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Women first 22/US Sideblog. I don't engage much tbh, I'm just writing down my thoughts.

[rosalesbeausderholle]

Can we stop pretending we don’t know the reason that lesbian culture is in decline? (hint: it’s non-lesbians in our spaces, the queer, fluid, ‘you’re a close-minded fetishist’ soup). Like, nothing’s ever going to be done unless we step up and say “yeah, when we mean lesbian spaces, we means LESBIAN, not any other label, we mean homosexual women, and you’re not welcome bye”. Like, labelling us all as queer and not even so much as recognising that lgbt women are not a monolith is part of the problem.

[lavendermenacing]

Given the gender identity movement’s own insistence that gender identity has nothing to do with material reality, that any person can be any gender regardless of sex, socialization, presentation, dysphoria or lack of, past identity, surgeries undergone and hormones taken, etc, I don’t see what the big deal is that radical feminists continue to use sex as the basis of class analysis. Gender activists demand that gender identity can mean nothing real or measurable (lest someone be excluded), which means that it can’t be used as a basis for any analysis about the dynamics of patriarchy, a material oppression. Clearly, there is an oppressor class and an oppressed class, one of whom benefits and the other of which is exploited. Clearly there are elements of patriarchy which directly target the female body; males simply are not subject to legislation regarding abortion rights, for example. You cannot talk about these realities without naming real, observable characteristics shared by women as a class.

To claim that patriarchy happens basically at random to a group of people who claim an “identity” with no discernible common characteristics, to the benefit of no one, is insane. It happens to women, with the intent of exploiting our reproductive potential, and this fact necessitates recognizing the importance of what women have in common.

There is no reason for this to be controversial, except that to name this reality makes certain men very angry. Men have always valued their own feelings and desires over the wellbeing and liberation of women, and they have always felt comfortable defining our experiences for us to their own benefit. Because being truly female is something they cannot actually attain, and the oppression of female people does not affect them, they feel comfortable demanding that femaleness now be defined by claiming it as one’s own on no basis of experience whatsoever, and that true female-specific concerns and experiences be silenced for their comfort.

Any movement which requires women’s denial of their own reality in this way is misogynistic; the fact that gender identity frameworks cannot explain or fight misogyny at its root is intentional and malicious.

[lavendermenacing]

I thought we had all agreed and understood that it is offensive to co-opt the experiences of or identify as a marginalized group. The experiences of that group cannot be fully understood by someone in a relative position of power in society, and it’s disrespectful and incorrect to barge in and say you know exactly what’s going on and how they feel and what their lives and cultures are like. The viewpoint of someone in power will always be affected by biases and stereotypes, whether they know and recognize this or not.

This applies for women too. For all the reasons listed above, men are not capable of knowing what it is like to be a woman and it is patently offensive for them to claim that they do. I don’t understand, when men demonstrate day after day that they do not respect women and it is very obvious why this happens when you take even a quick look at our culture, why we are EVER expected to believe that they can meaningfully identify as women. Their understanding of womanhood is hollow, fragmented, and unmistakeably male.

If you started grasping at straws while reading this but you had a problem with Rachel Dolezal, or if you would know it would be wrong for a straight man to write “autobiographical” books about being a gay man and make money from them, why don’t you have a problem with this? It’s logically consistant, don’t let misogyny get in the way of recognizing that.

[lavendermenacing]

I was at Baltimore Pride today and there was a small group of women with signs like “Woman is not a feeling” and “Violence against lesbians is an epidemic” etc towards the front. The dude behind me was loudly saying shit like “fuck TERFS” etc so I felt unsafe cheering but I tried to make eye contact.. not sure if y’all saw me. Thank you for standing up for lesbians, god knows they are trying hard enough to erase us.

I was watching towards the beginning of the parade route so I am not sure where you went afterwards but y’all seem really cool and if you are in an organization I’d like to join.. or even just meet up sometime idk. Seeing you guys out there was a pleasant surprise and I know this is a long shot, but get in contact if you see this? Or if anyone knows what group that was out there, can they put me in touch? Not sure who to tag. 

@midatlantic-radfems ?

[sespursongles-deactivated201906]

Whenever I see a woman being told to “respect pronouns” or else, I’m reminded of that text post that went “Sometimes people use respect to mean ‘treating someone like a human being’ and sometimes they use respect to mean ‘treating someone like an authority’. And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say ‘If you won’t respect me I won’t respect you’ but what they mean is ‘If you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a human being.’”

Men who demand that women “respect” their female pronouns are used to being treated like an authority and so they use that double standard in their definition of respect - “Terfs don’t respect pronouns so they don’t deserve respect” means “Women won’t treat me as an authority on womanhood so I won’t treat them like human beings.”

[chadgamer]

never trust men who love sexy anime girls and who bank on being in any way gender nonconforming to seem nonthreatening to women 

[chadgamer]

vaguely effeminate hentai dweebs have been some of the most dangerous dudes i’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing and this really just continues to be the case 

[transgenderer]

this….is such bad politics. the whole point of this situation is that people could not and cannot tell who these people are beforehand, and using “gender non-conforming” as your chosen indicator before what happens becomes public throws all gnc men under the bus and doesnt help anyone find people like this faster. assuming that people gender non-conform for ulterior motives is some classic far-right shit and we really should not being encouraging it

[multiversal-lilith]

Yo OP

A bunch of those “vaguely effeminate hentai dweebs” are actually closeted trans girls, and your ‘fuck them all’ attitude is likely to keep girls who sublimated their gender into their sexuality and/or used anime as a coping mechanism from discovering themselves.

I don’t know the rest of your politics, OP, but this shit is bad and you should feel bad.

[lavendermenacing]

Hmm why would there be so much of an overlap between sexist creeps who use femininity as a shield and hetero/bisexual trans-identified males who think womanhood is an identity that is theirs to define, it is truly and genuinely a mystery. I didn’t even have to make that connection, you know what y'all are and proclaimed it yourself. Self burns are fun.

Any women who are maybe getting a little disillusioned with liberal feminism, but aren’t sure who are reading this: here is your proof that transwomen value male creeps who might hypothetically identify as women over your right to identify patterns of male abuse and talk about them for your own safety. They don’t care about you! They are not interested in your wellbeing or safety and their demands to be centered in feminism are demands to make it a men’s rights movement at your expense.

[lavendermenacing]

inferior-mirage replied to your post “In case you needed a reminder that trans-identified males do not care...”

Priceless direct quote: " As we all know, CAMAB authors get far less exposure and I haven’t gotten the chance to read a lot of their works yet." Gender theory makes everyone stupid.

God, my soul shot out of my body and into the outer stratosphere when I read that like. Yes, it is definitely male authors who are underrepresented in the world of academia, that is a statement that aligns with reality. What we really need to hear are more male voices on this topic.

[lavendermenacing]

I read recently about how autistic lesbians in particular are overrepresented in referrals to gender clinics (especially minor referrals) in the last few years and on one hand I get it but on the other hand like, my experience with that was so different and I wonder if we’re also more represented in the gender critical community as well or if my experiences just happened to come together a certain way and I’m more of an outlier.

Femininity is a particularly cruel set of social rules for someone who is autistic to have to learn because there’s no logic to it and it isn’t designed to our benefit. As a result we’re generally not great at it as kids and I can see how that can combine with the way we tend to think literally and categorically to produce the result of “wow, I really really don’t fit this “girl” category and it doesn’t feel good to try, I must be a boy” especially when there’s so little representation of gnc women; part of enforcing femininity is making sure that women who don’t perform it are hidden or shamed. 

I also found femininity to be very distressing but I guess the leap that this meant I wasn’t a woman never took hold. Because I had to learn all these rules more consciously than other people instead of absorbing them naturally, I think I was more aware of them as what they were: enforced rules, not a natural part of me or any other woman. So I was very aware of the nature of femininity and how unfair and detrimental it was, and I was also very aware of what sex it was enforced upon.

This made it hard for me to understand or take seriously any of the gender identity stuff when I encountered it because of my own experiences in which gender was enforced upon me and everyone, out of my control and clearly favoring one sex over another. I saw it as a system of oppression and did not understand how anyone could see it to be a level playing field, or value-neutral, or having anything at all to do with self-conception. It seemed frivolous and missing the point, or sometimes dangerous: I saw men claiming to be women who benefited from being raised male in ways that I’m sure they’re not even aware of, who act the same way men always have and harm us in the same ways as well.

Since then I’ve done my reading and I try to understand the often self-contradictory system of thought that is gender identity in order to try to empathize with others who are caught up in it... like everyone is just trying to deal with their circumstances in the best way they know how and gender is a really hostile force that people deal with in different ways. In the end I want women to be liberated from gender but it’s such a messy thing that will require more personal understanding of the way it twines its way into so many parts of our lives. But like I’ll never buy into it in the same way that a lot of us apparently do, you know? I just wonder if my experience is a common one. 

[lavendermenacing]

Correctly describing an attribute of yourself isn’t “limiting” or “reducing” yourself and while I would like to say I don’t know why people think that, the truth is I do know and @ men you’re not being subtle!

When I say I am a woman, because I am an adult female human being, nothing about that statement is limiting to me. There is nothing in that statement to suggest that I can ONLY be my reproductive system or that that is my only value. I am simply correctly noting a biological fact, and beyond that, I am acknowledging that I belong to a class of people who are oppressed based on our presumed and real reproductive capabilities, historically for the purpose of establishing lineage and upholding ownership and transfer of (male) property.

This is not an oppression that will ever face men, and they continuously downplay it so they can feel more comfortable asserting that performing the trappings of femininity, or some sort of nebulous feeling, is what makes a person a woman. I guess we are to believe that women were relegated to second class for millennia because we wanted to be, or because we were chosen at random and shared no discernible physical attributes. To remove this reality from language in favor of merging gender and personality into one self-obsessed identity system truly IS misogynistic, far more than “limiting” womanhood to female human beings could ever be.

[lavendermenacing]

TERF does not mean lesbian. Stop pretending women who aren't TERFs can't be lesbians.

Not really sure what prompted this after not posting on this blog for months but yes, I am actually aware that lesbians can have a variety of beliefs. If what you really meant to say was “stop saying that women who are genuinely attracted to men (trans-identified or otherwise) can’t be lesbians” then we will have to disagree. I recognize there are many pressures in society which make it difficult to know our sexualities, especially as women, whose sexualities are typically not framed by what we actually like, but rather by what we can tolerate. But at the end of the day what the word lesbian means is female homosexuality and that does not include males, nor does it require any particular politics. There are other words for sexualities which do include males.

[lavendermenacing]

Butch/femme isn't a "scale" or a "spectrum"

Butch and femme are two lesbian identities with specific historical roots and interactions with each other. Someone made that butch-femme scale with futch in the middle to make fun of tumblr's OBSESSIVE need to turn everything into a spectrum and legendary lack of respect for historical context. That, or they misunderstood what those words mean just as much as the rest of you but I'm inclined to think it's the first one. Seriously? Futch? Either way joke canceled, it's over, too many people are doing exactly what this was meant to make fun of in the first place. It's ok to be a lesbian and not be butch/femme, I don't really understand my lesbian existence in that way but please stop ruining this, thanks, thank you, you really DON'T need to bastardize our terms and identities until you've made up something you like.

[e-cryptid-deactivated20180601]

“You can date a transwoman and just not have sex with her/have sex with her and not touch her penis” is honestly not a surprising argument at all when you think about how, for centuries, women’s sexuality has been made more about what we can tolerate than about what we actually enjoy.

[e-cryptid-deactivated20180601]

Women’s boundaries are of the utmost importance but our actual desires matter, too!! Not having to do things we don’t like is literally just meeting bare minimum requirements of a non-abusive relationship and we’re allowed to want more than that! We’re allowed to seek out relationships where we can also do things we do like (like eating pussy, lmao.)

[andwhimsicality-deactivated2023]

I swear everyone has to stop with calling lesbians “terfs” for not being attracted to people with penises. You’re hurting young lesbians who are already struggling with their sexuality and telling them that they have to force some kind of attraction that they don’t have.

You’re tearing our community apart by splitting us into “good” and “bad” lesbians and the ones who won’t compromise their sexual and romantic boundaries are “bad”

You’re teaching young lesbians to hate other lesbians for not wanting to be sexually involved with someone with a penis. And it’s tearing our community apart because of your invasive obsession with our lives.

You’re calling us evil and disgusting for our orientation like we haven’t heard that before. Every one of you who turns lesbian sexuality into a debate is disgusting and invasive. We aren’t up for debate especially when you’re arguing who we should have sex with/ date. Leave us alone, you’re hurting us and this is why lesbians can’t trust you.

[lavendermenacing]

Insisting that lesbians can be good people IF ONLY we would just be willing to compromise our comfort and sexuality to accommodate dick is at least something the right and left can agree on, it looks like. Both believe that women must prioritize male feelings and entitlement over our own safety, comfort, and right to live our best lives.

Lesbians, and especially young lesbians: you don't need to do this. Don't listen to homophobes. Female-only attraction is natural, beautiful, and good, and we can build happy, complete, fulfilling lives with each other and be good people without opening our sexualities to males. We do not oppress them by not sleeping with them, no matter how much they rage that we do. There is nothing about your sexuality that you need to "examine" until you find a way to compromise on your sexuality and happiness that MAYBE you wouldn't be completely disgusted by. You deserve better.

[female-tribbers]

tbh someone saying that *playing with gender* was masturbatory navel gazing was literally one of my peak trans bc i knew it was all true

[lavendermenacing]

Anyway I'm really tired of people who do not have any shared history or reason for wanting in besides "we're weird and unaccepted by society too, like you fucking ungrateful homos" barging their way into lgbt "community." I'm glad y'all apparently feel legitimized by doing this but I no longer know whether people I meet who self id as "queer" or even "gay" have literally anything in common with me. More often than not, it's an aesthetic or politics thing for them and my experience of being a woman only attracted to other women, navigating the world like this, is as lonely as ever. Words don't mean anything and if I can't use them to find other people who share the same experiences, struggles, joys, what's the point? Glad you all feel so entitled to the work we've done, the spaces we've built. Community is based on bonding over shared experience and yours are not mine, but they're now pervasive to the point of alienating. I don't know where I'm supposed to go.

[lavendermenacing]

I think my favorite part of “aces are lgbt” discourse is the people who make that exact statement without any irony or apparently any awareness that lgbt is an acronym.

[lavendermenacing]

yesterday this girl I've been sort of seeing said she didn't know who judith butler was and I fell instantly in love with her