Sphagnum Squarrosum A Distincitvely Spiky Sphagnum Moss.

Based in Shoreham-by-sea, England master glass worker

Louise V Durham crafts stained glass and driftwood sculptures for the beach and garden

Really tired of people on this hellsite acting like being gay comes with political obligations

Homosexuality is apolitical. Sexuality doesn’t come with a set of beliefs or rules.

Gay people belong to a diverse array of beliefs, religions, and communities and yes that includes ones you disagree with or dislike.

Stop saying shit like “terfs can’t be lesbians” “so and so isn’t allowed to be a lesbian because of xyz” “he’s not actually gay because he is of a/b political group”

It makes it clear you think being gay is a choice and that it comes with a set of rules you need to follow to be ‘validated’.

Gay people are gay even if you don’t like them. Shut up.

Feminism is unique in the sense that different groups of women have oppression and privilege on different axes, but we still need to work out the best way to have true solidarity on the basis of being oppressed as women.

I don't disagree with you. There's a lot of deliberate weaponisation of woman-on-woman violence by MRA and right wing types that want to undermine everything with "but women are worse, actually!" and it's entirely right to call that out for the distraction that it is.

At the same time, ordinary women who haven't read feminist texts, who are living their lives as best as they can, who then fail to relate to feminism because there's no space to talk about systemic vs interpersonal are then going to dismiss feminism as useless, and we're no further forward.

It's also true that every attack, abuse and act of misogyny large and small from men to women is interpersonal, but we just can't individually promote stories or offer individual protection to every single woman out there. It would be the dream to be able to do that. We can continue to donate to women's shelters and women-focused charities and offer support to individual women in our lives, but feminism's focus is on breaking down the patriarchy.

For me, I think it's more important to do as much as reasonably possible to reach out to women who have rejected feminism or who think feminism is useless to them. If we don't, then all that's going to happen is that feminists will sit and shake our heads and scream until we're blue in the face while nothing changes at all.

We need more women to wake up and be feminist, and telling the daughter of an abusive mother, essentially, "Mentioning your abusive mother is just amplifying the wrongs that women do while men get to get away with the very same thing" is going to do absolutely nothing but inflict more trauma on that victim, and turn her away from feminism, because while you and I will be able to sit back and have a reasonable chat about why that is thanks to the patriarchy, she is going to think feminism is full of abuse apologism, and she can't be near it at all because it's just triggered her PTSD.

One of the things that feminism needs to better grapple with is the difference between systemic and interpersonal issues.

The biggest reason that a lot of women push back from feminism with their additions to #NotAllMen is because those women know and love men who aren't rapists and who aren't physically abusive. It's entirely natural to rail against something that you see as attacking someone that you love.

When feminists advocate for single-sex schooling to protect girls, there's an automatic push back and outcry over the very real bullying that goes on in girl-only schools that have had long-lasting impacts on ex-students.

Glossing over the abuse that mothers put their daughters through often gives the impression that anything that counters any women-supporting-women narrative has to be stamped down on and ignored, or at worst, even denied, for the good of feminism.

It's far too easy as feminists to see criticisms like the above from women and then dismiss them, or repeat more statistics and then get frustrated at those women or call them handmaidens, instead of engaging and understanding why they're railing against what's being said.

No, not every single man is a raping woman-beater, but there are a ton more male abusers than female abusers, and a ton more female victims than male victims. That's a systemic issue, and we need to fix it. That doesn't make those loved fathers, brothers, cousins, friends or partners suddenly monsters out of nowhere.

No, female-only schools aren't perfect and there are bullying scandals in all schools, that doesn't excuse the individual abuse that victims have been through, but in general, they're safer for girls, and girls achieve higher grades than in mixed-sex schools, which is important to discuss and improve on.

No, abuse victims shouldn't be silent over what they've been through, and female abusers deserve to face justice. Continued cycles of abuse and female socialisation and mental illess etc might explain some of the abuse, but it doesn't excuse it. The point of feminism is to free all women from patriarchy, so that even the worst of the worst of women don't suffer with misogyny, not coddle the evil and the abusers just because of their sex.

There is so much difficult nuance, and there's too much reliance on the systemic to the point that the interpersonal is completely erased. It stops individual women from seeing anything in feminism that's useful to them. If they have counter-examples to any systemic issue, then they'll use those personal examples to dismiss that there's a systemic issue at all. If they're met halfway and the systemic vs the interpersonal is explained, then there's a much better chance that they'll pay attention or even go away to think about it to eventually become feminists, too.

bisexual women did you know you can just.. prioritize yourselves? you dont exist to be the lgbt foot soldiers. you dont have to defer to non-bisexual people's ideas about your experiences. you can dedicate your time and energy to things that concern specifically bisexual women it's fine it's not a sin

that post is really upsetting me.

i loved my wife when she was identifying as trans, and i also love her now that she isn’t. some of my closest friends are butch lesbians who went through with some degree of medical transition and then made the choice to pull back for various reasons. they detransitioned and every single one of them is still gender non conforming and still cares deeply about their trans friends.

the idea that all detrans women are reactionary grifters is so misogynistic, homophobic, and insidious. yet another way the trans movement ostracizes ftm people and silences their voices. by fucking villainizing them. all while refusing to hold any mtf abuser or grifter accountable. unreal.

and the messages my wife and my detrans friends on here have to deal with every week … people fetishizing their detransition, speculating “you’re probably balding now” (because the worst thing a woman can be is ugly, of course), telling them “you’ll go back” and saying “death before detransition”. it hurts me so bad to see lesbian women being treated like criminals for the “crime” of trying to cope with their sexuality and their dysphoria in a lesbophobic society. why is it impossible to show these women empathy? they’re not the fucking enemy! remember who the real enemy is!

i hate seeing amazing women question their own worth because of men who only see them as walking holes and laborers

I'm going to have to read that, thanks so much for the rec!

It's another one of those things where, once you see it, it's everywhere in patriarchy.

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.

My “all rich people are bad” brother would lose his fucking mind if I said “All men, including you”.

“Errr I don’t exploit you”, oh but when I had to walk to school in a dense black abaya and long hijab under the sweltering heat and you walked alongside me in your loose dress shirt, your privileged ass never showed any meaningful sympathy?

When you got to play sports outside all day but we girls couldn’t because of our restrictive wear and fear of male discrimination and sexual harassment, was it not your privileged ass that didn’t mind?

When we went to the beach and or swimming pools, it wasn’t you that only wore shorts swimming comfortably while I was covered head to toe in my burkini, still being leered at by the creep across the pool so I couldn’t even enjoy myself?

When our male cousin lived with us during the summer, was it not us girls that had to dress modestly and ‘behave’ in our own fucking homes while you played video games shirtless?

When our baby brother was growing up, was it not you that never changed his diaper once in your fucking life despite us being only a year apart in age?

When you started studying Islam just like me, was it not you that accused me of being blasphemous when I brought up concerns about sexism?

You saw obvious discrimination, you experienced privileges and benefitted, and you never once helped. I don’t care that you were ‘nice’ to me and joked around with me and hung out with me sometimes— the structure of inequality that you never cared to address is clear in my mind.

All men, INCLUDING YOU.