#sex and womanhood

[hamoodmood]

Another man another disappoinment

[redditreceipts]

[queerism1969]

[gcmonsterappreciation]

I just want to know what the issue is with defining women as "of the sex that can carry children". Even if you don't want children, will never have children, etc. You are still of the sex that can carry children.

I mean unless you see the ability to carry children as inferior or derogatory.

[itellmyselfsecrets]

“There are plenty of accounts of hostility from men when women venture into supposedly gender-neutral shared exercise spaces. Like transit environments…Gyms are often a classic example of a male-biased public space masquerading as equal access.” - Caroline Criado Perez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)

[asmileworthahundredlies]

You’re on my mind way too much.

[contagious-watermelon]

if i hear one more person unironically identifying themself as afab or amab I'm gonna start biting

[haggishlyhagging]

Womanhood is a biological reality. That's it. It's not an identity, a prize, an "exclusive club," or a land to be conquered. The more men regard womanhood as any of those things, the more inclined they are to colonize. Patriarchy regards women as property already, with disastrous consequences.

I am a reluctant feminist. I don't particularly enjoy being a woman. I don't "identify as a woman." I AM a woman. It's not a choice, it's biology. It's not a special club I'm trying to keep men out of.

Biology is the beginning and end of "womanhood," the alpha and the omega. If I wear pants, I'm a woman. If I wear a dress, I'm a woman. If my hair is long or short, I'm a woman. If I take testosterone, I'm a woman. If I cut off my breasts (don't think I haven't thought about it, I have fibrocystic breast disease and they can be very painful), I'm a woman. If I identify as a man, I'm a woman.

And if a person has a penis he's a man.

If you think that's "hate speech," the colonist is you.

-Nina Paley, “Gender Colonialism” in Spinning And Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century

[burningtheroots]

"Not like other girls" vs. "not all men" — patriarchal division

We all know the popular "not like other girls" (or "not like other women", respectively) trope.

I‘ve been thinking about it a lot recently and what really annoys me is that society teaches young girls and women that girlhood and womanhood are inherently "bad" and hence not being like other girls and women is "good" and "desirable".

While many people believe that it stems from the girls and women themselves, I‘d like to emphasize the impact of growing up in a deeply patriarchal, misogynistic society and system which ultimately influences the steps we take.

The world we live in is built on female oppression, exploitation, rivalry and division. By ensuring that girls and women believe in what the patriarchy teaches us, men ensure their power and authority as we‘re busy trying to "fit in" and prove that we‘re the "good girls/women". Girls and women are conditioned to look down on other girls and women and aspire to be different — to be validated by men that they‘re not this flawed image of girlhood and womanhood.

Once we have internalized these misogynistic beliefs, we start to make our lives revolve around them and also spread them further. That‘s a common technique used by oppressors — divide and conquer.

Now we have lots of girls and women who desperately want to be different from other girls and women, who want to be as close as possible to whatever gets them men‘s approval and highlights that they‘re actually good instead of "flawed" like the rest.

Girls and women are always either "too human" or "not human enough". Whether it‘s looks, interests, personality etc.. We‘re trained to make entire lifestyle choices based on other people’s men’s perception. We‘re forced to balance between idealized womanhood and demonized womanhood.

The solution we’re presented? Putting other girls and women down to "prove" ourselves.

And it‘s not like there aren’t any tools for this, in fact, the patriarchy provides them abundantly.

The beauty & diet industry strive to divide us.

Fun activities which are still "gendered" to this day strive to divide us.

The media, social platforms and advertisements strive to divide us.

Sexualization and objectification strive to divide us.

Relationships with men strive to divide us.

Even when men commit atrocities, they divide girls and women, not men.

On the contrary, men and boys are taught to be united. Not in a coddly way, perhaps, but in a way that gurantees solidarity and immunity when needed.

"Not like other boys/men!" isn‘t a thing, instead, we got "not all men!", a.k.a. "I‘m like other men and because I‘m not bad, they aren’t, either!".

Whilst men are more prone to violence and deliberately inflict emotional and physical pain on others on a much larger scale than women, boys and men aren’t taught that it‘s desirable to be different from other boys and men. Rather, they‘re taught that it‘s good, desirable and admirable.

Instead of aspiring to be different — to be better — their focus is on defending men as a whole and excusing or justifying their misbehavior, whereas we‘re told that we must hold each other accountable for the tiniest missteps, especially when they involve men.

Girls and women are taught that their existence (& humanity) in itself is flawed, undesirable and needs to be strictly regulated, judged and altered.

Boys and men are taught that their existence (& humanity) in itself is self-evident, desirable and worthwhile.

That‘s why I put female solidarity and sisterhood above all else.

That‘s why I proudly say that YES, I am like other girls and women. We aren’t a monolith, we‘re individually unique, and yet we share the experience of being female, and we‘re united in our mere existence as women, and we don’t need to put other women and girls above or beneath us, or allow us to be alienated from one another.

[personaldiary]

someday...

[cericertain]

a big reason people hate honeybees, coffee beans, cistrans folk, etc is because it ruins their perfect little rad fem world where 'everyone who is feminine (aka woman) is pure and experiences the worst suffering and everyone who is masc (aka man) is evil and priveleged'

when you start to be so outside the cisnormative, gender essentialist boxes they up hold like their lives depend on it that they can no longer ignore/erase your existence for the sake of convinience they get angry. they want you to use THEIR logic the terms THEY want you to use so there is no more cognitive dissonance between the harmful rad fem rabbit hole they have let consume them and your mere existence.

my thoughts? don't let them silence you. don't like the community get turned into "boys club" "girls club". a huge issue in the LGBT online communities these days is the inability, even in trans communities, to handle the existence of trans people. gnc people. people who are too queer to fit into your perfect little boxes where you only have to worry about *your* issues. This is the white feminism of the trans community. Ignore all other forms of oppression and the variety of the human experience. lets just care about the most priveleged most feminine (aka pure) few and ignore the rest. /s it disgusts me.

[queerism1969]

[the-feminist-philosopher]

Damn. TERFs really do see themselves as white nights fighting on behalf of black & brown women against an aggressive hoard of black and brown men. I cannot go into the #feminism tag without seeing some of the wildest takes…

Because a TERF will really get on the Internet and say some shit like,

“Trans-exclusionary ideas are globally popular ideologies” and fail to see how public discrimination against a group is maybe a symptom of the current power structures, structures like the patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism.

and then follow that up with,

“Because the global majority isn’t white, my activism for those women isn’t white. Also because the women fighting against the patriarchy globally aren’t majority white, my brand of feminism can’t be white,” and fail to see how this is white-night activism and an attempt to co-opt other feminist movements globally, many of which actively resist their country’s neo-colonial resource exploitation and imperialist extraction of their country. But positioned in argument alongside the take that trans-hate is globally popular, it’s also an attempt to make non-white people look uniquely or predominantly hateful compared to those within their lofty country.

Which is exemplified by the fact that when a trans person—regardless of location—shows support for any cause in the global south, the popular response is to tell that trans person the people of that country would behead them or throw them from a roof. Because in addition to believing the brown other is uniquely “backwards” and “brutish,” they also believe that any oppressed group’s “salvation” is contingent upon good behavior. Whose salvation? Theirs, of course. These people will freely repeat talking points about things that don’t happen in whatever foreign country of their picking to support their argument because the intention is to show they have credible reason to believe “those people” are not the perfect model of “(western) civility,” and as such, are in need of the TERF’s ideas, resources, and “activists.” It’s a reframing of “The White Man’s Burden” to center women.

(I’ve always found the “defenestration threat” a particularly disingenuous take. There’s the apparent racism on one hand, but clear pink washing, too. I—a gay—cannot care about the suffering of others in another country if gay rights in that country is not on par with that of its imperial oppressor? Are these trans-exclusionary radicals disagreeing with the existence of transphobia in another country? Or are they disagreeing with the purported tactics? “My enlightened policies that mass incarcerate, push children to suicide, and strip strangers of bodily autonomy; their barbaric policies that do much the same, oh, and defenestration.” They do realize that they, the trans-exclusionary radical, are more of an existential threat to me in *my own country* than a stranger half a globe away, no?)

And this worldview becomes ever so apparent when, after pointing out their attempt to co-opt feminist movements led by black and brown women, the usual comeback is to ask the person who disagrees with their take if they think that black and brown men are “too stupid” to “know” to or how to oppress women. “Do you think it’s not worse in other countries?”

Not only is this an attempt at purple washing; an attempt to benefit from purported support for women’s rights as a way to distract from the issue at hand: Western paternalism and chauvinism, this is also an attempt to turn it back around on the other. The TERF could not avoid being critiqued for supporting imperialistic ideas that downplay the significance of white supremacy and the struggles of black and brown women by arguing that because the majority of women aren’t white, any advocacy for women couldn’t possibly be racist. And they couldn’t avoid being critiqued for supporting imperialistic ideas that downplay the significance of white supremacy by deflecting with a “what-about’ism” about the state of affairs in a foreign country. And now they’re faced with the fact others may think that they think black and brown people are uniquely brutish. So, their last hope is to argue that no, actually you 🫵 are downplaying the oppression that other women in other countries face at the hands of “their men” and engaging in the “noble savage” trope.

(Of course, this ignores how such a trope refers to positioning Indigenous people as people uniquely removed from societies—when in reality they had complex societies, social structures, and politics—who live in harmony with nature. Suggesting that someone’s ideas and characterization of other peoples is influenced by Western Imperialism and white supremacy is in no way the same as suggesting there is “innate goodness, pureness, and moral superiority” among an “uncorrupted” “primitive” other, but a TERF’s ideology often depends on equivocation, usually as a means of distraction.)

But, when someone points out that this is in no way what they said; the TERF is attempting to create a strawman to argue against, the final play in the book is to literally @/ the one brown TERF they know of on this site or conclude by saying “well, my brand of feminism has had Black and Jewish thinkers, so…,” fully blind to how this is quite literally tokenism.

All this because “I can’t be racist; I’m a feminist” really isn’t the argument they think it is.

[tothe1ighthouse]

Glamorization of abortion by the media

I have never seen anyone talk about this before, and I would love to express my opinion on this topic since I am familiar with teen pregnancy and abortion.

It has come to my attention that many people on social media seem to view abortion as something glamorous and empowering, not as a basic female right. Content like "get pregnant so you can get an abortion to prove pro lifers wrong and bc its girl pwr" or "in some years there will be the first trans woman to ever have an abortion" that one can see mostly all over tiktok makes me think that people are completely missing out the point.

Well known it is, abortion existed from antiquity. Women of all times used various methods to abort, some dangerous and some safer. As the years passed of course abortion became a huge taboo among society since it was strongly believed(and still is) that a fetus is as alive as a grown human being. All this stigma caused women to try so many different ways to abort and most of them would turn out fatal. Although we live in the era of technology abortion is still not entirely safe and has many impacts on a female's physical and psychological health.

Truly debating on weather I should use my self as an example or not, but abortion definitely wasn't a girl power slay girlboss experience for a 15 year old girl. Not only me, but millions of young girls get so easily influenced by the romanticism of abortion by the media and then wonder why they don't feel the way those people told them they'd feel. I am absolutely pro choice, but pro choice does not mean ignoring the impact of abortion on women's health.

No matter if abortion is someone's choice or not, the process is 90% of the time an emotional rollercoaster. It is absolutely normal for women to feel guilt, sadness, emptiness afterwards and yet the media makes it look so abnormal because according to them aborting a fetus "is pure empowerment and of course how can one be sad after doing such a girlboss move" right???

My heart is with all the women who have had an abortion for whatever reason and I truly hope the process found them well ♡. It saddens me that although abortion always existed among people it's still not considered a basic right in so many countries. So instead of making pointless statements about abortions we should speak more about their importance and fight for the obtainment of it.

I am glad to have this privilege, but I know that many of my sisters don't and I wish to fight for them.

[a-gay-bloodmage]

Short Breeches

(Blackwall x Mallory Trevelyan, Sera & Mallory Trevelyan)

Sera figures that at least half of the Inquisition has a crush on the Inquisitor, Mallie. As a gift to the people, Sera devises an ingenious prank—seal Mallie's wardrobe and leave her with nothing but a tank top and a pair of homemade shorts. The Inquisitor, Mallory Trevelyan, does not exactly appreciate trying to keep up a fake female identity when nearly everything is on display in front of the Inquisition and the Warden Blackwall.

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Gender vs Sex

As the US elections come closer and I am bombarded by fear mongering LGBT posts, I need to get this off my chest.

The general LGBT community and activists keep saying sex and gender are not the same. How trans people have fought for gender not to be linked to their genitals. I think the whole concept of gender is meaningless and can be summarized as a combination of personality, fashion and personal taste but whatever.

I am willing to play ball. Gender and sex are not the same...so why does the LGBT community keep pretending they are? Why do trans people (mainly trans women) believe their GENDER gives them automatic access to women's spaces that were created based on SEX?

Based on my understanding of Title IX (not an American citizen and it wasn't exactly taught to me in college), women's sports were created because women could not play competitively against men.

When you go to the doctor, gender means squat! All that matters is what is between your legs and inside your body, unfortunately. When my brother goes to the doctor, the doctor won't be asking him when his last period was. Because he's MALE!

The entire debate with trans people is just so frustrating. It's like I am constantly being gaslighted.

It's even more infuriating to see trans women pretend they are actually the opposite sex and label anyone with a problem a transphobe. It's such an insult to see these MEN say they are experiencing periods. Or how they want to be able to get pregnant so they can have abortions (sick!). Periods suck! The cramps, the nausea, the iron scent of blood, the hormones making everything feel so overwhelming - my mom had it even worse with vomiting and diarrhea and crippling pain before she got pregnant with me. Her periods were a living nightmare.

I wish LGBT activists would show their true colors and admit that they want or think gender and sex are the same. So they can be revealed for the liars they are.