“gold star” lesbians are an incredibly tiny group. they likely constitute the tiniest niche in the entire LGBT community. yet, online™️ at least, there seems to be a significant cohort of queers, including the average lesbian, who is psychosexually obsessed with us. with a population so tiny, we are absent to just about every conversation that queers and their allies have about this ultimate lavender menace, lol. they are free to stereotype us and dictate our narratives™️ in ways that would earn accusations of bigotry if done to any other group, to the tune of widespread support. queers will complain about the .0001% of “gold star” lesbians that exist in the world more often than they complain about the brutal male supremacy that permeates our lives, for obvious reasons.
we apparently are hitler for being happy and proud to have never touched a man, which is something that both queers and straight people can agree on. whether it’s the male supremacist movement draped in a rainbow flag with all of their radical posturing, or heterosexual feminists, or straight people in general…at the end of the day they all will put their minor differences aside to remind us who the real threat to patriarchal norms is. it always circles back to dykes.
i’m reminded of an encounter a few months ago where a straight male coworker asked if i was a “gold star” lesbian. it gagged me that he even knew what that was lol. after telling him yes, he then proceeded to casually explain that this knowledge entrenched his rape fantasies. his exact words were “now i want to convert you even more.” he threatened to call HR after i said i’d castrate him but that part isn’t important lol. imagine the whiplash when i hop on the terminally online circuit as i often do and see sexually insecure queerbabble about our existence, and how we, an extremely tiny population, are evil for inducing psychosexual rage among queers and their lesbian apologists. we are hated because we are militants against men’s desire in a way that should be impossible under patriarchy, and we militantly reject the social expectations of womanhood. and being a militant against men’s desires is a huge social crime. the hugest social crime of them all. don’t be fooled by queers moralizing about how “gold stars” allegedly are all mean harpies with nasty nasty politics…
they hate us because women like us shouldn’t exist. society™️ either eroticizes sexual violence to correct our behavior or wants our existence to be unknown and unknowable. we are an enemy to these values, and how dare we find pride in our militancy. they hate us because they are male supremacists. but i don’t really want nor do i need anyone’s approval. trying to appease the haters so the world can be nicer to us isn’t a workable solution.
if any “gold stars” are actually out there reading this…don’t make yourself smaller and pretend you aren’t proud. i don’t care who tf it is, queers, average lesbians, straight people—don’t let anyone discipline you for being a dyke who never had to experiment with men, who rejected heterosexual ideology across the lifespan. i get that we’re small in numbers and lowkey, but our mere existence is extremely disruptive, hence the obsession with correcting or erasing us. like, we’re not really supposed to exist. we’re like bigfoot. a sighting is extremely rare. do not allow the weight of patriarchy to pressure you into silence. we don’t have to scream it from the rooftops, but i will (my voice is loud enough for all 37 of us on this earth so it’s fine).
i think there are a lot of straight women out there who have pavloved themselves into thinking they're attracted to women. it's classical conditioning meets pornbrain. like the female body is seen as a sexual object, it's inherently sexual, it's often used as a shorthand FOR sex itself and i think some wires get crossed in their brains. and that's why we've got so many "sapphics" out there who won't ever date or fuck women. bc they're not actually attracted to women
I haven’t been able to get over the grief of all human history being held back by the subjugation of women and I actually don’t think I will. Could you even imagine. Thousands of years of recorded history and women have only just (not everywhere and not fully) been able to really get the opportunities that led to the men of history we all know now. Everyone knows Socrates but so few know Aspasia. The amount of philosophy, technology, theory, and humanity lost due to the oppression of women is a genuine travesty. I think of it all the time; how many geniuses were confined to the home? How many Albert Einstein’s were forced to be wives and mothers? How much of human history is corroded by the subjugation of women? All of it?
Having to use the name of a man, albert einstein, for people to understand that you’re talking about someone who’s one of a kind is one direct consequence of this. It’s devastating
when i was a kid i was so mad all the time bc i thought someday i'd have to be somebody's wife i didn't know it was optional. is everybody reminding the young girls in their lives that it's optional.
is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?
why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?
core concept: what is gender essentialism?
is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?
look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?
what trait are you perpetuating when you assume that women who do not want to be wives and mothers must be aroace or trans? is it gender essentialism?
nobody in the fucking world is obligated to go to therapy. "not going to therapy" is never a moral failure. the only thing you're obligated to do is to treat other people with respect. the idea that therapy is the only path to being a person who's safe to be around is so fucking warped and rotten i can't believe how deeply ingrained it is in our society that even well-meaning people parrot it without thinking
#like therapy is great for many things#but you're never gonna convince me it's the only way for anyone to get better#and a sizeable portion of people go to therapy and get worse#really it's down to putting in genuine effort and critical thinking#being committed to the long haul
Mental health problems, especially among youth, have exploded together with major expansions in mental health awareness efforts. The theory of concept creep, or when harm-related concepts broaden their meanings over time, describes this phenomenon but is agnostic about the mechanisms behind the harms. We suggest that this lack of clarity is due to a fragmented literature with proposed mechanisms spread across adjacent fields. Across theories and explanatory frameworks of concept creep, nocebo effects, prevalence inflation, and illness self-labeling, we identify three common mechanisms through which mental health awareness may unintentionally cause harm. These include (a) lowering the threshold for what counts as a mental disorder, (b) increasing attention to internal states and pathologizing ambiguous experiences, and (c) reinforcing negative expectations and identities over time. We describe these shared mechanisms, propose a path forward for research priorities, broaden the evidence for harms from mental health awareness, and offer options for effective multifaceted interventions to reduce them
A while back, I read a profile of a prominent beauty industry personality known for “breaking down the science of skincare.” She teaches her followers to focus on “what actually matters,” the article said: “What’s inside the bottle.”
This, perhaps unwittingly, is a perfect illustration of how the “the science of skincare,” as defined by the beauty media, is not about science or care. It’s about products.
Over the past few years, Big Beauty has strategically co-opted science as a sales tactic. “Science-backed” has eclipsed “clean” (and “natural” before it) as the marketing term of the moment. Brands with single-ingredient offerings (The Ordinary, The Inkey List) taught customers to cosplay as cosmetic chemists, and dermatologists used their medical degrees to market self-branded skincare companies. Beauty publication Allure released an Ingredient Index styled after the periodic table of elements, and a podcast called “The Science of Beauty.”
via Allure
As the industry’s sole goal is to sell stuff, all of the above present science as the study of purchasable products and procedures. Customers rarely question the conflation. After all, in an era when “follow the science!” is both a health directive and moral imperative — in this case, one goading you to fill your medicine cabinet with face crèmes or face the aesthetic and ethical consequence of “bad” skin — who would dare dismiss “science-backed” skincare?
The $155 billion sector is thriving as a result. You can buy charcoal facial cleansers to get rid of your skin’s natural oils and cold-pressed chia seed serums to replace them. You can use alpha-hydroxy acids to eat away at your skin barrier and ceramide-spiked barrier repair creams to build it back up. You can purchase benzoyl peroxide treatments to eliminate bacteria and probiotic toners to add more. There is no shortage of studied ingredients to smoosh into your skin-holes: stem cells, squalene oil, ceramides, peptides, collagen, glycerin, hyaluronic acid, lactic acid.
“Sure, there are clinical studies that ‘prove’ these ingredients do something,” Perry Romanowski, a cosmetic chemist and founder of The Beauty Brains, tells me in an interview for Slate. “But most of these are not really science.”
Really, science says your skin doesn’tneed most pre-bottled skincare products. (Dermatologists, common sense, and your over-exfoliated epidermis agree.) It’s equipped with the ability to self-cleanse, self-moisturize, self-exfoliate, self-heal, and self-protect; and it can produce all of the aforementioned ingredients on its own, thank you very much.
The beauty industry has confused the science of aesthetic manipulation for the science of skin health.
“As far as cosmetics go, these ingredients don't ‘measure up’ when applied topically,” Romanowski says of the factory-born versions of various internal compounds (collagen, epidermal growth factor). Marketing claims are often based on how a certain molecule behaves within the ecosystem of the body, which bears little resemblance to how it behaves in an inert bottle of goo. The stem cells in your body create thousands of new skin cells daily; lab-grown stem cells sold in face creams are “pure marketing gimmickry,” Romanowski says. Internal hyaluronic acid aids in full-body hydration; the HA in your moisturizer is mostly there to lend an air of legitimacy. “It is illegal in the United States for cosmetics to have a structure or function effect,” the cosmetic chemist elaborates.
Mary Schook, an aesthetician and product formulator, clarifies that per guidelines from the country’s Food & Drug Administration, “a cosmetic brand can only enhance or beautify, not treat or cure.” This is why skincare brands often employ aesthetic-focused marketing language; for example, “makes skin look healthier” or “reduces the appearance of acne.” Health — legally — is not the point. (It’s important to note that this F.D.A. policy does not apply to sunscreen, which is considered an over-the-counter drug rather than a cosmetic, and which must go through appropriate, actually-scientific testing.)
Research on beauty products, then, acts as little more than a litmus test for beauty standards, seeking to see if a certain product or ingredient can manipulate the skin’s appearance in some socially acceptable way. Rarely does industry-cited research ask, “Should this ingredient manipulate skin’s appearance in this way?” or “What are the downstream consequences of manipulating the skin’s appearance in this way?”
HA is an excellent example. Short-term, the humectant draws moisture from the inner layer of the skin to the outer layer, creating the surface-level look of hydration. The beauty industry calls this “effective.” However, that surface-level moisture soon evaporates. Over time, continued use of HA slowly siphons the skin’s internal moisture stores, leaving the dermis dehydrated and dependent on a cocktail of other creams and oils and essences to retain basic moisture levels (a cocktail determined by industry “science”).
“In truth, companies have very little incentive to investigate ingredients further than initial, promising results,” Romanowski says. “They almost always will find that the effectiveness isn't real. And if they find that it is real, they don't get much extra marketing bounce. There is no financial incentive for a marketer to determine what is really true.”
What is “true” about products is often irrelevant — or even harmful — when compared to what is true about the skin itself, anyway. For instance, the science of products says charcoal has the ability to “draw out oil and bacteria” and “remove dead skin cells.” These claims are true. But the science of the skin says oil, bacteria, and dead skin cells actually belong on your face. Oil is the skin’s inherent moisturizer. Bacteria make up the skin microbiome, an essential part of the body’s immune system. Dead skin cells absorb external hydration from the environment and keep internal hydration from evaporating.
Think of it this way: The science of fossil fuels tells us where, when, and how to best extract and use these materials. The science of the earth tells us we should not be extracting or using these materials at all. Similarly, the “science of skincare” tells us where, when, and how to best manipulate the skin’s appearance. The science of the skin tells us we should not be manipulating the skin’s appearance at all.
The “science of skincare” offers nothing but a way to intellectualize the physical manipulation of one’s appearance; a way to justify the submission of the body to current cultural beauty ideals.
To be fair, much of the science of the skin is fairly new — which is, after all, the nature of science. It evolves. (It’s why the phrase is “follow the science,” not “stand next to the current science until the end of time.”) Over the past decade or so, studies on the skin microbiome have debunked almost everything experts once believed to be true about skin health. This surface-level ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, mites, and more is essential to the maintenance of the skin and the body as a whole. It kills invading pathogens, produces antioxidants and fatty acids, prevents “bad” strains of bacteria from taking over, and may even repair sun damage. When the microbiome is disrupted, its diversity is lost, and these inherent functions take a hit.
Almost any topical product can alter the delicate balance of the microbiome, injure the skin barrier, and impair the skin’s inherent abilities. Recent research shows that microbial imbalance is very often at the root of inflammatory skin conditions like rosacea, psoriasis, eczema, and acne. “In the case of eczema, Staphylococcus aureus is too dominant versus other microorganisms, and the microbiome can not function properly,” explains skin pharmacologist and microbiome expert Dr. Elsa Jungman. In the case of acne, p.acnes is overly abundant. In all cases, fostering a diverse microbiome helps.
In his 2020 book “Clean: The New Science of Skin and The Beauty of Doing Less,” Dr. James Hamblin writes, “The ecosystem does not need to be maintained in any elaborate way that we didn’t already know made our skin look good: sleeping and eating well, minimizing anxiety, and spending time in nature.”
In other words: The science of the skin refutes the science of skincare.
This isn’t to say the skin doesn’t need day-to-day support. It does! That support rarely needs to touch down on the dermis, though, since — disruption from topical products aside — the root cause of skin conditions is rarely surface-level. Take acne, for example: The condition is tied to gut issues, stress issues, hormonal issues, or genetics. No matter how “science-backed,” no serum goes that deep. The buzzy beauty ingredients inside said theoretical serum can all be otherwise obtained, anyway, from sources that leave the skin barrier and microbiome blissfully unbothered. Eating salmon and nuts supplies the skin with essential fatty acids. Exercise elevates antioxidant activity. Sleep stimulates self-exfoliation. Facial massage boosts lymphatic drainage. Meditation increases moisture (seriously). Vitamin D regulates oil production and vitamin C contributes to collagen production.
Cue the chorus of skincare influencers: “Well actually, the skin stops producing sebum and hyaluronic acid and collagen as you age, so you’ll need more skincare eventually!”
That’s true, in part. The skin’s production of these chemicals does slow over time. But churning out less hyaluronic acid in your fifties is no less “healthy” than, say, entering menopause or going gray. It happens. It’s fine. It’s life. Bodies change. Collagen levels drop. Trying to compensate with collagen crème “doesn’t help,” Romanowski says. “It’s like trying to fix a hole in a cotton blouse by dumping strands of yarn on the shirt.”
“We can try to control or coat it with topical products, but [skin] is ultimately a force of nature reacting to the constant signals coming from underneath and outside of it, as it evolved over millions of years to do,” writes Dr. Hamblin.
As it turns out, it’s not “what’s inside the bottle” that really matters. It’s your skin.
The beauty industry has confused the science of aesthetic manipulation for the science of skin health.
Lab-grown stem cells sold in face creams are “pure marketing gimmickry,” Romanowski says. Internal hyaluronic acid aids in full-body hydration; the HA in your moisturizer is mostly there to lend an air of legitimacy. “It is illegal in the United States for cosmetics to have a structure or function effect,” the cosmetic chemist elaborates.
men are never going to just spontaneously begin caring about women and treating them as equal human beings women Have to care about and fight for their own liberation. and So Many otherwise progressive young women these days are wearing "i'm literally just a girl 🥺" t-shirts and driving around with bumper stickers that say "hot girls hit curbs 🤪" and talking about "girl math" and defending waxing and makeup as personal expression and accusing any woman who critiques these things of "not being a girls' girl."
so many women now seem to have Fully bought into the batshit phyllis schlafly idea that women actually hold a privileged position in society and we aren't Meant to have jobs we aren't Meant to handle our own finances it's actually a privilege to be protected and provided for by men 🥺 and it's like oh my GODDDD i do not support all women some of you bitches are dumb!! read a fucking book!!! stop acting like a helpless little girl!!!
the buzzfeed girlboss era of feminism caught a lot of flack for many justifiable reasons but it's truly insane just how far we've regressed since then. like maybe manspreading discourse was silly but at least the mainstream popular view for a while was that feminism is good. now if somebody says that women should be wary about fully relying on a husband for financial support they're told they're being a misogynist and that CHOOSING to be a stay-at-home mom is totally empowering because it's a CHOICE. if you say "hey it's kinda concerning how basically every popular romance novel treats abusive men treating women terribly as something sexy and romantic" you're accused of kinkshaming and puritanism and misogyny.
idk i am just so scared for women and girls right now like it seems so bleak. we need to be mean feminists we need to learn our history and we have GOT to remember the real meaning of the word misogyny. because it is all a-fucking-round us right now and it'll never end if we don't fight it.
U lowkey gotta get on ur knees and apologize to all lesbians while live steaming putting ur bf’s head through a guillotine if uve ever messaged a lesbian asking if they’d be down for a threesome with u and ur man who looks like he snuck onto earth
"i'm gay, not blind" this and that whatever can i admit that i might very well be both gay and blind? because that man is not attractive to me either i'm sorry they all look the same and they're all so fucking ugly i sometimes think y'all are playing a prank on me specifically
"if it was normalized for women to wear swim trunks then they wouldn't have to worry about removing pubic hair" i hear you and this is so true. I know this in my heart. however i cannot lie to you i would not hate if bikini bottoms with bush showing became a trend
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