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!
I might be being too cynical, but when I hear about male NBs, I immediately think that they're a predator of some sort instead of anything else, purely because of that pornsickness. Because no straight men have had any territory stepped on by any gender nonsense, I don't think I believe that any men have been gaslit into the gender koolaid like women have. I could be wrong, but I keep thinking that every single male genderist knows exactly who to wish rape against.
If you’re ever feeling insecure about your intelligence just remember there are males out there who call themselves bisexual because they’re attracted to females and trans-identified females
i'm so happy that we're in this together!
your sexuality is valid.
your attraction to males is valid
your attraction to women is valid
and you have every right to be upset about being stereotyped as a whore- as unfortunate as us bisexuals are labled.
you do not need to change your sexuality for ANYONE.
you have EVERY FUCKING RIGHT TO REJECT WHOEVER YOU WANT!
just because tras say that 'you're biesxual! you are attracted to both sexes that means you'll be attracted to me!' doesn't matter at all. YOU DATE WHO YOU WANT TO DATE!
you absolutely deserve the company of people that respect you for being bisexual. that don't try to force you into the gay or straight role
and you absolutely deserve to be around people that love you for who you are and won't try to change you because of that <3
i love you <3
from one bisexual radfem sister to another
Waddesdon Manor
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.
Genuinely proud of myself for being cigarette-free for an entire year today.
my professor spent our entire seminar whining about how there’s too many girls in our group and not enough boys. he was like “i’m not saying women can’t be good surgeons but we need more men” no, we don’t. men suck. deal with it.
Like Velvet...
Bristol, Vermont
"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."
Seven Falls, Santa Barbara 𖦹 April 2025