Monsteradarling - Deliciously Monstrous

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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.

Mount Holyoke College students at pride in Northampton, MA in 1989. via mhlyonspride

gay men are not discriminated against because they're gay. they're hated because being attracted to men is seen as a feminine trait, and our society sees being a woman as shameful.

men, no matter their sexuality, are not oppressed.

gay men are not the victim.

I saw a post asking about whether there was a woman or women in your life that changed your view about misogyny in society, or made you realise that women needed feminism, and I immediately thought of my abusive mother, the woman that gave me the CPTSD that I still struggle with.

She was the one that gaslighted me to avoid apologising for something that she had done wrong, but cried and apologised to my brother.

Where I was abused, my brother was excused, and when he stood by me and supported me, that was still my fault, and I was punished for it.

She was the one that eagerly bragged about being supportive of gay men, but was quick to share how disgusted she was by bisexuals, particularly bisexual women, and lesbians.

She was the one who screamed and beat me if I ever tried to stand up for myself, but when my brother stood up to her, she beat me again for not telling him to stop - and then absolved him of his words by deciding that he had been possessed by the ghost of her own abusive mother.

I was the one broken down and trapped into being a carer and homekeeper to take care of the family, and gaslit into believing that I was lucky to be able to be able to do that in the first place.

Feminism doesn't absolve women of their crimes. I'm glad that she's dead and gone and won't forgive her memory. But that wasn't random abuse. I was treated much worse than how she treated my brother and her husband because I was a girl and then a woman. She quite literally deluded herself to create excuses for my brother to forgive him and attack me. Even though she abused them, too, it was still nothing compared to what happened to me. The abuse had misogyny baked all the way through it.

I can't blame her for hating women, considering the patriarchy around us and other personal circumstances where she learned that hatred, and understanding just how strong and ingrained misogyny is, but I will blame her for her choice to abuse, because it was a choice. I think that sometimes, there's a belief that feminism means needing to protect or defend every single woman, even the most disgusting and evil women, and that isn't true at all. Evil women deserve liberation. No woman, whatever she does, deserves rape or abuse or oppression. What they deserve is to face true justice instead.

So yes, a woman made me rethink misogyny around me and the need for feminism, just not in the way that others would expect.

I knew it was a TIF because there was a mention of "trans men" in there and wanting to reject the actual use of the word "woman," but I wasn't prepared for the self-satisfied, smug pose on her actual Yale page.

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Actual dystopian level sick this is. Legitimately floored. What the actual fuck.

“”I argue that pregnancy is not to be defined by biological phenomena but instead as a genre of political, aesthetic, and affective experience and expectation. As a multidimensional genre of experience, rather than merely a biological datum, pregnancy can potentially establish a shared ground between trans and cis women. Pregnancy is an existential experience involving birth and becoming in a larger sense. We need a more all-encompassing notion of pregnancy””

Pregnancy is not a haha fun little inclusive to all club. Are you fucking kidding me.

At midnight last night I came up with a concept: an adaptation of The Little Mermaid where the underwater world is in a stark black and white shadow puppet art style, while the human world is in vivid colorful stained glass? I may paint more of this for Mermay!

"is xyz rape, is abc rape" is just the wrong way to approach discussing rape as a feminist. what you're doing when you're concerned about absolute parameters is centering what we should consider allowable by men. why center that. it's not that "everything" is rape, it's that you need to completely shift your paradigm. you need to consider what it means for women to move in a world where their sexual violation is essentially a given and up for negotiation. what does discussing rape actually look like when completely, one hundred percent centering the experiencing and feelings of violated women and completely disregarding what would be helpful for men to think is "only so bad."