Women are stronger with women

So I’m of the radical mind that any woman can be a lesbian. Any woman can leave men, do The Work, and be with women.

Women are born and raised in a patriarchy. One of the key tenets of patriarchy is compulsory heterosexuality. This manifests in a number of ways and varies by place and time but it always means women are taught to fuck men, cater to men, birth males, and see women and femaleness as less, as Other. Compulsory heterosexuality means women are not allowed to be lesbians. Men make sure lesbians are derided and degraded in media, that lesbophobic slurs are commonplace, that lesbians never see themselves represented anywhere, and that women are punished for loving women too much. It’s not subtle. Iterations of lesbians in all media are raped by men or die—or are not lesbians at all because their male creator had them fuck men. Little girls are called dykes for holding their friends’ hands in grade school. Most girls these days are first exposed to lesbians through porn, which is made by and for men. (This first exposure is changing and we do have more positive, strong lesbian women to look up to than we ever had before.)

And that’s just the pressure to NOT be a lesbian. The pressure to fuck men is just as powerful. The two feed off each other, they work in layers, they are employed based on the need at the time. Are women deciding not to marry men? Make it so women can’t afford to live alone. Are women deciding to live with other women? Destroy and demean female friendships. Are women lesbians? Remind them that their bodies belong to men, that they are performing for the male gaze, that men can decide to be them just to get to fuck them.

Girls are raised to hate other girls, and they grow up to hate women. We are rewarded for it. We are always encouraged to tear other women down. And there men are, eternally praised and promoted as the proper (only) choice, the hero, the inevitable result of being a woman. Patriarchy, MEN, derail young women from lesbianism by child sexual assault and rape. CSA grooms women for a lifetime of heterosexual abuse. This can become a cycle that destroys countless women.

My question is, is it any wonder there are not more lesbians?

The Born This Way narrative is politically expedient. “Don’t discriminate against us, we can’t help how we were born.” It appeals to the religious narrative: God made us this way. It makes sense to a lot of women. Many, if not most lesbians knew they were gay from a very young age. Was it before compulsory heterosexuality ‘got’ to them? Not in all cases certainly. But I think that might be part of it. When you are able to know yourself before someone else tells you who you are, you are more likely to fight back, to not believe the lies.

Women who were always lesbians are still submitted to compulsory heterosexuality. Harassment, abuse, heterosexism, corrective rape, are all ways of keeping lesbians in line, to remind them who they are there for: men. Lesbians are the punching bag for patriarchy because they are the furthest removed from men.

Later in life lesbians and political lesbians did not escape compulsory heterosexuality. They frequently had relationships with men before coming out. They bring with them huge amounts of male-identification, internalized misogyny, the poison of lesbophobia and homophobia. It takes huge amounts of self-awareness and self-love to move beyond seeing yourself as an object to be fucked to a subject with genuine emotion and love. (This isn’t to say always-lesbians don’t deal with self-hatred; they absolutely do, and it’s encouraged by patriarchy for all women, especially lesbians, to hate themselves). One thing that always struck me when I was with men was how much I felt like an actor. My words, my movements were not my own. I was presenting a preconceived notion of woman (read: straight woman) for the male gaze. I wasn’t ME—I was what I knew they thought I was. I learned this ideal from movies and porn and real life straight relationships. I had no lesbian role models that weren’t torn apart by men in order to keep me from straying from my ‘path’. When I found radical feminism, suddenly my words were my own. I was speaking with power and assurance. I knew what I was saying was my truth. And contrary to the idea of Born This Way that I’d grown up with, I saw that many radical feminists chose to devote their energy and words and love to women. And frequently, they fell in love with these women. It seems, to me anyway, to be such a natural progression of love. You’re with men, and in quiet and loud ways they hate you. You often hate yourself. You radicalize and find love. You learn to love yourself. You speak with love and love women. Then you Love Women. It is sexual, though not in the patriarchy prescribes sexuality. I think this is the key reasons some lesbians don’t approve of or believe in political lesbianism. Because male sexuality, which informs all female sexuality but most especially the sexuality of women who have sex with men, is toxic, parasitic, violent, and draining. I’ve said before that part of the reason it took me so long to figure out I’m a lesbian was because I didn’t want to do with women what men had done to me. That was my idea of sexuality. It wasn’t something I would inflict on someone I loved. It was something DONE TO me, not mutually shared. Patriarchy and men almost destroyed my ability to love women. And that was ON PURPOSE. And they succeed so frequently.

I believe that most women don’t actually want to be with men, and their “attraction” is nothing more than brainwashing and patriarchal grooming. Why else would patriarchy have to work so hard to keep women with men? If it’s so natural, why not let it progress naturally instead of forcing it upon us and removing all access to agency and choice? Women are tortured by the way they’ve been trained to react to men. I’ve had heartbreaking conversations with women who would do anything to undo what compulsory heterosexuality did to their brains and bodies from before they could speak. But the brain is incredibly resilient and plastic; heterosexuality can be unlearned with the rejection and removal of men.

I think the misconceptions around political lesbianism is a problem with language. As radical feminists, we cannot have the same idea of sexuality as the patriarchy does. We cannot demand that lesbians have sex—that is up to the lesbians. We are not men. We must be honest and real with each other. If you’ve been with men, you know they damage you. Having sex with men and being exposed to male-centric porn and media makes you feel like you can’t have sex with a woman without objectifying her, without hurting her as you’ve been hurt. This takes time to work through, maybe all the time in the world. But a woman who loves women, who only wants to be with women, and who is attracted to women, with whatever baggage she brings, is a lesbian. It’s not political celibacy—that’s called spinsterhood and it’s admirable as fuck but different. It’s not that I’m trying to mince words. I take umbrage with phrasing like ‘lesbians want to fuck women’ and ‘lesbians want to have sex with women’ because they are both so stained by maleness and PIV-centrism. It’s almost certainly because I was stained by maleness that I struggle with the patriarchal lexicon, and that’s my issue and the issue of all women who have been exposed to toxic male sexuality and their control of language.

It’s interesting that when this conversation first started happening in the seventies, it was lesbians telling straight women to ditch men and discover women, and straight women saying they love the cock and the privileges and they’re just fine thanks ever so. It’s changed now, and I do understand why. But the women looking to political lesbianism aren’t het women who’ll go back to men. They are radical feminist women who eschew men and value women, and that’s an important distinction. Every woman can be a lesbian. Not every woman should be. Some women will hurt lesbians and destroy them with their male identification–they should not be lesbians until they do The Work. But no woman is born straight. Women are groomed, and in that process there is real harm.

For me, political lesbianism was a stepping stone. It made me realize that just because I’d been fucked and raped by men didn’t mean that was my entire story. Since I (thought I) was bi, I think the transition was easier because I already had that attraction, as tainted by patriarchy as it felt at times. I stopped being with men and in fact moved toward separatism. Once I was free from those tendrils of men, once their vampiric access to my body and selfhood was revoked, I woke up. Everything changed for me. In some ways political lesbianism is coming to your true sexuality through radical female-centric politics. Loving women IS political. It is personal of course, but the personal is political. We do not exist outside patriarchy, not even separatists. It is simply the realization that you don’t have to be with men and that relationships with women can be mutual, healing, loving, and sexual. It’s the realization that you were lied to, with all the power behind patriarchy, about men, about women, and about yourself.

Sometimes I think we should retire the term altogether, but that might be because I just don’t need it anymore, and that’s incredibly selfish. Regardless of how you come to love women, of how long it takes or what your journey looks like, if you exclusively love women in every female sense of the word ‘love’ then you are a lesbian.

Part of my feminism is helping women discover their love for women. In the conversations I have with ‘het’ women in person and online, it’s easy to see that many women are only with men because it’s what they know, what they were taught, what’s expected of them. Many women, having been hurt and abused and gaslighted all through their relationships with men, don’t actually like men very much, for good reason. I talk about my own experiences: being molested at a young age, getting into relationships with men to help me escape other men, taking in all that male-identification and misogyny, despite considering myself a feminist. Had I been born a lesbian, my molester wouldn’t have cared, the same cycle of events would have been set in motion. As it is, I’ll never know what I was born as, because my reality was erased and derailed from the time I was born onward, and that ONLY stopped when I turned away from all men altogether.

I hate that lesbians have left radical feminism because of political lesbianism. We can’t afford to lose a single woman’s voice. I do fear the misrepresentation of PL on tumblr (the idea that it is a ‘new fad’ is insulting and misinformed). Second wave lesbians spearheaded the idea that all women could choose to reject men and be with women (intimately, sexually, whatever was ‘right on’ for the individual lesbians involved). That no woman is born straight. I don’t really question the idea that born lesbians are just that. That isn’t my experience but I see it enough. But I don’t think that because some women are lesbian from word go, that means some het women are born het. Lesbianism is MORE than just hetereosexuality but with women. They are not comparable, especially under a political lens. Heterosexuality is a political institution that benefits men. Women need to recover from it. 

I do understand the sort of knee-jerk of “once bi always bi” or whatever, but I think it’s really gross. Women are not tainted by men, they are exploited. Women who choose PL are radical women, women other lesbians should be able to trust. Lesbians should trust political lesbians to: not derail conversations about born this way or lifelong lesbian issues; not fetishize gold star experiences; listen to lesbians’ concerns about PL as a political ideology; give lesbians safe spaces; be respectful in shared spaces. 

Should the label be dropped altogether? A political lesbian is someone who comes to lesbianism through political radicalization. She wants to be with women, exclusively, intimately. The self-descriptor allows her to express both her history pre-radicalization and her promise to women not to repeat it. 

Like I said above, my feminism means reaching out to women and letting them know they aren’t alone, yes men really are that terrible, and yes you can be happy with women if that’s what you want, as long as you are honest and real. I was lucky to have a total stranger care enough about me to point me in the right direction and save my life. Gradually I understood I was a lesbian and would always have been had it not been for men. 

I did experience privilege as a perceived het woman (I was married to a man). I was never harassed for my sexuality (unless people knew I was ‘bi’), I was a social default and received benefit from that. Heterosexuality itself is not a safe place for women, though.  I was also raped and abused within straight relationships, a cycle that kept me from women for much of my life. Women don’t belong with or to men, none of us—our place is side by side with women in revolution. 

I believe all women are derailed by men and by the socialization we receive as females. We are the babymakers, the caretakers, the vessels. Not all women withstand the pressure. If, as a PL, you deny all privilege granted someone perceived as the default approved sexuality, you are doing a shitty thing. But this isn’t opting into oppression. It’s opting out of heterosexuality and discovering you have something to offer women, and being prepared for the backlash from society that any ‘rebellious’ woman faces. And maybe there are women who aren’t ready for the double dose of misogyny and lesbophobia, but radicalized women don’t go back to men and it’s beyond cruel to dismiss women in this way. There is abuse of PL, apparently—women who claim the title while still fucking men or planning to. These women are not lesbians and they are doing significant damage to radical feminism, mainly in the form of causing other lesbians to abandon the movement. So stop doing that.

My lesbianism is political, it is personal, and yes I do want to recruit. 

 

 

Of course trans women aren’t women. You can’t

Of course trans women aren’t women. You can’t ‘trans’ sex. You can’t change sex. You can be in between sexes or have indeterminate sex, we all know this, but this isn’t about intersex people but people who choose to claim a sex other than their own. But no, males who perform the gender roles normally assigned/attributed to/forced on women aren’t becoming women. Males medically and surgically altering their bodies to APPEAR more female does not and will never make them female. Femalehood consists of more than the appearance of being female. Males cannot be lesbians because a lesbian is a female attracted to females. Males performing their version of ‘woman’ are not lesbians, they are men who fetishize lesbians and lie to women (and themselves). Body dysmorphic disorder and dysphoria are mental conditions to be treated, not physical symptoms of an adaptable reality. I get it—I wouldn’t want to be a man, either. Gender is rough for both sexes, except it’s only one gender’s fault so not a lot of sympathy to be had there (patriarchy consists of males, remember—all of them). I understand that trans people face male violence and other societal discrimination and abuse. Performing femininity is ALWAYS dangerous, or did you never ask a woman about that? Being a woman, being perceived as a woman, or being a male who doesn’t quite pull off ‘woman’ is incredibly dangerous. Lesbian/radical feminists are very aware of this and are fighting tooth and vag to end gendered violence and the abhorrence of femininity and femaleness.

It’s funny because lesbian/radical feminists constantly get told we are essentialists. What’s more essential, the idea that femaleness is hugely complicated and consists of chromosomal, biological, physiological  cultural, and personal ramifications, or that being a woman is what you wear and how you feel in your individual head? Btw no one’s ever answered what a woman feels like without resorting to stereotyping.

I’m a woman, that is, an adult human female. I’ve made an informed and conscious choice to not be around men for a number of valid reasons, none of which should be necessary to mention as “I don’t want to be around men/penises/people who think they are men/masculinity etc” is sufficient. Just because I’m female I’m taught to be defensive, explain my reasoning, and be persuaded of my wrongness. I’m not wrong. Men are dangerous, men who believe they are female (more female than females even) are dangerous, and males have no place in feminism, which is for liberation FROM males.

Here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t perform the feminine gender in totality. My head hair is short, body hair unrestrained, I don’t wear make-up or other traditionally feminine accoutrements because I don’t want to. I used to, though. I still wear “women’s” clothes (you know, the shit without proper pockets and buttons that never do up high enough and sizes that never align with reality) because “men’s clothes” fit even worse and also I happen to like colours other than blue, black, and grey. Anything you wear or any way you physically alter your appearance is related to gender—which is what transgender folk are actually trans-ing. Why not eliminate the idea that there is a proper way to be a man or woman, and it mostly depends on how you look? Why maintain that gender, delineated into a strict hierarchy with femininity on the bottom and masculinity as the ultimate, is right and good? Why not just wear whatever the fuck you want, as I will continue to do and encourage other women to do, and be done with it? Trans your clothes and hair all you want, but recognize sex is immutable. 

There is nothing a male can do to become female. I’m sorry the capitalist patriarchal medical establishment deceived you into thinking otherwise, but there is no such thing as a sex CHANGE. Sex is more than vagina (and SO much more than neo-vag, and conflating an intricate organ system with a hole for cock is so misogynistic I could puke) and sex is more than  affectation and attire. Women are more than transwomen give us credit for, and now they’re pissed we’re calling them out for their bullshit, all because they are males who will never reach the depths of our reality. I keep hearing, let us in, let us in! Let us consume you, subsume you, let us among and into you, let us recreate you, let us do you better than you can, we are the same. But women know better, we’ve earned our spaces, our labels, and the sanctity of our sex to not be warped into meaninglessness. 

I keep hearing that lesbians are terrible allies because we don’t acquiesce to males demanding access. I think transwomen are the worst allies I’ve ever fucking heard of, to women and lesbians. It’s become sickeningly obvious that the only valuable lesbians to transwomen are the ones who submit to the gaslighting, silencing, and manipulation—by saying, it’s okay, I’m one of the good lesbians, I’ll fuck your dick! Doesn’t this remind anyone of men who accuse feminists of being unfuckable dyke monsters? Then you get the libfems/bihets saying, it’s okay, I’m one of the good feminists, I still fuck dick! I’m not blaming women for this. I’m only too familiar with how relentless and abusive this shit can be, as well as how tempting it can be to just accept it. Women, I beg you, don’t accept it. Be kind to human beings who need it and respectful to all who haven’t disrespected you, but don’t dissolve your boundaries on the word of someone you’ve no reason to trust. Don’t take a be-dicked person’s word that they know woman as well as you know woman. They never will, and they know this so instead, and pay attention, they are changing the definitions and requirements for woman, female, and lesbian to suit them and push us out. Steady your stance and brace yourselves. 

Girlhood

Each girlhood is different. What is learned during childhood stays with us and shapes us. My girlhood made me a feminist long before I understood the term.

I think it all started when I broke my leg. At seven years old I was already a voracious reader. I read my mom’s science fiction, my stepmom’s romance novels, and regularly spent my allowance at the used book store. When I got my first library card, I picked a book and checked it out. Then I sat and read the book (I was waiting for my mom to finish work). Then I checked out about fifteen more, so many the librarian chuckled, this great stack of books I could barely carry back to my mom’s store. Books taught me that every single person is different, that everyone is important, and that everyone has a story. Books gave me empathy, a sense of righteous indignation at injustice, and an escape. Some books gave me a fucked up idea of what women were really like, but I was lucky to have that balanced by good women in my real life, and eventually I learned to read stories about women by women for anything resembling truth.

On the first day of summer I was riding my bike down a huge hill and I lost control and sideswiped a parked car. My leg snapped (tibia in half, fibula a compound break) but my bike kept going–I couldn’t stop because it had pedal brakes, but somehow my dad ran out of his house and stopped my bike before it went into heavy traffic. (My dad then took me to a walk-in clinic instead of a hospital, but I can laugh about that now).

Anyway, I had a hip-to-toe plaster cast for a couple months that was so heavy I had to have a sling under it, over my shoulder, just to carry it. I don’t remember having my cast switched to a shorter fiberglass one, but the memory of having that one removed has stayed with me. I had one very tanned, muscular leg with fine though dark hair. My other leg was wasted, pale, weird-looking, and covered in dark, thick hair. People made fun of me and my mom said I could start shaving and I did.

A year later at eight I got my period. I’ve always been what they call an ‘early bloomer’ or ‘early developed’, phrases I hate because they suggest I wasn’t ripe or ready before but suddenly people were telling me I was. Ready for what? I knew, though, and so did they. Women often looked at me with sympathy when they learned how young I actually was.

During that time my mom’s boyfriend began sexually abusing me and that lasted a few years until I told a friend (something I can’t even remember doing) and she told my stepmom. From there everything changed but no one explained anything to me. I was twelve when I was told I had to talk to the police. Since I’d been at my dad’s that weekend, I didn’t see my mom until I was at the police station, and she was there with my abuser, and I thought that she would choose him over me so I didn’t talk. I didn’t take back my story but I said I didn’t want to talk about it.

My mom stayed with him, meaning so did her kids, until I was seventeen. She didn’t tell me she believed me until I was eighteen and I’m still not entirely sure she does. She still works with him, my sister attends his family reunions, etc. I learned that loyalty is difficult to enact.

During the five years after he stopped molesting me and before my mom left, he fucked with my head in a tonne of small ways. Invading my privacy and space, talking to me about my personal journal entries, petty things like painting my furniture and room colours I hated, and basically destroyed my self-worth by constantly calling me sadistic and manipulative and turning my family against me. I was sent to therapy but when I confessed I had suicidal ideations, again things were sent beyond my control and I was put on medication. At the same time my mom was also on anti-depressants. And those were dark days.

Because I ‘developed’ early I was subjected to treatment usually reserved for older girls. Men were always holding me against them and trying to get me to sit in their laps. My body, hair, face, etc, were constantly public property. Men I babysat for put their hands on my legs or in my lap, using my body for their satisfaction.

Starting in third grade I was a slut because I had larger breasts than other girls my age. I was also really mean and violent–I was the only girl who would fight boys and I basically contracted myself out to other girls. The name-calling and rumours were really painful not just because they were untrue but because I knew it shouldn’t even matter if I had done the things people said. Boys only wanted to date me because they thought I would do things with them. Older guys were constantly after me and used my body as an excuse for their behaviour. Do you know how many guys blamed ME for them not bothering to act human? How their perception of my sexuality became a self-fulfilling prophecy?

By the time I got to high school I knew exactly what men are. They looked at me like I was food, and I grew to loathe and fear that look. I began to see myself as they did: an object. My body wasn’t mine, it never had been. Men in cars honked at me and yelled at me and my friends, men at clubs and bars touched me against my will, men were constantly demanding my attention and I was not allowed to deny it. Men I loved hurt me actively and passively. Men had sex with me when I could not or did not consent. I knew men were NOT like women, and yet I was still expected to want to be with them, to find the one that wouldn’t hurt me, or treat me like meat, or deny my humanity by mocking my reality.

I read cosmo, trolled chat rooms, watched and read porn, and learned as long as I kept up a learned facade, men would do anything for me. I got into damaging and abusive relationships, the sex I had became more violent and degrading, I lived in depressions for years. I wanted to punish my body because that’s all anyone else had ever done to it. I have countless scars that in my mind showcased my worthlessness. I controlled my unhappiness by controlling my diet. Anything I could do to hurt myself I did. I became an actress and for a long time I expected to live my entire life like a movie. As long as I was writing my part, I thought, I could fix the ending. I could edit. I wouldn’t have to be real.

Girlhood is a confusing time. People always talk about childhood and adolescence, but we need to stop acting like girls and boys are raised the same. While boys were bringing porn magazines to school, girls were learning how to be pleasing, compliant, acquiescent. When boys have pornographic imaginations and expectations, and girls are raised to be obedient, what the fuck do people think is going to happen?

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve felt unsafe with men. I can’t even say how many moments I’ve had where I’ve thought–he’s not going to stop. I’ve been right about that. Empowering a girl to say no doesn’t carry much weight when boys are taught to not take no for an answer, or pretend to not be able to ‘read’ us. And when girls do say yes, as is becoming the norm now more than ever thanks to porn culture and its ‘feminist’ subsidiaries, they ARE considered damaged, fucked up, at fault. When girls say no, they aren’t believed or the guilt of the perpetrator is mitigated by the victim’s actions. Most of the time when a girl says no and he doesn’t care, she never tells anyone. But throughout my girlhood and subsequent adulthood I’ve come to see that if you talk to any women long enough and she trusts you enough, you’ll learn about her rape or sexual abuse. It’s never the same story, and yet it is.

I consider my girlhood different from my childhood. I loved running around in forests, raising tadpoles, bringing home animals, and building snow forts. I was left to my own devices and I was happiest when alone. I had several groups of girl friends, which I lost every time I got a boyfriend. My family was really poor and moved a lot and my mom did the best she could but she’d never learned to be on her own and she couldn’t have supported us that way. There were a lot of bright, shining moments in my childhood.

The darkest moments, though, were almost all because I had a girl’s body. Girlhood matters to girls and I’m sick of seeing it brushed aside and erased.

By misogynists I mean men. You can see this with almost any man, whether you love him or never met him before. He will try to keep the attention on himself, often offering unneeded and disturbingly uninformed ‘explanations’, making his presence known, seeking simple assistance or direction, telling boring, repetitive stories—goodness forbid you get two men going or MORE. This intrusive behaviour evolved from/into/IS men using women to do what they’ve for millions of years—and under patriarchal coercion for thousands—which is tending their needs. Mothering, (potential) intercourse, self-aggrandizement. Often there is no LOGICAL reason for men to believe women’s attention in any form at all is their entitlement. It’s what men and boys have been taught all their lives; girls and women have learnt men need and should receive their attention to the exclusion of all else.

When women want to be alone together, this is a threat. When women announce they want to be alone together, like lesbians and feminists, men are infuriated, perceiving as denial of entitled access. Women declaring their intent to love women creates obstacles to men ‘loving’ them.

Suddenly males are feminists (which is for females, but if you are a male and pro-feminist in deed you might feel okay calling yourself pro-feminist. The feminist movement doesn’t need you but we welcome your support—please work on your brothers) and lesbians (lesbian is a female-only word). Suddenly females can’t be alone again.

These are not accidents, these are trends. Male access to females has changed dramatically. It is becoming understood that women are equal in personhood—women of course have always known this. So men, depending on their geographical location and therefore pervasive local culture, will change the rules. Capitalism—everything is for sale. Anything at all you want to see a woman do or anything your porn-altered mind can imagine, you can pay for. If she doesn’t want to do it, it doesn’t matter. He paid for it and that entitles him, or it’s in the contract, or he’ll just pay the next one more, or he’ll do it anyway. Religion—they were created to be paired. Marriage is the norm, sex is in that contract too. Religion is twisted once by contextual history and again by the mores of the present. 

If he can’t ‘negotiate’, he will rape. One thing patriarchies have in common is endemic rape.  In these cultures the goal is to ease male access to female bodies—and to simultaneously fetishize and diminish femaleness and femininity. Women are either indoctrinated into the new lies or are left with little recourse against them. The worthlessness of female bodies and stories never leaves us, we experience the feedback loop all day. Rape is a uniquely patriarchal assault, and every other aspect of every patriarchal culture employs numerous means to obfuscate and downplay the meaning, effect, or motivation in rape.

Women do not live as men do. Our bodies are different. It is shocking to ignorant men how very profoundly being female changes you, in terms of your own body and its ongoing unique needs and maturations, how you see yourself, and others, and how you are seen. Evolution has changed females. Our bodies, our DNA, hold the answer, the only answer, to human life. We are necessarily imperative. Unfortunately for males they are not, and their mutated Y shows it. 

We can see distinct usually quantifiable differences between the sexes, these differences made easier to recognize (I wonder why?) by gender. In patriarchal cultures there is always danger is transgressing gender roles. In patriarchal cultures, female bodies and femininity are indeed punished so widely and severely that I can’t see how anyone could deny this is war. 

So what is the purpose of the oppression of female bodies and by extension women and femininity? And what is it that the males in most species have evolved to demand?

Access.

After everything women have been excluded from over millennia all the schools and professions and leadership roles, all the clubs and sports and games, all the board rooms and back rooms, after all this, women-only space is sexist.

Sexist. Against males. Who, as a class AND individually, have oppressed and supressed females as a class and individually since forever. Males who support a system that grooms women into hating other women and ‘competing’ for men (some fucking prize) against each other. Males who funnel women into family units that aren’t healthy, mask abuse, and extort and exploit women and girls. Males who think women’s bodies are commodities to be bought, sold, traded, and discarded, who think consent costs about $150, who steal girls and women to sell to other men to abuse either directly or over video. Men who rule the media that forces women to self-mutilate for no benefit to us, merely keeping us compliant, self-obsessed, consuming, and pre-pubsecent. 

By needing places to ourselves, to heal from the unrelenting assaults against us by MALES and PATRIARCHY, we are sexist.

For what men have done to women, what they continue to do to us, sexism is too weak a word. They have committed spiritual and literal murder of women. They have stolen from us our wholeness and our history, and would deprive us of any way to get it back. They would use our own words against us, twist us and our movement into something that pleases them. They infiltrate and corrupt from within. They are poison to our solidarity and THEY KNOW IT. The idea that they think they belong, that we are cruel to disinclude them, that we are SEXIST, shows how very willfully ignorant they are to why WOMEN need feminism—as protection against whom and from what—and what sexism aka misogyny actually feels like. They are too cowardly to name themselves as agents of patriarchy so they name us, and we are left defending ourselves TO them even as we defend ourselves AGAINST them.

No real pro-feminist male would EVER declare that women-only spaces are sexist. Pro-feminist males understand the patriarchy, accept their collusion with it, and work hard to help women find one another and heal, while addressing ACTUAL sexism with other men.

Always question why males would rail against females helping and healing ourselves and each other.

 

(originally posted on tumblr but since it’s been making the rounds again I thought I’d repost it here. Hope to be adding more original content very soon)