#patriarchal state

[haggishlyhagging]

When it is asserted in Germany that in vitro fertilization and similar technologies are all about helping infertile women, German feminists impatiently brush that claim aside. They are irritated at any suggestion that they ought to take such a claim seriously. It is, they say, a "Deckmantel," which means "cloak," "disguise." In conversations with them, one hears occasional references to the political naivete of Americans who accept such a "Deckmantel" at face value.

German feminists have known all along that the stakes in this issue are high. They are particularly sensitive to the ways in which these technologies can and are beginning to be used to manufacture human beings to specifications and, in the process, to reduce women to breeders or, less elegantly, to raw material for a new manufacturing process.

Unlike U.S. feminists, they organized as a movement on the issue and began spreading their critique beyond the feminist movement.

That the stakes are indeed high became dramatically evident in December 1987.

The German equivalent of the FBI (the 'Bundeskriminalamt") staged thirty-three simultaneous raids, many of them against feminists, throughout the Federal Republic of Germany, December 18 at 4:30 p.m. A total of 430 heavily armed police burst into the workplaces of activists. Fifteen to thirty in a group, the police swept into homes in Cologne, Dortmund, and Düsseldorf. In Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, and Hamburg, the raids were directed overwhelmingly against feminist critics of genetic and reproductive technology, according to Prozessgruppe Hamburg, a watchdog group.

The targeted critics have written and spoken on such issues as in vitro fertilization, amniocentesis, sex predetermination, and genetic engineering. They have actively opposed surrogate motherhood. Many worked together in a massive coalition to stop Noel Keane's attempt to open a branch of his U.S. surrogate business, United Family International, in Frankfurt. (Keane's New York firm arranged the Mary Beth Whitehead surrogate contract.) Their campaign to stop the sale of U.S. women to European men for breeding purposes ended successfully January 6, 1988 when a West German court ordered Keane's business closed, three months after it had opened.

Grounds for the police raids? In many cases, the women were not given any. But the next day, newspapers reported that the police conducted the searches to ascertain whether any of the individuals were members of a terrorist organization. They were specifically looking for a group called Revolutionaren Zellen and its feminist wing, Rota Zora.

The police were operating under Paragraph 129a of the terrorist act, "Support or Membership in a Terrorist Organization."

The women raided were forced to undress. All "non-changeable marks" on their bodies—scars, moles, etc. —were noted down in police records. The women were fingerprinted.

Two well-known and widely respected women were arrested: Ulla Penselin, active in two groups in Hamburg, Women Against Genetic Engineering and another group critiquing population control policies; and Ingrid Strobl, a journalist for eight years with the national feminist magazine, Emma. Strobl is accused of buying a clock used in a bombing attack against Lufthansa offices in Cologne to protest the exploitation of Third World women in the sex-tourism industry. Both women were charged under the terrorist act, Paragraph 129a. Strobl remains in prison while Penselin has since been released.

In the nationwide raids, police confiscated materials from an archive on genetic and reproductive technology established by women in Essen and from private homes and apartments. They seized drafts of the women's speeches, material prepared for seminars, names and addresses of those attending seminars, published work, videos, tapes of radio programs, scientific articles, postcards, brochures and private address books.

The police raids appear to be an attempt to stop the widespread antigenetic technology movement in Germany by linking legal organizations with more militant ones, Maria Mies, author of Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale and professor of sociology at the Fachhochschule in Cologne, told me in a telephone interview from her home.

"No concrete accusation or crime was being investigated," she pointed out. "This means that women doing 'Aufklarungsarbeit,' that is, researching reproductive or genetic engineering or talking about it or giving seminars, are already doing enough to provide a pretext for the attorney general to launch such a police action."

Mies, an organizer of the world's first massive feminist conference against reproductive and genetic technology in Bonn in 1985, said of the police action: "We think it is an effort to criminalize and intimidate the whole protest movement of women against reproductive and genetic engineering and frighten others away from participating in order to prevent the movement from spreading even more widely."

Mies added: "We are planning another conference against reproductive and genetic engineering just to demonstrate that we are continuing our work."

-Gena Corea, “The New Reproductive Technologies” in The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism

[odinsblog]

Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has called for an all-Russian ban on “encouraging women to have abortions” in order to combat the demographic crisis

“As a member of the clergy, I testify that an abortion is a disaster and a tragedy for the woman and those close to her,” Kirill said in January, per the BBC.

Putin sees it as “an acute problem,” per the BBC. Kirill says anti-abortion policies are the solution.

(continue reading)

[hadesoftheladies]

"men are only bad because they're socialized to be violent :( without capitalism there'd be no patriarchy"

quick! who is doing the socializing! who is doing the socializing! no LOOK AT ME! hey *whistles* hey man just tell me just tell me who is doing the socializing if you could just tell me who is doing the socializing that would be so awesome haha!

"but their mothers don't tell them to put the seat back u--" I'm going to ask you very politely while clasping my hands and batting my eyelashes for you to shut up :)

[sainzofthetimes16]

formula one. the billionare boys club.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Saying that non-conforming female characters don't face as much misogyny as their "feminine" counterparts is so funny cause literally the misogyny in their treatment is more overt because they aren't staying "in their place" like men think they should. The disdain for women + misogynistic societal ideals are so much more blatant in male characters interacting with these women. Countless times they are, in essence, told they need to sit down, shut up, and know their place but somehow that translates into them having "masculine privilege". I can only assume that people with this take haven't actually read the books and only get their information from second-hand sources.

[banefort]

How is Rhaenyra part of the "my father is the worst person alive and I'm his favourite daughter"

?

All three of the women are united by being (in one way or another) selected by their fathers to continue and lead the family enterprise (the iron throne, waystar, the falcone gang). But, through a combination of their father’s inability to see his daughter as anything else other than a princess to be doted upon, and inability to reconcile his own misogyny, he ends up condemning them to a life of extreme suffering and extraordinary gendered violence.

All three of their fathers experience a level of cognitive dissonance whereby they want to gift their daughters the world, but simply do not care or do not notice that the male-shaped role they’re pushing them into will crush them, and they also don’t see patriarchy as enough of an issue to them to warrant making any changes to the system they preside over. If my brave strong daughter can thrive under the effects of ‘misogyny’ (thrive being me half heartedly asking patriarchy corp to make an exception for her) then surely it isn’t even an issue!

And there’s also another level to it whereby all three fathers enact some level of femicide on the mother of their daughters (Viserys and Carmine literally and deliberately killing their wives, + Logan alienating Shiv from Caroline by turning them against each other), then not quite realizing that by doing so their girls are being ‘groomed’ to later in life be similarly shunned and tossed aside (think of that one poem about girls turning on their mothers thinking it’ll save them from the same fate). Also, all of the fathers lash out and punish their daughters for questioning their role in systemic violence against women, and relegate them to the same fate as their mother once confronted by their gender through them expressing empathy towards women (Rhaenyra doesn’t explicitly question Viserys’ role in her mother’s death, but it’s still a relevant point imo).

And all of that^^^ just kind of coalesces into this awful paradoxical state which these 3 women have to occupy - simultaneously playing their father’s daughter, son, and wife

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about fallout 4 against my will

[lwcina]

the fact that the us government can continue funding and arming a genocide despite massive public opposition really highlights how inherently non-democratic the united states is

[ravenkings]

honestly, i would be morbidly curious to see what a christopher nolan take on a barbie movie would be. like how would he even approach that. his little head would explode. 

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

[marudeinusa]

Why are there so many yayoi period yaoi manga where the second himiko state ruler is actually a crossdressing gay guy like why is this a whole... trope? Genre?

[mariemariemaria]

It's been forty years since Ann Lovett, aged 15, died after giving birth inside a religious grotto, underneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. May she and all other women and girls who have died as a result of misogyny and patriarchy rest in peace. We can never underestimate the importance of women's liberation, and how it is an ongoing battle for women all over the world. Ann should still be alive today, but her life was snatched from her by a misogynistic society which treated women as lesser, held them to higher standards than men, allowed abuse to be flourish and stripped women of autonomy in more ways than one.

Suaimhneas síoraí dá hanam 🕊️

[azisfan]

In male mind creativity is synonymous with destruction and conquest. Just how many words have they turned upside down?

True female creativity is an ensemble of various voices and harmonies, male "creativity" is a triumphant laugher among thousands of painful moans.

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Radfems and Alt-right'ers aligning with each other is one of the most incredible things to come out of the 21st century lmao

[drbased]

Radfem makes me too aware and I just wanna die. How do we live in such a world with so much awareness? It’s painful to know. Other women ignore it and live delusionally better lives.

Oh, anon, I understand. It's the paradox of awareness; we're expected to grow and develop a larger pool of knowledge and wisdom whilst that same larger awareness ends up hurting us greatly.

Honestly, the main thing I would recommend is staying away from online radfem misery echo chambers. I don't like to reblog tragedies, or violence against women, or anything negative outside general observations, quotes from books, and theory. I'm always on the lookout for radfem-friendly blogs that don't share horrible news stories or graphic imagery without trigger warnings.

The problem with the internet is that you can easily access the Worst Horrors. But also, being Aware of the Worst Horrors doesn't actually make you a better, more moral person, or a better activist or feminist. It just wears you down, makes you feel shittier and shittier about the world. I would recommend making your world smaller and smaller; think of the internet as just another collection of books on your bookshelf and nothing more. With what you do know, learn to make peace with the idea that those Horrors existed before you knew about them, and that you're not responsible for them, and you're allowed to forget about them. If you're not planning on being any sort of activist, just forget most of this shit and concentrate on the things and people you love. Life's not worth it.

For me, radical feminism became a gateway into recognising my True Worth as a woman and human being; I have thoroughly incorporated feminism into my personal moral philosophy, and I feel enriched, emboldened and more grounded in result. After years of feeling stupid and insecure, I can finally recognise why and how that's come about. It's miserable to realise just how much the people who claim to love you are hurting you, and it can get very lonely - but I'm learning to come to peace with people as flawed members of a patriarchal society, each trying to survive and make sense of the world in their own way. I understand things a lot better than I used to, and I understand myself a lot better than I used to, and there's a real comfort, perhaps even a joy, in that.

I would also like to say that, frankly, it's arguable that these other women lead better lives. For one, you're doomed to misery if you believe that there is an objective measure of a 'good life'. Remember, everyone you meet is trying to project the best of themselves and their lives - you don't know what's going on in their private lives. And from what I've seen, the life of an average women is literally a horror story; women suffer greatly, losing their sanity and sense of self merely to cope with a world that punishes them for daring to exist. Your awareness may kill a certain part of you that was naive and lighthearted, but it will also set you free. You were never going to stay naive and lighthearted forever, and no doubt at some point your naivete could have lead you into the kind of real danger that kills women, metaphorically or physically. Maybe you already have had that happen to you. In which case, consider this your awakening, your sense of closure, an opportunity for real growth; you have an opportunity to gain a real understanding of your life and personhood that the patriarchy never wanted you to have. This is your chance to be human in a way that society doesn't think is even possible, this is a chance to defy all odds, this is a chance to say no, I will carve out a space for who I am.

Lastly, I'd like to make some shameless plugs; first, for my tag wisdom posting - I truly believe that you cannot develop and coherent and robust philosophical model of understanding and approaching the world without feminism, and in this tag I collect and describe all the wisdom that has really worked for me. To shamelessly quote myself

'you cannot gain true wisdom or understanding of the world without feminism. you cannot make the connections you need to make about how the human mind relates to things like suffering, competition and ego without decoupling yourself from male thought. female thought will set you free. male thought is designed to strangle you from within.'

When you realise just how much you've been lied to, you will find comfort in real truth.

And I'd also like to make another plug for my other blog learning womanhood, where I reblog and share everything I can find that deconstructs reverses patriarchal narratives around male supremacy, and instead centers women and female positivity. I used to be a very male-centred person; I thought of myself as an 'honourary guy' (way before hearing of transgenderism), so in this blog I re-examine what womanhood means to me and decouple myself from patriarchal understandings of who I am and my relationship with my sexed body. I've learned so much about how our (female) bodies are more robust; that we still don't know our potential in sport and exercise but we can develop our knowledge through rethinking what women-centered sport would look like; various contributions women have made throughout history, which have been ignored; that everything men say about women is complete projection; that women are the default form of human being; I could go on. It's been an exercise in deprogramming my mind and reconnecting with the full extent of my humanity and capability. All of this enrichment has been achieved through feminism. So there are horrible, horrible downsides, but it's the price I'm willing to pay for this level of understanding and sense of self in a world that was hostile to me way before I even knew what that meant.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I don't think y'all realize (or care) how much your definition of feminity/womanhood is rooted in white supremacy and how that negatively impacts BIWOC