ꕥ✿❀✿❀✿ꕥ

I am Sage's mother, better known as Nana. I adopted Sage after my son died when she was still a baby. She's been through six foster homes by then, but we loved her and she blossomed into a joyful, lively girl who made music and art.

Puberty began and COVID hit, and she was treated for depression and anxiety, at times very severe. Her teachers shared any concerns with me so her treatment could be adapted.

The transparency ended in August of 2021 when Sage started high school. She started a public high school and she told me that all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo and she wanted to wear boy's clothes and be emo. Because I saw it as just a phase, it was fine with me.

But at school, she told them something different: she was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns. Sage asked the school not to tell me, and they did not tell me even though I informed them of her mental health history and medication. If I had known, this would be a much different story.

She was terribly bullied. No one told me. But boys followed her, touched her, threatened violence and rape. Something happened in the boy's bathroom but for two days, the school told me nothing. They kept meeting with Sage alone and she became so distraught they called me to pick her up.

That evening, I found a hallpass labeled 'Draco' and Sage told me she was identifying as a boy, and that her counselor said she could use the boy's bathroom. She'd been jacked up against the wall by a group of boys. She was crying, terrified. I said just stay home, we'll figure it out. That was my last conversation with Sage for five months.

The night she ran, she thought, to a young friend she'd met online, she left a note saying she was scared of what would happen if she stayed. The sheriff, FBI, search dogs were called in. I dropped to my knees in prayer. Nine days later the FBI found her in Baltimore. My baby had been lured online, sex trafficked by DC then Maryland. She was locked in a room, drugged, gang raped and brutalized by countless men. It was night. The FBI told us to pick her up in Maryland the next morning.

We packed our cars with blankets and stuffed animals and arrived by 8 am, but we were told we couldn't see her, and were summoned before Judge Robert Kershaw late that afternoon. They didn't even tell Sage that we came for her. We finally entered the courtroom and Sage appears on a huge Zoom screen from a prison cell. She looks tiny and broken, and I cry out 'I love you Sage.' Sage responds 'I love you too, Nana.' But attorney Anisa Khan rebukes us. She is a 'he' and his name is 'Draco' not Sage. We were floored.

Khan accuses us of emotional and physical abuse, that we are misgendering her, even though we just learned she claims to be trans and we're willing to use any name and pronouns to bring her home. My husband was so tearful he kept forgetting the new pronouns, so the judge had the bailiff remove him from the courtroom. I was pleading for my child to be returned and treated for her unspeakable trauma. Judge Kershaw told me, if I use the word 'trauma' again, he would throw me out too.

For over two months, he withheld custody. He housed Sage in the male quarters of a children's home. Sage told me she was the only girl and repeatedly assaulted. She was given street drugs by the other kids and Khan told her she didn't care. She just wanted to win the case and all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Khan tried to prove abuse, but we were eventually cleared by both states of all charges.

Sage later told me Khan had told her to lie that we hit her. Khan even had Sage's school counselors testify against us, though they barely knew Sage and they didn't know us at all. Khan told my precious child I didn't want her anymore. I found out Sage never received any of the letters I sent her.

Sage ran from the Children's Home and disappeared for months. They told me she might already be gone forever, but I couldn't give up and I finally found a tip on her social media that led the marshals to her in Texas. She had been drugged, raped, beaten and exploited. This time I was able to be with her for the traumatic rape exam, and to bring her home.

Back in Virginia, she entered the mental health facility that Judge Kershaw had ordered, as it would affirm her as a male. The therapist began pressuring her to have her healthy breasts removed. Sage was too scared to protest, but she asked me to secretly buy her girl's clothes because she wanted to be a girl, but keep them in the car. It took a kind lawyer, Josh Hetzler to secure her discharge.

After almost a year. Sage was finally home. Safe. Alive. Sage is receiving professional trauma care. The first trafficker has already been convicted. Sage has nightmares, panic attacks, rape-related medical issues, but there's hope. I tell her she's not broken she's just scarred. And part of that hope is that in courageously sharing her story, others will be saved.

Sage said she doesn't know who she was back then. She wasn't a boy, she just wanted to have friends. But her school, the judge, the attorney and the doctor were all blinded by their ideology. The consequences for Sage were unspeakable.

Please don't let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.

Thank you.

==

Jesus Christ. This girl was exploited by everybody, except for her parents, who were villainized for literally nothing. It's opposite world.

And the fact that everybody with authority prioritized stupid shit like pronouns and trying to coax her further down into a fake identity, even against her will, and other ideological bullshit over her actual wellbeing is disgraceful.

Anyone that claims to care about trans people should care about this young girl's experience. Many kids with gender dysphoria who end up transitioning go through similar experiences that she did.

If you watch this video to the end, you'll understand why "TERFs" and "radical feminists" exist. These are the scenarios that feminists are worried about.

Discovering radical feminism masterposts:

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

Post 4

Post 5

Radical feminist literature:

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

Post 4

Post 5

Post 6

Post 7

Post 8

Post 9

Post 10

Post 11

Post 12

Post 13

Post 14

Post 15

Post 16

Other masterposts/useful sources

Post 1: sex trafficking sources

Post 2: prostitution sources from prostituted women

Post 3: anti porn resources + TRAs debunking

Post 4: anti porn masterpost

Post 5: Sue Donym's work

Post 6: sources on surrogacy

Post 7: resources about forced marriage

Post 8: sex is dichotomous with sources

Post 9: miscellaneous masterpost with a lot of great stuff

Post 10: on postpartum depression and regretting motherhood

[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying

but!

if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public

it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)

ALSO : 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_confidentiality_program

Financial assistance- grocery gift cards, preloaded transit cards, rent and utility assistance, etc

Community connection- support services, women’s spaces, recovery groups (SLAA, ACOA, Codependence Anonymous, One More Day, NAMI, + others)

Individual assistance- help with resumes and job applications, offer childcare so she can attend work/school/support groups, assistance with filling out government forms, offering transportation to medical appointments, offer to be a reference or sponsor, connect her with your connections

Personal connection- buy her a coffee on a cold day or water on a hot day, keep some single bills in your bag, treat her like a real person, offer to help with small tasks, recommend nearby resources

Take time to know her. Build rapport. Don’t assume you can “save” her. Don’t expect an instant connection. She likely has her guard up, and may be opposed to any random help offered.

Outreach to homeless women. Ever wonder why you mostly see homeless males outside? Because we’re usually working. Or with a “manager”.

Finally, and this a hard one, get comfortable working with religious organizations. Right now, most exit orgs are religiously affiliated. Many government run programs expect her to either work with police, narc, or go into detox.

So until we have feminist exit organizations, you’ll have to get used to working with religious groups. The exit org that helped me was Christian-affiliated. They saved my fucking life and never made me go to church.

Waxing is straight up painful, and shaving leaves my legs so itchy I scratch them all red and swollen. Hair growing back is literally SO itchy?? I refuse to believe its just me, but all I have to hear from my peers is how ✨HAIRLESS LEGS✨ on fresh sheets feel ✨SO GOOD✨. There's literally no room for other opinions.

This answer took way too long for me to write, and for that I’m sorry. I struggled a lot with writing this response, because I simply had too much to say. I started with trying to explain as much theory as I could and then I realized that I was basically writing a book which you didn’t ask for.

You asked not why radical feminism is correct or why it makes sense, but why I believe in it. I believe it can do for women what liberal feminism and queer theory are incapable of. Free us.

I do believe that many individual queer activists are genuine in their desire for human rights and freedoms. So why do I think the movement continues the patriarchy?

Modern liberals and their activists have become infatuated with subversion for its own sake. It’s fun to go against the grain. It’s sexy to be different and unexpected, to “queer the boundaries”. However queerness cannot stand on its own; it must be queer in relation to something. The word “queer” means strange, after all.

Subversion itself depends on the context in which it is preformed. And the context is patriarchy. Those who find such delight in the subversion will fight to uphold the backdrop in which their actions and identity remain subversive. In order to continue giving the finger to the establishment, the establishment must remain. In this way queer activism has a vested interest in upholding the patriarchy.

This kind of activism will always be futile, because subversion for its own sake has no end except for its own continuation.

When I say “this kind of activism” I mean activism that is focused on making aesthetic changes and statements instead of fighting for structural changes. This activism comes in the form of an intense focus on changing language, making art, and individual development and identity-making. None of these things are necessarily bad, and can even serve useful, but they are not sufficient for structural change.

While activists are operating solely on this aesthetic level, oppression continues in material ways. A female human being can change her pronouns or the clothes she wears and find a million different micro labels for herself and draw her own pride flag, but she will still be oppressed because of the body she has. Abortion bans will still exist. Rape still happens. Medical misogyny, period poverty, child marriage, and pornography still exist. Queer activists do all of the aesthetic and preformative activism and then pat themselves on the back as if they have changed anything outside of their own head.

Radical feminism focuses on the material world, and the real issues that physically affect billions of women everyday. We recognize that changing words does not change reality and we are willing and able to meet oppression where it finds us: in the physical world. We do not think “how can I be subversive within patriarchy”, but “how can we dismantle the patriarchy”. We don’t search to find a gender that makes sense for our personal experience because we recognize that gender itself only makes sense in the context of female subservience. We disavow cultural relativism. We have clear goals that don’t move and that we will know when they are achieved. We know what we want, and our goals still make sense outside of the context of patriarchy, because they are based on material outcomes for real women.

the fact that a crazy amount of gen z men are so lacking in empathy that they literally acknowledge that patriarchy is harmful but then flip the narrative to say that it hurts THEM more than it hurts us... I don't even know what to say. there is no logical debate with these types. they have the ability to rationally understand concepts like rape culture, yet they are so selfish that they continue to believe that they have it worse. they complain that feminists make ourselves out to be victims, then proceed to do that exact thing, except worse because it doesn't even have any bearing to reality. women cite examples like Afghanistan; they cite Joe Rogan.

We could have been in the same room together with women talking about how they innocently just discovered 4B, and have absolutely no idea that we are ideologically aligned.

I'm not sure what to do about this because as much as I would like to be brave like someone like JKR and be upfront, I am not as materially comfortable and kind of need to like... survive in society as a young adult. I sometimes think about starting local radfem groups (I am an event planner and have more than a few ideas of how to go about this!!), but then I think about how I would instantly lose both my jobs and a few friends if I was public like that about being a radfem.

Here’s what I keep wondering: Does J.Lo remember anything from that night? Could she focus on the speeches, the performances, the friends sitting around her? Honestly, how could she think about anything besides whether her breasts still had just the right amount of coverage? What happened when she sat down? Did she have to suck her stomach in? Can you even sit down in that dress? How much of a distraction must wearing that dress have been?

As fashions exposed more of the body, they required more body monitoring. Once the legs were exposed, they needed to be smooth and hair-free. As clothing became tighter through the torso (not just the waist), the whole torso needed to become slim. What seemed like greater freedom in terms of clothing actually in some ways translated into more restrictions. Sure, you can bare your arms and legs. You can wear jeans. But now you have to worry about how your arms and legs look. And now those jeans you love reveal the exact shape of your butt. Your freedom to wear a bikini means you have to worry about the size of your thighs. Chronic body monitoring is a ridiculous price to pay for fashion, but as women, we pay it all the time in dozens of different ways. I don’t want young women to feel shame about their bodies. I don’t want them to be called sluts when they wear what fashion moguls have decided to be the in style of the season. They should be able to wear whatever they are comfortable wearing. But how comfortable are they? We should have the freedom to dress how we see fit, but we should also have the freedom to be present in the moment. If we are to monitor ourselves, I want us to be able to monitor our thoughts and feelings, our desires and goals, not our appearance.

Women's stage outfits are often underwears or swimsuits nowadays. And it's interesting to compare it to what the men are wearing.

Things haven't changed for men. They are still allowed to wear comfortable and dignifying clothes. But for women, things are getting worse.

To answer some of your interrogations (though you answered some yourself) I’d say this: 

First, to be famous, rich and powerful under a male supremacy you have to play by men’s rules. That means that the power you’ve gained can be taken away if you stop following these rules. It’s borrowed power if you will. Yes, they have the freedom to say no, but if they want to stay famous, wealthy and trendy, they have to please men.

In the entertainment industry, popularity is key. Since men own most of the world's wealth, industries and medias, they can decide what's popular, they create the trends, not women. So if pornography and sexism are popular then your job depends on riding that wave.

The more powerful a woman is, the more women in general gain power, the more men require of us acts of submission and contrition, to make sure we’re not threatening their supremacy. In this pornified and image saturated culture, these acts rely on self objectification mostly, as well as shocking obscenity. That's how you end up with Lady Gaga joining a gala in a big dress only to take it off and pose in her underwear as if on a porn set. In the middle of men fully clothed and laughing.

Women whose income depends on going viral have to do this the most: reality TV stars, models, pop singers and the like. And by “this” I mean wearing outrageous clothing, doing degrading things, staging scandals, imitating pornography, etc. Because their fanbase, and the current cultural climate, is frivolous. It’s tabloid culture on steroids.

Second, the objectification of these women’s bodies was always part of the deal when they started gaining fame. You think Rihanna’s success depends on her talent? You think if Beyonce was fat, butch and unattractive she’d be where she is now? You think any of the women here were chosen only for their talent? No. Their sex appeal is most of what we’re sold. Their talent, whatever it is, acting, singing, performing, speaking, hosting, comes second to their attractiveness according to men. That’s why on talent shows you end up with half of the judge pannel composed of ugly old men and the other half of young (or bottox filled) hypersexualized women.

Third, when you say maybe “there is a contractual enforcement”, the answer is yes, there is. It’s all product placement. Celebrities willing to remain so no matter what become puppets. That video of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon pretending to be excited to have bought a NFT, a picture of a cartoon monkey, is the best demonstration of (failed) product placement via celebrities. You can see the strings so clearly it hurts. Go watch it if you haven't.

What they wear is often chosen by their stylists, managers, companies, producers, even their day to day clothes, especially if paparazzis are around. Brands pay celebrities to wear their clothing lines and promote their products. I find it especially obvious in Kpop. All of the sudden you’ll see all the idols of the same company wear the same brand, or even the same shirt, that’s because they are advertising these products as part of their contract. That’s why on the red carpet journalists are ordered to ask “who are you wearing?” and the celebrity (usually a woman) has to name the brand or creator. That’s not small talk, that’s advertisement, product placement. Same reason celebrities are invited to specific parties or fashion shows. Same reason they make specific posts on social media. It’s business masquerading as entertainment or personal choices.

So if the current most powerful trends are dictated by pornography, women are gonna have to wear pornographic outfits and act like prostituted women if they want to keep their jobs and sell whatever they have to sell. And the fact that even the most famous, wealthy and powerful women end up in this position is a clear indicator of the state of women's freedom as a whole.

While it's great and certainly refreshing to get a break from the Britney Spears-era "I'm obsessed with men" vibes of the early 2000s, a lot of young people (specifically girls) are deluding themselves into thinking that these celebrities are the new beacons of empowerment. Billie and Chappell are both definitely counter-culture in some ways (huge respect to Billie for speaking out against porn), but they're still not THAT much of a deviation from toxic celebrity culture.

It goes without saying that they try a lot less to appeal to the male gaze. But... they are still two beautiful women who DO fit the male standard. If they were butch or ugly or fat, they WOULD NOT be as popular as they are. It has very little to do with their musical ability or their queerness or their rebelliousness.

The music and entertainment industries know their audiences well. Are we all going to kid ourselves that they didn't realise that queerness is the "in" thing now? They saw the big companies sponsoring the pride parades. They knew this was the new wave to ride. Ultimately, the people profiting the most from Billie and Chappell's popularity are MEN.

Not saying this to throw shade at Billie and Chappell specifically, but they are not our friendly sapphic friends, they are not just like everyone else. They were put where they are for a reason, and as soon as the next trends come along they'll be washed up, just like Britney Spears is now.

Like, birth can be empowering, traumatizing, neutral, psychologically hard, etc. There are both positive things and negative things about birth and how we do it here in the US, but I think so many patients have unrealistic expectations or assumptions that are frequently promoted on social media. These can be overly positive or on the level of fear mongering to the extreme.

I think there is a way to talk about birth that is realistic but doesn't sugar coat the real and true risks of pregnancy and childbirth. I feel like we infantilize pregnant women in this country specifically because ensuring that women are uneducated ensures they have no opportunities but to be in the home caring for children (like the whole your baby is the size of a banana thing that pregnancy apps do is incredibly infantilizing) and I also think that if women were truly educated about the risks of pregnancy, childbirth, and its impact on your body, the birth rate would be even lower because women would be making actual informed choices. I'm saying women here because ensuring women aren't educated about their physiology and bodies is based in misogynistic policies, norms, and expectations that are specifically targeted at women.

I think that women deserve better than to be fed flowery language that paints birth as this idyllic empowering experience equivalent to sitting in a meadow with a flower crown basking in the beauty of childbirth because the reality is that childbirth is hard and not very glamorous when you're puking and shitting on the table and covered in sweat after 4 hours of pushing. We do a disservice by painting childbirth as the former because when the reality of it doesn't line up patients feel like they didn't do it the right way or they failed or there's something wrong with them which just leads to even more guilt, anxiety, and sadness.

I also think that painting childbirth with a toxic positivity lens allows people to promote home birth to patients who are not good candidates for that. I feel like social media influencers play a huge role in this and there's a reason why so many trad wives love to talk about their home births online.