belladonna

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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (c. 1818) 

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Okay, since you so genuinely want to understand… Sit down. Let’s talk. 

Why do you think “woman” is something that one can “identify” into? Do you understand what the word “woman” means? Do you understand what it means to be a woman?

I’m gonna guess you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few years so… Have you heard about the statistics for female infanticide? (x) What about female genital mutilation? (x) Have you heard of child brides? (x)(x) And breast ironing? (x) This list could go on and on. These are all acts of violence which harm females exclusively.

These girls are hurt not because they “identify” as women… Some of them are fucking unborn… But because they are women, or they will grow into women… Either way they are female. 

This isn’t a coincidence, it’s not like “oh five of them…uh… kinda??? maybe??? could??? be women??? I guess????” NO. These are 100% female individuals. They are killed, violated, mutilated, raped… Because they are female.

That is not an identity to be had. That is a biological reality. They are born with XX chromosomes, and they have uteruses, and they have vaginas, vulvas.. They are undoubtedly, biologically female.

The examples I’ve cited are all about children/underage individuals, because I wanted to point out: let’s pretend for a hot second that “woman”  or “girl” is an identity. Then how come these children are being oppressed and marginalized? Are they “genderless”, since they’re not old enough to even have an identity? Do we have some sort of “genderless” genocide going on? No. We do not. These girls are in third world countries, countries where “gender theory” is but a whisper which only the privileged have even heard about. 

Since we see all this violence against females, what about males? What does that make them?

It makes them oppressors. It makes them privileged. Males are either oppressing women/females or they are benefiting from their oppression. Either way, males come out winning, women come out losing, losing very badly.

From birth to death, females live in fear. Even in “pretty chill”, developed societies, women are scared of walking around at night, scared of going places alone, scared. Only females can understand the fear of a rape which might get you pregnant. The fear of being obliged to live with your rapist’s baby inside you, otherwise you’ll be cast aside, even arrested. Rape is just one of the things, though, then there’s acid throwing (x), forced pregnancy (x)…

So what happens? How do women react? How can they protect themselves? Well, women create shelters. They start women-only spaces, female-only spaces, where women can be free from their oppressors. Spaces where only we can be in, where there’s no threat hanging in the air…

And what do men do? Well they change their names to “Suzie-Lou”, and force their way in. At first, sure. A lot of transwomen were homosexual males, so they had no interest in scaring and intimidating women. But then the tables turned. The heteros caught on, they realized homosexual transwomen were being welcomed, so they decided they should be welcomed too. 

And before your can cry “oh but the poor transwomen! they don’t wanna get into your dirty terf pants! they don’t wanna have anything to do with lesbians they just wanna be happy!!! terfs started this, they spread hate for no reason” I strongly recommend you check out [t][h][e][s][e].

Okay, so now you understand female oppression, and you understand where these transwomen males are coming from… So where do they overlap, why do I care so much? Why can’t I “admit” they’re women, leave them alone?

A woman is an adult human female. A girl is a female child. We need to make these definitions clear as feminists, because as feminists the oppression of female children and adult human females is what we fight against. 

Bear with me for a second, and pretend you’re a dentist. Someone taught you that “a cavity is the decayed part of a tooth. It’s a little hole.” But then when you ask them “Okay, what’s a tooth, then? How do I find and fix the cavities?” they just answer: “a tooth is anything that identifies as a tooth”.

And you wanna seem smart, a good dentist, so you go in, see your first patient. But you still don’t really know what is a tooth. But then you look inside a human mouth, you see these white things, they’re all have similar characteristics. And they have dark spots, little holes. 

Are you gonna drill into your patients gums, because that might be a tooth? Are you gonna pinch their tongue? None of those have holes, what would you fix? But those white things, which you know have cavities… Why would you keep calling them “white things”? Why not define them as something? Why not give them a name, and call them teeth? It would be pretty dumb, right? Pretty useless?

So let’s change things up, you’re not a dentist, you’re a feminist. You know that there is such a thing as misogyny, sexism. You know that non-vagina-humans oppress vagina-humans. In order to fix the problem, solve that issue, you need to have a clear line between who oppresses and who is oppressed. And you know you’re gonna be talking about humans a lot, so wouldn’t it be  easier if you had a proper word for those humans?

Why not call the men and women? Now you know, misogyny is a thing that affects women. Okay, then we need a clear definition of what misogyny is. Misogyny is ingrained prejudice against women. Okay, then what are women? Anything that identifies as such? But then can a cat be a woman? Can a dog be a woman? Can a five year old boy be a woman? Because he identifies as such? No. In order for the definition of misogyny to have any value, then the definition of woman must have value. It must mean a fixed thing. You cannot define a word with itself. You cannot say “a woman is anyone who says they’re a woman”. That makes for blurred lines, confused statements. 

This is why people came together and made language a thing that exists. This is why we have dictionaries. We can’t ignore the meaning of important words just “because”. We only change the meaning of words when a significant part of society uses it in a certain way for a significant amount of time. But woman has meant adult human female for a very very very long time. So why would we change it? What would that achieve?

The one thing that comes from the denial of sex, the denial of male and female as absolute biological realities, is that feminism’s fight becomes useless. If we don’t know what a woman is, and what a man is, then there is no one being oppressed, and there is no one oppressing them, because nothing has meaning.

But that’s not the world we live in. Women are oppressed, they are marginalized, killed, abused. Why would us, the feminists, the ones who have vouched from the start that we would fight for female liberation, turn our back on that? Why would we deny reality? For males??? But aren’t males the ones to blame? Aren’t they the fucking oppressors? (hint: they are).

So yes, feminism is for all ages, ethnicity, classes… Of females. Feminism is for females. Feminism is for women. Women born women, the only true women to ever exist. We must fight for female liberation, because our oppression has not gone anywhere, and it will not go anywhere, unless we address it, loud and clear, with the right goddamn words!!!!

To deny that women are females is to deny our oppression. We are oppressed because of our bodies, because society despises our very biology, not because we identify as women. To say so would mean every woman to have ever lived has chosen her own oppression. 

And I will not have that. 

What do I do with my hands when they are just hands?

Also, feel free to dig into scientific articles where you’ll find womb transplants have been successfully done many times and are now being advocated for trans women.

BTW, telling teenage girls online to undergo elective removal of a functional organ in their body, expose themselves to increased risk of bladder, bowel, and vaginal prolapse, all because she doesn’t want to face sex-based oppression is some serious bullshit. Do you tell men with erectile dysfunction that if their dicks make them so sad they should cut them off?

Anyway, periods are not a privilege. They are our bodies’ shitty attempt to protect us from pregnancy (because pregnancy and childbirth do have the potential to shorten our lifespans by quite a bit). It’s imperfect, with a high failure rate, and is uncomfortable at best and can be life-threatening at worst. Men, having no ability to get pregnant, nor having any expectation to do so, nor experiencing any shaming for having no ability to do so, are therefore not underprivileged by not having a bodily function that limits how often it can happen.

2) Second part He raped and killed a nine year old boy and literally left his body on the boy's mother doorstep (he was a neighbor). It's so disgusting. I'm crying just thinking about it, I don't know if the mother watched it (I really hope she didn't), it's so fucking disrespectful. I cannot believe they would put someone like that, to make us feel bad and sorry for him. Everyone thought it was something like trafficking or robbery, but not a fucking heinous crime. ++++++3) Third part Globo is literally the biggest channel in Brazil and they fucking did this. There are people who actually defending this bullshit? "Oh don't misgender him" "It doesn't justify transphobia" (I found out about this through radfems, there's proof and everything. And no one was being transphobic, just sheer outrage to make us feel empathy for a man who murdered and raped a boy). This was deceptive and we ARE right to feel disgusted ++++4) Final part if it was with anyone else I would feel just as angry. No wonder no one visited him all this years. And about "misgendering" I WILL keep calling him by male pronouns, after what he did I can't just use female pronouns. This type of crime is common between males, it makes me sick that people actually want me to call him "she". I will not. I'm so angry and sad, they omitted this and I just can't stop thinking about the boy's family. It wasn't even the first time he had raped a child