#the feminist movement and trans liberation goes hand in hand

[minlex]

Wish we could talk about the complex relations between womanhood and trans experiences in a feminist way without everyone going fucking rabid insane

[biologusputrifier777-blog]

Many Tumblr users are Arch Conservatives in their mindset

I have frequently encountered Tumblr users who are reactionaries, and this is frankly not uncommon. In general, we live in a reactionary era and many workers are divorced from their movement, but what I have encountered on this site frequently goes beyond the base ignorance that the capitalist class inflicts upon the proletariat. Namely, a mindset that is defined by two factors, One, a single-minded focus on making one's own position in Capital as comfortable as possible at the expense of all else, and two, an overwhelming belief that the inevitable self-emancipation of the working class represents some biblical apocalypse. That last part has two meanings, as those who spew it often hurl it as a slur against the real movement, claiming that Communists are simply religious fanatics who seek some mythical purification of the world. The second meaning is less complex, they imagine the means by which the self-emancipation will occur, class war, as an outright apocalyptically violent event. This feeds into their first delusion, allowing them to further slander the real movement by claiming that the imagined pseudo-christian fanatic communist who has done nothing but trade in the bible for "some leftist book" craves an orgy of violence and murder, allowing them to relive the liberal glory days of the red scare and cold war.

The first one is simple, the activism proposed by the average Tumblr liberal represents not an attack on Capital, but an attempt to carve out a place within Capital. It is often very 1st wave feminist in its approach, focused less on empowering the whole of the working class, and more on allowing members of their group to become part of high society and function more freely within the Capitalist status quo. This manifests on Tumblr in a few ways, feminists who prickle at mentions of misandry (ie mostly just mfers figuring out how the capitalist system exploits masc proletariats), trans femmes who wax poetically of the inherent moral superiority they have gained through their transition and brave fight against the gender binary (Lexi if you see this just know that I am 100% talking about you) and god knows how many liberal feminists whose toxic ideas about the superiority of women over le evil, predatory men have morphed into the outright fascism of Terfism. Of course, while the examples I highlighted are pretty fucked up, in most cases I sympathize with this desire, and this part of the post is not the one where I am calling out everyone who acts like this as arch-reactionaries. Trans people should be able to secure steadier employment, black people should not face hiring discrimination, etc. This is not even in and of itself a bad mindset, it is simply the prereq for a bad mindset, but I will point out some of the flaws with it. The push for Black Capitalism failed to secure liberation for African Americans, and businesses such as "Your Black Muslim Bakery" have proven that you can't just fix the impacts capitalism has on marginalized groups by ensuring the existence of capitalists from within those groups. Secondly, on the more political side, Feminism has shown how even the most historically progressive liberal movement, one aimed at the liberation of women from bondage, can go on to become a reactionary tool of the capitalist state and even complicit in its abuses of women. For more on that, read "In an Abusive State" by K. Bumiller. But on the whole, this mindset alone, while inferior to a revolutionary mindset, which I highly suggest you cultivate (This reading list has worked wonders for me and I would suggest giving it a shot), isn't any more reactionary than the mindset of just wanting a job that lets you buy a house, which is to say barely reactionary at all.

On the other hand, the second thing we will be talking about is so reactionary that if you altered the words a bit you could slot it into Mein Kampf's section about "godless eastern bolshevism" and not change the meaning much. Namely, the idea that revolution serves some function as a biblical apocalypse that vile, bloodthirsty communists want to do out of a sick desire to purify the world with blood. To these truly, staggering titans of intellect, Class war is both impossible and undesirable, and if it were to happen, it would only serve to destroy the world, kill untold millions, and put some imagined dictator on the throne. I'm sure that many of you reading this have seen that godawful post with a pornographic depiction of kids dying because power to a hospital got cut, trying to scare readers into thinking that class war is bad because people might suffer as a result. After all, Capitalism is famous for how rarely it kills sick kids. Regardless, it's rather stupid to engage with this on the terms of the reactionary. I will not attempt to philosophically prove that morally speaking, class war is justified, moralism is counterproductive if material reality itself informs and guides your views about the world. Namely, Class war is not some imagined future, it's actually happened. The Paris Commune and the 1918 World revolutions happened. The desire for and the belief that a successful self-emancipation of the proletariat could exist is not driven by mysticism, it's driven by actual historical evidence at this point, backed up by scientific study, and kept relevant by the fact that the needs of the working class are not being met. The people who spout the "Revolution = Revelations" myth are simply refusing to engage with reality or the needs of the working class, and instead take refuge in an imagined world in which their enemies are simply morally bad and desire the end of the world by virtue of them being morally bad. The fact that dissenters from outside their camp disagree with this is simply proof of their fanaticism. In this sense, these goobers are the very model of an idealist.

Secondly, these people ironically enough, are very much hypocrites, as they often are the ones who most plainly view the revolution in apocalyptic terms. They will hue and cry about the millions of people who will certainly die if the class war is started. Who will feed us (they do not seem to understand that the workers would have seized the farms if the revolution is successful), who will give us power (they seem to not understand that the workers would seize the means of producing power), and etc. The fact that the violence will likely flow from the state trying to suppress the workers (as it already does), is also disregarded, the communist is blamed because they suggested the revolution, as if that alone is what willed violence into the world. No, we must accept the status quo and work within it to create non violent change! The non violence of a status quo in which 9 million people die each year of hunger must be preserved. The status quo under which half the worlds population does not have access to quality healthcare, in which half a million people die a year in imperialist wars, in which almost 2 million die of easily curable diseases, and in which billions are exploited every day until they die in lives made barren and empty by the crushing demands of Capital. But no, we must never think of revolution, it's violent and could kill people!

It's deeply stupid, born of sheer ignorance and comfort. They care only that the deaths that might occur in a class war would happen within their earshot, and it does not matter that it would be to end the system that currently kills over 10 million people a year in the pursuit of profits, if that class war would force them to give up their comfort. That they imagine the turmoil such change would bring as an apocalyptic orgy of violence and project it onto evil communists who clearly must desire it not for legitimate change or a better world, but simply wanting to kill lots of people for no reason other than some abstract lack of morality renders them arch conservatives of the highest order, and a flock which McCarthy himself would be proud to shepherd.

[angelsaxis]

I'm saying this as a nonbinary lesbian and someone's who's feminism is focused on Black trans women. So don't call me a T3rf.

I don't like how the transphobic feminists have claimed the most tepid basic 101 takes about feminism, to the point where they've become dog whistles for rampant and violent transphobia regardless of the intentions or social classes (ie race, gender, cis or not) of the person saying them.

Saying make up is fundamentally a gender role before its an empowering tool isn't a radical statement at all. Talking about how so much of ~womens empowerment~ still relies on women being beautiful/sexy under the cisheteropatriarchy/white supremacist gaze isn't radical. Someone stating the facts of life for women, and by extension most AFAB people, isn't a radical statement. I remember these things being in feminism 101, especially things like "why does every woman need to be empowered to feel like she's beautiful? Like her body actually does fit society's beauty standards, when the goal should be that she isn't expected to be beautiful in the first place? That she can just be?" And this one is especially insidious because I'm p sure that sentiment was started by fat activists, but now u talk too much about the most basic facets of our society and it's akin to declaring war on trans women (the body pos movement was started by fat activists, and I'm 99% sure it was to be about body neutrality. Now look what it's become). It's so incredibly harmful because I've seen literal trans women get called transphobic feminists for the most basic shit in the world.

(sometimes it makes me wonder: why is a woman who talks about her own oppression automatically viewed as a threat and oppressor herself, even if she's literally the victim of the oppression you accuse her of?)

This also goes hand in hand with how mainstream feminism I feel like has been rendered useless by capitalism and a fear of coming across too strong or aggressive (which is rooted in misogyny anyways). I remember being on here in 2013 right when feminism was becoming more popular/mainstream. Pointing out double standards for men and women for the "shallower" things of fashion and appearance and gender performance was the standard. Now I see people do it and get accused of being T3RFs. Like what's radical about it? Is it necessarily a revolutionary or extreme belief?

There's a lot of things that T3RFs will try to convince you are exclusive and unique to t3rfism, but they're not. That's how I think they recruit people, by seeming like the only ones to point out the obvious or be "reasonable" when they're not. And so many liberal feminists aren't as aware of more relevant dog whistles, like posts that reek of biological essentialism or that paint women as perma-victims. Or just the outright transphobic ideology.

I think a good way to combat this would be to realize that there's more than just two kinds of feminism. Both radfems and libfems seem to have this v black and white thinking that there's only two types of feminism. What's important to remember is that there's actually radical feminists that aren't transphobc--ive seen lots of feminist groups in other countries and anti-racist feminists here describe themselves as radical because their politics truly is radical. And it's only radical because it's anti-capitalist and anti-racist--which necessarily includes supporting trans and gnc people, especially the women, since in the US at least how we even conceive of gender and what makes a woman is based in white supremacy.

[getoheaven]

some information on TERF dogwhistles — TW: transmisogyny, transphobia, s*xual abuse mentions and s*icide/baiting mentions

i’m going to use this short and concise guide on spotting TERF ideology as a jumping off point. from Cambridge university’s women campaign:

HOW DO WE SPOT IT?

Terf ideology uses a lot of the same phrases and tropes, which often seem innocuous on the surface but are actually being used as dogwhistles for transphobia and transmisogyny. Overall, terf ideology hides itself in feminist language, often claiming to support trans rights while actually working to undermine them.

“Gender critical”, discussed above; terfs also often dub themselves “biological women” or “adult human females”, and frequently highlight biological and anatomical signifiers such as “XX” (denoting chromosomes) and parts of reproductive anatomy.

“RadFem”; terf ideology calls itself “radical feminism” after its origins in parts of the feminist ‘second wave’ and its opposition to what it sees as “liberal feminist” positions of trans inclusion, although in reality there’s nothing “radical” about biological essentialism.

Certain waves of terf ideology have attempted to separate trans people out from the rest of the LGBT+ community, so you might see references to the “LGB community” or “drop the T”.

Terfs often dub trans people and their allies the “transgender lobby” or “cult of transgenderism”.

They tend to dislike the term “cis” (non-trans), and often argue that the term ‘terf’ itself is “hate speech”, or a “misogynistic/lesbophobic slur”.

Current terf discourse places a lot of focus on trans children, perpetuating myths that children are being given surgery and hormones (“transing children is child abuse!”).

Another terf trope is painting trans women as predators who want access to women’s spaces so that they can harass and sexually assault cis women.

i’ve also compiled a list of a some other dogwhistles you might want to take into account:

on tumblr or twitter look out for URLs with heavy allusions to genitalia/uteruses/wombs/xx chromosomes

concern trolling - statements such as “we just have concerns” used to filibuster and put roadblocks in the way of genuine conversations about trans people. they are not concerns that will ever be appeased, they also divert the topic away from the issue at hand to purposely muddy the waters of the trans “debate”.

following on from the last point, referring to the issue of trans rights as a “debate” or “discourse”. it both delegitimises the urgency of trans liberation, reducing it down to a debate on a level playing field as well as dehumanising trans people.

“genital preferences are transphobic” - this is a phrase that supposedly originated within the trans community itself. it’s often used in TERF circles as an example of how unreasonable trans people are. it’s also been used to smear the trans community and say that this belief is a very common one amongst trans people, when in reality most of us take a much more nuanced position. to illustrate my point, these stickers were put up by TERFs who then claimed that trans people had made them:

“lost lesbian sisters” - usually in reference to trans-masculine people. the implication being that trans men are not really men but are actually lesbians “brainwashed” by the “trans agenda”

TRA(s) - stands for Trans Rights Activists. obviously there’s nothing wrong with being an activist for trans rights, this is just a specific abbreviation created by TERFs. this also goes beyond simply being an ally, it implies that trans activists are part of a well-funded and organised conspiracy.

41% - this one is really horrible. the National Centre for Transgender Equality surveyed 6,450 trans people and found that 41% of them had attempt s*icide, often due to being harassed and bullied because of their gender identity. TERFs will often weaponise this statistic to suggest that “choosing” to live as a gender other than the one you were assigned is bad for a person’s mental health. in more extreme cases, TERFs will use it as a blunt instrument against trans people suffering with mental illness and egg them on to “join the 41%”. source

TIM /TIF - TIM stands for Trans Identified Male, referring to trans-feminine people. TIF stands for Trans Identified Female and refers to trans-masculine people. i feel this doesn’t need much explanation, it’s simply misgendering.

i think i’ve exhausted most of the big ones, if anyone wants to add on to this it would be much appreciated. lastly i’d like to link to Katy Montgomerie’s youtube channel- she’s a trans woman who regularly talks about and debunks TERF rhetoric, particularly on twitter. her videos have been extremely helpful in compiling this list and getting to understand the ways in which the ideology perpetuates itself.

i highly recommend her series “TERF wars”, which is where she goes through all the transphobic nonsense she’s seen on twitter in the past week. also check out The XX factor, a podcast/stream where she and Christa Peterson discuss the rise of the gender critical “movement” in the UK. i especially recommend this to anyone who is confused about how the conversation around trans rights became so deeply toxic over the past 5 or so years.

thank you for reading, i hope this was as informative as i intended it to be.

[deargodsno]

This is a bit over two years old, but I haven't seen any evidence of a counter-movement among terfs. Basically, if you're prepared to work with white supremacists, and share some of their goals, and repeatedly make appearances on right-wing media (without arguing against them), then you're probably a white supremacist:

Tucker Carlson recently hosted Julia Beck, a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” or “TERF,” in a segment promoting the illusion that there is an important divide over the importance of transgender rights within the LGBTQ community.

Beck and other TERFs claim to be feminists, but they hold vehemently anti-trans views and are widely rejected by LGBTQ advocates and organizations. In fact, TERF groups and activists have joined with right-wing, anti-LGBTQ organizations around the country in lawsuits against trans rights.

Beck's appearance on Fox was just the latest example of right-wing figures and groups promoting TERFs, who use feminist vocabulary to disguise their anti-trans bigotry.

...Beck has also appeared at the anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation as part of a panel of people labeled as being “from the Left” who oppose the Equality Act, a bill that would add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to existing nondiscrimination laws. The January event was moderated by Ryan T. Anderson, an anti-LGBTQ activist who has previously hosted other TERF activists at the Heritage Foundation to attack trans-inclusive legislation.

On the panel, Beck said, “There are only three sexualities -- homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual; all the hip new identities in the alphabet soup like nonbinary, gender-fluid, [and] pansexual are not actually sexualities. Neither is transgender.” She added that the “T” in LGBTQ is “diametrically opposed to the first three letters” and claimed that transgender identities “undermine and erase homosexuals.” She also said the definition of a woman is limited to an “adult human female,” echoing a rallying cry of the U.K.-based TERF movement.

Beck spoke on the panel alongside Kara Dansky, a leader of the TERF group Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) who has also appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight. During her 2017 interview, Dansky said, “We're called transphobic bigots because we ask questions about gender identity. We're asking questions and we're standing up for women and girls.”

Another TERF activist has recently leveraged her anti-trans beliefs into a flood of sympathetic coverage from right-wing outlets.

Meghan Murphy, who founded the pro-TERF blog Feminist Current, is suing Twitter after she was banned from the platform for intentionally misgendering and deadnaming a transgender person. Deadnaming is the act of calling a transgender person by the name given to them at birth that they no longer use and that does not align with their gender identity, and it is a violation of Twitter’s new hateful conduct policy. Right-wing media rushed to cover Murphy’s lawsuit after she posted a YouTube video about the ban, leading to favorable coverage from Quillette, The Federalist, National Review, The Daily Wire, Townhall, The Spectator, LifeSiteNews, the Washington Examiner, and The Daily Caller.

TERFs’ embrace of supposedly feminist aesthetics and rhetoric can make it more difficult for media consumers to identify what they really stand for, and right-wing media take advantage of this confusion to push the illusion that activists “on the Left” share their anti-trans agenda. But TERFs are distinctly on the side of right-wing groups, and they have even allied with the efforts of national anti-LGBTQ groups to oppose trans rights in the judicial system.

In 2016, WoLF sued the Obama administration after it issued guidance to public schools regarding transgender students’ access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. In the suit, WoLF alleged that these accommodations would lead to “indecent exposure” and “voyeurism” -- a claim that has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. In reality, transgender people are more likely to be victims of harassment, assault, and discrimination in bathrooms than to be perpetrators of such crimes.

In G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, WoLF submitted an amicus brief filed jointly with the Family Policy Alliance, a national anti-LGBTQ group with an alliance of state groups that work to deny LGBTQ people their civil rights. The brief argued against extending Title IX protections -- which “protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance” -- to include gender identity. WoLF’s brief was submitted in support of a school district that refused to accommodate the needs of a transgender student.

WoLF also filed a brief in the Doe v. Boyertown Area School District case in support of a client of the extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom, who sued his school district for allowing transgender boys to use the same restrooms and locker rooms as him.

Another coalition, called Hands Across the Aisle, which includes TERFs as well as conservative Christians, has also been actively supporting anti-LGBTQ groups in their legal actions against transgender civil rights. Like WoLF, the group filed an amicus brief in the Boyertown case supporting ADF’s efforts to roll back protections for transgender students.

Hands Across the Aisle also wrote a 2017 letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson urging him to rescind protections implemented by the Obama administration in 2016 for transgender people seeking assistance in homeless shelters. The letter was signed by dozens of leaders of various anti-LGBTQ groups such as the Family Policy Alliance, Concerned Women for America, and the Texas Eagle Forum. (A prominent member of Hands Across the Aisle, Meg Kilgannon, was recently interviewed on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle about the group’s opposition to transgender athletes.)

One prominent TERF has also connected with extremist movements overseas to support reactionary movements seemingly unrelated to her anti-trans agenda. Kellie-Jay Minshull, who goes by Posie Parker, recently traveled to Norway for a conference where she posed with far-right Hungarian politician, Holocaust denier, and Islamophobe Hans Lysglimt Johansen.

Additionally, Parker has repeatedly expressed support for far-right anti-Muslim activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson. Robinson, another former Tucker Carlson Tonight guest, has also expressed anti-trans views in a video for far-right media outlet The Rebel.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

People are right that JKR isn't a TERF. Nothing about her rhetoric is Radical or Feminist, she's just a fucking transphobic idiot. (And she excludes way more then just trans people, I read her books with all the *looks* exactly zero queer characters or non-white characters of any kind of note.)

okay listen I understand where the impulse to say that Joanne cannot be a feminist and a transphobe at the same time, or that anybody cannot be a feminist and a transphobe at the same time, comes from, but I actually find that attempt to gloss over the less pleasant aspects of feminism really unhelpful.

I will agree that “terf” sometimes gets used in ways that are patently ridiculous; the infamous “Putin is a terf” comes to mind, because while undeniably transphobic I really don’t think Putin ever claimed to be any kind of feminist. on the other hand, Joanne has indicated in the past that she does at least consider herself liberal, and given the way she frequently compares accusations of transphobia to the silencing of women with insults like “feminazi,” I really think she does see herself as some kind of bold feminist spitfire bravely holding out against a mob in defense of the rights of poor oppressed cis women.

feminism is not a monolith and for better or worse, anyone is allowed to call themselves a feminist. some - dare I say most - feminists have different ideas of what constitutes “good” feminism, and some of them will be pretty fucking heinous. there are proud self-proclaimed feminists who are transphobic, racist, ableist, you name it. I think that makes for pretty shit feminism, but I also cannot deny their right to identify as such. (this goes both ways; I have no doubt that there are transphobes who think I have no place calling myself a feminist.) 

to simply write these people off with “well, those aren’t REAL feminists” is a cop out that does nothing to root out the sources of bigotry within feminism or meaningfully examine why feminist activism has frequently been exclusionary to women who are trans, who are disabled, who are disabled or poor or queer, etc. there have, historically, been a LOT of shitty cishet white women with too much money involved in feminist movements, and pretending otherwise behooves no one. 

[trans-advice]

Hey, for the past 5 or so years I have privately identified as nonbinary or not conforming to any gender, and even recently requested that my boss and coworkers use they/them pronouns. About a month ago I stumbled across a "gender critical" blog and started reading it. I know it's a bad idea to engage with trolls, especially when it will impact your sense of self, but I felt restless that my existence was being debated and wanted to hear the other side. Now I am feeling confused (1 o 2 asks)

I’m feeling confused and gross, wondering if all this time I have been actually working against my own feminist beliefs, or if I’m just being naive and getting indoctrinated. Like,I worry about me being a female who simply didn’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, tricking myself into thinking I"wasn’t like the other girls". I have also been wondering about what it means to identify into an oppressed group, and why we can’t talk about it without being dismissed as a dumb TERF. (1 o 2 asks) Thx

— Eve: CW: long post, possibly rambley, could’ve used better editing, transphobia, “gender critical”, recuperation, discussion of “terf” politics, recuperation of liberation movements, politics, oppression, rape culture, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist,

So basically I have tried for almost 4 weeks to write a response detailing this stuff. however it’s gotten too unwieldy. i tried to condense it, but this was as close as i got. it’s practically like 3 drafts back to back. I couldn’t figure out the differences & when i saw similarities it seemed significantly different enough. so I’m not editing any further. here’s a mindvomit. i wish i had this more polished but I can’t do that & i didn’t get a response.

however I’m going to make a history book recommendation, a referral to gendercensus2020, and i need to emphasize that these are much more like personal beliefs & not generally the tone of this blog which aims to give advice & positivity, while this is inherently political, the good bad & ugly. and there are trans people of various persuasions so I don’t want alienate them. i dissecting some ideologies that are transphobic, how they became that, how they got recuperated, and how you can find the same concerns being addressed. I’m answering this because it totally makes sense to me that this is asked in good faith & I want to respect your concerns & show that there are better methods of liberation activism that are trans affirmative, or at least must become & develop into such.

So I’m going to recommend the book “Transgender History (Second Edition)” by Susan Stryker, which I have put on our blog’s google drive account, so hence a link. It goes into the historic common ground between the feminists & LGBT+ peoples. It also gets into historic movements. And on top of that, the first chapter is literally a list of terminology deconstructing gender, which is also helpful for analyzing topics feminism analyzes..

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IvCwNvCJ_EiDmOer4zS8SbFGz4m-WDJ1

another thing you need to know regarding the label lesbian back in the day is that it was a catchall for any woman who didn’t have sex with men. now granted, this was a cisnormative understanding, but basically lesbians included celibate women, asexual women, and of course bisexual women in addition to gay women.

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money to have sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (granted, communities cannot be monoliths if they want to be ecosystems, like any movement label there are different interpretations made by members of it, and therefore there are some strands that uphold a homonormative appreciation for conversion therapy. perhaps a middle ground for understanding how that happened is that joke about macho sexuality purity “if a man masturbates with his hand, he’s using a man’s hand to get off, then it’s gay.” granted, there was of course a political/economic reason to this, but still, it seems in terms of history that this joke was considered actually legitimate.)

“lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included ace, celibate & gynephiliac women. part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married which I’ll detail a few paragraphs from now. (while this next thought could be incorrect because I did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, I think the vestiges of those economic pressures are basically the gist of “comphet”.) the goal of political lesbian as well as lesbian separatism was to build an economy/get money that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, via marriage, pregnancy etc. so basically in an effort to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

however these networks ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. it makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210] >

birth control helped to liberate women & that accommodation/handicap for reproductive health disabilities (disability is merely inability to do something that’s Normative. so if having a uterus, pregnancy/menstruation/having breasts etc aren’t considered normal, which is especially common in a patriarchal society for these examples, then it’s disability.) It should be said that due to the desire for bodily autonomy to regulate our own body parts, as well as a desire to manage our fertility & sterilization, the transgender movement has a lot in common with feminism’s female-as-disability movement.)

it should also be noted that before the medical transitioning became accessible that us trans people relied a lot more on social transitioning than medical transitioning. it should also be mentioned that the medical procedures are available & used by cisgender people too.

that being said, since both cis females & transgender women were denied birth control etc, there was a very intense fear of impregnation happening & trans women going back in the closet not only to get money under patriarchy but also because life raising a kid is hard. like if you’ve ever seen “the stepford wives” & look at how the ally husband betrays his feminist wife, then that should clue us into how a lack of birth control scared us.

the problem with the school of feminism that emphasizes physiological sex over gender identity (in order to deny the existence of trans people with female-organs or not) is that it doesn’t account for birth control & how that’s affected the landscape, the economy etc, the revolutionary impact of birth control basically. it also ignores that trans people & cis women feminists have the same goals when it comes to getting freedoms about reproductive rights & bodily autonomy. therefore it ends up being transphobic & wanting to run back into the times when we didn’t have abortion access because they want to hurt us.

That being said though, we need to have birth control & more in order to help liberate trans people too, so if somewhere doesn’t have birth control, then we’re not doing well either because it’d pay a lot more to be transphobic (which of course it doesn’t now when we have birth control & various medical & other technologies). i think what I’m trying to say is that similar to disability accomodations clashing with each other, if we of the women’s liberation, the trans liberation, and the gay & lesbian liberation, and the bisexual & ace liberation get stranded then we’re all doomed. granted we might be doing that due to defensiveness with hostility similar to how in the 1980s feminism got very conservative in USA & how some transgender people get spared in systems with strict gender conformity & anticolonialist values, it’d be wrong to say that all our liberations are in conflict with each other. they can be mishandled, but ultimately, safety still tends to favor cisheteropatriarchal people. internalized patriarchal thinking is like internalized queerphobia, and so forth.

I want to emphasize that it is relatively easy for transgender people especially nonbinary people to find gender critical discourse somewhat appealing. Here’s why: TERFs & Gender Critical discourse is agender-normative disability discourse regarding reproductive health & other AFAB organs. (a disability is being unable to do things that society considers normative. so if you can’t drive & your locale de facto requires it, then that’s a disability. also in usa you’ll find that pregnancy & disability are the main things welfare programs prioritize. a pregnancy can be harmful, but can be easier with the right monitoring etc. which again is the same with disability.)

the problem though is that they then insist on misgendering you as one of the binary genders based on objectification of your body (specifically, “morphology”). point being, because you feel dysphoric over being misgendered as something nonbinary as being mislabeled as cisgender, this implies that you are indeed transgender.

https://gendercensus.com/post/612238605773111296/the-gender-census-2020-is-now-open

—

Now to be clear, there are historical economic considerations that made the decisions to specialize on the intersectionality of cisgender AFABs, but the economy & technology has changed. Basically marriage back in the day was economically necessary because there was effectively no birth control available. Therefore, to get child support etc, required getting the father to pay the consequences. However, marriage was very much a chattel property institution, marital rape was still legal, and women couldn’t get credit etc in our own names.

#

At the same time, similar to birth control being unavailable, hormones & other procedures for medically transitioning trans people were unavailable as well, which meant social transitioning & wardrobe etc were the main methods of affirming our gender. however, we sometimes got lucky & had a doctor write us a note affirming our gender & sometimes we got even luckier & govts accepted this. this however required getting labelled sick & begging doctors to give us treatment & getting money for this since insurance companies etc still discriminated against transgender people even when we agreed to have our gender identity situation labelled as sick & medically necessary. (similarly insurance companies still refuse to cover abortions & so do some doctors & hospitals.)

#

So this meant that AFABs were concerned about getting hijacked via impregnation. Because of the patriarchal economics of the whole thing, people were afraid of “the stepford wives” repeating itself in their own lives, where the mind can only handle what the ass can stand would mean trans women would go back into the closet.

#

Granted, that’s a bit misrepresentative of trans women & trans people because trans people & cis women who can get pregnant do have a lot more in common. we take the same meds, go to the same clinics, menopause etc gets taken due to distress over how our bodies work, etc. then again, how would trans AMAB people have gotten the money for child support?

#

historically & still to this day we basically had to beg doctors for the ability to get hormones to get a surgery to get a gender marker change & so on, which granted, what we trans people had available to us varied from locale to locale because it required collaborations of trans people, doctors, and the local govts & especially their police stations. again, before roe v wade abortion providers were super underground & secretive & there were specialized units at police stations for hunting down patients & providers under the charge of “murder”. it’s the same dynamics.

#

seriously trans people & people with bodies that can get pregnant, menstruate, menopause, etc, we go to the same clinics! women’s health clinics take trans patients, planned parenthood takes trans patients, do i need to go any further on how trans people & feminists have the same interests regarding reproductive health?

—

as for political lesbianism:

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money before having sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (i’m not sure what the conditions were like surrounding not piv sex among the straights, and therefore what the likelihood of avoiding piv sex was. I do know that rape culture was much more heavily normalized than it is now.)

“Lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included: - ace, - celibate - bisexual - gay women. Part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married, (while this next statement could be incorrect because i did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, i think the vestiges of those economic pressures such as weddings are basically the gist of “comphet”.)

The goal of Political Lesbianism as well as Lesbian Separatism was to build an economy that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, such as that of marriage, pregnancy etc. In efforts to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

However these networks, (partly due to lacking radicalization) ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. It makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> “The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210]”

[go-diane-winchester]

Why does Misha have a fake name?

The more I research Misha Collins, the more I realize that Misha has a criminal mindset.  The Travis Aaron Wade debacle was what made this clear.  Ty Olsson is still a head scratcher.  The pedo remarks just made things worse and I eventually stopped seeing Misha as a decent human being.  And to think, one upon a time, that I liked him.  This last piece of information is why I think he definitely comes off as a scam artist.

Jensen, Jared and Misha are three actors with weird names.  Yet, Misha chose his name.  Jensen and Jared were born with theirs.  Have you ever wondered why Misha chose such an odd fake name?  Not only is the name fake but from a mainstream American standpoint, the name is gender confusing.  Misha is a scam artist.  If he can leech from any community, he will do it.  From his spectacle of a wedding, to his open marriage, to his gender-confusing fake name, it is an attempt to tap into the liberal community. 

The liberal community encompasses a lot of people.  Sometimes, these people don't see eye to eye with each other, because each of these groups have tenets which the other groups don't agree with.  However, the liberal movement places all these groups, rather presumptuously, under one umbrella:  Liberal America.  This community includes the LGBT, the Jews [who are categorized as Semitics and not whites], the Muslims, the Minorities, feminists, any race except the white race and the liberal Christians.  These Christians are liberal possibly because of racial affiliations and because of the LGBT, maybe because they have an LGBT relative, although this is not always the case.  The white people within the liberal movement either identify as something else other than white [for example female, gay, Buddhist etc], or they carry ''white guilt''.

Misha's entire life seems very LGBT-friendly, unless your eyes are wide open and you realize, that he isn't.  The man uses large groups of people for his own benefit and monetary gain.  It is why honest LGBT people don't like him.  They see right through his lies.  The LGBT group that supports him are young and not world wise.  They are either millennial or Gen Z.  The people who are his own age, who are smart enough not to get information from social media, who are not militant like the entitled snowflakes you get today, don't get swindled by this man.  Misha's fanbase is liberal and young. 

Recently I did a post on Stands Merch making a transphobic joke on Twitter.  They also are known to mock Jared in their tweets.  Many people were angered by the trans remark.  I made the connection between how Misha made a trans joke years ago about Jensen looking pre-op in his portfolio picture and that there is a rumor that Misha is a stakeholder at Stands.  Apparently that is not a rumor.  Misha is a stakeholder.  That is why Stands bashes Jared on Twitter.  Its not Stands.  Its Misha.  Misha bashes and belittles Jared, using a company Twitter handle.  Thanks to the wonderful person who passed this information onto me. 

This is why Misha uses a fake name for his public life.  It is so that he can have his businesses under his real, legal names.  And nobody from his mostly underage fan base will ever think to link him to charities that he is ''supporting''.  He never said overtly that he is a stakeholder at Flash Merch, the Stands company.  Why?  Because he knows he is making money from the Supernatural fan base without telling them that the business belongs to him.  Stands is marketed as a charity.  But under Californian Law, it is registered as a business.  If he said he had a stake in these companies, his fans might be put off because he is essentially making money out of them and he wont come off as a philanthropist.  But, like this, even people who don't like him will support Stands for charitable reasons [even clueless Jared and J2 fans] and he will be profiteering from everyone, even people that cant stand him.  This is why he accepted a 70% cut in his pay check.  Its because he uses Castiel to make money elsewhere, money that I hypothesize might be untaxed, unlike his paycheck, which is.  Money acquired through charity is not taxable.  But his failed Haitian orphanage is proof, not all the money goes to charity.  So where is it going. 

Apologies for the small font.  I will just type the words underneath the screenshot in italics. 

Dmitri Krushnic is currently associated with two companies, according to public records.  The companies were formed over a one year period with the most recent being incorporated six months ago in October of 2018.  All companies are still active. 

A connection is made when two people are officers, directors or otherwise associated with the same company.  Dmitri Krushnic has only one known connection. 

I wonder what Jared will think if he realizes that Misha uses Stands to make Jared look stupid and make Sam get erased.  If you want to buy Sam merch, you wont find a variety on Stands merch.  That is how we know Misha mocks his own fanbase.  Remember the clam trinket that he claimed meant cockles?  His fans felt duped.  He is gathering with both hands, before SPN ends.  I don't think he is happy about it ending because there goes his moneymaker.  If you were buying Stands merch, thinking you were supporting a charity, understand that you were instead supporting Misha and that this money may have never went to charity. 

Source:

https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/30omd0/dmitri-krushnic

[rebelwheelssoapbox]

When Feminism Fails Feminists : A Love Letter To The Movement

by RebelwheelsNYC When I was a little girl growing up in the late 70's, my mother told me, time and again, that whatever I do, to always make sure that I had my own money, and to never – ever – be financially reliant on a man. Besides completely ruling out the option and existence of queer sexuality, it was the exact opposite of what was drilled into her, by her parents. Advice that she realized was not on point, during toxic marriage #1, where she initially had no financial way out of.

[image description: a baby in business attire, with a cellphone and laptop]

And so I became fiercely independent. If the neighborhood kids sold lemonade, I sold lemonade and iced tea. If local teenagers were charging 5 dollars per hour to babysit, I was charging a more competitive rate of 3 dollars per hour – which got me more gigs. (Though to be honest, this is also because I was 10 & 3 dollars per hour was big money. Why adults were leaving their very young children, sometimes toddlers, sometimes babies with a 10 year old, is a whole 'nother question. Yes, I was very mature for my age, but still... 10.) I was like a mini entrepreneur, always doing something to make money. I was behaving in a way that I perceived (and what was presented to me via my mother) as being an empowered woman, and although I didn't know the word as of yet – a feminist. My mother eventually went from the stay at home mom / housewife (which was frowned upon in mainstream feminist circles ) to the modern working woman of the corporate world (which was greatly revered). This was partially done I suppose as a feminist statement, a rebellion against what she was taught, but also it was of necessity to get out of a bad marriage.

[image description: a woman in a typical 80′s business suit, with huge shoulder pads. she is talking on a brick size 80′s cellphone.]

And while I was great at making money, one thing my mother never taught me (and I suspect no one ever taught her) was how to have a good, loving and mutually supportive relationship. Another being that money (although necessary and can be a certain kind of freedom) does not guarantee happiness. And so in order to lead a better life, I would eventually need to go beyond the kind of feminism that my mother taught me, just as she had to go beyond what her mother taught her. And of course, these days we know there is nothing less than about staying home and raising your kids (if that is what a woman chooses, and if that is an option, which it isn't for all people). In fact, it only has stigma when it's viewed and presented as a woman's “only path”. The toxic and false idea that a woman, at best, could only be three things in life. A daughter. A wife. A mother. That's it. And thus why back in the day, if a woman was a stay home mom and wife? She was a traitor. She was oppressed. She was not a real feminist. In the 90's I was exposed to a more academic, queer focused but still very white brand of feminism. It was also another instance where once again a feminist looked and behaved a certain way, if she was a real feminist. Short hair was seen by some as a sign of freedom. Long hair meant you were (in ways) oppressed, that the only possible reason you chose long hair is that you were a servant to the patriarchy and male gaze – when maybe you just liked to have longer hair.

[image description: two powerful woman stand with a raised fist of solidarity, and a proetest sign in their other hand. one sign reads “protect: black, asian, muslim, latinx, disabled, trans, fat, poor women”. the other sign reads “if you don’t fight for all women, you fight for no women.” ]  And I think this is where feminism sometimes fails the same people it is supposed to liberate. Yes, sometimes progress means rebelling against the norm, to even present that as an option, and that is a very important first step. Do note, in no way am I disparaging the activists and progress of the feminists who came before me. But if a movement never goes beyond that first step, where by default, it's the direct opposite of the norm, then the norm is still dictating the behavior and appearance of what qualifies as, in this case “a real feminist”. True liberation can only be achieved when we go beyond that first step, and let people be as they want to be, regardless if it happens to fit or go against the norm, or even varies and fluctuates as per their whim and mood, long as one is aware of the root of that decision : internalized oppression or liberation.

Humans are nuanced beings and one box will never fit all people. Furthermore replacing one box based on societal norms, with another box that is the default opposite of the norm, is still a box. One could reasonably argue, that this is not liberation or it's liberation, but only for some. For those who can comfortably conform, while excluding other people who can not. It goes without saying that the topic of feminism and liberation, is one that is complicated and nuanced, a topic that one could easily write a thesis on (and many have). It is also important to note that when I refer to feminism in this article, I am obviously referring to my own experience growing up, which was pretty much focused on liberation via financial means and the impact of sexism. In this way, I also needed to go beyond what I grew up with, because when we have a kind of feminism that doesn't acknowledge how various forms of discrimination (racism, LGBTQ+phobia – and yes this includes, transphobia - ableism, fatphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia and all other forms of oppression) intersect with the feminist struggle, and impact feminists from marginalized communities; when our feminism is not intersectional, and mostly focuses on the struggles of the cisgender heterosexual middle class white woman, this too fails feminists.

author’s note: I am a queer/bi, disabled (#DisabledAF) intersectional activist, writer, artist and nerd. While this was written with the intention of solidarity, sometimes I don’t always get it right. If you feel this article misses the mark in any way, I am open to constructive feedback. you can leave a comment or msg me privately.

[image description:  black and pink symbol of feminism]

[tervacious]

I first spoke with Dianic Priestess Ruth Barrett about how to create a Samhain ritual, which you can check out HERE.   In part 2, we get into the roots of radical feminism.

AfterEllen: I wanted to talk to you about lesbian feminists embrace of Dianic spirituality. In the 1970s a lot of women turned away from the religions in which they grew up, because they identified them as patriarchal, and they turned instead to a new women-focused spirituality.

Ruth Barrett: I want to name one of our foremothers Mary Daly, feminist theologian, she languaged for many of us the realization that as long as god is male, the male is god. It was one of those took-your-breath-away paradigms that was hiding in plain sight. So for a lot of us in the 1970s-80s the notion of ‘how do we recognize spirituality, religion, politics? and how does patriarchy affect all of these things?’

There was this examination that continues to this day. As your readers know, our lives don’t take place in a vacuum, they are always in a context of history or herstory.

In the 1970s as women were working primarily for equal pay, reproductive rights, equity in the workplace, all of those things, the notion of a feminist spirituality did not enter the consciousness for some time. That had to do with the fact that Marxist politics was influential on the left. Religion was the opium of the people. Spirituality was a distraction from the work people needed to do to be free. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 1970s that women started to think about it differently.

Z Budapest is a Hungarian-born immigrant who came over after the communists had invaded Budapest, and she brought with her her mother’s folk traditions, folk religion. She also became a feminist, so she began to merge these two things.

Around 1976 or ’77 she was arrested for fortune telling in LA, it was against the law. It was the witch trial that occurred in LA in that year. That got the attention of the feminist movement of the time. They had struck out against that woman for tarot reading. The movement took notice and things really went well from there. It was a spiritual revolution. The idea of ‘where do we oppress ourselves from the inside?’

This is what I came up in in my teens and early 20s. Where are we complicit and colluding with the values of patriarchy that we have been indoctrinated into?

AE: You had mentioned the witch trial of Z Budapest

RB: The “Year of the Woman,” let me point out.

AE: Was Z a lesbian?

RB: Yes, and she still is (laughs).

AE: So the movement takes up the cause of women’s spirituality. There was a fair amount of denigration of women’s spirituality within the movement I imagine, in the same way there was the denigration of the “Lavender Menace.”

RB: Many women did not embrace the idea of a feminist spirituality. You have generational trauma over patriarchal religion and rather than seeing it as something that could be healing, there was an outright rejection. There was a lot of Eastern influence and New Age thinking that entered goddess spirituality as well. The Dianic tradition was based in radical feminism, but the larger goddess movement was not necessarily. It really depended on who feminists ran into, in terms of what they could relate to.

I founded a community in Los Angeles; I was ordained in 1980 and that community is still going. It’s the longest running Dianic community. The work that we do is not only personal, it’s political. We do work to counter the dominant power in the best ways we can. We work to heal from the effects. To model the way we want to see the world, through our activism.

It’s because we came out of Second Wave feminist politics. Those who identify in the Dianic tradition still have some form of political activism in terms of their magic and their rituals.

The Dianic tradition — in the beginning most of us were lesbian — but it grew and is now not specifically lesbian. A lot of people assume it’s a lesbian religion, but it’s not. It’s for any female who identifies with those values of radical feminism.

AE: Oftentimes patriarchal loyalists and people who want to denigrate older women make the claim that crusty, old, privileged, white women bought into Dianic traditions or goddess traditions because they buy into gender essentialism. Can you speak to that?

RB: Well there’s a lot of goddess traditions, so there may be a seed of truth regarding some of those traditions. But let’s look specifically at Dianic tradition. Gender essentialism is a misunderstanding coming from the fact that Dianics focus on the sexed body as a metaphor for life. Gender is arbitrary designations of behaviors or characteristics ascribed to the body, whether you are female or male. The women that come to Circle are very diverse in their presentation. It was not just women in flowing robes that were participating, then or now. There were women who were not conforming to gender roles. Essentialism is put on goddess traditions, but Dianics don’t focus on a [gendered] duality. When you don’t focus on a duality, you don’t have the issue of genderism [the gender binary]. In the Dianic tradition, we are whole unto our selves. We model wholeness, so it’s not like females have this one set of characteristics and males have the other. It means we have it all. I can wield the sword and I can cook a meal. Whatever would be gendered behaviors or skill sets — it’s not like, because I have this body I’m more this or more that “naturally.”

That’s what’s happening now because of trans/gender ideology. At the same time people think we’re getting away from the binary, we’re actually reinforcing it. Essentialism means I’m a sexed female, therefore I’m more prone to these attributes and of course these characteristics are gendered. And Dianics just out and out reject that. Who made this up and whose cause does it serve? Where did we get this notion that we have a male side and a female side? What they’re saying with the duality of [masculine or feminine] behaviors or attributes is a crock, we are all whole.

Women can be and behave and aspire to whatever we want and the only thing stopping us is cultural conditioning. That’s the opposite of essentialism.

AE: So Dianism puts forth that there is no single way to be a female.

RB: The maiden/mother/crone metaphor is just a way to talk about our lives. The maiden is youth, mother includes warrior, amazon, creatrix, and crone is the woman who is elderly. Phases of life like the inhale of woman’s breath, you sustain that breath for a moment, then you exhale. It’s a way of talking about cycles. Creation, sustenance and death. So there’s many ways we use language to talk about it and the women-centered symbols is another way to talk about that.

AE: There has been an explosion of women returning to personal practice, a mainstreaming of witchcraft. To the point that there was a witch starter pack that was going to be sold at Sephora.

RB: It may be an entry point for women. You can’t see me rolling my eyes right now, but I also want to think, “what could be positive about this?” The backlash reveals the idea that power in the hands of women is inherently evil. In a sense to normalize it, to do divination or turning inward for guidance, the idea that we could assist one another in our healing — that’s not a new idea, that’s an old idea. Becoming commercialized may trivialize it, but it also means that this idea is no longer terrifying to women to consider their own power or their own authority.

AE: But this might be the first spark for a woman to turn inward for guidance. There is a wide commodification of witchcraft and ethnic and folk traditions going on right now, certainly Sephora is the worst example of trivializing and feminizing since it is part of the multi-billion dollar makeup industry. It is also happening on Etsy and Instagram from boutique sellers. But it’s so interesting that this came from a makeup store since this is one way that women participate in our own feminization and conformity to gendered stereotypes.

RB: It’s also interesting that there’s this thread in magic of “glamoring” and that has to do with influencing others to see you in a certain way. So I hate the stuff, but I’ve put on mascara or something knowing that if I do it with perfect application, I’ll be treated in a certain way.

AE: As a feminine-of-center lesbian, I don’t want to denigrate makeup-wearers, and I definitely wear makeup sometimes, but it’s so true that in liberal feminism the party line is that enacting gender stereotypes can be empowering.

RB: In liberal feminism, anything goes. There is no consistent analysis.

Glamoring, the definition is the quality of fascinating alluring or attracting. Glamoring, in magical terms, can be a charm, enchantment, or witchery. Glamoring is taken from the intentional creation of an illusion.

[the-feminist-philosopher]

TERFs calling themselves Hygienic was literally taken from the concept of racial hygiene and the idea that allowing "certain people" into a community (integrating, specifically, integrating trans women) dilutes the purity of the people of that community. So, there's one.

TERFs calling for rad fems to embrace the reality of race is another example. In case you aren't aware, race realism already exists. It's racist pseudo science that holds there are inborn racial difference between white and black/brown people that justify segregation of the communities (so not to dilute community "purity") because it's believed one race is biologically more prone to violence and aggression than the other (among other things including the belief that black and brown people are less intelligent).

Literal white supremacists and white supremacist organizations (See: Richard Spencer’s Radix) have been working hard to try to turn TERFs into “race realists.”

Additionall, many rad fem leaders and organizations have come to ally with LGB &T hate groups and the Christian right because they, "know who real women are." It is these christian right groups like the FRC and ADF who are behind many of the anti-abortion, anti-women movements through the U.S. and Europe. They're incidentally behind a lot of anti-trans policies and legislation.

You can read a bit about who is behind funding these policy initiatives, and how much money goes into these campaigns below:

European Parliamentary Forum

Southern Poverty Law Center on the ADF

Southern Poverty Law Center on the FRC

And you can read about the connection between these groups and trans-exclusionaries and radical feminists below:

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Far-Right Anti-Trans Laws

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Anti LGBT Campaigns

Political Research Associates on Partners with the Christian Right

An "Unlikely" Ally

Meg Kilgannon literally created an organization, "Hands across the aisle," with the express purpose of connecting radical feminists with christian, anti-LGBTQ groups. Much of their rhetoric depends on the assumption that our slight and limited sexual dimorphism makes "males" more capable than "females."

We've also seen countless radical feminists appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight and the Ingraham Angle, two Fox hosts well-known for whipping up anti-immigration sentiment in America's Christian Nationalist movement. Speakers included: Meg Kilgannon, Kara Dansky, Tammy Bruce, and Julia Beck.

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) even accepted a $15,000 donation from the religious freedom giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom. They've also co-authored anti-trans parenting guides with the Family Policy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation. They've held conferences and panels with Christian-right organizing groups too

The term "gender ideology" even has it's origins in conservative Christian circles. This, plus their tendency to provoke demonstrators or advocates so they can paint themselves as the victims of trans-rights violence and exclusion are pulled right from the alt-right play book. They literally target gender-affirming and hormone therapy clinics with the same strategies used by anti-abortionists in their campaign to target abortion and reproductive health clinics. Plus, TERF complaints about the supposed existence of "cancel culture" echo conservative and right-wing rhetoric. And there's a reason men on the "right" of the political spectrum can't stand the existence of trans people, but will voice support for TERFs and their ideology while co-opting their language. Notice how incels took off with the "females" and "adult, human female” rhetoric.

And the bitch of it? They know what they're doing and they know it is dangerous.

“I do feel kind of nervous about working with the right wing because they have opposed women’s bodily autonomy…”

-Julia Beck

Politically, rad fems put their eggs in the same basket as people passing anti-abortion policies, people trying to pass girl's genital inspection policies for sports, people trying to ban LGBT+ books, people who want to repeal the right to gay marriage, and people who believe that a woman's "place" is in the home- serving a husband and children.

Who's defending TERFs? Tucker Carlson. Piers Morgan. Jordan Peterson. Theocratic *fascist* Matt Walsh. Very problematic, authoritarian men who are misogynistic and, quite literally, fascist.

people who believe radfems are just “women with opinions” and not the sum of their very harmful belief systems are the reason why so many are blind to the nazi dogwhistles entrenched in terf ideology. boiling the issue down to “women with opinions” is a way of calling misogyny where there is none in order to halt all arguments against what they’re truly saying. essentially, it’s a strawman designed to derail a legitimate criticism of their beliefs and the damage those beliefs cause people. 

[feministlikeme]

1. Before explaining something to a woman, ask yourself if she might already understand. She may know more about it than you do.

2. Related: Never, ever try to explain feminism to a woman.

3. Trans women are women. Repeat that until you perish.

4. RESPECT PEOPLE’S PRONOUNS. It’s not hard.

5. Remember that fat women exist and aren’t all trying to get thin. Treat them with respect.

6. In fact, just never comment on a woman's body.

7. Be kind to women in customer service positions. Tip them extra. (But not in a creepy way.)

8. Trust women. When they teach you something, don't feel the need to go and check for yourself. And especially do not Google it in front of them.

9. Don’t maintain a double standard for… anything, ever.

10. CLOSE YOUR LEGS ON PUBLIC TRANSIT, OH MY GOD.

11. Trying to describe a woman positively? Say she's “talented,” “clever,” or “funny.” Not “gorgeous,” “sweet,” or “cute.”

12. Examine your language when talking about women. Get rid of “irrational,” “dramatic,” “bossy,” and “badgering” immediately.

13. Don't think to yourself, I describe men like that too. A) You probably don't. B) If you do, it's to criticize them for acting like a woman.

14. Do you love “fiery” Latina women? “Strong” Black women? “Mysterious” Asian women? Stop. Pick up a book on decolonial feminism. Read.

15. Stop calling women “feisty.” We don't need a special lady word for “has an opinion."

16. Recognize women's credibility when you introduce them. “Donna is lovely” is much less useful than “Donna knows shitloads about architecture.”

17. Think about how you describe the young women in your family. Celebrate them for being funny and smart, not for being pretty and compliant.

18. Examine the way you talk about women you’re attracted to. Fat women, old women, queer, trans, and powerful women are not your “guilty crush.”

19. Learn to praise a woman without demonizing other women. “You're not like other girls” is not a compliment. I want to be like other girls. Other girls are awesome.

20. Share writing by women. Don't paraphrase their work in your own Facebook post to show us all how smart or woke you are. I guarantee the woman said it better in the first place.

21. Buy sanitary pads and tampons and donate them to a homeless shelter. Just do it.

22. How much of what you are watching/reading/listening to was made by women? Gender balance your bookcase.

23. Feeling proud of your balanced bookcase? Are there women of color there? Trans, queer, and disabled women? Poor women? Always make sure you’re being intersectional.

24. Don't buy media that demeans women’s experiences, valorizes violence against women, or excludes them entirely from a cast. It's not enough to oppose those things. You have to actively make them unmarketable.

25. Pay attention to stories with nuanced female characters. It will be interesting, I promise.

26. If you read stories to a child, swap the genders.

27. Watch women's sport. And just call it “sports.”

28. Withdraw your support from sports clubs, institutions, and companies that protect and employ rapists and abusers.

29. Stop raving about Woody Allen. I don't care if he shits gold. Find a non-accused-abuser to fanboy over.

30. It's General Leia, not princess. The Doctor has a companion, not an assistant. It's Doctor Bartlett, not Mrs Madame First Lady.

31. Cast women in parts written for men. We know how to rule kingdoms, go to war, be, not be, and wait for Godot.

32. Pay for porn.

33. Recognize that sex work is work. Be an advocate for and ally to sex workers without speaking for them.

34. Share political hot takes from women as well as men. They might not be as widely accessible, so look for them.

35. Understand that it was never “about ethics in journalism.”

36. Speak less in meetings today to make space for your women colleagues to share their thoughts. If you're leading the meeting, make sure women are being heard as much as men.

37. If a woman makes a good point, say, “That was a good point.” Don't repeat her point and take credit for it.

38. Promote women. Their leadership styles may be different than yours. That's probably a good thing.

39. Recruit women on the same salary as men. Even if they don't ask for it.

40. Open doors for women with caring responsibilities by offering flexible employment contracts.

41. If you meet a man and a woman at work, do not assume the man is the superior for literally no reason.

42. If you're wrongly assumed to be more experienced than a woman colleague, correct that person and pass the platform to the woman who knows more.

43. Make a round of tea for the office.

44. Wash it up.

45. If you find you're only interviewing men for a role, rewrite the job listing so that it’s more welcoming to women.

46. Make sure you have women on your interview panel.

47. Tell female colleagues what your salary is.

48. Make sure there's childcare at your events.

49. Don't schedule breakfast meetings during the school run.

50. If you manage a team, make sure that your employees know that you recognize period pain and cystitis as legitimate reasons for a sick day.

51. If you have a strict boss (or mom or teacher) who is a woman, she is not a “bitch.” Grow up.

52. Expect a woman to do the stuff that's in her job description. Not the other miscellaneous shit you don't know how to do yourself.

53. Refuse to speak on an all-male panel.

54. In a Q&A session, only put your hand up if you have A QUESTION. Others didn’t attend to listen to you.

55. If you have friends or family members who use slurs or discriminate against trans or non-binary people, sit them down and explain why they must stop. (This goes for cis women, too.)

56. If you have friends or family members who use slurs or discriminate against women of other races, sit them down and explain why they must stop. (This goes for white women, too.)

57. If you see women with their hands up, put yours down. This can be taken as a metaphor for a lot of things. Think about it.

58. Raising a feminist daughter means she's going to disagree with you. And probably be right. Feel proud, not threatened.

59. Teach your sons to listen to girls, give them space, believe them, and elevate them.

60. Dads, buy your daughter tampons, make her hot water bottles, wash her bras. Show her that her body isn't something to be ashamed of.

61. But dads, do not try to iron her bras. This is a mistake you will only make once.

62. Examine how domestic labor is divided in your home. Who does the cleaning, the childcare, the organizing, the meal budgeting? Sons, this goes for you, too.

63. Learn how to do domestic tasks to a high standard. “I'd only do it wrong” is a bullshit excuse.

64. Never again comment on how long it takes a woman to get ready. WE ARE TRYING TO MEET THE RIDICULOUS STANDARDS OF A SYSTEM YOU BENEFIT FROM.

65. Challenge the patriarchs in your religious group when they enable the oppression of women.

66. Challenge the patriarchs in your secular movement when they enable the oppression of women.

67. Trust women's religious choices. Don't pretend to liberate them just so you can criticise their beliefs.

68. Examine who books your trips, arranges outings, organizes Christmas, buys birthday cards. Is it a woman? IS IT?

69. And if it is actually you, a man, don't even dare get in touch with me looking for your medal.

70. Take stock of the emotional labor you expect from women. Do you turn to the women around you for emotional support and give nothing in return?

71. Remember that loving your mom/sister/girlfriend is not the same as giving up your own privilege to progress equality for women. And that gender inequality extends beyond the women in your direct social group.

72. Don’t assume that all women are attracted to men.

73. Don’t assume that a woman in public wants to talk to you just because she’s in public.

74. If a woman tells you she was raped, assaulted, or abused, don't ask her for proof. Ask how you can support her.

75. If you see a friend or colleague being inappropriate to a woman, call him out. You will survive the awkwardness, I promise.

76. Repeat after me: Always. Hold. Men. Accountable. For. Their. Actions.

77. Do not walk too close to a woman late at night. That shit can be scary.

78. If you see a woman being followed or otherwise bothered by a stranger, stick around to make sure she’s safe.

79. This should go without saying: Do not yell unsolicited “compliments” at women on the street. Or anywhere.

80. If you are a queer man, recognize that your sexuality doesn’t exclude you from potential misogyny.

81. If you are a queer man, recognize that your queer women or non-binary friends may not feel comfortable in a male-dominated space, even if it’s dominated by queer men.

82. Be happy to have women friends without needing them to want to sleep with you. The “friend zone” is not a thing. We do not owe you sex.

83. Remember that you can lack consent in situations not involving sex—such as when pursuing uninterested women or forcing a hug on a colleague.

84. Champion sex positive women but don't expect them to have sex with you.

85. Trust a woman to know her own body. If she says she won't enjoy part of your sexual repertoire, do not try to convince her otherwise.

86. Be sensitive to nonverbal cues from women, especially around sex. We’re not just being awkward for no reason. (You read “Cat Person,” didn’t you?)

87. It is not cute to try to persuade a woman to have sex with you. EVER. AT ALL. Go home.

88. Same goes for pressuring women to have sex without a condom. Go. Home. And masturbate.

89. Accidentally impregnated a women who doesn't want a kid? Abortions cost money. Pay for half of it.

90. Accidentally came inside a woman without protection? Plan B is expensive. Pay for all of it.

91. Get STD tested. Regularly. Without having to be asked.

92. Examine your opinion on abortion. Then put it in a box. Because, honestly, it's completely irrelevant.

93. Understand that disabled women are whole, sexual human beings. Listen to and respect them.

94. Understand that not all women have periods or vaginas.

95. Believe women's pain. Periods hurt. Endometriosis is real. Polycystic ovaries, vaginal pain, cystitis. These things are real. Hysteria isn’t.

96. If a woman accidentally bleeds on you, try your absolute best to just keep your shit together.

97. Lobby your elected officials to implement high quality sex education in schools.

98. Uplift young Black and Indigenous girls at every possible opportunity. No excuses.

99. Do not ever assume you know what it’s like.

100. Mainly, just listen to women. Listen to us and believe us. It’s the only place to start if you actually want all women to have a “Happy International Women’s Day.”

[lesbian-ed]

do you think that the rest of the community usually "disrespect" lesbians or like push us to the side a lot. I often feel like we're in the shadow of everyone else. like just all around gay men tend to get more media than all of us combined and at one point bisexuals had their thing and now the gender chronicles and the rest tend to not take us seriously like even sometimes when I hang out with my gale male friends they crack jokes with the straight girls in our group & I feel so alone.

Hello there !

You might wanna read up on lesbian socialization (x). This is quite an eye-opening reading that might help you understand our situation better.

Women are the ones in charge of emotional labour and have to care about everyone and their interests, forgetting themselves in the process. For lesbians, it goes double, maybe triple or more. In a phallocentric society, lesbians are seen as deviants, sinners. We “exclude” dick and males from our sexual attraction, and that is an absolute sin in a patriarcal society, as it is the ultimate threat to phallocentrism. Lesbians, in order to make themselves more acceptable and less monstruous in the eyes of heteropatriarchy, in order to attain pardon, have to fulfil female socialization to a fuller extent. This means being as non-threatening as possible to males (you are familiar with the man-hating lesbian stereotype which is used as a scarecrow to 1) prevent lesbians from being lesbians and 2) isolate lesbians who wouldn’t do everything in their power to fight this ridiculous stereotype) ; this means also performing emotional labour to a larger extent than straight women : our emotional labour encompases men, children and straight/bisexual women as well. It is particulary visible in the feminist movement, where lesbians are prominent activists/theorists who are rejected as extremists, while liberal feminism is mostly made of straight or bisexual women (I would argue that it is the case even in radical feminist circles, and I’m referring to the latest drama which occurred in this community on tumblr).

What about the LGBT community, you ask ? Well the same mecanism is easily observable. When lesbians are attacked by lesbophobic trans activists, gay men mostly don’t move a finger. We are expected to do the hard work while getting nothing in return. A good example of this is the gay and lesbian movement for gay rights, which turned into gay pride (notice the erasure of a lesbian pride). Since I am french, I will speak about french lesbian and gay history. In 1977 occurred the first March recorded in France : the Red Dykes (Les Gouines Rouges) along with the Gasolines marched ; more than 300 women marched in Paris. “It was a feminist act in response to Anita Bryant, head of the organization “Sauvons Nos Enfants” (Save Our Children) who called for “the killing of homosexuals in the name of Christ”” said one of the women who was part of this March.“It was an explosion of joy and pleasure, the Gay Pride in 1981 was more conventional, it was taken completely out of our hands by gay men, who took our signs and wanted to be the first to pose for pictures.” This last segment in particular really says a lot. Gay men are still men, and are socialized as men. This is something we should never forget. 

I made a post about the relationship between gay men and lesbians here. I will only add that straight women and gay men have more in common than what we could expect in terms of experience, which might be why it is easier for them to form friendships.

Hope it answered you !

Mod C.

[somuchbetterthanthat]

What do you think the barricade boys would be like today. Like with everything going on.

I was thinking about this, and I thought “oh my god, I have zero idea, that’s why it’s so hard to really write les amis in modern AU” but, I can try to actually give the beginning of an answer (and I’m ready to hear everybody’s opinions on this, really, because I think, depending our own situations, we’re gonna imagine something different for all of them.). This turned extremely long.. sorry.

I think the easiest to pin down are Feuilly and Grantaire, to be honest. 

Grantaire, would be That Guy who never went to vote to an election because “what’s the point? They’re all the same.” Or maybe, the first time he was able to vote was for a presidential, he voted someone, they didn’t pass (or they did and disappointed him) and he was disappointed and he went “whatever, voting is not as cool as I was told it would”. Grantaire won’t say he avoids the news because the bullshit around him actually affects him, and he totally won’t ever admit how much he loves being friends with people who ARE optimist and who sees humanity’s beauty and want to make things better. Grantaire is also the guy who is Totally in Favour of Women’s Rights, Especially the Sexual Liberation Part of It *wink wink*. He… probably had unfortunate sentences like “girls don’t like the nice guys, they just want assholes” (i mean he basically already say unfortunate things like that in canon). Irma probably said once to him “Dude, you are an asshole, and I don’t see women running to your feet, so shut the hell up.” In my opinion, he’s also a white man in his twenties, with all the blind prejudice it can bring. He’s bi, but not that comfortable with it. 

Feuilly, and dear god will I fight anybody on this if I must, is a STUDENT. (Or was a student, depending on which age you give them). Feuilly still struggles with money, because he’d live in fucking Paris, but Feuilly would NOT struggle to study, because FRANCE’S UNIVERSITIES ARE CHEAP (in comparison to some other countries, I mean), and also there are different financial help for people like Feuilly who don’t have the financial means to pay everything from their pockets. It’s still highly probable Feuilly would work anyway, probably in retail or tutoring!, though. Feuilly would spend his time reading and Getting Angry or Passionate about everything that’s going on in the world, that won’t change in our modern world. It’s not about Poland anymore, but oh man Feuilly would rant hours on the situation of Syrians refugees. He probably sat in baffled, horrified silence after Trump’s election. He makes sure people know about what happens in countries the media aren’t interested in. In fact, I could see him write long articles on international problems. 

To be honest, I really don’t know If I can do this for all of les amis (perhaps not as detailed). A lot of this is only my personal opinions on how they might be in modern France. 

In a world where Law school isn’t the only available school for people who don’t want to graduate for School, what do Bossuet and Bahorel do? I can see them, of course, going to university, again and again, but? Would they really not get a diploma…? I mean, okay, poor Bossuet probably doesn’t because of Circumstances, but for Bahorel, I don’t know - he can still have gone to study Law in the first place, find it filled with Terrible Arrogant Competitive People, went “nope” and just. Tried a lot of other things, accidentally majored and got a diploma in at least two of them, and somehow ends up with the most diploma in the group???? Which is baffling because Bahorel would also clearly be a Stylist. He has a page and everything. People don’t get it. I dunno. 

Concerning politics activity, Bahorel would still be the person who Knows Everybody In Paris, which means he goes from group to group - Bahorel probably knows the most radical leftist you can find in Paris, and he has tried to infiltrate an extreme-right meeting once or twice (but that ended up badly). Bahorel probably is the Main Messenger of l’ABC. He’s also probably very good at corrupting students and making them think “maybe being Far Left is actually quite cool”

Jehan probably is vegan? I have no idea what radical art movement is actually scandalizing the Good Society, but he’s probably part of that in some way (with Bahorel). Street art..? I truly have no idea here, so I won’t embarrass myself trying to say something. He still writes a lot of poems, he’s still very erudite, and he’s probably still very rich. He probably gives a lot of money to charity - for women, children, and animals, and he’s an active participant in at least one of them. He’s very big on the “nature doesn’t belong to human and we should be respectful of it” sustainable development movements. 

… Of course les amis would probably all be for sustainable development cause they’re not idiots but. you know.

I can’t see Joly as anything else than a doctor, and I tend to think he’d go for caring for kids in particular. He’s good with them. To be honest, when it comes to politics, Joly and Bossuet are the hardest for me to pin down - I have zero doubt they’re as invested as the others, but I don’t think they’d have as much “clear” role if you know what I mean? Joly probably organizes things for the children at hospital, like having people come here to visit them and make them laugh (Bossuet would probably help with that, and, in fact, probably so would Grantaire), or making sure they can see That Movie that just got out, etc. Joly would also be highly invested in the cause of nurses, which are having a hard time in France right now. Bossuet, drawing from his own experiences, would probably help people in situation of poverty - homeless people, etc. Perhaps he’d help in Le Refuge, which is an association that helps lgbt kids in France who are homeless. 

As for Joly, I can’t see Combeferre as anything else than a doctor, apart if he’s a teacher. Combeferre could totally be a teacher. however, Combeferre would probably be a family doctor, after trying a lot of different specialization. In fact, Combeferre probably went for medicine after trying a bunch of other things, and probably did at least two years of “prépa” (I have zero idea how to explain what it is. Two years of school that prepares you to a test that will allow you to enter prestigious schools all over france?) in like, physics or something because he used to plan to become a scientist. Combeferre is fascinated by technology and how it can help; probably works on making teleportation a thing during lost hours; has contacts all over the scientist words, and spends a lot of time with Jehan speaking about how we could actually already put into place green energy all over the world. Combeferre also tutors kids, he’s involved in feminist groups, and of all his friends, he is the most socialist while everybody else is pretty far into radical left.

Would Courfeyrac be a lawyer? Honestly, I could see it! There is something about Courfeyrac that feels right about this, choosing to defend the innocent and all, he’s a paladin isn’t he - of course he would be a real life lawyer, not a fictional one, and I don’t know exactly which branches of law exists for him in modern-france, but he would be for the one who comes closest to helping either children, group of people being wronged, etc. He probably also gives free lawyer advice for those who don’t even know perhaps they hAVE rights. Courfeyrac would deal with everything social media in the group, and he would still have an uncanny eye to notice people that might fit and belong in their group. He’s charming in a less intense way that Enjolras might be, which makes him an easy “first contact”. 

 As for Enjolras, well, duh, he’d be a printer. He’d be involved in particular with everything that touches the right of workers, what the EU means for France’s companies, and what generally speaking international market do for workers that might not have a chance to fight against the competitive prices of other countries. Chances are, the printshop would also have an editorial branch to it, too. Which brings me to my point-

I think les amis de l’ABC would have a newspaper of sort: they’d started with a blog, and somehow it turned into a very political, humanist newspaper, of which Enjolras would be the principal editor: all of les amis might write articles from times to times - Bahorel, Bossuet, Courfeyrac and Jehan are the one who find other authors to fill in. Grantaire probably writes the horoscope, and it is mocking and still very PoliticalTM, but the tone is humouristic and there are a lot of puns and les amis are much too weak for puns.  

They would also have a branch dedicated to tutoring students of all ages, particularly in “difficult neighborhoods” (which would go hand in hand with Valjean’s center, which is a vague idea of mine that i like). That’s Combeferre and Feuilly’s responsibilities, though Joly chimes in when he can, as well as Courfeyrac and Enjolras. 

They would, obviously, protest - that’s a French Given. They would be, as I said, very active on social media (Courfeyrac on youtube, please and thank you, videos of Enjolras speaking, etc.). A lot of their stance might be on visibility and education: which wouldn’t stop them from direct action when it needs to happen. Les amis de l’ABC would very much be far left, though I don’t think they would like the idea of two big parties anymore, because that’s a feeling that every french people feel nowadays, i think, or so it feels anyway. 

And while I said “he” all the while in this post, because I put them all from canon to modern era, obviously not all of them would be “he”. Les amis de l’ABC would be boys, girls, trans, non-binary, they’d be white or black or brown-skinned, atheists, muslims, catholics, jewish people, etc. Les amis de l’ABC would be very diverse. Also, probably bigger than they were in canon-era - apparently there wasn’t that much of them because of political restrictions of the time-period, but nowadays they could be as much as they can freely, so, there’s that.  Of course, that doesn’t change the idea that Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Feuilly, Bahorel, Jehan, Bossuet, Joly and Grantaire might be the “core” of their association/group. 

I don’t… actually know if that answer your question at all? I hope so?  

[pinkxsheets-blog]

Stop assigning gender rules and roles within the feminist movement

Philip Larkin, in a famous poem titled the Arundel Tomb describes his adoration of a torn and weathered tomb (as it were), remarking on, of all the things to praise it for, its wear and tear.

They would not guess how early in

Their supine stationary voyage

The air would change to soundless damage,  

Turn the old tenantry away

(Larkin, 1964)

He remarks, with blaring enthusiasm, about the ability of the temple to withstand damage, flaw, and fault, and still strike those who pass by with its beauty. In many ways, this attitude would be very helpful to those who explore their personal ideologies when it comes to feminism.

As an ever growing, expanding, and influenced concept, feminism includes under it so many ratifications as influenced by history, that we can’t simply deem our selves with a solution as how to fix gender equality in 2017; we couldn’t aid everyone who feels coiled by gender norms using mainstream feminist ideas from, for instance, the suffragette movement in 1910s England, so why should we think that we could fix every aspect of everything that societal expectations hold down on us using mainstream feminist ideas today? The nature of everything feminism fights for is that we must all see ourselves in a bigger picture, woven by history, and engrained within everything we know about the divisions our ancestors created, destroyed, and resurrected time and time again. In that, it is contextual in nature and to prescribe feminism a one size fits all normative methodology would be to take away from the fact that we need to see ourselves as learners, as reaching, as developing our understanding of what feminism is and how varying people experience it.

There are dangers in staying too firmly cocooned in your views as you've always thought you'd know them. For instance, I myself remember identifying as a feminist as early as eleven years old, when I heard the word thrown around a lot more in mainstream media. I thought, back then, that this meant would be seen as more important than men, and painted the idea of woman-hood in a very god-like image. As I got a little older, while my views became more refined, I was guilty, at around the ages of thirteen and fourteen, of judging women based on the way they dressed, or how they chose to go about their sex lives. I’d haughtily call girls with revealing tops “sluts”, proclaiming that the fact that they’re sociable and exposing skin must mean they’re dim-witted phonies. Not to mention, I didn’t for one minute sit and think about the delicately covered yet magnificent implications of race, class, and sexuality when it comes to discourse, practice, and activism in feminism. I threw the word around, and only when I decided to accept myself as a learner, as someone with practical limits, and as someone who knows the world changes and ideas change with it, did I feel that I could have the most interesting and open-minded discussions on the subject matter at hand. This isn’t to say that I’m a perfect feminist now; but I do think disapparating yourself of an idea in seeing feminism as “women should do this” and “men should do that” is a way to deal with it more openly and pragmatically; in that, we should be looking at feminism and asking “how can socio-political and economic systems be formed in a way that allows you to participate freely and democratically regardless of gender identity.” For instance, for a man to deem the word “feminism” too limiting and restrictive to men without reading around the topic would be to concretise a less than practical solution. To accuse a trans-woman of not understand what a “true” woman goes through would be to use feminism as a chain and shackle. To tell someone that according to feminism, men and women must act a certain way because they are men and women would be to go against the very principle of what the movement stands for. To preach feminism as an all knowing all holy agenda that will only do this and this for that and them, without taking into account other groups marginalised by society would be to make it another religion, rather liberating ideology. We should be cutting away at societal chains- not creating new ones.

Time has transfigured them into  

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be  

Their final blazon, and to prove  

Our almost-instinct almost true:  

What will survive of us is love.

(Larkin, 1964)

-Elmira Tanatarova

References:

Poetry Foundation. (2009). An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin. [online] Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/47594 [Accessed 4 Apr. 2017].