Meanwhile, Maya Forstater Was Investigated By The Police For 15 Months Over Criticising A TIM Doctor

Totally agree, and I would also argue that connecting with other women is the most important first step. Actually taking time to build up the care and empathy for other women is huge. The patriarchy constantly pits woman against woman to prevent us from working together.

You can give up the makeup, love your body hair, abandon the need for male acceptance or approval - but if you don't teach yourself to care for other women, and give other women grace, and understand female socialisation, then all you're doing is partially freeing your physical self while upholding the patriarchy elsewhere.

Considering that the patriarchy also wants to crush us so that we're always kind to men and hyper critical of other women, centring women and actually saving that kindness for other women trains us to be kinder to ourselves, too, which builds our confidence and empowers us to stand up even taller against men.

It's admirable if one day, you can wake up and completely deprogram yourself from misogyny and the patriarchy in one go but it's also OK if:

You start wearing less makeup or wearing makeup less often rather than completely stopping

You start to let your body hair grow a little longer before shaving instead of never letting it grow more than stubble

You stop making new male friends but keep the ones that you have

You share resources online about community efforts before helping in person

You disengage from conversations where casual misogyny or full blown misogyny is used rather than challenging it

Everyone starts somewhere. We don't all have the ability to change our lives completely overnight.

But you have to put in the work to do more and get out of your comfort zone. Women's liberation doesn't happen if we all just do the minimum.

It's a good place to start but you have to learn how to push yourself to do more.

Shine through...

Middlebury, Vermont

"But some women fantasise about sexy priests!"

Those women imagine attractive men wearing ordinary priest clothes. There isn't some obvious and acceptable g-string with a priest's collar around it swapped in. The fantasised priests are just... attractive, romanticised priests.

The whole point of nuns being sexualised, as far as I understand it, is the transgressing of boundaries (as above), the male obsession with owning and touching and fucking an underlined-capitalised-bolded virgin, and/or their need to fantasise that those pious nuns will take one look at that one specific man and suddenly turn into a nymphomaniac for him.

Maybe the message was "Ha, I'm not straight like religion tells me I should be! This is me being sexy and breaking free!" but it just underlines what men want anyway and upholds that the likes of nuns are some minor, sexy taboo for men.

Nothing is or can be subverted when it's sexualised, because the only message that men understand is I can jerk off to this.

Re: Chappell Roan’s nun stuff and the sexualization of nuns

I do not think a religion itself is owed any kindness or respect. I don’t think the misogynistic practices of these religions are sacred or deserve to be treated as though they’re immune from criticism and mockery.

However, I also do understand that nuns and similar religious roles are held by women who don the outfit and play the role because they have a commitment to their religion that includes sexual purity (whether brainwashed or not… though probably brainwashed a bit). I think the sexual mockery of a woman or a group of women who indicate their desire to not be seen sexually is weird. I believe even religious women are owed respect for their sexual boundaries. And the main fetish surrounding sexualizing nuns is that it is a clear violation of sexual boundaries and consent. That is the part that needs to be understood. The sexualization of nuns is because it is enticing to cross the set sexual boundaries of a woman. And the woman being religious can either add to the fetish (in the eyes of men) or it can be a defense against criticism, i.e. “I thought we hated Christianity but nuns are somehow off-limits?” (‘Religion-critical’ leftists).

I just don’t agree with the premise. I truly do think it’d be a whole different scenario if it were a religious role being sexualized that wasn’t about sexual purity. If that makes sense. Like the issue with the nun sexualization is that the whole fetish surrounding sexy nuns is that it is sexualizing a woman who doesn’t want to be sexualized. If it wasn’t a nun, but it was a random female celebrity who was being highly sexualized after she made it clear she didn’t want to be sexualized, I’d say the same thing.

Does this make sense? I’m at urgent care rn and im struggling to focus

gyns I am deeply ashamed of you, and exceedingly disappointed

why did none of you tell me that India Willyboy said he was ABDUCTED BY ALIENS AND EXPERIMENTED ON

I guess if you believe a man can become a woman you can believe anything

The internet is amazing for unlearning what the patriarchy has taught us to be automatic. It's even better to practice personal feminism.

Because we're online, we can take a step away and analyse our thoughts if we feel angry, disappointed or disgusted at another woman. We have the ability to pause and not hate the woman that sneers at feminism, but feel grief for her and understand why she rejects it.

When we catch ourselves lashing out at other groups of women, the internet gives us the opportunity to work through those negative emotions and remind ourselves that patriarchy pits us against each other on purpose.

It's an incredibly powerful tool to use. Where else can we finally learn how to personally dislike another woman, to hate her views or wish that she was better educated, but not blame her for countless generations of patriarchy and still genuinely hope that she grows, succeeds, lives well, is happy and, most of all, safe? Where else is the space that allows us to go through the negatives to come out the other side, even when it's hard, without harming another woman?

In this space, where feminists will most likely agree on 90% of issues, there's still anger and infighting and backbiting thanks to the misogynistic female socialisation that tells us that nobody hates women more than other women, and that misogyny carrying on to think that other women want to trip you up or are readying themselves to attack to tear you down.

Men aren't thinking about how best to free women. We have to do that ourselves. Do you honestly think we can even come close to dismantling even one small section of patriarchy if we haven't learned to actually stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other women?

If you can't support and uplift and care for other women even in the same space with the same general ideals as you, how do you think you're going to be able to support and uplift and care for the women that hate everything that feminism stands for and promotes everything that feminism stands against? How are you going to be patient and understanding enough to teach her? How are you going to avoid victim-blaming her if she ends up being hurt?

That's why the internet is so useful. We can learn to dislike other women and step away from other women for our own sanities if we need to, we can understand that we will never be able to be best friends with every other woman, we can criticise other women and hold other women to account for their actions, but with this curated space and time to think, not being face-to-face, we can start the process of genuinely caring for every single woman anyway - especially the ones that we dislike the most.

I'd argue that that is the most important activism that feminists can do right now, the one that has to happen first before patriarchy can actually be ripped apart the way that it needs to be.

Feminism is in trouble. Underneath a veneer of supporting women, there's too much navel-gazing over which women deserve to be protected and which women deserve to be blamed and hated.

Misogyny is the oldest form of bigotry. It is the original form of oppression. Cultures from around the world, across time, decided that women were inferior so that men could control, rape and abuse, all in isolation.

Intersectionality is important for feminism, because misogyny is so entrenched into all sorts of different societies that it also is entrenched into every other form of bigotry, too. Every woman that happens to be part of a different oppressed group too has specific extra examples of specific misogyny that she faces because of that intersection.

That begs the question: can misogyny even be erased before every other kind of bigotry and hatred is erased? Or can no other form of bigotry be erased until misogyny is defeated?

It's interesting just how intersectionality has both the power to bring all women together of all different female lived experiences - but also the power to ensure that there can never be any form of class consciousness for women at all.

How can there be class consciousness and solidarity for all women when there are both white women that gloss over black women's lived experiences at one end, and then lesbians who victim-blame straight women for the abuse they receive at the hands of male romantic partners on the other?

Actual feminism is incredibly hard. Actual feminism means supporting and advocating for all women, not just women you like. It means offering a hand to women who have previously spat at you, or hated and abused you. Women who have been misogynistic or who promoted misogyny. Women that you otherwise (even rightly) hate. It means women who are oppressed in other ways, too, standing shoulder to shoulder with women who are part of oppressor classes because we're all women.

Especially in online spaces, it seems like the bar to be a feminist is to hate men, maybe prioritise and care for some groups of women (aside from using all women as statistics to justify hating men to focus on men again), and, if lucky, possibly a few scan-reads of some foundational texts, and then that's good enough to become a sudden shield to use so that it becomes safe again to make up some new misogynistic slurs. So that it's acceptable to understand that female socialisation is the cause for some anti-feminist behaviours, but it's all those evil women's faults and their free choices to attack and hate others depending on the narrative.

It's obvious that in online spaces, so many that describe themselves as "feminist" come from TRA spaces, because they have hierarchies of women in mind, fuck you, [identity label] woman, stupid fucking handmaiden, you get what you fucking deserve. It's just a remapping of prioritising men to prioritising certain women, like feminism is a new religion instead of a difficult movement with difficult and uncomfortable inner work, even before that has to translate to offering actual solidarity to all women that isn't just lip service.

If you call yourself a feminst, be honest with yourself: are you actually a feminist, or do you just like how the title sounds?