My kofi ♡
To add, even back in 2009, there was a push that "bisexuality is transphobic," something that was designed to both attack anyone that dared to think about science (because bisexuality is being able to be attracted to both women and men), and also to wear bisexuals down.
Even on a website where bisexuality was defended, even back in 2009 when that page was published, bisexuality as a sexuality was already massively weakened, where bisexuals were so broken down that they were already tying themselves in knots to not be seen as transphobic.
Bisexuals in general are the absolute worst at defending ourselves and our sexuality, thanks to just how prevalent biphobia is everywhere. It tends to be so much easier for bisexuals to latch onto an entirely different label to try and obfuscate the fact that they're bisexual - both to themselves and others.
What isn't talked about enough is the intersectional bigotry that bisexual women face. A bisexual woman is seen as hypersexual and is presumed to have zero boundaries, so if she dares have any then she's a lying tease who can't be raped because she always wants it, who is both the hateful, lying and homophobic straight woman looking for male attention, but also the closeted self-hating lesbian as soon as she dates a woman and needs to admit to being a lesbian already because denying it is selfish and she needs to think about other lesbians, but if she dates a man after breaking up amicably with a woman, then she suddenly and finally becomes the evil, abusive bisexual lesbophobe that preys on unsuspecting lesbians to use them and deliberately lies to use lesbian culture.
Is it any wonder that bisexuals made up a whole bunch of nonsense labels to avoid accurately being called bisexual, when there's both so much entitlement to our time and bodies purely for existing, and also so much hatred of us?
We talk a lot about how it’s homophobic to tell lesbians that they need to be open to dating males.
But by focusing on on how harmful this is to lesbians, we leave bisexuals behind.
Many trans people have an attitude of “If lesbians/gay men don’t want me, at least bisexuals do.” And that’s just not true, and not fair to bisexuals. It leads to a culture of expecting bisexual women to be okay with any configuration of biological sex, hormonal status, and body parts.
Bisexuals are therefore framed as a group of women who are supposed to be available as a potential partner for anyone who wants them.
So it’s not just homophobic, it’s part of rape culture. Because it aims to teach (mostly) women that they’re not allowed to form their own feelings about their sexuality and their attraction. It teaches women that their sexuality isn’t for them. Their sexuality is a political statement, and there is a right and wrong statement to make.
The fact of the matter is that no one has to date someone they’re not attracted to. No one has to try to develop attraction for someone they’re not innately interested in. No one has to “examine their preferences” when it comes to who they want in their bed. This includes bisexuals.
Yes, women standing up for ourselves does lead to a lot of lonely mtfs who can’t get dates. No, that is not women’s problem.
This affects all of us, but it affects bisexuals in a unique way that’s worth talking more about.
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.
Pedro pascal calling JK Rowling a loser fucking pissed me off so bad and people were praising him (majority women!!!!!). I hate that dude so bad, he's only at this level of fame because he's a man.
I AGREE ‼️‼️🔥🔥🗣🗣🗣
Men have to do the barest minimum of "oho yes people I ALSO think bad thing of the month is bad ☝️" and men as a whole will get the benefit of women screaming and crying and saying he's just so smol and squishable and matureeee (read: father figure).
Honestly whenever a man leans into his public image of being... all of that, I get suspicious 😒 genuinely never failed me yet.
Not all people who identify as trans are "bad."
As a feminist, I feel grief and anger about the girls and women that identify as trans who are really (in no particular order):
Lesbians or bisexuals who hate/fear their same-sex attraction (and are sometimes pushed into a trans identity by parents who hate same-sex attraction)
Autistic (and otherwise neurodivergent) who are made to feel like they "can't be real women" because of it
Suffering with an eating disorder
Traumatised by abuse
Doing the only thing that they think they can to rebel against deeply misogynistic gender roles
Caught by social contagion and fear being ostracised by their peer group if they don't conform to the current fad
As for men, I do pity the boys and men who are gay/bisexual struggling with their same-sex attraction and otherwise go through something similar to the girls and women above, and who feel that they can't be "real men" in some way, so feel forced to adopt a trans label for themselves etc.
The trans people who are inherently bad are the men who "identify as women" for fetishistic, misogynistic and anti-LGB reasons. The straight men who call themselves "lesbians," the straight men that intimidate bisexual women into identifying as lesbians, the men who are desperate to push into female spaces, etc etc etc - the men who, in short, use women of all kinds as nothing but props and objects to validate them and their porn addicted fetish, and the men who prey on vulnerable teens to push them down a trans path for their own sick and twisted pleasures, too.
If you see feminists criticising trans people and immediately identify with the abusive men that gleefully talk about triggering women abuse survivors by forcing their way into women-only crisis centres and fantasising about swinging their vile penises around, or who eagerly push into women's bathrooms hoping to find a woman that they make uncomfortable because it brings them joy, then trust me, that isn't a feminist problem.
As per your response to someone else: if arguing on the internet with women suddenly makes you want women who are sex trafficked - women that have done nothing to you, who are a mere hypothetical to you - to "get raped and die," then yes, you are bad. Personally.
You couldn't even try the "I don't have to care about feminists" point to argue back. Instead, you rushed straight to an abusive, narcissistic "if a feminist doesn't bend the knee, then that means that I'm justified in hating and wishing the worst things on all women, especially the most vulnerable women."
You don't want feminists to care about you. You just want a twisted excuse to continue to hate women.
I'm so utterly baffled as to why women don't want you in our spaces. It truly is the greatest mystery of our time.
TERFs be like “no no, I don’t hate trans people, I’m not transphobic, I just think all trans people are inherently bad!” And it’s like did someone forget to tell the TERFs that that’s literally what transphobia is. Regardless of if you believe you have “reasons” for it.
Genuinely proud of myself for being cigarette-free for an entire year today.
There's been tension between women of different sexualities in feminism from the beginning.
As a bisexual woman, over the years it's made me feel that there's more suspicion of us in feminism because there's this strange belief that bisexuals can turn off part of our sexuality if we want to (which we can't), so if we don't do that then we're traitors or fetishists or something else damaging or harmful, but if we're perceived as being able to turn off part of our sexuality (which again, we aren't), then we're treated with suspicion because what if we decide to turn it back on and betray everyone.
I'm too old and too tired to jump through hoops and beg other women who are supposed to be equally supportive of me and others like me please, please, I'm one of the good bis, I promise! I'll help tear down those evil bi women to prove I'm good! I won't say a thing if there's biphobia, aren't I a good girl?!
The patriarchy already demands enough out of women, and biphobia already damaged me enough when I was younger, I'm not carrying that burden too.
Why is this guy monologuing like he's some sort of edgy anime villain?
To that “trans man” who keeps pestering me; shut up. You were never trans. You were always cis. You were always a TERF. You were born a TERF and will die a TERF. You can never be forgiven even if you try. What you attempt to salvage of your shattered life will be too little too late.
You keep trying to say things to me. But they don’t matter. They don’t matter until you give up TERFism. You don’t matter until you give up TERFism. But you won’t. Because TERFs don’t change. And me keeping you out? Me PROTECTING myself from you? You who pose a fucking threat to all trans people? That’s just natural. Those who hurt the pack are naturally discarded.
Stop acting like a victim. You’re a TERF.
You’re a TERF.
You’re a TERF.
You’re a TERF.
And that’s enough for me to want you dead.
No matter what you try and say or how sweet you try to act.
You’re a TERF.
I'm going to have to read that, thanks so much for the rec!
It's another one of those things where, once you see it, it's everywhere in patriarchy.
The greatest trick of the patriarchy was to teach countless generations of women to be kind.
We can talk about statistics all day long, but the weaponisation of our compassion is what keeps us on our knees.
When we see studies about violence, the immediate reaction is but men can be victims, too, and examples like that are why the false ideas of the patriarchy hurts men, too and feminism is for everybody are so prevalent. Women have been so broken down by generations upon generations of manipulation through be kind that is feels wrong, that it feels psychologically painful to centre ourselves.
Instead of women being able to come together and fight for our rights as one, this malicious forced compassion makes us sideline and silence ourselves, with the reward being tricked into feeling like I'm a good and selfless person. When women dare to centre ourselves and put ourselves first reasonably, then we're gaslit into believing that we're being selfish, cruel and even violent, and when other women snap and snarl, tired of our treatment, then they're entirely dismissed as being any modern version of hysteric.
Men like to hide behind the idea that we're the manipulative ones that psychologically damage, but without a thousand generations of men reinforcing that we should think again and actually have kindness and compassion for others, women as a whole would be able to see through the blinders of oppression.
After all, to be anti-prostitution has been reframed as hating sex workers.
Fighting against systemic violence and rape against women is ignoring male victims and supporting female perpetrators.
Protecting female-only spaces is excluding a vulnerable minority's right to exist.
Few ordinary women want to be made to feel like they're hateful or cruel. As soon as we talk about women's issues, examples of individual men are brought up, and women are tricked into talking about them by either proving how kind we are ("of course I don't want anyone to be raped, male victims deserve help!") to distract us from our issues and re-centre men again, or women dismiss that obviously malicious call for compassion ("feminism isn't about men, sort your own issues out!") and then men use it as a reason as to why feminism is evil, because anything without kindness and compassion is wrong.
Women need to be taught that it's not unkind to put ourselves first, and that men use our compassion against us.
In feminism, our kindness and compassion must be reserved for our fellow women.
Women can be kind and compassionate to men in their private lives if they want, but that isn't part of feminism - and they need to be reminded that they won't get that kindness and compassion returned.
The mountains stand guard, the river tells tales, and the trees listen.