#lesbian separatism

[empowered-wombyn]

I am Cockslinger's #1 Fan.

[never-tell-me-what-to-do]

we need to stop looking for male allies.

we can't change men. they cannot help us tldr in the bottom

The situation that women in the middle east are experiencing today is worse than it was for women in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, roughly 3000 years ago

women today even marry earlier than their ancient predecessors there are more child brides, more human trafficking, and even less protective rights for women. and these persecutions are legitimized by the world's largest religion today, which only keeps growing in population, power, and legal jurisdiction. the desire for human rights has only gotten larger among women in every culture. The fight for freedom has been a constant and unwavering battle for women. feminism has continued to bloom exponentially, yet our status didn't really change, every improvement is from advanced technology and the struggle of women before us we don't give the women before us enough credit. every luxury we experience today is because they died for us. but I think the reason we're stagnant is because our socialization. women are taught to cater to men, so even our feminists want to direct our feminism towards our oppressors, "convincing them" to not be sexist. fighting to change their minds in hopes that it will make our situation better. that's the problem. those men aren't just sexist because they're delightfully ignorant, they're sexist because the world caters to them. like our feminists that work to forgive them and change minds. women have been preaching feminism to men since feminism existed. they were the first people women preached it to. There is a vastly unintuitive irony in the feminism that continuously revolves around changing minds when men shouldn't have had a different opinion in the first place. men aren't victims here. if they could undo their socilization they would. But they won't because that would require being treated equally, and they're not. they could never fathom being in a woman's shoes, so they will never completely empathize it hurts to know that the men you are taught to trust want to defend the patriarchy in an act of self-preservation, but they do. that's why even nice men seem eerily out of character when you bring up feminism. that's why we need to cut them out. never talk to them again in situations outside of work or survival. the oppression of women is unlike any other. a woman is oppressed in every man's life so long as he was born. He saw firsthand the oppression for 10,000 years and didn't do anything about it. men make up 80% of the government on average. every single liberation for women came from 20% of women. it came from women threatening men, it came from women demanding for a crumb of liberation instead of asking nicely. It came from solidarity and working together, strikes, campaigns and being unrelenting. those who think men can change their minds don't understand how deeply ingrained sexism is everywhere. in every culture, in every point in history, in every corner of society, by every race, nationality, ethnicity, family, friend women were considered oppressed. this is 50% of the human race that makes up less than 1% of written history.

if men could be allies, they would've done so already STOP TRYING TO CHANGE MEN. WE CAN ONLY CHANGE OURSELVES. WE CAN ONLY SEPARATE

GO 4B. FOCUS ON OTHER WOMEN

tldr: women's liberation has only gotten worse for women in the middle east, Even though the feminist movement has only gotten bigger. If feminists cannot change their husbands, fathers or sons minds, then we cannot expect to them to undo their socialization even in theory. Women are socialized to cater to men, and even our feminism is directed towards trying to change men. But if men wanted to, then they would've already

[serpent-labrys]

Sometimes I think it's funny that what finally made me peak was simply coming out as a lesbian.

I used to call myself bisexual despite knowing I had no attraction to men just in case my family found out. I figured it would be "more palatable" if my family had some string of hope that I could end up in a relationship they expected of me. I've long since stopped caring about their opinion and accepted myself as lesbian

But when I came out to my friend group about it, suddenly the same "preferences" I had (it's a requirement not preference imo, but I'll use their language) about never wanting to be in a relationship with someone who was born male became a problem point. Literally nothing else changed except a descriptive label I applied to myself. And my "friends" instantly changed tone and told me I can't exclude people from my dating pool because of the way someone was born.

Tf?

The cognitive dissonance that they showed towards me over my sexual orientation ended up making me finally see through all the smoke and mirrors the tq+ put up. The only thing it boils down to is "how dare you tell males 'no' "

[gnc-centric]

You can learn a bit more here

[lesbianerin]

i wish every woman could experience being in a true female only space at least once. a space away from men in a secluded area. cooking, eating, dancing, creating, swimming, existing only among women. no need for make up, clothing that’s not comfortable and practical, no bras, no shaving, no artificial femininity. if you wanna walk around naked you can be, no one’s gonna stare at you, no fear of a man sitting in the bush filming or masturbating. no body shaming or pointing out any part of your body. no pressure to look perfect. no need to look perfect. just existing and being enough, living without fear and in harmony with our bodies and nature.

[chirxlity]

"tgirls need cgirls friends" they don't. i'll explain.

cis women as a group have a position of power over trans women because they're cis. this means that if a particular trans woman don't need or want to befriend her oppressors, it's perfectly fine. but the thing is that no trans woman gatekeeps cis women from being her friends, it's always the opposite! and it's because of transmisogyny!

trans women don't owe cis women accomodations and friendship if they don't want to. we, cis women, are the ones who need to stand up for them and make welcoming and safe spaces for them. we need to analyse our own beliefs, the way transmisogyny works and understand trans women's struggles.

since decades, a lot of lesbians have been separatists, and that allowed us to create communities for us, we theorised our oppression and we could better focus on our struggles. it allowed us to have more freedom, so why we deny them the right to be separatists too? just think about it for a while.

[pingintech]

Don't wanna share it on the post but regarding the anti-sex-work bent in transfeminism right now: Sophie Lewis has some good commentary on this in her interview "A Feminist Utopianism" with Tracey Clark-Florey! It's paywalled but you can get around that with the Internet Archive. The reason I didn't want to post it myself is that she connects anti-sex-worker ideology to political lesbianism/lesbian separatism and I am noooot confident about how it will go over with that crowd.

well you came to the right inbox i love to read and ill kick any nest

oh this is a good read and i recommend ppl sub to the substack if youre able

i like especially this part here

i feel like a lot of tirfs here on tumblr do this trick often those at least who believe truly they are revolutionary and who insist there are/can be good men who support them but that it is so very rare because doing so is often at their expense and to gives no benefit to them

a lot of people insistent on the irredeemable nature of men do seem to fall for this lie of the patriarchy that men can only be benefited by the systems that subjugate others that they will only be politically decent in order to be good allies or that supporting women is at great sacrifice ignoring the fact that the patriarchy harms men too that seeing others suffering is itself an indignity on yourself when you are asked to sit and do nothing about it

licherally tho

to that id say i dont think gender separatism is automatically expressly or directly transphobic ofc but i do absolutely think theres something to be said about how separatism does innately act as if there are two groups to separate and as a result trans and intersex people (especially nonbinary trans people) will always be caught in the middle even when theyre "included" because male and female men and woman have never and will never be two distinct fully inextricable categories and trans* and intersex people are fully the overlapping sections that get torn to shreds in political gender separatism

FACTS fuck hyper individualism we need togo back to COMMUNAL living as a society

[thisis-intersexism]

okay so this isn't a fully formed thought and i feel kinda ridiculous saying it:

but people redefining the definition of lesbian (queer love for women) to be non-man loving non-man / woman loving woman feels transphobic and intersexist? also kinda lesbophobic too?

transphobic + intersexist ; not taking into account the ways trans men and intersex men have different life experiences and identity can be complicated, and "non-men" is very much a binary that can't be enforced without becoming transphobic and intersexisy

lesbophobic ; the history of lesbianism has always included more masculine people and being defined as "non-man" encourages terf-y thinking and transvestigation in trans women

OKAY IDK IF THIS BELONGS HERE OR IF THIS IS A STRETCH!! JUST NOTICED ITS PRETTY INTERSEXIST

This is intersexism/internoirism, transmisia/transandromisia/transgynemisia, and exorsexism.

Oh. Oh anon. You don't understand how much this exact topic haunts me. As an intersex black multigender lesbian butch man. Yeah. Yeah.

Non-man/non-woman language has a history of dehumanizing and degendering black people in particular, so using that language in that context is anti black bc. Ofc it is. The lesbian separatist movement has HISTORY with specifically trying to separate itself from fucking lesbians of color so yk.

It's definitely intersexist and transmisic to exclude lesbians who aren't men because, as you said, HISTORICALLY, both communities have always intersected heavily and BUILT the lesbian community.

And it's DEFINITELY terf-y at the BEST, and transgynes will be excluded basically at will depending on which side of radfem talking points you're on (though both sides will always inherently be dangerous and toxic for transgynes so yk).

This is NOT a comprehensive list of reasons at ALL for why the non-man for non-man language is harmful (we didn't even get into the queerphobia that mspec lesbians have to face), but we'll just leave it at that for now.

Remember kids; the lesbian separatist movement is evil, stop falling for it and don't listen to the call of the radfem lesbians!! They're lying to you!!! Identify however the fuck you want to!!!