you literally watch supernatural

nepantla | 23 | lesbian | they/she | FAQ

[lesbianboboberens]

what would your advice be for someone who was involved with the GC movement for a long time, like 8 years or more, made it a large part of their identity, and wants out now? could someone like that be able to move on and redeem themselves, or would they be too trapped in their biased thought patterns? do you think that there could be hope for someone who was in the cult for that long? how could someone in that situation move on from the extreme guilt and regret?

my prison abolitionist is showing here but i think everyone is capable of redemption and healing and reconciliation. you are not only capable of moving on in peace, you deserve to. my advice is to find a cool therapist who you can up front tell 'hey i used to be in this movement and im out now and you dont have to worry about me bringing the ideology to you but i do want and need a lot of help moving forward from it.' unlike new friends or acquaintances, you won't have to sell a professional on how guilty you feel or justify that you really are a good person inside or anything -- it's their job to know that you are a multifaceted person capable of rational decision making (and that being in that movement was in many ways rational for you at the time! it certainly did something for you or you wouldn't have been in it for so long). if you already have a therapist and you haven't raised this topic with them i'd say give it a shot.

i see nothing but hope for you to you move on. maybe that means you need a new community or movement, or that you need to address whatever sent you looking for one in the first place. but thought patterns are not permanent, your mind is changing every day for your whole life. there is a version of you out there in the future that is healed from this. you can find redemption through taking care of yourself, building that self, and being different and kinder to people you meet in future. idk how old you are but god willing you will be on this planet for many decades to come, of course there is hope for you to change! the world is so wide and full of so many possibilities

[lesbianboboberens]

hey for the anon who just sent a couple of asks i got dont worry they are indeed on anon, answering in a sec

[lesbianboboberens]

not the radfems coming for you! they see that ur exposing their bullshit so they start accusing you of being “surface level”. its truly culty behavior. fr tho it’s depressing seeing the same bloggers i followed in 2016 still active and absolute brain dead on this app. like its so apparent that these (mostly white) women never moved on from harrasing trans people online and posting germaine greer quotes to, oh, i dont know, actual fucking praxis/community work? truly radblr is where anything remotely radical or with the potential to dismantle colonialism/racism goes to die.

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[lesbianboboberens]

i just went through your ex-RF tag and so much of what i saw really resonates with me. i’ve joined discord servers, followed hundreds of radical feminist blogs, made a spinster account, etc., yet i still feel so alone. i’m the type of person that likes to read something and discuss it with others afterwards, which is the primary reason i joined the RF sphere of the internet. however, actually being in these communities has caused me to have multiple panic attacks and feel very depressed. i can’t disagree with another woman’s opinion without being attacked. someone i really looked up to recently got exposed for literally DRINKING PEOPLE’S BLOOD and being friends with a bunch of awful people. i’m moving all of my activism and community to real life. ASAP.

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[lesbianboboberens]

"it appeals because it suggests that there is, in all the chaos of life, a select platform of facts and beliefs that you can orient yourself around to guide your life and be good."

Yeah that's what I thought as a TRA (For lack of a better term. You know what I mean. Part of the online groupthink circle that is anti-critical thinking and "if you're even agreeing with truscum you're a horrible person" type bullshit) and radfems helped me to start formulating my own opinions on things. I've built a community with radical feminists and I openly disagree with radfems all the time. I'm sorry you had bad experiences on radblr but cult thinking has not been my experience at all, especially compared to most online leftist spaces.

okay?

[lesbianboboberens]

I'm reading through more of your stuff and I understand what you're saying. I relate a lot to your experiences going from radical queer spaces to radical feminism. (I'm glad you have your carrd because seeing you still agree with the importance of actual radical feminism is like. Okay this isn't just someone turning their back on feminist thinking.) But the thing is radfems are not a monolith. I *know* there are sections of radblr and radtwt I will not touch, and I don't trust most irl "radfem" organizations because of their willingness to partner with the right wing. But talking to women in my own part of the community, that seems to be a pretty commonly held opinion.

I'm just not sure why I can't be both normal and a radfem. I just agree with them on a lot of things. And irl queer spaces have already cast me out for wrongthink so I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Be friendless? Have no one?

Standing against the porn industry and the culture it's created is insanely important to me and radfems are the only ones who seem to understand. I partially resent the fact that I do agree with radfems because it would've made my life a whole lot easier if I didn't. But I do so what now?

it's fascinating to have people spell out explicitly like "irl queer spaces have already cast me out for wrongthink so I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Be friendless? Have no one?"

like politics are not supposed to be community. it should be community ties that generate politics and beliefs to support and uphold that community. we should not live lives that require us to hop between ideologies in order to have community.

anon u need like a serious hobby or a religion or something im not even making fun of u. u need to get like really into magic the gathering or go to grad school or become a unitarian universalist or something. "queer communities hate me so radfems are my only answer for community" like great dichotomy what is beyond it? what is the hole in your life that these internet ideologies are trying to fill? if u deleted all ur social media what would u do w that headspace.

outside of these politically oriented high stakes communities you'll like. find straight men who admit to porn addictions and normie women who detest hookup culture like all of these things exist in the real world. beyond like online radfem spaces. though it really may truly feel like it, no one is making you be a radfem

[lesbianboboberens]

unprompted update del anon que te mandó hace + de un año un unhinged post chillando del lesbofem. Sorry tal vez ni te acuerdas pero qué tal y sí. En fin, me asumí lesbiana y ya no me siento "culpable", creo que me sentía así porque vivo en un ambiente muy homofóbico/lesbofóbico y entendía la sexualidad de una manera diferente pero está ok porque ahora voy a terapia y hago journaling y ya no venteo con desconocidos en internet. Y nada t deseo todo lo mejor eres una persona muy inteligente <33

graciassssssss

[lesbianboboberens]

Hi. This is the same anon that sent you the ask you answered on Dec 1st. The other two asks you answered since then were not from me. Regardless, I am sorry for putting transmisogynistic vitriol in your inbox. I have been trying to be a better ally to trans women and feminism as a whole lately. Unfortunately radf.ems' obsession with posting "tr.a rece.ipts" or "T.iM recei.pts" has made me afraid that I am harming women and feminism when I try to be an ally to trans women. You helped me realize that my transmisogyny has led me to percieve trans people as inherently more "threatening" than everyone else even though I do not want to. This is incredibly unfair and hateful, so I hope to become better ❤. Again, so sorry for ruining your inbox, but I hope you have a better day today after I made one of yours worse ❤

this is really sweet anon i know this was months ago but i really appreciate it

[lesbianboboberens]

I'm not an ex-radfem so I don't have personal experience, but as an ex-Christian from a particularly culty church, I can draw a lot of parallels while looking at how radfems respond to ex-radfem posts.

Most notably: the No True Scotsman fallacy being used to deflect any criticism from ex-members. If they don't deny you ever being a member of the group at all, they'll try to explain how you weren't REALLY a member. Same thing happens when they hear stories of intra-community abuse and bigotry by other members. The abusers and bigots weren't REALLY radfems.

From my experience in the church, this is a method of thought-cancellation that is meant to guilt the listener (and often the speaker) out of doubt, because it implies doubt is due to the inadequacy of the believer and not that of the idea being believed. I'm just not studying hard enough. I'm just not isolating myself hard enough. I am not immersing myself to the point where this is the only thing I know, and therefore the only thing I can believe in, therefore my wavering belief is my fault.

It also conceals the fact that ex-members occupy a gray area of the us/them dichotomy. An ex-member can't have anything in common with us if they were never one of us at all. It kills compassion, and in turn it kills understanding and curiousity.

I hope this ramble was somewhat insightful. I am admittedly a bit tipsy and in a mood, hehe.

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[lesbianboboberens]

what made you stop being a radfem? sorry i saw ur account in the ex radfem tag and your acc has piqued my interest so im sorry if this out of the blue lol. for me, it was when these white radfems were calling George Floyd a bodybag (an anti-black slur i would argue usually geared at black men) based on the lies conservatives spread abt him robbing a pregnant lady at gun point or whatever and the only other black girl in this org i was apart of defending them when i asked if she found it weird and when i did confront those those girls basically saying “hey i know men fuckin suck but i don’t appreciate you saying that abt a black man who just fuckin died” they were literally calling me misogynistic slurs for having the gall of not appreciating their racism towards a black man and they were defending themselves due to the fact that he was a man and yeab 👎🏾 that shit pisses me off just thinking abt it and just further intensifies my distrust in white women

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[lesbianboboberens]

exrf too & I actually purchased who cooked the last supper back then because it was in every rec list and I was Thoroughly Disappointed even though my teenage brain couldn't exactly pinpoint why

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[lesbianboboberens]

I never considered myself a radfem and never reblogged posts or anything so I didn't fall too far down the pipeline thankfully because I had no hate or backlash to motivate me the way it motivates most radfems.

But when I was new to radblr and somehow came across your posts I hated you. I thought you were just a hateful misogynist who didn't like women speaking and never were a radfem and I had experienced a lot of racism and homophobia from your average queer spaces online so I thought "who tf cares if some white radfems are racist? There are less worse" and oh boy do I regret thinking like that now.....

There are some radfems of color I have come across who do take racism seriously but they still continue to ally with white radfems. And I felt like I was going crazy and overeacting at their racism because I wanted radfems of color to stop interacting with white radfems and forgiving their racism to the extent they still do today.

I am very grateful for you on speaking out about this. Many ex radfems I have come across are just tradwives who found the "right man" and fully embraced the right wing and abandoned feminism completely. And the rest are frustrated woc like you.

Your posts also opened my eyes about transphobia and racism against our third gendered categories in radfem spaces. But I am still pretty confused about your views about radfem theories about trans people. The whole "female socialization" thing and stuff if you get what I mean. Could you please elaborate more on what you think about radfem arguments about trans people's issues?

genuinely thanks a lot for this ask its really validating to know other people see this all happening, i appreciate it

opinions-wise it's been a while since i looked back thru ex-radfem stuff i've posted on here so probably they reflect my mixed emotional process of leaving an internet cult and so might not be super coherent. off the top of my head i think that radfeminism of its various available brands appeals to people for the same reason that qanon, antivax, etc. internet ideologies appeals. yeah hate/backlash as you say can play a role but it's by far not the only motivator or even the primary one. people are isolated, under stress or hard times in their lives, and they don't necessarily have a strong inoculation against that particular ideology. like fundamentally it's all misinformation. it appeals because it suggests that there is, in all the chaos of life, a select platform of facts and beliefs that you can orient yourself around to guide your life and be good.

'female socialization' is not a real or definable thing in my opinion, dysphoria is real and not just an extension of the generalized discomfort supposedly experienced by all women under patriarchy. trans people have not been making this all up and are not somehow 'taking' people away from femaleness, womanhood, their (pure, unaltered, white) bodies, or anything else. i think that trans people are way more right about their own bodies and health, and the rest of ours', than radfems were ever willing to entertain.

there's also doubt and debate within trans circles like trans laypeople and academics and professionals talk about like pediatric transition and the validity of 'cis' as a category. like these are discussions that are happening, though radfems made it sound like they were the only ones having them.

all to say that i'm not listening to white non-trans women about trans people lmao i'm listening to trans people of color. and i'm doing it in like real life with real people instead of the internet. it's far and away a better practice, and i'm doing like real reading in queer studies and literature instead of circulating the same three andrea dworkin, sheila jeffreys, adrienne rich pdfs.

[biglawbear]

[stripedsilverfeline]

Yep, this describes most if not all organized religion and the Republican party. 

[mindfulwrath]

This describes Evangelical Christianity and the Republican party. Dare I say it, MOST organized religion doesn't do this.

[tsarina-anadyomene-deactivated2]

radfems are so funny because of how transparently they are manifestation of the security at all costs culture of a too-precious segment of the middle class combined with epistemic rut-digging and an artificial appearance of value clarity

[bebemoon]

i highly recommend cultivating your own secret religion just for you and your own needs

[treecitysessions]

This is foul KDJKSFKKSMFJSKCKS

[lesbianboboberens]

the things is that young women who become radfems and tween boys who become andrew tate fanatics and crunchy moms who become anti-vax and facebook dads who join Qanon are all experiencing different versions of the same goddamn thing and yet every one of them is reblogging/-tweeting/-sharing the same "we are living in an era of anti-intellectualism" meme because they think they're the only enlightened community in the world