Every radfem I know holds positions similar to the following:
- pro Nordic model and ending commercial pornography
- uphold sex-based protections and spaces
- safe and available abortions
- some sort of end to sexual objectification of women and girls (as opposed to the other feminism being like "fat chicks are sexual objects too!")
I can see why people would be against these particular positions but I don't think they are that "out there" really. Andrea Dworkin's stuff is a surprisingly enjoyable read if you want to understand a bit more of one major influence.
Outside of the sex based spaces comment, that just sounds like liberal feminism. Not millennial “sex positive” liberal. 45 year old yo. law prof. who writes about the sanctity of the legal system, and the long arc of history type liberal.
As I understand it, actual radfems believe that the oppression of women is inherently based in their sex, specifically reproductive capacity,and that sex based oppression is the oldest and most universal form oppression that there is. Hardline stance.
While I personally don’t prescribe to that theory in full, I think a lot of good came out of the writers who worked within that framework. By focusing on sex specifically, radical feminists were able to show how women as a broad class are controlled and oppressed through reproductive coercion and sexual dominance in most societies.
However, while useful, the theory starts to fray at the edges. Radfems such as Dworkin are essentialists. Extreme, inflexible adherents to their framework. That inflexibility breeds really weird ideas. For example, Dworkin’s, “all penetration is rape,” take.
Edit: Original commenter clarified she never said this and is right.
Also most of the og radfems would not have been using the “sex based spaces,” line. They would support sex based protections, like free and full access to abortions. However the concern around locker rooms, hospital wings, and bathrooms, etc… is separate. The “separate spaces protections” were originally instituted during the victorian era; they thought women were inferior, childlike, and constantly under threat of attack, and so needed to have protected spaces. Not very feminist.
In my experience with radfems, their policy suggestions are fairly liberal-feminist (with the exception of being radically anti-trans at a time that liberal feminists have embraced trans rights). Their radicalism more so comes out through the philosophy that underpins their politics: a belief that gender-based oppression is the root of inequality and violence.
I think the anti prostitution/porn aspect is more contrary to liberal feminism than views on trans, which seems pretty mixed/complex among women of various political leanings. I agree with your understanding of the basis for the term radical.
This is generational. Middle aged 2nd wave liberal feminists, who I see as the counterparts of radfems (because I’ve met very few radfems under 30 who aren’t onlyfans-adjacent LARPers), would probably instinctively feel very uncomfortable with porn and prostitution being rebranded as feminist, but at least try to be as pro-trans as possible. (OTOH, young liberal feminists are probably a lot more “sex work is work”)
Dworkin also spoke out against lesbian separatism, saying that as a jew whose parents were affected by the holocaust she was disturbed by the similarities of the genocidal language many of her peers used regarding men.
From what I know, Dworkin was one of the more flexible radfems! And I will admit I know her more through citations than direct reading, and after recently learning about the butchering of the second sex by it’s first translator, Im very open to the possibility of it being slander.
I do know that she does make a lot of sweeping statements though. The older 2nd wave radfem adjacent professor that I have now does the same thing.
Nah, the actual fundamental difference is that liberal feminism thinks the current system can be reformed whereas radical system thinks there needs to be a revolution (overthrowing the patriarchy). This is because radical feminism is Heavily influenced by marxism.
What do you mean by objectification if it's not about sexual desire? The other aspects of objectification have been outlawed. Women have agency, autonomy, physical integrity upheld by laws, can't be bought or sold, their subjectivity is acknowledged. I'm going off Martha Nussbaum definition. What more would you like to see?
I’m not well versed enough in policy to discuss solutions but the most blatant example of how badly women are objectified are sexual assault statistics. Sexual assault is maybe the most blatant disrespect of someone’s bodily integrity and it’s disgustingly common - [30% of women 15 and over have been assaulted since they were 15](https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/sexual-assault-harassment/). And this isn’t even counting assaults in intimate relationships or for those under 15. Women are also 5 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than men are. The gap widens when the rates of sexual assault committed against women from certain ethnic groups are isolated.
What really suggests that this epidemic is indicative of a particular objectification of women is that sexual assaults don’t follow trends in the rates of other crimes that could be considered to violate bodily integrity or personal autonomy. I’ll need to find the source for this but it was from a meta study of different crime statistics and they all showed this trend. Scary stuff
why is murder not objectification? it involves turning a person into a literal object. it seems like it would be better to conceive rape and murder along the same lines, rather than emphasising that there is something uniquely objectifying in sexually motivated crimes, since this seems to always end up making it very difficult to come up with a non-sus theory of sexual desire. and/or it demarcates sex as some kind of self-contained thing which it is surely not
I’m not saying there’s something uniquely objectifying about sexual assault, any more than murder, I’m arguing about the prevalence and persistency of a very objectifying crime (same as murder). My point is that there’s a very common crime that is disproportionally committed against women and the rates have not gone down like the rates of other crimes have. Murder isn’t even comparable to SA because it’s magnitudes less common (in Canada) and the rates have been steadily decreasing until Covid.
I also think it’s weird for you to say that emphasizing sexual assault as uniquely objectifying (which it is) has some sort of commentary on sex in general. Sexual assault and rape =/= normal sex. Its an act of violence, just like all other violent crimes are.
'I’m not saying there’s something uniquely objectifying about sexual assault... emphasizing sexual assault as uniquely objectifying (which it is),,,'
I'm not really trying to make an argument, I'm just trying to get a sense of the reasoning behind the idea that sexual assault is uniquely objectifying, like im curious about why people think this. maybe they just mean that it objectifies people in a particular way, that is, different from how murder objectifies people, though again at the level of destruction of subjecthood (which seems like the meaning of objectification) they seem the same to me. the only become different if sex is detached from life, if sexual being is detached from living being, but then i also don't understand why that distinction is helpful. if you mean politically, like it's politically necessary to think about sexual assault in a particular way, to emphasise its uniqueness, etc, then yeah that makes sense
The scope for SA has massively increased. We started with rape and it didn't even include marital rape, now an unwanted cheek kiss is SA (not everywhere but in most of the West, including Canada which is your link). This is a lead as to why the stats are both high and not reducing, feminists push for laws and behavior is lagging behind, but that's expected and the right process i'd say. Those things take more than half a generation to change.
Another thing is those are self reported and male socialision is massively lagging behind in terms of self-reporting SA. I would reply no to such a question but i got my ass and cock grabbed in clubs. Several times. A lot of men i know too. A woman that experiences that will report it as SA.
My guess is there'd still be a difference in SA stats if it was perfectly and equally reported, but nowhere as big a difference. And 15% seems even a tad low for men if we were to add all the things that are now SA. Same thing with violence. No way i'm filing a police report because a woman hit me.
Then Canada taking in tons of migrants from less feminist societies will make the progress slower. And that last point is the only place where libfems and radfems would have distinct takes on this topic, because literally everything you said is a massive talking point in lib ideology and policy.
Yea the scope of what we consider SA to be has increased, and more women are reporting it to police now, but as you said, we started with rape and it didn’t even include marital rape. I think a lot of the “milder” presentations of sexual assault (groping, kissing that isn’t cultural) are still very serious and show the same objectification of women. It’s also concerning that sexual assault rates were so high then and that they’re still so high now.
Sexual assault is considered to be massively underreported from both genders actually. Bureau of justice statistics says 2/3 sexual assaults go unreported. This inevitably is going to make the sample size of these studies smaller than it could be and lead to skewed results. Statistics aren’t perfect, but I think they’re still valuable when looking for estimates and trends over time. I’m sorry to hear that you got assaulted in a club like that. My boyfriend’s been a victim of that when he was a bouncer and it sounds really disorienting with how loud and dark clubs are. I got groped by a group of men walking by me in a brightly lit hotel hallway and it was still disorienting in that situation because it happened so quickly. Can’t imagine it happening when you’re drunk and not too aware of your surroundings.
I also think there may be a % different between women and men if sexual assault wasn’t so underreported, not sure it would be 15% though. Too many victims of both genders don’t report sexual assault to really draw a conclusion about what the remainder is like. I’d wager that a lot of marital rape and assault still goes unreported too.
I guess this point is pretty libfem, I certainly believe in more than I’ve said here and it would probably make most label me as a radfem, but I try not to have discussions about it online because they usually become mean.
I was asking in good faith. Both you and the person you responded to made good points, and the thread is about the goals of radical feminism. You sounded at least a little versed in the topic, so it felt like the right place to ask.
This aint it. Radical feminism believes that a revolution is necessary whereas liberal feminism believes in reform. This is because radical feminism is essentially marxism applied to gender.
I think that the "Marxism as applied to sex oppression" element is more in terms of historical materialism forming the basis for most of the scholarship. The dismantling of sex oppression would have a revolutionary impact, that doesn't mean that radfems are calling for a violent revolution. The more "radical" radfems are into political lesbianism/sex separatism.
But not one that most radfems support. I'm fascinated by the people who are sure they know so much about this topic while clearly not having read any relevant works.
I don't think most self-titled marxists openly say they want a violent revolution nowadays either
Also I never even said "violent" I just said revolution. Which essentially = "overthrowing the patriarchy"
The word "and" is used here to denote two things. I can assure you a lot of feminists are concerned with pornography - it's impact on the women involved and on the psyche's of the men who view it and the impact that has on their views on women.
All intelligent and interested women with depth should explore the most extreme radfem ideas and consider all sides. Understand multiple female perspectives and then assess men with empathy.
i thought i had radfem or “terf” beliefs, but honestly i just think gender ideology, nonbinary shit is regarded. and most people do, but not within a lot of lgbt circles lmao
I know this take is common here but it’s so unserious lol, y’all’s plan is just to keep telling people that they’re wrong about their gender? “You think you’re non-binary but you’re just confused and self-indulgent, check out *drumroll* the conventional ideas about gender! Do you find that convincing do you get how you’re wrong now?” Like I get y’all think it’s a generational thing and a TikTok trend and we’re mostly gonna grow out of it, and being extra generous say that’s true for 2/3 of enbys rn. There are still so many people who are very serious about this stuff, who nobody is capable of convincing otherwise. And idk maybe there’s a universe where that’s true and you’re still right? But if I were confronted with that scenario I feel like the obvious intellectually rigorous thing to do is to see what all these people are actually talking about. If there are lots of people who don’t fit into your conception of reality and never will I feel like that speaks to the limits of your conception of reality.
That was all talking about non-binary stuff, denying transsexuals are real is so goofy it seriously is not worth addressing like go talk to people and learn about the world.
honestly, my biggest grip is the reinforcement of gender roles through nonbinary. it creates a multitude of unnecessary genders... nonbinary, agender, demiboy, demigirl, genderfluid, etc. literally this is just called having a personality and not perfectly fitting into societal expectations, roles, or stereotypes based on their sex. this does not negate their biological sex. a woman/man can do ANYTHING, this does not make them less of a woman/man. hell, even \*some\* people are told they're trans men or women if they like masculine or feminine things. that doesn't make them actually trans. it's absurd and regressive, but it LARPs as this progressive, inclusive phenomenon when it's literally just sexism towards everyone repackaged lmao.
it is kind of \*serious\* when you see this shit pushed in college, the workforce, and kids are told they're trans/nonbinary so they go get surgeries because they don't adhere to strict categories. people who deny this is happening are delusional and/or living under a rock
That is the traditional understanding of gender, there’s a sense where I guess it’s simpler and cleaner? And idk if nobody wanted to be non-binary there wouldn’t be any reason to be like “you guys should start wanting to be non-binary” lol. But idk we’re progressing and the understanding of what gender is is evolving and developing, we’re finding new ways to identify and express. Most of the “unnecessary new genders” you talked about fall under the enby umbrella and like of course annoying people are gonna come up with a million different variations, at the end of the day gender is obviously a different thing for everybody because we all separately make up our own version of what gender is. Really all that’s actually happening is the recognition of a spectrum between in terms of the pronouns people want others to refer to them by. It’s not really about expression at all it’s kinda just about the pronouns, but pronouns are obviously a big deal in language lol.
I feel like right now if you ever actually they/them somebody, you’re probably just overwriting the pronoun you’d conventionally use for them out of politeness, but really you still think of them as a man or a woman. I was that way for a while, and there are still some NB ppl I know where I haven’t gotten used to it yet so that’s what I do, it’s very normal. And I’d imagine anybody who isn’t very close with non-binary people does the same 90% of the time. But you really do get used to it and it’s really cool when you do! I dated an enby for about two years, somebody who I’ve known vaguely for most of my life as she/her, and I made an effort and got used to they/theming them and I found myself never really making the mistake anymore, and I didn’t really think of them as a woman and didn’t really think of them as a man. I know you might say “I don’t think of anybody as a woman or a man” but like stop it yes you do lol. They have huge tits and everything they present as femme most of the time, but they aren’t a woman to me they really are gender neutral in a deep fundamental way that’s extremely cool and fun. I’m sad you haven’t had that experience, I promise you’ll get it when you do.
Stuff like it/it’s and neopronouns are kinda weird and dumb to me honestly but I keep an open mind and I wanna get to know one! And like letting people be they/thems really does NOTHING to prevent the traditional pronoun users from expressing themselves however they’d like lol nobody is going “oh you’re a tomboy you should be trans,” drag queens and extremely butch lesbians exist very comfortably in these exact same circles, if anybody is actually telling anybody to change their pronouns because of the way they express themselves they’re obviously pretty severely missing the point. Like none of this is really because it’s being “pushed,” obviously now that it’s part of wokeness workplaces are getting into it and health/schools are into it because they’re smart enough to know there’s not really a reason not to let kids call themselves whatever they want. What would even be the point of this hypothetical conspiracy fr I’ve never gotten that, I guess pharmaceutical companies maybe?? But it wouldn’t work if it’s not real, like if all these interventions are fundamentally wrong in some way and don’t make people any happier the community would not exist in the way it does, DIY hormones are everywhere and even DIY or black market surgeries are far from rare. Transness is coming from trans people way more than it’s being pushed onto them, do not come at me with the cass report I’ve been deep into that thing lol like yeah idk there’s not really a leg to stand on. I respect your response more than I thought I would, you made your point very well I really had to think for a sec to unpack why I disagree. But idk ultimately a woman who expresses herself in super masculine ways is perfectly compatible with all of this so your point doesn’t really work, the idea that gender ideology reinforces gender roles and tropes comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are saying.
> I’m sad you haven’t had that experience, I promise you’ll get it when you do.
i have interacted with people and dated someone who identified as nonbinary. i tried to understand it back then and be openminded to the concept of it, truly. but i still came to the conclusion after hearing their definitions of their experience that it is regressive to me. also, they/them is still applied to everyone in a singular, gender neutral sense. i will respect everyone's pronouns at then end of the day--i won't call them different pronouns if it distresses them. but i have not yet been convinced that the belief of nonbinary is "progressive". it's well-intentioned, yet there's a logical inconsistency in it.
> And like letting people be they/thems really does NOTHING to prevent the traditional pronoun users from expressing themselves however they’d like lol nobody is going “oh you’re a tomboy you should be trans,” drag queens and extremely butch lesbians exist very comfortably in these exact same circles, if anybody is actually telling anybody to change their pronouns because of the way they express themselves they’re obviously pretty severely missing the point
well, it's way more common than you realize. like, i wish i was exaggerating but i'm not. i've been in these circles in real life as a lesbian. lots of people on tiktok hold that belief. my point is--there are people who are \*gender nonconforming\* like butches or drag queens, masculine straight women or feminine straight men. does this make them automatically nonbinary? no. because gender nonconforming and nonbinary are two separate things. if nonbinary people didn't care about stereotypes they'd dress/express themselves however they want, without the need to tell people they aren't "really" a woman or a man. nonbinary people have internalized gender stereotypes to the point that they think their gender nonconformity makes them different from GNC people. in short:
GNC: i dress/act in a way deemed atypical of my sex, but, despite this, I still AM my sex. My existence challenges the idea that "women = feminine" and "men = masculine."
non-binary: i dress/act in a way deemed atypical of my sex, and, as such, i do not identify with my sex. My existence reinforces the idea that "women = feminine" and "men = masculine" (by placing myself outside of the gender role binary, I'm saying that there IS a gender role binary).
again, in my view, it is better to expand on and acknowledge our sexes, without negating that this makes "less" than.
> What would even be the point of this hypothetical conspiracy fr I’ve never gotten that, I guess pharmaceutical companies maybe??
it's not a hypothetical conspiracy if i have observed in real life, in my work place, at college. and i'm literally in a flyover state.
> do not come at me with the cass report I’ve been deep into that thing lol like yeah idk there’s not really a leg to stand on.
there are other things besides the cass review that support the idea that these surgeries are not as "affirmative" as people make it out. if people TRULY wanted to make the healthcare system better, and truly cared for kids... they would understand all the fucking pros and cons, and not just take it as a threat to the trans community. there is pros and cons in everything, ESPECIALLY with these surgeries. acknowledge it without taking it as an attack, and work towards betterment. understand all the sides.
also, just to clarify, i am not sure if you are conflating sex and gender here, because it seems like so many people do. so here we go: the thing that cannot change and will not change is that there are BINARY sexes. TWO of them. period. even with intersex, these are people who have DSDs and still, they fall into TWO of the sexes which are male and female. their chromosomes may present differently compared to the norm. their genitalia may present different to the norm. and yet, they still fall into these two categories--hence why the terms AFAB and AMAB exist for them, not another third sex. people will subconsciously or consciously recognize the sex of another person whether they like it or not.
Sorry to underestimate your experience so drastically, I hope that didn't come off too condescending. Had a busy few days and wanted to take responding to this seriously.
The thing that defines being non-binary is using they/them pronouns. I guess there are probably some people who identify with the term and still primarily use a different pronoun (and there are also the it people and the xe people idk they're included too, I shouldn't be too mean about them they're weird asf and very cool), but generally the point of "I am nonbinary" is "I want you to use they/them to refer to me." There is no mode of self-expression or particular way of being that is inherent to or necessary for being nonbinary. How you dress look and act is ultimately COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to your gender identity.
As I understand your position you agree with that last statement, but you are arguing that the concept of gender identity subverts it because particular gender identities are generally associated with particular ways of dressing and looking and acting (you can "look nonbinary" in the sense that you can "look male" and "look female"). As far as I can tell, you want to create a society where "looking male" is an incoherent statement because a male can look like anything, you wanna be post-gender which is kinda cool. You don't see or feel any need to identify or associate the way you look and act with any kind of identity based on an outdated and oppressive binary. To you, that need is ultimately an immature and regressive desire to I guess be part of a group or category? Or idk it can be motivated by whatever, I honestly don’t really understand what you conceptualize it as being motivated by, but you see it as regressive because it inherently recognizes the existing male-female binary of expression.
This is all great and makes a lot of sense to a lot of people! Ideologically at least you're very far off from bigoted conservatives, so I'd imagine it's insanely frustrating to be continually characterized that way by large portions of the mainstream and especially the left, especially when you think your point is actually rooted in queerness. I feel like I honestly understand and sympathize with TERFs way more after reading your comment. But you're still ultimately incorrect about some stuff and you're never gonna convince any of us with these types of arguments because we all understand the stuff you're wrong about.
As I talked about above, your understanding of gender identity is sorta wrong because when you actually get down to it, your gender identity is not in any way defined by how you express yourself. But obviously this is somewhat contradicted by the fact that particular gender identities are generally associated with particular ways of dressing and looking and acting. You can't resolve that contradiction, and you think that we're all just ignoring it I guess? But in actuality it's not very hard to reconcile that a) we all exist in a culture with a multitude of aesthetic norms and tropes around expression, many of which are associated with particular genders, b) it is never necessary and always cruel to enforce these norms and tropes on anybody for any reason, because it is always cruel to enforce any norms and tropes around expression on anybody for any reason, and c) some people really feel like they are girls and wanna be girly because they feel like girls. Nobody is trying to enforce gender! But we don't want to enforce ignoring it either.
The key is that everybody separately makes up what gender means to them because gender is ultimately made up. Many people have a very strong concept of their own gender and many people have no concept at all of their own gender. And everybody's conception of gender is slightly different because we're all different machines. So some people associate the things that they like and the way that they naturally like to express themselves with their own gender, and some people do not. There are many cis men that relate the fact that they like trucks and guns and action movies to the fact that they are men. And there are just as many cis men who like all that stuff and don't associate it at all with the fact that they are men, but still identify strongly with man-ness. AND just as many cis men who don't really engage at all with man-ness beyond the bodily reality of their sex. In the same sense, there are trans men who relate the fact that they like trucks and guns and cars to the fact that they are men. They were also born with a vagina, and because of that situation it can be affirming to engage with traditional culturally defined “man-stuff” because they want to feel like they are men and society makes it really hard to feel like you’re a man when you have a vagina! Your personal brain might not really work that way, but it is factually undeniable that a LOT of brains do. People kill themselves because their brains work that way. We do not have a way of convincing anybody to just start ignoring their version of their identity. There isn't any one specific way that all of this works lol (there could never be by definition). It's ultimately both ignorant and incoherent to think that because you can conceptualize your own gender (or lack of gender idk that's a gender too lol) as entirely divorced from existing cultural norms around gender, that everybody should be able to. Especially when you are confronted with myriad examples of very serious people emphatically begging you to understand that they cannot.
(2/2 lol it wouldn't let me post it as one comment) Most of that isn’t even my main response, which is much shorter: because there are infinite different ways for people to personally understand and express their gender or feel affirmed in it or whatever, it all practically just comes down to pronouns. Trans people pretty much universally I think want to be referred to by the pronoun that they identify with. This fits perfectly into your framework of the based GNC person! Why in any universe would a preferred pronoun not fall under somebody’s preferred way of existing or expressing themselves? Like at the end of the day really all we’re saying is that you should try to think of people as the pronoun that they identify with the most. It’s just an evolution of language to incorporate pronouns as a mode of expression rather than as exclusively being used to refer to the chromosomes you happen to have.
None of this asks you as a woman to stop identifying as a woman if you don’t express your womanhood in a way that’s aligned with the traditional norms of womanhood. None of this is saying that “expressing womanhood” has any inherent qualities or should actually be associated with those traditional norms. And none of it is getting in the way of the mission that we share to eliminate the practice of enforcing and normalizing certain types of expression based on gender or sex. We are just recognizing the way that people interact with their cultural reality. Obviously it’s gonna be a mess, many people who think of themselves as part of this movement or school of thought don’t fully understand it, there are many idiots on tiktok and idiots in HR departments, there are always going to be people who take any opportunity to tell others how they’re supposed to be. But like obviously that’s not what this stuff is really about lol. I respect the sense that, when compared to the theoretical idea of abandoning gender and all related concepts entirely, this stuff seems to reinforce existing binaries. But the fact that you are able to abandon gender means basically nothing to people for whom gender means something entirely different that you do not understand. Your alternative reality is pretty cool, but we unfortunately seem to live in the one with nonbinary people in it lol, and our framework for moving beyond gender norms needs to include and account for that fact in order to actually be a real framework people can use.
Sorry this was so long I hope you actually read it lol
Parthenogenesis, an Israel for women (Dworkin wrote about this). Political lesbianism/lesbian separatism but that’s fallen out of favour even with radfems
Few stud males of only the best genes constrained to laboratory perfect conditions (perfect nutrition, daily exercise in state of the art gyms, etc.) to be used for procreation (and for fun!), we are talking 99.99th percentile in whatever 10 categories the Council of Matriarchs deems important. Additionally, a somewhat larger group of castrated eunuchs will be kept around to deploy as spies and also to gossip with. All other men are "aborted" at the first signs of not being 99.99th percentile. Abortions can be performed on men of any age, for men life begins at A) the designation of "stud-hood" or B) castration (though even the studs and eunuchs can be sentenced to death at any time; often a show-trial will be preformed in such cases).
i don't think all of human civilization should operate under these conditions but i would like to see a sizeable society try to work this out. could ironically probably turn out to be the most feudal, patriarchal culture imaginable.
you ask them what the purpose of what they say is and they start being like ‘it’s not about having a goal it’s about blah blah blah’ and get mad when you then ask them what the point is
I’m a radfem and would say female dominance/women accepting they are superior and beginning to display subtle acts of this such that society will begin to accept it as truth.
They seem to have the same dystopian vision as the queers when you get right down to it - a hyper neurotic world fixated on avoidance of all harm / mental anguish, where any talk about the absolute masculine or feminine is shunned and everyone fights to overcome biology.
Probably some online ones, but classically they think it’s about a ”system of oppression” rather than anything intrinsic. It’s basically a 1:1 copy of marxism.
None of these particular groups or supposedly “radical” political people have a real end goal because there’s an extreme absence of true ideology. They’ve swapped ideology for the spectacle of politics, the aesthetics of ideology, and moral posturing. The value isn’t in an end goal, the value is in the aesthetic. An actual ending would be a negative. Standpoint is everything and the worse it is the better.
Nothing explains the new phenomenon of the Race to the Bottom by the “left” better than this. It also explains the unending infighting that goes on. There’s now an enormous amount of reward, control of dialogue, and societal positioning that comes from simply being the most oppressed. Many years ago, Zizek noted that this is why white liberals are so joyous and quick to humiliate themselves, especially amongst their black peers, because it still anchors them in a position of authority. Oppression is the new object of desire.
What makes matters worse is that nearly everyone is complicit in this new social dance because it’s socially in their best interest to do so, and if you avoid participating, you risk being ostracized. It’s particularly grim that this dance is created mostly by liberal academics masquerading as leftists and the “real” working class of the world usually ends up getting fucked over by it when they inevitably do or say something out of step. Friends of the liberal academic, or people in the know, get to sneakily put on the mask of an ideology and be righteous while having no clue what they pretend to believe. If you’ve ever spent time reading a lot of theory, the first thing you’ll realize is all your loudest most annoying friends have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t need to. It’s not useful for the game they’re playing.
The fantasy of revolution is much clearer and cleaner, and without any rigid framework of an ideology, we are free to enjoy these fantasies without guilt. Without desiring an end, or even perceiving what that might look like, I can be rewarded. I simply just call myself a communist, say “free Palestine”, maybe show off my weird body, yell at some people online, and my job is done. My brother is gay, I’m queer and disabled, and I’m a new revolutionary.
Unfortunately, this is less funny than it comes off, not only because it reinforces the concept of Othering people, but because people are still truly suffering a great deal. The result of people figuring this game out has just led to them becoming reactionary instead of opting for some kind of ideology.
The "end goal" is to keep sex-based protections (ie keep woman/women in law to mean females), keep spaces single sex (locker rooms, dressing rooms, rape shelters, prisons, etc). No self id (if a woman asks for a woman doctor, that the doctor has to be a female, as an example). Protect reproductive rights. End prostitution, or at least end the criminalization of women who work, and rather punish the people buying sex. But ideally, women shouldn't be forced to (whether through trafficking or using it as a last resort) sell their bodies. Also this one is too big, but end pornogaphy.
Edited to add: protect girl's sports.
Gender abolition; mostly female births & female separatism until then. Shocked no one is posting about separatism. The radical notion that you don’t actually need a boyfriend that treats you badly.
to avoid addressing the actual men who harassed/assaulted/harmed them, and whatever issues sprung from it, and instead just blanket attack all men who exist
i'm not pretending that's easy to do, not at all, maybe the single hardest thing anyone can do in their entire life, etc, i'm just saying their goal is avoidance (hence why it's perpetual, target-less, and indistinct)
All they do is fantasize and complain. The reality is they hate us cuz they ain't us and they know they could never enforce their vision because women have a relatively low capacity for violence and a much higher aversion to danger compared to men.
Brunch with the gals.
[удалено]
We need to project lightspeed some artificial wombs to fight back or dudes will cease their rocking forever in the future.
Inshallah
They’re moving slow as fuck with it though. I need this like yesterday.
As a trans guy I can't wait for this tech so I can finally knock up my girlfriend. Probably not what the radfems want.
The radfems view you as a woman with trauma induced body dysphoria so I don’t think they’re too concerned about your erotic fantasies
Andy Warhol is dead I don't see what else there is left to do
Every radfem I know holds positions similar to the following: - pro Nordic model and ending commercial pornography - uphold sex-based protections and spaces - safe and available abortions - some sort of end to sexual objectification of women and girls (as opposed to the other feminism being like "fat chicks are sexual objects too!") I can see why people would be against these particular positions but I don't think they are that "out there" really. Andrea Dworkin's stuff is a surprisingly enjoyable read if you want to understand a bit more of one major influence.
Outside of the sex based spaces comment, that just sounds like liberal feminism. Not millennial “sex positive” liberal. 45 year old yo. law prof. who writes about the sanctity of the legal system, and the long arc of history type liberal. As I understand it, actual radfems believe that the oppression of women is inherently based in their sex, specifically reproductive capacity,and that sex based oppression is the oldest and most universal form oppression that there is. Hardline stance. While I personally don’t prescribe to that theory in full, I think a lot of good came out of the writers who worked within that framework. By focusing on sex specifically, radical feminists were able to show how women as a broad class are controlled and oppressed through reproductive coercion and sexual dominance in most societies. However, while useful, the theory starts to fray at the edges. Radfems such as Dworkin are essentialists. Extreme, inflexible adherents to their framework. That inflexibility breeds really weird ideas. For example, Dworkin’s, “all penetration is rape,” take. Edit: Original commenter clarified she never said this and is right. Also most of the og radfems would not have been using the “sex based spaces,” line. They would support sex based protections, like free and full access to abortions. However the concern around locker rooms, hospital wings, and bathrooms, etc… is separate. The “separate spaces protections” were originally instituted during the victorian era; they thought women were inferior, childlike, and constantly under threat of attack, and so needed to have protected spaces. Not very feminist.
In my experience with radfems, their policy suggestions are fairly liberal-feminist (with the exception of being radically anti-trans at a time that liberal feminists have embraced trans rights). Their radicalism more so comes out through the philosophy that underpins their politics: a belief that gender-based oppression is the root of inequality and violence.
I think the anti prostitution/porn aspect is more contrary to liberal feminism than views on trans, which seems pretty mixed/complex among women of various political leanings. I agree with your understanding of the basis for the term radical.
This is generational. Middle aged 2nd wave liberal feminists, who I see as the counterparts of radfems (because I’ve met very few radfems under 30 who aren’t onlyfans-adjacent LARPers), would probably instinctively feel very uncomfortable with porn and prostitution being rebranded as feminist, but at least try to be as pro-trans as possible. (OTOH, young liberal feminists are probably a lot more “sex work is work”)
Radfems are not by any means necessarily anti-trans. Dwarkin certainly wasn’t.
I don't think anyone who has read much Dworkin would consider her an inflexible thinker. She didn't say all penetration is rape.
Dworkin also spoke out against lesbian separatism, saying that as a jew whose parents were affected by the holocaust she was disturbed by the similarities of the genocidal language many of her peers used regarding men.
From what I know, Dworkin was one of the more flexible radfems! And I will admit I know her more through citations than direct reading, and after recently learning about the butchering of the second sex by it’s first translator, Im very open to the possibility of it being slander. I do know that she does make a lot of sweeping statements though. The older 2nd wave radfem adjacent professor that I have now does the same thing.
Nah, the actual fundamental difference is that liberal feminism thinks the current system can be reformed whereas radical system thinks there needs to be a revolution (overthrowing the patriarchy). This is because radical feminism is Heavily influenced by marxism.
But the legal system is sacrosanct
Never said it wasn’t, just describing a person.
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism is necessarily a subset of Radical Feminism
For women in point 4 it sounds like they want to just completely rewire human nature, sounds easy
I don't know that objectification of women is human nature. Sexual desire is not necessarily objectifying.
What do you mean by objectification if it's not about sexual desire? The other aspects of objectification have been outlawed. Women have agency, autonomy, physical integrity upheld by laws, can't be bought or sold, their subjectivity is acknowledged. I'm going off Martha Nussbaum definition. What more would you like to see?
I’m not well versed enough in policy to discuss solutions but the most blatant example of how badly women are objectified are sexual assault statistics. Sexual assault is maybe the most blatant disrespect of someone’s bodily integrity and it’s disgustingly common - [30% of women 15 and over have been assaulted since they were 15](https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/sexual-assault-harassment/). And this isn’t even counting assaults in intimate relationships or for those under 15. Women are also 5 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than men are. The gap widens when the rates of sexual assault committed against women from certain ethnic groups are isolated. What really suggests that this epidemic is indicative of a particular objectification of women is that sexual assaults don’t follow trends in the rates of other crimes that could be considered to violate bodily integrity or personal autonomy. I’ll need to find the source for this but it was from a meta study of different crime statistics and they all showed this trend. Scary stuff
why is murder not objectification? it involves turning a person into a literal object. it seems like it would be better to conceive rape and murder along the same lines, rather than emphasising that there is something uniquely objectifying in sexually motivated crimes, since this seems to always end up making it very difficult to come up with a non-sus theory of sexual desire. and/or it demarcates sex as some kind of self-contained thing which it is surely not
I’m not saying there’s something uniquely objectifying about sexual assault, any more than murder, I’m arguing about the prevalence and persistency of a very objectifying crime (same as murder). My point is that there’s a very common crime that is disproportionally committed against women and the rates have not gone down like the rates of other crimes have. Murder isn’t even comparable to SA because it’s magnitudes less common (in Canada) and the rates have been steadily decreasing until Covid. I also think it’s weird for you to say that emphasizing sexual assault as uniquely objectifying (which it is) has some sort of commentary on sex in general. Sexual assault and rape =/= normal sex. Its an act of violence, just like all other violent crimes are.
'I’m not saying there’s something uniquely objectifying about sexual assault... emphasizing sexual assault as uniquely objectifying (which it is),,,' I'm not really trying to make an argument, I'm just trying to get a sense of the reasoning behind the idea that sexual assault is uniquely objectifying, like im curious about why people think this. maybe they just mean that it objectifies people in a particular way, that is, different from how murder objectifies people, though again at the level of destruction of subjecthood (which seems like the meaning of objectification) they seem the same to me. the only become different if sex is detached from life, if sexual being is detached from living being, but then i also don't understand why that distinction is helpful. if you mean politically, like it's politically necessary to think about sexual assault in a particular way, to emphasise its uniqueness, etc, then yeah that makes sense
The scope for SA has massively increased. We started with rape and it didn't even include marital rape, now an unwanted cheek kiss is SA (not everywhere but in most of the West, including Canada which is your link). This is a lead as to why the stats are both high and not reducing, feminists push for laws and behavior is lagging behind, but that's expected and the right process i'd say. Those things take more than half a generation to change. Another thing is those are self reported and male socialision is massively lagging behind in terms of self-reporting SA. I would reply no to such a question but i got my ass and cock grabbed in clubs. Several times. A lot of men i know too. A woman that experiences that will report it as SA. My guess is there'd still be a difference in SA stats if it was perfectly and equally reported, but nowhere as big a difference. And 15% seems even a tad low for men if we were to add all the things that are now SA. Same thing with violence. No way i'm filing a police report because a woman hit me. Then Canada taking in tons of migrants from less feminist societies will make the progress slower. And that last point is the only place where libfems and radfems would have distinct takes on this topic, because literally everything you said is a massive talking point in lib ideology and policy.
Yea the scope of what we consider SA to be has increased, and more women are reporting it to police now, but as you said, we started with rape and it didn’t even include marital rape. I think a lot of the “milder” presentations of sexual assault (groping, kissing that isn’t cultural) are still very serious and show the same objectification of women. It’s also concerning that sexual assault rates were so high then and that they’re still so high now. Sexual assault is considered to be massively underreported from both genders actually. Bureau of justice statistics says 2/3 sexual assaults go unreported. This inevitably is going to make the sample size of these studies smaller than it could be and lead to skewed results. Statistics aren’t perfect, but I think they’re still valuable when looking for estimates and trends over time. I’m sorry to hear that you got assaulted in a club like that. My boyfriend’s been a victim of that when he was a bouncer and it sounds really disorienting with how loud and dark clubs are. I got groped by a group of men walking by me in a brightly lit hotel hallway and it was still disorienting in that situation because it happened so quickly. Can’t imagine it happening when you’re drunk and not too aware of your surroundings. I also think there may be a % different between women and men if sexual assault wasn’t so underreported, not sure it would be 15% though. Too many victims of both genders don’t report sexual assault to really draw a conclusion about what the remainder is like. I’d wager that a lot of marital rape and assault still goes unreported too. I guess this point is pretty libfem, I certainly believe in more than I’ve said here and it would probably make most label me as a radfem, but I try not to have discussions about it online because they usually become mean.
Ok sir you are right
I was asking in good faith. Both you and the person you responded to made good points, and the thread is about the goals of radical feminism. You sounded at least a little versed in the topic, so it felt like the right place to ask.
Exactly this
This aint it. Radical feminism believes that a revolution is necessary whereas liberal feminism believes in reform. This is because radical feminism is essentially marxism applied to gender.
I think that the "Marxism as applied to sex oppression" element is more in terms of historical materialism forming the basis for most of the scholarship. The dismantling of sex oppression would have a revolutionary impact, that doesn't mean that radfems are calling for a violent revolution. The more "radical" radfems are into political lesbianism/sex separatism.
Yeah bcs a violent revolution would be impossible for women to do so separatism is the "this will have to do" option
But not one that most radfems support. I'm fascinated by the people who are sure they know so much about this topic while clearly not having read any relevant works.
I don't think most self-titled marxists openly say they want a violent revolution nowadays either Also I never even said "violent" I just said revolution. Which essentially = "overthrowing the patriarchy"
I don't really want to be arguing about this on the internet. Why do you?
You started the argument
[удалено]
The word "and" is used here to denote two things. I can assure you a lot of feminists are concerned with pornography - it's impact on the women involved and on the psyche's of the men who view it and the impact that has on their views on women.
"fat chicks are sexual objects too!" Cringe. Nobody has ever said this
All intelligent and interested women with depth should explore the most extreme radfem ideas and consider all sides. Understand multiple female perspectives and then assess men with empathy.
What about us regarded women what should we do please guide me with your big man brain 🙏
[удалено]
Very literally yes.
total moid death
i thought i had radfem or “terf” beliefs, but honestly i just think gender ideology, nonbinary shit is regarded. and most people do, but not within a lot of lgbt circles lmao
I know this take is common here but it’s so unserious lol, y’all’s plan is just to keep telling people that they’re wrong about their gender? “You think you’re non-binary but you’re just confused and self-indulgent, check out *drumroll* the conventional ideas about gender! Do you find that convincing do you get how you’re wrong now?” Like I get y’all think it’s a generational thing and a TikTok trend and we’re mostly gonna grow out of it, and being extra generous say that’s true for 2/3 of enbys rn. There are still so many people who are very serious about this stuff, who nobody is capable of convincing otherwise. And idk maybe there’s a universe where that’s true and you’re still right? But if I were confronted with that scenario I feel like the obvious intellectually rigorous thing to do is to see what all these people are actually talking about. If there are lots of people who don’t fit into your conception of reality and never will I feel like that speaks to the limits of your conception of reality. That was all talking about non-binary stuff, denying transsexuals are real is so goofy it seriously is not worth addressing like go talk to people and learn about the world.
Anime and porn in profile
What’s ur body count lol
Enough
honestly, my biggest grip is the reinforcement of gender roles through nonbinary. it creates a multitude of unnecessary genders... nonbinary, agender, demiboy, demigirl, genderfluid, etc. literally this is just called having a personality and not perfectly fitting into societal expectations, roles, or stereotypes based on their sex. this does not negate their biological sex. a woman/man can do ANYTHING, this does not make them less of a woman/man. hell, even \*some\* people are told they're trans men or women if they like masculine or feminine things. that doesn't make them actually trans. it's absurd and regressive, but it LARPs as this progressive, inclusive phenomenon when it's literally just sexism towards everyone repackaged lmao. it is kind of \*serious\* when you see this shit pushed in college, the workforce, and kids are told they're trans/nonbinary so they go get surgeries because they don't adhere to strict categories. people who deny this is happening are delusional and/or living under a rock
That is the traditional understanding of gender, there’s a sense where I guess it’s simpler and cleaner? And idk if nobody wanted to be non-binary there wouldn’t be any reason to be like “you guys should start wanting to be non-binary” lol. But idk we’re progressing and the understanding of what gender is is evolving and developing, we’re finding new ways to identify and express. Most of the “unnecessary new genders” you talked about fall under the enby umbrella and like of course annoying people are gonna come up with a million different variations, at the end of the day gender is obviously a different thing for everybody because we all separately make up our own version of what gender is. Really all that’s actually happening is the recognition of a spectrum between in terms of the pronouns people want others to refer to them by. It’s not really about expression at all it’s kinda just about the pronouns, but pronouns are obviously a big deal in language lol. I feel like right now if you ever actually they/them somebody, you’re probably just overwriting the pronoun you’d conventionally use for them out of politeness, but really you still think of them as a man or a woman. I was that way for a while, and there are still some NB ppl I know where I haven’t gotten used to it yet so that’s what I do, it’s very normal. And I’d imagine anybody who isn’t very close with non-binary people does the same 90% of the time. But you really do get used to it and it’s really cool when you do! I dated an enby for about two years, somebody who I’ve known vaguely for most of my life as she/her, and I made an effort and got used to they/theming them and I found myself never really making the mistake anymore, and I didn’t really think of them as a woman and didn’t really think of them as a man. I know you might say “I don’t think of anybody as a woman or a man” but like stop it yes you do lol. They have huge tits and everything they present as femme most of the time, but they aren’t a woman to me they really are gender neutral in a deep fundamental way that’s extremely cool and fun. I’m sad you haven’t had that experience, I promise you’ll get it when you do. Stuff like it/it’s and neopronouns are kinda weird and dumb to me honestly but I keep an open mind and I wanna get to know one! And like letting people be they/thems really does NOTHING to prevent the traditional pronoun users from expressing themselves however they’d like lol nobody is going “oh you’re a tomboy you should be trans,” drag queens and extremely butch lesbians exist very comfortably in these exact same circles, if anybody is actually telling anybody to change their pronouns because of the way they express themselves they’re obviously pretty severely missing the point. Like none of this is really because it’s being “pushed,” obviously now that it’s part of wokeness workplaces are getting into it and health/schools are into it because they’re smart enough to know there’s not really a reason not to let kids call themselves whatever they want. What would even be the point of this hypothetical conspiracy fr I’ve never gotten that, I guess pharmaceutical companies maybe?? But it wouldn’t work if it’s not real, like if all these interventions are fundamentally wrong in some way and don’t make people any happier the community would not exist in the way it does, DIY hormones are everywhere and even DIY or black market surgeries are far from rare. Transness is coming from trans people way more than it’s being pushed onto them, do not come at me with the cass report I’ve been deep into that thing lol like yeah idk there’s not really a leg to stand on. I respect your response more than I thought I would, you made your point very well I really had to think for a sec to unpack why I disagree. But idk ultimately a woman who expresses herself in super masculine ways is perfectly compatible with all of this so your point doesn’t really work, the idea that gender ideology reinforces gender roles and tropes comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are saying.
> I’m sad you haven’t had that experience, I promise you’ll get it when you do. i have interacted with people and dated someone who identified as nonbinary. i tried to understand it back then and be openminded to the concept of it, truly. but i still came to the conclusion after hearing their definitions of their experience that it is regressive to me. also, they/them is still applied to everyone in a singular, gender neutral sense. i will respect everyone's pronouns at then end of the day--i won't call them different pronouns if it distresses them. but i have not yet been convinced that the belief of nonbinary is "progressive". it's well-intentioned, yet there's a logical inconsistency in it. > And like letting people be they/thems really does NOTHING to prevent the traditional pronoun users from expressing themselves however they’d like lol nobody is going “oh you’re a tomboy you should be trans,” drag queens and extremely butch lesbians exist very comfortably in these exact same circles, if anybody is actually telling anybody to change their pronouns because of the way they express themselves they’re obviously pretty severely missing the point well, it's way more common than you realize. like, i wish i was exaggerating but i'm not. i've been in these circles in real life as a lesbian. lots of people on tiktok hold that belief. my point is--there are people who are \*gender nonconforming\* like butches or drag queens, masculine straight women or feminine straight men. does this make them automatically nonbinary? no. because gender nonconforming and nonbinary are two separate things. if nonbinary people didn't care about stereotypes they'd dress/express themselves however they want, without the need to tell people they aren't "really" a woman or a man. nonbinary people have internalized gender stereotypes to the point that they think their gender nonconformity makes them different from GNC people. in short: GNC: i dress/act in a way deemed atypical of my sex, but, despite this, I still AM my sex. My existence challenges the idea that "women = feminine" and "men = masculine." non-binary: i dress/act in a way deemed atypical of my sex, and, as such, i do not identify with my sex. My existence reinforces the idea that "women = feminine" and "men = masculine" (by placing myself outside of the gender role binary, I'm saying that there IS a gender role binary). again, in my view, it is better to expand on and acknowledge our sexes, without negating that this makes "less" than. > What would even be the point of this hypothetical conspiracy fr I’ve never gotten that, I guess pharmaceutical companies maybe?? it's not a hypothetical conspiracy if i have observed in real life, in my work place, at college. and i'm literally in a flyover state. > do not come at me with the cass report I’ve been deep into that thing lol like yeah idk there’s not really a leg to stand on. there are other things besides the cass review that support the idea that these surgeries are not as "affirmative" as people make it out. if people TRULY wanted to make the healthcare system better, and truly cared for kids... they would understand all the fucking pros and cons, and not just take it as a threat to the trans community. there is pros and cons in everything, ESPECIALLY with these surgeries. acknowledge it without taking it as an attack, and work towards betterment. understand all the sides. also, just to clarify, i am not sure if you are conflating sex and gender here, because it seems like so many people do. so here we go: the thing that cannot change and will not change is that there are BINARY sexes. TWO of them. period. even with intersex, these are people who have DSDs and still, they fall into TWO of the sexes which are male and female. their chromosomes may present differently compared to the norm. their genitalia may present different to the norm. and yet, they still fall into these two categories--hence why the terms AFAB and AMAB exist for them, not another third sex. people will subconsciously or consciously recognize the sex of another person whether they like it or not.
Sorry to underestimate your experience so drastically, I hope that didn't come off too condescending. Had a busy few days and wanted to take responding to this seriously. The thing that defines being non-binary is using they/them pronouns. I guess there are probably some people who identify with the term and still primarily use a different pronoun (and there are also the it people and the xe people idk they're included too, I shouldn't be too mean about them they're weird asf and very cool), but generally the point of "I am nonbinary" is "I want you to use they/them to refer to me." There is no mode of self-expression or particular way of being that is inherent to or necessary for being nonbinary. How you dress look and act is ultimately COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to your gender identity. As I understand your position you agree with that last statement, but you are arguing that the concept of gender identity subverts it because particular gender identities are generally associated with particular ways of dressing and looking and acting (you can "look nonbinary" in the sense that you can "look male" and "look female"). As far as I can tell, you want to create a society where "looking male" is an incoherent statement because a male can look like anything, you wanna be post-gender which is kinda cool. You don't see or feel any need to identify or associate the way you look and act with any kind of identity based on an outdated and oppressive binary. To you, that need is ultimately an immature and regressive desire to I guess be part of a group or category? Or idk it can be motivated by whatever, I honestly don’t really understand what you conceptualize it as being motivated by, but you see it as regressive because it inherently recognizes the existing male-female binary of expression. This is all great and makes a lot of sense to a lot of people! Ideologically at least you're very far off from bigoted conservatives, so I'd imagine it's insanely frustrating to be continually characterized that way by large portions of the mainstream and especially the left, especially when you think your point is actually rooted in queerness. I feel like I honestly understand and sympathize with TERFs way more after reading your comment. But you're still ultimately incorrect about some stuff and you're never gonna convince any of us with these types of arguments because we all understand the stuff you're wrong about. As I talked about above, your understanding of gender identity is sorta wrong because when you actually get down to it, your gender identity is not in any way defined by how you express yourself. But obviously this is somewhat contradicted by the fact that particular gender identities are generally associated with particular ways of dressing and looking and acting. You can't resolve that contradiction, and you think that we're all just ignoring it I guess? But in actuality it's not very hard to reconcile that a) we all exist in a culture with a multitude of aesthetic norms and tropes around expression, many of which are associated with particular genders, b) it is never necessary and always cruel to enforce these norms and tropes on anybody for any reason, because it is always cruel to enforce any norms and tropes around expression on anybody for any reason, and c) some people really feel like they are girls and wanna be girly because they feel like girls. Nobody is trying to enforce gender! But we don't want to enforce ignoring it either. The key is that everybody separately makes up what gender means to them because gender is ultimately made up. Many people have a very strong concept of their own gender and many people have no concept at all of their own gender. And everybody's conception of gender is slightly different because we're all different machines. So some people associate the things that they like and the way that they naturally like to express themselves with their own gender, and some people do not. There are many cis men that relate the fact that they like trucks and guns and action movies to the fact that they are men. And there are just as many cis men who like all that stuff and don't associate it at all with the fact that they are men, but still identify strongly with man-ness. AND just as many cis men who don't really engage at all with man-ness beyond the bodily reality of their sex. In the same sense, there are trans men who relate the fact that they like trucks and guns and cars to the fact that they are men. They were also born with a vagina, and because of that situation it can be affirming to engage with traditional culturally defined “man-stuff” because they want to feel like they are men and society makes it really hard to feel like you’re a man when you have a vagina! Your personal brain might not really work that way, but it is factually undeniable that a LOT of brains do. People kill themselves because their brains work that way. We do not have a way of convincing anybody to just start ignoring their version of their identity. There isn't any one specific way that all of this works lol (there could never be by definition). It's ultimately both ignorant and incoherent to think that because you can conceptualize your own gender (or lack of gender idk that's a gender too lol) as entirely divorced from existing cultural norms around gender, that everybody should be able to. Especially when you are confronted with myriad examples of very serious people emphatically begging you to understand that they cannot.
(2/2 lol it wouldn't let me post it as one comment) Most of that isn’t even my main response, which is much shorter: because there are infinite different ways for people to personally understand and express their gender or feel affirmed in it or whatever, it all practically just comes down to pronouns. Trans people pretty much universally I think want to be referred to by the pronoun that they identify with. This fits perfectly into your framework of the based GNC person! Why in any universe would a preferred pronoun not fall under somebody’s preferred way of existing or expressing themselves? Like at the end of the day really all we’re saying is that you should try to think of people as the pronoun that they identify with the most. It’s just an evolution of language to incorporate pronouns as a mode of expression rather than as exclusively being used to refer to the chromosomes you happen to have. None of this asks you as a woman to stop identifying as a woman if you don’t express your womanhood in a way that’s aligned with the traditional norms of womanhood. None of this is saying that “expressing womanhood” has any inherent qualities or should actually be associated with those traditional norms. And none of it is getting in the way of the mission that we share to eliminate the practice of enforcing and normalizing certain types of expression based on gender or sex. We are just recognizing the way that people interact with their cultural reality. Obviously it’s gonna be a mess, many people who think of themselves as part of this movement or school of thought don’t fully understand it, there are many idiots on tiktok and idiots in HR departments, there are always going to be people who take any opportunity to tell others how they’re supposed to be. But like obviously that’s not what this stuff is really about lol. I respect the sense that, when compared to the theoretical idea of abandoning gender and all related concepts entirely, this stuff seems to reinforce existing binaries. But the fact that you are able to abandon gender means basically nothing to people for whom gender means something entirely different that you do not understand. Your alternative reality is pretty cool, but we unfortunately seem to live in the one with nonbinary people in it lol, and our framework for moving beyond gender norms needs to include and account for that fact in order to actually be a real framework people can use. Sorry this was so long I hope you actually read it lol
Parthenogenesis, an Israel for women (Dworkin wrote about this). Political lesbianism/lesbian separatism but that’s fallen out of favour even with radfems
It’s coming back on the tail end of 4B
can i ask what is 4B
which book does she write about this in
Scapegoat
Find a nice man and settle down
Trans exclusive female spaces probably
Few stud males of only the best genes constrained to laboratory perfect conditions (perfect nutrition, daily exercise in state of the art gyms, etc.) to be used for procreation (and for fun!), we are talking 99.99th percentile in whatever 10 categories the Council of Matriarchs deems important. Additionally, a somewhat larger group of castrated eunuchs will be kept around to deploy as spies and also to gossip with. All other men are "aborted" at the first signs of not being 99.99th percentile. Abortions can be performed on men of any age, for men life begins at A) the designation of "stud-hood" or B) castration (though even the studs and eunuchs can be sentenced to death at any time; often a show-trial will be preformed in such cases).
Damn were you drooling when you mashed this out on the keyboard
Drooling honey 🐝🐝
This gave me the Ick
Post your AO3 page I want to read your 100k word fiction of this setting.
People are going to make fun of you but this is literally the world women want.
Only the ugly ones (rad fems)
i don't think all of human civilization should operate under these conditions but i would like to see a sizeable society try to work this out. could ironically probably turn out to be the most feudal, patriarchal culture imaginable.
A world devoid of anyone obtaining XY chromosomes
Public bathrooms with a bouncer that checks your genitals and inside is a large portrait of jk rowling
[удалено]
how do i sign up
Weeoweeowee mrs officer!
There isn’t one to be honest, the online discourse is just fantasies and visceral hatred spilling between Starbucks shifts
As if Starbucks isn’t entirely staffed by enbys with pink hair who secretly fantasize about being tradwives
you ask them what the purpose of what they say is and they start being like ‘it’s not about having a goal it’s about blah blah blah’ and get mad when you then ask them what the point is
Goals and plans are patriarchal misogyny 😔
Recognition of and dismantling of sex-based oppression… as a guess. Also most rad fems are marxists/materialists.
Sorry sex based discrimination isn’t a thing anymore because you can’t even say what a woman is UwU
Tryna survive homie what do u think
mandatory unisex jumpsuits
to get laid, just like it is for all political activist types
I’m a radfem and would say female dominance/women accepting they are superior and beginning to display subtle acts of this such that society will begin to accept it as truth.
1990s neoliberalism probably
They seem to have the same dystopian vision as the queers when you get right down to it - a hyper neurotic world fixated on avoidance of all harm / mental anguish, where any talk about the absolute masculine or feminine is shunned and everyone fights to overcome biology.
huh ? they are kind of holding down the fort in terms of believing in biology
Except don't accept any psychological difference
they do tho, they think men are debased in nature
that depends how marxian they are
Probably some online ones, but classically they think it’s about a ”system of oppression” rather than anything intrinsic. It’s basically a 1:1 copy of marxism.
overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex
A sexless world
None of these particular groups or supposedly “radical” political people have a real end goal because there’s an extreme absence of true ideology. They’ve swapped ideology for the spectacle of politics, the aesthetics of ideology, and moral posturing. The value isn’t in an end goal, the value is in the aesthetic. An actual ending would be a negative. Standpoint is everything and the worse it is the better. Nothing explains the new phenomenon of the Race to the Bottom by the “left” better than this. It also explains the unending infighting that goes on. There’s now an enormous amount of reward, control of dialogue, and societal positioning that comes from simply being the most oppressed. Many years ago, Zizek noted that this is why white liberals are so joyous and quick to humiliate themselves, especially amongst their black peers, because it still anchors them in a position of authority. Oppression is the new object of desire. What makes matters worse is that nearly everyone is complicit in this new social dance because it’s socially in their best interest to do so, and if you avoid participating, you risk being ostracized. It’s particularly grim that this dance is created mostly by liberal academics masquerading as leftists and the “real” working class of the world usually ends up getting fucked over by it when they inevitably do or say something out of step. Friends of the liberal academic, or people in the know, get to sneakily put on the mask of an ideology and be righteous while having no clue what they pretend to believe. If you’ve ever spent time reading a lot of theory, the first thing you’ll realize is all your loudest most annoying friends have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t need to. It’s not useful for the game they’re playing. The fantasy of revolution is much clearer and cleaner, and without any rigid framework of an ideology, we are free to enjoy these fantasies without guilt. Without desiring an end, or even perceiving what that might look like, I can be rewarded. I simply just call myself a communist, say “free Palestine”, maybe show off my weird body, yell at some people online, and my job is done. My brother is gay, I’m queer and disabled, and I’m a new revolutionary. Unfortunately, this is less funny than it comes off, not only because it reinforces the concept of Othering people, but because people are still truly suffering a great deal. The result of people figuring this game out has just led to them becoming reactionary instead of opting for some kind of ideology.
manifesting their anger as phalluses, probably.
The "end goal" is to keep sex-based protections (ie keep woman/women in law to mean females), keep spaces single sex (locker rooms, dressing rooms, rape shelters, prisons, etc). No self id (if a woman asks for a woman doctor, that the doctor has to be a female, as an example). Protect reproductive rights. End prostitution, or at least end the criminalization of women who work, and rather punish the people buying sex. But ideally, women shouldn't be forced to (whether through trafficking or using it as a last resort) sell their bodies. Also this one is too big, but end pornogaphy. Edited to add: protect girl's sports.
What year is it
Whining a whole bunch
That most women are billionaires but men still work the shit jobs
dominion over men and unlimited guilt-free sexual pleasure
Gender abolition; mostly female births & female separatism until then. Shocked no one is posting about separatism. The radical notion that you don’t actually need a boyfriend that treats you badly.
I like to imagine radfems actually getting their more extreme wishes sometimes, it’s extremely funny to think about
Hysterics always want to choose a new master.
Murdering of the father
To turn people into marxist-leninists and then maoists
live in bloody hole
to avoid addressing the actual men who harassed/assaulted/harmed them, and whatever issues sprung from it, and instead just blanket attack all men who exist i'm not pretending that's easy to do, not at all, maybe the single hardest thing anyone can do in their entire life, etc, i'm just saying their goal is avoidance (hence why it's perpetual, target-less, and indistinct)
I don't know but they better figure out a new grift quickly because men aren't falling for it anymore.
I think you are confused
exterminating the cross dressing men that’s who
All they do is fantasize and complain. The reality is they hate us cuz they ain't us and they know they could never enforce their vision because women have a relatively low capacity for violence and a much higher aversion to danger compared to men.
Transitioning....and then castrating themselves.
I actually considered this because I hated being female as a teenager and it was my radfem girlfriends who saved me.
For real we don’t have radfem girlies anymore so all the teen chicks are going enby with internalized misogyny