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educational resource to introduce those from all backgrounds to radical feminist ideology

[happy-terf-blog]

the radical feminist community is toxic as fuck. i tried getting back into it again today and quickly discovered what a horrible idea that is. i’m leaving for good this time. i’d literally rather hang around libfems or genderists, i looked at their tags today and the lack of hatred towards bisexual women was so refreshing. thanks for driving me out of a community that was supposed to be for me you pieces of shit. guess im gonna have to make my own female-only community, one where all women are welcome. maybe i’ll make a new blog for frilly feel-good feminism. dunno. just need to be in a space where i’m shown basic respect

[respectthefemalebody]

Matriarchy is Natural

Even our primate cousins kill rapists, so there is no reason to think that rape was the most prevalent form of human reproduction before the invention of private property and patriarchy, which came hand in hand.

Consider very early human societies, gatherer-hunters, who lived nomadically depending on the seasons or following the game they hunted. These societies would be much smaller and more intimate, with the people within them living closely together. Humans are also born with empathy. Unplanned pregnancies in these small communities would mean more mouths to feed and there would be times when the women who were pregnant would need to rest.

This is a pre-agriculture civilization, and the key thing about agriculture is that it allows us to feed more people and have larger families, and it also means staying in one place, in a home. So before agriculture, keeping a population stable was a higher priority than having as many children as possible. However, once you get agriculture, then you also get ideas such as ownership of the land, and producing more children to have more workers on your farm.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that early humans understood how reproduction works. After all, the clitoris has evolved on the outside of the vagina for a reason, because humans use sex to pair bond as a form of intimacy.

Venus statues of fat women which appear to have been carved from the perspective of a woman looking down at herself show that in early societies, there were women who had the leisure time to make statues of themselves, were fat and therefore well fed and taken care of. Evidence also shows that the majority of cave paintings were made by women.

Archaeological evidence also shows that early human societies supported the disabled, through skeletal remains which show that those who had severe injuries survived decades after their debilitating injury–something they could not have done without community support. This shows that empathy for others was a high value of early human society.

It is far more likely that in pre-agricultural society, families were matriarchal, as before the concept of patriarchal marriage, it would be impossible to tell who the father of a child was, but you could surely tell who the mother was. In such a society, before the invention of a gender hierarchy of feminine/masculine behaviors, it would be more likely that women could choose whether or not to become mothers, and that those who decided to become mothers were well supported and respected by their communities.

[arandomthot]

These two things get confused for each other far too often

[sespursongles-deactivated201906]

what makes you hate transhumanism as a movement? i'm curious to know, because i have always felt iffy about it but i can't articulate why and i've been made feel stupid and anti-science because of it.

I haven’t read all that much about it and I suppose, as all movements, it has many versions and sub-movements, but all the transhumanist rhetoric I’ve come across has massively creeped me out. When I first learnt that its core principle was “enhancing human capabilities through technology” I thought “okay, so, neo-eugenics”, and discovering that the most prominent transhumanists are rich white able-bodied American (/ Silicon Valley) males wasn’t reassuring on that point. As Francis Fukuyama said “Transhumanists are just about the last group I’d like to see live forever.”

I haven’t really thought about it deeply enough to have a coherent critique, but some of the elements that creep me out are a) the eugenics slippery slope, as I said (which kind of human will have the privilege to become posthuman? do we really want to live in a world where rich white male elites are overwhelmingly the demographics that live forever?)—the comparison with Hitler’s biologically superior Aryan Übermensch rhetoric can feel dramatic but if you read transhumanist manifestos written by these white able-bodied Silicon Valley men, the similarities can be chilling (esp. with regards to disabilities / mental illness, a “degenerescence” of the human race to be eliminated);

b) the Cartesian dualism slippery slope—we can see right now with sex worker rhetoric and transgender politics how dangerous it is to go further and further in the direction of “I am only my mind, my body is something I have and not something I am (thus it’s no big deal to mutilate it, sell it, etc)”. Transhumanist rhetoric is an extreme version of that; the idea that humans can someday get rid of our subpar bodies and upload our consciousness into machines amounts to reducing our personhood to nothing but our mind/intellect. An idea which, historically, has been pushed by the worst kind of people / movements (you know, like excluding women, people of colour and mentally ill people from human personhood, as they do not possess the right kind of intellect / rationality, or not enough of it);

c) the extremely male contempt for boundaries or limits of any kind. Men have such a problem with the notion of limits due to their entitlement, arrogance and fantasies of omnipotence / god complex. I was thinking the other day about how often you see the word “reductionist” used as an insult on this website, even in a scientific context. Science is reductionist by nature! Would they call physicists evil reductionists for reducing a person to their elementary particles by demonstrating that’s what all matter consists of? Successful scientific theories isolate a common element underlying many disparate phenomena and reduce complexity to simplicity. It was really baffling to me how reductionism has become a bad word, until I realised that the other two components of this evil trifecta are exclusionary and gatekeeping, so at the core of it must be nothing but men thinking of themselves as gods and feeling wronged by the existence of categories and definitions that exclude them, which they perceive as intolerable threats to their divine omnipresence.

Transhumanism is, again, the extreme version of this. Max More (who founded the Extropy Institute) said “We seek to void all limits to life, intelligence, freedom, knowledge, andhappiness.” This kind of “We will push back all human limitations (including death) until there are no more!” rhetoric is the very core of trans/posthumanism. I find this hubristic mentality not only male but also very (white) American, who got used for a time to thinking of the “frontier” not as the geographical limit of their country, but as something to be repeatedly and triumphantly pushed back; not as a boundary but as the symbol of their thrilling freedom to expand. It’s also why I’ve never been a fan of the idea of space exploration as our backup solution for when the Earth is ruined. It can be fun to read about (as is transhumanism—I like cyborgs in scifi) but as a real-life ambition it’s just another symptom of men’s parasitic mindset of unlimited growth and overexploitation of natural resources, which are seen as worthless and disposable rather than valued and protected—in prostitution women’s bodies are to be consumed and thrown away after use; in transhumanism people’s bodies are to be left behind once we can find a “better”, more durable way to store our consciousness; in space exploration the Earth is to be depleted of all resources and left a barren wasteland without a second thought once we find another suitable planet to exploit. I hate this arrogant, solipsistic mentality of “no limits, no restraint, everything is ours to consume then dispose of once we get something better” and as I said, it’s everywhere in posthumanism.

[I’m editing to add that Mary Midgley, in that book of hers I quoted earlier, pretty much comments on your “i’ve been made feel stupid and anti-science because of it”:“There is also a curious moral slant, which tends to condemn allopposition to the wilder technological dreams automatically asnarrow and philistine. The response felt to be ‘scientific’ is not theshrewdly sceptical one which at one time was seen as typical ofscience. It is a receptive, credulous, romantic one. The fanciesthemselves are venerated as being, not just wish-fulfilment, butembodiments of a serious ideal. They could, of course, in principlebe so. But if they are, then the nature of that ideal needs to be speltout soberly and literally. It cannot be taken on trust in a flood ofrhetoric.” ]

[destinyrush]

The most important thread you’ll stumble upon today

[vagueliving-vogueloving]

And marital rape still legal in India

[90905791]

Can we as radical feminists agree to stop referring to clitoromegaly as a “mutilation” aspect of FtM transitioning?

There are aspects of transitioning that are actually harmful but clitoromegaly is not. If you want to critique the harmful parts of transitioning, go for how it negatively affects the health of joints, kidneys, livers, hearts, etc. whatever. But clitoral hypertrophy is in no way dangerous to the person’s health and the rage about it seems to be based in disgust rather than worry about “mutilation.”

It’s okay to not find clitoromegaly pleasing, to not want to have sex with those of us who have it, to not like it at all. We’ll disclose it to you before anything–I for one always disclose my condition to women when they start to show interest in me because I know plenty don’t like the idea of a woman with a clitoris like mine and I’d think that 99% of others disclose too.

The problem with the way this community reacts to clitoromegaly is that it’s disrespectful to those of us with it. It’s not helpful to detransitioning women, women with forms of CAH, and the few women with cases of PCOS severe enough that they develop it. It makes us feel even more uncomfortable in our already harshly criticized bodies.

It’s another aspect of the female body like stretch marks is. For a community that states it supports the female body being destigmatized, we need to start doing so in all forms of the female body.

[destroyyourbinder]

Detransitioned women who experienced a change in their genitals as a result of testosterone use sometimes experience the change as traumatizing or otherwise disturbing, and it may affect their experience of and comfort with sexuality. But this sort of language does nothing to help women come to terms with their altered bodies and increases any self-hatred they might feel. Atypical female genitals, especially clitoromegaly, are/is something often deemed literally monstrous by the general public and medical professionals, and it does no woman any benefit to gasp and titter about the effects of testosterone on intimate body parts that women already have such a fraught relationship with. Female people with transition histories often have faced sexual abuse and face the potential for severe, possibly life-threatening discrimination when interacting with medical providers. Describing the details of testosterone-induced changes in female genitals in a sensational and inaccurate way intended to shock, disgust, or induce pity will not help any woman with atypical genitals (no matter the cause) heal from her distressing history (which we all have in a patriarchal world but can obviously include extremely intense and horrible experiences) nor get medical care for risk factors of any condition she actually has (whether from an intersex condition, an endogenous reproductive condition, or from the effects of transition.) There are medically relevant changes to female genitals from testosterone which can be harmful, such as vaginal atrophy, but clitoral growth is not one of them. Equivocating what is medically risky with what is psychologically unhealthy, or what a female person might find traumatic when her self-understanding changes, or what is abusive to do to someone although medically “safe”, is not useful to anyone except for those peddling disgust, rage, or politically prurient interest towards so-called “abnormal” women.

[hypnictwitch]

Boys who watch porn at a young age are more likely to be misogynistic

Boys who watch porn at a young age are more likely to grow into misogynistic men who want power over women, a new study conducted at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, claims.

[radfem-lyanna-mormont]

I find it really interesting how rape and sexual assault have about the same rate of false accusations as any other crime ( http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/false-sexual-violence-assault-rape-allegations-truth-rare-international-day-for-the-elimination-of-a8077876.html ) and yet everyone seems to know someone who was falsely accused of rape, but nobody really seems to ever know people who were falsely accused of burglary or murder or whatever. And by interesting, I mean not at all surprising considering how our society hates and constantly disbelieves women

[antiplondon]

[gahdamnpunk]

Louder for the people in the back

[feministvenus]

Can you explain why radfems are porn critical?

Thanks for the question! Pornography is the dehumanization, degradation, and abuse of women for male pleasure. In porn, women’s bodies are seen as no more than an object to be dominated by men. Porn focuses primarily on the male’s orgasm, and creates unrealistic and unhealthy sexual expectations. Porn doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the way women are viewed in our society are reflected in porn (sexual objects) and the way women are portrayed in porn are reflected in our society (women being expected to deepthroat, have bare vulvas, small labias, enjoy aggressive sex, etc). Since porn does not exist in a bubble, many women feel pressured to act out the unhealthy portrayals of sex seen in porn, and many men see sex as an act of dominance and control. 

Porn isn’t fantasy; it’s production requires real people. Nearly half of sex trafficking victims report that pornography was made of them while they were held captive (source). There is no way to tell if the sexual acts that you are viewing are consensual. Radfems listen to the stories of former porn stars, and what they have to say shows the true horrors of the porn industry 

(content warning… graphic descriptions of abuse/rape)

“"I got the shit kicked out of me,“ she said. “I was told before the video - and they said this very proudly, mind you - that in this line most of the girls start crying because they’re hurting so bad … I couldn’t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, ‘Turn the fucking camera off’, and they kept going.” -Regan Starr (source)

“I was crying and crying, which was not against their shooting rules. There was a male dominant and a male videographer and a female photographer. I kept looking to her to save me.”-Princess Donna (source)

“When I arrived to the set I expected to do a vaginal girl boy scene. But during the scene with male porn star Eric Everhard, he forced himself anally into me and would not stop. I yelled at him to stop and screamed no over and over but he would not stop. The pain became too much and I was in shock and my body went limp. I couldn’t fight him off anymore” (source) 

Porn stars Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon made a video describing the rape and abuse they faced while shooting porn films. At the end of the films, both women had been asked if the sexual acts on camera were consensual. Even though it was not, they answered yes. They say they did this because 1) they didn’t feel safe. They both felt that if they said no, they may be harmed. They both stated that they were in a warehouse with strange men. And 2), if they said they had been raped, they would not get paid. Riley states that she desperately needed to pay her rent. (watch their video here) 

After Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon told their stories, Leigh started getting threats: 

You can read the testimonies of more previous porn stars here

 Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant’s studies found that after using pornography, subjects of their study reported less satisfaction with their partners affection, appearance, and sexual performance. Subjects also assigned increased importance to sex without emotional involvement (source)

Zillmann and Bryant’s studies also showed that subjects exposed to pornography trivialized and were desensitized to rape, and had a significant loss of compassion towards women in general ( Zillmann, D., Bryant, J. (1982). Pornography, Sexual Callousness, And The Trivialization Of Rape. Journal Of Communication, 32(4), 10­21)

A 2010 study found physical aggression in 88.2% of leading pornography scenes and verbal aggression in 48.7% with 94.4% of the aggression directed towards women and girls. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, and the victims were overwhelmingly female. (source)

The Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force found 46 published research studies demonstrating that exposure to pornography increases the likelihood of a person committing sexual offences and accepting beliefs about rape and sexual violence that trivializes the victim (source)

The Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force also found that a California-based study of the mental health of female porn stars found that 33% met the criteria for depression, 37% were victims of childhood sexual abuse, 27% had been raped as adults, 50% lived in poverty, and 34% experienced domestic violence in the past year (source) 

This is just the very start of the harms of pornography. To learn more, check out this Anti-Porn Masterpost , search “porn tag” on my blog, and check out the blogs @antiporn-activist 

Porn is violence against women. Porn is rape on tape. Porn is unacceptable. 

[gonegrrrrrl-deactivated20200821]

Whenever women have been banned from the stage, it has been because of their femaleness, not their femininity. Men and boys in drag have always replaced women on the stage when female performers were banned. Italian laws banned women from singing in church or appearing on stage and they were replaced by castrati in dresses. Femininity is not oppressed, femaleness is. At least one Italian female opera singer was found posing as a castrato in order to perform. She wore dresses and sang in the soprano register but wore a false penis to pose as a feminine male, because males who were feminine were not banned from the profession of singing. Females were banned from classical vocal training and appearing in operas.

In Japan, kabuki theatre did not include female performers because women were banned from performing during the Edo period by the shogunate. However, male performers were able to dress as females and play the roles of women and girls. Was femininity banned from this profession or were females? The answer is clear.

In fact,

Many of these men were celebrated for their talent in emulating femininity.

[hustlerose]

no offense but the porn industry is evil and exploits women who have no other options. we should dismantle the systems that leave women without options, by which i mean misogyny and capitalism 

(terfs dont reblog lol i’m trans and you hate me) 

[happy-terf-blog]

reblogging b/c i, personally, do not hate you, and you made a good ass point

[happy-terf-blog]

If you don’t respect bihets you don’t respect bisexuals.

[rubyreed]

Bless these women and bless this article. Read/see more here. 

[ofthecrown]

I’m not even going to lie, up until this instant I thought something was wrong with me (maybe that i was the ‘ugly kind of fat’?) because I didn’t think plus sized models were retouched so much. I know that sounds stupid, but I have never considered the reality that even the models of fat women are heavily doctored. 

Same shit, different numbers.

[heyitsharding-deactivated201601]

Hey look it’s my catsuit!

[sailorstoner]

not only are plus size models heavily retouched, but they also have to wear padding to make their curves curvier so that we hate ourselves for not having exaggerated curves on our beautiful lumpy bodies.

[krycca]

This is super important and belongs on my fashion blog. Don’t you ever feel ashamed, because your fat doesn’t look like the model fat! It’s the fashion industries fault for not being able to dress actual people!

[gonegrrrrrl-deactivated20200821]

I need more of this

[rad-itzel]

Fashion industries aren’t able to dress actual people.

[its-called-deduction-use-it]

Do feminists in America realize that they equal AF 👀

[fandomsandfeminism]

Do you know we are one of the only countries with no garanteed paid maternity leave and highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world?

Did you know that a woman has never been president, and women make up a minority in every branch of government on every level?

Did you know that in the US an average of 3 women a day are killed by an intimate partner and 600 are raped?

Did you know that even if we have different issues than some other countries, acting like we are a haven of equality is laughably naive?

[lesbian-lizards]

American men don’t even think of us as their equals.

[89584957294589425-deactivated20]

So many people that attempt a gender-reversal in which to objectify men instead of women do it completely, totally wrong. Showing images of muscular men flexing their muscles is not sexual objectification. It doesn’t accomplish the objective of reversing the gender roles of men and women. And it fails to give men the slightest taste of what it’s like to be a woman surrounded by sexually objectified images of women.

The factors that make images of women sexually objectifying are the stripping away of human qualities and the removal of agency. Images of hyper-sexualised, objectified women affirm the sexual availability and violable status of women. In ads, they conflate the characteristics of the woman with the characteristics of the object being sold, thus relegating the woman to an object. Just a picture of a naked or partly naked attractive person does not an objectifying image make. Sweaty, hairy men fresh from the gym are subjects of their environments, not objects.

You don’t see fashion photographs of helpless, bruised men lying near garbage dumps that vividly suggest brutal victimisation. You don’t see used car ads depicting ~sexy~ men’s bodies with jokes about being able to enjoy the man even though you’re not the first to have him. You don’t see awareness campaigns about testicular cancer that focus on SAVE THE BALLS and lament the loss of manliness after orchiectomy.

If you want to do a proper gender swap to give men an idea of how sexual objectification affects women, you can’t just switch out feminine women and insert masculine men, as if femininity were not an inherent component of sexual objectification. What the fashion and advertising industries do to women, you have to do to men. Get rid of the fucking muscle men. Get a pretty face skinny boy and put him in makeup; impractical, feminine-coded clothing; and a pose that looks explicitly like he wants to get spanked. If men squirm in discomfort when they see it, you know you did it right.