Not a Blind Follower

But then someone's like well some countries have mud roads, why complain. And another one's like the pickaxe wielders are only doing this because they're really sad and need a purpose in life. And another one's like those other drivers with big trucks don't feel anything so there really is no issue, buy shock absorbers. Another one's like actually the bumps in the road are comforting to me because they've been there my whole life, the roller coaster builds character.

In 2022, the male commenter at the FIDE women’s tournament said that chess is “maybe not for women”.

Right now, male competitive chess players outnumber female competitive chess players 16:1.

And studies have shown that this harassment has an affect on how women play; when women think they are playing men, they don’t play as aggressively as when they think they are playing women. I wonder why.

Women, like every oppressed group, deserve their own spaces away from their oppressors.

We deserve these spaces for whatever reason we see fit, even if it is just "because".

The idea that women are only justified in having their own spaces if we can prove we "need" them was never the point. Women's spaces were not made for them because we are too inferior to be in the same spaces as men.

Men created a world in which they centered themselves (read Invisible Women for a glimpse at just how insidious that remains to this day) and denied women access to it because they thought of us as inferior, not because we are.

Women, denied access to these spaces, made our own spaces. We fought for them.

We made them for many reasons: to be able to pursue our passions, to enjoy the company of other women, to avoid harassment and abuse, to compete on our own terms, and so many more. Again, we must remember, any reason is an acceptable reason for an oppressed class to want to be separate from their oppressor.

Men are centered all over society, throughout time and across the world, but that isn't good enough for them. They want to be centered everywhere, including the spaces women made for ourselves. Every mixed sex space is a male space by default in a patriarchy and every male space can and will exclude women at its leisure.

Men cannot tolerate that women exclude them, not because we oppress men, but because men need to ensure they can always oppress us.

P.S.

These issues are always framed as "I am being excluded for being trans[gender]" when in reality the reason they are being excluded is because they are male.

 Here’s some facts and stats about men:

Not a lot of studies have been done on rapists, but this one says about 25% of men rape, about 50% commit some sort of sexual violence, and about 4% have participated in a gang rape. On page 2 of this study (which is an interesting read in and of itself), the author sites a UN study stating that globally 14% of men have completed a rape, and 58% have committed some form of sexual assault. This study puts the percentage of men who are rapists at 27.6%.

On a related note, 99% of rape is committed by men (page 5, although I would highly recommend you read the whole first chapter nonnie)

46% percent of men age 18 to 39 in the US view porn in any given week

Male misogynists get a dopamine release from treating women poorly (last paragraph)

97% of physicians that sexually abuse their patients are male (page 4)

95% of perpetrators of homicide are male

96% of child sexual abusers are male

Now I have some questions for you: 

If at least half of men get off to the subjugation of women (considering the sexual assault and porn stats), how many more men are okay with this behavior? How many men will defend them? 

Many of the above statistics focus on the “really bad” stuff, but how many more men do not participate in these “really bad” activities yet do more minor things like harass women, believe women are inherently lesser, discriminate against women in the workplace, etc?

Why are men so much more likely to be abusers, predators, and killers than women?

Why don’t many women get off to the sexual subjugation of men? Why don’t women rape and kill men in large numbers?

These facts and these questions definitely don’t cover the whole scope of male violence, but they’re meant to serve as a starting point. 

After you’ve considered all these points and questions, please try to understand why I do not trust men. Why I talk about men as a class. Why I’m afraid of men and actively avoid them in my day to day life.

It’s because the odds are not in my goddamn favor.

I hope you have a good weekend as well anon, and thanks for the little note of positivity at the end, I appreciate it!!<3

Additional reading on this and related topics:

Why “#notallmen” is harmful

Male violence towards women: a UN study

On online harassment of women (free pdf available)

Misogyny: The Male Malady (google books page)

A reflection on modern American feminism (free pdf available)

(a video about transwomen getting their "periods")

A transwoman's comment: This is really insensitive. I go through similar emotional cycles every month similar to how cis women have linked to their periods. You can’t gate keep something like this. Not to mention society has invalidated trans women so hard, even if it’s a stretch let trans women believe anything that validates their experience.

The Woman who made the video who responded: You’re a male. YOU are being insensitive to what we as actual females go through with Menstruation. We have absolutely zero obligation to “include you” in a struggle that is exclusively ours. Stop redirecting precious, limited medical resources towards your fantasy to colonize the female body and away from vulnerable females who actually need them. Stop it. You will never experience Menstruation, no matter how badly you want to. The same way that I will never experience fatherhood no matter how badly I wish I could produce biological children without bearing the reproductive burden. Stop colonizing our bodies. Stop appropriating femaleness. We aren’t a costume. Our bodily functions aren’t a fetish for you to indulge in for your pleasure. We don’t need to “validate” your fantasies by invalidating our own biological reality. FOH. And for the record: you do not go through the “emotional” cycles of a female menstrual cycle. And you never will. Menstruation is not some kind of “catchall” term for every Chemical imbalance related to mental illness. I am an actual woman, who is on hormone replacement, and no, I do not experience anything like what I experienced while I was menstruating. So please, enough. The only thing “gatekeeping” menstruation is biological reality.

ATE.

👀 Sis fucking snapped

i think it's because of their misconceptions about femininity. i've seen plenty of Black feminists and other women of color talk abt this already on this site, but the fact that white women are expected to uphold this white supremacist feminine ideal role doesn't mean that liberation for women of color is to take on that same role. in fact, no women should be upholding that role. it only looks empowering by comparison because performing femininity is socially "rewarded." women of color are expected to perform heightened levels of femininity in order to be rewarded.

for transactivists, femininity is idealized and even treated as a privilege rather than a method of subjugation. their proof of this is the fact that women of color, especially Black women, are treated as masculine and mannish - despite the fact that that's all baseless like you said. and also like you said, the only reason this "masculine" caricature of women of color exists is because of racism. so the transactivist argument is, because racists created the idea that women of color are masculine and then alienated them from "true womanhood" - which is, of course, a misogynistic and white supremacist construct of womanhood that still relies on the subjugation of even the most privileged women - "terfs" are now doing the exact same thing by "denying" actual males their own true womanhood. that is, the male-constructed version of womanhood. (that no one should be aspiring to in the first place.)

their argument just... completely fails to grasp the reality of racism and misogyny, it's a shoddy copy-and-paste job that people are falling for because they have never actually thought about how femininity works as a social construct at all. it's easy to get confused about femininity because it's simultaneously rewarded and punished, and without an understanding of misogyny as the hatred of the female body people can come to the conclusion that, because women overwhelmingly perform femininity, and women are oppressed, it must be that femininity is oppressed, not female people. but, at the same time, women who perform femininity are clearly rewarded. how to rationalize that? introduce the idea that women are "reclaiming" femininity. suddenly, femininity becomes desirable. we lose the idea that femininity is, itself, oppression.

then, looking back at women and race, we go back to the idea that many women of color (mainly Black women) are treated as masculine, excluded from femininity. femininity becomes desirable. of course, this is the ultimate goal of white supremacist patriarchy. the illusion that femininity is empowering, that women hold a separate but equally powerful social role from men - that women hold men in some kind of sexual thrall. this argument that transwomen are also being unfairly excluded from this idea of womanhood, just like women of color, hinges on the validity of this institution. it insists that womanhood is a socially constructed role that can be reclaimed and empowered just by expanding it to everyone. and that women who don't fit into that role are in fact Other. conveniently, it erases the need for race or sex class analysis, because anyone can take on this role. that's why they don't care about the racist origins, the misogynoir behind women of color being treated as masculine, because they've removed those factors from the equation.

Men can wear makeup, but they aren’t denied promotions or respect in the workplace or seen as “letting themselves go” when they don’t wear it.

Men can wear high heels, but they aren’t required to wear them constantly to “look professional” or sexy, in the mean time ruining their leg/back muscles because they have the option to take them off.

Men can wear shapewear, but they aren’t expected to be perfectly squeezed and shaped 24/7, damaging organs and lung capacity.

And when men get boob-jobs are use them as a sexy accessory, they are perpetuating the bullshit that breasts are purely sexual, to be oogled and looked at. Breasts are for women to feed their children, not masterbation fodder for men.