#women: a journal of liberation

[radwave]

photos by J.E.B. • from Women: A Journal of Liberation, vol. 5 no. 2 (January 1974)

[atticollateral]

No Pride for Some of Us Without Liberation for All of Us

[ditadaydreams]

"The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[meelous-motivation]

A journal entry_Nov 13 2023

Alas, the year has gone by and I am spent. Another year sitting in painful servitude to that which is required of me by systems I scorn. Systems not only appalling to my personal sensibilities but also taking first place in the 6-century race to be the bane of my people’s existence. 200 years of deceit and domination, followed by 100 of enslavement and the ‘conquering’ of my people which btw is not possible lest there is a fight, the former is simply called a brutish inhuman massacre. Then we got 200 sordid years of brutal conditions, forced labor, and fucking eugenics. The last century has then been filled with a generally declining social condition worldwide. I ache for my people. I pray god for recompense.

[femalethink]

Sex and Power: Sexual Bases of Radical Feminism

Not even the most ardent feminist can claim to be "liberated" in a sexist society. "Sexual liberation" can mean nothing unless it includes the freedom to reject or enter into sexual relationships fearing neither exploitation nor punishment. But sexual exploitation and punishment still threaten every woman. The denial of complete reproductive freedom, the total responsibility for child rearing, the psychological intimidation of rape victims are all punishments for the sexually active woman. The threat of job loss, ridicule, rejection, isolation, and even rape are punishments threatening the woman who refuses sex.

—Alix Kates Shulman, Women: Sex and Sexuality.

[stump-water]

i cant stop thinking about how the traumas & shit that really screwed me up & screwed me over blunted my compassion & how that interacted with the shit that power insulated me from. it's not just that shit in society you benefit from insulates you from other people's problems. you know? it's how THAT compounds with all the other pain you're in. i truly believe you can build a deep bias without meaning to, just by living in this world and being hurt by it. there's a system you're benefiting from. you don't wanna admit that it's hurting you too, and so you resent the people who are being targeted very deeply by that system and trying to speak out about it

[shellofhappiness]

The general dialogue between Eric and that AOL girl regarding his philosophy on love has always stood out to me. It's one of the very few moments of vulnerability we've been given / able to find on his character over the past twenty years.

Eric always had his guard up. We all mostly know this from his own writings, no one acts like how he portrayed himself naturally. But, also including the accounts given about him from other people in his life, important or not, before and after passing. Mostly commonly described as aggressive and irritable, yet closed-off and restrained.

Alongside that online exchange, the only other times I can think of were when he called out of work to be there for his sick dog, or the innocent adoration he held toward his older brother, alongside sincere respect for his mother, of course, Reb's "I wish I were a fucking sociopath" Tape, and (arguably) his undisclosed email to his childhood best friend.

He talked about love like he was an outsider. A still figure watching it & whatever shape it may take maneuver around him, but not having the ability to engage. Let alone even acknowledge the fact it could be something of his own as well if he reached his hand out to touch it, but that wasn't even a possibility for him at that moment. Feeling comfortable enough to bring it up, but never to address it directly. Mentioning what he believed, but never outright saying it, afraid to cross a boundary. Though, he was still very careful with his wording despite not feeling confident enough to state his opinion in full. Being just general enough so he didn't risk the girl disagreeing with his words because he didn't give her an opening to do so, but still baring just a bit of his self to her through his ego because it was just the two of them.

Everyone talks about the concept of "love" relating to the case in reference to DK, because it was something that openly consumed him in private, but in a way, I feel the same just might have applied to Eric as well. But, like many other things relating to him, he hid it all away inside of himself. To live is to be vulnerable, and the times Eric was, never ended in his favor. Hence why he conditioned himself to be so isolated from everyone else, emotionally independent.

When Eric did openly talk about his doctrine on love, it was that degenerate & exploitative journal passage in which he wrote in depth about the idea of forcing himself onto certain women in his life alongside gaudy band lyrics. Considering how hesitant he was to directly speak to another girl about love, even under the context they were both being open with each other, the passage was likely written out of some kind of complex frustration. To compensate for how he felt like such a stranger in the face of it, but remarkably knowledgeable when speaking objectively. He wasn't being honest with himself, but still desperately needed some kind of liberation as an attempt to stop whatever feeling of desire he harbored from further stirring inside him.

The passion that stems from hatred is something I'm sure we all know Eric was well acquainted with. I think the hate inside of him masked the love, being overshadowed and making it appear small. It was definitely there, but seldom did it get a voice to speak in comparison to the amount of steam he let out on a general basis.

Eric cared a lot. When you look past the ego he presented to the whole world, he wasn't an individual with ASPD by any stretch of the means. He wanted not to be independent, but his life made him feel that was the only option he could truly rely on with the social instability he faced growing up. He wanted to be seen. I'm sure many people have voiced this before, but it's truly heart-wrenching to think he was doing this big finale act with his best friend, maybe because he had his best friend there to do it with him, only to find out post-mortem that DK didn't hold him to the same high regard. Maybe close, but not at all on the exact same level.

Putting the fact aside both of them expressed fantasies of doing NBK with their own respective "dream girl," DK wanted other options for someone to go through with the date, other actual people in his life, but from Eric's point-of-view, it had to be Dylan. Dylan was one of the very few people in his life, the only one still present with him, that aided his desire not to be alone. To be seen as an individual. To be vulnerable. Under the impression Dylan felt the same way he did, or at least something similar ... and while I won't deny it was there, it just wasn't as significant to the other party.

"What one person calls true love (EH) can be just another cheap thrill to another (DK)."

I'd like to specify that my goal with this post isn't to send the message that they were "gay," nor point out any form of "romantic chemistry," but rather to emphasize how languished love was overall in Eric's life. Also, I think there's an absurdist humor that comes from the irony of him saying this with what we know would follow half at his hands (you know who the other half is).

They both loved each other as friends, without a doubt, but it's so tragic to think that Eric's closest bond, a connection of love so intimate yet unrelated to direct societal romance, which created a strength so abundant that it started a ripple effect worldwide that still persists to this very day, wasn't quite requited the way he thought it was. Just like every other published bond of his, in his sad little existence.

[wumblr]

A study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found a 100% effectiveness rate for the drug in a study of 2,134 women in South Africa and Uganda. However, Gilead at present charges $42,250 for an annual two-shot regimen — a price obviously far out of reach for working and oppressed people. Producing the drug costs Gilead just $28, meaning the company is collecting a 1,500% profit on each treatment!

[idontknowreallyidontcare]

NIKTO HC’S FOR MY NIKTO GIRLS!

- Nikto is definitely a pig of a man. Like let me tell you, I know from experience how Slavic men are, he loves his porn and he loves it dirty. He can’t help it, he loves women and sex, he can’t control himself once a pair of tits are bouncing into his face and a girl is riding his cock, he’ll curse and talk like a man in heat, he’s not watching his mouth!

- He has sex with multiple women at the same time, and for a lot of times. Again, he is DIRTY! He’s cumming while two girls are licking and sucking on his cock and balls at the same time, he’s tongue fucking one while the other is riding him, he loves pussy and women and he loves having more than one fucking him.

- The moment he lays eyes on you he can’t help but see how utterly beautiful and unreal you look. Your demeanor, your rosy cheeks and your eyes are enough to send him to another dimension. He refuses his feelings for you, he does everything to forget you, too broken and old to let himself be loved by such beautiful young lady. He will fuck lots of women hoping one of them would be able to completely erase your presence from his mind, he’ll try to tell himself that you’re actually just a bitch, a girl that probably is not worth it and that you’d probably take advantage of his money! Fuck him, there’s not a thing he can do to get you out of his head! He is completely fucked. Not a woman he touches feels good, not a woman caressing him feels nice, all because she’s not you, and she’ll never be, no matter how many of them he fucks, they’ll never be you.

- You’re ruined the moment he touches you. Not in a bad way, he just ruined sex for whoever comes after him (nobody! You’re HIS!). The way he treats you, the way he handles you, the way he talks to you, he pushes you to the limit. He’ll have you so fucked up you’ll actually end up crying, not knowing if it’s because of happiness, orgasms or because there was not an instant in your life a man has made you feel the way Nikto makes you feel.

- He licks your pussy from every angle, he’s not even sorry. Standing? Sitting? Sleeping? He’ll fold, manhandle and put you in positions so embarrassing you’d end up crying because of him. Something about sexually embarrassing you gets him going, and it gets you going too, your embarrassment coming only from a place of insecurity about past partners that were not so obsessed with you as Nikto is. Seeing your ruined reflection into the mirror while Nikto pounds you is utterly embarrassing, but it’s a kind of embarrassment that feels so good, and it just awakens something in you, you want this man to have you in the most vulnerable places and positions, and he will.

- He loves ass. I will not elaborate. (I am actually going to, lemme explain). We already established that he is dirty, he watched lots of porn and read journals while single, maybe never got the chance to play the things he saw in real life because he always reserved this kind of intimacy to be done only with someone actually significant to him. You’ll get oiled up and fucked, he’ll have a field day with your ass honestly, his pent up desire liberated all together, and his need to possess you ass too much to make him think straight. He will be slapping, biting and caressing your cheeks, eating your hole out and fingering you before putting his lubed cock finally in.

[fatliberation]

I totally understand and can empathize with fat activists when it comes to medical fatphobia. But I do think its important to provide nuance to this topic.

A lot of doctors mention weight loss, particularly for elective surgeries, because it makes the recovery process easier (Particularly with keeping sutures in place) and anesthetic safer.

I feel like its still important to mention those things when advocating for fat folks. Safety is important.

What you're talking about is actually a different topic altogether - the previous ask was not about preparing for surgery, it was about dieting being the only treatment option for anon's chronic pain, which was exacerbating their ed symptoms. Diets have been proven over and over again to be unsustainable (and are the leading predictor of eating disorders). So yeah, I felt that it was an inappropriate prescription informed more by bias than actual data.

(And side note: This study on chronic pain and obesity concluded that weight change was not associated with changes of pain intensity.)

If you want to discuss the risk factor for surgery, sure, I think that's an important thing to know - however, most fat people already know this and are informed by their doctors and surgeons of what the risks are beforehand, so I'm not really concerned about people being uninformed about it.

I'm a fat liberation activist, and what I'm concerned about is bias. I'm concerned that there are so many BMI cutoffs in essential surgeries for fat patients, when weight loss is hardly feasible, that creates a barrier to care that disproportionately affects marginalized people with intersecting identities.

It's also important to know that we have very little data around the outcomes of surgery for fat folks that isn't bariatric weight loss surgery.

A new systematic review by researchers in Sydney, Australia, published in the journal Clinical Obesity, suggests that weight loss diets before elective surgery are ineffective in reducing postoperative complications.

CADTH Health Technology Review Body Mass Index as a Measure of Obesity and Cut-Off for Surgical Eligibility made a similar conclusion:

Most studies either found discrepancies between BMI and other measurements or concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support BMI cut-offs for surgical eligibility. The sources explicitly reporting ethical issues related to the use of BMI as a measure of obesity or cut-off for surgical eligibility described concerns around stigma, bias (particularly for racialized peoples), and the potential to create or exacerbate disparities in health care access.

Nicholas Giori MD, PhD Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Stanford University, a respected leader in TKA and THA shared his thoughts in Elective Surgery in Adult Patients with Excess Weight: Can Preoperative Dietary Interventions Improve Surgical Outcomes? A Systematic Review:

“Obesity is not reversible for most patients. Outpatient weight reduction programs average only 8% body weight loss [1, 10, 29]. Eight percent of patients denied surgery for high BMI eventually reach the BMI cutoff and have total joint arthroplasty [28]. Without a reliable pathway for weight loss, we shouldn’t categorically withhold an operation that improves pain and function for patients in all BMI classes [3, 14, 16] to avoid a risk that is comparable to other risks we routinely accept.

It is not clear that weight reduction prior to surgery reduces risk. Most studies on this topic involve dramatic weight loss from bariatric surgery and have had mixed results [13, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27]. Moderate non-surgical weight loss has thus-far not been shown to affect risk [12]. Though hard BMI cutoffs are well-intended, currently-used BMI cutoffs nearly have the effect of arbitrarily rationing care without medical justification. This is because BMI does not strongly predict complications. It is troubling that the effects are actually not arbitrary, but disproportionately affect minorities, women and patients in low socioeconomic classes. I believe that the decision to proceed with surgery should be based on traditional shared-decision making between the patient and surgeon. Different patients and different surgeons have different tolerances to risk and reward. Giving patients and surgeons freedom to determine the balance that is right for them is, in my opinion, the right way to proceed.”

I agree with Dr. Giori on this. And I absolutely do not judge anyone who chooses to lose weight prior to a surgery. It's upsetting that it is the only option right now for things like safe anesthesia. Unfortunately, patients with a history of disordered eating (which is a significant percentage of fat people!) are left out of the conversation. There is certainly risk involved in either option and it sucks. I am always open to nuanced discussion, and the one thing I remain firm in is that weight loss is not the answer long-term. We should be looking for other solutions in treating fat patients and studying how to make surgery safer. A lot of this could be solved with more comprehensive training and new medical developments instead of continuously trying to make fat people less fat.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 21

Missy was one of Amelia Pond's childhood therapists. She was looking for the Doctor but came too early.

River Song knows Venusian aikido.

Raj Kahnu, one of the Rani's favorite experiments, considered the Rani to be his mother. The Rani never acknowledged this.

The Master once tried to combat the Third Doctor's Venusian aikido with Martian kendo but was defeated when the Doctor switched to Mercurian kung fu.

The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars was an intergalactic televised music competition where the losers get incinerated by a laser cannon. Clara and the Twelfth Doctor were forced to compete after Clara accidentally insulted the monarch. During their episode, a band composed of five different versions of the Master also played (Missy, Crispy Master, Bruce Master, Tremas Master, and Saxon Master), trying to hypnotize the viewers, but they were disqualified after they started fighting each other.

The Twelfth Doctor thinks of his Tenth and Eleventh selves as "Manic Pixie Dream Doctors."

The Tenth Doctor, meanwhile, is very concerned about where the Twelfth Doctor got extra regenerations from and believed he might be the Valeyard.

In his Masterplan Journal, the Saxon Master admitted that living as all the female Masters in woman's clothes felt "strangely liberating" and that he should get more in touch with his feminine side.

You can listen to the Fifth Doctor speak Gallifreyan in the audio Cold Fusion.

The Eighth Doctor meant to visit the opening night of the Braxiatel Collection but was prevented from doing so by the Kotturuh Crisis.

The Doctor spent his 1000th birthday with two broken ribs on board a spaceship.

Chloroform is effective on Time Lords.

The Seventh Doctor once broke the galactic record for continuous spoon playing at 67 hours.

The Doctor once took seven people who were so wealthy that they were bored of their lives to a place he called "Purgatoria." He brought each of them one by one into a separate room where he brought them to their breaking points and let them experience a story from his life first hand.

Galileo Galilei discovered what he thought was a planet between the sun and Mercury called Phaiton. It was actually a stellar manipulator that had been forgotten about by the Time Lords and lost until the Eleven found it.

Gender is subject to fashion trends on Gallifrey. For example, during some eras of Gallifrey, the female gender went out of fashion to such an extent that women were completely absent.

The Doctor used to sing songs about windmills to his daughter Miranda.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

[leftistfeminista]

Palestinian coed tortured during her period, just for joining a Leftist student org.

From the Israeli Newspaper Haaretz

Mays Abu Ghosh, who I featured here before, because of her brutal and humiliating torture of being tied in the banana position, while on her menstrual period, and denied menstrual products and underwear. Endured all that torture on the flimsiest of pretenses, even according to the Israeli media.

"Now Mays is in prison and, according to her lawyers and other sources, she has been tortured during her interrogations. The five counts of the indictment against her sound serious and terrifying, but are for the most part revealed as ridiculous when the details are known.

The “unlawful association” that Mays, a fourth-year student in the media department at Bir Zeit University, is accused of belonging to is the left-wing students’ organization, Qutub. Israeli authorities claim that Qutub is affiliated with the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but the student group denies any such connection."

In this article attacking the "Palestine Writes” literary festival at the University of Pennsylvania, she is the 1st "dangerous terrorist" listed, all because she was convicted in an Israeli kangaroo court, even by the standards of the Israeli media, simply for belonging to a leftist student organization. They focus media attention on the Islamists, but this is how leftists and socialists are treated. Intentionally exasperating our natural menstrual pains to intensify our torture is such a depraved level of hatred of women, down to our very biology. And then after all they did to her, they make it as if she victimized Israel.

This is how Mays was tied for 3 days, without sleep, while on her menstrual period, denied tampons or underwear. This is the infamous banana stress position.

“The most severe thing was three days in a row without being allowed to sleep,” Mays, 23, said. “I had to stay in a chair and if I closed my eyes, a soldier would come over and shout at me. I was slapped in the face continuously.”

Mays was forced to stand and bend her knees, with soldiers pressing hard on her shoulders. She had to remain in such painful positions for long stretches of time.

Mays Abu Ghosh seized by Israeli occupation forces

[theraprism]

Class subtext thoughts on Gatsby, Flatland, and Bill.

So broadly speaking, we've had some idea of what Bill's home dimension was like since the 2015 in-character AMA, when the idea that it was nearly (if not fully) identical to the world of Flatland was first introduced. During the Weirdmaggedon 4-parter, we finally learned that Bill had obliterated his home dimension and called it liberation. (From what I recall the fan concensus on this information was that it was a malicious act of evil on Bill's part -- up until the Book's release, I don't think the idea that it was a tragedy or accident ever had much ground to stand on.) Journal 3 picked up on this again when it established the existence of Exwhylia, which (importantly!) also reinforced the hierarchical nature of existence that Flatland presents.

I'll own up to the fact I've never read Flatland myself (it is on the neverending list of classics that I still haven't gotten to yet) and will be instead be relying mainly on Wikipedia and Sparknotes clones for this analysis, but the good news is that canon Gravity Falls materials have given us the basics of how Bill's home dimension operated at this point, and so knowledge of the work seems less required and moreso recommended. Similarly to Gatsby (the book as well as the character). More on that later.

To be more specific, the important info that Hirsch has given us about Euclydia is that it was repressive in the extreme. The exact ways that it maintained this are left up to the imagination, to an extent (e.g. there is no evidence of the upper echelons of Euclydia carrying out public executions against the lower classes, as there are in Flatland), but the Book does directly pull an image from Flatland that illustrates the class hierarchy there.

Since Flatland was written originally as a satire of the stratification in Victorian society, the work goes to great lengths to specify and elaborate on the different social roles of each shape (for example, women as lines, though the gender stratification isn't relevant in Bill's case). More relevant is the way that the work considers upward mobility through generations, and the fact that isoceles triangles (working class) are considered among the lowest beings in existence, just above irregular shapes. Bill has been referred to and drawn inconsistently as both isoceles and equilateral, but based on what we learn from Exwhylia in Journal 3, it's possible that this distinction is not relevant in the GF multiverse's reinterpretation of Flatland. See:

I'm sure a part of this reduction of the hierarchy in the original Flatland has to do with the work needing to be at least somewhat accessible to younger readers, but it does textually ensure that, regardless of the specific details of Bill's geometry, he comes from a background where, in spite of his exceptional ability to see the third dimension, he saw those around him receive resources more freely. His singling out of irregular quadrilaterals reads to me as a form of internalized classism; he needs someone to punch down to.

And earlier:

He describes his regular shape as an out-and-out "power". Bill explicitly carries with him the classist ideals and values of his home dimension despite its destruction. The way he internalizes different ideas about himself and who he is is probably a subject for another post, but the point is that these qualities Bill is emphasizing aren't simply a matter of arrogance. Bill is trying to sell himself as a gentleman, a respectable individual from an upper-middle class position.

This is where Gatsby becomes relevant, because The Great Gatsby is all about a man who wants more than anything to cross the threshold of inborn greatness and become a true upperclassman. Bill appealing to his innate biological qualities as evidence for his own greatness relates back to the notion that such greatness is an ontological trait which cannot be given, but can also not be taken away. Note what he explicitly says here about the themes of class in Gatsby:

If you walk up to any college English professor and ask them what Gatsby has to say about the American Dream, I really do not think you are going to hear them say the word "bittersweet". The American Dream is a false idol and illusion; Gatsby himself is utterly miserable and meets a miserable end. There is nothing "sweet" about it.

At the same time, it makes sense that Bill would describe it as bittersweet, because for all his powers of sight, Bill cannot imagine a future where he is happy. Throwing crazy parties every night (for Gatsby at his home, for Bill on the Earth's remains), staring at an unreachable desire far out in the distance -- that's his end goal. He emerged from a position where he was repressed and since then his life has been a steady climb/crawl in the direction of power and control. Both Gatsby and Bill seek to reclaim a lost sense of fulfillment and purpose through this ascent, and both seek to become untouchable as gods are, but both are brought down in the end due to the consequences of their own actions, stemming directly from the violence they bring into their worlds of their own volition. In case you've forgotten, or if you've never read it, Gatsby's money is not clean. We may not see Bill use money, but his social currency is not clean either.

I think it's telling that Flatland can be understood as it relates to Bill's character through summary, but with Gatsby, there is so much subtle incentive to actually read the thing. From the GIF originally posted by Hirsch that I included at the top of the post to the PDF link on ThisIsNotAWebsiteDotCom.com to the fact that the gag in the Book itself goes on for multiple pages when it could have ended after one or two, the intertextuality is paramount. I think that's really cool. It's rare to see intertextuality this well-considered in genre fiction, and I think it makes the whole analytical process more fun.

[simply-ivanka]

If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump

Democrats would scorn her business savvy, cap her ticket prices, and fret over her huge carbon footprint.

Wall Street Journal

By Allysia Finley

Forbes estimates Taylor Swift’s net worth at $1.3 billion. Despite her liberal leanings, the singer-songwriter has amassed her wealth the old-fashioned way: through hard work, talent and business savvy. Her endorsement of Kamala Harris last week is rich considering she owes her success to the capitalist system the vice president wants to tear down.

“The way I see it, fans view music the way they view their relationships,” Ms. Swift wrote in a 2014 piece for the Journal. “Some music is just for fun, a passing fling. . . . Some songs and albums represent seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our memories but had their time and place in the past. However, some artists will be like finding ‘the one.’ ” She has become “the one” for hundreds of millions of fans worldwide with lyrics that chronicle relationship woes women commonly experience.

Ms. Swift took advantage of her ardent fan base in 2014 by removing her catalog from Spotify in a bid for higher royalties. “Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” she explained. “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet, . . . is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”

She also criticized Apple Music for not paying artists during the streaming service’s free trial, prompting the company to change its policy. As she jeers in a hit song, “Who’s afraid of little old me?” Apparently, Big Tech companies.

Last year she reportedly raked in $200 million from streaming royalties on top of the estimated $15.8 million she grossed per performance during her recent “Eras” tour. Some fans have shelled out thousands of dollars on the resale market to see Ms. Swift perform. Americans have even traveled to Europe when they couldn’t get tickets in the U.S.

Her fan base may be more loyal and enthusiastic than Donald Trump’s. JD Vance scoffed at the idea that the star’s endorsement of Ms. Harris could influence the outcome of the election. The “billionaire celebrity,” he said, is “fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.” Maybe, but she certainly taps into the problems of young women.

Democrats hope to use Ms. Swift’s endorsement to drive them to the polls. But it isn’t difficult to imagine what the left would be saying about her had she endorsed the Republican antihero. It might go something like this:

The billionaire has gotten rich by ripping off fans, avoiding taxes and harming competitors. Time for the government to break her up. Unlike rival artists, Ms. Swift writes, performs and owns her compositions. This vertical integration allows her to charge exorbitant royalties and ticket prices.

Tickets for her “Eras” tour on average cost about $240. That’s merely the price for admission—not including food, drink or Swiftie swag. VIP passes that include memorabilia go for $899. How dare she make young women choose between paying for groceries or rent and going to a concert.

The Federal Trade Commission must cap Ms. Swift’s ticket prices at a reasonable price—say, $20—and ban her junk fees. Concertgoers shouldn’t have to pay $65 for an “I Love You It’s Ruining My Life” sweatshirt.

Her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce also unfairly boosts their star power, letting them charge more for endorsements. As Ms. Swift writes in one song, “two is better than one.” Mr. Kelce reportedly signed a $100 million podcast deal with Amazon’s Wonderly. By breaking up the couple, the government could reduce their royalties and ticket prices.

Ms. Swift, the self-described “mastermind,” also dodges taxes on her “full income,” which includes some $125 million in real estate and a music catalog worth an estimated $600 million. “They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true,” Ms. Swift acknowledges in her song “Florida!!!”

Under the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed billionaire’s tax, she would have to pay a 25% levy on the $1 billion increase in her fortune since 2017. But that isn’t enough. Ms. Swift should also have to pay taxes on the appreciating value of her “name, image and likeness,” which the Internal Revenue Service considers an asset.

How much is her brand worth? Easily billions. She might say, as she does in a song, that her “reputation has never been worse.” True, Miss Americana’s image took a hit after reports that her private-jet travel in 2022 emitted 576 times as much CO2 as the average American in a year. When Ms. Swift sings, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me,” she’s correct. She and her fat-cat friends are what’s wrong with America.

Appeared in the September 16, 2024, print edition as 'If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump'.

[determinate-negation]

The Journal of Vietnamese Women, or Phu Nu Vietnam, publicized the militant vision of “socialist womanhood” promoted by leaders of the North Vietnamese Communist Party. During the years of the American War, cover photos almost invariably celebrated women in arms. Issues featured tales of personal experiences and moral stories that encouraged Vietnamese women to transform themselves and their lives to help better society. Stressing a complex combination of women’s liberation and civic responsibility, the journal’s ideal woman was simultaneously a freedom fighter and a traditional homemaker – or, in the words of a popular national slogan of the 1960s, “good at national tasks, good at household tasks.”

source

[masayomi]

i just finished reading Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China by Leta Hong Fincher and during this part where the author discusses the central role woman played in the development of revolutionary thought and activism in the early 1900's and the eventual founding of china's communist party (part of her broader argument that women's rights in china have actually decreased in the last 50ish years) this passage really stuck out to me:

Liu argues that the “liberated” images of women presented through Socialist Realism and the bare faces and colorless uniforms—designed to further the goal of equality—“end up denying difference to women.” “The category of women, like that of class, has long been exploited by the hegemonic discourse of the state of China,” she writes. “In the emancipatory discourse of the state, which always subsumes woman under the nationalist agenda, women’s liberation means little more than equal opportunity to participate in public labor.” Ding Ling joined the Communist Party in 1932 after her husband, the author Hu Yepin, was murdered by the Nationalists. She was then kidnapped by the Nationalists and kept under house arrest for several years until she escaped to Yan’an, which became the Communists’ base after the Red Army completed its legendary Long March to escape Nationalist forces. As a prominent Communist Party member, Ding Ling renounced writing about sexuality and romantic love and embraced the Socialist Realist form of literature for the revolutionary masses. Even so, for International Women’s Day in 1942, Ding Ling vehemently criticized the Communist Party’s gender politics in a damning essay about the Party’s treatment of “women comrades.” “When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’ and raise it specially?” she began. She discussed the pressure on women comrades to marry, as single women were the target of “slanderous gossip”: “So they can’t afford to be choosy, anyone will do: whether he rides horses or wears straw sandals, whether he’s an artist or a supervisor.” Ding Ling pointed out the Party’s double standards, with its expectation that women have children, only to deride the same women for “political backwardness” and insufficient devotion to the revolution. “I myself am a woman, and I therefore understand the failings of women better than others. But I also have a deeper understanding of what they suffer,” she wrote. “Women are incapable of transcending the age they live in, of being perfect, or of being hard as steel.” She called on men in the Communist Party to consider the suffering and “social context” of their female counterparts: “It would be better if there were less empty theorizing and more talk about real problems, so that theory and practice are not divorced, and if each Communist Party member were more responsible for his own moral conduct.” Party officials accused Ding Ling of having “narrow feminist” feelings and holding “a nonrevolutionary view of the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle,” according to Rebecca Karl. In retaliation for her criticism of the Party, Ding Ling was fired from her position as editor of a literary journal and ordered to re-educate herself. She later recovered politically, only to be sent for re-education among the masses during the anti-rightist campaign in 1957 for speaking out about women’s “double burden”: “Women were celebrated in their public role as ‘iron women,’ for their heroic contributions to production. Meanwhile, they were forced to silently struggle with household chores.”

all men across literally all of space and time, no matter their race, religion, or political views, have relied on women's physical and intellectual labor to prop up their movements then turn around and denounce them for not meeting their standards. never forget that any male-centered political movement, no matter how feminist it may seem, will find its own way to exploit women