“The cliché that when women are liberated men will be liberated too shamelessly slides over the raw reality of male domination — as if this were an arrangement in fact arranged by nobody, which suits nobody, which works to nobody’s advantage. In fact, the very opposite is true. The domination of men over women is to the advantage of men; the liberation of women will be at the expense of male privilege. Perhaps afterwards, in some happy sense, men will be liberated too — liberated from the tiresome obligation to be ‘masculine.’ But allowing oppressors to lay down their psychological burdens is quite another, secondary sense of liberation. The first priority is to liberate the oppressed. Never before in history have the claims of oppressed and oppressors turned out to be, on inspection, quite harmonious. It will not be true this time either.”
— From “The Third World of Women,” by Susan Sontag. Partisan Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (1973).
“The average prison sentence of men who kill their women partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their male partners are sentenced on average to 15 years. This is despite the fact that 86% of female offenders kill in self-defense, while males are most likely to kill out of possessiveness (82%), abuse (75%) and during arguments (63%). Women are eight times more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner.”
— Fact Sheet on Battered Women in Prison (no stats given for GQ and trans* people). (via sonnywortzik)
reminder that the right wing is not our friend because we agree on a singular issue. the issues we both have with transgenderism come from opposing viewpoints; ours is that it is misogynic and homophobic, while the right dislikes it because they are misogynistic and homophobic and see gender nonconformity as a sign of moral decay.
no more of this bullshit about how the right is upfront about their misogyny. is it worth discarding key tenets of feminism like access to birth control and abortion just to own the libs? it’s not
An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From “The Jungle” Into the Surrounding Community by Amy J. Fitzgerald, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz
The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a “Sinclair effect” unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.
Though few researchers have looked into this phenomenon at length, those who have explored this issue have found that slaughterhouses increase violence in surrounding communities. In particular, they increase male violence against women.
Animal agriculture is exploitative and brutal; it relies on the violent slaughter of sentient animals. The men who kill these animals–sometimes hundreds a day–then go home to their girlfriends, wives, and children. Do you think they’re able to leave that violence behind at work? Research says no. As feminists, we should question how industries founded on exploitation may contribute to violence against our fellow women and girls. We need to look at ourselves and question how we may be promoting violence against women, even inadvertently, in something as seemingly simple as the food we eat.
Please point to where I said “only men work in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants.”
A majority of these workers are men, at least in the US. Most perpetrators of rape and domestic violence are men, and most victims are women. Did you read the study? The point is that slaughterhouses increase violence in surrounding communities, and that feminists should be having discussions about this when we talk about male violence against women. What psychological effects does killing hundreds of animals a day have on workers, and how does this spill into their personal lives and relationships? How are women uniquely vulnerable to sexual and domestic violence in our patriarchal society? Slaughterhouse work is extremely traumatizing, and it can cause severe psychological issues in these workers, who are then liable to take out their frustrations on those around them (i.e. romantic partners, children). This needs to be studied and talked about, not brushed off.
Vegans and nonvegans alike should be concerned about this issue. Many slaughterhouse workers themselves are harmed by this work, as they are more prone to injury, PTSD, and substance abuse than the general population. Many of these workers in the US are vulnerable immigrants, and those who are undocumented are at risk of deportation. All around, this industry is violent and harmful to those who participate in it.
But way to distract from the topic at hand, I guess. Seems like you’re less interested in helping vulnerable people than you are in defending corporations.
This is an incredible analysis on the term “SWERF” being used against us whenever we criticise the sex industry. FDS is spitting facts as usual!!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Highly recommend y’all listen to their podcast episode where this topic is discussed in further detail, along with the issues surrounding BDSM, kink and polyamory.
I’ve noticed sometimes there’s posts aimed at radfems saying “go do real-life activism! you’re not a real activist for just yelling stuff online!” and I don’t think that’s anywhere near right.
Radical feminist writings from female perspective online have saved my life, and my sanity. We are surrounded by male brainwashing and male perspective to the point where many women don’t even realize they have a right to their own perspective, and a lot of them still feel insane for just feeling hurt and upset at how horribly men treat them. Exposing women to female perspective, on a very public, social platform, is a revolutionary. I remember first time in my life when I found a radfem blog, first time I read a post written by a woman, saying we are not bad people for not caring for men’s problems, because males create all of our, and their problems, so why should our activism center them? It light up my entire world, just that statement that it’s ridiculous to expect of us to dedicate our movement on people who are reason why we have a movement! I kept reading radfem materials every single day for the next 6 months, and bit by bit my sanity was returning, for the first time in my life I was seeing the truth, the actual data of violence, the actual representation of who women are as human beings. I have never before in my life felt proud to be female, but after absorbing radfem writings, I haven’t stopped feeling proud.
Openly writing radical feminist resources has proven to be dangerous and emotionally taxing, every single radfem who stepped forward and started writing her own posts has faced rape threats, death threats, attacks and insults from every single group that isn’t radical feminist, we have been insulted and trashed to death for doing this, do you think this would be the case if our writings aren’t very effective and dangerous to status quo of patriarchy? You think there would be bans on communicating with us and interacting with our resources, if they weren’t extremely effective in undoing the brainwashing inflicted on women? Waking women up from believing in male delusions is essential to the movement, and this is the only safe way to do it. We’re providing each abused and raped and exhausted woman with a place where her experience and feelings matter and are represented within all of us. This is something patriarchy cannot give to any woman. Resources we create are invaluable to women’s sanity, confirmation that her instincts are right, her perspective is right, the way she observes and condemns abusive men is right, the way she feels uncomfortable and threatened in male company is right. Women need to hear this, because all their life they’ve been listening to how they’re not allowed to express or even feel any of that, they’ve been drowned in guilt for even thinking they’re right to condemn those who merrily abuse them.
History of feminism is filled with extraordinary women who were able to write and speak publicly from female perspective, and who managed to spread this around and wake up the female spirit of justice and freedom, and this is exactly what we’re doing, every day. Seeing women openly disgusted by a man for doing cruel and horrifying creepy shit every day is so much better than only being able to listen to media defend him endlessly. There are still women who don’t even know their perspective exists, who don’t know they have the right to be tired and sick and angry with all of what they’ve been thru. We need to keep going until they all find us. We will keep going until the truth is represented in all of our minds. Once we’re there, we will have no trouble translating our activism into real life.
biologicial essentialism is not when someone says "vaginas are a female sex characteristic" or "men generally have broader shoulders than women". biological essentialism is when you ascribe character traits to a person based on their biological sex. what is truly biologically essentialist is to claim that "women are better caretakers because they give birth" or that "men are more suited to leadership roles than women are because they are naturally more intelligent". that is actual biological essentialism. "penises are male" is not a biologically essentialist statement. jesus christ.
Had a startling realization about children’s exercise clothes the other day and how they’re influenced by patriarchy. If you go to the boy’s section, you’ll see loose sweatpants, t-shirts, and flowy knee length shorts. The colors tend to be darker, with deep reds, blues, greens, and black and gray dominating. The girl’s section, on the other hand, is completely different. It’s filled with tight leggings, tank tops, and bike shorts. The colors are usually more pastel, mostly pinks, purples, and light greens and oranges. Girls’ shirts also tend to have sparkles or glitters.
This feels like a product of pedophilia culture mixed with the idea that women and girls must wear restrictive clothing to properly perform femininity. Children’s bodies, especially pre-puberty, are not so different that they need these different designs. Specifically, girls can exercise just as well in t-shirts and loose sweatpants. So why do we put them in tight pants and shorts, but we don’t expect the same of boys? Why do we need to infantilize girls (with the sparkles, the pastel colors, and the inane butterfly/unicorn/floral designs), while simultaneously sexualizing them by making skin-tight leggings and tiny shorts and bras their only options?
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it’s undeniable that the clothing we create for children is both a product and perpetrator of gender socialization. Young girls can’t even play sports and wear exercise clothes without being subjected to patriarchal influence and misogyny.
Compare these:
vs these:
Imagine putting one of the boys pictured in any of the girls’ clothes shown. Most people would find it humiliating or off-putting. The reverse--putting girls in loose pants and t-shirts--would not elicit the same reaction. That’s all you need to think about to realize that enforcing extreme femininity on girl children is unnecessary and harmful. Being female should not be defined by ritual degradation.
An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From “The Jungle” Into the Surrounding Community by Amy J. Fitzgerald, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz
The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a “Sinclair effect” unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.
Though few researchers have looked into this phenomenon at length, those who have explored this issue have found that slaughterhouses increase violence in surrounding communities. In particular, they increase male violence against women.
Animal agriculture is exploitative and brutal; it relies on the violent slaughter of sentient animals. The men who kill these animals--sometimes hundreds a day--then go home to their girlfriends, wives, and children. Do you think they’re able to leave that violence behind at work? Research says no. As feminists, we should question how industries founded on exploitation may contribute to violence against our fellow women and girls. We need to look at ourselves and question how we may be promoting violence against women, even inadvertently, in something as seemingly simple as the food we eat.
Her name’s Marianne, she’s a Samburu woman and the Supalake village chairlady. It’s from The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village and that convo is at 22:16, but the entire video is awesome!
The Dutch experiment in legalised prostitution has been a disaster
Julie Bindel
2 February 2013
Do you remember the rather brilliant comedy sketch featuring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse in which they played laid-back police officers in Amsterdam, bragging that they no longer have to deal with the crime of murder in the Netherlands since the Dutch legalised it? Don’t laugh too hard. In 2000 the Dutch government decided to make it even easier for pimps, traffickers and punters by legalising the already massive and highly visible brothel trade. Their logic was as simple as it was deceptive: to make things safer for everyone. Make it a job like any other. Once the women were liberated from the underworld, the crooks, drug dealers and people traffickers would drift away.
Twelve years on, and we can now see the results of this experiment. Rather than afford better protection for the women, it has simply increased the market. Rather than confine the brothels to a discrete (and avoidable) part of the city, the sex industry has spilt out all over Amsterdam — including on-street. Rather than be given rights in the ‘workplace’, the prostitutes have found the pimps are as brutal as ever. The government-funded union set up to protect them has been shunned by the vast majority of prostitutes, who remain too scared to complain.
Pimps, under legalisation, have been reclassified as managers and businessmen. Abuse suffered by the women is now called an ‘occupational hazard’, like a stone dropped on a builder’s toe. Sex tourism has grown faster in Amsterdam than the regular type of tourism: as the city became the brothel of Europe, women have been imported by traffickers from Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia to meet the demand. In other words, the pimps remained but became legit — violence was still prevalent but part of the job, and trafficking increased. Support for the women to leave prostitution became almost nonexistent. The innate murkiness of the job has not been washed away by legal benediction.
The Dutch government hoped to play the role of the honourable pimp, taking its share in the proceeds of prostitution through taxation. But only 5 per cent of the women registered for tax, because no one wants to be known as a whore — however legal it may be. Illegality has simply taken a new form, with an increase in trafficking, unlicensed brothels and pimping; with policing completely out of the picture, it was easier to break the laws that remained. To pimp out women from non-EU countries, desperate for a new life, remains illegal. But it’s never been easier.
Legalisation has imposed brothels on areas all over Holland, whether they want them or not. Even if a city or town opposes establishing a brothel, it must allow at least one — not doing so is contrary to the basic federal right to work. To many Dutch, legality and decency have been irreconcilably divorced. It has been a social, legal and economic failure — and the madness, finally, is coming to an end.
The brothel boom is over. A third of Amsterdam’s bordellos have been closed due to the involvement of organised criminals and drug dealers and the increase in trafficking of women. Police now acknowledge that the red-light district has mutated into a global hub for human trafficking and money laundering. The streets have been infiltrated by grooming gangs seeking out young, vulnerable girls and marketing them to men as virgins who will do whatever they are told. Many of those involved in Amsterdam’s regular tourist trade — the museums and canals — fear that their visitors are vanishing along with the city’s reputation.
I was last there with Roger Matthews, a professor of Criminology at Kent University and a renowned expert on the sex trade. The politicians he spoke to confess that the legislation has made a total pig’s ear of an already unsavoury situation. So the repair work is starting — for what good it will do. Women who rent the windows will soon be obliged to register as prostitutes. This will be as ineffective as the obligation on them to pay tax. When the fake and government-funded union supposedly representing those involved in prostitution did a massive membership recruitment post-legalisation, only a hundred joined, and most of those were strippers and lap dancers.
Rather than remove the sleaziness of the red light district, it made the area more depressing than ever — full of drunken sex tourists who act as window shoppers, pointing and laughing at the women they see. Local women pass the streets with their heads down, trying not to see the other women displayed like cuts of meat in a butcher’s shop. Men can be seen entering the brothels, trying to barter down the price. Others come out zipping up their jeans. Many of the women look very young, all of them bored, with the majority sitting on stools in underwear playing with their phones.
Nowhere else in the world is street prostitution legal, because people do not want it in plain sight. Where there is a street sex trade, women are accosted on their way home by punters, and often condoms, drugs paraphernalia and pimps are visible. But the Netherlands decided in 1996 that street prostitution was a decent way to earn money and created several ‘tolerance zones’ for men to safely rent a vagina, anus or mouth for a few minutes. Cars drive into cubicles. This being the Netherlands, there is a special section for cyclists. Keep prostitution green.
The day after the Amsterdam zone opened, more than a hundred residents from nearby neighbourhoods took to the streets in protest. It took six years for the mayor to admit in public that the experiment had been a disaster, a magnet for trafficked women, drug dealers and underage girls. Zones in Rotterdam, The Hague and Heerlen have shut down in similar circumstances. The direction of travel is clear: legalisation will be repealed. Legalisation has not been emancipation. It has instead resulted in the appalling, inhuman, degrading treatment of women, because it declares the buying and selling of human flesh acceptable. And as the Dutch government reforms itself from pimp to protector, it will have time to reflect on the damage done to the women caught in this calamitous social experiment.
I wish it were as positive as this: people having regret, being realistic and shutting places down. But it’s not.
Currently, yes, a few places have shut down over the last couple of years, but prostitution is still completely legal and seen as a job as any other, especially under the public. As a woman against prostitution in the Netherlands, I have been treated like a prude, a controlling douchebag and an obsessive religious person whenever I tell about my views and the millions of troubles in the world of prostitution.
In this country we work by an indirect democratic party system. As far as I know, all parties, except for some extremist Christian ones, are pro legal prostitution. This is why I’m not expecting anyone to shut down these brothels and streets any time soon.
However, the government made a few new rules to ‘ensure safety’ in the last few years. These are utter bullshit:
If you visit a prostitute and she’s completely beat up, apathetic and obviously abused, you must cancel your visit and report her to the authorities. No man does this. No man is being educated about how to spot an abused person, other than ‘she has a lot of being beat up spots I guess’.
If you continue to visit and use the obviously abused prostitute, you can be punished with a very short jail time. However, this is not being done, because everyone keeps whining ‘ah but how could HE know?!’, ‘this is such an unfair law, it’s not obvious that they’re being abused, it’s not our fault!’. Besides that, who’s ever going to report such a man… the prostitute? Some people walking by? Yeah, right.
The Netherlands keeps sweet-talking about how well they take care of their prostitutes, how slavery and trafficking isn’t that big of a problem. About how many rules and laws they’re making to keep all the women safe, about how they help women leave the scene so it’s 100% their free will and choice if they keep doing it. About how someone needs to receive these men, how it’s so good for export and tourism. About how we shouldn’t be worried: it’s just a job like any other.
The worst maritime animal welfare tragedy in history could, by now, be unavoidable, says Gabrile Păun, the EU director for Animals International, an NGO.
The worst maritime animal welfare tragedy in history could, by now, be unavoidable, says Gabrile Păun, the EU director for Animals International, an NGO.
There are 16 ships taking live animals from the EU to the Persian Gulf which have been stuck for several days behind the stranded ‘Ever Given’ cargo vessel in the Suez Canal.
Even with the Ever Given now slowly moving again, the live animals inside the blistering cargo containers, which are quickly running out of feed and water, are now nearing an even more tragic end than that which awaits them in the slaughterhouses at their destination.
Even if the ships were to resume full course today, the water and food would not last until their sea journey is over.
Romania is the source for the 130,000 of the 200,000 live animals now caught in the Suez bottleneck.
I see yall joking about this incident while leaving out the victims (who will have ended up being brutally murdered in slaughterhouses anyway for the personal pleasure of consumers) who will now die slow agonising deaths before they reach land.
Yes. That's why a biology-based definition only tells you who is a woman and not who that woman is as a person.
A woman is a person with female biology, and ascribing any other characteristics to her on that basis is sexism. For example: "she is biologically a woman -> all women are submissive -> she is submissive." That is sexism.
The following is not sexism: "she is biologically a woman -> that doesn't tell us anything about her as a person."
Of course there's also socialisation, which means that, for example, women are more likely to wear makeup. But that's the point of radical feminism: to say that that is not a natural consequence of being a woman, but part of a role that society forces us into that we want to liberate ourselves from.
Sex is more than just genitals and I think that’s half of tumblrs problem. It’s this ignorance around the terminology sex and gender. Your sex is in every single cell of your body. Humans are not just cookie cutter same bodies with mr potato head two genital options. Women and men’s bodies have significant differences in bone structure, how fat sits in our body, how our metabolism works, what diseases we are susceptible to or how we react differently to health problems (heart attacks is the big one. Women don’t always get that one chest pain grabbing at yourself like men do and it literally leads to women dying because our atypical symptoms are not believes or because male bodies are treated as the default.)
Saying women are female has never been about reducing women to our vaginas. Tho vaginas and uteruses are often talked about in these discussions because they are how men/what men use to oppress us. The fact that it’s assume we can provide reproductive labor, provide male heirs/children. Men use our bodies as “proof” we are subhuman, secondary class citizens. Girls are kept out of schools, sent to menstural huts, being victims of FGM, being married off as child BECAUSE they are female. Because they have a vagina. Our bodies are the reason why these things happen. Not any sort of worldwide shared gender identity that we’re questioned about before being denied rights.
Feminism has long fault against female being connected with any social behavior. (Hello sociologists!) feminism has fought against the idea that being female is tied to femininity. That female humans are less intelligent, less strong (men continue to claim physical strength is all that matters while studies come out about women being more likely to live longer or survive illness more often than men).
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