clovenhooves

clovenhooves.org is a forum for feminist women. It was created in order to give women a place to promote woman-centered news; share feminist resources; and learn, discuss, and chat with one another. clovenhooves aims to be an expansion of the feminist and woman-centered web, alongside places like ovarit.com, spinster.xyz, radblr, r/fourthwavewomen, and other feminist/pro-woman online communities.

There is an application process to join, this is intended to keep trolls and bad faith actors at bay. You can read about the process in this post if you are interested in joining.

Am I a TERF?

Probably not, based on these prior sentences:

I will address transgender people by the gender pronouns they identify with, but if they haven’t undergone gender-affirming surgery, I consider them transgender rather than simply female or male. I will only discuss feminist issues with transgender women who have had surgery.

TERFs generally still don't consider men who cut off and inverted their penises "women." There is a term for those who only consider "valid" transgender people as those who have had surgical procedures to their genitalia, it's "transmedicalist" or "truscum."

Besides that, a lot of your beliefs and stances do align with radical feminist ones. Check out radfem.kindrad.org for some of the basics of radical feminism. The sections on gender abolition, gender socialization, and gender criticism may be of interest to you for a better understanding on why radfems are usually dubbed as "TERFs."

Am I transphobic?

A decent chunk of TRAs may consider you so, especially when going into the "transmedicalist" debates.

Do you care if you're transphobic? Do you care if you're a TERF?

Detransitioned women are women. Medical malpractice did not change that.

https://ovarit.com/o/Announcements/676340/ovarit-is-closing

Sending this to your blog hopefully so that those who’ll miss Ovarit might look to your website as the successor. No pressure lol

Thanks to a member sharing on r/fourthwavewomen and r/femaleseparatists, clovenhooves.org has reached over 250 users!

clovenhooves.org has reached 150 users, yay!

Some statistics:

We have over 1,000 posts with 143 registered users on clovenhooves, yay! 💜

Here are some of the top replied-to topics:

What People Get Wrong About Christian Women Who Voted for Trump

College Men Try to Ban Porn from Campus WiFi, Saying 'Pornography is Prostitution'

Ovarit post on o/Lesbians: "Where have we all gone?"

Prominent atheists ditch Freedom From Religion Foundation as org doubles down on censorship, 'extreme gender activism'

Donald Trump doesn’t know what a woman is, either

Russia bans 'child-free propaganda' to try to boost birth rate

Beauty & Ostracism

"There Is No Safe Word—How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades."

By YesYourNigel

I was debating posting this in the Gender Nonconformity forum, but maybe it's more appropriate here?

I feel like with a lot of women who forego some trappings of femininity, the problem arises because they still remain somewhat feminine, and this ends up with them feeling essentially like failed women. Like, they still compare themselves with the feminine ideal, except not as extreme. And this results in negative self-perception where the original ideal is still a perfectly feminine woman that they're just moving further away from.

I've been thinking about why this has never been the case for me. All my life I've wanted to look masculine, so it did not feel odd to never shave, or to never wear makeup. It felt completely liberating to buy in the men's section and to cut my hair short. Because my role model was the form of presentation that's expected of men, foregoing parts of femininity felt obvious, and in fact combining the two would've felt weird. In that way I signaled that I do not in any way wish to have any feminine standards applied on me.

I think the reason why rejecting femininity feels so scary to women is because they don't feel like they have any alternative. They can either move between being invisible, or being on the lower end of the ugly-pretty scale of femininity. An alternative to that is seen as nothing, like a lack of identity. And being, say, a somewhat feminine woman who doesn't shave her legs seems to create this image of a woman who just can't do femininity right, rather than an alternative to the conventional ideal. One might say that an alternative, more realistic ideal should be popularised, but because femininity is a mode of presentation whose centuries of existence have only ever served to further ideas of female attractiveness in a patriarchal society, it doesn't feel possible to rehabilitate it.

Hi everyone! As of today, clovenhooves.org has 132 registered users. I've added a "recent threads" plugin which organizes all the forum content into one page, so this is similar to a single-feed social media. Check it out here. There's also a button on the main page to access it. (Pagination functionality is available to registered members. Guests can see the first page of latest threads.)

Some statistics from the MyBB Admin dashboard, from when clovenhooves.org launched (back in June) to now. :)

In the future I'm hoping to add an improved notification system plugin, an "@ username" mentions plugin, and upgrade the email system.

Being female is the only identity I can think of where the person is simultaneously oppressed for being female, as in, for having a female body and all the associated harmful misogynistic expectations of femininity, of inferiority, of submission etc. etc. and also privileged beyond compare for these exact same traits! Under trans ideology, being female, aka actually being female as opposed to the far more oppressed identity of merely wishing you were female, means you are privileged because you actually have female body and genitalia (that is objectified, disregarded and seen as inferior to men), because you're actually forced into femininity and graded according to beauty standards (that are objectively harmful to you and both destructive to your self-esteem and affirming to male supremacist ideas on women being sex objects), because you're actually seen as a woman who is fundamentally inferior rather than just a failed man who should be trying to profit off of his male privileges more, and because, unbeknownst to you and anyone around you, you totally have a magical gendersoul that matches your body despite it being completely undetectable and unnoticeable due to you being cis (which only makes you more privileged due to not suffering as much as poor transwomen's super turbo painful gendersouls). Ok well, we can tell that you're a bit iffy on this whole "gendersoul" thing, although we assure you it is backed by scientific evidence (we gathered a bunch of trans people who all told us they can feel their gendersoul is there, so check-mate, atheists). Here's some evidence of how gendersouls manifest in people who aren't trans: If you feel gender euphoric from wearing heels or having to be meek and submissive or getting plastic surgery after a lifetime of being told that not doing so makes you an ogre or an invisible uggo, that's just your gendersoul manifesting itself to you. No, it's not misogyny or the patriarchy making women feel this, it's gendersouls, something we're all born with (I'm not entirely sure why a metaphysical gendersoul would react to a modern invention like stillettos, but I'm certain this is what is causing it)! Patriarchy is, like, telling a woman she shouldn't be wearing heels, or that makeup isn't empowering. The fact that you can do these things without being shamed for it due to being a man who's supposed to be above being a sex objects proves that you're privileged over transwomen! You will never know their pain! On the other hand, if you ever feel dysphoric from how objectively uncomfortable and traumatising your privileged oppressive cis female existence is, good news! You must have a boysoul then! Real women would feel overjoyed at the possibility of being able to play out female gender roles and actually gaining patriarchal approval for it, as evidenced by transwomen. So either transition or stop complaining about your cis privilege of being expected to be feminine and inferior due to being female.

I figured because it's "women's right" to separate from men, lol. Tbh I didn't feel like any category/forum was a perfect fit for it, so I'm open to suggestions on alternative places to have the Female Separatism forum.