#rootfeminism

[evenuelle]

I encourage everyone to not be naive. The Epstein Files is not primarily a problem of class, mankind losing grasp of their reality, the tinfoil hats suddenly making sense, or conspiracy revelations. Unless you read “mankind” as overwhelmingly male, it’s a misrepresentation of the problem.

Language shapes the narrative and we must utilize it precisely so that real issues do not transform into spectacles. That is what is happening right now and it is not helping anyone but those who want to simplify this situation as the rich preying on the poor. The kind that is made for provocation and stops there. An echo that pierces nothing. Insisting a gender-neutral discussion on Epstein is the pinnacle of ignorance. Intentionally omitting the variable of prevalent gender patterned violence is not at all materialist. When you insist, “The elites abuse power.” you imply that power is a problem within itself but when you start looking at the problem holistically and conclude: Powerful men sexually exploit girls and women — you see a gendered pattern of violence that persists beyond class lines and, most of the time, is further intensified by it.

Let me ask you: What is the ratio between men and women in the files? How many women were on the files to confess they saw monstrosities and how many men inquired about “pizza”— a cryptic term speculated to be related to a pedophilia ring?

When you talk about the files and refer to the perpetrators as “elites”, you lose sight of the more important variable of the situation, they were disproportionately male. Elites weren’t the base of the problem, they are a particular demographic of males who were there. Everyone’s first mistake is assuming the issue is detached from male tyranny. That it is beyond the male-over-female dominance.

Remember this, the defining feature of the island was not about eating babies or being sickeningly wealthy. It’s the women and children’s sexual trafficking ring. Epstein, afterall, was a convicted sex offender.

Those who sent emails and explicitly mentioned sexual abuses towards girl children, those who have regarded Epstein as a good pal publicly and have asked for funding and have given funding, and those who were included in photos and videos with redacted children’s faces are disproportionately male. The “elites”, rulers in tech development, high ranking academics, and Hollywood celebrities you are referring to are not sexless, they are particular kinds of men. This is not a mankind problem, it’s a male problem. Until you all have wrapped your heads around the fact that this is barely a Left and Right wing issue because individuals from these coalitions were also reportedly a part of it regardless of their belief systems, the Epstein Files will remain weaponized for political agendas that do not address the underlying problem that is sex based oppression.

[venusianfem]

“The simultaneous emergence of the "sexual revolution," however, became a convenient, though erroneous, synonym for "feminist revolution." It offered some free thinkers the comfortable illusion of tolerating feminism without depriving men of their legacy of sexual privilege. They could support issues favoring birth control and abortion; these issues eased sexual access to women without the responsibility for unwanted pregnancy. They could, with good conscience, enjoy Playboy and Penthouse as women-loving feminist publications and still retain the identification of women as sexually available playthings.”

The many faces of backlash, Florence Rush

[evenuelle]

Naming oppression clearly is always called extremist by those who benefit from mystification.

[evenuelle]

One of the most telling sign that every political movement is co-opted by male supremacist values is the fact that critiquing prostitution is easily disregarded as a “conservative talking point” in mainstream left-wing discourse. If being critical of women being commodified and dehumanized for male consumption cannot be more than a conservative stance, what does it imply about being radical or progressive today?

It is undeniable that radical feminists are easily boxed with people who hate speech as a form of new misogyny where in women’s articulations of their material reality is deemed illogical or no less than gossip unless a man whispers the same rhetoric, and then we can say it is “theorizing.” It is undeniable that the stereotyping of radical feminists very much mimics silencing tactics where our experiences cannot be interpreted in the terms where we see it but only when it fits male narratives. They are saying we can be feminists as long as it is the feminism the male envisions.

[evenuelle]

“He thinks saying ‘JK Rowling is right’ adds credence to what he’s saying.”

It does, especially when it’s about women. Joanne has been the center of the Trans Debate, consistently painted as the bad guy for saying biological reality should be acknowledged and women are rightfully deserving to have their single sex spaces. On the other hand, people like you merely echo the Western export that is Gender ideology, branding those who oppose it uneducated. Look at your proponents, they are middle and upperclass “activists.” Some English-educated elites that know nothing about the material concerns of the working class women, talking about them as “having not done the reading” while all you have read is postmodern theory disconnected from the reality they are living everyday.

Unlike you, Rowling has been supportive of humanitarian causes throughout her rise to fame. She knows poverty as she lived as a single mother relying on state support to survive her day to day life before Harry Potter’s breakthrough. When Rowling critiqued Watson’s take, saying that she didn’t understand the effect of trashing Women’s Rights for Gender Ideology because she lived a pampered life due to fame early on, she was not exactly lying. She was 32 when her writing gained recognition. Before that, she was poor and she lived knowing how the class difference intensified her already disadvantaged life as a woman.

This is JK Rowling, the Founder of Lumos, a charity built for orphaned children and their care. The same Rowling who funded Beira’s Place for women who are sexual assault and abuse survivors. She is also the same Rowling who supported Book Aid International, Catie Hoch Foundation, Children with AIDS, Dyslexia Action, Gingerbread, Haven Foundation, and Heifer International to the point she lost her billionaire status. These are charities that focus on education, AIDs Support, and mental health needs.

Now, villainizing Rowling won’t reverse any of these. What actually have you read from Rowling aside from the strawman the trans community have built to discredit her and her work? What have you touched on aside from Butler and Foucault? Why should gender identity supersede the material reality of women?

The rest of you can afford the progressive badge because you probably will not need a women’s shelter, rely on state funded women’s services, and face vulnerability in public women’s facilities. Reality can seem fluid when you are economically secure, when you're not facing material constraints. When you won’t have to compete with male bodied people in a category meant for you.

So, what gives? This is an abstract moral issue for many of you. What gives you credence to dismiss women who have to live it?

Viewing gender as something “explored” instead of “survived” gives you all the answers to your questions. Here is the truth: Academics can never read to the same intensity women experience their oppression. Take your bourgeois philosophy in your queer theory seminars, nobody will tell you this but I will, you have the political consciousness of a door knob. I hope I have the time, outside this neopatriarchal society, to think that this smear campaign about Rowling holds any weight. But it doesn’t and I am tired of pretending any of you have spent at least ten minutes in her Twitter account before engaging in bad faith.

[evenuelle]

Always give women the benefit of the doubt, even the worst woman you can think of. Women are treated guilty before they are proven innocent, stupid before they demonstrate intelligence, and inferior before they demand respect which is then deemed unfair for men because their privileges have always been cut from the fraction of our fair respective pieces. Observe the way how women are treated and reflect on it.

In the past, I loudly criticized Taylor and her fandom for being spineless. I do not take back any of that. But I did not endorse hate or call her names, I said she was a white feminist and often her feminism does not extend the way her fans market it to be. However, the “white” before a woman does not make her any less of a woman, someone who is vulnerable to unjust treatment simply because she is born female. I have said this before— the people so eager to hate women the moment a controversy appears related to them will do the same to you when you’re subjected to the same circumstances.

The people who can easily cuss her out, call her a bitch (which is a slur by the way) or an old hag writing heartbreak songs from high school might be the same people who dissolve others of accountability just because they spoke for Palestine while at the same time singing about women fucked and discarded, having affairs with little girls, with cases of beating their wives on legal court. Notice how when it is men, they can separate the art from the artist?

Look how it is so easy to hate women in the guise of a bigger liberation project or to discard their experiences for the comfort of others. I do not absolve Taylor of being silent in times where voices like hers are needed but I also do not absolve woman-hating disguised as progressive politics. A lot of people from the left have displayed their politics as explicitly non-feminist and I condemn all of them. You cannot advocate for women between a genocide and discard the experiences of the women in front of you, because our conditions are always intersectional. It can be any woman, the question is a matter of time, of place, and of circumstance. Open your eyes and soon enough, you will realize it is impossible to draw a line between hating people like Taylor and hating women because if it’s really the former, the satire would be about her being politically questionable and not about her being a woman writing songs about her life.

[evenuelle]

Because no woman deserves to be vilified when asserting her sex-based rights in her own sex-specific space.

Because no woman deserves to be subjected to academic witchhunts due to the fact that she is not complicit in her own erasure.

Because no woman deserves to be called “unkind” when she is against males dominating her sports and her rights movement.

Because no woman deserves to be called a man just because she does not perform femininity.

Because “self-identity” should not override the material vulnerabilities of women and the laws made to address them.

Because if the only way to feel accepted is to erode women and women’s rights and spaces, then it is not for women.

Because womanhood is not chosen.

Because this is not my nature but a tool for my oppression.

Time and time again, we are reminded that the Left and the Right are united by one ideology which is sexism. They reproduce patriarchy in different forms, from marriage to sex work, biological reductionism to identity politics.

And we are left with our own selves and so few resources to push back against the erasure of women in private and public life. The knee-jerk reaction to women being against transgender ideology is to dismiss it as a conservative value and this unveils just how much misogyny is wrapped in “diversity” advertisements. The rest of my sisters are socially punished for expressing their condemnation of the medicalization of gender dysphoria to the point that there are fetishes about raping them until they break expressed on Reddit and Tumblr mainly. Our opposition to it has turned to a BDSM roleplay in their community which, while they may never admit, remains relevant in this discussion.

The colonization of women’s spaces is not a symbol of diversity but an extension of male power.

It first starts with “We just want to pee.” to “We dictate if your discomfort is a reason for you to not pee here at all.”

I am not a breast feeder, a baby machine, or a uterus or a vagina haver. While I am accused of being bioessentialist for revealing how patriarchy operates, they reduce me to body parts.

Adopting identity politics mystifies women’s oppression ultimately turning it neutral devoid of any political reflection. Linguistic control is imposed in the academe to deflect from the ongoing gender genocide or more clearly femicides. It affirms women only when they move against their interests.

Like politically correct markers.

Like decor.

Reinscribing patriarchy through the use of progressive language is still patriarchal.

The oppression of women—patriarchy—is not entirely economic, or psychological. It is first sex-based. And to discuss gender detached from sex classes is liberal individualism. It is reformism. I am not a caricature.

I stand with the janitress for saying NO.

I stand for all women vilified for their gender abolitionist views.

I stand for women protecting other women.

Get over it.

[evenuelle]

God, I just remembered my hatred for men. I don't live carrying that weight everywhere, there are even times I pretend it doesn't exist. But there are really no exceptions to this. From my closest friends, my brother, to men I don't even know, there is a single most apparent trait for them, that is sexism. May it be benevolent or aggressive, they think women are too idiotic, too soft, too frail, too masculine, too smart, too toxic, too shitty, too forgiveful, too angry, too much, they want to break women or protect women or give them the life they deserve by giving them artificial freedoms or convince them they're actually better, the harrasment is compliment, you don't understand let me teach you, you understand too much adjust to me, give me slack, help me, fuck me, marry me, give me a child, forgive me, forget me, let me build a woman in you, the crying, pretty mascara flowing on your cheeks, the red on your lips, let me bite it, let me fuck your mouth, let me call my mom, let me build you a life, fuck all of you. You don't get to decide the life I want to live just because you love me. You don't get to decide the ways I would hurt myself just because you're a man. You don't get to tell me what to do.