Important

“Oh yeah, we mixed with lesbians. We always got along back then. All that division between the lesbian women and queens came after 1974 when Jane O'Leary and the radical lesbians came up. The radicals did not accept us or masculine-looking women who looked like men. And those lesbian women might not even have been trans. But we did get along famously in the early 60’s. I’ve been to many a dyke party… The lesbian community today has a lot to learn from the old ways of the lesbian community.”

— Sylvia Rivera (via millesbianfalcon)

🧵 THREAD: This #EqualPayDay, let’s not forget how many of our workplace rights were only secured in the last few decades.

💪✨ We need to fight for our rights.

Here’s are a few examples:

📍 In 1963, the Equal Pay Act required employers to provide equal pay for equal work regardless of gender. 

📍  In 1964, the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination based on gender, race, religion, color, or national origin in public places, schools, and employment. Before, it was legal to refuse employment opportunities to women. 

📍  In 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate against pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.

📍  In 1988, the Women's Business Ownership Act created support for women business owners and eliminated the requirement for male co-signers on loans.

📍  In 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act gave some workers paid family leave, and provided job protection and security for employees who took unpaid time off to care for a relative or family member. 

📍 In 2010, the PUMP Act expanded the Break Time law, which provides key workplace protections for nursing mothers, including reasonable break time to nurse and a private place to pump.

📍 In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

📍 In 2024, the Department of Labor introduced a Final Rule to end an employer's ability to pay individuals with disabilities subminimum wages. 

Alt-text included on all pieces.

Heart attacks symptoms are different for women. I recently learned this. 

“Female-assigned intersex kids’ vaginal canal size is also assessed by doctors, to ensure that it’s long enough to fit a penis inside of it. Doctors might surgically construct or re-construct vaginas, which can result in a host of health problems and necessitate multiple, multiple surgeries. This is especially the case since most intersex kids have these surgeries very young, and when their bodies grow into their adult forms, more surgeries are necessary to keep their vagina size in proportion. Non-surgical methods are also used to increase or maintain vaginal length by regularly using medical dildos to stretch the vagina over months and years. (It’s kind of like braces for your vagina, but much, much worse.) Just like there are no standards for how long a clitoris “can” be before it’s classified as a penis, there aren’t absolute standards as to how long a vagina is for it to be of “normal” length. I had a dilation procedure performed for almost every exam I had with intersex doctors from the time I was 8 until I was 16, so that they could check how long my vagina was as I grew. I absolutely hated these procedures. I mean, imagine a man as old as your father or your grandfather, who you don’t know, inserting a medical dildo into you each time you saw him, knowing that you can’t question the doctor’s orders and just accept that you have to undergo these uncomfortable procedures for your health. Imagine a decade or so later, realizing that these procedures did nothing to track your health, and had everything to do with grown men feeling good about the fact that you could fuck some dude someday like a “normal girl”. That all those traumatizing procedures weren’t actually medically relevant at all, and it actually was within my right to refuse those examinations. I didn’t know any of that at the time. I also had no idea that I wouldn’t want to ultimately have the kind of sex they assumed I’d be having, adding yet another layer of this-was-totally-unnecessary/messed-up to my history. Other kids shouldn’t have to go through this. Other adults shouldn’t have revelations some day far into the future that what was happening to them WASN’T okay, and their traumatic feelings ARE valid, and the whole system of how intersex people are conceptualized and “treated” IS entirely fucked. And it’s gotta change. We’ve gotta change it.”

—

—-Claudia at Autostraddle

I just read this article and was reminded once again how invisible the intersex community often is… we need to signal boost this shit to let people know that this kind of “medical treatment” is NOT okay.

(via bossybussy)

Felt straight-up ill reading this. This is the institutionalized rape of children. It’s beyond unconscionable that procedures like this are normalized and considered “treatment”.

(via thaxted)

jfc

(via stammsternenstaub)

Revolting and repugnant.

See why intersex folk don’t like their medical issues being used as a rhetorical gotcha?

(via appropriately-inappropriate)

You can’t change your gender because gender is the social expectations placed on you by virtue of your sex e.g. femininity is the gender assigned to females.

You can’t change your sex because sex is an immutable part of your biology that extends down to the cellular level e.g. female is the term for a member of the sex that produces large gametes.

What you *can* do is wear whatever you want and act however you want and like whoever you want regardless of what anybody says and regardless of your gender and sex. That is truly radical.

Remember that “I think everyone should have the freedom and autonomy to make decisions regarding their own personal life” will never mean “all decisions and outcomes are equally good”.

Conversely, the statement “some decisions are better than others” does not imply the statement “decisions should be compelled.”

Freedom of choice liberalism has turned into a lazy ambivalence about how the choices we make either positively negatively impact ourselves and the people around us.

A critique of someone’s choices has been too often mistaken as an attack on their right to make that choice. For example, if I say that the glorification of tradwifery on TikTok will lead to bad outcomes for young girls, the statement “tradwives should not be allowed to post on TikTok” is nowhere near implied. If I say that wearing makeup encourages compliance by other women and perpetuates a patriarchal erasure of the image of women, I am not saying that I have any desire to make makeup illegal.

Those are certainly statements that feminists could make, but only assume that’s what someone means if they actually say it.

Opposing choice feminism does not an authoritarian make.

(of course this doesn’t apply to choices which directly aid or perpetrate sexual or physical violence)

i hate the way makeup and beauty ads pitch their products. there’s this angle that’s like: ‘the frustration you feel with an insane beauty practice that only women are expected to engage with is solely because you’re using the wrong product.’

hate wearing foundation? you’re using the wrong one. try this. try that. try our new skin-healthy paste that comes in seven million colors, just like women do! watch them twirl and smile in this tiktok ad, now with 75% more body diversity! tired of breakable ineffective razors and ingrown hairs? try hair removal cream. try our luxury waterproof trimmer. try our special diverse queer razor that makes you feminist and empowered! look at this real life cool girl removing her real life body hair — that could be you, if you buy our subscription box! aren’t we so progressive? you too can be progressive and individual while staying smooth and sexy and inhuman and consumable!

like no you know what? if you hate wearing foundation, stop wearing it. if you’re tired of razors and razor burn, stop fucking shaving. if you want to get the fuck out of this capitalist patriarchal hellhole, stop buying product after product to make yourself acceptable to men. it’s really not that hard.

White supremacy and colonization really forced that male/female binary forced onto so many communities, lands, and cultures, huh?