To abolish gender does not mean to erase distinction and difference in expression and embodiment, it means to remove those differences from a coercive framework of self policing, and from a system that delineates material benefit based on arbitrary distinctions in those differences.

bi women that are super awesome and cool and valid:

- non - monogamous bi women who only date women - monogamous bi women who only date women - bi women who dated men but no longer want to - bi women who have never dated men - bi women who don’t ever want to date men - bi women who have only ever dated women - bi women who are currently in a relationship with another woman

It’s disturbing how freaked out and worried and guilty girls feel when they find out one of their guy friends likes them “like that”. They start thinking it’s something they’ve done to lead the guy on or give him the wrong idea, and they think it’s their responsibility to change their behaviour to make the guy stop thinking of them “like that”. At no point does the guy need to change anything or reflect on anything. It’s a pretty important life skill to a) recognise when your feelings are not reciprocated and b) move on. But guys don’t have to learn to move on and accept that they can’t have what they want bc the culture tells girls that they are responsible for men’s desires and have to take on the responsibility of either avoiding men’s attentions or acquiescing when they receive unwanted advances.

reminder that your intrusive thoughts don’t represent who you really are

your brain is where you sandbox and process ideas, and not everything you think implies some secret underlying evil that you’re barely holding in, or something

it’s natural to think about things you don’t want to think about, because it lets you break down the ideas and understand them better, and help understand why you dislike those things and why it’s healthy for you to dislike them

“the word ‘TERF’ is a silencing tactic.” Like I’m supposed to feel bad for transphobes being silenced.

i literally am someone who transitioned because of dysphoria. a lot of other people getting labeled terfs are too. theres nonbinary “terfs”, trans women “terfs”, dysphoric women who have accessed medical transition services “terfs”.

yes, some people with “terf” ideals (believing in exclusive space for cis women) are transphobic, but many of us absolutely dont hate trans people and prioritize their wellbeing as well. thats actually a big part of why we want to have these conversations, because we believe that trans people deserve access to the framework of sex-based oppression, which explains their experiences much more thoroughly.

the word terf is regularly used to discredit people immediately without actually analyzing or responding to their ideas, like a priest yelling sacrilege before letting his constituents actually hear things out and decide where they stand because he feels threatened by the concepts being brought up.

the kneejerk “block the terf” thing is indicative of an unhealthy environment, where critical thought is being actively stifled.

28-year-old Ann Osman has defied many stereotypes and social barriers on her way to becoming Malaysia’s first professional female mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter. Osman is one of few Asian women joining this male-dominated sport and has become a role model for women and girls.

“One girl that was writing to me said she was in an abusive relationship and when she saw me fighting it really inspired her to leave that relationship, which to me really meant a lot,” she says.

Read more via Al Jazeera 

Why I am a radical feminist

When a young girl is raised to believe her natural curiosity is less valuable than the dry cleaning to get the mud stains out of her summer dress, when she is given toys to teach her how to police her body, when she is taught in school that it was men who achieved all things of value in society, my eyes cry for her, raised to believe second class is her natural place.

When that girl hits puberty and she learns she is to pay the price for Eve’s sin once each month with blood and pain, that her body makes her weak, makes her inferior, that her very existence is shameful, her role in life is as a sex object and a human incubator, her pain is not to be taken seriously, her complaints are invalid and to be looked over, my voice cries out for her, socialized to police and to hate her own physical form.

When I see a man laugh slurs at a young women’s face and she smiles and she postures but in her eyes her soul is being chipped at, as usual, same old same old, because she can not safely tell him, “No, stop, don’t call me that, it hurts.” without that man taking insult to being called out on his insult, my bones and my brow ache for her, constrained by society, forced to choose between social acceptance and self respect.

When a woman tells me about how her rapist walks free, about how she had to give up her friends because they shamed her, blamed her, took his side as if he is incapable of lying, his honesty taken for granted despite mixed defenses and changing stories, his actions excused, as if the decisions of men are the fault of women, my blood boils for her, betrayed by society, isolated from justice.

When after a life time of being told to stand aside, step down, to wait your turn, to come second, a woman enters a feminist space and is told that this is not a place for her to talk about the experiences of being female, that her issues do not deserve to be centered, that she is privileged for being raised the way she was, that she is privileged for the body that she has, that she must consider first and foremost the feelings of people with penises, the same as she has always been taught, my soul can take no more. Feminism should prioritize females, always, first and foremost–if female issues can’t be prioritized in feminism, then where?

It’s totally cool to criticize women for saying stupid privileged stuff but it continuously amazes me that people treat that as as bad or, tbh, way worse than when men are literal outwardly racists and/or misogynists and rapists and abusers. Like, we hold women to a WAY higher standard than we do men. We already talk a lot about how guys get a ton of credit for saying some basic ass thing about thinking women are technically human, but it goes the other way too, in that women can’t get away with ANY infraction without being called slurs and having their appearance attacked by leftists and feminists, and generally vilified instantly. It’s just not something we do to men, and if we do, it’s not until they have literally committed egregious acts of violence. Really liberal/surface “feminism” is annoying but it’s not even on the same planet as the stuff that we don’t give a fuck about men doing

And no this isn’t just about one instance bc I can think of like 100 examples of this

i feel really weird about the word “identify” and how it’s used lately

I feel this. personally I feel like it’s because tumblr/radiqueer/pomo identity discourse seems to hold at the same time an unspoken idea of an individual as completely free to wander in and out of equally completely independent spheres of meaning, and an unspoken idea of an individual as being inherently one thing or another thing on a kind of soul level completely apart from social context, which despite being completely invisible and intangible is more meaningful than their tangible modes of existence.

it’s almost like an atheistic form of gnosticism; the real truth about the self is on a higher plane reachable only through special knowledge, and it is indicative of lesser knowledge to be concerned with things on the physical plane. ‘identify’ indicates your knowledge of your special soul-plane self- in tumblr politics, you could ‘identify’ as being a butch lesbian, and if people point out that in reality you are male, stereotypically effeminate, and you date other men, they are oppressing you and demonstrating their inferior knowledge.

while I believe that my sexuality is an immutable part of my being, I understand myself as a lesbian materially both in terms of my biology (my ‘gay gene’/whatever formative processes wired up my brain to look for hot chicks/who knows but I’m a mammal and my sexuality is what my body does) and in terms of my social positionality. it is a fact about me that other people can empirically determine that I have a girlfriend, that if I did not I would be seeking only to date women, that I dress and style myself in ways indicative of my place in lesbian subculture, etc etc. I am a lesbian because I do lesbian things, because ‘lesbian’ is the word for women who are like me in certain specific ways, not because I 'identify’ as a lesbian.

obviously in some cases there can be disconnects between one’s interior sense of self and one’s positionality, and positionality can shift on micro and macro levels (eg. many butches get mistaken for men in a brief or more sustained manner, moving countries may alter how a person is perceived racially, etc), but to claim that the interior sense and only the interior sense is really true is to ultimately lose all grip on anything on a broader social scale, particularly the ability to do class-based political organising. there’s a reason why there is no real boundary, only a sliding scale, between the 'I identify as queer because I am heterosexual in a slightly unusual way’ crowd and the 'I identify as a gryphon and Daenerys Targaryen is my headmate’ crowd.

tl;dr 'I identify as…’ is basically code for 'I am the worst kind of existentialist’.

why is it too much to ask for trans women to not appropriate womanhood from females

womanhood is a lived experience that comes from having female biology

it’s not make up hair nails and dresses

like what I don’t understand is what’s wrong with just having the identity “trans woman” and having your experience of “transwomanhood” or “transhood” like this would be a great time for trans people to make their own words about their own experience? And wouldn’t that be the actual way to recognize trans women’s experience, since, if we actually do recognize them, they are different from female experiences?

Like I am all for subverting gender and I support males and females not conforming to gender 100% but if you say that adhering to the gender roles associated with a specific sex makes you that sex, then you aren’t subverting those roles you are enforcing them by suggesting those roles are the essence of that sex.

lmao yes trans women and cis women have different experiences obviously, but you’re also implying that trans women aren’t real women and don’t experience real “womanhood” trans women are women and if they are perceived as women in society (“passing”) then they will have many of the same experiences in their “womanhood” as cis women// I’m really getting sick and tired of cis women thinking they are better than transwomen because they have female biology// also please stfu about saying that trans women are enforcing gender roles, transwomen are allowed to be just as expressive in their gender as cis women, some cis women wear makeup and dresses just like some trans women and some cis women have short hair and wear cargo shorts just like some trans women// trans women experience womanhood they are not appropriating that term from cis women so please educate yourself

Nobody used the word “better” but you.

Why do you think trans women have to be considered the same as us to have value?

Why can’t trans women be considered biologically male but transitioned to feminine gender and still have value?

Why do you erase the differences between us instead of recognizing our different lived experiences which are significant? Trans women are trans women, and that’s valid enough to be as it is. They don’t need to appropriate our lived experiences  to be considered “real” and it is shitty of you to promote that.

the whole “its okay to be transphobic bc theyre misogynistic” thing is so callous… like even if you dont care about any males, there are so many girls and trans females stuck in those circles (many in abusive relationships structured to take advantage of the features of that community) and unable to name the misogyny they face. being needlessly cruel about trans issues pushes them further away from real analysis of their lives.

if you want that movement to start unraveling, you need to make an effort to welcome those people here. listen to their questions, try to be understanding. if you really believe its a cult-like environment, keep that in mind when youre talking to them about it. you dont yell at a cult survivor for having shitty politics, call them slurs, or aggressively blame them for being super super wrong about a lot of things.

if ‘cis’ really did just mean “not trans” aka “not dysphoric” then ok. but it connotes so much more than that because so much of trans activism isn’t about support for dysphoric people but about how “fun” gender is and how to “identity however you want” and “explore all gender opportunities” etc etc. and so addressing myself as cis implies that I am complicit in this libfem genderist bullshit discourse and also complicit in my own oppression (as cis women are assumed to stay within their assigned gender role of femininity or else they would be trans, non binary, or genderfluid). while some many genuinely view cis as simply meaning “not dysphoric and therefore not trans”, the trans activist gender ideology has made cis a loaded term that I, and other radfems, refuse to “identify” with. please respect that.

if it just means “not trans” then just say “not trans”. i’m 99.99% sure that even the women who are most against being called “cis” wouldn’t mind being called “not trans” but i guess that would require respecting women’s boundaries and listening when we talk so guess we can’t have that.

they go on and on about how we need to respect their identities and their pronouns and their “womanhood” but the minute we say “don’t call me cis” or “I am a female” they freak out like we’re three headed monsters.

trans people are outliers and it’s okay to acknowledge that! I feel like the original explanation for “cis” was so it wasn’t “normal” and “trans”, but honestly I don’t believe there needs to be any modifier for a non transgender woman/female. transwomens reaction at this stage is just because they have built up this queer mythos of being exactly the same as females and anything that threatens that even in the slightest is responded to with rage and hatred

Things to understand...

tonidorsay:

None of this is done to girls *because they have vaginas*. It is done to girls because they are girls. It is done to women because they are women. And the act of saying that it happens to them because they have vaginas is part of the very system of oppression that also oppresses trans women: the patriarchy, which is what made that call and reinforces that idea.

As Friedrich Engels made clear, even before feminism’s First Wave, women were historically controlled because we are “a means of production”—without women, there are no heirs, and without heirs, no inherited property and wealth.  Women’s reproductive capacity is why we were colonized as property, just as animals, countries, weapons and land was colonized.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been important at all; any thing we could do (cooking, cleaning, sewing clothes) could have been done as well by men (and in the military, it was).  The reason women were oppressed was to control our REPRODUCTIVE ABILITIES.  This does not mean all women had these abilities, but women were assumed to have them until proven otherwise.  (In many religious traditions, a woman’s “barren” status was the only acceptable reason for divorce.)

There can be no other logical, rational basis for women’s oppression; unless you think men were just being “mean” or something.  No, it was for a very real, profit-centered reason.  Men without families and heirs could not build empires (or even working farms) and without this centralized, religiously-sanctioned consolidation of the family, the state could not have evolved.  The state then effectively empowered men to be women’s keepers until very very recently in human history.  

THIS is the origin of women’s oppression.  

So yes, women’s oppression is because of vaginas.  Also: uteri, ovaries, ovum and menstrual cycles.  That is just a fact.  This is what got us consigned to the lower class, and our vulnerability during pregnancy and childbirth is historically what kept us weak and dependent on men.  And this is how patriarchy evolved.  

To write “vaginas” (or other female body-parts necessary for baby-making) out of the history of patriarchy and the evolution of the state, is flatly incorrect.  

It is also anti-feminist, since this account effectively erases the one thing women were allowed to do, the one exception to our limitations:   birthing and raising children.  Anything women dared to do, had to be somehow connected to that.  So, the first women artists and writers were women who painted their children’s portraits; sang their kids songs or made up stories and poems for them; knitted/crocheted/sewed their clothes, created pottery for the family to eat on, etc.  Women’s creativity was harshly limited to domesticity like this, and yet, we found ways to express ourselves regardless.  It is a story of SURVIVAL.  To explain to our daughters (as Virginia Woolf did) why there is no female Shakespeare or Chaucer, is to go back to….. VAGINA.  We were only allowed to have babies and failing that, teach or take care of some other woman’s babies.  Period.  

Because yes, that is the historical reason we were oppressed.  BODIES.  VAGINAS.

I do not want to oppress trans women, but I do not want to erase the history of the SOURCE of women’s oppression.   In your comments and in the comments of certain other Tumblr trans women, I see a continuous attempt to do that.  

Why?  

It is deliberately anti-feminist and seeks to erase women’s history.

Just because you don’t like the existence of vaginas, does not mean that you can rearrange history to make them unimportant.  

Support trans men. Support de-transitioners. Support gender nonconforming women. Support females with body dysphoria. Tumblr in general seems to hate you, especially if you aren’t drinking the pro-gender koolaid, but you are important and awesome and you matter.

let me make this clear

in theory i support sex positive feminism ideology in that sex is not shameful and whatever

however i strongly dislike how far the movement has grown away from this ideology and has become about defending pedophiles and misogynists in the name of combating kink shaming and somehow the notion that stealing your man and riding his dick reverse cowgirl will smash the patriarchy?? still do not understand that

the execution of sex posi feminism is very messy and actually does hurt a lot to girls (including myself) who get caught up in the rhetoric

sixteen year old girls need to be told “no you should not make your sexual debut with this guy six years older than you” rather than “yeah girl get that d you’re so empowered and liberated i support whatever choices you make”

I’m here for the girls who unwillingly consented to sex or sexual acts because they were in a situation where they didn’t feel as if they had the right to say no and now feel violated but don’t feel like they can say they were raped or molested.

this is probably one of the most important text posts i have ever seen because i feel like this is a HUGE issue among teenagers especially young girls in today’s social culture and nobody talks about it. nobody tells you that you were in fact abused and sometimes it takes you years to finally realize what happened to you was wrong, and it’s really scary and confusing! we need to teach each other that “rape” or “molestation” can happen in many circumstances and not just the ones we are taught!!!!

I grew up in a family of only women - just my grandmother, my mom, my sister, and me - and I’m so grateful for it. Especially since my grandmother, my role model, is so strong. No-nonsense, tough, soldiered through a hard life, so clearly aware that lots of the misfortune she went through was because of patriarchy. 

She hated being a woman in this world, and I’m not talking about ~femininity~. It wasn’t lipstick or clothes or being gentle or whatever tumblr associates with being a woman these days. She hated that she - and other women - were treated as second class citizens, that had she been born a century earlier, she would have had her foot binded. She hated how her mother could not read, she hated how she had to help raise her younger siblings while her brothers got to spend their time going to school and learning. She hated that she had to marry, that her husband was unsympathetic to her troubles, that she was responsible for making the money and taking care of the household. 

She hated her oppression, and that oppression had nothing to do with the world not liking femininity or whatnot. All that had happened was that she was born a woman - she was born with a female reproductive system - and her fate was decided for her - to become part of the background for a man, to be a wife, nothing more. She’s pragmatic and practical - she was not good looking, she rarely wore dresses - she was a farmer and worker, she lived through Maoist China, she did not shave or wear makeup. I guess you could say she was ‘masculine seeming’. Mattered not - she was still oppressed. 

It’s my grandmother and her life that I think about when I think about feminism and women’s liberation, and how oppression is sex based, and how true liberation is women, all women, being educated, being assertive, controllers of their own life and fate, never pandering to men or thinking about men at all. Economic independence, political power, everyone living safe and in equality in a non-capitalist world. And I want to help create that world, one in which had my grandmother been born in, she would have shined so brightly.

*Actually, it’s because of my grandmother that I feel I luckily have a different view of gender, in a way. She’s strong, tough, intelligent, kind, scary, she was the boss of the family. She’s materialist, she cared little for consumerism. She told me a woman could do anything a man could do, a woman can be anything a man can be, but history has been holding women down since forever. She set the foundation for my radical feminism. 

thoughts on the friendzone

when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors.  we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards.  he wasn’t the only one.  there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”

i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was

in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face.  we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d turn the lights off during lunch time.  one day they got in a fist fight over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my friendship, like it was something they owned.

in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly.  everyone in the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my friend.

when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that hid hurt behind it.  people didn’t like him because he was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly.  he became my friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around. we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home with the sunset silhouetting us.  he talked often about how he loved me, but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on. that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb cunt.

in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the bus and talked to me about manga.  he’d ask me personal invasive questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked attention.  i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how much of an asshole he was every day.  i wondered, why, why does he think the love of my life is an asshole?  but whenever i asked him, he just told me, “girls only date assholes.  there’s no room for nice guys like me.”

i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?

he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me, you know.  being friendly.  i thought we were friends.  but then, how many times had i thought that before?

how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?

how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”

there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams.  beneath a million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me. then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained about how he’d never get laid.

when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.

i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk about all my favourite games with me.  he was the closest thing to support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind and friendly.  but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come over every day and do it.

“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love you back?  don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”

when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to just say

when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill.  and i’m 18 years old, and i still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.

but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”

they were

“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”

so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so much:

put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex.  that he just wanted her for a relationship.  a girl who was just an object to win, a prize.  a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.

maybe she friendzoned you.  but you girlfriendzoned her, first.

Even if you don’t read it all, read the last sentence. Then you will understand so much about me and other girls.

This blog supports detransitioned people

This post could never have happened a year ago. Even six months ago. Something is changing and my heart is full for all of the womyn who helped make this happen.