Why Can't I Mock Your Religion Lmao U Literally Think I'm Going To Hell

Can’t reblog the post going round containing these two screenshots:

So I’ll put my addition here:

This also applies to women who complain about feminism requiring them to work, rather than being ‘ladies of leisure’. Women equivalent to them in the past always worked - who do they think were the maids, housekeepers, cooks, nannies, wet nurses, governesses, washerwomen, spinners, weavers, seamstresses, nurses, midwives, etc - and today’s equivalent of the past’s ladies of leisure can afford to be ladies of leisure now. Feminism fought for women’s work to be acknowledged, valued, and fairly paid, and that fight is still ongoing.

Both Selfish; you each lose 2 points

You Selfish, prev Cooperative; You gain 2 points

You Cooperative, prev Selfish; You lose 1 point, prev gains 1 point

Both Cooperative; You Each gain 1 points

(ps make sure to say what you voted)

Making this post long so you have to scroll to see prev's tags.

Huh, I hadn't thought of that the first time I read it but there is a pint there- Victor begins thinking that he'll create something beautiful and wonderful but after actually seeing Creature he experiences a massive depression event and abandons it. As much as he insists that he'd make a decent parent; that insistence comes from a place of arrogance and lack of foresight.

He brings Creature into a world that despises him. Creature is a brilliant mind, well read, he shows compassion towards the family he watches over, and helps without being asked, but the world offers Victor's child nothing but physical abuse and abandonment until he grows painfully resentful. There's the idea there that if Creature had any positive relationships, maybe everything here could have been avoided. On the anti-natalist end though, bringing Creature into this world is in and of itself an act of arrogant cruelty. How could he know what people are like and choose to create a child anyway.

Frankenstein feels like a very anti-natalist work. From the modern perspective of course. With the original context, the themes about the progression of science and the nature of humanity still stand

women can’t make satirical pieces without every self important loser insisting every word is sincere ignorance or simply going “not funny (would be funnier if it were a man)”. even among progressives it’s weirdly common to think women are not intelligent or funny enough to do satire or even just a bit with deadpan delivery

‘This is just like if there was pushback against not being attracted to <insert any other kind of person>’

Yeah I actually find those, ‘if you find yourself not attracted to <group> check yourself’ posts gross too actually. I’m a believer in radical consent: You’re allowed to say no at any time, to any person, for any reason and no one should ever be shamed for denying someone access to their body. Sorry if that upsets people but I’m not sorry for holding to that belief.

I mean, ‘all work is slavery under capitalism’ is REALLY compatible with ‘“sex work” is bad.’ Like, the obvious logical points would be ‘all work is coerced/slavery in a system where you have to work to eat and live -> coerced sex is rape -> ‘sex work’ is rape and should be abolished.’ It’s inconsistent to say, ‘all work is bad… Except for ‘sex work’. Without a really good reason why this is the one kind that’s not coercive.

i hate when i’m talking to a leftist about why i hate prostitution as a feminist and they hit me with the “all work is slavery under capitalism, you just have a moralistic view of sex” as if i’d disagree.

capitalism is literally antithetical to radical feminism, and i was socialist before i was a radical feminist.

also, why wouldn’t i have a moralistic view of sex? i have a moralistic view of everything; i think everything we do is political, and that includes the kind of sex we have and the rape we find socially acceptable. duh.

Social Construct Masterpost

I was inspired to make this post because of the mass confusion on tumblr about what social constructs are and how they function. I will start with a simple example:

This is a one dollar bill. It is an excellent example of a social construct. This piece of paper represents a specific amount of spending power in the society that it exists in (the USA). An individual person could decide personally that it represents 1000$ worth of spending power, but it would not matter because like all social constructs, the collective agreement between individuals in society is what determines the meaning of the construct. There are laws on the books about currency but it doesn’t stop society from changing the meaning of a dollar; after all, in times of scarcity a dollar is a much more valuable asset than in times of plenty. The exact value of a dollar is something that fluctuates in tune with other factors, including things like consumer confidence- meaning, how consumers feel about the economy. Social constructs can change based on changes of opinion in the population. 

One way to test if something is a social construct is to remove it from its native society and see if it retains the same functionality. The US dollar is accepted in some foreign countries, but in other places, it is just a piece of paper. 

Another way to test if something is a social construct is to remove people from the picture entirely and see if it retains its functionality. Without people to give a dollar meaning it simply becomes paper. 

Contrast the attributes of a dollar with say, biological sex.

Male humans produce sperm and much higher levels of testosterone than females. Females produce ova and offspring if their eggs are fertilized and implanted. Individuals who are sterile still have either male or female anatomy which serves sexual functions for the individual. Virtually everyone on earth qualifies as one sex or the other, with or without malfunctioning or variations. Is this binary a social construct?

Does the collective agreement of society give male and female organs their functionality? Absolutely not. Humans did not always have an understanding of how pregnancy happened, and yet it happened anyway. Individuals who don’t know about or understand reproduction can and do get pregnant via sex. No matter how many people got together and decided that females inseminate males there would be no change in the function of testes or ovaries. 

The functionality of human reproductive organs is also impervious to cultural or geographical differences. All over the world people get pregnant and have babies by mixing sperm from males with ova from females. There is no exception. 

Removing humans from the equation also has no effect on the biological reality of mammalian reproduction. Male mammals are male, female mammals are female, and only one of the two can give birth. 

Biological sex is not and never has been a social construct.

Another example is gender. Femininity is the easiest example to discuss. Lets look at different examples of femininity from around the world:

As you can see, what it means to be feminine or girly is very different depending upon the society. None of these is the “correct” femininity, just different versions from different cultures. There is no objective way to determine what makes someone feminine in any given culture- you have to ask people. 

The nature of femininity is totally subjective and relies on the collective agreement of society. If you move one of these women into a different society their defining feminine characteristics instead become physical characteristics with no gender designation at all. In fact, what would make you gender conforming in one culture would make you gender non conforming in another. Gender also changes in individual societies over time, so the meaning of being feminine in America in the 1800s would differ markedly from what it means to be feminine in America right now. How people feel about the construct changes its meaning.Thus we can easily say that gender is a social construct. 

See now I know you’re for sure scrolling through my blog lol.

I mostly think it’s fine to leave the conversation there because A. My information is very likely out of date and while I think anyone in a given industry (especially as a figurehead) is unlikely to talk shit about it because it puts their job security at risk, it’d be useful to hear the current concerns in the industry. And B. On the points that matter I don’t think we particularly disagree. I don’t think any industry should be treated as above scrutiny, especially from left-leaning people and groups. It’s gross seeing how supposed leftists reaction to fucking McDonald’s workers being overworked, underpayed and making a penny on the bosses billions their reaction is rage, they’re indignant and want to fight. But the same people when told about abuses in the sex industry respond with apathy. We should be working harder to stop all exploitation in society in every shape it takes in every industry.

Trans women showing once again they know nothing about women or what being a woman is like

Nitpicky hyperonline post

Tbh it’s a bit weird when I see Radfem posts about the trans-ification of tomboys that say that they’re ’turning them into men’. Because you know, they’re not? It’s a quibble but it’s worth remembering when that 20 year old draws random vaguely masculine female character with top surgery scars, that isn’t an act of sex bending. Mind, there’s a long history of sex bending in fandom spaces- it’s a fictional space so it’d be really easy to go, ‘this is x as a male’, but they go out of their way to keep the character female and advertise cosmetic surgery as a way to make them ‘more themselves’. Admittedly this frames the whole thing as deeply sinister- I don’t think people saying ‘hormones would save them’ have actually thought about what that statement implies or who it benefits.