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radfem help !!

2 of my little cousins (14yrs and 15yrs) are both girls dating boys right now, and together we are coming up with a "dealbreaker list" of things they will never put up with from their bfs! and also we are including positives, like so they aren't just looking for the absence of bad things, but actual positive things

what do yall think are the most important things to add? (i put extra info in tags)

Thank you so much!!!

#I dont want it just to be “he doesn't hit me” as that's super important but they could end up with awful boys who don't hit them and still #mistreat them. there are certain vulnerabilities that make me worry the most for them. Ive been writing under the deal breakers like exampl #of how it would manifest like things they might say or how they might behave so that way in the moment there will hopefully not be as much #time spent questioning if it counts as a deal breaker. we want to do positives too so like I said in the post it's not just like "he doesn' #put me down“ but also ”he roots for me and encourages me and verbalizes it“. #they are 14/15 so I'm less focused on stuff related to like splitting domestic labor for example but I think a good translation could #be like “he spends as much time as I do planning dates” and “it's clear to me that he put a lot of thought into my birthday gift” or the li #anyway I know they are safer without dating boys (and for the record they both know I do not date men (and only one knows I am SSA) but #they ARE dating and it's much more practical and realistic to reduce harm here since they are doing it! #also this is obviously not the extent of my effort in making sure they are safe and well and not reliant on boys/men; #this list is just one small part!!! #thanks so so much! and if you don't know please share bc maybe someone else has advice! ty!!! #radfem #radical feminist safe #radblr #sex based oppression #mvawg #question tag

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If you've got a Twitter pls show her some love 💕

These are amazing!

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yk if the son was getting off to videos of kicking puppies or something the dad wouldn't be like “well yk he'd never do it for real," bc obviously that desire indicates the potential for future harm... but women and girls are fair game to abuse in the name of jacking off? bc its "normal" to want to do that to us??

So I just saw this reddit thread and am disgusted. A mother is upset that her son is watching rape porn, that her daughter saw it, and that the children’s father is okay with it. Most of the commenters think she’s the one in the wrong and even scold her for “kink shaming” her son.

#this is so distressing to read. I hope the mom and daughter ended up okay:( #I hate I hate I hate I hate this! #not j a reblog tag

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i hate the label swerf being used to refer to any woman who is vaguely critical of the prostitution and porn industry

i support and love sex workers, it's not their fault they are forced by men to do this to survive. i know many other radfems who do, and yet this label is used by people who don't understand basic feminist theory. no one is excluding the actual sex workers themselves. i'm sex work exclusionary, not sex worker exclusionary

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We love the library!

#me too! #art tag

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Picture this.

An all-powerful entity comes up to you. You know for certain this is real and what they say is true. They give you two scenarios to choose between. You are not allowed any other option. No one will know you are the person who chose. Here are the two.

Scenario 1. Heaven and hell are both real. Heaven is a place of peace and happiness. Hell is a place of eternal torture. You and everyone you love, including pets, are guaranteed heaven, no matter what you do. But there is a hell, and you have no guarantee what type of behavior could get someone there, or if there are people you’d consider innocent who’d go there. Scenario 2. There is no heaven or hell. After you die, you reach eternal sleep. You never see your loved ones ever again. But there is no hell to torment anyone, either.

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They say I’m a child

They say I’m a child but they say I’m a Bride

They say I’m a child but shouldn’t go near strangers

They say I’m a child but I hold one’s hand

They say I’m a child but I marry one four times my age

They say I’m a child but they say I’m a Newlywed

They say I’m a child but I don’t go to school

They say I’m a child but instead, I stay home

They say I’m a child but I know chores aren’t education

They say I’m a child but he says I’m a Wife

They say I’m a child but the load I lift is heavier than I

They say I’m a child but my hands only bleed

They say I’m a child but I only labour

They say I’m a child but they say I’m Pregnant

They say I’m a child but I know only sickness

They say I’m a child but now I’m too weak to scream

They say I’m a child but I’m Agonised

They say I’m a child but I’m a Mother.

They say I’m a child but my thighs have lines

They say I’m a child but my belly is slack

They say I’m a child but I relentlessly tend to my own

I say I’m a child but they don’t hear.

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trans men on tumblr fighting for their lives to get transandrophobia acknowledged because they can't say "i experience misogyny" or the trans women will tell them "so i experience male privilege?!?!?!?!" and they're going to have a war

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click on the image to see it clearer

Ok so I was a bit worried about the way my own biological father looks at me and I thought it was so bazar that I always even end up crying and it seems I’m really not the only one. and then after searching for so long, this is how they put it, “she is like my wife but 25 years younger, ofcourse it’s normal” 

men are terrifying, like I wish I could say this is so completely un normal, but how many times do you hear about fathers and step fathers sexually abuse their daughters. like I can’t help but wonder how many just simply don’t act on their thoughts like this guy but still have it in their heads.

and he worst part is, this doesn’t happen when the girl is like an adult, it happens when she is begining or is hitting puberty. 

I know this is “dark” and uncomfortable but the more you don’t talk about this, the more it happens and the more men try to normalize it. 

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this sunday, it was dissapointing to see how easy it was for the boys to run around and get their energy out outside, but for the little toddler girls in impractical frilly puffy dresses and impractical shoes, it's an obstacle for their play.

the girls', clothes are made to be seen in as opposed to being made to be worn, unlike the boys which are still nice for easter but they dont have to trip over the edge of a skirt or dress, or have their shoes fall off or pinch their toes when running, they can move and play freely.

it's a problem too cuz when toddlers don't get that energy out, they get irritable and pitch fits, so then the boys look like easy kids, and the girls difficult. let the girls run around!

female subjugation starts from birth. these girls are praised for being beautiful in their dresses, while also learning they cannot play in them. this correlation will not be lost on them especially as they grow up. "If i want positive attention from the important people in my life (like my congregation), this is what i do." the whole "beauty is pain" narrative, while not incorrect, is often viewed as normal and a justified fact of life, like "beauty IS pain and thats just how it is! oh the things us women go through to look pretty haha!". stop teaching girls that their beauty is WORTH pain, because it's not! they should never sacrifice to look attractive.

if half the congression can dress both formal and practical, so can the other half. don't handcuff little girls to femininity at the cost of their happiness and energy and play.

#ugh that sounds awful! kids already have little autonomy (considered that's j the nature of most child/parent dynamics) #and it makes it sm worse when as a girl your autonomy is even MORE restricted than your male peers!!! it's so so so so frustrating!!!

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It's grim, but what often fails to be emphasized about the importance of female bathrooms and other spaces is not just avoidance of rape in the first place, but the ability to prosecute afterwards.

(Of course, this is reliant on liberals actually believing the fact that rape is incredibly difficult to charge, let alone convict, which in all honesty I don't think they do-- as much as they say otherwise.)

If a rapist wasn't even allowed to be in a space in the first place, placing him at that scene improves a woman's chances to prove ill intent. Witnesses notice social transgressions of this caliber. The rapist's ability to argue that he was victimized by a passing stranger telling lies goes down: the Jury knows he was guilty of one transgression already, and to what other end than a sexual one? Even the most chauvinistic pile of shit gets his switch flipped from "normal male urges attracted by a huge slut" to "degenerate piss obsessed pervert attacking MY virtuous women". The defense's ability to ask "well why were you in X dangerous place?" diminishes. She's just that bit closer to the only universally accepted rape conviction scenario: of a strange man kicking in her front door.

It's not surefire; we know by now that nothing is. But to deny women even the slightest edge in criminal court like this must be taken as nothing less that hostile.

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i recently stopped working in abortion care (i want to write about that decision, but not right now) but i was going through my old drafts and i wanted to expand on this:

something i’ve been thinking about a lot, especially in relation to my job, is the relationship between women’s quality of life, feminist consciousness raising, practical feminist action, and the language used to describe male violence (and the culture of, etc) that can sometimes revictimize and alienate women who have experienced it. by this i mean: when i have a patient who discloses to me that her unwanted pregnancy is the result of her partner slipping off the condom, does it actually improve her quality of life or increase her safety if i insist that we call her experience rape by deception or assault? would she perhaps be better served if i choose to mirror the language she uses to describe it, even if i disagree with how she wants to name that experience?

in my experience working with women who are often subjected to what i might term “casual” sexual violence (things that are often perceived as innocuous or common by many women, like condom tampering or emotional manipulation to receive sex), many of those women feel resistant or even defensive when other people call those experiences rape, or assault, or even harm.

in my experience, many women will acknowledge how their experiences affect them personally (how it made them feel, what it cost them, how it has made them view their partner) but they will not politicize their experience by naming it as and contextualizing it within a culture of male violence. this is perhaps not a feminist approach. however, in my experience, most women will do whatever they can— including creating linguistic loopholes through which they can obfuscate the reality of male violence in their lives— to survive their experiences in the moment. women will sometimes lie to themselves and others in order to keep living. while it is perhaps not the most sustainable survival tactic, i think that feminists should be cautious of dismissing this approach as strictly anti-feminist and solely patriarchy-serving. women have an incredible talent for prioritizing their own survival through the trauma at hand (the traumas that often follow as consequences of male violence: having an abortion, needing housing assistance, filing for divorce, seeking mutual aid, navigating healthcare as an abused woman). just because that ability to survive and cope sometimes comes at the cost of the recognition of the role that patriarchy (and its iterations, such as male violence) plays in their circumstances does not entirely negate the net benefit to women’s lives of being able to continue functioning in day-to-day life, being able to make clear-headed decisions about the impacts that materially affect them in the aftermath of patriarchy (can i actually stay pregnant? do i want to?), and, in some cases, moving through life without the psychological experience of having been victimized.

i think that as feminists, especially when we work directly with women impacted by patriarchy in real and painful ways, in the aftermath of that impact, there is an impulse to lead the horse to water and make it drink. there is an impulse to make the woman acknowledge that this isn’t her fault by pushing her to name male violence. there is an impulse to lead by example, to name it for her. i have certainly felt this impulse in abortion care. when a woman begins to cry, explaining that her partner knows she cannot get pregnant because of a life-threatening medical condition yet refused to wear a condom because it doesn’t “feel as good” for him, my own anger at her situation spurs that impulse. yet my experience has shown me part of effectively aiding women in crisis is prioritizing her own feelings, emotions and outlook over my own. that is, in my opinion, a radically feminist act, and one that is perhaps the most effective when consciousness-raising.

when i told women like that, “That’s horrible! He assaulted you and put your life in danger!” I was, effectively, ending the conversation. I was closing dialogue by imposing my interpretation of her circumstances over her. now the woman may regret sharing her story with me, she may feel pressured to hide her situation in the future, she may feel pressured to defend her partner, or she may begin to recognize her own cognitive dissonance about her situation at a time when she is not mentally prepared to face it. my prioritization of my own beliefs about her experiences may, ultimately, make the experience of having her abortion a lifelong trauma because i have forced her to reckon with her experience of male sexual violence, my own judgement of her relationship at a time when she chose to be vulnerable, and the experience of having the abortion all at the same time.

by contrast, when i began telling women like that, “I’m really interested in how that’s impacted you. How do you feel at home with him? Have you been considering birth control because of this? How are you feeling about the decision you’re faced with because of your partner’s actions?” I am opening the dialogue by demonstrating my interest in her thoughts and feelings about her experience. when i was careful to mirror the other woman’s language about her experience, i was often able to collaborate with the woman to find her helpful and harm-reductive solutions to improve her quality of life. sometimes, that meant getting her a birth control method that her partner couldn’t detect. sometimes, that meant sending her home with a supply of Plan B. sometimes, that meant connecting her with a social worker and creating a plan to safely exit her relationship. sometimes, it meant sending her to a prenatal specialist because she wanted the pregnancy regardless of the risk. this approach is very hard— it’s frustrating, it’s infuriating, it’s suffocating. it’s not satisfying or cathartic. it’s especially difficult to take this approach when working with very young women and girls, when working with those who are not health literate, when working with those who are religious or socially conservative.

but that is the real, on the ground, hands in the mud feminist work. it requires me to acknowledge that i do not know better. my deep knowledge of feminist literature and my own personal convictions about patriarchy and feminism do not mean that i can teach a woman anything about her own life. i have to acknowledge that i don’t know better even when i do literally, objectively know better. part of doing feminist work with the general female populace is acknowledging that while my feminist framework can shape the way i approach women’s issues, i will never connect to women, gain their trust, build a relationship, or meaningfully support them while telling them how they should think and act in their lives. this framework is mostly useful for those engaging in real-life work with women but i encourage those of use engaging with random women online to also use this framework. for anyone interested in learning more about this approach to feminist work, i would strongly recommend “Decision Assessment and Counseling in Abortion Care” by Alissa Perrucci.

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i agree w her point but "openly judging girls who do this" I definitely do not support. when men mistreat the women in their lives, it does us no good to judge or shame those women. like she almost had it w "really it just looks sad bc why do you not think you deserve better" (after asking "why did you stay").

why aid in the judgement, ridicule, or mistreatment that she's already facing at the hands of her bf? we know her bf is treating her poorly, so why judge her when she's already getting judged at home? women and girls who date someone who gives them the bare minimum of support/love/attention, women who will date a man who is "nice to them one time," need MORE support not less, they need MORE empathy, not less. and they need a lot less judgement!

dating those "insects" is a sign of insecurity, vulnerability, and low self esteem. women secure in themselves don't settle. rather than judge her, it's important to make sure that when shes with you its a space to assert her strength and importance, to rebuild her self esteem, because feeling shame isn't what's gonna make her leave. finding strength and security is what will.

not to mention that when it comes to abusive relationships, isolation and ostracization is a huge barrier for exiting the abuse. if she doesn't feel safe leaving, like she has no where to go and she will be judged even by her friends for having stayed, that only fuels the idea to just keep "dating him for his potential," and stay w a bad guy.

#ik there's a lot more to say and you don't have to be all positive all the time and you can be real and for ex. #label his behavior as mistreatment since sometimes it's hard to decern if you're too close #but please don't go ridiculing her for staying w someone bad!!! like she's getting enough of that w him. #not j a reblog tag #radfem

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