Harems WERE female spaces. They were enforced and not voluntary but they were not just where female slaves were kept. Anon's comparison is nonsense, but the responses are as well.
I think you are missing the point here. ‘Women’s space’ means something more than just a place where women are kept, it means politically/socially/economically autonomous spaces created by and for women.
We don’t count brothels or prisons or sex-segregated spaces under patriarchal religions as women’s spaces, because they don’t further women’s liberation.
Marilyn Frye wrote so powerfully about the difference between patriarchal and feminist separatist spaces in her essay “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power.” Check it out if you haven’t read it!
This documentary provides a good overview of the scope of the issue and how women and children are being targeted by predators in Eastern Europe to be specifically trafficked to countries in Western Europe where prostitution is legal or decriminalised like Germany or the UK.
Elly Arrow's channel is also a great resource for educating people, she talks about the reality on the ground for sex workers in Germany where prostitution is legal and where a lot of these women and girls end up being trafficked.
It's a horrific problem, and this would not be as much of an issue without Western sex buyers fueling the demand for this industry. Eastern Europeans are absolutely right to be pissed about it
Also, sWerF is a meaningless term; you can't be a feminist and support the exploitation and trafficking of women and girls. People who throw that term around are violent misogynists who can usually be seen trying to silence the victims of this industry.
Most interesting scientific facts I learned reading Starre Vartan's 'The Stronger Sex - What Science Tells us about the Female Body'.
I don't have page numbers because I read an epub version taken from a PDF that was all over the place.
Women's muscles are significantly less subject to fatigue in tests of isometric muscle endurance (i.e. when lifting lower weights, women can do more reps than men, and can also hold these weights in a static position for longer).
Women's muscles take up oxygen about 30% faster than men's which "scientifically speaking, indicates a superior aerobic system"
Women have a higher proportion og "slow twitch" muscle fibres which are good for endurance exercise and confer a health advantage when it comes to diabetes by increasing insulin sensitivity.
After an hour of exercise at the same level of intensity, women's muscles burn more fat (and less carbs) when compared to men's. This keeps women going in endurance exercises.
Menstrual blood contains mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Remnant cells in the uterine lining that heal the uterus each month without scars could also contain stem cells. This could contribute to endometriosis because during menstruation, some menstrual fluid travels up through the fallopian tubes and into the peritoneal cavity. If this fluid carries stem cells associated with the endometrium, it could explain how endometrial cells grow outside the uterus.
In the 1920s, there was debate about whether menstrual blood could harm plants and animals. It was discussed as a "menotoxin" into the mid 20th century and in 1936, research was published about whether menotoxin caused a child's asthma.
Male bodies have 50-100% higher fasting blood glucose levels, and men clear glucose 15% slower than women. Glucose uptake in men can be up to 50% slower. This is one reason why men are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes as women.
Estrogen comes from two sources: the ovaries and the subcutaneous fat on the hips and buttocks. Once a female body goes through menopause, the hip/buttock fat becomes the only source of estrogen, which is important for maintaining bone strength
During pregnancy, the body's energy use increases to 2.2x the basal metabolic rate which is close to the limit of what the human body can handle.
Female small intestines are significantly longer than males, which might explain how women are better able to withstand life stressors like starvation or disease.
Sex hormones influence the gut microbiome, and the microbiome impacts how sex hormones are metabolised. Similarly, vigorous exercise is helpful for gut microbial diversity.
Women's bodies devote more energy to continually educating their b-cells (antibodies) and therefore produce the best-fitting antibodies and fighting infections more effectively than males.
Female sex hormones strengthen the immune system and testosterone suppresses it.
Women have stronger immune systems into old age, allowing them to fight off diseases better than older men, although this ability does decline over time.
While I don't disagree with anything this guy is saying in this particular video, I think it's important to mention that this man is Mormon. And as an exmormon it gives me pause. I checked out his other videos on his Instagram and it's not great- he has a video about how women "choosing the bear" is actually based on women believing harmful stereotypes about men- see screenshot below:
Furthermore, he has this whole "disagree better" campaign in which he credits Spencer Cox, the current governor of Utah who is also a homophobic asshole.
Not saying that any of the info in this video is incorrect, but I feel compelled to do more research. Call me biased but when information like this is presented by a man, I always view it with skepticism until I can verify their background.
It's good to be skeptical and know your sources. Still, even a broken clock is right twice a day/ what is being said is more important than who is saying it.
The way abuse fetishists get away with what they do is insane and reflective of cultural misogyny beyond that sphere. men mistreating women is not uncommon, and postmodernism has helped sanitize male violence even more. when you're a woman being abused because it's clearly trauma bonding or you've been groomed or there's something wrong, It's probably uncomfortable to accept that you were being abused to begin with and that it was wrong. because the culture at large doesn't really care. It's already uncomfortable to talk about sexual matters in public and so the abuse that women suffer often remains private and it's only shared with close friends because it's so embarrassing women are afraid of the repercussions of making whatever they've suffered public.
abusive men get called out, they get reported to the law, only to marry women with children and be a risk to them It's just insane.
you need to stop sealioning feminists that are clearly uncomfortable with sexualized abuse. most people are uncomfortable with sexualized abuse and you need to ask yourself why you feel so compelled to defend it
I am trying to engage in a discussion. If the person is uncomfortable with the mere idea of BDSM, I can be blocked. I will not try to harass them. i simply replied to a few posts.
People being uncomfortable with this is completely alright, but what is not alright is to claim a moral high ground because you do not personally like this kink.
I also want to make clesr that you ignore my point that this kink is not exclusive to dominant males x submissive females.
Ancient Hatred and Its Contemporary Manifestation: The Torture of Lesbians by Susan Hawthorne, Ph.D. Victoria University
abusive men in the kink scene in their own words:
💬 0 🔁 1586 ❤️ 1602 · this was such a heavy read so tw everyone 💔
3 lies that kinksters tell you about BDSM to distract you from their sexual human rights abuses.
Content warning: descriptions of kink torture.
First of all: sorry for writing so much more about kink culture lately, you all know me as “that ex-prostitute who fights the sex industry (and who’s personal long posts nobody really reblogs, but i write them anyway)” after all. But kink culture is mainstreaming and i firmly believe this is either a result of porn culture or intersects with it. After all, cultural changes expand if not stopped: rape culture –> porn culture –> kink culture. Not that sexual sadism isn’t as old as patriarchy itself, but it certainly is mainstream now.
Okay: when i first got educated on sex (which was very insufficient, even for a country that brags about their sex ed), how it was explained to us, was like this: when a man and a woman love each other, they want to be close together, so close that they want to be inside each other, this act of love making is sex. And that is a pretty idealist way of phraming things, maybe you could even call it dishonest, because it does’t reflect reality. In reality men fuck, pound, bang, shag, destroy or screw women. It is honest in one way though: it forgot about homosexuality, society does that too.
So why am i telling this? Because kinksters explain their brutality in sweet talk like this too, i did that too to talk about my masochistic “sexual orientation”. To cloud what’s really going on. So here are 3 lies kinksters tell you to get away with rape and abuse:
1. Pain can feel like pleasure. The argument: “the parts of the brain that register pain, pleasure and itchiness are close together and sometimes overlap. This is why scratching (pain) elevates itchiness: you blend the sensation and feel pleasure/relief scratching an itch. Kinksters utilise this blending of sensations to feel pleasure too. We all like a little pain in a way.”
The truth: this might as well be true, i don’t even care. But facts remain that pain is a warning side of your body that something is wrong. Scratching an itch is not the same as beating your partner with a cane untill she’s bleeding. And most of all: sadists don’t necessarily want the masochist to feel pleasure. In my decade in the scene i noticed 2 types of sadists (Doms not included, Doms are about power, not pain per se). Type 1 who really wants their victim to suffer, to not enjoy it. They love playing with subs (not masochists). Type 2 who simply doesn’t care, which is a great match for a masochist. They just want to destroy, to reduce the physicality of their object of desire. The problem is that sadism is wrong, unethical, acted out it’s a form of non-state torture. The masochist’s itch that ‘needs’ to be scratched with a knife or a whip is irrelevant.
2. It’s all about trusting your partner. The argument: “BDSM relationships are deep, intense relationships (unlike vanilla ones) that demand trust between partners. You give your partner your body and mind or recieve theirs, that trust is a beautiful thing. Why would anyone consider this special bond wrong?”
The truth: of course there are plenty of these relationships and they’re still abusive as fuck. But what bothers me is that it’s a lie. In the BDSM community, monogamous relationships are less common than outside of it and there is more acceptance of polygamy. Which is neutral of course. But it’s also true that this “special bond” with 3 other people is kind of… not as special as what you’re telling others? This argument romanticises BDSM to sell it to the rest of the world, hiding its abusive nature. It’s way more common that a BDSM community is more like a marketplace of desires, fantasies and subculture. People would play with interesting strangers at playparties. Why not be honest and champion this concept? It’s actually one of the few things i really liked about the BDSM scene: the open communication about desire and breaking down the monopoly of “man owns woman, woman is dependent on man for love and affection”. The only shitty thing you did with it was “all men own woman, she exists for male pleasure”, instead of having a huge group of friends who were all casually intimate with oneanother. From sleeping in each other’s arms to playing and from sex to cheating with +1 invites to parties.
3. Safe, sane and consensual. The argument: “it’s not like we just go around beating people and doing whatever. We actually learn skills on how to safely work with the body, inflicting pain, doing bondage, we even read up on psychology. This is why young girls tend to end up with an older man so often: he has the experience that balances her inexperience. We live by these rules, BECAUSE we are not abusers.”
The truth: every single one of these statements is a lie. There is no Dom-school (ironically there actually is “slave training”, that’s a pretty big thing). Yes, there are workshops, but there is no requirement for a Dom to start doing BDSM. And since Doms tend to be pompous, narcistic bastards, many tend to blow their experience level out of proportion. Which often resulted in funny, yet dangerous, situations where i had to guide the activity WHILE SUBBING. Older men do not have more experience, some do, many don’t. Older men prey in young girls because they’re vulnerble, like tight young flesh and the thrill is to break a porcelaine doll (which i wrote about before, see my #legalisedlies tag). Many kinksters learn safety skills to prevent killing their partner, they don’t want to end up in jail. If they cared about safety, they would wear a condom more often and not practise BDSM. Many BDSM activities cannot be done safely, that’s why they came up with the newer code Risk Aware Consensual Kink. But it’s never the Dom who faces the risks, it’s the sub who needs to go to the hospital when something goes wrong.
Welcome! This channel educates on the harms of sadomasochism, which is also known as S/M, S&M, or BDSM. (BONDAGE, DISCIPLINE [or DOMINANCE o
I’ll never forget when I was arguing with a person in favor of total prison abolition and I asked them “what about violent offenders?” And they said “Well, in a world where prisons have been abolished, we’ll have leveled the playing field and everyone will have their basic needs met, and crime won’t be as much of an issue.” And then I was like “okay. But…no. Because rich people also rape and murder, so it isn’t just a poor person thing. So what will we do about that?” And I don’t think they answered me after that. I’m ashamed to say I continued to think that the problem was that I simply didn’t understand prison abolitionists enough and that their point was right in front of me, and it would click once I finally let myself understand it. It took me a long time to realize that if something is going to make sense, it needs to make sense. If you want to turn theory into Praxis (I’m using that word right don’t correct me I’ll vomit) everyone needs to be on board, which mean it all needs to click and it needs to click fast and fucking clear. You need to turn a complex idea into something both digestible and flexible enough to be expanded upon. Every time I ask a prison abolitionist what they actually intend to do about violent crime, I get directed to a summer reading list and a BreadTuber. It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. Where’s the answer to my question. There it is. No wait, there it is. It’s under this cup. No it isn’t. “There’s theory that can explain this better than I can.” As if most theory isn’t just a collection of essays meant to be absorbed and discussed by academics, not the average skeptic. “Read this book.” And the book won’t even answer the question. The book tells you to go ask someone else. “Oh, watch this so-and-so, she totally explains it better than me.” Why can’t you explain it at all? Why did you even bring it up if you were going to point me to someone else to give me the basics that you should probably already know? Maybe I’m just one of those crazy people who thinks that some people need to be kept away from the public for everyone’s good. Maybe that just makes me insane. Maybe not believing that pervasive systemic misogyny could be solved with a UBI and a prayer circle makes me a bad guy. But it’s not like women’s safety is a priority anyway. It’s not like there is an objective claim to be made that re-releasing violent offenders or simply not locking them up is deadly.
I've done a lot of reading about prison abolition, particularly academic sources, and the general idea is that crimes will still happen, but the communty will essentially sort it out on their own.
A lot of prison abolition frameworks rely on what we know about how societies met their own and each others needs before currency. So, if someone needed milk, they'd take eggs from their chicken and trade it with the person who has a cow. This ensured that everyone's physical needs were usually met.
Prison abolitonists won't say it, but their idea of how rape should be handled is exactly how these early agricultural societies handled it. It was a "majority rules" system. Meaning, if the community liked the women more, the man would be ousted or punished. And if the community liked the man more, the woman would be ousted or punished.
The general goal of prison abolition is not a society in which everyone is safe and has their individual needs met. It's a society that's stable and can maintain itself, where most people have their physical needs met enough to reproduce and continue the society.
This is why they can never give you a straight answer. Because the prison abolition framework doesn't aim to abolish rape, it aims to keep it as quiet as possible. Their solution is to keep men only raping their own wives and daughters, and for those women and girls to have enough other needs met that they'll shut up about it for fear of not having those other needs met.
Most prison abolitionists do not actually understand their framework, because they don't read the academic sources and they don't know how their ideal society would function. But the academics know exactly what it would look like, and it's a regressive society where instead of a justice system making prisons to keep the violent men contained, each household has a woman to keep that household's men contained.
If you want to know what prison abolition looks like, don't ask a prison abolitionist who says "I don't know what that would be like". Look at examples of early agricultural communities where their primary goal is survival. That's what it would look like, because in the absence of large scale people management, all of the social duties fall to women.
And you don't even need to go back that far. The concept of a secular "public civil force" originated in England in the 18th century. Before that, proto-police were the private hires of nobles or the church/dominant religious force, or else a part of the local military. For the vast majority of history, commoners largely settled most of their disputes among themselves, usually in a way that was heavily dependant on religious ideology. A rape victim might get community justice, but like others were saying in this thread, that depended on the standing of the rapist within the community.
Like it or not, a lot of the historical gains made for women's freedom have come from the penal system. A husband is no longer the untouchable iron fist of the law within his own home, an outside force can step in and stop him from beating his wife and children to a pulp. They can lock him away where he'll never hurt anyone again. That's revolutionary. It took until 1993 for marital rape to become illegal in the US, but it still happened. A woman can freely say no to sex with her husband and seek legal recourse if he rapes her. Again, revolutionary.
I think prison abolition is another example of far-leftists falling in love with the idea of tearing down an imperfect system without putting a single coherent thought toward the reality of rebuilding afterward.
I’ll never forget when I was arguing with a person in favor of total prison abolition and I asked them “what about violent offenders?” And they said “Well, in a world where prisons have been abolished, we’ll have leveled the playing field and everyone will have their basic needs met, and crime won’t be as much of an issue.” And then I was like “okay. But…no. Because rich people also rape and murder, so it isn’t just a poor person thing. So what will we do about that?” And I don’t think they answered me after that. I’m ashamed to say I continued to think that the problem was that I simply didn’t understand prison abolitionists enough and that their point was right in front of me, and it would click once I finally let myself understand it. It took me a long time to realize that if something is going to make sense, it needs to make sense. If you want to turn theory into Praxis (I’m using that word right don’t correct me I’ll vomit) everyone needs to be on board, which mean it all needs to click and it needs to click fast and fucking clear. You need to turn a complex idea into something both digestible and flexible enough to be expanded upon. Every time I ask a prison abolitionist what they actually intend to do about violent crime, I get directed to a summer reading list and a BreadTuber. It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. Where’s the answer to my question. There it is. No wait, there it is. It’s under this cup. No it isn’t. “There’s theory that can explain this better than I can.” As if most theory isn’t just a collection of essays meant to be absorbed and discussed by academics, not the average skeptic. “Read this book.” And the book won’t even answer the question. The book tells you to go ask someone else. “Oh, watch this so-and-so, she totally explains it better than me.” Why can’t you explain it at all? Why did you even bring it up if you were going to point me to someone else to give me the basics that you should probably already know? Maybe I’m just one of those crazy people who thinks that some people need to be kept away from the public for everyone’s good. Maybe that just makes me insane. Maybe not believing that pervasive systemic misogyny could be solved with a UBI and a prayer circle makes me a bad guy. But it’s not like women’s safety is a priority anyway. It’s not like there is an objective claim to be made that re-releasing violent offenders or simply not locking them up is deadly.
I've done a lot of reading about prison abolition, particularly academic sources, and the general idea is that crimes will still happen, but the communty will essentially sort it out on their own.
A lot of prison abolition frameworks rely on what we know about how societies met their own and each others needs before currency. So, if someone needed milk, they'd take eggs from their chicken and trade it with the person who has a cow. This ensured that everyone's physical needs were usually met.
Prison abolitonists won't say it, but their idea of how rape should be handled is exactly how these early agricultural societies handled it. It was a "majority rules" system. Meaning, if the community liked the women more, the man would be ousted or punished. And if the community liked the man more, the woman would be ousted or punished.
The general goal of prison abolition is not a society in which everyone is safe and has their individual needs met. It's a society that's stable and can maintain itself, where most people have their physical needs met enough to reproduce and continue the society.
This is why they can never give you a straight answer. Because the prison abolition framework doesn't aim to abolish rape, it aims to keep it as quiet as possible. Their solution is to keep men only raping their own wives and daughters, and for those women and girls to have enough other needs met that they'll shut up about it for fear of not having those other needs met.
Most prison abolitionists do not actually understand their framework, because they don't read the academic sources and they don't know how their ideal society would function. But the academics know exactly what it would look like, and it's a regressive society where instead of a justice system making prisons to keep the violent men contained, each household has a woman to keep that household's men contained.
If you want to know what prison abolition looks like, don't ask a prison abolitionist who says "I don't know what that would be like". Look at examples of early agricultural communities where their primary goal is survival. That's what it would look like, because in the absence of large scale people management, all of the social duties fall to women.
The era of class compromise is never coming back. Any serious democratic socialist politics must pursue a politics of rupture with capitalis
don't necessarily agree with all criticism of past socialist projects and the sketched out alternative, but nonetheless very good article on the crisis of the left, the failure of social democracy and cold war communism, the problems with reform and the flexibility of capitalism.
actually to tack on to this: one point the article makes is that a party should articulate a specific program for transition and building socialism, and i think this is somewhat undervalued. we really need to envision alternative ways to structure the economy (this also has to include a critique of the soviet economy). and there are some good works on this out there, but few are aware of them and none have been turned into a specific program an party or political organisation is advancing
Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as "grooming"—to create a class of compliant victims. Across history, this breaking has including so-called "beauty practices" like female genital mutilation and foot binding, as well as the ever-popular child sexual abuse. Femininity is really just the traumatized psyche displaying acquiescence. In its essence, it is ritualized submission.
-Lierre Keith, "The Girls and the Grasses" in Female Erasure
Sadly she never found her daughter according to Wikipedia.
But she rescued many other girls and led to laws offering protection.
But she never found her daughter Marita. Who was on her way to a doctor's appointment when she was abducted and forced into prostitution.
Hopefully before she passes away she finds out what became of her daughter.
Extract from the entry:
Trimarco quoted: "I screamed until I couldn't scream anymore. And then I realized that I had to be strong. I had to think with my head and not just my heart. These people were powerful, and I was a nobody, and I had no money, no power, no resources. I had to be smarter than them if I wanted to get my daughter back".[9] She began investigating on her own. She started dressing up as a prostitute and visiting bars in La Rioja that doubled as brothels. She got the phone numbers of people she suspected of being involved in trafficking and called them saying she wanted to buy girls. In June 2002, she set up a meeting with a female trafficker and gained access to a safe house where 12 girls were being held hostage. "Minors or adults?" the woman asked her. When Trimarco said minors, the woman told her each girl would cost her a minimum of 3500 pesos. Promising to return with the funds Trimarco left and informed the police, who then saved the girls.[9]
I suspect that the science will eventually show that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is related to male drinking / the effect on sperm as well. the US is decades behind in FASD diagnosis, treatment & public services & relies instead on blaming/shaming mothers which results in cultural silence on the issue
“Further, there’s a problem because a structureless group often gives the appearance of being very democratic and anti-elitist, whereas, actually, there is a small group who is making decisions through the control of information, etc. These apparently democratic groups (like SDS) are often especially oppressive to less privileged members because the ultra-democratic facade precludes recognition of these problems by simply denying their existence.”
—Alice, Gordon, Debbie, & Mary, Problems of Our Movement (1973), found in For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology (1988) ed. Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Julia Penelope, pg. 387
I'm surprised that she didn't mention this, but it's not only the men in the affected zone of the conflict who take advantage of these women, it's the men who are working for the very charitable humanitarian agencies she's referring to that send people in to the zone of conflict in order to "help." multiple men who work for charities that went into Haiti after the earthquake were caught routinely refusing to give women the food and water that was meant to be freely provided unless they exchanged sexual favors for it. this also happened to mothers who were forced to let themselves be raped not only for their survival but bc the men in question were withholding these resources from their babies as well.
haiti is not the only place this has happened by a long shot, just one particular example that is at the forefront of my mind. the "helpers" can't be trusted either when they're men.
Decades-long campaign powered by patient perspectives results in switch from PCOS – a name that caused confusion and undue suffering – to PM
a health policy paper has been published saying the name is officially updated to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS)
polyendocrine= multiple endocrine factors
metabolic = affecting/affected by metabolism
ovarian = from the ovaries
essentially, instead of using the symptomatic term (many people with PMOS do not develop cysts) the new term widens the diagnostic area and makes it easier to diagnose, treat, and do research on people with PMOS (even atypical types, such as no cysts).
it may seem like a waste of time to change a name instead of focusing on research, but for a lot of medical professionals a name can be associated with a hard set collection of symptoms, so the name needs to change to acknowledge that the disorder is not well understood and has a broader, subtler, and often missed set of symptoms. for example ADD is considered an antiquated/unused term, and now comes under the ADHD umbrella. in healthcare names and terminology changes all the time, and this is a positive change. your local healthcare professional may not know about this unless theyre really up on the news though!
in case you want to read about the name change process that was published in the Lancet (one of the most impactful and well respected medical journals):
Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously named polycystic ovary
syndrome (PCOS), affects one in eight women. However, the
