awomansdream

[awomansdream]

“5 amazon products you NEED” “pov: you bought a straw that ✨prevents wrinkles✨ (link in bio!)” “how i stay skinny as a working mom of 3 [straight up eating disorder behavior]” “refill my emotional support stanley cup with me” “POV: you’re a 23 year old tradwife boy mom😍” “i spent 2,800 dollars on a top! let’s style it!” “does anyone else’s husband do this😂😂😂 [the most insane example of weaponized incompetence anyone has ever seen]” What the fuck are you people talking about😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇

[awomansdream]

It feels taboo as a childfree person to admit this but I actually do have concerns about who is going to take care of me when I'm old. The elder care system in our nation relies A LOT on the unpaid care labor of adult children. I just don't think that's a good reason to have kids.

"But you'll have more money!" does not completely put this to rest for me. Neither does "Buy care insurance!" Even if I can afford direct personal care, who is going to advocate for me to get it? Who is going to navigate bureaucracy for me when I'm 80?

"If you do have kids, there's no GUARANTEE that they'll take care of you when your old!" That's true, but doesn't solve my problem.

I think childfree people get very defensive about this question because its used as a kind of "gotcha!" against us, but I actually do not feel we can afford to be in denial about this reality. Based on current trends of more people in their 30s stating they intend to be permanently childfree, we are going to see a huge wave of childfree adults hitting the eldercare system at once in a few decades. Childfree people in their 30s should be advocating around eldercare NOW.

[awomansdream]

it honestly both moves me and breaks my heart that it seems to be the people who’re living paycheck to paycheck who’re going out of their way to donate periodically, whereas rich people are basically lauded for doing as little as liking posts that kind of insinuate… kind of hint… kind of wink at supporting Palestine. here’s a PSA that the wealthier you are, the more responsible you are for consistent donations—and not just a one-and-done to ease your conscience. yes, you do have a responsibility to donate if you have the means. no, hyperindividualism can’t save you with this one. you should be feeling indignant that your rich friends would rather drop thousands on products but barely anything on Palestinian aid. you should be heckling them to do more. this is everybody’s fight—whether they like it or not.

[awomansdream]

We are hearing reports from the North of Gaza, almost daily now, about babies dying due to malnutrition. Think about it, babies can only sustain themselves on either breastmilk or formula in the first months. Formula had practically become nonexistent in Gaza as a result of Israel’s blockade, while mothers simply cannot produce breastmilk when they themselves are malnourished. Do you see the cycle here?

If you continue to argue about whether or not this is a genocide, you're making a fool out yourself.

[awomansdream]

Saw someone on tiktok yesterday talking about "the cons of pretty privilege" and then just mentioned like, having to go to multiple job interviews and often not being taken seriously by men in her profession? I'm sorry but that is just regular misogyny like you're treated that way because you're a woman not because you're conventionally attractive

[awomansdream]

10 children a day lose their limbs in Gaza. All hospitals in Gaza are basically barely functioning and the amputations are done in unsanitary conditions and without anesthesia

[awomansdream]

there was this comment under a video of a girl complaining about her facial hair saying she (the commenter) also has facial hair as well as her mom and daughter and she doesn’t remove it anymore because she likes it and it makes her feel like a kitten and dismissed every negative reply with “you wish you felt as secure as I do in my body” and a smiling kitten emoji. i think it’s very 😺

[awomansdream]

just bc i feel like were mostly seeing hotrible news and shit on radblr - these were the top comments on that post, and look at the likes!

the sex industry lobbyists and influencers bought by them who make their money off of pimping want to make you believe the opposite but there are actually loads of people who dont think hardcore pornography is a normal thing and natural part of human sexuality.

[awomansdream]

@W_Asherah

[awomansdream]

why is headless women art bad? i can see why it's seen as objectifying but why is it such a big deal to make art out of the female form? (sorry if i sound agressive this is a genuine question)

Hi anon! You certainly don’t sound aggressive - I’m actually very grateful for the opportunity to collate my current thoughts in one place, so thank you for the prompt. I’m going to try my hardest to keep this short.

For any women who haven’t seen posts on this topic previously, some examples of the ‘headless women art’ trend I’ve been talking about for a while now are below. They’re often missing their limbs, at various points of amputation, as well as all or part of their heads (if she has her eyes, I generally don’t count it). Sometimes their heads have been ‘replaced’ with other objects, typically plants or mushrooms, though I wouldn’t count a woman with an animal or bird’s head. They’re often naked.

So, per Anon’s question, why is it a ‘big deal’?

I mean, really, it’s not. It’s an absolutely minuscule deal - it’s as dwarfed by the issues of the sex industry, femicide, and systemic sex inequality, as we are by the Sun. And yet, much as our bodies are made of particles formed in dying stars, I see elements of the large within the small… ok, I’m not getting poetic.

It’s not a big deal, and I don’t necessarily think it’s wholly terrible either, which is why in my analysis posts on the topic I try to ask questions more than criticise, and criticise gently when I do so. What it comes down to is that I spotted a pattern, and wanted to acknowledge that pattern, think about it, and ask other women for their thoughts on it.

With that said, there are certain things that I question particularly, and have seen other women question, which I’ll list:

Remove her legs and she can’t run, remove her arms and she can’t fight, remove her mouth and she can’t shout, and remove her eyes and she can’t look back at you. You totally disempower her when you remove almost every body part capable of action.

By removing her head you also remove her brain (her personality and internal identity), and her face (her visible external identity). By anonymising her you strip her of her individuality, and depict all female people as a result - so what message are you sending about all female people with your depiction of us, naked and dismembered?

A (living) woman’s neutral existence requires her to have her head. By removing it, you are making an active choice to step away from the neutral (and it’s on you to defend that choice), and you are also by necessity depicting a dead woman. You ask about ‘art out of the female form’ - the living female form has a head. Why remove it?

The simplest test of whether something might be sexist, is to see whether it applies to men and women equally. Are (straight) men decorating their homes with ‘bits’ of male bodies? Do men in general feel conscious enough of, yet alienated enough from, the appearance of their bodies that they seek out their representation, sans heads, to reflect back at them? Why not, if women are? Would it be strange if they did?

As a follow up, since many of these pieces are made by women (often straight women), are (straight) men often focusing their artistic output on depicting ‘bits’ of male bodies? Do men regularly choose to create art intended to depict the ‘beauty’ of the male form? If not, why not?

You mention objectification - what links are there between objectification and violence? Could self-objectification be used to normalise violence against the self, or even excuse it? What about violence against others who are like the self (ie violence against other women)?

As I say, I’m not necessarily saying this artistic trend is exclusively a bad one, or that people/women in particular shouldn’t be decorating their homes however they please. It’s just something I’ve noted and found interesting, and like many apparently free choices, I think feminist women have a responsibility to interrogate their own and others’ motivations.

This is a hasty overview, and I’ve probably missed things - I’ll reblog with additions if I think of any, but you can also see my previous posts on this topic, and other women’s contributions, under my “Headless Women Art” tag. Thanks again for the question!

[awomansdream]

“Hi I just want to play devils advocate.”

He says this smugly, like he’s a brave, lone, contrarian fighting for truth in a pc world that hates him.

Then he says something that’s been spoon fed to everyone in society for last 100 years, and that most men enthusiastically repeat with zeal, all while punching down on people deemed safe enough to mock.

Go ahead and play devils advocate, it’s just not so interesting in a place where the devil is widely accepted and adored. Where all the philosophers are devils. All the religious leaders. All the judges, and jurors. The radio and podcast hosts, the musicians, the richest art dealer to the poorest street graffiti artists scrawling the same message… all spitting the same bile. I don’t care anymore…

I think the body can become bored of even the most repulsive of poisons.

[awomansdream]

Even if 100% of the women in porn loved working in porn, loved taking two dicks in their asshole until their rectum prolapsed, loved getting chlamydia and gonorrhea in their eyes from the cumshots, loved being beaten, spat on, choked, slapped, throatfucked until they vomited, I would still argue for the eradication of porn on the basis of what it is doing to the rest of our fucking society. This evil, disgusting world will do anything to justify the continued degradation and violation of women; will do ANYTHING to conform the abuse of women to the tone of the times so that profound human suffering is now considered vital and empowering, just as it was once moralized as a "necessary evil" for containing the sexual violence of men. I do not forgive those that blindly swallow this lying, soporific, stultifying gruel.

[awomansdream]

Its so true, Dworkin and Mackinnon predicted everything about this current era. Porn has become sex now; teenage girls being bullied into anal and getting choked by boys and coerced into sending nudes at an age typically understood as one of “exploration”—now porn defines sex and sexuality; and Gail Dines and many others have talked about the deeply deadening effect of porn on empathy and the ability to recognize women as people. Porn crept ever further into the mainstream and it has totally saturated our culture, from the ‘arts’—not just streaming/TV or Lars Von Trier films, but I’m thinking of stuff as small as frames of comic books traced from porn, art distributed online traced from porn—to the personal intimate lives of human beings, women being choked, spat on, beaten—then again, even back in the 80s, men were using porn to abuse women, and the most widely available stuff was still not as vile as the porn you can find with a 2sec Google search from any phone or computer today. Deepfake porn turns all women existing in public into potential victims of violent and degrading misogynist fetishism and sexuality. OF and its ilk makes it possible for any woman to monetize herself in the form of porn and in a time of increasing economic instability, inflation, high food and gas prices, the upcoming potential loss of health insurance for millions, I’m sure it’s more appealing than ever. Porn terminology is everywhere, “MILF,” “ebony,” etc. And all of this is done under the guise of sexual liberation and free speech, and to argue against it is seen as puritanical, condescending at best, hateful, antifeminist, “SWERF”/“TERF”-y at worst. It is a demonstrated fact of the research done into porn that it shuts off vital abilities to connect with women as human beings, to empathize with women and to reject violence against us; that porn usage conditions the user into seeking out ever more intense, bizarre, violent content to use in order to achieve the same pleasure and orgasm that “vanilla” content used to do for them. What must it be doing to all of us, collectively, to have porn on every level of our culture now? What is it doing to the position of women in our society, already half citizens at best, earning significantly less than men, with our bodily autonomy stripped away in many states, being denied life-saving procedures and medications—not just mifepristone etc but even things like lupus medication and anti-inflammatories that may potentially affect us and our bodies if we chose at some point to maybe get pregnant—even being arrested for drinking or taking drugs while decidedly not pregnant because it could affect a potential fetus at some point? Are we not degraded objects already? What does it mean for us to be reduced to “cumsocks” and pornographic objects on top of all this? How deeply destructive is this society, how much further will it go to enforce the category of woman as hole, woman as receptacle, woman as vessel, woman as meat?

[awomansdream]

Naming the female razor brand Venus is so personally offensive to me....you think Venus the goddess of love and sex and beauty was shaving her PUSSY? Go kill yourself

[awomansdream]

This is why women celebrating periods should not be dismissed as "white feminism."

A 30 year old married man tortured his 12 year old sister to death because he saw bloodstains on her clothes and assumed it must have been because she was sexually active. She couldn't explain to him what the stains were because she didn't know about menstruation.

Breaking the period stigma is not "first world feminism." Girls should know what's happening to their bodies one week a month for the next several decades of their lives. Men should know what their daughters and wives go through. It's part of how they came into this world in the first place.

[awomansdream]

thinking about that joke post about creating an platonic app for young girls & old ladies to meet and chat. thinking about the old woman talking with the cashier in the supermarket about living alone. thinking about the old lady at the church that innocently asked 16 year old me, dressed all-black and with pentagrams hanging from my neck, if the holy water i had taken was for my mom and proceed to strike a conversation. thinking about the old lady that came into the store i used to work on and was so shocked when i complimeted her shirt she turned around to be sure i was talking to her. thinking about the old lady at the funerary house that taught me the name of every ornamental flower we had to decorate a casket at the time and promised me to get a four-leaf clover she found growing outside her house.

[awomansdream]

I wish it were more acceptable for girls and women to just call feminine beauty rituals degrading.