, or giving them children. (no screencaps because i WILL go above tumblr's image limit). i might have missed some, but this is a large enough sample size to prove my point.

01x01 "The Curse of Dethklok": 1 (elderly/fat) 01x09 "Mordland": 1 (elderly/fat) 01x16 "Dethkids": 2 (1 elderly/fat) 01x18 "Girlfriendklok": 2 02x07 "Dethwedding": 2 02x10 "Dethgov": 3 (elderly/fat) 02x13 "Klokblocked": 4 (1 elderly/fat) 02x14 "Dethsources": 2 (elderly/fat) 03x05 "Fatherklok": 48 (8 elderly/fat) 03x06 "Fertilityklok": 54 (6 elderly/fat) 03x10 "Doublebookedklok": 18 (7 elderly/fat) 04x06 "Writersklok": 2 The Doomstar Requiem: 3 (1 elderly/fat)*

TOTALS: 142 young/thin women: 111 (78.17%) elderly/fat women: 31 (21.93%

*note: for DSR, since so many of the visuals are meant to be taken non-literally, i only focused on the ones that seemed to be direct representations of reality or of his genuine feelings. in this case, i focused on the beginning of Partyin' Around the World with the band at mordhaus and his fantasy in How Can I Be a Hero where he dreams about being married.

so. what does this tell us? more often than not, in canon, skwisgaar is depicted as having sex or sexual feelings towards thin women who are closer to his own age. despite this, even in canon, an emphasis is drawn to his attraction to gmilfs and fat women, most notably with him demanding to be put in charge of "dems old ladies" in florida.

i wanna draw attention to this interview, notably at timestamp 2:14

transcript:

Dethklok Minute Host Graham Hartmann: What is it exactly that you love about the-the larger and more elderly ladies? Skwisgaar: I thinks beautiful womens—what peoples calls "beautifuls womens"—amn'ts, uh...gets uglies after a whiles, you gets sicks of them, like eatings the same meals everydays, and you starts to turns to more exotics things that ams nots on the mains menus. So, uh, that would explains that. [underlines added for emphasis]

he doesn't have a type for fat or elderly women. he just can get any woman he wants whenever he wants, and since he does see beauty in all women, he wants to appreciate all women lest he get tired of them.

so, why is there such this hyperfixation on the elderly and fat women as objects of skwisgaar's attraction? as evidenced by both canon and his own words, he doesn't have a preference for them, he simply enjoys them as he would any other woman.

i'm gonna put it bluntly, this is where my silly skwisgaar analysis goes into actual feminist critique: it's because people still find it unusual at best or fetishistic at worst to be genuinely attracted to older and/or fat women. that's the whole thing. everyone—from fandom to interviewers to even the show (by making his attraction to older and fat women an inherent joke aspect of his character)—focusing on this aspect of his attraction does so because, on some level, they cannot fathom a young(ish, depending on what age you headcanon him to be), thin, conventionally attractive man being attracted to women who don't fit that mold.

and, in some ways, there is some reality to this—women's beauty is still held up to an insanely high standard, and generally it's more accepted for average-looking men to have attractive female partners than for average-looking women to have attractive male partners. societal standards for women's beauty and expectations for what men should find attractive is what this joke hinges on, and honestly? it's really frustrating to see this reiterated so often in the fandom. because skwisgaar never really acts particularly fetishistic towards any of the women he's attracted to. you could argue the "exotic" comment was, but he was still talking in terms of his food metaphor, and he's not exactly the best at expressing himself in english.

he loves all women. he genuinely does, his attraction to them has no size, race, or age—any consenting adult woman is game. i don't know about you, but it's fucking refreshing to see any kind of character like that. lesbian skwisgaar rights who said that