On this year women's day, all we could think about are Palestinian women in Gaza.
Nearly 9,000 women have been killed in Israeli attacks in five months. Another 2,100 are missing and presumed dead, while 23,000 have been wounded and over half a million are displaced.
“Palestinian women, especially in the Gaza Strip, are exposed to the worst humanitarian catastrophe,” Ashraf al-Qudra, the health ministry’s spokesperson, said on Thursday.
Dozens of women and girls have also been detained and face harsh conditions in Israeli custody, including sexual abuse.
Women in Gaza also struggle to find menstruation products and access the necessary pregnancy and post-natal care. The consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births, have increased significantly.
Women in labour are undergoing caesarean procedures without anaesthetics, and a shortage of post-operative care such as medication, antibiotics and pain relief further exacerbates the situation.
According to the health ministry, 5,000 women give birth monthly in Gaza under “harsh, unsafe and unhealthy” conditions caused by Israeli bombing and displacement.
There are 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza suffering from “malnutrition, dehydration and lack of medical care.
There have also been repeated cases of Israeli soldiers mocking Palestinian women by posting videos and pictures of themselves rummaging through personal belongings in Gaza homes, making derogatory comments and posing with women’s underwear.
Masterpost of gender-neutral language used for women but not men
Some say that gender-neutral language is not sexist, nor does it erase women. Here are some examples that prove otherwise, revealing the bias for women, and not men, to surrender linguistic boundaries.
(I’ve been collecting examples since I made this post. Thanks to all who submitted! I will keep adding on.)
I’ve noticed that people tend to talk about the need for sex ed as if the two sexes are both suffering equally from the lack of it. While I obviously agree that comprehensive sex ed is desperately needed for young girls and young boys alike, I don’t think that the consequences for children without it are anywhere near equal. For uneducated girls, they are the ones who suffer for their lack of knowledge, from yeast infections to pregnancy. Whereas for boys, their lack of knowledge often leads to suffering for girls, from pain during sex to pregnancy. When sex ed is lacking, girls and women are the ones who suffer the most.
Women’s liberation protest, New York, August 26, 1970. Tens of thousands of women marched along Fifth Avenue to Bryant Park to demand equal opportunity in employment and society
Dr Jess Taylor asks 37 questions to challenge the existence of systemic misandry – the hatred and oppression of men.
1. Can you name 1 instance of an all-female terrorist regime that has committed acts of mass rape and murder towards boys and men who they deem inferior?
2. Can you name 1 instance where a group of female terrorists abducted hundreds of little boys from their school, to traffic them for sex?
3. Can you name 1 female led country in the world where it is illegal for men to drive a car or have a driving licence because they are perceived as too stupid?
5. Can you name 1 female led country in the world where men are not allowed to leave their houses without a female chaperone?
6. Can you name 1 country in the world where females in power have legally dictated that men should cover their entire bodies at all times, not show their hair or faces, and punish men and boys who do show their skin?
7. Can you name 1 female led country or community in the world that has legally banned boys from getting an education or attending school?
8. Can you name 1 company which is currently abducting and exploiting men and boys to impregnate, carry and birth babies for rich white people whilst being locked in facilities for 9 months?
9. Can you name 1 female led country where the child marriage of boys as young as 6 years old to adult women is widely encouraged or legally allowed?
10. Can you name 1 country where men are not allowed to take part in sports at all?
11. Can you name 1 country where 1 in 3 men will be raped or sexually assaulted by women?
12. Can you name 1 country where the entire government is female?
13. Can you name 1 country where all CEOs of top performing companies are female?
14. Can you name 1 country where men who become fathers are expected not to work or study?
15. Can you name 1 country where men are made to live in small huts once per month due to their hormonal cycle as they are perceived to be unclean and unworthy of being in bed with a woman?
16. Can you name 1 country where teenage and unmarried fathers were sent away to asylums and institutions to live there and look after their babies on their own?
17. Can you name 1 country where the majority of all murders of men are committed by women?
18. Can you name 1 female-led major world religion which suggests or describes men as inferior to women?
19. Can you name 1 country where males must get permission and supervision of females to travel, marry or seek healthcare?
20. Can you name 1 country where large groups of women publicly stone men to death for showing their skin?
21. Can you name 1 country where large groups of women kill men for having sex before marriage?
22. Can you name 1 country where large groups of women publicly flog and beat men as a form of punishment for being seen out alone without a female chaperone?
23. Can you name 1 country where men have been forbidden from using any form of contraception?
24. Can you name 1 country where a man has never been in power or leadership in government?
25. Can you name 1 country where men are not allowed to apply for a passport without the express permission of a woman?
26. Can you name 1 country in the world where women kill more than 3 men per week?
27. Can you name 1 country in the world that states that male prisoners can only leave prison if they transferred into the guardianship of a woman who will then control them?
28. Can you name 1 country in the world where a man is not recognised as ‘a whole person before the court’ and therefore cannot give evidence in a trial unless it is backed up by a woman who is deemed as a ‘whole person’?
29. Can you name 1 country in the world where men do not have the right to vote, but women do?
30. Can you name 1 country in the world where a woman has a legal right to stop her husband from working in occupations she doesn’t like or want him to do?
31. Can you name 1 country where female-led governments have stated that men are not legally allowed to drive trains, tractors or pilot ships?
32. Can you name 1 country where men were not allowed to watch sporting events?
33. Can you name 1 country where men are not allowed to serve in the military?
34. Can you name 1 country in the world where universities restrict their male university population to 10-15% to ensure more women than men get into higher education because they are deemed more important than men?
35. Can you name 1 country where a man can be given up to 100 lashes for wearing trousers?
36. Can you name 1 country or community where it is illegal for men to own or use a mobile phone?
37. Can you name 1 country where men and boys were routinely sectioned and had their reproductive organs removed because female doctors believed it was causing them to become insane?
I still don’t think female and male are opposite sexes. They are definitely two different, distinct sexes. That’s biology. But opposite? That’s cultural. That’s patriarchal. That’s an interpretation of facts, facts arranged into a hierarchy and forced into dualisms. To call female and male opposites is to gender biology. It reeks of Descartian and Freudian thought, but it has as little to do with reality as the trope that somehow positions cats and dogs as each others’ opposites.
Getting ”OP is a terf”-notes on this post I wrote ages and ages ago is surreal. I don’t even know what to say at this point except that there’s a difference between not agreeing with someone’s ideology and wishing or causing them harm. I want people to live their lives in a way that makes sense to them and I’ll do the same. Generally speaking, trans interpretations of sex and gender do not make sense to me. That’s it. I know that the “OP is a terf”-label is precisely to stop discussion so I know it’s futile to encourage a respectful exchange of ideas. (And honestly I’m not in the least bit interested in educating or convincing anyone.) But I don’t want anyone to read what I’ve written and think “This person wishes me harm, this person doesn’t want me to exist in the world” because as long as you’re kind, I can promise you that’s not the case. There seems to be a growing(?) generational divide between the very interpretation of the word “gender” and that also makes discussion pointless. I want young (and older) people to feel free to experiment with whatever self expression they want, dress how they want, explore personality traits, interests, relationships. You want to call that gender, fine, I guess. I call gender the cultural system of beliefs that allows for the subjugation and exploitation of women by men. I see gender as the prison and not biology. I’d rather see us empty gender of all meaning and of all power until the words “woman” and “man” are completely neutral, factual descriptors bearing no cultural significance whatsoever and being relevant in medical contexts only. That’s where I see us all free to live exactly the way we want, and women completely free from patriarchal oppression.
Men who can’t cook, clean, or even do their own laundry are not “cute” and “in need of a woman to care for them”. They are spoiled brats so dependent on gender roles that they never bothered to learn the minimal skills to take care of themselves.
“Women are described in animal terms as pets, cows, sows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats, old hens, mother hens, pussycats, cats, cheetahs, bird-brains, and hare-brains…‘Mother Nature’ is raped, mastered, conquered, mined; her secrets are ‘penetrated,’ her ‘womb’ is to be put into the service of the ‘man of science.’ Virgin timber is felled, cut down; fertile soil is tilled, and land that lies ‘fallow’ is ‘barren,’ useless. The exploitation of nature and animals is justified by feminizing them; the exploitation of women is justified by naturalizing them.”
