#second wave feminism

[andreadworkinq]

“Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.”

Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

[moonlightsapphic]

I will hold your hand as I say this. Sabrina is an adult woman who likes to make tongue-in-cheek music about luring and murdering men. Her persona since the last album cycle has been very femme fatale—feminine, pretty, cutesy, sexy, kinky, small, submissive in bed, wants a prince charming, also direct, non-conforming, frightening, intelligent, scheming, ruthless, might poison you, callous, player, comedienne. The man on the cover doesn’t even look like Sabrina’s general type, or particularly romanticised. He feels more symbolic of “posh rich old man who has no idea I’ll eat him alive”.

We’re circling back dangerously close to policing women’s sexuality as a political tool, both from the left and the right and it is not a good thing. Our implicit puritanical expectation of white women is already weird (and racist on the flip side when we regard BIPOC women as inherently sexual). Let women exist and own their sexuality in peace without politicizing it. Conventional femininity isn’t inherently unfeminist, even when it is performed for a masculine partner and not just “for the girls”. We can’t make this mistake again, we moved on from and built nuance upon the exclusionary principles of second-wave choice feminism for a reason. We’re not doing 4B. We’re not doing political lesbianism. We all have valid big feelings lately but we have to take a deep breath and stop projecting them onto minor media aesthetics and optics, and instead channel it into real community work. Read a book.

[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

[oldnewyork]

1968 feminist demonstration, NYC

[crimes-chevalresques]

I'm on the hunt for tips from feminists who work with kids. I've been at a Montessori school working with kids aged 2-7 years old for three weeks, and I have been so shocked by how many sexist phrases ('only boys can do that') the kids throw around and how little my coworkers do to challenge them on those beliefs.

Regardless of whether it's nature or nurture (though I still lean towards nurture), I'd really love to hear more techniques to bridge the gap in socialisation and compensate societal messaging as much as possible.

There are some things that I was already prepared to do. I try to call all the children by the same gender-neutral pet names. I make a point of telling girls they're 'cool' and 'strong' when they show me tricks on the monkeybars and tell boys the towers they build are 'pretty'. I also generally try to make sure I pay an equal amount of compliments to girls/boys. I try to avoid letting the attention seeking behaviour from the boys distract me from giving every kid a chance to speak up...

Yet, even though elementary schools in my country have been mixed-sex for 5 generations now (1965-2025), the way the classroom segregates itself... I never expected to be this extreme.

I was so shocked seeing these boys as young as 3 years old make guns out of legos and see how the classroom between the girls silently drawing at the tables while the boys hit each other with plastic dinosaurs. (I spend half an hour holding up my own dinosaurs, making kissing sounds at their dinosaurs explaining that my dinosaurs are comrades who hunt for food together... they HATED it).

I've started removing foam balls from recess altogether because the boys who play rough always take over the entire playground, chasing the girls into corners, no matter how often I've tried to tell them to play more gently and encouraged the girls to take part, it doesn't sit right with me that a game of footy between three boys monopolises 80% of the space.

While taking pictures for the parents, I took a picture of one of the boys and one of the girl having a drink of water side by side at the water fountains, the girl dexterously cupping her hands to drink, while the boy exerts himself standing on one foot to crane his neck under the faucet and drink while half of it drips down his t-shirt. This is also just a matter of fine motor skills, but I find it reason more to encourage boys to practice tidy habits.

The younger kids still get very sad when their parents drop them off, but so far, there have only been boys who really cried, the girls at most silently sniffle for a minute, but the boys go on for hours. These girls, once again, aged as young as 2-3 years old, will silently sit next to the crying boys and try to comfort them (I have to resist telling them, leave him be sis, he would not do the same for you!) Meanwhile, even the boys who were close cradlemates just ignore each other when one of them cries. The gap in emotional responses really really struck me.

Anyways, those are the few anecdotes that have stuck over the course of the first three weeks. I've recently rewatched the documentary No More Girls and Boys which gave me a lot of hope, and I'm currently on the look out for similar content as well as articles/reading lists. If anyone has any recommendations please lmk!!😭🙏

[its-terf-or-nothin]

I just saw someone claim young women aged 18-23 are “groomed by TERFs” and I had to laugh.

So I, a 22-Year-Old adult, that wasn’t even very into politics until a few years ago, am a victim of grooming, but Jazz Jennings and all of the other trans kids put on puberty blockers, estrogen or testosterone and having surgery performed on them while they’re underage isn’t grooming?

[mementomorimusic-tmblr]

Where’s the Shame for Sluts

When I was growing up

There were Slut Walks all around

The nipple was on the cusp of being freed

And slowly, I thought, it was becoming that the worst thing you could call a woman was a slut

Because in doing so one, usually a man, revealed the extent of his in-enlightenment

For when I was growing up, it was the preeminent feminist issue that women not be shamed for doing with their bodies what men did without regard

There are no slut walks anymore

Not because the issue has gone away

But because the word need not be uttered now

There are simply harsher weapons than words to shame the womenfolk

And thus the unsheathing of such a cutting knife need not be done in the polite front rooms of London and Washington

Traditional Wives assert the essential feminine power of washing their husband’s socks while wearing frocks so grossly inappropriate for laundry it’s a wonder their cleaning ladies don’t over dry-clean them

And the curtains get drawn on the matter of the breast and it’s capacity to go unsexualised, because even an ice skatress pulling a silly face in jubilant celebration of her gold medal victory cannot go without comparison to porn

So the matter of the slut is closed

And our grandmothers, those still with the ill fortune of living, must watch their granddaughters stiflingly survive what they bravely marched against

Not because the feminist is dead

But because the intersectionalist has a more fundamental battle to wage

Like a small reptile fleeing from a desert predator, this particular appendage is sacrificed for the good of the host body’s survival

But when the dust resettles from the scurry, will the unbalance prove an unrecoverable kilter?

Why is the matter of shame, its presence and absence, always reserved for peacetime?

I almost crave the shame of those days, that was so fiercely fought against.

A cultural background radiation of shame, and a campaign reared up against it,

would at least imply the existence

of a womanhood seeded

with a little rebellion

a little proactivity to the fight for our freedom.

Now, it seems all we can offer is tired resilience

Resistance, we forget, is ultimately passive

It fights, not to change but to endure

And that which must make do with endurance holds no true power to make change

In far too many ways the fight to survive

Has dulled the female teeth in her own mouth

What I would give to bite again,

To join once more in the chorus of:

“Call me a slut,

I dare you!”

-M

[hairtusk]

Andrea Dworkin, 'Pornography', from Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)