Thank you! I'm currently reading (Un)kind by Victoria Smith on a recommendation from here, and it's incredible just how much weaponised kindness from female socialisation has weakened us as a class.
I think it's also important to remember that few women would even recognise throwing other women under the bus for "acceptable feminism."
I know that I was abused, and when I was safe, I sought out therapy. It was that work with my therapist that allowed me to see just how bad it was. When she first mentioned that I was made to constantly question my reality, that sounded absolutely absurd. To cut a long story short, with her help, I ended up realising that I didn't just "need a little support," I had CPTSD and the abuse was horrendous.
Going through that shifted my perspective about feminism. Patriarchy and female oppression is that abuse, but on a global scale and spread across every woman in different ways.
The reason that I mention all that is that abuse survivors sometimes can't see the abuse that they're going through. They don't even register that they're avoiding words or phrases. They might not even recognise how much of their perspective has been deliberately warped by their abuser(s). It might not even occur to them that putting themselves first is even an option.
When that's scaled up and made much more subtle, and the patriarchy works to whisper more manipulation, it's not a surprise that there are a fair number of women who are trapped by "be kind!"
Feminism is only kind to women. We can choose or not to be compassionate and supportive of men, but the point of feminism is to be technically unkind by taking away things that men have felt entitled to for so long. It's not a surprise that the patriarchy is obsessed with ensuring that we know that we're supposed to be the kind ones.
The greatest trick of the patriarchy was to teach countless generations of women to be kind.
We can talk about statistics all day long, but the weaponisation of our compassion is what keeps us on our knees.
When we see studies about violence, the immediate reaction is but men can be victims, too, and examples like that are why the false ideas of the patriarchy hurts men, too and feminism is for everybody are so prevalent. Women have been so broken down by generations upon generations of manipulation through be kind that is feels wrong, that it feels psychologically painful to centre ourselves.
Instead of women being able to come together and fight for our rights as one, this malicious forced compassion makes us sideline and silence ourselves, with the reward being tricked into feeling like I'm a good and selfless person. When women dare to centre ourselves and put ourselves first reasonably, then we're gaslit into believing that we're being selfish, cruel and even violent, and when other women snap and snarl, tired of our treatment, then they're entirely dismissed as being any modern version of hysteric.
Men like to hide behind the idea that we're the manipulative ones that psychologically damage, but without a thousand generations of men reinforcing that we should think again and actually have kindness and compassion for others, women as a whole would be able to see through the blinders of oppression.
After all, to be anti-prostitution has been reframed as hating sex workers.
Fighting against systemic violence and rape against women is ignoring male victims and supporting female perpetrators.
Protecting female-only spaces is excluding a vulnerable minority's right to exist.
Few ordinary women want to be made to feel like they're hateful or cruel. As soon as we talk about women's issues, examples of individual men are brought up, and women are tricked into talking about them by either proving how kind we are ("of course I don't want anyone to be raped, male victims deserve help!") to distract us from our issues and re-centre men again, or women dismiss that obviously malicious call for compassion ("feminism isn't about men, sort your own issues out!") and then men use it as a reason as to why feminism is evil, because anything without kindness and compassion is wrong.
Women need to be taught that it's not unkind to put ourselves first, and that men use our compassion against us.
In feminism, our kindness and compassion must be reserved for our fellow women.
Women can be kind and compassionate to men in their private lives if they want, but that isn't part of feminism - and they need to be reminded that they won't get that kindness and compassion returned.
This is exactly why TRAs are always homophobic and biphobic.
A lesbian, trying to be as kind as possible, has twisted herself into knots to convince herself that she's bisexual because she believes in the gender cult.
Their ideology harms every LGB person, because it says that no real sexualities exist. There are only labels that affirm TIMs and TIFs while lesbians, bisexuals and gay men are supposed to hate ourselves some more and get back into closets and question ourselves even more painfully. We're nothing but objects to be used and abused by them.
"I wish I wasn't that way" honey you're a lesbian and you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. You're surrounded by conversion therapy rhetoric and it's wrong. You aren't having a "genital preference" - you like women. The entire female form. You're a female homosexual. It's okay to be a lesbian.
There is nothing wrong with you. You shouldn't have to hide in order to pacify a mans ego.
"But some women fantasise about sexy priests!"
Those women imagine attractive men wearing ordinary priest clothes. There isn't some obvious and acceptable g-string with a priest's collar around it swapped in. The fantasised priests are just... attractive, romanticised priests.
The whole point of nuns being sexualised, as far as I understand it, is the transgressing of boundaries (as above), the male obsession with owning and touching and fucking an underlined-capitalised-bolded virgin, and/or their need to fantasise that those pious nuns will take one look at that one specific man and suddenly turn into a nymphomaniac for him.
Maybe the message was "Ha, I'm not straight like religion tells me I should be! This is me being sexy and breaking free!" but it just underlines what men want anyway and upholds that the likes of nuns are some minor, sexy taboo for men.
Nothing is or can be subverted when it's sexualised, because the only message that men understand is I can jerk off to this.
Re: Chappell Roan’s nun stuff and the sexualization of nuns
I do not think a religion itself is owed any kindness or respect. I don’t think the misogynistic practices of these religions are sacred or deserve to be treated as though they’re immune from criticism and mockery.
However, I also do understand that nuns and similar religious roles are held by women who don the outfit and play the role because they have a commitment to their religion that includes sexual purity (whether brainwashed or not… though probably brainwashed a bit). I think the sexual mockery of a woman or a group of women who indicate their desire to not be seen sexually is weird. I believe even religious women are owed respect for their sexual boundaries. And the main fetish surrounding sexualizing nuns is that it is a clear violation of sexual boundaries and consent. That is the part that needs to be understood. The sexualization of nuns is because it is enticing to cross the set sexual boundaries of a woman. And the woman being religious can either add to the fetish (in the eyes of men) or it can be a defense against criticism, i.e. “I thought we hated Christianity but nuns are somehow off-limits?” (‘Religion-critical’ leftists).
I just don’t agree with the premise. I truly do think it’d be a whole different scenario if it were a religious role being sexualized that wasn’t about sexual purity. If that makes sense. Like the issue with the nun sexualization is that the whole fetish surrounding sexy nuns is that it is sexualizing a woman who doesn’t want to be sexualized. If it wasn’t a nun, but it was a random female celebrity who was being highly sexualized after she made it clear she didn’t want to be sexualized, I’d say the same thing.
Does this make sense? I’m at urgent care rn and im struggling to focus
Rowling uses names like Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt for her Characters of Color.
Werewolves are a metaphor for HIV. Fenrir Greyback is a werewolf who likes to infect young children. Seeing as the Aids Crisis primarily affected gay men and there is a stereotype that gay men are sexual predators, this is pretty damning. Especially seeing as she has no visibly queer characters in her story.
Dumbledore is the only confirmed queer character in her story and she kills him off. I suppose Grindelwald was also confirmed as being gay, but that's not the best representation seeing as he was evil. She never explicitly states either of these characters are queer in the text, though.
Dobby wanting to be free is treated as an anomaly amongst the house elves. The rest are content being slaves.
When Hermione creates S.P.E.W. to try to help free the house elves and gets them rights, Ron and Harry both become annoyed with her and Ron outright mocks S.P.E.W.
The book treats any character who is overweight poorly. Typically, heavier characters are either nasty people or incompetent people whom she makes fun of.
The whole thing where the girls can get into the boys' dormitories but the boys can't get into the girls'. You could probably find something transphobic here, especially since JKR is a TERF, but even so, she ignores that through the use of magic, the girls could be just as dangerous as the boys.
She is oftentimes misogynistic, as seen when Mrs. Weasley believes the rumors spread by Rita Skeeter in Witch Weekly and begins to treat Hermione, a fourteen-year-old girl, poorly for them, but treats Harry just the same.
Even characters we are supposed to like, like Hagrid and Ron, make nasty comments about Muggles. And not just the Dursleys. Ron even makes ignorant comments about Muggle doctors, calling them people who "cut people up" and acting like they aren't as good as wizards. Considering they can't just wave a wand and make everything better, what Muggle doctors do is amazing and we all know it.
The goblins are antisemitic caricatures.
Feel free to add onto this if there's any I missed. It's been a long time since I read the series, so there's probably something in there that I've forgotten about.
Not quite garden related, but look how pretty these newly unfurled leaves are.