This Might Be A Hot Take But I Think That Most Women Do Have Some Radfem Beliefs But Choose Not To Share

Rainforest~~☆

Weird question but since you're bi and not dating men, do you still allow yourself to fancy them?

Absolutely! I feel zero guilt for feelings of attraction. I spent way too long feeling awful for being bisexual to play that game. If I see a man I find attractive, I enjoy the sight. I don’t pursue relationships with men because of the risks related to domestic relationships with them, but if a hot guy is in a movie? If I see an attractive man at the park? I don’t try and police the natural attraction I feel. Nor do I feel guilty.

Same with women. I no longer torture myself for seeing a beautiful woman and feeling attracted to her. It’s not automatically predatory or objectifying to just feel my feelings. Nor is it a betrayal of my politics or lifestyle to feel attraction to men.

True. I'm not against venting at all, and I don't think there should be a compromising of principles, but at the same time, if feminists and feminism isn't trying to offer a supportive hand out to ordinary women and meet them halfway to dispel negative myths and go over the basics with them and generally welcome them into the cause, then what's the point?

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.

Not quite garden related, but look how pretty these newly unfurled leaves are.

Happy Pride Month! To kick off pride I'm busting some myths about the Stonewall Riots, Marsha P. Johnson, and giving some love and recognition to Stormé DeLarverie!

This was sitting unfinished for months but I got it together and completed it in time for pride.

Edit (6/12/23): I believe only the first Joseph Ambrosini photo was confirmed to be taken the first night of the Stonewall riots; I couldn't find sources that indicated if the other photos were taken on that same night or not.

‼️Good news for today‼️

Polish trans people will no longer have to literally SUE THEIR PARENTS to get their gender marker changed!

This is huge!!!

There is the generalized, traditional fear of female sexuality. Further, there is discomfort with the similarity, with the common origin, of the female clitoris and the male penis. Women are used to hearing the clitoris described as an "undeveloped penis"; men are not used to thinking of the penis as an overdeveloped clitoris. Finally, and most seriously, there is a profound psychological and institutional reluctance to face the repercussions of the fact that the female clitoris is the only organ in the human body whose purpose is exclusively that of erotic stimulation and release. What does this mean? It means that for the human female, alone among all earth's life-forms, sexuality and reproduction are not inseparable. It is the male penis, carrier of both semen and sexual response, that is simultaneously procreative and erotic. If we wanted to reduce one of the sexes to a purely reproductive function, on the basis of its anatomy (we don't), it would be the male sex that qualified for such a reduction, not the female. Not the human female.

But these are only biological facts. These are only biological realities. As we know, facts and realities can be, and are, systematically ignored in the service of established ideologies. Throughout the world today virtually all religious, cultural, economic, and political institutions stand, where they were built centuries ago, on the solid foundation of an erroneous concept. A concept that assumes the psychic passivity, the creative inferiority, and the sexual secondariness of women. This enshrined concept states that men exist to create the human world, while women exist to reproduce humans. Period. If we argue that data exists—not solely biological, but archaeological, mythological, anthropological, and historical data—which refutes the universality of this erroneous concept, we are told to shut up; because something called "God" supports the erroneous concept, and that's all that matters. That's the final word.

—Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, "The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth."

It's the difference between understanding individual and systemic issues.

The fact that men are the most likely to be perpetrators of violence and abuse, where women are most likely to be the victims of violence and abuse proves that there's a systemic issue of male violence that victimises women.

That fact doesn't stop a woman being abusive to another woman, or a man being abusive to another man, or a woman being abusive to a man. In every individual case, the victim needs support and the perpetrator needs to face justice.

All that we can do is fight the systemic causes of overrepresented male violence to prevent as much harm against women as possible.

There will always be evil individuals that will commit evil acts because they want to. Even in what would otherwise be a utopia, there will always be those that harm because they enjoy harming.

But the MRAs won't acknowledge any of that. It's much easier for them to be misogynists and go "but what about...!" There is no what about. Male victims will need male-only spaces to find safety after escaping abuse and the MRAs can go support those individual victims. Meanwhile, feminists who actually give a damn want to destroy the roots of male supremacy that makes so many men feel like they're entitled to beat, abuse and rape women (and other men, but the MRAs forget about that part because it doesn't help them try to justify their hatred of women).

At the end of the day, if it was only a case of "well some abusers abuse and feminists obsess over male abusers," then rape and domestic violence statistics would show that male and female abusers and victims both hovering around the 50/50 mark - but that isn't what's happening, is it?

I hate when males bring up female abusers as if it’s supposed to deflect from the majority of abusers being men. As a girl who was sexually abused by another girl from ages 6-10 I can acknowledge that it happens but is nowhere near as common as a male being an abuser. Yes there are female abusers but that does not deflect from the fact that majority are men, no matter how many women abusers there are it will still never compare to the amount of male abusers.

Plank, markers, acrylics, plants... And dragon. d: