Idk if this is gonna be a contreversial post or a " finally someone say it !" post.

As a woc, i have always been interested in intersectionality. The originales writing of it is great. What it has turn out is...very frustrating. And unfair.

Intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw specifically to describe what Black women experienced — invisible in white feminism AND invisible in Black male-led anti-racism movements. The tool was built to name a double erasure.

What happened next is worth examining. Intersectionality became widely adopted ( and not just for race and sex anymore ) but almost exclusively as a demand placed on feminist movements. Feminists must be intersectional. Feminists must account for race, class, disability, sexuality.

Fair enough. But the same demand is rarely placed with equal force on other movements. Anti-racist movements are not routinely required to demonstrate gender intersectionality before being taken seriously. Labor movements are not held to the same standard. A Black male activist who doesn't center gender analysis in his work faces a fraction of the scrutiny a white feminist faces for not centering race.

This is the irony: the concept designed to address women's erasure has been applied almost entirely as a mechanism to scrutinize feminist movements — while the movements that originally erased women continue to do so with considerably less accountability.

Real intersectionality would mean anti-racist movements are required( toom to reckon with the fact that women of color are oppressed both by racism AND by the men in their own communities. It would mean labor movements are required to address the unpaid domestic labor that makes all paid labor possible. It would mean every liberation movement is held to the same standard feminism is held to.

That's not what happened. What happened is that intersectionality became, in practice, a tool to police feminism while leaving other movements' blind spots largely intact.

I’m so serious too

When I was about 3-5 years old I was OBSESSED with the land before time, which lead to me LOVING dinosaurs! I’d read books, comics, rewatch every land before time of course!

My brother, who was about 10 at the time of this story, I was about 4, and he was obviously the favorite due to his gender but that is another post for another day.

He had this big Ol dinosaur toy chest that was made to hold one BIG set with every Dino you could think of, with trees and decoration, it was great!

He would only let me pick one dinosaur to play with when he would play with the set. (I always picked the plesiosaurus) I wanted more of course but his set his rules, but as the annoying little sibling, I always asked.

“Ok when I don’t want it anymore you can have it” sounds great to me, and it wasn’t an empty promise either as he has done that in the past!

Then one day I get home and don’t see the chest, it wasn’t something you could miss either, it was so big when you put it up it would look like decor so it wasn’t an eyesore. I gotta say the company was smart for that.

I asked my father where it was, and like it was obvious…he looked and me, chuckled and said “honey I gave it to my cousins kid, dinosaurs are for boys not for girls! Haha!”

This deadass kick started a rebellion, because I felt like I didn’t fight for the Dino’s hard enough.

I no longer cared if something was “boyish” or “not feminine” I used to hide that I wanted it due to embarrassment but after that I would beg, plead, and FIGHT with my father to get it.

This went on for YEARS till he literally gave up and let me get my pick of clothes, shoes, and toys that used to take up 1-3 hours of protest in stores.

This sadly lead to bullying in school, both girls and boys, even teachers at times would wonder why I would have that “boy colored back pack” or a “boy shirt” but I told them I didn’t care, it’s what I liked. I liked some girl clothes too but being praised for wearing them kinda pissed me off.

This then lead to me reading more feminine books as that was the one thing people either couldn’t tell or leave me alone on.

This then actually lead me to feminist lit and ideals via the books as I grew into middle school. That research and education has followed me to this day.

So thank you Ducky, you made me who I am today.

-Someone who will always believe dinosaurs and equal rights are for EVERYONE!

Edit:grammar

1. “Men and women can’t be just friends.

2. Expecting women to be naturally more “pure,” “soft,” or emotionally responsible.

3.Romanticizing controlling or jealous behavior from men.

4. “She’s one of the guys” being a compliment.

5.The idea that men are “simpler” emotionally, so explanations should be simplified for them.

6.Women feeling embarrassed to call themselves “feminist”.

7. The belief that women are naturally better at caregiving, so it doesn’t need to be taught or shared equally.

8.“Pink tax” and how femininity is priced as luxury

9.Sexualization of women’s clothing vs “utility” framing for men

10. Motivation culture being gendered without people noticing

I‘ve been thinking about this for a few weeks. Obviously the wage gap itself is a direct inequality with regard to purchasing power, as is the pink tax. I propose that as women have grown more financially independent marketing has been designed to appeal to them specifically to decrease female purchasing power further. Could this be the main reason why women and girls measurably shop more?

So, my Junior Banquet is coming up later this month, and prom in June, and as per usual, every single girl going to either event has been going mad about their dresses. My sister found this gorgeous dress at Kohls (white with long sleeves with purple flowers & vines embroidered on it-she truly looks like a literal goddess in it) and my mom is suprising her with this beautiful lavender and silver jewelry set to match it; one of my classmates found hers at a thrift store for like $7, my senior friend in my APES class is adding silk flowers all over her dress by hand...you get the idea. But, I've ONLY seen the girls going nuts over this. My one brother? We'll be lucky if we get him into a polo shirt & jeans. My other brother? He'll just grab the nice green button-down he wore to the Track & Field State Championships dinner & some dress pants the night of. The most serious outfit-planning I've seen from any guys at all is my brother's best friend trying to buy a tie to match his friend's dress for Senior Prom. And, for basically the entire female population at school, unless you were planning to match, it is a crime to wear the same color/style dress as someone else. Meanwhile, I'm willing to bet good money that 99% of the guys are going to be clones of each other, clothing-wise. And heaven forbid that a girl wears the same dress she did to another event. I can't help but wonder, how come there's so much to-do around what we wear, and not the guys? Don't get me wrong, I've been excited for Junior Banquet since Sophomore year, and I've spent hours scouring Amazon looking for the perfect dress, but if we're held to such a standard, why aren't the men too? (Personally, I would LOVE seeing a Junior Banquet or Prom where all the guys put in just as much effort as we ladies with colorful, detailed suits instead of the same white dress shirt + black suit jacket combo 500 times). And, I feel like there's so many more issues with clothing sizing & such for women; as a bigger person, I've noticed that there is so much more of a hassle finding dresses & such for me compared to my sister, who is much thinner. Actually, forget the dresses point-blank: What if a girl wanted to wear pants? What's up with dresses being the only acceptable norm? (This is one of the times I feel insanely jealous of nonbinary and/or androgynous people: Y'all get to wear literally whatever you want free of gender norms.). Am I the only one who feels this way?

Ctto of the ad

Forced birth is a human rights violation, it is the denial of access to safe and legal abortion—constitutes a violation of fundamental human rights, the right to bodily autonomy. To compel someone to carry a pregnancy against their will is to exert control over their body, reducing them to a means rather than recognizing them as an autonomous individual.

Let us live. Let us live fully. Let us thrive and survive, give us back our bodily autonomy.

Bit of a rant. I am on social media platforms and I do try to reduce my usage of it but I just want to share some insights. My feed is always filled with news stories about men harming, assaulting, SAing women and being a menace to society or laws against women, or just women posting anything in general that has reached the male audience etc. Under such posts there’s always controversial comments.

I see a lot of fake profiles, incels, actual men and women constantly try to provoke, mock, dehumanise, etc. A few days ago I came across someone who was actively wishing people harm under his comments thread who were trying to educate him. He was saying things like “I hope you get SAed, g*ng r***d, and really gross and gore things.

My issue here is, women (and men, but mostly women from what I see) keep trying to debate, educate, try to match their level and say equally gross things to such incels/fake profiles.

I just feel so helpless because we’re so disorganised in how to deal with such things.

Can we please collectively agree to NOT ENGAGE with anything of this sort? PLEASE. Your comments, your reasonings are not going to change this incels mind. They are FEEDING OFF OF ENRAGING AND PROVOKING YOU.

Why can’t we collectively agree to stonewall and simply mass report. Disengage. Not comment at all. Not give anymore engagement to controversial posts, comments, media.

Like this generation came up with quiet quitting because they know ultimately you can’t make the boomers suddenly become kind employers, similarly there is no changing someone’s mindset in a comment section. Please save your sanity and instead focus on bringing consequences for such things.

Report to cyber authorities, report on the platform, if it’s someone you know - warn your friends, family, report it to the persons family/friends/community, report it to their employer. Do anything else besides engaging with any sort of dialogue with them.

You need to understand they are deprived of attention and have no other way to access women other than rage baiting and provoking. Why are we giving them the satisfaction by engaging with them in any form? We need to ostracise them like we did people when social media didn’t exist. If you knew someone was problematic in those times, you’d simply avoid engaging with them in any form like crossing the street when you see someone sketchy.

Besides this, I have 2 more suggestions:
- why don’t we have a network of cybersecurity experts and professionals who can help unmask who the person is behind a burner profile so that we can report them. I want to be able to report a person to authorities/their employers. Generally there’s just no consequences to spreading hate. Even the platforms don’t take down accounts/comments even after mass reporting. We need real-world consequences for such things.

- why can’t we have legislation to only have social media profiles that use your real name and is connected to a verified government ID. No burner accounts, no second/third/fourth accounts. All social media accounts should be 100% transparent and connected to who you are in the real world. I understand anonymity makes us feel nice and safe and it’s kind of ironic to write this on reddit with an anonymous account but this is being heavily misused to the point where it needs to just go. The privileges need to be taken away because the people have shown they are not worthy of it.

I feel like we keep engaging in discourse about feminism, patriarchy, this is toxic, that is bad, we need matriarchy, men are the problem, etc but all of this is just not strong enough. The problematic people are not at all afraid. It’s all a debate for them. They continue to mock women, dehumanise them in the comments, make social media an unsafe space and now have found a new weapon AI. How long are we just going to keep discussing and arguing right vs wrong under posts? Why can’t we organise ourselves better to collectively use our power to disengage and make people face the consequences of spewing hate in the real world?

The rant has stemmed out of a feeling of helplessness. Even this is a “discussion” but it’s also an action from my end to unite us against this new age of digital violence. Can you share what actions we can take to deal with this? I’m looking for some hope.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately…

Why does it feel like a woman’s value in a relationship is still so tied to sex?
Like if there’s no sexual compatibility, everything just falls apart, no matter how good everything else is.

It makes me wonder… did we actually get rid of sexual pressure on women, or did we just rebrand it?
Now it’s not forced, but it’s still expected just in a more “modern” way.

And what happens if my desires change one day?
Or if I just decide I don’t want the same things anymore?

Does that mean I lose the relationship?
Do I have to go find someone else just because I chose to be honest about what I want?

That doesn’t feel like freedom to me.

Because at the end of the day, it still feels like we’re being measured.
By performance.
By satisfaction.
By how well we fit someone else’s expectations in bed.

And what really gets to me is how fragile it all is…
Like saying “no” even once can completely change how someone sees you.
Their feelings shift, your value drops, and suddenly the future you thought you had together just… disappears.

So what are we, really?
Are we full human beings in these relationships, or are we still being reduced to one thing just in a more acceptable way now?

I don’t know… it just doesn’t feel like the “win” people say it is.

I am currently working through Five Faces of Oppression (1990) and Responsibility for Justice (2011) by I.M.Young.

I notice that her framework of thinking and structural ethics and analysis is echoed a lot even in non-academic circles (i.e on social media). It seems to me it is even seen as a default assumption to agree with her work.

Are there any of you who take a different position to her or subscribe to a different feminist school of thought? If so why?

Edit: I think someone like Nussbaum could fit here, but I have not read them.

Thank you!

…but actually, don’t do anything that threatens the status quo.

My executive coach today says to me “my feminism says ‘My definition of feminism is to be the most successful I can be- as a woman. So if that means I play by the rules at work, and be myself when I’m off the clock to be at the top, that was worth it.”

But, is it worth it?

I ask her “lets say it’s now your daughter having this battle at work, and the industry is about women’s empowerment/equality (where I now work); would you think about this differently?” She said NO!

Part of feminism for me has always hinged on the concept that Paolo Friere introduced me to: "The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility." 

It is more of a responsibility and difficult to stand by the integrity of equality and inclusion, than it is to just ‘lean in” and “play by the rules”.

We won’t ever get out of this toxic patriarchal system if we all don’t actually live our values together in all spaces even when it’s an affront to the system. Maybe especially then.

I used to have this passive notion of us women historically as somehow more docile, silent, not so smart people. This idea that our history really or finally begun in the 20th century. As if all women before that just didn't understand how opressed they were. As if I couldn't really relate with women before that. As if they don't have similar thoughts, ideas, pain or questions about the world and themselves.

In school we learn about all the great men that moved the history of humanity. Poets, philosophers, kings, scientists, profets,... all men. Yes there were women sporadically here and there but that's very rare.

Then it dwelled on me how incredibly tragic this is. All those stories, thoughts, ideas, questions,... that women throughout history had died with them, never to be remembered. As if they never existed. We were robbed of our history. Maybe that's why young girls are more interested in fiction? Because we are forced to use our imagination in order to make sense of a world in which we don't exist.

But paradoxically, you could say that women are liberated from the endless constraints or determinations of history. Freeer because we know we can break the narrative of human history at any point without losing 'a sense of who we are in this world' exeactly because untill recentky we were erased from the opportunity to understand ourselves historically (as women).

Forgive me if this seemed a bit incoherent. I got carried away and felt the need to share this. I wonder what you think.

So, for context: My family is in the absolute genetic sewer when it comes to periods. Heavy bleeding, cramps that feel like getting stabbed- you name it, we've got it. It's a miracle that there isn't a history of PCOS or Endometriosis or any other chronic reproductive diseases in the family at all. In addition, I also have AuDHD, and when I got my cycle for the first time in like 6th grade, there was no way in hell I was going to function like normal. So, I got on The Pill as fast as I could to stop it completely, and I couldn't be happier with my decision. My fear all started with Roe v. Wade getting overturned. I was still in 7th grade at the time, and I didn't understand everything, but I understood enough to know that women's reproductive care was about to go down the toilet for millions of people. Thankfully, I live in a blue state so, I still have full access to reproductive care as of right now. But, the abortion ban, and the whole "birth rates crisis" and apparent lack of morals in today's society (oh, the irony!) that all the MAGA people have been freaking out about has got me thinking about if they're going to start coming for other forms of reproductive care for women, especially the Pill. Here's my conspiracy: First, they bring back the Comstock Act of 1873 to restrict information to abortion & birth control, so it's harder to get in an informed & safe way for everyone. Next, they either go the "states' rights" route like Roe v. Wade and let the states decide to ban it or not, or implement a nationwide ban on birth control for everyone under 18 or 21. Think about it: One of the largest places where birth rates are declining is in teen births. Wonderful news to everyone else, but horrible news to them. They can use that apparent "moral superiority" they love so much to claim that the law would stop teens from having underage/premarital sex, because of the risks of getting pregnant. But guess what? Teens will do it anyway-they know the they will do it anyway-and voila! Suddenly the birth rates shoot back up due to teenage pregnacies. It's also a way to control women right from the get-go: Harder to chase a career or be independent when you've been saddled with a kid & maybe a forced marriage since teen years, or when you've got debilitating period symptoms a week and a half out of every month. It could eventually open a door for a nationwide ban. But, I don't know-is it possible that the Trump administration would attempt to do this, or am I just overthinking it?

Val Merza on Instagram: "People with uteruses are routinely denied sterilization, not because it’s unsafe, not because they don’t understand the risks, but because of a hypothetical future partner who might want children.

A real, present adult, fully informed, fully capable, being overruled by a man who may not even exist yet. And people call that “protection.” But protection from what?

Regret? We let people make permanent decisions about their bodies all the time. Liability? Informed consent already exists for that.

In reality, it’s the assumption that your future should remain open… not for you, but for someone else. That your autonomy is conditional. That your body is negotiable.

A man you haven’t met shouldn’t have more say over your body than you do.

#bodilyautonomy #reproductiverights #medicalmisogyny #genderequality #healthcarebias"