Hey everyone! I'm so sorry for the unannounced break and the nearly three year long silence. In that time, a lot of things happened (obviously) and I was extremely burnt out from radical feminist activism, from seeing the terrible things happening to women day after day and trying to bring attention to them, from the abuse on social media, from everything. I have been suffering with some health issues for a long time, and in the last few years they've got a lot worse. With all this combined, this tumblr was the last thing I had on my mind.
However, I did still write some stuff for it. It never reached what I wanted it to be when I started - I wanted a one-stop-shop for radical feminism beginners, and that included in depth explanations of radical feminist beliefs, which I never got around to. I would really like to finish that at the very least.
I truly believe that this little blog could be something useful and important to people, and I hope that it can reach its potential.
I have plans on adding in more pages that go further in depth about radical feminism, writing essays about pop culture etc. from a radical feminist point of view, and of course, reblogging as much stuff as possible that I believe needs to be seen. I still want to keep this place welcoming to newcomers and people who just want to find out what radical feminism is without joining. I still plan on making sure that this blog shows the truth about radical feminism without getting too complex and nitty-gritty. I still want to make this blog a great resource that radical feminists can use to find sources, citations, and community. I hope this can be something you can introduce your friends to, your sisters to, your mothers to - and show them that radical feminism is not how it's portrayed in the media and society at large.
I hope some of you are still willing to bare with me while I deal with all of this, and while I am inevitably going to need to take breaks again. I'm barely more healthy than I was before, and I still get deeply affected by seeing the things women are put through daily.
Thank you ever so much, everyone who has followed and reblogged and liked and replied to all the posts so far. It means so much to me. I had a lot of things I was going to add to this, but I really struggled to find the words to write. Just know that I'm proud of what we have made here so far, and I fully intend on making it better. There's two posts left in the queue that never got posted, so I'm going to post them now and then there'll be a bit more of a break until I can get new content and hear your suggestions.
If you have any suggestions of things you would like to see on this blog, any particular things you'd like explained or talked about, any content you'd like posted, any new features or additions, please let me know! I am actively seeking out what you want. Literally anything (within the bounds of this blog being a radical feminism explainer blog)
Hey, i’m a little confused and I was wondering if anyone has the pacience, energy, and spoons to maybe help explain something to me? I keep hearing that the idea of 2 sexes isnt accurate, and I understand that, because intersex people exist. But I’ve also heard people say that the entire basis of the sex binary is wrong at its core. I don’t quite understand that, because the vast majority of people do fall into xx chromosomes and uterus/ovaries/etc or xy chromosomes and penis/testes/etc. Obviously there are exceptions, but aren’t exceptions just that: exceptions to the general rule? This may sound like someone trying to argue, but I’m honestly curious and want to be more informed. I’ve tried doing research but it’s all very, very complex. Thanks!
So, basically, there are a whoooole bunch of different things that we consider sex characteristics. Primarily:
exactly two chromosomes (either XX or XY),
one kind of gonadal tissue (testes or ovaries – these are the bits that make reproductive cells & hormones),
all external/internal genitals that correspond with that gonadal tissue and are within a certain measurement range
hormone levels within a certain range
secondary sex characteristics (like hair growth/patterns, development of breasts)
There’s not a super agreed-on definition of what does and does not count specifically, but if all of these things don’t match what the expected model of a man/woman should be, that generally counts.
Now, we also don’t have great data on how many people are intersex because we can’t decide what counts, but the numbers are usually around 1 in every 2,000 people at the lower end to 1 in every 100 people or more at the higher, with that lower figure usually including only people with visible genital atypicalities at birth (so not everyone).
In percentages, that means somewhere between 0.05% - 1% of the population are intersex. For comparison, residents of Rhode Island make up 0.32% of the American population, and about 1% of all people are redheads.
It’d be silly to argue that redheads are just exceptions to a hair color rule or not a significant enough part of the population to reclassify a blond hair/black hair binary, right? Or that there aren’t enough RI residents to conclude that “living in Rhode Island” is statistically meaningful and that we should sort them into either Massachusetts or Connecticut, whichever one someone lives closer to. 😉
tl;dr: The exceptions to the rule are so numerous that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say that rule is a good one.
Let me try to explain this in the easiest way possible since you’re very close to understanding: yes, intersex disorders are the exceptions that prove the rule (of human sexual dimorphism).
Human chromosomes are binary: X and Y. We do not produce a third chromosomal type. Each person receives 46 chromosomes at conception: 23 from their mother’s egg and 23 chromosomes from their father’s sperm cell. Of course, sometimes this goes wrong. Transcription and translocation errors, meiotic disjunction, deletions, etc. will cause physical and developmental abnormalities rather than new sexes. An extra copy of any chromosome is known as Trisomy. Having an extra copy of chromosome 21 causes Down’s Syndrome. Having an extra copy of chromosome 18 causes a rare, mostly fatal condition named Edward’s Syndrome. An XY male having an extra X is behind the intersex disorder known as Klinefelter’s Syndrome. An XY male having an extra Y is known as Jacob’s Syndrome. XX females can also have duplicate Xs in their cells, known as XXX or XXXX (which is actually a tetrasomy) syndrome, sometimes also written as 47,XXX to indicate their abnormal number of chromosomes. A chromosome can be missing completely, as in a monosomy disorder like the intersex condition Turner’s Syndrome, or partially, as in those with deformities at chromosome 15 resulting in Prader-Willi Syndrome. It is important to understand that these are mistakes, rather than intended outcomes. A normal and healthy human development will not have these random and inherited genetic errors.
Human gametes are also binary: human females produce ova and human males produce sperm. We do not produce a third type of gamete. There are some conditions causing the development of the “wrong” internal gonads, but these will rarely be functional and most are removed to avoid cancer risks later in life. The most common side effect of intersex disorders is infertility. It doesn’t matter if the individual doesn’t want children, technically reproduction is the point of evolution and sterility is not regarded as a biological advantage for any member of a species. This is further evidence intersex disorders are not deliberate outcomes in sex development.
Even intersex disorders follow the sex binary of our species: NCAH, Turner’s, Triple X Syndrome, MRKH are examples of female intersex disorders. Klinefelter’s, Jacob’s, PAIS/AIS are examples of male intersex disorders. There are intersex disorders presenting different symptom sets in males and females, like Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and Kallmann’s Syndrome, as well as other urogenital issues classified as disorders of sex development which don’t alter phenotype, like hypospadias. The confusion comes from two things:
people mixing up genotype (how we’re born) and phenotype (how we look externally)
people mixing up sex (how we’re born) and gender (how we’re organized socially)
A common defense for transgender rights is to counter the claim of “there are 2 genders because there are 2 sexes” with “gender is a spectrum because sex is a spectrum”. A few years ago the trans community and allies did not deny their biological sex (the basis for their dysphoria and medical transition) or anyone else’s, but for whatever reason, this is popular pseudoscience now on the left. They’ll even invoke non-mammalian species like birds, lizards, and clownfish to argue against the idea of human sexual dimorphism. Human sexes are a continuum, not a spectrum. Intersex disorders do not represent different sexes but rather disordered variations on the two sexes. Without two human sexes, intersex disorders couldn’t even exist. It’s because our species has two pathways that these disorders present with the characteristics and symptoms that they do. And rather than argue if a man has low muscle tone and small testicles, he’s less of a man, we should appreciate that intersex disorders don’t change who we are.
Many people cite Anne Fausto-Sterling’s common-as-redheads 2% statistic (which, incidentally, 88% of her incidence rate comes from one condition alone, the female-only NCAH) when in actuality, a mismatch between sex chromosomes and phenotype occurs in just 0.018% of the population. Even though she tried to divide us into 5 sexes, we have to ask, what makes a “””female herm””” remarkably different from a female? The Intersex Society of North America never saw the point of arbitrarily drawing a line where our disorders make us less than the sex we were born. There are lots of value-neutral mutations, like red hair or blue eyes, but disorders of sex development aren’t one of them. We regard other congenital abnormalities, like missing bones, extra toes, or blindness as exceptions rather than new truths. It’s incredibly ableist to see a missing uterus, or a dangerous overproduction of cortisol, or heart irregularities, or intellectual disabilities, and so on, as irrelevant. We have real medical issues erased under identity politics. And it doesn’t need to be like this. I am not someone living in Rhode Island, I am a biological female with a recessive genetic disorder behind a 21-hydroxylase deficiency named Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. This does not exclude me from my birth sex; my symptoms such as precocious puberty and irregular menstruation are related directly to my sex. It is absurd to demedicalize chronic illnesses just because people misunderstand that intersex disorders are disorders.
Where is YOUR proof of trans people doing anything to TERFs? We’re just trying to fucking protect ourselves and stay away from you murderers
ooh okay! i got time
here is 61 posts where trans women have called lesbians terfs/transphobic for not wanting to have sex with them, harassed / guilt tripped / threatened them for being lesbians, etc
here is a trans woman exposing himself in a female changing room, and another, though yall said this wouldnt happen
another thing u said wouldnt happen! here is a trans male raping women in a female jail. actually, 49% of trans prisoners have been convicted of sexual assault!
interesting how you say we are murderers. can u name 1 radfem murderer? while you think, here is a trans one! and another, who tried to kill people because he got rejected by a woman - sounds like a plain old incel! in fact, trans women have the same criminality patterns as men!
i have tags for all of these things: trans violence, trans rape, male violence, trans misogyny, trans lesbophobia, trans homophobia … hope i answered ur question sufficiently! have fun reading :)
also, yall gotta stop playing the victim narrative bc trans groups have been found to get 5x more funding than lesbian groups and 3x more than gay groups. homophobes and conservatives are flocking to the current trans narrative because they understand it more than the gay narrative since both are founded on homophobia & misogyny.
your movement is dying and no one will remember you in a few decades, just like no one remembers any of the groups opposed to decriminalising homosexuality. thank you for wasting your sad little life like this lmao
1) We are not dying. Our numbers have been growing drastically just over the past year. I have seen so many more people joining in these discussions and supporting women and it's been incredible to see people finally take notice.
2) We have already been around for decades, long before you were born. What group do you think was fighting for women prior to liberal feminism's capitulation to men? The famous feminists you have heard of are most likely radical feminists: Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Julie Bindel, Sheila Jeffreys... We are not going anywhere.
3) No, people still remember those groups, especially the LGB people who lived through that period. They should be remembered. We should not forget our past and pretend that our rights were easily won or just given to us.
4) The implication being that we are trying to criminalise transgenderness? This is not true at all (read the FAQ, I made it for a reason) and extremely offensive to us as we are a majority lesbian movement. Likening our want to abolish gender and liberate all women to groups who openly attacked LGB people is despicable and shows a real ignorance into both what we believe as radical feminists and gay history. I suggest you read up on both before trying this again either with me or someone less willing to educate.
5) The only life that's being wasted is the one sending hate comments to a blog literally designed to teach people about a different type of feminism. You probably thought that you had done a really good job here, didn't you? You really showed us scary terves! The information in this blog would have helped you write something more scathing or critical. But instead you wrote this, something which can be easily disproven by clicking on the link next to the one that says "ask".
Please do come back and try again because I want to see you use some effort in trying to bring this blog/movement/??? to the ground. Come on, really shake my beliefs to the core.
I can’t find trans sports resourcess I’m fighting with my dad!! girl help
I would start here: https://fairplayforwomen.com/ and follow some links! I'm so sorry that this is probably really late, but I hope this helps in future!
can radfems date and marry men? I know straight women can be radical feminists, but should they stay celibate?
As I am a lesbian, I can't really answer this universally and I don't think there is a universal answer. This is something that I know has been discussed a lot, so I'll throw this over to any straight/bi radfems for their opinions!
If you knowingly keep information from a sex partner because you believe it will determine how they consent to you, then it’s rape by deception, it doesn’t really matter what “it” is.
This post is old but is making rounds again, and there are some old arguments from rape apologists in the notes who are so positive I wrote this to only be Big and Mean to trans people. So here’s a fun list of other items besides being trans:
positive STD statuses and/or the last time you were tested
your marriage/partners. Also, probably should be honest about going through a divorce.
if you’re not a virgin - people use this to sleep with virgins, so creepy and nasty, just tell the truth if you’ve had sex before
your drug addiction - no, not weed you morons. if you are a meth addict, or a heroine addict, etc etc, you need to disclose that before you have sex with someone. this is a big deal, and people have a lot of reasons to say “no” to sex with someone with a drug addiction that has nothing to do with their ideas of morality concerning drugs.
the last time you took drugs and what drugs - like if you took a line of cocaine 15 years ago in college, that’s not what I’m talking about. if you got high 6 hours ago, don’t try to pass off that you didn’t. don’t try to convince someone you’re fine to have sex with because you’re “def coming down.”
if you are or are not using birth control
lying about your identity. (don’t try to pick up people by telling them you are someone else entirely that is so fucking creepy)
if you want to try something unusual/dangerous during sex with them. it’s extremely manipulative to act like you’re on the same page about the sex you want to have with someone and then half way through tell them you want to cuff them to the bed or use a whip or something. it’s hard to say “no” to someone when their penis is literally inside of you, and rapists know that. So just be fucking real with people if you’re into weird kinky shit so you can have sex with like minded people instead of tricking uncomfortable people who are suddenly at your mercy.
Things you KNOW are important to someone, even if they’re little. If you genuinely did not think a piece of information would have made a difference to someone, that’s different. If you think it’s stupid that the person you’re talking to doesn’t want to sleep with anyone who, let’s say, owns a bird…okay, who knows what up with that person I agree it’s weird. But if you own a bird and you know they don’t like it? don’t lie or hide it. You don’t get to impose your own sense of boundaries on someone. Go find someone you don’t think is weird to have sex with! the world is full of people who would agree with you about the bird thing, so leave this one goof ball alone!
It happens so often that women freeze and forget the magic word.
Pilots freeze and crash their plane and it's a tragedy. Armed police panic and shoot the wrong person and it's the stress of the job. Doctors get overtired and prescribe the wrong meds, and it's the pressure and the hours.
But women who stupidly believe their man loves them and cares for them and has their best interests at heart and who go blank, forget the safe word or even cry and beg for him to stop? Entirely their own fault. No benefit of the doubt. Definitely not his fault for prioritising his orgasm over her bodily integrity, physical and mental health.
It's a massive headfuck, to realise the person you love just raped you, so I hope the redditor has someone to lean on. But her boyfriend is a rapist and he has zero respect for her. Trusses her up like a turkey and fucks her simply because she can't stop him.
Saw this pop up on Twitter last night and thought I'd share. Wasteofenamel (trans woman) tweeted about cis women complaining, Riamuofficial (radfem woman) engaged with the tweet, and Wasteofenamel replied with ableism and misogyny. This led to all of Wasteofenamels followers becoming increasingly misogynistic and ableist towards Riamuofficial. All posted below.
“Empowerment” is having to wear bikinis because you’re told your sports teams are pointless otherwise. See the “lingerie league”, the only pro-level football league for women.
If they want to play pro football then they have to wear those ridiculous, dangerous, objectifying uniforms. Don’t let idiot men tell you that being dehumanized for their consumption is empowering you.
I honest to god thought that lingerie team had to be a joke, like a novelty game or something. Still sexist like but I just thought there’s no way that’s a real team…
… it fucking is. And its atrocious and I feel for these women so much.
Notice the way it says they love the game, as though they obvious solution - if it were sexist - is to get rid of the whole league, not have them dress appropriately. And it gets worse.
The top bit just makes me so sad because you know they aren’t going to stay for the athleticism… also the fact that he recognises treating them like the guys is a good thing, but not so similar that they are allowed to have their bodies covered??
So help me Jesus
They are not even getting paid! Sex sells he says, basically he sells them and they don’t even see the money!
First of all I’m not surprised their clothes come off or get ripped its the least practical sports uniform in the world, secondly she outright says she did not love it, but that is assumed to be a joke meaning she is actually comfortable in her skin malfunctions and all??? This is insanity…
the frequency in which men kill their entire families and maybe then themselves is horrifying. like it happens so often they have profiles and typical reasons why men do this. i really do encourage reading the full linked article because it’s insightful but for a quick tldr:
men usually kill their kids in august because that’s right before school starts and on sundays before they have to give their kids back to their partner who they have shared custody with
family breakup is cited as the most common cause, followed by finances
they usually kill because they’re self righteous, disappointed, anomic, or paranoid
the last paragraphs should be read verbatim for the full effect
men as a sex are so obsessed with masculinity and violence that they’re willing to murder their partner and children in a final effort to remain in a position of power. that’s terrifying, and i’m almost sure that it’s not only family annihilators that think like that, but a far too large percentage of men. these men were normal enough to marry and raise a family for years before deciding to kill them on a whim. their wives loved them and their children trusted them only to end up six feet underground. i’m scared of men. i’m scared of what they’re capable of and their complete lack of remorse.
before i get called an evil misandrist, i know that most men won’t snap and murder their families or anyone else, but how much is too much. at what percent are women allowed to be scared of our oppressors? i’ve known men that i thought were normal only to learn they they were addicted to violent porn and hated women with a passion. it’s scary how normal men can act while not having compassion for any other people. all of my female friends have had weird experiences with men including ones they considered friends. women as a whole are so jaded from male violence and it makes me nervous sometimes. when will men finally stop?
The domestic burden – heavier in lockdown – falls mainly on female shoulders, yet Iceland’s housewives showed change is possible
On 24 October 1975, 75,000 women in Iceland left their jobs, children and homes and took to the streets for a general strike that was billed “Women’s Day Off”. In Reykjavik, 30,000 women marched up the Laugavegur (wash road), as a women’s brass band played the marching tune from Shoulder to Shoulder, a British TV series about the suffragettes which had recently aired in this small Nordic nation. Flyers fluttered against clear autumn skies: “We march because it is commonly said about a housewife: ‘She is not working, she is just keeping house’,” they read. “We march because the work experience of a housewife is not considered of any value in the labour market.”
For Icelandic men, this day became known as the “Long Friday”. With no women to staff desks and tills, banks, factories and many shops were forced to close, as were schools and nurseries – leaving many fathers with no choice but to take their children to work. There were reports of men arming themselves with sweets and colouring crayons to entertain the swarms of children in their workplaces, or bribing older children to look after their siblings. Sausages (easy to cook, of course, and a hit with children the world over) were in such demand that shops sold out; children could be heard giggling in the background while male newsreaders reported the day’s events on the radio.
Many of the greatest successes of feminism have come in moments when boots were on the ground; and our bodies elsewhere to the posts ascribed to women by patriarchal capitalism. In the UK, public reaction to the sexual violence meted out against the 300 women who marched to parliament demanding women’s suffrage on 18 November 1910, Black Friday, was instrumental in gaining the vote for women. The 1968 strike by Ford’s women sewing machinists at Dagenham, which was followed by 1970 strikes by women clothing workers in Leeds, were landmark labour-relations dispute that triggered the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970.
Yet domestic labour has always been a tricky injustice to protest against. It takes place in the privacy of the home, making it difficult for women to see each other doing this work and to collectively acknowledge that men do not share equally in its burden (and they don’t: the average British woman still contributes 60% more washing, wiping and childcare a week than the average British man, even as the pandemic has increased this work to around nine hours per day). And there can also be dire consequences if we withdraw this labour: children uncared for and vulnerable relatives unfed.
“A women’s strike is impossible; that is why it is necessary,” claims Women’s Strike Assembly (WSA), an activist alliance that, to mark last week’s International Women’s Day, called for a series of banner memorials to be erected around the UK to declare why #westrike as women (or, just as importantly, why we can’t). In a manifesto published in November, WSA wrote: “We strike because we are tired of our labour being taken for granted. We strike because we now have to do a triple shift: our paid work, our unpaid domestic labour and educating our children during the pandemic.”
In Liverpool, Bristol and Edinburgh women gathered, last Monday, in socially distanced clusters toting their banner memorials. “#westrike because we are tired. Very, very tired,” a banner in Liverpool read and a memorial painted by Bristol Sisterhood stated, simply: “Fuck macho bullshit, women on fire.” Many of the social media protests, however, indicated why last Monday saw no wholesale abandonment of women’s posts. “I am a freelancer and I would not get paid (or lose my client!). But I’m striking with my compañeras in mind and spirit,” one IWD banner read, and another: “I cannot strike but I lit a candle in solidarity.”
Recent years have seen a flowering of strikes against gendered labour in Spain and South America. In 2018, six million women joined Spain’s 2018 “Dia Sin Mujeres’ (day without women), including Madrid’s Manuela Carmena and actress Penelope Cruz, as “feminist men in solidarity” staffed a network of collective nurseries. Old-fashioned mother’s aprons, the symbol of the strikes, were stitched in solidarity workshops and strung from balconies. But, in Britain, women’s general labour strikes have been conspicuously absent.
Selma James, the cofounder of 70s marxist activist project Wages for Housework, has a theory to account for this lack. She points out that as the power of unions dwindles, the climate in Anglo-Saxon countries is less hospitable to gestures of withdrawn labour, even as feminist identity marches gain broader support. Without union protection, British and north American women who strike from paid work risk losing their jobs; to the single mum on the breadline in a pandemic, strikes, in this context, seem the preserve of privileged white feminists.
For all this, calling political attention to the pandemic’s third shift is an urgent project. Only 36% of British women have been able to continue working full time alongside their caring responsibilities during the pandemic, compared to 66% of men, and mothers are more likely to have quit or lost their job. As the pandemic recedes over a nation of shattered women, there will be opportunities for direct action. Women’s March, Pregnant Then Screwed and Women’s Strike Assembly, among others, are calling for protests and marches to highlight the structural sexism that’s left women bearing the brunt of reproductive labour during this year of crisis.
James, in the meantime, advocates a daily constellation of “small resistances”: banging pots and pans at your window; stringing up a banner and apron; radically lowering domestic standards.
Forty-five years after the Women’s Day Off, Iceland has ranked top in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report – an index that examines educational opportunities, life expectancy, pay equity and the average time spent on housework – in 13 of the past 16 years. Yes, it’s impossible for many women to strike; but can we afford not to?
I do not have a gender. I'm not cis. I'm a woman because I'm female, not by choice. Many times I wish I wasn't. Who would, in a world where we are oppressed and discriminated? In a world where we are always treated as less? Where we are made to hate our bodies for what they are and for what they aren't, for what they can and can't do?
I wish I had no body. I wish I was neutral. But I can't. It's okay to feel that way, it's normal. We must find strength in each other.
Posts like this are what keeps me from deleting this blog and going back to labelling myself as nonbinary or agender. I'm not alone. This feeling, as painful as it is, is part of the female experience.
here’s the thing, if you consume porn i don’t want to hear your opinion on social issues at all. you don’t like racism but you watch videos from a site that has slavery themed porn? you want to smash the patriarchy but you’ll watch 18 year old girls get pissed on by grown men. you hate homophobes but you’ll watch porn on a site that has videos titled “lesbian forced to take cock”? you want to battle transphobia but you’re okay with pornhub recruiting trans identitied teens to be abused on film for a couple hundred bucks? if you can boycott a spice brand for prejudice why can’t you do it for porn? if your activism ends the moment you want to nut, shut your fucking mouth and stop pretending like you give a fuck about any of this.
