It Doesn't Even Need To Be As Frightening As That.

Waddesdon Manor

Fake, performative support is worse than being indifferent about something or not expressing an opinion

This one was a workout for my brain 🧠

By: Me 😊

Being a radical feminist doesn’t mean you get to hate libfems or any other type of woman for that matter. Are libfems annoying? Do they have bad takes? Do I believe that their ideas are harmful? YES. But I’m not going to scream that they deserve death like I’ve seen other people do on here.

Maybe a girl isn’t ready to dissect the reasons why she feels the need to shave. I’m not going to call her a fucking idiot. I’m not going to call her worthless. Because she’s not. Why has it become common practice in radfem spaces to hate fellow women for falling into the beliefs that they’ve been groomed to have?

When a radfem talks overtly harshly about other women it tells me that they live within an online echo chamber. Women in real life have bad takes. They have internalized misogyny. Some radfems take for granted the knowledge and strength that they have. Not every woman has read feminist theory. Not every woman is confident enough to advocate for her rights. Women in real life are complicated and possess a mixture or both good and bad traits. No matter what, these women are worth defending and fighting for. They didn’t choose to be conditioned by the patriarchy.

I likely won’t get along with most women, but that’s fine. I’m not a radical feminist because i hate other women, I’m a feminist because to an extent i harbor a deep love for ALL women

im so tired of being unable to say "no/please stop" because if i do the other person will hurt themself

i loved an Angel, but it made me weak.

I think that it's because asexuality is to sexuality as gender identity is to sex.

There's no consensus on what asexuality even is.

If it's a sexuality, then it would be the simple state of not being attracted to either sex, the direct opposite to bisexuality, and then it's fair to discuss oppression, invisibility etc.

If it's a spectrum of whether someone is sex repulsed to someone who only enjoys sex after having a deep connection with someone else, then the real issues here are misogyny and pornification, since women tend to be the ones that claim some form of asexuality over men, and the idea of "I'm asexual because I need to form a connection to someone else emotionally before desiring sex and can't just fuck a stranger at a club like everyone else" is the definition of a pornified society. That also means that it's not a sexuality and it's wrong to conflate it with sexuality.

I personally can't see how asexuality can be both, but hearing "asexuality and aspec identities" does sound just like a sexuality version of people calling themselves "nonbinary."

I really dislike radfems hating on asexuals. Not desiring sex is deviant from what is expected of society, whether among the right or the left (yes, even among radfems and it's quite obvious). There's a level of sex negativity that is encouraged in these spaces (don't have sex with men), but people taking it further upsets you (because you're a woman with the same desire for sex as the men you dislike). I will always support asexuality and acespec identities. If you want sex positivity in any form and don't want those "annoying asexuals" to bother you, just go outside. Stop acting like your stance on sex is not a mainstream opinion

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.

It bears stating from the onset that feminism is a broad church. There are splits and schisms within it, usually pertaining to what constitutes useful, meaningful action towards women's liberation. It is, however, to put the cart before the horse to start by placing into these furrows. One does not have to be a feminist to become one of the 'hounded', though to be feminist at all arguably requires agreement with the trio of Core Beliefs that follow. For the sake of both clarity and brevity, these three Core Beliefs are identifiable as the beliefs that are at question when a woman – feminist or not – is targeted for opprobrium in the gender wars.

Core Belief 1: Women are materially definable as a class of human being. That means that the category definition of 'woman' describes those humans who are adult and female. The only criterion for being a woman is to be a female girl who survives into adulthood. No other criteria are necessary: no personality traits, no interests, no adornment or style of dress, no mandatory life choice must flow from this definition. This is the realm of category definitions and not value judgements.

Core Belief 2: Women (as adult female humans), are culturally, legislatively and politically important, with their own sets of needs, rights and concerns. On the basis of being female, such women assert the need in particular for female-only spaces, sports, and other services on the basis of privacy, dignity and/or safety – or, simply, in recognition that equality and social justice cannot be achieved where males and females are included together with competing interests in whatever space is under discussion.

Core Belief 3: Where social, cultural or legislative trends are under way – ones that may diminish women's rights and/or liberation – then women have a right to meet and discuss freely that which affects their lives profoundly. As such, when women's events are protested disproportionately via attempts to shut them down or to intimidate attendees, the women involved will respond with even more rigorous calls for debate and reassertion of their right to freedom of speech and assembly.

– Jenny Lindsay (2024) Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars, pp. 1-2.