Spiny Seed Pod

Sideblog that I use for posts about topics divergent from those on my main blog. Lesbian, almost thirty, from the USA.

[stuckinapril]

[tarrarre]

I don't think it's talked about enough how the knowledge of women's millennia-long subjugation under patriarchy feels so incredibly demeaning and what it does to young girls self esteem when when they learn about it in school. I remember being 12 or 13 in history class learning about the Romans and how women were considered property to be passed from their father to their husband and for the first time feeling this awful and disheartening sense of humiliation and embarrassment, especially sitting there among my male pupils, being told by the male history teacher over and over throughout every single historical period that we were second-class citizens. What it must do to a girl's self esteem on a subconscious level, how it then might affect everything you say and do, not even mentioning how the misogyny in their daily lives affects them. My heart kind of broke when I realised that

[karlmarxxing]

Can't wait to read declassified documents on how cia got people to act this way 40 years from now

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

This is in fact what everyone is thinking, yes. And policing language more won’t make it stop.

[earhartsease]

this is so on the nose

[flashdyke]

it is a bit sad and worrying seeing a lot of women who get cosmetic mastectomies apparently to resolve a severe body anxiety, who after the surgery seem to become only more focused on that part of their body, and become symbolised by the scars and made into someone who’s had something removed. There is having pride and comfort in how you look, but there’s also presumably being able to move on from being fixed on your body when you’ve had the thing that’s apparently supposed to fix the problem, and becoming more focused in on exactly that area does not seem like moving into a healthier mindset. It likely does not help that so many get stuck with surgeons who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a scalpel, who’ve done genuinely terrible work that wouldn’t fly in a field that wasn’t so female specific (saying that, are you even allowed to stitch up a cesarean that badly?)

[capricorn-season]

[thatraginglesbian-deactivated20]

idk how anyone can literally say this:

and then still think it’s a good healthy idea to get into a different flavor of body modifications. Alienation from your body, and a need to control it or be in charge of it or shape it. The key to beating alienation, and alleviating the dysphoria, is to become familiar with your body and not letting it be this fearful unknown. being okay with your body.

Recognizing your need to control your body and shape your body is harmful and then….jumping to getting surgery, which is the most extreme form of controlling and shaping your body it can go.

the same kind of thinking that lead her and other girls into eating disorders is what’s leading them to transgenderism this drives me so insane. this needs to be a much bigger conversation fr

[rage-fem]

theyre literally spelling out that trans ideology is homophobic and lesbophobic and the comments are just laughing. this is straight up conversion therapy. you are a victim. wake up.

[wyvern-of-the-evening]

This is why radfems aren’t as vocal about TIFs. This is why more of us are patient with them, and not TIMs. Because of lesbians with extreme internalized homophobia, because of women who have internalized misogyny. This isn’t a turn of for them, it’s not a fetish.

This woman went through conversion therapy. I don’t know if her family accepts her like this, but I see so many accept “hetero trans” children over their gay child

[profetens-apenbaring]

LITERALLY HOW DO YOU SAY CONVERSION THERAPY "WORKED" AND STILL THINK YOU'RE GOING AGAINST SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS

[femsolid]

This is heartbreaking. I guess she thought she was being sarcastic. But she wasn't. The persecution did indeed work. She was not able to be herself, a lesbian. She was forced to pretend she is a man, because women aren't allowed to love each others. She thinks she won because in the end she can now date women. But she had to negate who she is completely, even undergoing cosmetic surgery, to be with another woman.

What her family did to her must have been incredibly traumatic. Imagine that: you think you're having a good time with your family but secretly they think you're monstrous and they suddenly force you into a room to abuse you and you realise it was all a trap and they won't let you go unless you pretend you are indeed a repenting monster. All of this after you were brave enough to come out. It's sickening.

[hexagon-club]

I've said before that transgender ideology started as a way of masking homosexuality. Even though there are more straight/bisexual people coming out as trans these days, I think this is still the reason why transgenderism gained mainstream acceptance. And other trans ids like transrace/transabled/transage/otherkin have not (and probably never will) is because a lot of people, including a lot of liberals, pathologise homosexuality. And desperately want to believe that there is some sort of treatment for it.

If you don't want to accept that your daughter is gay, but you can't turn her into a straight girl. Then the next best thing is to turn her into a straight man. Or at least a mimic of one.

[przewalskishorsegirl]

the fact that people expect a woman to suffer thru unwanted sex more often than they expect a man to suffer thru no sex says all you need to know about how society (mostly men, but women do it as well) sees women and their role in the relationship.

[revived-ophelia]

Who has better feminist cred, my 90+yo christian centrist grandmother who says "men are barely civilized animals" and put each of her daughters through college so they could aspire to be more than "waitresses or secretaries", or my 25yo leftist atheist cousin who identifies as pan demigender,, tweets about men's soft tummies, and thinks her boyfriend spending $200 a month on OnlyFans subscriptions is empowering female entrepreneurs

[drbased]

I used to wonder as a teenager why it was that men seem to think that their straight female partners are going to find it erotic to go to strip clubs, have threesomes etc. I narrowed it down in recent years to this perception that men have of women as inherently attractive, thus the belief that any woman, no matter her sexuality, is going to 'get something out of' seeing another woman in an erotic context. But I've come to a further realisation that it is not simply that women are intrisically sexual, erotic, attractive beings - but rather that men own the concept of attraction altogether. Men believe that they are the only ones capable of 'carnal knowledge' and that it is their 'role' to educate the woman - the perpetual child - in the world of eroticism. And women are supposed to find this education erotic in and of itself, for the education is built on a foundation of female submission. The act of being taught is inherently submissive, therefore the act of being taught in eroticism is inherently sexually submissive, and submission is erotic, therefore the act of being taught in eroticism is eroticism itself. Men like children and virgins not simply because they are 'inexperienced' (although the practical reality of that helps), but because the student-teacher relationship is inherently erotic. Every-time a woman watches porn, every time she goes to a strip club, every time she involves herself in a threesome, he is less concerned with her as a willing participant but rather as naive enough that she can be educated in total submission to him: she is disconnected enough from her own natural sexuality and is willing to embrace his, thus proving to him that he was right all along: he is the only one with a true, natural claim to sexuality: he understands what sex is, and she never will fully be able to, but can always learn from him.

[redditreceipts]

what an actual policewoman looks like vs what a sexualised adult costume of a policewoman looks like:

and now take a guess as to which of these two little girl's halloween costumes are modelled after

they're not making costumes to give girls the chance to see themselves as their idols, they make costumes to groom girls into being sexualised for the rest of their lives

[bloodyfeminist-deactivated20210]

BTW, if you haven’t already, read this book. It’s all about the “mannosphere” (incels, pickup artists, MGTOW, etc.). The audiobook narration is also good if you prefer audiobooks.

Book description:

Imagine a world in which a vast network of incels and other misogynists are able to operate, virtually undetected. These extremists commit deliberate terrorist acts against women. Vulnerable teenage boys are groomed and radicalised.

You don't have to imagine that world. You already live in it. Perhaps you didn’t know, because we don’t like to talk about it. But it’s time we start.

In this urgent and groundbreaking book, Laura Bates, bestselling author and founder of The Everyday Sexism Project, goes undercover to expose vast misogynist networks and communities. It’s a deep dive into the worldwide extremism nobody talks about.

Interviews with former members of these groups and the people fighting against them gives unique insights on how this movement operates. Ideas are spread from the darkest corners of the internet – via trolls, media and celebrities – to schools, workplaces and the corridors of power, becoming a part of our collective consciousness.

Uncensored, and sometimes both shocking and terrifying – this is the uncomfortable truth about the world we live in. And what we must do to change it.

[old-school-butch]

This is critically important. For many years, men who murdered women would blame abusive mothers for their hatred, but men learn misogyny from other men. There’s nothing unique, special or obviously different about men who hate women, except that they hate women. There are entire groups of men who would happily rape, beat or murder any woman available to them if they could get away with it - because they’ve learned from other men that women are subhuman. We don’t need to ‘save’ men as part of feminism, but we do need to de-radicalize them and call on male allies to stop men from instilling this hatred in other men.

[femsolid]

It's definitely a disturbing read. The author is very much harassed and threatened by anti-feminists by the way.

[femsolid]

Currently sharing my workplace with a man. Can you tell????

[webandofsisters]

Does anyone know of an article about why men do this? Its clearly a learned response given the steriotypicalness of it (across the fucking world no less) I looked it up a bit but almost drowned in all the works that said "men are frustrated and don't want yo hurt anyone" and "men don't know how to express anxiety because they are thaught to only show anger".

While these are nice and cutesy explanations, it is clear this is an abuse tactic to scare anyone around to watch. "Careful, you are next", "I might not be able to hold it back next time, you will be the target", "this is how I solve my problems, not with words but with my fists, which are stronger than yours", "be afraid".

By "this" I mean specifically punching drywall.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

I think there’s also an element of what Lundy Bancroft (?) talks about, where men will consciously inflict damage they consider to be reasonable and that will not lead to consequences, rather than actually ‘losing control’. Also, I think an assessment takes place, but I do believe the emotional drive is ‘real’ - in the sense that they have no motivation to resist anger, or to find non-threatening ways of processing their anger. They really are angry, but they choose to be, and they choose what to inflict that anger on.

[webandofsisters]

I live in Turkey where walls are not cardboard and yeah they never punch normal walls.

One of my schools had drywall between classrooms (probably the only drywall structure I've been around) and a boy punched through it in anger. Like, the one drywall and a boy went and punched through it.

We knew it was drywall, we could hear the other class sometimes. He just kept that in mind I guess. The front of the classroom where the door was, was regular wall and not a single boy punched that wall.

[radicalcoffeeclub]

The house I grew up in had stone walls. My brother knew very well what he was doing when he punched through a particle board door instead.

[flowerlygirls]

i know one adult man who punched a wall (like, a brickwall) when his gf broke up with him and he broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder LOL

[cecaeliawitch]

my stepdad throws things instead of punching walls, bc he doesn't want to have to pay to fix broken drywall

[freckledscum-deactivated2023071]

It's as we've been saying all along. Its not about "acceptace" or "letting trans women live their lives". It's about validation. It's about getting us to bend over backwards to cater to them

[cryptogamist]

[diabeticlesbian]

I was forwarding these to a friend and figured it’d be worth sharing them all here too so enjoy some free books and essays and things in no particular order:

Jeanette Winterson - Art Objects

Does Your Daughter Know It’s Okay To Be Angry? - Soraya Chemaly

Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Zami, Sister Outsider, Undersong - Audre Lorde

Garments Against Women - Anne Boyer

Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price

Learn Socialism Resources

Do Economists Actually Know What Wealth Is? - Nathan J. Robinson

Love Dialogue: CÉLINE SCIAMMA on Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Carlos Augilar

Teaching To Transgress - Bell Hooks

Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson

Sinister Wisdom Archives

Why Pop Culture Links Women and Killer Plants - Amandas Ong

How To Suppress Women’s Writing - Joanna Russ

Women’s Voices Now

The Life of Tove Jansson

Unbearable Weight; Feminism, Western Culture and the Body - Susan Bordo

‘A Simple Favour’ and That Whole Lesbian Psycho Thing - Ciara Wardlow

OUTWEEK Archives

AirPods Are a Tragedy - Caroline Haskins

Devotions - Mary Oliver

Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin

Nevertheless, She Feasted: Why Girls Get Hungry in Horror Movies - Francesca Fau

Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson

Sula - Toni Morrison

Not Vanishing - Chrystos

The Fever - Wallace Shawn

Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’ - Alexandra Pollard

Minimalism Is Just Another Boring Product Wealthy People Can Buy - Chelsea Fagan

AIDS, Art and Activism: Remembering Gran Fury - John d’Addario

In the Day of the Postman - Rebecca Solnit

Blood and Guts in Highschool - Kathy Acker

Mark My Words: The Subversive History of Women Using Thread as Ink - Rosalind Jana

Exploring Frida Kahlo’s Relationship With Her Body - Rebecca Fulleylove

Ravens have paranoid, abstract thoughts about other minds - Emily Reynolds

The Lady in the Looking Glass - Virginia Woolf

Angela Carter talks beauties and beasts with Terry Jones

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride

Why Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate - Kate Robertson

Lesbian Herstory Archives

Bartleby

Guggenheim Books

We Are Lisa Simpson: 30 Years with the Smartest and Saddest Kid in Grade Two - Sara David

On Beauty - Zadie Smith

Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado

How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Petersen

[pink-bunny-fem]

Jess Zimmerman’s Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology

I find that last line especially powerful:

“When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.”