Radfem Safe - Tumblr Posts

Ok fellow radfems, for anyone who manages to invent a time machine, I think we need to decide when and where we should all go, and what our meet-up place is. The future is always changing, so it's much more likely we'll be able to make it safely into the past.

I'm going to strongly suggest 2009, meet-up place is a Borders Book Store, somewhere in the Midwestern United States. But we need to go in early 2009, because the swine flu was declared a global pandemic in June of that year.

Reblog with preferred year and meet-up destination ideas.

You're definitely not alone. I pick up a good romance novel every now and again. I also like how you pointed out that it's a case by case basis as I will never condone 50 shades and the like.

I also like how you made a point that there is actually a story and relationship development. Think about how many movies have a few sex scenes without it being the focus of the whole romance film (e.g. No Strings Attached, The Notebook, etc.). I think the huge difference between romance novels and porn, is that women are not being objectified as often in romance novels because women are the ones writing them.

I am resolutely against visual porn involving real human beings, but I think that (written) erotica by women can be an incredibly powerful tool in allowing women to explore their sexuality safely without exposing themselves to a constant stream of images of beaten and battered women. The content involved in such books (i.e. unsafe kinks) should be judged on a case-by-case manner whether or not it is harmful, because there are some genuinely good stories in this genre. It’s also important to always read everything critically, and I’m not saying that erotica should be exempt from this or general criticism.

also worth noting that out of all pornography types, written erotica (by women for women) is the most scorned and ridiculed by mainstream society- the porn that widely actually involves a story and relationship development is the one that gets made fun of for being embarrassing to engage in. Shocker.

I’m not sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts! 🤍🤍

hello 911 feminists are being mean

Okay, so I have a sleep disorder (hence the sloth in the name) and I follow this sleep advocacy group/non profit on Instagram which of course, this month, felt the need to "highlight voices from the LGBTQ+ community" who struggle with sleep disorders. So today they posted about this one girl and she writes "I identify as queer and bisexual, and as disabled."

I'm sorry what? Are any of those things something you can "identify" as? Que*r is a slur, and even if it wasn't, what would it even mean? Like why is it a separate thing from your sexual orientation? Which by the way, that's what bisexuality is: a sexual orientation. Not an identity. And disabled, how tf do you identify as disabled? You either have a disability, or you don't. And then underneath that she writes "I have narcolepsy".

Are you sure? Maybe you just identify as narcoleptic. But that would sound ridiculous. 🙄

I wrote a 20-something page literature review and hypothetical research proposal on the effects of pornography related to healthy relationship views in young adults for my undergrad. Porn has definitely been proven harmful in the academic world.

I have access to several data bases from my university and it’s so funny every time you look up pornography theres not a single article about how it’s good. It’s 2020 we’ve been studying porn for decades, there’s thousands of studies on it, if you believe porn is scientifically beneficial youre dumber than a flat earther.

Ugh, I'll always hate this trend. As the daughter of a nurse, I was taught growing up that acrylic and fake nails are not okay because they are terrible for your actual nails, especially if done repeatedly, and because they harbor bacteria between the fake nail and your real nail. You can safely paint your nails for far less money anyway. If you do want to get them painted professionally, try to find a nail salon that is family owned or one where you can verify the workers are not trafficked. I grew up in the midwest US and I got pedicures at the same nail salon for over a decade because I knew it was owned by a local Vietnamese family.

I hate the trend of long acrylic nails so much. Ah yes, let's encourage young women to do something to their hands that will prevent them from doing most everyday activities. I get occasionally wanting to decorate your body. I get it. I paint my nails on occasion. But me painting my nails purple does not prevent me from handling small objects. Tricking young women into paying 35+€ every three weeks for the pleasure of not being able to use their hands is cruel.

Bonus: In Europe at least, many of the women doing your nails are trafficking victims, forced to work for essentially no pay with chemicals and dust that will permanently destroy their lungs and airways. All so you can be unable to use your hands.

Why can’t a women’s march turn into a riot? Why can’t we force them to listen to us by burning their cities to the ground? The suffragettes did it, why can’t we?

Amen

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and a female by any other pronouns would still be oppressed in a patriarchy

What the actual fuck. She wasn’t even remotely transphobic, she just wanted to stay true to her beliefs and not expose her hair to the male SEX. The XY chromosome combo. She's not "misgendering" anyone. She didn’t use the "wrong" pronouns or anything like that. All she did was defend her personal belief based in her religion that she keep her hair covered in front of biological males. Funny how Islam is super woke to all the leftists until it conflicts with all their gender-bending philosophy and self-identifying trend.

Aaand everyone’s calling her transphobic

@searchingforproofsthatimwrong here I've elaborated on your hypothesis:

If we ask 50+ TRAs to provide concrete definitions of the terms woman, man, and gender in less than 50 words per term using language at or below a 6th grade reading level, they will be unable to perform this task because they have too wide a variety of definitions for these terms within their online discourse, none of which have a clear, evidence-based, scientific origin.

Now, why a 6th grade reading level? It's because the average US adult can read at a 7th-8th grade reading level, and we want information to be easily understood. And information about sex and gender affects health in many ways.

The ability to understand health information is known as health literacy and don't fuck with me b/c I just wrote an insanely long quality improvement paper on this topic.

 "A number of factors impact health literacy including a patient’s receipt of appropriate written health communication materials, ability to accurately interpret written health-related information, and communication with providers. When patients receive written health communication materials that don’t match their reading level, patient education is not effective. Additionally, when patients have low overall literacy skills but high verbal fluency, their verbal fluency can mask their inability to interpret written information. Potential communication barriers between patients and health care providers created by low health literacy may lead to a variety of negative health outcomes for the patient. For example, such communication barriers have been associated with patients being more likely to be hospitalized."

Source

Basically this can be summarized as TRAs failing to provide definitions in plain language will actively create worse health outcomes for people who cannot understand their reasoning that "asking to define the term woman isn't a scientific question, it's a pHiLOsoPhiCAl one".

Here's a scientific answer:

Woman = Adult. Human. Female.

For Real now what is a gender identity, what are gender roles, what is a gender, what is the difference ?

A definition for each please

I am getting tired of Always Reading how terfs are stupid for conflating those and never getting a straight answer as to what exactly those are.

Gender identity: the individual sense of what gender you are. The reason why can be for various different things. Mine being the drop in gender dysphoria and experience of gender euphoria.

Gender roles: Femininity and masculinity, stereotypes, etc.

Masculinity and femininity are usually seen as types of gender expression within our transgender cult. We don’t think that whether being masculine or feminine has an impact on what someone’s actual gender is and instead as a way of expressing oneself.

The difference is that gender identity isn’t determined by gender roles and that being masc or fem doesn’t have to equate to someone’s gender identity.

Gender identity can simply be how one percieves themselves and/or their body. Gender roles are what’s expected of that gender identity. Gender expression is how the person presents themselves (clothing, pronouns, etc.).

This is how masculine trans women and feminine trans men exist. It’s how they don’t get shunned by every other trans person, even if they are by some.

Thank you so very much, @ms-gay-frogs for so perfectly explaining the difference between seeking mental health treatment for dysphoria and the incredibly harmful and unsupported use of conversion therapy to "treat" homosexuality!

I was looking for something on the website for Children's hospital MN yesterday and was unsure of what the wording of this victory meant for people who may need resources for coping with gender dysphoria and/or detransition. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% for banning conversion therapy, but why did they have to tack gender identity and expression onto that ban when it's a completely different issue?

Gotta love how radfems hail themselves as progressive when they are basically conservatives with hairier armpits and, despite a disgust towards trans women, have an even bigger obsession with transwomen's dicks than porn blogs.

The most perfect metaphor.

me: eggs are not vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE REAL.*

me: sure but they aren’t vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE VALID.*

me: yeah but they still aren’t vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE DESERVING OF LOVE AND SUPPORT.*

me: I guess so but they’re still not vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS. ARE. VEGETABLES.*

Has anyone watched Euphoria on HBO? Thoughts? I watched the first episode and while it is a deeply unsettling show, it portrays so much of the unique pressures gen Z is under. I'm aware it has a transgender girl in it, but I wondered what people's thoughts were on how both that and the the main character's drug addiction is portrayed and how it maybe even plays into the underlying factors that can contribute to dysphoria and drug dependence (as two separate issues).

Thoughts?

You know, I wouldn't even mind that much that we have been to socialized to shave, because obviously men have been too, and societies will always have different ideas of what is considered 'normal' personal grooming, however there are two major differences between men and women's shaving in modern society:

1. Men are expected to shave their faces and women are expected to literally rid themselves of all body hair, especially their legs, underarms, and bikini area, which is a hell of a lot more work, and

2. While men having beards aren't as common as clean shaven men today, no one freaks out and calls men with beards 'gross' or 'unhygienic' the way they do when women choose not to shave their underarms or legs.

When these two things change, maybe I will actually consider women choosing to shave as a personal choice. For now, though, it remains a practice too greatly influenced by negative societal pressure to be considered something one can independently choose to do. Sticking with the status quo is rarely something we consciously choose to do, especially not without exposure to the fact that there even is another choice.

Also, in the face of several very 'black and white' posts I have seen on radblr, I feel like I need to say this: I would be lying if I said I was not a hypocrite about these socialized standards sometimes, because it can be hard to escape from societal pressure. To the other young radfems out there, especially those of us who left liberal feminism to join the radical side, please know that it's okay if you can't wake up tomorrow and quit shaving, quit wearing makeup, quit caring about everything you have been socialized to care about for years, all at once. It might take a while and you know what? At the end of the day, I would rather young girls went out and saw some women with hairy legs and makeup, and some other women with bare faces and shaved legs, than for them to go out and see only shaved legs and makeup. So if you have given up shaving but you haven't given up eyeliner yet, don't fret about not being a "real radfem". Our job as radical feminists is about promoting liberation from men, and to do that, we have to join together as women to be supportive of one another. And if you show up to protest the Oklahoma abortion ban with lipstick on, or you spread the word that women deserve spots just for biological females and fight for that right with shaved underarms, I'm certainly not going to yell at you that you can't dare call yourself a radical feminist looking like that. There are bigger fish to fry.

Sincerely,

A radfem with hairy legs who isn't quite ready to give up her eyeliner and tinted chapstick just yet.

I really like the phrase "those perceived to carry and birth children" because that sort of sums up how misogyny affects all women regardless of their genotype and reproductive abilities. I have a friend with Turner's syndrome (single X genotype) who will never be able to have kids, but people view her exactly the same way that they view me, as a twenty-something woman worthy of all the same misogynistic bullshit.

I think…at times we get too bogged down in the nitty-gritty of what makes someone female or male. Like talking about which sex produces large gametes and which produces small gametes, or variations on chromosomes, etc. Is that a valuable conversation to be had? Yes, absolutely. But I think we get trapped in that argument and it distracts from the main issue—that patriarchy is designed to oppress those with female phenotypes and the perceived ability to carry and birth children.

Because an intersex child who looks female is going to be raised with female socialization, regardless of their chromosomal makeup. Women who do not have uteruses, from birth or via surgical procedure, are still subject to misogyny and structural sexism due to their perceived biological abilities.

I think most radical feminists know this, but I don’t know how many of us realize that picking these definitions apart are ways to distract us from identifying our material oppression and coming together as women—because the more we argue about the details, the less focused we are on developing bonds between women and ultimately female class consciousness.

I’m putting these thoughts into a coherent statement for the first time, and I’d like to know other women’s opinions.

Not to mention that there are some incredibly deserving women who for one reason or another cannot use their own uterus to get pregnant. It's known as Absolute Uterine Factor Infertility and Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome and cervical cancer early on in adulthood are two of the leading reasons it may occur. And a few important points that people don't seem to understand:

Every successful uterus transplant thus far has involved the recipient having their own ovaries. You need ovaries in order to menstruate or get pregnant. Trans women do not have ovaries.

Almost all, if not all, of the successful births following transplant, were using uteri from women who had previously had a child. Which just makes sense. If you are going to do a complicated surgery to provide someone with a uterus that they can use to get pregnant, better to pick a uterus that has a good track record. So the idea that you can just "donate your uterus" to anyone, including trans women, because you "don't want children" is not really a thing.

We JUST performed the first successful transplantation followed by childbirth in 2014. That's not even ten years ago. This field has so much more to learn in the next few decades.

Uterus transplantation's primary focus will be helping infertile women, because our bodies already have all the rest of the gear you need to have a child. An example of this would be how the pregnancy hormone lactin prepares a female's body to begin lactation when the infant is born, producing a very specific pre-milk called colostrum. Among this substance's many benefits are boosting a neonate's immune system and helping to fight infection. (My mom, who works in a NICU, calls this substance "liquid gold" because it makes such a big difference if an infant can be provided with it). This is something that biological males, even with a uterus transplant, would not be able to produce. Everything from where are bladders are located to how our pituitary glands work are different in biological women than in biological men, and affected greatly in terms of fertility and pregnancy.

While having children is certainly a choice, there is only one sex who is able to get pregnant, because we have fucking amazing bodies that know how to build human beings. I get that men are jealous of that ability, but they can get tf over it because they will never be able to do what we can do.

Sources

This. All of this. I have no issue with painting nails, as I feel like it can be a fun thing to add a little color to life, and unlike makeup or shaving, I feel like society doesn't tend to give a shit whether or not your nails have paint on them or not. But I DESPISE fake nails.

I was raised by a nurse and these are the reasons my mother gave as to why I was under no circumstances allowed to have fake nails while growing up:

- Acrylic nails must be applied to a rough surface which means they file down your actual nail, which makes them weaker

- the space between your acrylic nail and your real nail is a great spot for bacteria to hide and grow.

-acrylic (and gel) nails literally have to be soaked in acetone to be taken off

-you can't do anything with acrylic nails and they make writing, typing, and literally all activities of daily living more difficult

-cuticle trimming (often done before acrylic or gel nails are applied) is literally pushing back and trimming the very thing that prevents the skin surrounding your nails from infection. And just like removing body hair, removing your cuticle skin often causes it to grow back rougher.

Gel has become pretty popular in the last 10 years and in the interest of giving clear information, I feel like I should state that there are two different products "gel nails" may refer to. The first is artificial nails made out of gel that bond to your nails with UV light. Basically this goo is applied to your nail and then 'cured' under a UV light, so that is hardens into a tough shell attached to your nail. The second product is gel polish, which is regular nail polish with a gel component, that is still dried under a UV light and generally lasts longer than regular nail polish due to the gel curing under UV light.

-while gel nail polish isnt quite as bad as artificial nails, please keep in mind that UV light is used to seal this type of polish. I know some people like gel polish because it lasts longer than typical nail polish, so if you absolutely insist on using it, at least put sunscreen on your hands (or feet, if painting toenails) before putting them under the UV dryer. And consider taking breaks in between gel with no polish at all, as repeated use can lead to brittle, cracked nails.

-the major problem with gel nails and gel polish isn't actually the gel, it's the removal of it. People often pick at the gel and peel away layers of gel polish instead of having them taken off with acetone at a nail salon. Picking and peeling causes not only the gel but part of the protective outer layer of the nail to be peeled or pried up together due to the chemical bonds. Pure acetone breaks the bonds so that the gel can be removed with less damage to the nail. The bond between your nail and the gel only solidifies more with each day and the longer you wait to have gel nails removed, the harder it will be to get them off, so the whole longer lasting thing doesn't really pay off.

Moral of the story: stick to regular polish if you are going to paint your nails. And never feel obligated to paint them, cosmetic companies run by men don't need any more women's money.

This is crazy! I pay for the NYT and they literally disable comments on most trans stories to prevent people from even having a conversation about anything instead of just accepting their 'facts'. The only time I have seen them present anything that shows the view point of those 'average Americans without an agenda' was a recent story about how some teachers are calling students by different names and pronouns based on student preference, and purposely not alerting their parents to these changes. The article discussed how many parents are upset by this blatant dis-involvement and purposeful hiding of information related to how their own children feel about their core identity.

The Bradshaws have been startled to find themselves at odds with the school over their right to know about, and weigh in on, such a major development in their child’s life — a dispute that illustrates how school districts, which have long been a battleground in cultural conflicts over gender and sexuality, are now facing wrenching new tensions over how to accommodate transgender children.

The Bradshaws accepted their teenager’s new gender identity, but not without trepidation, especially after he asked for hormones and surgery to remove his breasts. Doctors had previously diagnosed him as being on the autism spectrum, as well as with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, PTSD and anxiety. He had struggled with loneliness during the pandemic, and, to his parents, seemed not to know exactly who he was yet, because he had repeatedly changed his name and sexual orientation.

Given those complexities, Mrs. Bradshaw said she resented the fact that the school had made her feel like a bad parent for wondering whether educators had put her teenager, a minor, on a path the school wasn’t qualified to oversee.

The only 'agenda' this article discussed was a parents' right to be involved in major decisions about changing how their child is referred to and thus how they are perceived by their classmates and the world at large. And most of the parents voted liberal on other issues but discussed how they could not talk about their frustrations because people are so quick to label anyone with a dissenting voice or even a questioning one as 'transphobic', thus leading them to seek out allies on the other side of the political spectrum.

But how schools should address gender identity cuts through the liberal and conservative divide. Parents of all political persuasions have found themselves unsettled by what schools know and don’t reveal.

Mrs. Bradshaw said she wouldn’t align herself with Republican lawmakers who sought to ban L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but she also felt as though her school’s policy left no room for nuance.

“It is almost impossible to have these discussions,” Mrs. Bradshaw said. “There is no forum for someone like me.”

Other self-described liberal parents said they registered as independents or voted for Republican candidates for the first time as a result of this issue. Although they haven’t sued, some have retained lawyers affiliated with the largest legal organization on the religious right to battle their children’s schools.

The best part of this random call to eliminate 'anti-trans' stories is that even some transgender people support the right to have an actual discussion about social transition and for parents to be involved in their own children's major life decisions, so I'm not sure how they can possibly claim articles like these ones as being biased against trans ideology when they are going out of their way to get the opinion of both sides.

In November, Erica Anderson, a well-known clinical psychologist who has counseled hundreds of children over gender identity-related issues and is transgender herself, filed an amicus brief in a Maryland lawsuit in support of parents represented by a conservative law group. The parents have argued that their district’s policy violates their own decision-making authority.

Transitioning socially, Dr. Anderson wrote, “is a major and potentially life-altering decision that requires parental involvement, for many reasons.”

She told the Times that she had to push aside her qualms about working with conservative lawyers. “I don’t want to be erased as a transgender person, and I don’t want anyone’s prerogatives or identity to be taken away from them,” she said, “but on this one, I’m aligned with people who are willing to advocate for parents.”

So far, this is the first and only article I have seen from the NYT actually having a discussion about gender ideology rather than blatantly shoving it down our throats as 'science', and if an article showing both sides of an issue is really so offensive to some people, then those people don'tunderstandhow journalism works. All they are doing by shutting down any dissenting voices is proving the point that many of these parents made regarding how quickly anyone questioning these liberal doctrines are slapped with the 'transphobic' label.

There is a network of internet support groups for “skeptical” parents of transgender children, some with thousands of registered members. Detractors have called the groups transphobic, because some want to ban gender-affirming care for minors, or have amplified the voices of people who call transgender advocates “groomers.”

But members say these groups are some of the only places to ask questions and air their concerns.

One Saturday morning shortly before Christmas, a meeting of one such support group was held in Westchester County, just north of New York City. Sitting in a circle in a member’s living room, 12 mothers and one father spoke of the ways they said they had been sidelined by their children’s schools.

One mother said her middle-schooler had secretly changed names and pronouns without her knowledge, even though she had worked as a teacher at the same school. Another mother shared how high school teachers had hidden her teenager’s social transition from her until graduation because they thought she wouldn’t be supportive enough. A mother of a 14-year-old who had spent time in an inpatient therapy facility said she had sent her school a letter from the student’s psychiatrist outlining concerns that the school had ignored.

Most said they identified as liberal, and that the living room was a rare safe space for them to voice their fears. Some parents didn’t think their teenagers were really transgender. Others thought it was too soon to know for certain. Most said their children had mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, or autism.

Here they could ask: What if their children had been unduly influenced by their classmates to ask for hormone treatments and surgery? What if teachers were encouraging students to see their families as unsafe? And were right-wing partisans their only sympathetic audience?

“It’s just been such a hard thing to navigate, because on the one hand, I’m dealing with my very extreme liberal values of individuality, freedom, expression, sexuality, wanting to support all of this stuff,” said a tearful mother. “At the same time, I’m afraid of medicalization. I’m afraid of long term health. I’m afraid of the fact that my child might change their mind.”

Collecting information on and being empathetic to the indivuals on both sides of an issue in order to try and understand the influences on and made by that issue doesn't make a journalist phobic of anything, it just means that person did their research. TRAs need to stop this absolute insanity of trying to emilinate discussion on gender ideology. They are pushing people out of their own political circle by refusing them a voice, and the consequences of a political spectrum where neither of the major parties allows for free speech and discussion in a respectful manner could be drastic.

last line is me circa 1543 when that loser galileo dared to suggest that the earth revolves around the sun

This perfectly sums up the disrespect so many men and boys show towards women in what are often considered to be "socially acceptable ways".

I thank the lord most days that I'm a nurse and most of my coworkers are females for so many reasons, the fact that my coworkers will never use my fears/phobias against me is just another one to add to the list.

It's monstrous how much boys and men love tormenting girls and women. The way so many boys and men actually love scaring and upsetting girls and women on purpose because they think it's funny.

I'm thinking specifically about how I have some phobias of bugs, and I specifically have to hide that from men because once they find out they purposely show me the bugs I'm afraid of to torment me because they think it's funny and cute to torment and upset a woman. Like when one of my male co-workers at my old job found out I was arachnophobic after that he made a point of if he found a spider in the store he'd purposely try to shove it in my face because he thought it was funny and cute to scare me and make me upset. I've had multiple instances of grown male co-workers behaving like this but never a grown female co-worker. Sure, I'm sure there's at least a few grown women in the world out there like that, but for the most part this behavior is only seen in small girls but quickly corrected and beat out of her while men are still tormenting women for fun as grown adults.

Or my mother has a pretty bad phobia of frogs, and she told me a story about how when she was a little girl some boys found out, and they specifically made it a point to collect frogs from outside to throw at her. One time they cornered her in the bathroom and threw buckets of frogs at her, she was sobbing and shaking and having a full blown panic attack while they were laughing. It was for no other reason than they thought it was funny to make a girl upset and scared.

And this ties in with how often if a girl or woman asks a boy or man to stop doing something that bothers her or annoys her they double down and start doing the behavior even more just because they want to upset girls and women. Like schoolgirls asking the boy next to her to stop drumming with his pencils because it's distracting her from being able to pay attention to class, how likely is it he'll actually stop vs just doing it even more loudly and frequently just to bother her? If this is a lifelong pattern for girls this makes girls back off and less likely to stand up to boys and men.

If a girl has for years had a pattern of every time she asks the boys in her class to stop drumming with their pencils while she's trying to pay attention or stop saying gross sexual jokes that make her uncomfortable to her during class or stop poking her and every time they just double down and start doing it even more and even louder or harder just to upset her, is she going to keep asking boys to stop doing things that bother her? Is she going to feel comfortable and safe standing up for herself and asserting her boundaries? Or is she going to get quiet and stop speaking up and hope for the love of god they don't notice the annoyance on her face because if they do that's enough just to make them double down and start doing it more to bother her?

I've seen countless examples of men purposely making women so scared or upset or angry that they're in tears for no other reason than fun and entertainment. Boys and men are fucking sadistic demons. And this keeps girls and women in line, keeps girls and women from being able to stand up for ourselves and assert our personal boundaries to boys and men.