#separatism gone wrong

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

made the mistake of reading separatism discourse again and... why do so many radfems think that it will just eradicate patriarchy?? don't get me wrong I support separatism 100% but acting like men will just respect female only communities and leave us be is laughable

I’m honestly not sure, so I can’t speak on it, or even think about it much right now. 

They exhaust me, a number of them have encouraged me to kill myself just because I’m not one of them, and the whole mess angers and depresses the shit out of me. So I avoid the whole damn discourse a lot of the time now, especially when they seem to be ramping up again. 

I have always believed that Feminists’ energies would be better spent networking with and creating mutual support systems with as many cooperative women as possible. All that energy currently being wasted bickering and bullying fellow women online, or engaging in endless discourse, could be used to gather strength and resources. Empower women. Put us in a position where we can truly push back against patriarchy.

But that’s actual work, and to many, doing something productive is just not as fun as being snotty and cruel to their fellow women at any opportunity. So more and more, I’m getting tired of even looking for women to propose the idea to. 

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

If you believe that the ONLY thing women need to be safe from abuse is to live in a women-only community, survivors of maternal abuse and female sexual predators have some uncomfortable news for you

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

How can you call yourself a feminist when you're more loyal to your husband and father than you are to women?

Oh this again. 

Every damn time this gets asked it’s a separatist asking, so in light of that:

What you are really asking me is why I will not abandon my husband and father for the sake of an ideology that I do not fully share, or to prove to a bunch of judgmental women on Tumblr that I’m not a “fakefem”.

I’ll put this as simply as possible.

I am not going to abandon one-half of the four people in the entire world who care about me to satisfy female strangers who don’t. The whole idea is fucking ludicrous.

And if you think that makes me a bad Feminist, smash that block button and fuck right off.

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

This shit again.

Tumblr Separatists(tm): develop a massive reputation for being abusive toward straight and bi non-separatists regardless of our stance toward them

Tumblr Separatists(tm): unironically call people “dick worshippers” when most of them get “vagina fetishist” tossed at them on the regular

Tumblr Separatists(tm): Just as likely to go mad with the anonymous suicide-baiting as any fucking transactivist on here, and are literally half the reason why I leave anon comments off

Tumblr Separatists(tm): single-handedly remind a lot of us AGAIN why female-only spaces will not be free of abusive bullies

Also Tumblr Separatists(tm): “You’re just criticizing us for prioritizing women”

Also Tumblr Separatists(tm): “Nobody’s abusing you or suicide-baiting you, none of us ever called women on here dick worshippers, you’re just making it all up to defame us.” 

Also Tumblr Separatists(tm): “Receipts? Those are made up. Why do you hate women?”

The blind, aggressive hypocrisy, the love of attacking people via anon, the suicide baiting, the claims of a moral high ground while denying obvious wrongdoing, and the extra-special form of internalized misogyny (”it’s okay to attack and suicide-bait women who aren’t exactly like meeee”) make this type of separatist sound like the damn transactivists or MRAs.

Attacking women is not prioritizing women.

Suicide-baiting women is not prioritizing women.

Spewing your internalized misogyny at your female out-group of choice is not prioritizing women.

If your “activism” is measured by how many women you’ve tried to bully into self-murder in a day, you fucking fail at being Feminist. 

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

Gah

I don’t have the spoons to individually address all the bullshit on my dash. I never do. I’ll just address one.

When I come off of a discussion of separatists bullying straight women and then trying to scream lesbophobia/anti-separatism when called on it, and immediately see some assholes laughing about this exact thing, my immediate thought is not “wow maybe straight women should contritely accept the abuse to be good Feminists.” 

It is “GO FUCK YOURSELVES YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITES. You know the shit you’re doing is wrong. There is no righteous excuse to bully women.”

I do not have to explain to people why they shouldn’t be shitty to entire swaths of fellow women. But some fuckers will hunt up a million excuses for doing so, without once asking themselves why they’re so desperate to justify (and continue uninterrupted) their bullying of fellow women. They don’t see how they’re basically passing down their misogynist abuse onto other women, or how disgusting they are for both doing that and trying to justify it.

Either you have solidarity with women regardless of whether they’re different from you, or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re a shitty Feminist. 

Unless she is a Nazi, a child abuser or something genuinely evil, there are no excuses. No “well she doesn’t want to have sex with ladydick so it’s okay to bully her”. No “well she’s straight and not celibate so it’s okay to bully her”. No “well, she’s libfem so”. No “well she’s separatist so”. No “well she’s X religion so”. No. FUCKING. Excuses.

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

“All Heterosexuality is Compulsory”

I’m heterosexual. It’s not compulsory. Not only am I attracted to male bodies, but I am genuinely turned off by the thought of touching or being touched by women in a sexual way. For this reason among many others, I find those pushing the political-lesbian narrative to be insensitive morons with no inkling of how inborn sexual orientation works.

Are women pressured to perform heterosexuality regardless of their desires all the goddamn time? Yes. Compulsory heterosexuality exists. It simply isn’t universal. And swinging the pendulum the other way to try and compel homosexuality from straight women doesn’t fix anything.

Monosexuality is not fluid or negotiable. Gay women do not want dick. Straight women do not want pussy. Only bisexual people have a choice. 

The only people who think sexuality is fluid or negotiable are *DING DING* confused bisexuals projecting their own sexuality onto everybody else--possibly while “identifying” as lesbian or straight. They are the sort who think your orientation actually changes depending on who you’re fucking--that you can “become lesbian” with enough effort for example, when no, you’re the same ol’ bisexual you were to begin with. You’re just strictly fucking women now. The actual lesbian next to you only likes girls and can’t choose otherwise.

Women who think like this are a serious problem in our community. You see them banging the “hearts not parts” drum to try and get lesbians to take dick. And you’ll see another group of them banging the “heterosexuality is unfeminist” drum to try and get straight women to go for pussy. And NONE OF IT is any of their goddamn business! Has everyone just forgotten that part?

They really need to just shut the hell up on trying to tell other women who to fuck. That’s the kind of shit that men constantly try to do, and we’re all sick of it, so these women should fucking know better than to add to the problem.

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

You’re complaining about our harassing you? That’s bigotry!

Yikes. Just got another reminder that Tumblr Separatists(TM) cannot take any criticism of their behavior toward the rest of women, even if it’s literally criminal (like suicide baiting). We’re making it up! We’re anti-separatist! We have no right to make our own choices anyway! Something something lesbophobia! (What?)

I’m just glad I am not accepting anon messages or I’d probably get another 4-5 calling me a dick worshipper and telling me to jump in front of a train. Their toxicity toward their fellow women is reaching transactivist levels in a lot of cases. I know part of that is a Tumblr Thing, but holy fuck do they need to get their shit together and stop.

I’d love to have a nice, civilized, PRACTICAL conversation about how to help all women to become more INDEPENDENT of men. But you can’t get that out of women who openly treat you like shit for disagreeing with any portion of their rhetoric. If I want to have a SANE conversation about boosting women’s independence from men, I have to avoid this crowd altogether, because they would rather hate on me than get anything done. And there’s little avoiding them on Tumblr.

I’m sick of being screamed at and harassed by women who claim that I’m betraying Feminism because I’m married and love my dad, and who claim that criticism of their odious behavior is somehow anti-separatist. 

I’m not anti-separatist. I am anti-asshole. 

You don’t liberate women by setting yourself over them and trying to control them. You don’t liberate women by attacking them until they capitulate to your specific take on Feminism. You don’t liberate women by suicide-baiting them, then playing the victim and claiming they’re lying when called on it. You don’t liberate women by treating them like dogshit, then trying to gaslight everyone by claiming that any complaint about YOUR BEHAVIOR is an attack on separatism or separatists as a whole. 

This is not separatism. This is bullying your fellow women using separatist rhetoric as your excuse du jour. Full fucking stop.

I would love to have one single, sane conversation on Tumblr about encouraging women’s independence, networking, and mutual support without some fanatic popping up to scream at me because I maintain positive relationships with a tiny handful of men. 

I have at least half a dozen posts on pro-separatist ideas just sitting in my drafts because if I post them, these people will use my post as a jumping-off point to attack me and other women again. They are actually discouraging women from talking about separatism on Tumblr by acting this way. 

I don’t know. Maybe I should make a sideblog for liberationist discussion and just kick out anyone who gets abusive. That would end up being a lot of people, because it’s Tumblr, but that’s fine.

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

This week...

...has been another reminder of why I don’t identify as radfem OR libfem. 

In the last forty eight hours, I’ve had multiple radfems whom I backed up in arguments against the transactivist patrol turn on me, calling me homophobic, a dick worshipper, a bad feminist, a patriarchy handmaiden, stupid, dense, brainwashed, “refusing to prioritize women”, and a whole bunch of other bullshit.

They did this just because I am straight, live with a man, and don’t appreciate a bunch of separatists trooping in telling me that I can only be a good Feminist if I dump my disabled husband (which would kill him) and never date or fuck again. But they did do exactly that, and it sucked. Then another batch trooped in telling me that what just happened to me never happens, separatists just want living apart from men to be an option and they absolutely do not bully straight women. Then the assholes came back for another round, and the deniers came back for another round, lather, rinse, repeat, for days. 

I had to block a bunch of them, and so did a lot of my mutuals apparently. I don’t know why they were on a fucking rampage, but they were.

Now, of course, a lot of women are disgusted with the militant bitch side of separatist Radblr for their two-odd days of open hostility against basically all women in relationships with men. Meanwhile many of the separatists are STILL banging on about how they’re righteous heroes and the rest of us are shitty fail-feminists. Because why not double and triple down on being snotty, pompous assholes toward their fellow women? Only they are good feminists, because they say so, and the rest of us deserve a huge lecture on why we suck!

Women who will happily shit all over any woman who doesn’t hate men enough for their tastes are not prioritizing women. They are prioritizing a tiny in-group of women who think exactly like them, and attacking everyone else. That’s bad Feminism.

Feminists are supposed to support each other despite differences, not police each other, harass each other or leap to try and invalidate each other. They don’t, in short, act like thirteen year old Mean Girls with bigger vocabularies. This is supposed to be about uplifting women, not tearing down any woman who isn’t exactly like you.

Let me put it another way. I’m in love with a man. But when he’s a dick to a woman to any degree, I do not duck my head and let him fucking do it. I don’t deny that he does it; men need hard limits set with them or they’ll all make asses of themselves around women to at least some degree. Yet every militant Tumblr separatist out there assumes that I have no backbone and coddle my man, and then treats me shoddily according to that baseless assumption. It’s ridiculous. 

And what’s even more ridiculous is that they assume the right to scrutinize, criticize and police any straight woman’s sexuality and relationships, when we’ve been fighting to defend lesbians’ sexuality and relationships from scrutiny, criticism and policing. Double fucking standard much? I’m...already sick of it.

My feelings at this point are that the Tumblr feminist separatists who absolutely cannot interact peacefully and considerately with women who aren’t exactly like them should indeed separate themselves...from everyone else.

If you’re this much of a toxic, abusive, hateful bitch, then the best thing you can do to prioritize women is to go away and leave us alone. Our lives are hard enough without dealing with your shit on top of men’s. Just...fuck off.