real talk...yall need to stop making posts on “universal womanhood.” some of yall make these kinds of posts and then wonder why t*rfs keep flocking to them like...t*rfs can and will weaponize the concept of universal womanhood to the detriment of trans women, and the mindset itself is an exclusive one by nature so its wise not to spread those kinds of posts either. you can talk about misogyny and growing up in a patriarchical society without phrasing it like “every woman has experienced x y and z”
OH i just remembered how i wanted to finish that last sentence. you can talk about misogyny and growing up in a patriarchal society without phrasing it like “every woman has experienced x y and z” because that phrasing in itself is something t*rfs take as a “trans women are closed from participating in this discussion.” question what really defines “womanhood” in the end, and do it without inadvertently using radfem rhetoric
slogans like “no pussy no power” “viva la vulva” “not an ovary-action” etc as stand-ins for “i support women” are more damaging than yall think bc centering ur feminism around things which only cis women experience a) alienates trans women who dont experience them, b) is harmful to ppl who DO experience them but arent women, & c) furthers the mentality that gender = genitals/trans women dont really have a place fighting for womens rights. none of that is as progressive as yall think holding up a sign with a vagina on it is, same goes 4 writing that shit on pads. not every woman has a vagina & not everyone with a vagina is a woman, and feminism which marginalizes entire subsets of us for the sake of a catchy slogan isnt good feminism
A very insidious form of transmisogony is that there can never be a positivity post for trans women without people (usually afab trans people) either derailing it OR reminding them about terfs and it’s ONLY for trans women- it’s much less often that anyone will mention “transphobes don’t look at this” on posts for trans MEN.
Trans women can’t exist without everyone reminding them that someone out their hates them, even people in their communities, and we as allies HAVE to do better. Instead of saying “terfs don’t look at this” or whatever preformative allyship floats your boat- deplatorm terfs, block them and STOP ENGAGING, and uplift trans fem voices!!!
As a Jew I rarely see “Nazis don’t even breathe on this post” when it’s Jewish positivity, but I ALWAYS see it on anything even REMOTELY related to trans fem things. It’s transmisogony, simple as that
It’s especially ugly when someone (always someone who’s not transfem) tacks on: “✨reblog to make a terf mad✨” like supporting trans women just to make an aggressive statement to a group of people whose intentions you clearly don’t understand is in any way helpful or meaningful.
If women don’t conform to beauty expectations, they’re paid less.
“ Madison, who works a customer service job at an airport spa, has an employee handbook that says “makeup should be well maintained” and “hands and nails must be well manicured.” She says the few men she works with just ignore these guidelines “because they’re meant for women but [it] doesn’t explicitly say that.” Her wages ($13.25 per hour + 15% retail commission) do not include additional pay to purchase manicures or makeup. During her interview, her now-boss commented on how nice her makeup looked and how well her shoes matched her purse—comments that make her feel like she needs to keep up that kind of appearance even though she already has the job.
It’s well known that a persistent wage gap exists for women workers in the United States, a gap that becomes even wider when race, industry, age and geography are taken into account. But less frequently discussed is the often silent expectation around appearance imposed on women workers, which has its own financial costs—known as the “grooming gap.” The grooming gap refers to the set of social norms regarding grooming and appearance for women, including the time women workers must spend to conform to these norms and the material consequences it has on their lives.
We’ve all heard the common advice to “look the part” at work. For men, that can often just mean business casual clothing and a short haircut. For women, it can mean hours spent each week on makeup, hair styling and curating an outfit that’s both attractive and professional.
The rules are usually unspoken; even when employers do not explicitly require workers to wear makeup, for example, women workers often feel required to wear it anyway.
They’re not wrong: Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found that physically attractive workers have higher incomes than average-looking workers, but that this relationship is eliminated when controlling for grooming in women. In other words, if you purchase the right clothes, makeup and haircut, higher wages are more within reach. It’s true that men need to abide by certain grooming rules, too, but they are less complex, less expensive and less time consuming. Men’s haircuts, for example, often cost much less than women’s haircuts—regardless of hair length. The grooming gap essentially constitutes a pay cut catch-22: If women don’t conform, they are paid less; if they do conform, they’re expected to use those higher wages on beauty products and grooming regimens.
Grooming costs for women can be extremely expensive; the global beauty industry, valued at $532 billion worldwide, directs aggressive advertising toward women to convince them they need to purchase a whole host of products to have a chance at being beautiful, well-liked or successful. The industry relies on maintaining impossible expectations around women’s looks so it can continue to rake in enormous profits. One 2017 study found the average woman puts $8 worth of product on her face each day; another found the average woman spends up to $225,000 on skincare and makeup during her lifetime. And then there’s the “pink tax”: Studies confirm that, 42% of the time, products marketed to women are more expensive than comparable products targeted to men.
The grooming gap also results in a loss of free time: 55 minutes each day for the average woman, the equivalent of two full weeks each year. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFACWA), says that, in her industry—a workforce that is 79.3% women—the expectation around appearance literally “interrupts your sleep”: Flight attendants get minimal rest between flights, and that rest time is further shrunk because they are expected to appear “perfectly coifed” before their next flight. Nelson says that all of her grooming tasks took 30–40 minutes each day (more than two hours in a five-day work week). Madison agrees: it takes her 45 minutes to do her makeup and style her hair before her 7 a.m. shift—and she wakes up at 5 a.m. to get it all done. Prior to this job, Madison says she worked at the beauty department at Target, where she spent $200 on products every other week.
Restaurant and hospitality workers are perhaps hardest hit by the grooming gap, as they rely on tips to survive. When I was a barista in 2010–2011, the only official dress code rule was to wear closed-toed shoes, for safety. Still, I knew I had to show up looking pretty to pay the rent; I made less than $10 an hour and I needed the tips.
Katie, 36, a veteran bartender and server in Fort Smith, Ark., says at her current job, it’s “understood” she should wear makeup. At a previous restaurant, a manager even told her and her coworkers they would “make better tips if [they] wore makeup.”
“Based on my own appearance—weight fluctuations, makeup versus no makeup, jewelry versus no jewelry—there’s a definite difference,” Katie says. She adds that she was passed over for the most lucrative bartending shifts at her previous job after overhearing her managers say they wanted “cuter girls” to bartend instead.
Multi-billion dollar industries also market fad diets and anti-aging products to women. Both Katie and Jeeva, 24, a bartender and member of UNITE HERE, the union representing hospitality, hotel and airport workers, worry about aging. “As you get older, as a female bartender, your tips can go down,” Jeeva says. Katie says she “hope[s] to leave [the service industry] in the next 10 years, before I get too ugly.”
The grooming gap’s effects are compounded for women of color. According to Restaurant Opportunity Center, restaurant owners look for workers who are “clean-cut, [have] good hygiene or a professional appearance, all potential code words for race.” For instance, Black women spent $473 million on relaxers, weaves and other hair care in 2017, in part because of racist ideas that natural Black hair is not professional or attractive. Black workers annually spend nine times more on hair and beauty products than other workers.
For transgender women, too, there can be an added layer of work, stress and self-consciousness. Autumn, who transitioned while at her current publishing job in Washington, D.C., says she quickly realized how much time and energy it takes to perform femininity for work. She used to spend 20 minutes to get ready in the morning, but now takes at least 45 minutes. Autumn adds, “I have to do things that cis women don’t have to… [but] it’s gotten easier with time and practice,” like tucking and dealing with facial hair. Because she presents extremely femme, Autumn says she hasn’t dealt with enforcement around her appearance, but other women workers around the country have been disciplined and even fired for appearing insufficiently feminine. Women workers have sued—and won—over gender discrimination that manifests as attractiveness discrimination.
Nat, a trans woman who works at a union in the Washington, D.C., area, says, “I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be a woman if I liked masculine things. It delayed any kind of self-reflection” about gender and identity “for such a long time.”
At work and in the world, all women—cis and trans—feel the pressure to conform to normative standards of femininity and attractiveness. But the solution to this problem isn’t to throw away all the eyeshadow or take out a new line of credit for weekly manicures. The solution is to organize together.”
Continued in the link to the article, but uh
TL;DR: There’s a significant wage gap between women who conform to traditional feminine beauty standards by, for example wearing makeup and heels and using a lot of hair and beauty products, and the women who don’t. Meaning women are financially punished for not conforming to femininity or beauty standards. The gap is worse for women of color and trans women because there’s higher beauty standards for women of color and trans women.
And when women do get those higher wages by playing the game and conforming to beauty standards and femininity, they have to spend 2x-3x+ more on grooming and their appearance than their male colleagues, so those high wages just disappear and go right back into keeping up their looks, making it difficult if not impossible to keep up financially with men, this isn’t even mentioning how much more time women lose each day to having to keep up their “professional” appearance compared to male colleagues.
like not to psychoanalyse people online but you kinda have to realize that while you might go to bed thinking about your plans for tomorrow or for later in the week or some movie you wanna watch or videogames or about dating or about some cooking you wanna do, basically all the most popular users in TERF tumblr go to bed thinking about what unhinged anti-trans shit they’re going to post as soon as they wake up next day, what users they want to harass, and what anti-trans talking points they’ll be obsessing over the next day, and they do this every day because their blogs have uninterrupted streaks of transmisogynist bullshit numbering in the hundreds of posts. it’s a level of obsession i think most people can’t even hope to be familiar with, and it’s entirely driven by hate and fear and revulsion.
i’ve literally seen testimonials by active users of r/gendercritical saying that this obsession has taken over their lives and describing themselves as driven by an actual addiction to post and share and invent new anti-trans women talking points every day and harass and shame and attack and invent rumors because it literally gives a sense of meaning to their entire lives. they’re like, acknowledging that they’re monomaniacally obsessed with us and that it forms the centerpoint of their entire existence and basically being super close to admitting they should stop, but not doing so because they’re surrounded by a faux-community of equally obsessive hateful people who encourage them to keep going. terfism is basically a fad in maladaptive coping mechanisms for cis women who would rather cope by engaging in daily attempts at harming people they see as disposable than by engaging in any introspection.
This is like the messages a dude on tinder sends you about your photos that you’re supposed to accept as a compliment but the wording is weird as fuck and uncomfortable with an underlying ominous feeling of transphobia as cherry on top
Nice guys finish last! Why won’t she fuck me when I read about feminism?
I always thought the “nice guy” meme was over-exaggerated but when I go back in the Dating Scene™️ it’s actually so fucking real. A guy told me he had depression and anxiety so is kinda afraid of approaching people and I was like chill me too, but then when I said I didn’t want to have sex on the first date he texted me and like flipped out and said I worsened his self hatred then blocked me and cursed me out before I could say anything.
Perhaps “nice guys finish last” because they act like the “chads” they complain about; they’re super pushy and sexual at the very beginning of a relationship. And it’s funny because the only guy who apologized to me for anything was a total asshole 90% of the time.
So my advice for “nice guys” is, instead of focusing on being the most moral and appealing person possible, work on your sensitivity to rejection. THAT is what’s creating these issues, not you being weird or awkward or whatever the fuck—that’s another thing, these men victimize themselves so much. They seriously seem to believe they are the only ones who struggle in life.
Honestly at this point I’m more likely to date a neoliberal who thinks he’s cool because he has a new Tesla. Still no libertarians sorry.
Just to spell it out for those who still don’t get it: He was an adult, and she was a minor 7 years younger than him. Even if we would look over the fact that this legally counts as pedophilic behavior in a lot of countries, the age difference is exactly what gave him the power to be so manipulative later on in their relationship. But you know, just let it sink in that the start was still fucking creepy and disgusting. I’m in my midtwenties. 17 year olds address me with Mister, Sir and the formal form of you in Dutch. If I had done a different study I could’ve been their teacher, after having finished college. That’s how large of a difference these 7 years are: They are in completely different phases of their life. I understand that maybe he made a bad judgment when guessing her age when he was initially attracted to her, that much I could believe, but when you (in your midtwenties, at the end of or even after college) discover that the person you approached is literally and legally still a child, you get away. You don’t pursue. You accept that you fucked up and move on. THAT is what is normal and expected behavior.
Think about why this man didn’t move on. Think about what made him decide to continue their relationship. It wasn’t just love or even lust.
He’s got 6 years of experience being a legal adult, while she hasn’t even started adulthood yet. The reason he thinks he gets to tell her what her hair should be like, and the reason she is asking for help here instead of immediately realizing this is dangerous behavior she should end the relationship for, is probably because he has been doing and saying similar things for their entire relationship. She’s not experienced legal adult agency without him being there as her guidance telling how to do things.
Now, 8 years into their relationship, 2 years into their marriage, she does realize that a threatening divorce over a hair color is a bit too much, but someone doesn’t just come up with these kind of threats out of nowhere. He’s done this for a long time, gradually testing his limits, and he’s gone too far this time which made her notice. How much manipulation do you think she missed?
i dont really wanna post the full image because its transmisogynist as fuck but one of the listed “pros” of a cisbian gf is that “she won’t persecute you for making POLITICALLY INCORRECT jokes” whereas the trans woman gf has, as one of her cons “SUPPORTING EVIL ONLINE SJWS”. imagine telling andrea dworkin that her writings would lay the foundation of white female incelism.
aside from a few “feminist” buzzwords this character is literally just a male /r9k/ poster’s wank fantasy, not only because she’s some fucking generic skinny short white woman, but also particularly because of every single part of the listed “pros” about how she doesn’t need emotional support, has no insecurities that you need to help her with, will never criticize you for being an asshole and agrees with all your politics. imagine how deranged and friendless the person who wrote this is oh my god
I feel like this batshit insane meme’s attempt at depicting the trans fem character as repulsive and disgusting also fails kind of spectacularly if you excise the completely deranged wall of text next to her, as I have done here. Like, this is just a tall girl with trans flag stockings wearing ever so vaguely alternative fashion. Wouldn’t be surprised if both the characters here are stolen art that the untalented fascist who made the meme just barely took the time to modify by making one of them taller and being like “uhhh i guess multicolor stockings are uhh cringe agp???” before going back to fantasizing about her right-wing imaginary gf that has no emotions whatsoever. What a mess.
what i find funny about the whole “you shouldn’t be on tumblr if you’re like 30 or whatever” thing is that its actually a pretty thorough demonstration of how hard tumblr failed to be a regular, successful social media website, since facebook or twitter or even websites like reddit don’t have people going “this website only belongs to teenagers” or “this website only belongs to people over 30″ or anything akin to that, whereas tumblr is insular and fringe enough that you get these community bubbles on it that end up thinking that they’re the only people who belong on the website.
to be fair to tumblr though, the beginning of the “dont post here if you’re in your late 20s” phenomenon was pretty explicitly people in their early 20s being huge misogynists and melting down that (mostly cis) women of ages like 27 or 28 would post here about liking anime or movies or whatever, instead of, as these people indicated “caring about their mortgages or children”. it was very explicitly built on the idea women past a certain age are supposed to become housewives and not have any weird hobbies, and then it gradually leaked towards politically incoherent “woke” spaces consisting of other young people, who gradually managed to reframe it as “women over the age of 26 on tumblr as dangerous and predatory”, because that’s how you make things woke I guess? what a dumb website this is.
i've been aware of this person's online presence for like a couple of years, but it was still kind of insane to see them go from posting shit like "i am not transphobic, i just think posting about anime girls is creepy" to keysmash laughing about a theoretical serial trans woman murderer.
it's also interesting to think about, because a lot of like contemporary liberal media blames 4chan and reddit for the rise of fascism in young men, but shit like this is proof that a subculture of deranged fascist tradwives can spawn even from flowery aesthetic blogs on tumblr.
the two can't be equated exactly, though. i think the 4chan/reddit case is probably just the normalization of racism and bigotry through memes while the tumblr tradwife case is probably the normalization of racism and bigotry by coating it in a layer of liberal academia or calling it "feminist theory" or something.
i am a woman. i am a lesbian. i have a penis. i am dysphoric about my penis. even if i wasnt, i would be allowed to enjoy having sex with it! and my lesbian sexual partners would be allowed to enjoy it too.
being a lesbian is about loving women–even if those womens bodies have penises, or flat chests, or deep voices, or adams apples, or facial hair.
claiming that being a lesbian is about hating penises, or liking vaginas, or breasts, or anything other than loving women regardless of what their bodies are like, is disrespectful not just to trans lesbians everywhere, but to all lesbians whose bodies dont fit what society tells us women have to be, regardless of whats in their pants.
women are more than their vaginas. women are more than their bodies. women are a wonderful and diverse group of people with bodies that are as diverse as any other group. you cant ignore that, no matter what shitty ideas about womens bodies you subscribe to.
Hypothetically porn should be able to be criticized in the same way that any kind of media should be able to be criticized. It affects the way we see the world (and sex specifically) in roughly the same way and to the same extent that any other form of media does.
However - every single goddamn time I’ve seen civilians try to criticize porn, the “critique” always ends up perpetuating some kind of whorephobic stereotype or falling in line with some aspect of SWERF rhetoric. It’s framing porn as a specifically and uniquely harmful form of media, it’s implicitly positioning porn stars as the enemies of women.
When a civilian says something like “we should be able to criticize porn without being automatically assumed to be SWERFs,” what they pretty much always mean is “we should be able to criticize porn freely without feeling obligated to listen to sex workers when they tell us the way we’re doing so is missing the mark or making their lives harder. We should be allowed to shout down the voices of sex workers who disagree with us.” And they act accordingly.
I’m dead serious, I have not seen a single counterexample to this claim. Hypothetically porn should be able to be criticized. But if you’re a civilian, then I don’t fucking trust you to criticize porn in a way that doesn’t fuck over sex workers, especially porn stars.
A lot of popular porn videos shows male literally raping a woman, but it’s OK because she starts to like it. After looking out for this kind of thing, I’ve noticed it with all genders in pornos. I’ve always wonder if this is why a lot of people think it’s OK to sexually harass others.
…..yeah, this is actually an example of the kind of critique that makes me uncomfortable.
There are SO MANY reasons why people (especially men but not just them) think it’s okay to sexually harass others. Like there’s an entire rape culture out there, entire schools of feminist thought have been created to analyze the ways that boys are taught from birth that they are owed access to women’s bodies (and girls are taught from birth that they have to go along with it). This indoctrination begins long before any exposure to pornography, and continues after that first exposure.
Porn that uncritically depicts rape can be a part of how rape culture is perpetuated, yes. It can be a part of how rape culture is propagated and enforced. But to suggest that it’s the reason people think it’s okay to sexually harass others is just scapegoating porn for the existence of rape culture. This implicitly blames sex workers for the existence of sexual violence (its easy for this line of reasoning to turn into “if porn stars just worked a different job then rape culture wouldn’t exist”), which is logic that’s used to justify violence against us. It also actually obfuscates the myriad of other ways that rape culture is perpetuated and taught to people, especially young people.
I never even watched porn as a teen, but I still internalized rape culture so thoroughly that I had no idea what was happening to me when I was raped at 16. I thought I owed my rapist access to my body. And porn had literally nothing to do with why I believed that.
