#pop feminism has killed your brain cells

[fascination4949]

LOL feminism (at least not lib or choice feminism) isn’t *just* about “women can do anything men do” how fucking reductive. Like that’s the thought I formed when I was 13 and had just learned the meaning of the word “feminism”. Yeah it’s true that “biologically” we can do anything, but that’s like so fucking obvious it’s actual laughable that you’re bringing it up like some sort of revelation to shit on radfems. Radical feminism (and any feminism that rejects “choice or liberal” bs which is what you’re peddling here) isn’t trying to prove that men and women are “equal”. We are trying to address the consequences of literally thousands of years of patriarchy during which “female biological features” were used to oppress us. You might not want to hear this but misogyny has historically been about body politics. Look around you. We live in a world that’s been literally built around the notion that (cis) women are inherently weaker because of our biology, so we need more than just saying “we can do anything”. And this shit affects people who fall outside the cisgender binary. Why do you think trans-misogyny is a thing? 🤔 Patriarchy has literally changed the way women behave. There are so many studies about this. You can’t reverse that with just saying women can do men’s jobs or whatever. No radical feminists will disagree with your statement. But saying you’re the same as men isn’t gonna fix the oppression that we still face today. That’s why radfems advocate for many “RADICAL” ideas like separatism for example. No radfem is gonna be like “women are weak and love pink and men are strong and love blue” like 💀💀. Your girlboss millennial cringe fest idea about feminism is literally useless on its own without addressing patriarchy as an ongoing system of oppression that affects every aspect of our lives. You guys love to shit on radfems but it just makes you look like a joke.

like what happened to "women are capable of doing everything men can do". If this statement is true the reverse is also true. It doesn't mean they necessarily do but they could. Thats like THE feminist statement in my mind its the most important one and radfems are actively rejecting it. There is nothing but superficial differences between us!!! "Men" and "women" are fictions used to organize society and power in a specific way they're not essential truths. We can go from one to the other freely and easily because we are essentially the same. The massive gulf between us in modern society is political, its not in anyway concrete, essential or biological.

[theramblingonesie]

But Do We Really Want To Destroy The Partriarchy: A series of tough questions that we don’t actually wanna get real about.

 I was on the phone a couple weeks back having a business focusing session with a counselor, and I got into some blarbble about the emotional obstacles I face with my project. Alongside my awareness of my shortcomings as an entrepreneur and leader, the thought occurred to me—

Is the theme of my work and how I present it somehow more threatening, or uninteresting, because I don’t offer an appealing enough reward?

In my feminist work, I am not offering any promise of being a queen or goddess, nor am I glorifying saintly or martyr behavior.  I’m arguing for the right to have a human experience as a stepping stone for living a fulfilling, honest life.  There’s no master plan for domination. It’s not sparkly.

Our patriarchally conditioned brains don’t like that.  We need promises of power and status.  We need to feed the parts of our brains that have turned the pursuit of pleasure into addiction to pleasure.  Especially those of us who belong to oppressed parties (aka anyone who is not a rich, white, able-bodied man between 18 and 75 years old), we need some kind of promise of “better than” and “other”.  We need proof that we will not be picked on, held down, enslaved to, degraded, blocked, questioned, etc. We need a system or cheat code that will make us #boss, #diva, #hbic, #alpha, #queen, or #goddess.  Why?

Because that’s how the patriarchy has taught us to survive. Whether we fought or found ourselves at the top or associated with the top, we profit off the very system that is breaking us. We are benefitting from the same system we claim to want to destroy.

I had to take a good, long, humbling look at my own place in this dilemma. I, realistically, do not believe that I could extract myself from the power system of the patriarchy without having a complete identity crisis. I don’t know a single other human who could, either. We’re so buried in this; 20 feet past all of our collective eyeballs in social and political muck.

We have empowerment movements that we want to believe are anti-patriarchy. Ugh, guess what—

Most of them are not.

I like reclaiming certain words. It deactivates the vitriol in them.  Words like “bitch”, “slut”, “nasty” and so on. It’s important to redefine that shit in order to take hatred’s toys away. But other words—why are we giving them *more* power?

Boss

Queen

Alpha

Diva

Goddess

This is not a reclaiming. We are taking words that indicate the reliance of inferiority of the other, hierarchy, power and control, and either shifting them over to women or using their feminine counterparts.

I know. I use them, too.

And I get it.

We need to identify that we’re in a hole before climbing out of it. And once we claw our ways to the surface, up and out, we want to turn around and scream that nobody will ever push us in that damn hole again.  So then, why don’t we go somewhere else after that? Into a house? Drive away far from the scene of the crime?  Why do we just shift a few feet over to dig a nearly identical-looking hole to push other people into?

Just because the original jerkoff didn’t dig that hole does not mean it’s not a hole. Just because you used to be in a hole and understand holes does not mean that what you just dug is not a hole.  Call it an Earth Bucket or Vertical Hollow Long Cave if you’d like. Say the Divine visited you in a dream and gave you a premonition about it.  It’s still a hole.

 I’m using women as an example because I live and breathe feminism (and as life goes, all things are subject to mistake and growth), and was set off by these Goddess empowerment circles that are popping up and spreading spiritual bypassing around like ants on pie at a picnic.  However, when we zoom out, this is actually an intersectional crisis that impacts….well….the human race at large.

 Ew, I hate the patriarchy. I bet most of you do, too.  Yeah. YEAH! Let’s get rid of him!!!

 Oppression? Get it out of here!

Degradation? Booooo, byyeee

Power battles? Smell ya later!

Control freaks? Who needs em?!

Genocide? NOPE

War? NOOO

Pedophile Culture (which, yes, impacts how grown women are pressured to present): FUCK OFF

Destruction of the planet: STOP

Hate Crimes: WHY??!

Tyrannical Leaders: OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!

Capitalism: MURDERERS.

Rape: *overwhelming sadness*

Animal Cruelty

Racism

Sexism

Homophobia

Transphobia

Classism

Ableism

Ageism

Any word or ism that judges a person based solely on their ability to be productive

 That was easy, right? Drown it all, light it on fire.

How do you feel about abolishing these other biproducts of the patriarchy:

Celebrities

Prisons

Money

Fashion

Cell Phones

Internet

Industry

Coffee

Status

Being the boss or leader of anything

Awards

Marketing

Schedules

Heteronormativity

Family units

 The argument could be made that many of these are neutral, and whether they harm, help or neither is dependent upon the hands they fall in.  That all being said, each of these items on this generously short list of possible examples is a crucial and defining piece of our modern society, and can be (and has been) used as a patriarchal weapon. This power has infiltrated them in such a way that maybe, if you try hard enough, you can turn your head and not notice so long as it benefits you.

When you say that you want to destroy the patriarchy, do you mean only the big obvious things? Or are you willing to take a very detailed look at all the little ways you still benefit from the system?  Where are you willing to make sacrifices, and where do you still need to hold on?  How many of us are actually ready for that shift? Does it make you feel angry and icky that you, despite your protests, still uphold this system in your own ways? Is saying that we want to “destroy the patriarchy” just an unrealistic, macro-minded ideal?  I’m not advocating for this system.  It’s hurting mankind and killing the planet.  But to make real change, we need to get real with ourselves.

Upon deep reflection and introspection, I’m not as prepared as I thought I was.  I still benefit more than I’d ever want to admit.  You do, too.  Even fighting against the patriarchy becomes an identity. If it disappears, who am I?  If I really want this war, which is a patriarchal concept in the context I’m using it, then I have much more internal work and restructuring to do.  If we get rid of this system without a realistic replacement, we will be plunged into absolute chaos of the not-fun variety.  Yes, even you, yoga bro.  I’m still holding out for a solution that isn’t simply the current situation in a prettier mask.  

Let’s see what develops. I have hope.

[radthursdays]

#RadThursdays Roundup 04/06/2017

A drawing of multiple doors with the text, "When one door closes, another one opens… Destroy the prison industrial complex". Schools, housing, health, youth, seniors, libraries, drug treatment, homeless shelters, parks, arts & culture, and community services doors are all locked, barred, cordoned off, and closed. The only door open is the door to a jail cell. Source.

Issues

Worked to Death: The American pension crisis helps corporations maintain a precarious, easily exploitable workforce. "Saying that you rely on your job means that you have to maintain your employment to get these basic goods, which means that, unless you have a union — and even if you do in many cases — you are subject to the tyranny of your boss, who has totally unchecked rights to keep you on the job or fire you at his or her whim. All of these benefits are attached to that; it produces incredible precarity for workers at all times."

[CW: your brain might hurt from the contradictions and lies] Lipstick Fascism: "Lokteff finds feminism to be ultimately self-centered because it focuses on a woman’s autonomy instead of the family. The suffrage movement started this trend by transferring the 'one vote per family' model to 'one vote per woman.' Husbands and wives were supposed to vote together, and giving each woman the right to vote stripped the nuclear family of its important function in society, she says. It created divisions from the start, paving the way for single-parent households run by 'trashy, drug-abusing' women. The days when the man of the house was the breadwinner and the mother the dutiful wife, pumping out football fields of children, disappeared. Women on the alt-right emphasize the need to rebuild tight-knit, heteronormative white families with traditional values and gender roles."

Recentering Anti-Black Racism: Preparing for the Summer: "The Trump regime has been choosing the battles. During the first 100 days, they have been most ostentatious in targeting the Muslim Ban, Sanctuary Cities, and DAPL. This seems like an intentional strategy to keep the attention off the Black community, where resistance has been most militant and organized in recent years. […] While it is important to have a sense of what’s going on in the halls of power, to identify fault lines or lightning rods in the political establishment, paying too much attention to this circus takes us away from the kinds of actions that have the most potential to crack those fault lines and corrode the system. The more attention we pay to the circus the more the agenda will be set by either Trump, or sell out Democrats. Our current form of government (democracy) thrives on legitimacy, and it is direct action and extra-parliamentary struggle that puts democracy into crisis, which pressures the loyal opposition to be more aggressive / responsive to the rebellions in the streets. If you want Trump impeached and vigorously opposed in congress, the best thing to do is to light something (maybe even anything) on fire, (figuratively speaking of course)."

Martin Luther King’s Revolution: “American schoolchildren know that Dr Martin Luther King Jr believed in the power of Christian love to redeem a world filled with hatred. But far fewer know his radical critique of American capitalism and war.” An article on Dr. King’s 1967 Riverside Church speech against war in Vietnam.

A political cartoon made during the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion depicts two side-by-side images of a crouching person choking another on the ground, sword raised and about to strike. On the left, labeled "Barbarie" ("Barbarity" in French), a Chinese person is about to kill a European person. On the right, labeled "Civilisation", a European person is about to kill a Chinese person. Source.

Media

[CW: spoilers for Ghost in the Shell (2017), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Ex Machina (2014)] REVIEW: I Watched ‘Ghost in the Shell’ So You Don’t Have To: "In both Ex Machina and Ghost in the Shell (2017), Asian women are rendered entirely mute as our bodies are repurposed for the empowerment of White womanhood. In Ghost in the Shell (2017) this plot device is particularly gruesome: Motoko Kusanagi (who bears the name of one of the most powerful and self-confident Asian female characters in science fiction pop culture) is silently and senselessly destroyed, her brain is harvested, and her identity is utterly erased — all in service of Major Mira Killian’s personal advancement. […] Indeed, the entirety of Ghost in the Shell (2017) can be seen through this lens: Asian cyberpunk aesthetics and faceless Asian/Asian American actor-extras are combined into an Orientalist mishmash of a shell wrapped around an empty and hollow story about White womanhood. If there ever was a movie about how White feminism thoughtlessly commits violent erasure of Asian American feminism, this would be it."

The Superhero Surge: "Marvel Studios’ own forceful infiltration of the grand cultural landscape began in earnest with another ferrous Übermensch, 2008’s Iron Man; ever since then disastrous reactionary politics have grown, a demented tumour in the advanced capitalist societies. A surging far right wants to defend the liberal order by fascist means; they dream up exceptional individuals, great crimefighters like Trump or Duterte who will restore the cosmic order by applying state violence to drug users, migrants, minorities, riffraff, the weakest in society. And all the while these same stories are blared at us from the million faces of a vast culture-industry complex—and we sit and watch them for twenty thousand years, complaining that the great fascist opera of our time should have featured more Asian actors."

A parody of old American propaganda posters reads, "Do Your Part – Illegally Download Paywalled Scientific Papers". At the bottom, it says, "Lock Your Desk – Close Your Door – And Do Your Part". It depicts two people in front of a laptop, looking out a window across a field with the American flag as the sky. Source.

Direct Action Item

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What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.