#the patriarchy = shitty system that harms everyone inside it

[eggs-love-loki]

The Barbie movie is not anti men but every time I see a man say that it is I become more anti men so it’s actually the men that are anti men

[thewasteland]

This is probably not the answer anon wanted but our thoughts are so divided on the topic if we talked about it we’d just piss everyone off so we’ve kept our mouth shut.

But it’s late at night and we have a lot of thoughts so here goes.

First off, I don’t think the experiences of “plural” people and OSDDID systems are at all comparable. I don’t think it’s useful to try and fit us onto the same spectrum. I do think there should be groups and places that are only for dissociative systems, because we have a disorder that endos staunchly maintain they do not have, and we deserve a safe place to find community and talk about our issues.

However, I also don’t think it’s moral to invade endo’s spaces, call them names, make threats, tell them they have trauma they need to face, etc. All that is way beyond shitty, and I’m ashamed that the fierce hatred of people who call themselves endos has become such a huge thing in the system community. These are real people behind the screen, many of whom have their own trauma. There’s no excuse for the kind of behavior I’ve seen, on both sides, and it makes me sick the way it’s torn our community apart.

I’ll be honest, I don’t understand how someone could have multiple people inside them without trauma. In order to be separate people, you need divisions. By definition, these divisions would be considered dissociation—a wall has been built between you, one way or another. Dissociation/divisions in your brain are caused by trauma, extreme emotions, memories, etc that your brain can’t handle. There’s no other reason I can think of for them to form.

My system is entirely formed around trauma, so much so that it’s sickening. I feel torn apart, like I don’t know who I am without it. Pain is the glue that holds me together. Every detail of my inner world and alters is related to trauma somehow. The concept of someone being a “system” without it is entirely foreign to me.

That being said, live and let live. It’s not my place to tell someone else how to interpret themselves and their trauma. I can ask them to leave a space that’s not for them. I can correct misinformation. But I can’t tell someone else what’s going on inside their head. That’s their fucking business.

And I certainly can’t tell them they have trauma or that their trauma created their system, even if it is true. That’s not my place, it’s theirs to figure out on their own. Even if they are a traumagenic system, but don’t feel that they are, telling someone “hey those people inside you whom you love and who keep you alive? They’re all caused by that fucked up shit that happened to you. Not ready to accept that? Too bad!” Is not helpful.

I tend to prioritize facts and rationality over feelings and spirituality, but I do think there’s a lot we don’t understand. I’ve met many people whose experiences don’t quite “fit the mold” and I believe what they’ve told me. I respect those who feel their spirituality intersects with their systemhood or feel that their system was formed by spiritual means. It’s not my place to tell them otherwise, and it’s not a necessarily harmful thing.

Science is not a religion, it’s a flawed process of trial and error that is influenced by capitalism, ableism, and the racist patriarchy just like everything else in the world. Sorry if I don’t trust it implicitly. I don’t want to listen to the opinions of people who don’t have the disorder just because they read about it in a textbook or “studied” us. The amount of misinfo I’ve heard from therapists and books and psychiatrists makes me even more mistrustful of an ableist, classist system that’s not designed for me.

Trauma is also relative. What was traumatic to one person might not be to another. And things that “don’t seem that bad” often were that bad in the moment, but you’re an adult now and so detached from the emotions you can’t see it. I’m sure many people who assume they’re endo are traumagenic and just don’t realize it, because it’s an easy thing to do. Or maybe they feel like their system helps them (plot twist, that’s the whole point of having a system). Point is there’s lots of misinfo and reasons someone might think they’re endo when they’re not. Even if it’s just for the sake of the traumagenic systems who don’t realize they’re traumagenic, fakeclaiming people is just not cool and does irreparable damage, especially to someone who may already feel invalid or doubt themselves.

All this being said, I also understand the rage that anti-endos feel. Someone invading your space and telling you “hey I have your same experience!! Just without the pain!!” Is infuriating when your experience *is* pain. When they clearly have no idea what it’s like to be you and want to say you have everything in common. We are a community full of hurting, deeply misunderstood people. Being a system is so deeply lonely because no one understands. And frankly, if you’re an endo, you don’t understand either, cause you don’t have the disorder.

Anyway whether you’re an endo or an anti reading this you’re probably already mad, but please keep in mind this is just my opinion. I dont hate anyone, I just want people to respect each other.

What is your stance on endos

Live and let live ✌🏻

[theliterateape]

When Intersectionality Runs Amok: The Underlying Misunderstanding that is Fracturing Society

By Don Hall

"Once these angry Rage Profiteers have kids, their kids will look at them and tell them what a mob of bullies they were. They'll be so disillusioned because they thought, by jumping in on the separatist dogma, by leaping into the public shaming online, they were making a difference."

I've had more than a few conversations lately that sound a bit like this. Thinking people who see the current level of Leftist backlash to Trump and the onslaught of Republican rule in this country as wholly negative. Like me, they see the term whypipo as just an attempt to come up with a white people version of a term that strikes offense in the same way that other racially derogatory terms heretofore banned in polite society accomplished for marginalized groups. Like me, they see the term to simply indicate that the users of it are merely assholes (just like those who continue to use gay as a pejorative).

The question becomes simply, why is the idea that one's political discourse is centered on their personal identity has become so divisive?

The trend began with an academic trying to define a broader experience.  

Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw's work in the late 1980s introduced the term intersectionality. Intersectionality meant that the experience of a person who belongs to multiple identity groups cannot be captured simply by focusing on subordination based on one or the other identity, or even by adding them together.

According to her 1993 Stanford Law Review article, "Experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and... these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourses of either feminism or antiracism." One of Crenshaw's examples is an immigrant woman whose legal status depends on her relationship to a battering husband does not simply experience anti-immigrant prejudice or sexist battering. Her statuses (as an immigrant and a woman) intersect to create a distinctive vulnerability.

This means that an identity can be and often is formed by the intersection of various group memberships, to create a distinctive experience. Being a Black woman is not just like being a Black man when racial issues arise. The intersections, while similar, are distinct. By contrast, the informal (and now more accepted) sense of intersectionality means that various forms of oppression are linked, either as a matter of their actual practice or with respect to the justification for opposing them. To be intersectional in one's commitment to racial equality and gender equality in this sense of intersectionality is to see both racial and gender subordination as manifestations of an unjust white patriarchal power structure.

In other words, the root of the idea of intersectionality was both specific and complex but the newer, more accepted (and I'd argue misunderstood definition) centers on a single villainous umbrella that all subordination can point a finger to as its cause.

Thus, we see less empowerment based upon individual intersections and more embracing of victimhood in the face of an amorphous and almost impossible to pin down bugaboo: White People and the Toxicity of White Male Supremacy. Because it is difficult to fully define what is and is not a manifestation of White Patriarchal power, the default position becomes simpler: anything associated in almost any way with white males is the enemy.

Modern feminism becomes less about working to change the systemic inequities women face daily and more about centering outrage on white men who "man spread" and "mansplain," and proliferating the notion that white men are all predators. This notion immediately places women in a defensive position and grows the view of women as perpetual victims of white male dominance.

Modern civil rights becomes less about working to change the systemic and institutional racism baked into the American experiment and more on exaggerating the harm of microaggressions and the separatist need for safe spaces. As the concept of intersectionality becomes less about the public stance of empowerment, the rationale that racism is an incurable evil that must be destroyed rather than a series of legal barriers that can and should be remedied makes it an argument better suited for the superstitions of churches than the utilization of democratic solutions.

While both definitions of intersectionality have justification and merit, when the two types collide, the clash can result in serious mischaracterizations of the concept and push an already fractured Left into further segmentation.

The result is a Progressive (Regressive) Left hellbent on eating itself from the inside out effectively doing the work for the Right and ensuring their power grab is sustained.

Things get really dicey when the attempt to corral all "correct thinking people" under this umbrella.

When one considers that, according to Gallup, only 25 percent of the entire country even consider themselves liberal politically, it's hard to justify the idea that everyone not white is feeling that particular burn or is looking to destroy things. Given that conservative views tend to favor the status quo, 36 percent are thinking that things aren't that bad and an additional 34 percent aren't that dissatisfied with things.

This either means that things aren't quite as intersectionally oppressive as we believe or we're just shitty at getting the word out. Regardless of which, the most strident of the Rage Profiteers label 70 percent of the country as immoral and unworthy of anything but disdain and destruction.

One could assume that all 70 percent are white and bolster the oppression intersectionality perspective. One would be wrong.

The concept of oppressive intersectionality does not take into consideration that "...47 percent of blacks identify as liberal and 45 percent as conservative..." [SOURCE] or that white women voted for Donald Trump in unusually high numbers but not much more than 50 percent. The broad cloth of oppression politics simply does not account for the possibility of differing opinions within identity groupings and those who do not fall in line aren't listening, need to check their privilege, are racist, sexist and are thus labeled the enemy of the Righteous.

The Big Umbrella approach to intersectionality accomplishes a lack of context in the very identities that intersect. It likewise creates and allows a mindset among the self-righteous best exemplified by the current rash of online mob mentality.

Example Someone posts that someone else is a racist/sexist. Five others pipe in agreeing. Fifteen more who have neither read nor experienced this accused racism comment "I can't believe that person is a racist/sexist!" Forty more who have even less knowledge of the specifics jump on digitally calling for the accused racist/sexist's head (or job).

The simple accusation, with no context or fact, based entirely on the opinion of the original accuser goes viral and we have a full-blown public bullying, all in the name of good intentions yet all proliferated under the Big Umbrella mindset of those who are rewarded for claiming to be victim to the villain of White Supremacy and Patriarchy.

Add to this model a very well known accused party like Joss Whedon—white, cisgender, heterosexual male with billions of dollars—whose angry ex-wife decided to deride, and the virality of the shaming can reach the hundreds of thousands of completely uninformed, disinvolved people with strong opinions nonetheless.

I am not advocating for victim shaming but approaching every accusation with a measure of skepticism. In a court of law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. It should be no different in the court of public opinion especially as that court, via social media, now has real life consequences. Your opinion does not equal proof any more than the opinion of a GOP Senator about climate change equals fact.

Back to intersectionality, the embrace of oppression intersectionality rather than the intersectionality of identities is also marginalizing the understanding of the country's multi-cultural potential. In a Reuter's Poll taken at the University of Virginia just days ago, it becomes obvious that folks just aren't getting the message.  

According to this poll: • 59 percent agree that "Political correctness'' threatens our liberty as Americans to speak our minds. • 55 percent agree that Racial minorities are currently under attack in this country.

The disconnect is that identity politics and the idea of politically correct speech are at odds, in conflict, and seen as opposites in the spectrum of change. In the parlance of the political, most people agree with the precepts of identity intersectionality but disagree with oppression intersectionality and confusing the two pushes the middle, which, face it, is most of the voting voice, to the right.

As we progress forward, it is those who have been most marginalized who tend to push the boundaries past a point of reasonable persuasion.  

"All white people are white supremists."   "I wish all white people were dead." "White history is the history of colonization and genocide."

Propaganda begins with oversimplification and then cements itself in repetition. The cries of almost non-stop oppression politics by the Rage Profiteers might feel good for them to yawp out but is one of many reasons why these issues are doomed to be ignored in a longer game. And we cannot afford to ignore these issues of systemic racism, fundamental sexism, and the economic destruction of whole identities any longer.

"Once these angry Rage Profiteers have kids, their kids will look at them and tell them what a mob of bullies they were. They'll be so disillusioned because they thought, by jumping in on the separatist dogma, by leaping into the public shaming online, they were making a difference."

[ms-demeanor]

I have a friend who is constantly racked with guilt about being attracted to women since he started transitioning because posts like this have taught him that men’s attention to women is always predatory. I have friends who are cis dudes who feel the same way. I have a transfemme friend who constantly questions whether they are actually just fetishizing women because being “socialized male” means they can never unlearn the predatory nature of their AGAB.

This sort of thinking also trains straight and bi women to expect to get treated like shit by their partners instead of believing that men are compassionate, kind, generous people who should be expected to treat their partners well.

And, not to get all “what about cis people” on this but there are young teen boys on this blogging platform who are learning that they are “trash” simply for looking at or being attracted to women and there are adult men on this platform who are  trying to turn themselves inside out to try to “make up” for their maleness and framing men as terrible, unsafe, selfish, bad people is the exact kind of gender essentialist bullshit that says all women are compassionate and good communicators and naturally maternal caregivers.

It’s crap! It’s garbage!

You can write off all cops as bad because they all looked at an abusive, corrupt system and went “I want to be a part of that.”

If you write off “men,” the type category, fifty fucking percentish of the goddamned species, as trash you’re looking at a little boy or a black father or an autistic teen or a gay pensioner or even just a totally run of the mill cis straight white dude and saying “you were born wrong.”

And you know what, for fucking YEARS I’ve been saying “feminism benefits men too” and “feminism helps everyone” and there has been this loud minority of utter fucking assholes saying that men are trash and there’s no such thing as misandry and I’ve been trying to say “yeah, okay, those people are assholes but they’re not really a huge part of the movement” and but now it seems like their shitty ideas about purity culture have crossed over to the mainstream and their shitty sex negativity has crossed over to the mainstream, and radical feminism in general and TERFs in particular are brimming with misandry that is an exact fucking mirror to the misogyny of blackpilled incels and we are very calmly letting it infect our discourse and discredit our philosophy.

ALSO all of this bullshit broadcasts and spreads the idea that women must always be protected from men (which is exactly how JK Rowling justifies her transmisogyny) which does NOTHING to accomplish the equality that feminism is nominally about.

“Men are trash” and “kill all men lol” is a memeified, gender-swapped version of Mike Fucking Pence refusing to meet with women unsupervised because they might contaminate or tempt him. 

And it *also* paves over the shitty, rapey, abusive, power imbalanced, oppressive things that women do. “If men are trash and women aren’t then clearly the abuse or sexual assault I’m suffering from my female partner must be *different* in some way because she’s not harming me through patriarchy or oppression.”

Hey so "all men are trash" posts help terfs

I'll explain if one of you want