#very good points
It’s just that I have both endo and PCOS so every time I’m confronted with fucking “unnamed mysteriously vanishing womb disorder” or what the fuck ever in a female character I yell at the tv for ten minutes about how this was a perfectly good opportunity to bring awareness to these WILDLY UNDERDIAGNOSED and poorly understood conditions that affect 4-20% (PCOS) and 10% (endo) of reproductive age women globally
Oh I can’t have kids! But I’m never in pain nor do my periods or perhaps lack thereof come up in the script at all, my skin is perfect I’m not insulin resistant or hirsute everything is 100% fine except I magically can’t have kids like OKAY maam no literally no woman has that experience and it definitely came out of a writers room of 10 men who think the ability to have a child or not is completely fucking divorced from any other aspect of a woman’s health. Being naturally infertile is not usually a medically neutral position it’s not benign. Theres always a reason and it’ll have wider implications for your general health. Primary ovarian insufficiency puts you into early menopause and you’re more at risk of osteoporosis and autoimmune diseases, not to mention your quality of life is trash if you’re untreated. If it’s endo then your life is pain but also medical trauma and an honorary medical degree since no one is gonna fucking listen to you, if it’s PCOS your whole endocrine system is having a flap and you’re at higher risk of T2 diabetes and associated risks like cardiovascular disease etc. not to mention other causes I haven’t mentioned here. It’s all so fucking stupid. Does black widow have incontinence? Does Robin have crippling periods? Does Betty have way too many androgens that are wreaking havoc on her body? Are these female characters human?
A thought abt radical feminists “working with the right” or whatever u wanna call it: obviously most conservatives are anti-choice and anti-lgb which is clearly at odds with radical feminist views, but on the other hand most leftists are pro porn and prostitution which is just as dangerous to women and just as at odds with radical feminism . So if we’re willing to put that difference aside to work with leftists on issues like reproductive rights, what’s different about putting differences aside to work with conservatives on fighting porn and prostitution or the trans issue? We’re always talking about how leftist men are just as sexist as conservative men, but then when it comes to making single-issue alliances we act like allying with conservatives is so much worse than allying with leftists, when really both groups support things that are equally dangerous and harmful to women. If we’re against allying with the right should we be against allying with the mainstream left too? Should we only work alone? I don’t know where I stand on this and I feel pretty conflicted about it tbh so I’m not trying to make any particular point I’m just curious to see what other radfems think
Radfems complain about trans activists being in an echo chamber, but y'all are too.
In the real world, in the world of politics and policy, if you want to get something done, you have to COMPROMISE. Yes, even if the people you’re working with or agreeing with hold different values and opinions you find abhorrent.
Look, I get it. I’m at a point where I don’t have much interest in talking to pro-trans leftists or most conservatives. But that’s just for my personal life. I’m not trying to change the world.
But if your goal is protections for women, if it is better treatment for LGB people, you’re going to have to suck it up and learn to tolerate other people long enough to achieve a common goal.
So what if the conservatives aren’t passing anti-sex buying laws or anti-self ID because they respect women or gay people? They’re still passing laws that help women and/or gay people! The ends justify the means. You have to work with what you have, because if you hold out for the perfect group of law makers or politicians, you’ll never get anything done.
Working with conservatives or leftists or whoever to get a law or policy passes is NOT “forming an alliance”. It’s not “getting into bed with them”. And it certainly doesn’t automatically make you part of that group.
It’s doing what needs to be done with what little you have to work with.
The world is gray, not black or white.
Next time you all want to complain about “allying” with an “undesirable” group to pass a new law, ask yourself if you’d rather grin and bear it to make change, or refuse to cooperate and achieve nothing.
I think there’s something to be said, however, about who is expected to do the cooperating.
Republicans don’t compromise. Conservatives don’t compromise.
They filibuster. They protest. They shut down the government.
Exactly how far across the aisle am I expected to reach before we see eye to eye?
The other point to be made is that we broadly agree with the progressive liberals and leftists we complain about. There’s no such thing as a conservative/republican/tory radfem. Most of us fall somewhere left of classical liberalism on the political spectrum. Many of us are politically active in progressive-to-socialist parties and organizations. When we complain about leftist men and their support for prostitution and gender self-ID, it’s from the perspective of trying to change or protect a group we already belong to. We’re not making single-issue alliances. We’re offering critical support.
It’s very different to work with a group that you generally agree with except for like two things, and to work with a group that you generally disagree with except for like two things.
gender crits forget that conservatives want Black people, other poc, poor people, and immigrants to die/leave the country (they may not say this and will in fact deny it, but their policies make it clear) just because it’s more acceptable to correctly sex someone in right wing spaces. that’s it. if your radical feminism is truly radical, you can’t just buddy up with conservatives, esp because you can’t trust them not to push their regressive agenda in every piece of policy they write (riders)
Working with right wingers also makes them seem more legitimate. It gives them the chance to point at you and say, “look, women agree with us! Lesbians agree with us! We represent everyone, our policies are for everyone!” even when their motivation (for the single issue on which you agree with them) is completely opposed to yours
And means leftist men can continue to denigrate feminists for being ‘right wing’ - the right is in power now in many places but the pendulum may swing back, as has happened so many times.
These are all good points, and I agree with most of them.
I just wonder how easy it would be to say this we any of us actually in a real life position where we had to make such decisions.
I wonder what I would do, or what any of you would do, if you had the opportunity to pass legislation in the current climate.
So, I say, take the money. From whoever. We need all the help we can get. “Feminazis” have always had it rough being legitimized politically.
Radical feminism would not have made the progress it did re: porn had it not received some dirty, Christian, anti-porn funding. I hate this, as history, but I know it worked on some level. Don’t, however, take mess from the people who give you money. There has to be a divide there, business only, as most right wingers will only have it in it for them, not you. So I don’t blame those radical feminists who would rather not be associated whatsoever.
I avoid them, because I’m “black and brown” and they don’t like this. I can have civil conversations with some. My only “boyfriend” ever grew up in a Fox News bubble. He is somewhat normal, 30 years later. I can talk to him about radical feminism, but not to some “liberal” women my age. This is baffling to me, to this day. I’ve known him for three years now, and the more and more I become a “TERF” by the ever changing definition, the more he gets what I mean.
He’s anti-porn. He was already. Politically, that aligned us somewhere gray more than I expected it to when I met him. The left would call us both uppity conservatives for following the words of Andrea Dworkin today, despite me being black, brown, a woman, Atheist, and something of a leftist.
It’s just misogyny. Misogyny knows no political lines. It’s much older than those. This dude I speak of is of course a man, so it’s embarrassing that he’s able to see how the third wave is failing women and how so many men refuse to step back and stop harming us, and yet so many liberals will not.
@genderisstillareligion thank you for sharing. This is kind of what I was thinking of when I replied above.
People are gray. Not black or white. I hate this word now, but politics are a spectrum. There are many, many conservatives who are hateful and downright evil. But there are many who are not. Same with liberals. In all honesty, I think, those who aren’t on extremes, those who are normal, regardless of whether they’re left or right, at the end of the day, just wanna do what they think is right.
I’ve known conservatives who are anti-racism. I’ve known liberals who are homophobic.
I’ve known conservatives who are openly racist.
Ive known liberals who aren’t homophobic.
People aren’t as cut and dry as social media makes you believe.
In politics, money talks. You take what you can get, or you go nowhere.
It might depend on your specific country and it’s political climate/the political parties you have on offer, but overall I feel the strict stance of “no cooperation with the right/conservatives” is unproductive. At least if you want any chance at solidifying women’s rights as actualrights laid out in law. Laws are made by politicians and to get anywhere, you have no choice but to seek common ground with them.
Of course it’s good to remain critical of the alliances you form and to weigh the pros and cons. But stop vilifying women for trying to achieve something. You can choose to stick to “my way or the highway” if you like, but that doesn’t mean that feminists who adopt a more pragmatic stance have sold their souls to the devil and have devolved into a lost cause. Or that they have thrown everybody else under the bus.
These changes in law to erase sex and replace it with gender identity are also going to do the most harm to the most vulnerable women and children. Me, I might skate by just being offended to be reduced to a “person with uterus”. Maybe I’m lucky and won’t run into any stunning TIMs in changing rooms. But women in shelters, in prisons, women who cannot be vulnerable in the presence of men due to trauma, or religion, those will be impacted the most. Those will be put in the most danger or forced to adjust their lives the most. Kids will undergo these unethical medical experiments that will damage them for life. So I do not believe that lobbying for votes with conservatives is necessarily only for the benefit of more privileged women.
I’m with a small feminist organization (the only one not captured by trans activism) in the Netherlands and we’re trying to raise awareness about the implications of plans like self-id for women’s rights. ALL of the political parties (and we have a lot of them) except for an ultra-conservative Christian one, outright refuse to even talk to us. We send them all information and letters nonetheless, but every politician on the left either: (1) ignores us, (2) tells us not to contact them again, (3) proclaims us a hate group on Twitter and promptly blocks us. So what option does that leave? Start a party of our own? Okay, that’d be great, but these horrendous laws are being worked on right now. They will have been implemented by the time we’d get a seat in the government. That is, of course, if we would even manage to get enough votes for a single representative in government, which is doubtful. And then that’d still likely be one representative and therefore one vote at most. We would still need a lot more parties on board to block or pass laws.
So we take what we can get and use those few contacts with the conservative Christians. A party that did not even allow women to join until a judge ruled a few years ago that that was discriminatory and not allowed. It absolutely sucks. But at least they can serve as a means to ask some of those important critical questions. Together with another (slightly less conservative) Christian party, they were the only ones to aks for clarification about the spike in referrals of young girls to the gender clinic (1000% increase in a decade) and for more research into the underlying cause. And they were the only party to bring up detransitioners and plead for more support for this group. Meanwhile, one of the bigger parties on the left called puberty blockers + cross sex hormones for kids a “win-win” situation: better transition results and lower costs due to the need for less cosmetic surgery later in life.
Elections are coming up here in three weeks, and I still have no clue who to vote for. Women are politically homeless. It’s absolutely outrageous that this super conservative religious party seems the safest choice for women in many ways. I don’t think I can bring myself to vote for them, however. They are against abortion, of course, and I feel that that’s a line I can’t cross, even if they won’t get a majority to actually ban it. But a vote for anyone else effectively means a vote to render my speech into hate speech (yup, that bill is currently on the table).
‘the point of fiction is to build the world we want to see!’ respectfully. No It Is Not.
Remember: Your favorite works would not exist if the author didn’t do it for themselves.
Art is purely for the person creating the art.
Artists/Authors do NOT have to cater to YOU. They cater to themselves first and foremost.
They don’t HAVE to cater to you at all.
YOU just happen to like the work they produce.
If the case isn’t to build a world for us to escape to, then why does everyone use fiction as an escape from reality?
The point of fiction IS to build the whole world we want to see, because fiction is meant to be so that we can escape from the world we don’t like.
Respectfully.
hey, so, you’re right that many people use fiction as an escape from reality! however, people also use fiction for many other reasons, some of which are listed in the notes - entertainment, exploring concepts, catharsis, wanted to see a fucked up thing happen without that thing happening in real life, etc. just because escapism is one of the uses of fiction doesn’t mean that’s its sole purpose, and it especially doesn’t mean that everyone has to use and create it for that reason only.
it’s like saying a knife is only for chopping vegetables. lots of people use a knife to chop vegetables. someone could choose to only ever pick up a knife to chop vegetables. however, this does not mean that the sole purpose of knives is to chop vegetables, and it definitely doesn’t mean people who make knives that are adapted to other purposes are making bad knives, or don’t understand what knives are for.
also sometimes i use fiction for escapism but the fiction i want to use for escapism is stuff that’s about WORSE worlds on purpose because that happens to be what hits the particular itch. so even ‘fantasy is escapism’ does not automatically mean ‘the worlds should be places we want to actually like… live in.’
also important to note that saying fiction has to be for escapism puts the burden of creating an escape on the author, who may in fact not want to do that, who may want to do any number of other things with their fiction, and who shouldn’t be barred from creating fiction just because what they want to make doesn’t work for the purpose someone else wants fiction to serve. and that’s kind of a really important thing to note, actually, bc fiction doesn’t just spawn fully formed, people do have to put effort into it. and they get to choose why they’re doing it and what they want to get out of it and what they want their work to be.
