Gendie Bioshock

The What: Pick a feminist issue or issues that you are passionate about and are willing to invest your time and energy into.

The How: Based on your interests, you can research groups you can volunteer for or donate money/supplies to (local women's shelters are a great place to start), brainstorm and design stickers or flyers, or pick out books or documentaries on the topic and post on Tumblr/Reddit/Ovarit/Twitter/Substack a summary, review, analysis, or interesting facts. This is obviously not a comprehensive list! Suggestions are always welcome. Pick something that aligns with your strengths and abilities. If you spend a lot of time online, then join (or make) a (regional) feminist discord. If you enjoy writing or design, submit to Ugly Truths Publishing Collective or the Radical Feminist Zine. You can even make and publish your own zine!

The Plan: After doing some research, pick a few actions, then set goals. The way I set goals/actions is based on timelines: I pick daily actions, weekly actions, monthly actions, yearly actions, and even lifetime goals. You can break up your goals/actions however you see fit. (For example, my daily action is spending a few minutes a day on Tumblr writing responses and queueing some posts, my weekly goal is printing and mailing out stickers for stickering, my monthly goal is trying to read 1 - 2 feminist books, doing some volunteering for a women's organization, and designing a few infographics on feminist/LGB topics. My goal for this year is to make a spending plan so I can do recurring monthly/yearly donations to my favorite organizations by next year and to see if I can land a job at an organization I have my eye on where I can help women).

Then do it!

Some resources to help you get started right now:

Here is my guide on how to make your own stickers (hundreds of them!) for under $10 so you can start stickering. The guide is budget friendly.

Here is my Gumroad where I sell feminist stickers, if you want to buy you own. The stickers are FREE (you just pay for shipping)! You can also download artwork for flyering/stickering/whatever, also for FREE!

Here is my guide for how to sticker safely and effectively.

Here is my guide on how I make my own feminist infographics/quotes/posts through Canva (which is FREE!)

Here is a masterdoc (300+ pages) I compiled of studies and sources of interest! Feel free to peruse it and use it for whatever:

If you want to donate, here are some suggestions:

You can set up recurring monthly donations of small amounts (think like $1), kind of like a subscription. If you don't want to sign up for recurring donations, you can note down a day every month in your calendar to donate to your favorite organization(s). Some of the organizations on the list are non-profits and the donations may be tax-deductible depending on the tax laws in your country. (This is not an endorsement of the groups below, please do your own research!)

Anti-Trafficking/Prostitution Groups

Routes Out  This is a Glasgow based organisation founded to help women exit prostitution. 

Turn Off the Red Light An Irish organisation working for an end to prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland. It advocates the adoption of the Nordic Model. 

Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution A UK coalition who believe that prostitution is male violence against women and are working to achieve Swedish style legislation. The site contains many useful links and resources.

Abolicion de la Prostitucion This web site, in Spanish, was set up by a group of 77 women’s organisations to fight prostitution in that country.

Centre for Women’s Human Rights This Korean feminist organistion was established in 2005.

The Polaris Project Anti Trafficking organisation with a focus in Japan and USA 

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Nordic Model Now

LGB/Gender-Critical Groups

Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine

Fair Play for Women

LGB Alliance

Lesbian Strength

Ovarit

me: I grew up with severe social anxiety and self-hatred and no money and I’m experiencing certain girly teen things for the first time in my 20s so I completely relate and empathize

I remember spending hours locked in my room watching tutorials, washing, drying, and frying my hair over and over again with blow driers, straighteners, and curlers, trying to learn how to do pretty things to my hair. (I still can’t do a French braid.) I lost whole weekends to this, weekends I could have spent hanging out with friends or family, reading, writing, studying, playing games, or being outside. I remember spending absurd amounts of money on hair dye, to the point where my own mother forgot that I’m not naturally blonde. I remember the freedom I always felt when I cut my hair short, and how much freer still I felt when I finally cut it all off into a super-short pixie, and I didn’t have to deal with that shit at all.

I remember those same weekends, deciding instead to experiment with makeup. Putting it on and washing it off, scrubbing my face red and raw, over and over again. I remember the makeup causing acne, and wearing more makeup to cover that acne, which caused more acne. 

I remember being 14, waking up at 5am to do my hair and makeup before school. I remember coming home after school, when the makeup had worn off and I’d finally gotten annoyed and put my hair in a ponytail, and thinking I looked hideous.

“having a girls night with your friends? having female friends in general?”

I feel like all the lesbians who were never invited to sleepovers will tell you that they’re still female. regardless, having age-appropriate same-sex friends is hardly a “girly thing.” and it’s still weird for grown men to identify with pubescent girls.

“perfecting your skincare routine?”

ah yes, the crippling anxiety caused by not looking like a photoshopped magazine model. followed, in adulthood, by the crippling fear of aging, because a woman who is not fuckable is invisible. I have memories here, too.

I didn’t even have bad acne, and yet, I still remember covering my face in things that gave me actual chemical burns. (I’m allergic to benzoyl peroxide, which was fun to discover, and I have eczema that makes it difficult to use acne treatments.) I have broken capillaries on my nose from using “pore strips,” to try to get rid of my “blackheads” (btw, those dots on your nose are called sebaceous filaments, they’re a normal part of your anatomy, and you really can’t get rid of them.) I remember a whole drawer full of face wash and lotions and creams and spot treatments. I remember friends who were put on accutane, a medicine that can cause severe organ damage, and dries your skin out to the point of pain.

But hey, I don’t need memories. I really enjoy my skincare routine as an adult. But it’s rooted in those anxieties. Stay young, stay pretty, have perfectly flawless skin. I spend an unreasonable amount of money on it. I’m breaking the law for it - I’m illegally using somebody else’s prescription for Retin-A.

“flirting and being flirted with? going on a date?”

Plenty of people don’t become sexually/romantically active until later in life. Lots of lesbian women don’t come to terms with their sexuality until later. They’re still women.

“going to prom? going to a party?”

While admittedly fun for many people, that is neither female-specific, nor a required experience of adolescence. Prom is pretty much exclusively a US thing. It’s also expensive as hell, which keeps it out of the reach of many people who grow up in poverty. And lots of introverted people never go to a party in their life. They’re fine. 

“decorating your room?”

This is also neither female-specific, nor adolescence-specific. 

honey that’s just life. none of it is female specific and most of it is dreamed up by middle age men who work in hollywood (which we all know is plagued by pedophiles)

its avoiding bathroom mirrors because you know your hair/makeup doesnt look the way it did that morning and if you sneaked a peak youll have a breakdown and will skip class trying to make it look better.

its helping the freshman who got knocked up by the senior jerk in your grade…he said he would be safe, “just trust me” yet here you are after school… holding a dollar store pregnancy test in the science wing bathroom looking up abortion clinics in the state next door because your state treats girls as vessels.

its going to the bathroom only in groups because, you wont tell your friends but, the male janitor always is too close to the girls bathroom and youre never really safe.

At 13 when I was on MSN messenger to chat to my friends, I’d have done anything to identify out of the boys that I knew from school messaging me and demanding that I go on webcams with them and “show me your tits”.

At 14 when a childhood boyfriend tormented me with texts begging him to let him finger me, and then threatened suicide when I told him no, god I wish I could have identified out of the naive female nature I’d grown up with, that made him think he could treat me that way.

At 15 when a guy invited me out for a walk, that ended with his hands shoved into my top and under my bra even though I kept asking him to stop, god I’d have loved to identify out of my girlhood.

At 19 in my first serious relationship when my boyfriend’s friend pressured me into having sex with my partner, because they’d obviously talked behind my back about how I was a prude and wasn’t “giving it up” to him, I wish I could have identified out of that pressure.

Like first of all I agree with him on that but more importantly…. He came to that conclusion because he actually used to coach female sports. He’s told me on many occasions there were times where he knew his girls were better than the boys, but if they played the boys they’d lose because of sheer strength, speed. It doesn’t matter how much technically better a girl is, in most sports a man will still beat her because of bio advantages. He didn’t need to be told what to think, he saw one headline with that trans swimmer and went “no this is fucking wrong and women will miss out on scholarships”

Don’t claim you give a shit about women you fat ugly hypocrite fuck.

This list includes doctors in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe!

Even if you're not the target demographic, please share for any of your friends who may be.