So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”
Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”
So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.
That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.
When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I wasalso saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”
When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?
And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.
“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.
Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.
That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..
So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.
And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”
I’m a feminist, I love women, but I’m really disturbed by stuff I’ve read lately about how women, women’s relationships, women’s spaces, are all magically naturally pure and free of oppression from violence.
The thing about feminist analysis we need to remember is that when we talk about men and women, we’re talking about statistical probability that’s not able to accurately predict life every time.
A randomly-selected man is more likely to be taller than a randomly-selected woman. A randomly-selected man is more likely to earn more money than a randomly-selected woman. That does not mean that any man is taller or richer than any woman, or that every man is richer or taller than every woman.
So many times in debates about sex and gender, these probabilities get hammered out into flat declarative sentences. We know it’s wrong when sexists say, “Men are stronger than women, so women could never play sports against men,” but somehow give it a pass when a feminist says “Women are less violent than men, so it’s not in a woman’s nature to be abusive.”
And as a feminist who’s worked in women’s shelters, I’m beyond disturbed by how feminists twist statistics about violence into the claim that women just don’t have the capacity to be violent or cruel.
Because what that really says is: Women aren’t fully human. We don’t fully exist in the world; our womanhood renders our anger and our aggression invalid. We’re not capable of the kind of moral choices men are.
That isn’t just bullshit, that’s dangerous bullshit. You know who makes that kind of argument?
A woman who wants to hurt other people and get away with it.
Understanding this is also a good way to spot who’s interested in breaking down the social hierarchy that hurts all of us, and who’s just interested in building a new social hierarchy that benefits them instead.
We can’t liberate everyone just by reversing the axis of oppression. If your goal is to hurt other people and get away with it, you aren’t really fighting to end things, you’re just fighting to take control.
All of the above can be directly applied to how white women treat black people, especially black women. White women (including liberals, including feminists,) are some of the worst when it comes to to upholding white supremacist ideas, especially in the face of black women. If you want to know more, go to the sources. Layla F. Saad @laylafsaad talks about this, check out her “Me and White Supremacy Workbook.” Others talk about it as well, but honestly, just google search “how white women uphold white supremacy” and there will be tons of articles.
There are a lot of ways for humans to be oppressed or hold power over each other. All of us exist in so many overlapping and interlocking social contexts, it just doesn’t make sense to think of ourselves as 100% The Victim All The Time; we usually always have someone who’s smaller or weaker or more marginal than us. We’ve got to understand both sides of the equation, and think critically about how we use the power we have.
‘women’ means ‘women’ - trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise
‘(perceived) women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone that others - radfems, etc - mistakenly perceive as women (nb afab, sometimes trans men, etc)
‘women and/or people presenting as women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone of any gender who chooses to present as a woman for whatever reason, not limited to genital arrangement.)
so ….
you know how I’m always on about radfem lite rhetoric? as in: people who don’t even like non-intersectional radfems, much less their subgroups (terfs & swerfs), will say this stuff without understanding the buried connection to radfem thinking?
the examples rainbowloli used are all that kind of rhetoric - or closely tied to it.
‘f-o-f, you’re trying too hard. it’s women looking down on other women for their choices because of internalized misogyny.’
well the funny thing is, nonintersectional radical feminism totally encourages (perceived) women to look down on other (perceived) women for their choices. The difference is only that:
radfem rhetoric judges (perceived) women for what they see as ‘catering to men’/’the patriarchy’ too much*
misogyny judges (perceived) women for not catering to the patriarchy enough(or not doing it ‘the right way’).
(*’catering … too much’ should be read as ‘doing something that might conceivably please men, even if it also pleases the (perceived) woman doing it.’)
In short: both radfems & patriarchal social structures try to control and police the behavior of (perceived) women.
That’s why radfem rhetoric can easily flourish among the unaware: the behavior it encourages replicates the behavior encouraged by patriarchal/misogynistic social structures. It’s only the reasoning that’s changed.
Let me demonstrate:
“Wow, I feel so sorry for women dating ugly dudes like girl you can do so much better.”
this is closest to internalized misogyny. In general, when a woman is seen as significantly more beautiful than her partner we assume the guy is somehow buying her affection, and we judge her for being bought off. that’s internalized misogyny.
But lop off the ‘ugly’ in the middle of that sentence and you’ve got word-for-word radfem rhetoric. ‘I feel sorry for women dating dudes like girl you can do so much better.’ because dudes are always hopeless, self-centered trash and women are always attentive, woke angels. That poor silly woman. she needs to find a good wife who will make her happy. Dating men is an act of catering to the patriarchy.
and no: neither misogynists nor radfems consider that maybe the woman is happy with the man she’s dating, nor are they willing to respect her choice to date whomever she likes, for whatever reason she chooses.
“I feel so sorry for girls who spend hours doing their makeup and they can’t catch a break from the patriarchy.”
as is often the case, there’s a grain of truth in here. Dress codes & appearance standards for (perceived) women in client-facing jobs are often more strict than those for (perceived) men, and certainly more expensive to maintain (jobs that require women and/or people who present as women to wear makeup should have to pay for it. just saying). Plus, those standards are often set by (cis) men who are in positions empowered to make those calls. There’s also plenty of internalized misogyny involved in the social perception that anyone who is and/or presents as a woman must maintain their appearance at a certain standard to attract a (male) mate, whereas men are seen as capable of attracting a woman via qualities other than appearance.
But the idea that all people who present as &/or are women are forcedorbrainwashed into a makeup & beauty regimen purely at the behest of men/patriarchy is both an insult to free will and too narrow a look at daily primping. Plenty has been written by others about how applying makeup often isn’t about men/attracting men at all. and men and/or male-presenting people are also under social pressure to meet certain beauty standards to be seen as attractive (though perhaps not to the same degree).
‘women are forced to do [thing] by the patriarchy/the only reason women do [thing] is because of patriarchy,’ where [thing] is something that women and/or female-presenting people choose to do for many reasons, is a radfem dog whistle.
The underlying assumption is that any (perceived) woman who says they do [thing] for a reason other than ‘i’m forced to do it for the pleasure of men’ must be a brainwashed victim of internalized misogyny; the only way to truly free oneself of patriarchal brainwashing is to submit oneself entirely to a husban– I mean, the radfem worldview.
And the third statement has the same energy:
“I feel sorry for women who enjoy [insert thing] because they’ve been socialized to enjoy it.”
Here’s another statement that presumes that women only do [thing] because they were tricked or brainwashed into it. Here, the word ‘socialized’ stands for ‘taught by patriarchal society’ - i.e. (perceived) women only enjoy [thing] because men & misogyny taught them to enjoy it.
and hey: our society is patriarchal. and hey: that totally does influence how women are socialized and how women think about themselves and others in negative ways. but this statement once again takes it too far: it posits that women functionally have no free will and are more or less mind-controlled by the influence of patriarchy into all their likes and dislikes.
If you’re having a hard time seeing the radfem influence, insert ‘giving head’ for ‘[insert thing]’, and ‘taught by men’ for ‘socialized’: ‘I feel sorry for women who enjoy giving head because they’ve been taught by men to enjoy it.’ because to a radfem, (perceived) women doing anything that gives pleasure to a (cis) man cannot possibly be a pleasure to herself as well. It’s impossible for a (perceived) woman to choose such a thing of her own free will.
And no: radfems do not respect that some people they see as women enjoy things that they find reprehensible or disgusting. instead, they see that perceived woman’s enjoyment of what they hate as traitorous to the cause of womanhood. These traitors - who are also victims - must be rescued from their own desires, even if that means screaming at them daily about how terrible they are and how they’re hurting and betraying their fellow women and how they’re harming themselves. (because screaming at (perceived) women about how terrible they are isn’t at all a carbon copy of the behavior of misogynists towards women.)
The takeaway is this:
When you see a blanket statement about how women* are forced, tricked, coerced, trapped, etc by patriarchy, men, or misogyny to do [thing], please consider whether or not it respects autonomy/free will before resharing or agreeing with it.
It’s true that patriarchy influences the lives of people of all genders, and that much of that influence isn’t for the better. it’s true that it particularly harms anybody who isn’t a cis man (and even cis men, if they don’t perform masculinity to satisfaction). but arguing that patriarchy robs people, particularly (perceived) women, of all their free will is a step towards trying to control the actions of those (perceived women) for their own good - and that’s gateway radical feminism in a nutshell.
I hate to make this go off topic but I think this whole thing gets amplified when the target of the radfem rhetoric/patriarchal shit are neurodivergent/disabled (perceived) women?
Already, neurodivergent and otherwise disabled (perceived) women have their autonomy stripped from them in too many ways to count, with one of those ways being that a lot of us get masculinised because of our difficulty to keep up with beauty norms, and feminised for any perceived “childishness” (read: we get infantilised, and then coercively gendered for it); one trend that’s been happening recently, however, is radfems doing something similar.
Research suggests that autistic afabs are more likely to be trans or non-binary than allistic people, and so there’s lots of think-pieces out there as to why this is the case, with the current big theories being: autistic people have less social restraint and are thus more likely to just do what they want; autistic people can’t relate to neurotypical gender roles; autistic people believing that their lack of ability to relate to neurotypical women, combined with tomboyish interests ‘convinces’ them that they must be men; and, of course, the “extreme male brain” theory of autism and everything that’s related to it (so shit about high testosterone or whatever). Generally we don’t know why this is, but it’s not actually a problem really?
Either way, you can imagine that there are plenty of radfems who do not like this fact at all, and are more than willing to lean on ableism to express this.
Most commonly, it’s expressed as autistic people being “brainwashed” by “the trans cult” into falsely thinking that they’re not women, with calls for us to be “saved”. It’s bullshit and relies on ableist tropes of autistic people not being cognisant enough to consent to…well, pretty much anything that’s even a little bit “adult”, but it also relies on this radfem idea of (perceived) women not knowing or understanding what’s best for them.
They’re using ableist tropes, but the attitude is just an expansion of shit they already say.
this is absolutely NOT off-topic, but rather another excellent example of how nonintersectional radical feminism is - well - not intersectional.
radical feminism is trying to intimidate & coerce (perceived) women to submit themselves to radfem control, just as systemic patriarchy is trying to intimidate & coerce women, perceived women, & those presenting as women to submit themselves to patriarchal control.
any movement trying to force people to trade one kind of control for another is toxic and dangerous - and like most toxic/dangerous things, it is most dangerous and toxic to people marginalized on multiple axes.
Radfem on this site: *posts some meaningful insight into womanhood or patriarchal systems or sex based oppression*
People on this site:
Radfems: so you disagree?
People on this site:…..
Radfems:well….?
People on this site:
so, uh … this is a problem
if OP is a TERF it’s probably best to assume that any post they make is spreading transphobic TERF ideology & rhetoric (even if you can’t tell for sure yourself)
so how about instead:
DON’T REBLOG TERF CONTENT and ALSO DON’T ‘STEAL’ TERF CONTENT TO SPREAD IT ON THEIR FUCKINGBEHALF EITHER
this is how TERF bullshit gets spread so far and wide on tumblr, dammit
PS ‘meaningful insight into womanhood’ = ‘womanhood is [secondary sex characteristics of females and mystical feminine sisterhood that doesn’t exist]’ DOn’T BELIEVE ANDOR’S TRANSPHOBIA
also!!!
‘patriarchal systems or sex based oppression’ = ‘anyone amab, no matter what they do or how they present, benefits from the patriarchy’ and ‘assigned sex at birth = your lifelong gender’ and ‘oppression of women is entirely based on having wombs/vaginas/boobs and being non-aggressive/weaker than men’ and ‘womanly characteristics are inherent to aiab>afab and afab ppl’ and ‘afab people are just inherently kinder and sweeter and better than men in every way’ and ‘amab ppl just can’t help being evil rapists’
it’s transphobia with a massive side order of free gender essentialism and sexism and fuuuuuuuuck that
States in dark red still have laws on the books that make “sodomy” (oral and anal sex*) illegal; states in red only have laws against same-sex sodomy. These laws are unenforceable due to Lawrence v. Texas(2003), but would go into effect if the ruling were to be overturned. And yes, you read that correctly, 2003!
* Laws in Michigan and South Carolina ban only anal sex, not oral.
It’s not even just that blowjobs were illegal: a lot of sex negative radfem discourse is predicated on the idea that things like blowjobs (or anal sex, or penetrative sex at all, the goalposts keep moving) are inherently degrading and violent. When they say “foul, dangerous shit,” they don’t mean something like scat play, they mean “literally any sex.”
Like, just to illustrate my point, here are some screengrabs from the notes of that post about the guy who went to the hospital because he accidentally ruptured something during a blowjob.
To be clear: at no point was it either said or implied in the original post that the guy was having rough sex, that he was kinky, or literally ANYTHING ELSE other than that he was giving a blowjob. And here come the radfems saying that sex with any man is inherently violent and dangerous. And when someone calls them out on their homophobia, this is their response:
notice how it goes from “how can you say that our concern for this guy in the hospital is homophobic” to “you don’t need to go to the hospital for it to be violent and yes, actually, we ARE saying that any sex with men, including gay men having consensual sex with each other, is inherently violent.”
It’s not just whatever you’re picturing when you think of extremely kinky sex that they consider “foul and dangerous” - they’re defining that to include any sex acts they personally don’t like.
And also? This is why queer people and kinky people have a lot of overlap when it comes to their rights. The laws that criminalize “indecency” and other “damaging” sexual behavior always impact queer people the most, whether that’s a side effect or by design.
