#feminist essay

[hairtusk]

Andrea Dworkin, 'Pornography', from Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)

#andrea dworkin #feminism #feminist literature #feminist essay #anti pornography #second wave feminism

[vamprzhope]

new essay: on eating disorders and feminist guilt

#feminism #essay #feminist essay #tw ed

[somedarkhollow]

In the midst of a tentative autumn within my first few months in this new city, I've found a truth I was not prepared for. This revelation reminds me of a quote that while seeming quite obvious always struck a deep chord within me: "wherever you go, there you are."

It's on nights like these where my dear one has fallen asleep far earlier than usual and my mind begins to pick up speed again that I find myself looking for answers and grasping at straws. See, the aforementioned truth is simply that I must not allow myself to continually retreat inward. While in the past that has been the answer to overstimulation and stressful social situations beyond my control it has come to my attention that in this present moment I must allow myself the particular privilege and grace to radiate outward.

While previously, when I sat in silence, alone in a New Jersey apartment with my windows flung open and my candles ablaze, disconnecting from the cultish social realities of my undergraduate education, clinging to what free time I could scrounge to be home by myself, I felt free. But now, when adult life has provided the seemingly luxe opportunity to work from home, this same practice has me singing the tune of captivity.

For the first few weeks of this working from home and newly living with my dear partner I found myself feeling what I thought were the negative effects of ingrained misogyny in my own world view. I had breakdowns where I lamented that I felt my years as an ambitious, working woman were dwindling as I began to think about the timeline for domesticity and producing children. I blamed myself, my partner, "society," etc. But, as time wore on, I felt the clutches of this fear loosen, although they did not fully release.

2 weeks ago, as I traipsed out of my neighborhood gym and began the short walk back to my apartment I was accosted by two men. What started as strained niceties on my part in reaction to their gregarious approach for 9:30am small talk turned into a degrading description of my body and the actions they felt entitled to in reaction to it. I looked around and saw nothing but empty sidewalks as I mustered a less than empowered "Good Lord!" before turning the music in my headphones off and making adjustments to my route home as not to potentially lead the men directly to my residence should they choose to continue this pursuit. I have not been back to the gym since. I stopped walking the few blocks to the coffee shop, I struggled to make trips to the post office down the street or even the two blocks to the parking lot to get my car. I was trapped again, this time with bars on the windows adding to the captivity I had felt before.

I only realized how captive I felt quite recently. My dear one was out of town and I awoke to find my day utterly without agenda. Although I awoke early that morning, I found myself stuck in bed as I argued with myself in my head about what to do with this time. I finally flung open the windows to the apartment to feel the morning chill on my skin, threw on a sweatshirt, pants, shoes, socks, and my favorite denim jacket before setting out on the 0.3 mile walk to the coffee shop. I had avoided this walk for over a month at this point and found that I had almost forgotten the way. The sun was so bright and the air so crisp, I watched the tourists and workers dart about in their sweaters and boots, dotting the streets as they paused to examine their maps or light a cigarette. I finally felt as if I was out of captivity, but still not quite home. I began to realize the root of the truth I mentioned earlier, when it comes to making somewhere feel like home and feel safe, you get out what you put into it. In isolating myself from this community, locked into my apartment by fear and the responsibility of my first adult job, I lost my connection to it which fed into the feelings of not belonging and insecurity. It's like losing your place in a novel with too many characters and little discernible plot, how will you ever know where and how to jump back in again?

For now I'm finding that jumping back in requires a bit more dedication than I'd like to admit. I'm learning how to let the sun hit my face and how to feel safe in my own skin, in my own neighborhood. Because as I truly begin to settle in to my new home, I must remember the aforementioned adage: Wherever you go, there you are.

#personal essay #short memoir #memory #safety #feminism #feminist essay #on home #on safety #on agency #agency #urgency #home #feeling home #home again #Richmond Virginia #RVA #writers on tumblr #writers and poets #poet #prose poetry #writing #memoir #romance #poem #poetry #romantic poetry #journaling #romantic #prose #poets on tumblr

[sparklingstarjump]

Almost August

Some of my earliest memories are of being out running errands with my mother. These memories of which, I can’t completely see everything around me, most of my vision blocked from standing behind my mother’s legs. I was very shy and hated and ounce of attention my way. The women would tell me mother to “keep the boys away from me” I never understood. These women had conducted their lives, gained knowledge for much longer than I had, I was only 5. Their words of wisdom prove so valuable now, the summer before I turn 19.

I am only 18. An adult. An adult woman. Which comes along with a extensive list of hardships yet to face. But I thought I knew everything, because not yet in my life had I been face to face with a world where I was aware of the way the world sees women, the way the world sees me. I was blissfully unaware of the nuances of being a woman that would encroach upon me in the blistering summer heat.

In my life so far, I became acquainted with the way my mind works, the human mind. It will never truly understand, until forced. When I was younger I never understood sadness, until it became me; and I didn’t know what is was like to be alone, until I was. Conversely, I heard people say that women’s voices are often silenced, I nod to show I understand. Women need to speak twice as loud in boardrooms, classrooms and politics to be heard. They are silenced in audiences. I knew this personally. What I had yet to understand was how this turns from infuriating to dangerous, once the audience is removed.

One on one intimacy, with no one around. Only two people present and you still are not loud enough for them to listen. Intimate spaces with men, men you love and thought loved you. A space where “no” means “yes” and “I’m not in the mood” is interpreted as “keep asking until I am”. Keep asking until I’ll allow my body to be completely someone else’s and no longer mine. Which at the time feels easier and less compromising than holding firm in your answers “no “. Integrity now worn thin and you are no longer human. Not in a decent sense, and most definitely not to them. You are only theirs as a vessel of pleasure.

They do not remember how you breathe, how big you smile when the sun is out, how you always sing along to music, how you always order tomato’s but never eat them, how hard you study, how fiercely loyal you are to a friend, how you sleep on your back and kept your socks on until the moment you sleep and how incredibly brave you are to live everyday as the little girl you always have been, but now in an adult woman’s body.

You perform, as women do. You moan when it hurts. You tell him you love him after. You act like it didn’t bother you, when it most certainly did. Once he leaves, and only then is when your choked back sobs become so loud you did not know you could cry so hard. Clean yourself up now. Walk down the street with sunglasses so big they hid your teary eyes. All you want to do this throw yourself to the nearest stranger for a hug and ask them to listen. Listen to what you have to say. Listen to what he did. And listen like he did not to you.

#writing #sad #emotional #feminist #feminist essay #story #journal #women #poetry #poem #being a woman

[objectivelybadart]

"In my view, it is a fine thing for many of us, individually, to have traversed the minefield; but that happy circumstance will only prove of lasting importance if, together, we expose it for what it is (the male fear of sharing power and significance with women) and deactivate its components, so that others, after us, may literally dance through the minefield"

Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism by Annette Kolodny

#feminist essay #feminist theory #annette kolodny #feminist critique

[poselysscripts]

Just finally finished reading “La chair est triste hélas” by Ovidie

It’s a feminist book, with the author, Ovidie, talking of her five years of sexual abstinence with men, how it lead to it, why, how it’s going.

It’s an essay filled with her own experiences with men, as well as experiences coming from women close to her. It’s very personal and she opens up to the readers. Obviously trigger warning rape

It’s a fairly interesting book, and I found myself agreeing with her on some topics, and others where I found her a bit…. Outdated? Or just some where I could not agree with her at all. For exemple she says that, if we, women, wear make up or shave, it’s for men…. Where, I kind of do it for myself, like, I wear makeup cause I love how I look with make up on, but if I’m to lazy to wear it, I won’t.. as for shaving, it depends, I like my body without the hairs, but again, it I can’t or am too lazy too shave I won’t 🤷‍♀️ and I’ll still wear clothes where you can see my armpits or legs.

Even so it’s a good read!

#lyss thoughts #lyss reads #Ovidie #essay #feminism #feminist essay #la chair est triste hélas #french #french books

[fashiun-killa]

let this be the last time a MAN sends me a FEMINIST VIDEO ESSAY made by a MAN explaining NEO-LIBERBAL FEMINISM to ME a WOMAN

#girl #feminism #unfuckingbelievable #video essay #feminist #feminist essay #did you know capitalism is bad for feminism? no fucking shit sherlock

[vaspider]

Feisty Lady Anger and other things about me you hate

My mother prizes her anger, for all that she doesn't express it openly. I tell stories about her spiteful, steel-spined responses to people who told her, "You can't do that," and I point to them as Why I Am How I Am. Her father told her he wouldn't pay for her college because "women only go to earn the MRS degree," and she could "get married and have babies" without college. In response, Mom got her bachelor's in Mathematics in 1970 on her own dime, back in the days when in-state students didn't pay tuition at state schools (just another thing Reagan ruined). She worked and paid for her books and housing, got her degree, paid for her own wedding because he wouldn't do that either. Taught school, got her Master's, had three kids, started her Ph.D. with 3 under 6 and became a professor when the youngest was 5.

Tell me I can't, my mom told the world, and I'll show you that I can. I won't just do it, I'll become a department head and a Distinguished Professor and retire after 30 years of teaching other math teachers with a list of achievements as long as my arm.

There is an anger that runs deep in the women in my family. Tell me I can't, and I'll show you I can. Show me injustice and I'll tear at it with my teeth and hands, staring you down while I do. Backwards and in heels.

I can't tell you the moment I crossed out of Feisty Lady Anger in the eyes of the people close to me, but I can tell you the moment I noticed. Maybe it was when my voice started dropping or the growing muscles on my shoulders pulled my stance more square and upright. Maybe it was when I moved from they/them to he/they, and somehow I stepped from Diet Woman to Too Close To Man in their eyes.

It's a funny thing when all of a sudden your anger becomes real enough to be startling to people. Your anger is no longer feisty, charming, and attractive. This thing that people liked about you, that people who say they love you said they loved about you, suddenly becomes frightening, upsetting, and terrible. The way you didn't let people mow over you and fought back used to be a thing that people admired. It was actively attractive. It was one of your best qualities.

Now? It's ugly. It's disgusting. It's scary. The thing you were is gone, and now your anger is real to them.

It's in that moment that the blade cuts back towards you. You realize the reason your squared shoulders and set jaw drew people in couldn't be squared with the stubble on that jaw or the newfound strength in your arms. Feisty Lady Anger isn't real, not in the way a man's anger is real. Feisty Lady Anger is admirable, sure, but it is admirable because of its essential ineffectual nature. At most, Feisty Lady Anger fixes minor problems for the kids at school, gets the principal to back down from scolding your child when she politely asks the kid calling her a faggot on the bus if he knows what that really means, pushes a woman to achieve for her family, in appropriately neutered ways.

When you stop pretending to be a woman and become who you really are, when your anger becomes real, you realize both that the thing about you that people loved is gone and that this thing was attractive in the first place because of its ineffectiveness. Your anger wasn't scary because it wasn't real enough to be threatening.

Now you have Man Anger, and, you're told, you should apologize for that. It doesn't matter if it's the same anger you've always had, or that you're angry about the same things. It comes now in baritone, with belly hair and bellowing, and now it's both real and disgusting.

The worst part is watching it come from people you thought should know better, the people who should understand. You spent nearly 40 years being told to sit down and shut up because the men in your professional career were speaking, assured that if you just waited your turn, you'd be given a place to speak eventually, and now here you are being told within a community that claims to love and understand you, by people that claim to be in community with you and love who you are, that you actually don't have any real problems to speak about, also your Man Anger and Man Privilege (when do I get that, please?) are Scary and mean you should sit down and wait, and you'll be given a place to speak eventually.

It is the Transmasculine Catch-22: if you become Man Enough to no longer fit into Almost Lady, your anger becomes Real, which makes you realize that your anger wasn't Real before, but because it's Real now, you're not allowed to have it. And by the way, you're not allowed to be neither Man or Lady - now you're Man Enough, and that makes it all the more clear how you were simply Kirkland Signature Lady right up until the point you weren't.

There will be a few people who Fucking Get It, who don't see you as either a Failed Lady or a Broken Man, and you'll love those people all the more for their rarity. It won't take the sting out of realizing that the things people you love loved about you before now disgust and repel them, but it'll make it enough to keep going.

You couldn't stop, anyway. You've never felt more yourself, and the people who don't love you, the actual you, the real you... the loss of that hurts, but not nearly as much as the idea of pretending to be something else did.

#transmasc #transmascs #transmasculine #transmasc issues #transandrophobia #personal #before someone says it #yes i recognize that this experience is very much a white experience with anger #this is a deeply personal essay #and if you come at me for it not fitting your personal experience as well #we will not talk #i will just block you #it not being fully universal doesn't mean it's not real or not deeply painful #this has taken me years to write #terfs fuck off #radical feminism has done more to neuter the ability of women to be meaningfully angry than any other 'feminist' movement #so just don't

[anistarrose]

The thing about the "fridged" trope is that obviously you can't have a female love interest dying as a defining moment for a male character because that's not feminist, but you also can't have a male love interest dying as a defining moment for a female character because then she's just going to have an arc revolving around her relationship with a man and that's also not feminist, and you also can't kill off a love interest from a gay relationship or a relationship involving a nonbinary person because that's burying your queers, which is at least as bad as misogyny if not even worse, and now suddenly you can't kill off romantic partners at all in stories because no matter the demographics, it's going to be problematic somehow, which is... a pretty ridiculous limitation to impose on storytelling.

And, like, it would be satisfying to have a solution other than "it depends on context if not straight-up vibes, and it's usually very reasonable for audience members to have a range of opinions on the execution of one specific instance," but. Yeah, you do kind of have to just vibe check it in a deeply subjective manner sometimes.

#thinking about a few things and characters here... but especially about amelia infinity train #when i watched book 1 the first time i was like “...hey wait her motivation all revolves around this One Man? idk about this” #but then watching book 3 and noticing the whole unwanted child allegory #plus a very good video essay about the historical feminist context #i've come around on it completely now. sometimes men do die and it fucks women up #and amelia's story is handled with care that gives her agency; plus traits outside her husband-centric trauma. #it works in my personal subjective and constantly evolving opinion is what i'm saying

[tomurakii]

The worst part about the "mansplainer Gale truthers" is that it comes with a fundamental misunderstanding of what mansplaining is. To mansplain is to have a subconscious bias against women or queer people that makes a (cishet, white) man assume he knows better than someone else without evidence (or despite evidence to the contrary), and as such condescendingly over-explain common or industry-standard information to them. One of the formative essays on the topic, published in 'Men Explain Things To Me' by Rebecca Solnit, is about an anecdote wherein the author introduced herself as a writer to a man who then explained her own essay to her, while bulldozing any attempt by her and a female friend to reveal that she'd in fact written the book that he was pretending to be an expert on. The man listened to her introduce herself as a writer on a particular topic, and had so little respect for her intelligence that he thought he would explain the subject to someone that had just told him she was an expert, while he himself admitted to only ever reading the blurb of her book.

While Gale being condescending is to some degree a matter of interpretation, it is objectively true that he knows more than the player, regardless of class choice. He was an archmage and Mystra's chosen, if the player was anywhere near his level of expertise he would've known about them already, especially if they're a wizard (which is the only magic class that goes through formal educational institutions and could be expected to know the things he lore-dumps about). Beyond that, in most of his lore-dump scenes he is addressing the entire party, the only magic user of which (Shadowheart) is also an amnesiac. It's safe to say his assumption that he knows more about magic/magic history than the rest of you is both valid and accurate.

It isn't mainsplaining when literally one of the top 10 experts in a given field explains something to you, and misusing the term just invalidates people who actually experience and try to call out mansplaining. Mansplaining originated in an uneducated guy believing he had the right to explain a subject to a woman he knew to be an expert. Literally all Gale's done his entire life is study magic, let the man infodump.

#he is real and lovely to me #also. how entitled. to have God's (former) Favourite Magician in your party and act like he's a bad guy for knowing more than you #if ANYONE is allowed to infodump it's the until-recently-reigning champion of Knowing Shit About Magic #also men explain things to me is both an informative and also just a well-written essay collection. great intro to feminist theory #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate

[charlieconwayy]

Movies That Made Me: Back to the Future (1985)

#filmedit #bttfedit #motionpicturesource #80sdaily #back to the future #moviesmademe #gifs: movies #* #this had to be the first pick for this meme #i saw this on a class trip in fifth grade and it changed my perception of movies #obviously it's considered one of the best films ever made with one of the most perfect scripts ever and honestly? i agree #biff still being in their lives at the end is weird af but i get why the writers did it #i have known this script word for word since i was probably 14. even rewatching it for this gifset i was just mouthing the words #my hot take in the ~fandom is that there never has been and never will be anyone who can play marty except for mjf #one of the reasons (aside from the music being atrocious) that i do not like the musical #“back to the future made me a feminist” essay also sums up my thoughts perfectly #the CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE that is earth angel bleeding into the score during the kiss #crispin glover's heel turn from fear into courage during the car scene is one of my favorite performances in any movie #we do not give him enough flowers i fear

[fictionaltrvlr]

Roman Empire this, Roman Empire that. I don’t really think I have a Roman Empire-

The Overwhelming Hatred of Rachel Zegler

This rising star of a 22 year old woman is being torn apart by men and women alike and I’m so tired of it.

I’m disgusted by the amount of hate she’s getting and you best believe I’m gonna lay it out. I’ve tried to organize this but I’m really tired so bear with me.

Main Controversy

Her saying that it’s no longer 1937 and Snow White doesn’t need to be saved by the prince is not her saying that women can’t want to have a husband or a family. Simply that they don’t need a man to give them value.

And to be clear, yes, okay? Yes. Women should be allowed to soft, they can want families, they don’t need to be badass to be happy. They can fit “traditional” roles. Women can want different things. Meg March, the icon that she is, “just because my dreams are different than yours doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.” 100% yes. But Rachel wasn’t saying otherwise.

She said the prince was a bit of a stalker so they’re not doing that this time… and yes? The prince was weird. I thought we agreed on that. Snow White was 14 in the original and got kissed while she was unconscious by an adult man… but sure, ✨iconic✨.

And it’s fine if you don’t like the *apparent* girlbossification of Snow White, but people are acting like Rachel wrote the movie?? Did it ever occur to people that maybe Disney wants the “girlboss independent woman who doesn’t need a man” picture presented?

She’s doing press for the movie, is she maybe taking the direction Disney gave her?? Also… we. haven’t. seen. the. movie. The teaser only just came out!

Strike Comments

Her comments being popularized during the strike is already suspicious enough. Is it not in the studio’s interests to portray the strike and those taking part in it as unreasonable?

Her saying she deserves to be paid fairly for the hours she spends in a dress playing an iconic Disney character is completely valid. She wasn’t saying she’s the most amazing actress ever or that she plays the hardest roles or does the most complicated stunts. Just that she deserves fair pay… like every other striking actor and writer??

Childhood Relationship With The Character

Her saying that Snow White scared her as a child and she didn’t revisit it until she got cast. Why does that matter so much?? There were scary things in that movie! The witch, the poison apple, the forest coming to life and trying to grab her.

Tastes change as we grow and Rachel has shared her excitement about getting to play the character now.

She was a child. *screaming*

The Extremely Different Treatment Men Receive in The Same Situations

May I present, Robert Pattinson?? Mr I hate these books and felt like I shouldn’t be reading them?? Mr Edward is creepy?

He mocked and joked about the Twilight series every chance he got and people ate it up. They loved it and still do. He’s funny, he’s confident, he’s so real for that.

Harrison Ford wanted his character to die off and said it had run its course. He was praised for his humour and honesty.

Oh but Rachel is ungrateful. She’s rude, she’s cringe, she’s mean, she’s annoying. She’s irredeemable, she’s overbearing, she’s smug, off putting. There’s just something about her that we don’t like…

She’s pitted against other successful women, like Halle Bailey. She’s pitted against Kristen Stewart. Against Elle Fanning, Jenna Ortega. Ignoring, may I point out, how hated so many of these women have been at the different points in their careers?

This is how Brie Larson is being treated and now she wants to leave Marvel too.

Women can be sarcastic. They can joke and speak their minds. They don’t have to package every thought with a pretty little bow so it’s palatable to you.

Rachel’s statements are being misinterpreted and twisted. But on top of that, even if she was what people are saying, have we forgotten about Tom Cruise? Leonardo DeCaprio?

These men are insufferable and problematic and yet some of the biggest names in the industry and, again, confident. Boss. In charge. Charismatic. Not annoying, not petty, not “oh you should be grateful you have anything!!”

Let me pull out Taylor Swift for a hot second because she does a wonderful job of describing the different ways we talk about men and women.

A man does something and it’s strategic. A woman does the same thing and it’s calculated. A man is allowed to react, a woman can only overreact. […] A man shares his experience in writing and he’s brave. A woman does the same thing and she’s over sharing, she’s over emotional, watch out!

America Ferrera when she said that the only difference between being bossy and being a boss is that one is a woman.

People need to listen to “All American Bitch” again -

I know my place, I know my place, and this is it! I don't get angry when I'm pissed I'm the eternal optimist I scream inside to deal with it All the time I'm grateful all the time I'm sexy, and I'm kind I'm pretty when I cry Oh, all the time I'm grateful all the time

And not that women need to be grateful because they don’t, but just to be clear, she is grateful.

She has expressed how lucky she was to get Shazam and how much she enjoyed it and made amazing friends. She was excited to play her version of Snow White. She shared pictures of herself as a child dressed as Snow White. She’s thrown herself into it.

Conclusions

Hate trains fun, I get it. But let’s not pile on young women when they’ve not even done anything wrong. Question why all of a sudden everyone hates this person, what are the facts, what else is going on, what confirmation bias do we have?

There is something so much worse to me about seeing other women tear her down. Like yeah, men will be pigs, but what are you doing? It’s so sad.

And women like hunting witches too, doing your dirtiest work for you, it’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together… (Mad Woman, Taylor Swift)

Rachel seems like such a joyful person and people are out here bullying her like she kicks puppies on the weekends.

Claiming to be a feminist because you want a wide variety of princesses (ie, ones that get saved by their prince), and then sending death threats to another woman for possibly appearing as though she holds a different opinion about one princess - is not only a contradiction, it’s just baffling.

Anyway stan Rachel Zegler

That’s my speech, please do contribute collaboratively if you want :).

#in this essay i will #rachel zegler #feminism #snow white 2024 #taylor swift #misogny #america ferrera #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #lucy gray baird #shazam #text post #raging feminist #all american bitch #mad woman #feminist #west side story 2021 #lyrics #thank you for coming to my ted talk #thoughts on things

[f1ghtsoftly]

While, I don’t hate the women that express “doomer” ideology, I do think it’s Really Bad for a wide range of reasons. One of the most important of which is the all or nothing type of valuation it places on resistance, we either destroy all patriarchy, or we’re all doomed, and the way it negates our power as living breathing adult women to do anything at all the change our circumstances, because I can’t change all of it-I change nothing instead.

There are thousands of women on this website that are alive right now who want a better world-do you seriously believe none of our efforts, do you believe the efforts of all the women who’ve ever lived amount to nothing just because we haven’t achieved a post-patriarchal society? Think about all the ways women’s resistance, big and small, has nurtured you-even before feminism was a thought in your head. Did that not matter to you? Did it not help protect you? To warn you? To feed your soul? Not enough of course, but all of that effort was enough to make you brave enough to dig for answers, to not immediately give in to all that was expected of you, to find a place here on this website, surely. It did matter, even just hearing or seeing something that made you feel seen for the first time in your life-that does matter.

I think one of patriarchy’s most pernicious effects is the way it corrupts intimacy between women. We are trained to play act images of women that men create through media and social control we end up worrying if we’re successful in our impersonation of this being we call “woman” always trying to be nice enough, tidy enough, small enough etc…and disrupts our images of woman’s actual humanity and personhood. Remember how crazy you felt before you discovered feminism, imagine all the other women and girls who already do and will one day feel like you. You thought no other woman was like you, until one day you went to a secret place, somewhere men didn’t control, and discovered, it wasn’t true.

Women’s ability to resist patriarchy is a gift to us, it lets us know, even hundreds of years into the future, that we have never really been alone. Women who acted out to the point of being disciplined via religious, psychiatric or state institutions. Women who worked in secret as men to be able to write, create, make and live independently. Women who pushed politically for their rights. Even just women who survived and gained power for themselves in environments that were hostile to it. They all gave us a gift and that gift is the knowledge that they were alive, they mattered and they didn’t like it-they weren’t these images of women that men created-they were human, just like us. More than just giving us comfort, these big and small acts of resistance allow us to more fully understand not only the totality of what we’re up against-but also to appreciate the incredible fortitude of women who persisted against incredible odds. They didn’t know what their fates were going to be either and it probably felt as bleak, if not more, than it does right now. We can find women like this in the historical record, even if Big Patriarchy is still around.

It’s true that individually we don’t have a lot of control over the Really Big Historical Picture, but the good news is we don’t have to-we just need to control our slice of it. There are so many women just waiting to find women like us, there are girls growing up who need to see us to know that they’re not alone and that there is a community of women who feel like them and who are worth fighting for. Focus on making yourself visible as a human being to the women around you, on trying to make a mark big enough so that women in the future can find you. We are alive and we matter-and I really think this is enough. It’s a very worthy effort to live by and for other women and usefully it’s also a really critical step in building solidarity, so even if some of us get crazy ideas about doing something to change the Big Historical Picture, they’ll have a much better chance of achieving it.

#watch me write the exact same essay about having daughters ahahaAHAHAHA I hate antinatalism #how is it that my mom almost killed me a million times (exageration) #and Im the one getting weepy eyed about babies and female solidarity #radblr #radical feminism #radical feminist #char on char

[eerna]

I don't think it's misogynistic to clown on SJM and all the writers who follow in her wake, I think it's misogynistic that we don't treat Pierce Brown the exact same way

#WHERE are my 1000 video essays and memes about this man. where are they. #he is so despicable and his books are the worst shit i've ever read WHY ARE WE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT WHY ARE WE ONLY PRAISING HIM #OH I KNOW BECAUSE HE IS A MAN. AND AN ATTRACTIVE WHITE ONE AT THAT. I FORGOT. NO I DID NOT BUT I WISH I DID. #sorry. scarf started rr and it triggered my feminist feelings surrounding those books #peeboy liveblog

[words-and-coffee]

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

#Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie #We Should All Be Feminists #quote #quotes #essay #essay quotes #essay quote #essays #feminism #feminist #Social Justice #Gender

[trans-axolotl]

emailed my feminist disability studies professor to say "sorry i know that all the assignments from the second half of the semester are due tomorrow and i've already got extensions for all of them but also someone i love got incarcerated this week and three other people i love are in the hospital and one of my best friends just found out that all of her family were murdered in Gaza and we're all still grieving our comrade who was murdered in a transphobic hate crime five weeks ago and i think i might have a broken rib from a cop again and it's really hard to try to care about schoolwork when all my time is spent being in the streets and trying to make sure my loved ones can survive right now"

#personal #vent #murder tw #thinking that they will give me an extension they are one of my only cool professors #and they believe about putting disability justice values into action #i just cannot. i don't have it in me to do discussion posts and essays and tests right now #and i think out of any class i would hope someone teaching feminist disability studies would get it #feeling like right now i just need to keep going and keep going and keep going #thinking about anger and grief and love and what it means to love people enough to fight for them #thinking about how i don't want to let go of this anger