#fuck libfem handmaids

[eve-is-a-terf]

ask game: 🤝 and 🎭

🤝 What introduced you to radical feminism?

i had always been vaguely feminist in the way that i supported women's rights and thought that feminism was beneficial but i never thought that much about it. i was also pretty interested in politics and online was the only place i could really talk to other people about it. my mother didn't allow me to use social media so when i wanted to read about feminism online, i only looked at screenshots of tumblr posts on pinterest (lol).

at that point i had only been exposed to the mainstream liberal feminism... what i was reading was pretty repetitive, tame, libfem-y. but slowly i searched / pinterest algorithm gave to me more radical feminist content (aka screenshots from radblr). then i basically said 'fuck it, i wanna join the real thing' and made a tumblr account. so yeah, pinterest introduced me 😭 pretty lame story ik, but yeah. i'm always continuing to learn and in the process of reading some radfem theory texts but i'm a super slow reader with no attention span so it takes me a while.

🎭 What’s the best piece of media you’ve enjoyed recently?

i finished "the diamond eye" by kate quinn and thought it was good. i'm also reading "the handmaid's tale" currently and it's very interesting.

#ask #eve's posts #thanks for the ask bxstie

[serenagaywaterford]

It’s fucking crazy how in a show meant to wake the general populace up, people really do seem to hate majority of the female characters. Note it’s only the complex ones, because god forbid Margret Atwood wrote them as shades of grey and not as definitively “evil” or “good”.

I’ve been in quite a few shitty fandoms in my day but I’m not certain I’ve been in one quite as overwhelmingly tone deaf as The Handmaid’s Tale fandom. I have never seen so much hypocrisy and virtue signalling and fake wokeness in a singular fandom with source material (in terms of the original novel and S1/2 at least) that directly opposes those things. Like I was in GoT fandom for a while and holy shit the misogyny there. So, I know what it looks like. But the thing about that hellplace was that there was still a fairly recognisable and approachable faction that loudly and actively spoke out about the sheer number of issues with GoT (racism, misogyny, etc.) I feel like those people gave up on the show about mid-run, and GoT was left with a bunch of idiots and “libfems” by the end.

The thing about THT is that it appears to be 95% idiots and fake-woke “feminists” I put it in quotes cos they are NOT feminists. They just like to identify as that cos it’s trendy. They have no idea what feminism is if they centre Nick in the THT narrative, or refuse to engage with any female character other than June or Emily in any rational way and instead wish rape, violence, torture, death, and/or intense suffering on any female character (or apparently actor who plays said character!) they personally dislike because they don’t have the braincells to understand what Atwood specifically was trying to do.)

When THT becomes all about a MALE and his precious fweelings, and his uwu luv stowwy wiv Jwune and all they focus on is how “cool” June is for bullying other Handmaids into suicide, and how “awesome” she is for being 1000% selfish and self-absorbed and not caring at all about all the other women (esp. poor women of colour) she tramples on to get what she wants, that is NOT GOOD. This is a character who purposely and actively manipulated a domestic abuse victim to go back to her abusive, violent, cheater, rapist husband for June’s own ends. (And surprise, surprise that blew up in her face and people really take June’s side 100% on that cos “Serena deserves Fred” aka “Serena deserves to be beaten, raped, and abused by her husband because she’s a bad woman who has done bad things herself”. When you are saying a woman, no matter who they are, deserves to be beaten and raped and imprisoned in that situation, you are not a feminist because that isn’t justice for Serena’s crimes. That is torture.) Nothing June did in S3 was heroic. She is almost no better than the woman she hates at this point. I see very little difference between June and Serena anymore, and yet… YET fans think the sun shines out of June’s ass and Serena should be raped to death (aka “Wouldn’t it be soooo cool if Serena became a Handmaid?! Omg so cool! She deserves it! Hurr durr I am FEMINIST!!!!”).

O.o

There is zero nuance in THT fandom. It’s fine to dislike female characters. It’s fine to be critical of them. It’s fine to like male characters (I guess…). But centring men in a woman’s story and then parroting Gilead’s ideals unironically while calling yourself woke? It’s terrifying. 

June is so gross in S3, and when she isn’t being awful, she’s written as some child-crazed, hysterical woman. The writers’ full sexism and internalized (or externalized lol) misogyny on clear display. And the fans just LAP IT UP with no critical thought. No complaint. Like, “Yes, this is what a woman should be!” nevermind the entire purpose of the commentary in the novel (and S1) was that women are MORE than just hysterical, overly emotional baby-machines or housekeepers. Women are not mere resources to be harvested like cattle. Women have more personality than just “ME WANT BABBY!!!” Women are resourceful and complex and not all good, not all bad. Women are conflicted and conflicting. Meanwhile, now the show presents women almost identically to how Serena Joy wrote about them, and how Gilead has identified them, and the fans are like “Yeah! This is fine! I don’t see any problems with this at all!”

And if you dare say, “Um, guys, that’s a pretty bad take. Do you understand what you’re actually saying?” you get called a “rape apologist!!! HURRRR!!!! WHAT ABUT 2x10!!!!!” And it literally doesn’t matter what you challenge these fans about, whether it’s Nick, the themes of THT, Serena, June, etc. They see you are a fan of Serena and suddenly the discourse deteriorates completely to “Nazi!!!! you’re a rapist nazi sympathizer!!!!!!!!!” 

So, there’s no point in talking to any of them. Yeah, cos I’m the one saying women I don’t like deserve to be raped and beaten until they die as slaves in an oppressive fascist regime. (That’s actually you guys, jsyk.) My favourite was being compared to an MRA. Like, do you people even read what you write? 

I’m not the one talking non-stop about how great Mr. Soggy Pancake Man is and how we must protect this precious bean in a story about massive female oppression uwu. “BUT WHAT ABOUT NICK?!?! MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER!!!” I hate men, lol. I can’t count the number of times I’ve literally said, “I don’t give a shit about ANY of the men in THT. I only care about women and you people are misogynistic pigs for the way you talk about women.” yet I’m a Men’s Rights Activist?

What I hear when I go into the tags: 

“All women are awful harpies and stupid or boring except this specific one cos we want her to bone the Cute Boy we’re obsessed with and she’s just basically a self-insert for our own lonely fantasies and we need to only hear about the Cute Boy, not these annoying women. If a woman character interferes or challenges my heterosexual fantasy OTP in any way, that woman must suffer and die, and I’ll laugh and cheer as that happens, especially if she’s beaten by her husband or loses her mind/commits suicide! They deserve it! Also, who really cares about all those other women’s stories elsewhere in the world. BORING! My white saviour self-insert main female character can do no wrong because I am perfect! I’ll even go out of my way and actively search out people who aren’t doing anything to me, aren’t talking to me at all and just keeping to themselves, and send online threats, hate, and insults to anybody who doesn’t agree with me about how great Mr. Stale Bread is and they’re Nazis for not agreeing with me.” 

And I’M the MRA? I’m the crazy one?

No self-awareness at all. No nuance. No critical thinking skills. And a HELL of a lot of projection that they don’t even seem to know they’re making. There are grown ass women (like 40 YEAR OLDS!) who worship Nick Bland’s ugly dick, online bullying literal minors who don’t subscribe to the Serena-Hate groupthink. It’s a cesspool. THT fandom fucking SUCKS. I’m gonna guess it’s these same morons who wished that Yvonne would lose her baby cos you hate SERENA. Like, if you don’t think this is disgusting, I don’t know how else to get it through to you that something is VERY WRONG with the vast majority of online THT fandom.

99% of this fandom doesn’t seem to give a fuck what Atwood was trying to say in her novel, or what the show intentionally set out to do challenge and prove. Anyway, anon. I feel ya. I hate this fandom which is why I never check the tags anymore, never go on Twitter, unfollowed the Insta, don’t go on FB, and stick with my very wonderful small group of non-crazies who also appreciate the complex, difficult character of Serena here – and block everyone else I can because I just don’t have time for that kind of constant drama and aggravation from ignorant people.

Wow. Okay. Sorry. Rant over.

#the handmaid's tale #tunglr dot hell #Anonymous

[sick-sad-world-revolution-now]

An important part of becoming a radical feminism and just participating in this living, breathing activism is to educate ourselves with important books (in the field of activism). We might like or not like certain books but the purpose is to know what we are fighting against and what we are fighting for. Read books sisters, that’s food for thoughts, we can collectively be stronger thanks to books. Read some simone de beauvoir, chimamanda ngozi adichie, virginia woolf, audre lorde, fictions written by women (the handmaid’s tale, wuthering heights, ...) mary daly, sylvia plath, and sooooo many others. Read. If you don’t usually read or have lost the habit, then read at least 5 to 10 pages a day, you’ll feel the hunger for more growing every day a little more. Develop your critical mind. Read from genderists even, you’ll then be able to criticize their bullshit with more effect and preciseness. Libfems don’t read a lot it seems, that constitutes one of their biggest error, they have lost touch with the reality of our (patriarchal) world which is hateful toward women based on sex, not based on gender (both feminine and masculine women face sexism). Keep in touch with radical feminism outside of tumblr, who are the women who show their face, in their best dress, fearless (i’m not sorry for that sentence, inspired by one of the best poet and musician out there), listen to conferences, listen to women who escaped the sex industry, and again, my best tip, fucking read! Anyway radical feminism is beautiful, needed and a constant breath of fresh air <3

#my posts #radical feminism #tips #reading #education #radfem sisters #writer #women activists #feminism #womanism

[lesbian-ed]

heya my girlfriends a libfem but i think its mainly because shes just misinformed, ive tried explaining radical feminism to her before, but i am so so bad at getting the words out properly,, do you have any good links to resources i could show her? (more specifically on 'gender identity' and stuff like that)

I think introducing her to radical feminism in general is a good place to start, to be honest. I know that many women who start looking into radfem (after being libfem and trans rights activists) are still holding on to the trans stuff for a while but after some time we all must realize radfem and TRA can’t be combined. 

This might sound silly, and perhaps it is, but I believe watching The Handmaid’s Tale (I only made it through a few episodes, I couldn’t bare watching more cause it really triggered my anxiety for like...numerous reasons) is what set my interest in radical feminism off. I just couldn’t believe that while this is a possible future for all women, and the current life of so many women, transwomen were going apeshit crazy over wanting to use the female bathrooms instead of advocating for unisex one-stall bathrooms which would make so much more sense. Something just didn’t feel quite right at this point.

I can’t fully remember how it all happened but I’m sure it was around the time this show came out that I started questioning liberal feminism - as well as hearing more and more about the cotton ceiling (and of course the youtuber Riley J Dennis). 

Perhaps this website called transgenderreality could be a good place to start off? It’s mostly about autogynephilia but it does feature quite a lot of concrete examples ime.

There’s also feministcurrent. They mostly write about feminism but I’m sure I’ve read some stuff on gender identity there - for example, this article on being non-binary with a video interview to match! It’s more of a comedic read than anything but it could make you think. I also just found this article about women-only universities while writing this post, I recommend checking it out.

You could show her some Magdalen Berns videos, but perhaps she isn’t the first thing to show since she is very...well, “politically incorrect” according to the libfems. It might just scare her off, but she is a very good source because she doesn’t fuck around so to speak, she lays down the law without any compromises which I really appreciate.

Lastly, and I’d say most importantly but also the most complex, if she is really starting to get interested, I’d say reading some actual feminist theory is a good idea. This website (radfem.org) has .pdf’s of radical feminism content. Some of it is quite old and discusses political lesbianism and such (obviously I don’t condone that), which was the big thing back during the second wave. But if it’s read critically and with some historical awareness it is very valuable for your understanding of radical feminism.

So there, now you have some gender critical and radical feminism resources. Most of it is gender critical but like I said, I think it’s very important to also expose her to actual radical feminism. Being gender critical is basically mandatory for being a radical feminist, but the anti TRA stuff you see on radfem tumblr is basically just a “branch”. Most TRA critical women on tumblr are rad-leading, but it’s not a fundamental part of radical feminism so to speak. Being TRA critical/anti TRA is more of a reaction “based” in radical feminism than actual radical feminism, if you understand what I mean? But then again, you can’t really believe in radical feminism without being anti TRA, since TRA is very actively anti feminism/anti woman.

Anyway, I hope the resources will be helpful. If anyone has any other resources they’d like to share, please do so and I’ll post it for this anon to see. 

/ Mod W

#radical feminism #gender critical #answered asks #mod w #ref #Anonymous