men are walking abortions

not calling women slurs like whore, slut, cunt, bitch

NOT BEING FRIENDS WITH RAPISTS

not being friends with domestic abusers

not watching porn

very easy things not to do like. not raping, or trafficking, or abusing women. obviously

not justifying rapists in any way

being critical of gender roles

supporting female bodily autonomy

being critical of patriarchal religions

not purchasing women's bodies via prostitution or even stuff like porn

opposing stuff like femicide or honour killings or fgm

opposing clearly harmful things to women like high heels or corsets

Males have long held the belief that women owe it to them to affirm their gendered beliefs about themselves, and now this same entitlement leads them to claim that if they identify as women, women owe it to them to make them feel feminine.

Emasculation:

women are expected to modify their behavior to make men feel masculine

men believe that their manhood can be destroyed by women’s failure to affirm it

men react with rage and indignation

men characterize it as an attack on their rights and their core identity

they often use or excuse violence in response, in the name of securing their manhood

Misgendering:

women are expected to modify their behavior to make trans women feel feminine

trans women believe their womanhood can be destroyed by women’s failure to affirm it

trans women react with rage and indignation

trans women characterize it as an attack on their rights and their core identity

[image: Mercedes Grabowski, aka August Ames]

For those of you who don’t know, August Ames was a 23-year-old porn actress who committed suicide in 2017 after being bullied and publicly shamed by her peers/colleagues in the adult film industry. The reason they were bullying her was because she found out a studio was planning to have her shoot a sex scene with a porn actor who was on her “no” list, so she refused to film the scene with him.

She was bullied for not consenting to sex with a specific person that she already had informed her agent and the studio that she didn’t want to work with. They scheduled her with him anyway, and she said no, end she was subsequently bullied and publicly shamed en masse. Another adult film actor (Jaxton Wheeler, male, 7 years her senior) posted publicly that “the world is waiting” for Ames “to swallow a cyanide pill.” The internet hate mob was made up of people Ames saw as her peers - and since they were all posting about her publicly - an army of porn fans also joined in. Even those who didn’t really care about the ins and outs of the adult industry were excited to have an opportunity to publicly abuse a woman who dared to say no.

She tried to stand up for her right to say no, but this just caused her critics to double down even harder on the public roasting. Finally she had enough. She tweeted “fuck y’all” and she hung herself. She was only 23 years old. Her real name was Mercedes Grabowski.

[image: Mercedes Grabowski]

Like I said at the beginning of this post, what messes me up is the way “sex positive” writers covered her death. Even in obituaries and memorial posts, many writers still try to debunk her reasoning for not wanting to have sex with the person she said no to. Consent is supposed to be sacrosanct. No one should ever be forced (or pressured in any way) to have sex with someone that they say no to. The fact that she said no to this man and then was still scheduled with him is a violation of her consent. The fact that her reason for not consenting was dissected and called “problematic” is also a violation of her consent. No means no. No always means no. Anything that tries to change a “no” into a “yes” is a violation freely given consent.

Yet publications covering her death sometimes spent HALF THE ARTICLE dissecting and “debunking” her reasoning behind not wanting to shoot a scene with the man she said no to.

What was her reasoning? I haven’t mentioned it in this post for one reason: it doesn’t matter. No means no. A person can refuse to consent to sex FOR ANY REASON. Disagreeing with that is rape logic. A person shouldn’t need to prove that they are declining consent for ideologically pure and completely “unproblematic” reasons. No means no! No only means no!

Rest In Peace, Mercedes Grabowski age 23, August 23rd 1994 - December 5th 2017. She was bullied, ostracized, publicly shamed, and called a bigot for daring to say “no” to sex with a specific partner who was already on her “no” list. Her consent was not respected, even in her death. The porn industry and its supporters has since pushed this incident under the rug and never talks about it. On the rare occasion that they do, they’ll spend at least half of the talk on criticizing the reasoning she gave behind saying “no” as if a simple “no” was not enough. “No” should always be enough.

[image: Mercedes Grabowski, aka August Ames, posing for a photograph with her brother who says he still receives disgusting anonymous messages about his sister, even long after her death.]

here's my honest answer.

my beliefs about trans women are only the incidental product of my beliefs about feminism. I fundamentally believe that women are oppressed for their sex, not for their femininity. I believe that the society that fosters this sex-based oppression uses compulsory femininity as a method of oppression. I believe that we need distinct terminology to discuss and try to heal the division between the sexes. As a result of this, I believe that efforts to facilitate confusion of these terms hurt and hinder the progress of feminism. If women are oppressed for their gender and not their sex, then no one except people who wanted to be oppressed would identify as women. I think the root of the reason terfs have the reputation they do is that we just refused to change the terminology, which TRAs took as a denial of their cause.

I want to ask you, what is womanhood? what is the common trait that all women have that identifies them as the ones men oppress? what does it mean for someone to "feel like a woman" cis or not? if sex has no bearing on gender, what causes the desire to transition sex? what is it about "feeling like a woman" causes people to want long hair and makeup?

I didn't start off a terf. I was deeply involved in the TRA movement for a long time, genuinely believing your cause and wholeheartedly agreeing that trans women were women. i encourage you to think critically about what a woman is, about how your definition may be impacted by the sexist culture in which it was formed, about how to effectively protect or even discuss the rights of a group so ill-defined that there is no functional difference in definition between the oppressor class and the oppressed class. I encourage you to think critically about this, even if you don't admit it aloud.

I support biological females because we share an anatomical trait that has been exploited, abused, and cited as both cause and proof of our ‘inherent inferiority’ to males for millennia, and I believe there should be a designated movement just to support, defend, and liberate people affected by this. I believe that movement is called feminism and those people are called women. that is how I don't see the place for trans women in that movement. It is a movement for the protection of sex-based human rights for the human sex which has been oppressed for the sex of our bodies. And that’s without even getting into the issue of gender-based activism.

The idea of an inherent ‘woman-brain’ just reaffirms the idea that there is an ephemeral woman-essence that is innate and inborn and is what makes a woman; this is necessarily in conflict with the core tenets of feminism, which has been arguing for over a century now against the misogynistic doctrine of ‘women are just better at housework and nurturing and obsessing over beauty and their hormones make them baby-crazy the way their periods make them unsuitable for leadership,’ insisting that the social constructs and constraints of womanhood are not baked into our second X chromosome. “Feeling like a woman” is no different from feeling like a man. We are neutral fucking mammals. There is no one way women think, there is no one way men think, we are all individuals and the notion that one’s individuality needs to be labelled as a gender in relation to one’s sex just reinforces the ideas that:

(a) there is an expected gendered brain for your sex (i.e., ‘man-gender-brain’ for males, ‘woman-gender-brain’ for females) and that people are born with these gendered brains. (b) the majority of the population (i.e. the ‘cis’ demographic) does have an innate gender-brain corresponding to their sex; so, claiming the entire population of ‘cis’ women actually do have innate ‘woman-gender-brains’. (c) those who do not feel like their gender-brain matches up to what is expected of their sex are oppressed by the ‘cis,’ on the basis that having the expected gendered brain is a privilege; so, claiming that ‘cis’ women are privileged for their supposedly-innate ‘woman-gender-brains’ because that’s what corresponds to their female sex, while simultaneously claiming that female humans who realise they do not have innate ‘woman-gender-brains’ are not women AND that male humans (whose only notion of what a ‘woman-gender-brain’ feels like compared to a ‘man-gender-brain’ is based in conjecture) who feel that their brain is innately gendered ‘woman’ are women and that they are oppressed by ‘cis’ women because their bodies ‘don’t match’ their supposedly innate woman-gender-brain (again reinforcing the association between ‘innate woman-gender-brain’ and ‘female’ by having this demographic as the vocal exception). (d) that this gender-brain, not the sex with which it is forcibly and artificially associated, is what sexism/misogyny has been based on all along; so, claiming that that supposedly-innate woman-gender-brain (which we can’t detect or coherently define) is the trait for which women were/are paid less, objectified, denied the vote, forcibly married and indentured into housework, genitally mutilated, raped and trafficked and sold en masse, forced to give birth... I could go on.

Can you see now how this is reinforcing the same sexist ideas about gender it claims to be overturning? The very idea of innate gender is sexist. the idea that women either identify with the misogynistic societal notions of what womanhood is or they shed the title ‘woman’ is not progressive or feminist at all. There are three potential definitions of ‘woman’ at this point:

1. anyone who feels like a woman (tautological, meaningless, and functionally useless for feminism; indestinguishable from ‘man’ when likewise defined as ‘anyone who feels like a man’. How can one oppress the other and on what basis? for what trait? how can we legislate when we can’t define whom we’re protecting and from whom?) 2. anyone who identifies with the social associations with womanhood, (e.g., femininity, nurturing, or any of the ever-fluctuating social tropes or expectations of women, any conception of ‘womanhood’ which is opposed to parallel conceptions of ‘manhood’; a definition fundamentally based in misogyny for its assumption that these traits are not only innate, but innately tied to womanhood. it’s bioessentialism without the bio-; it’s just gender essentialism. it’s sexism.) 3. human of the female sex. (womanhood denotes nothing inherent other than sex; no inborn traits, no natural femininity, no innate woman-gender-brain. we are neutral humans the same as men, with the same internal range of individuality, and the only inherent difference between us is our physical sex. useful for activism because it includes everyone oppressed for their sex by--again--simply denoting our sex.)

many people don't seem to know this, but a mental disorder is NOT based on symptoms alone, it's based on how much the symptoms actually impair you in daily life. most people could look at a list of mental disorder symptoms and identify either themselves or someone else with them. as far as a narcissistic personality, we all know people who appear more self absorbed than others, but this is typically subclinical narcissism (presence of narcissistic traits without significant impairment of functioning) which is not a disorder. there is also a misunderstanding of what npd is. a narcissist is not a supervillain invincible to emotion. npd is a defensive reaction to trauma that lead to deep insecurity and fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable. so narcissists aren't actually "in love with themselves" at all and often are diagnosed when seeking help for other issues such as substance abuse resulting from their struggles.

Then they tell you stories about them. From day one, they were basic idiots and assholes, incapable of finding their own asses without GPS, with a gigantic ego.

They chose to wear pink lens glasses and they didn't see anything wrong.

What they were saying to me was very clear. As long as any male, anywhere is suffering, women are selfish to mention that they are suffering, too.

I'm sure neither of those men realized the woman-hatred behind their feeling that everything and everyone should come before women. I pointed out quietly that in every country where children are starving, women are starving also. In every country where men are being tortured, women are being tortured also. I was insensitive enough to point out that Vietnam is also strewn with the blasted bodies of women, and that many, many of those bodies were not simply blown up, but were also sexually abused-raped, gang raped, used up in prostitution, tortured. No matter when or where or what men suffer, women's suffering is on some totally different, more exquisite, plane.

But no one wants to hear that women are suffering. Men's ordeals are recounted and described and depicted in every conceivable way in every medium on earth, and have been from earliest history. We are always asked and expected to look at and listen to and understand and sympathize with men's pain and suffering, and we have always done it, all of us, men and women. But women's agony at the hands of men must never be revealed. If women steadfastly and courageously began to tell the truth and would not stop, would not be co-opted, would not become afraid, the truth of our enslavement would be undeniable, and the jig would be up.

That this might indeed happen is terrifying to most people. It would stand the whole world on its head. This is why any time women say, "Look at what is happening to us!" someone invariably rises up on the spot (as patriarchy has trained us all so well to do) and shouts, in order to divert us, to frighten us, to remind us of our vulnerability and danger: "But what about men?"

I explained to the distraught man whose buddies lie in fragments all over the corpse of Vietnam: ''You are performing this function here to night. May I interrupt this well-rehearsed performance to point out that we have given men 5000 years of undivided attention." (Is it any wonder they have remained spoiled little boys?) As Pauline Bart points out: "We are not allowed, even now, to speak of women's suffering without someone saying, 'and men, too,' although we have always spoken of men's suffering without adding 'and women, too!'" Patriarchy has worked hard to make women's experience appear so trivial and so invisible that it is inconceivable to most people that we warrant any attention at all. Otherwise, it would not be so maddening to them to have to listen for a whole hour to a speech about women, though they listen willingly day after day, year after year, to talks by and about men. For many hundreds of years they have heard about nothing but men: their wars, their ideas, their art, their politics, their science, their blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam."

now that's just fucking sad, imagine having to train your equal partner for life like a dog to behave like an adult

she should have put him down like a dog instead

oh look she has to reward him with kisses to get him to pick his dirty clothes off the floor, how romantic

this is so sad

uwu it's not his fault! it's your fault for not teaching him better! are you his mother or his wife?

vomit inducing. so she trains him to be an adult and he trains her not to complain when she's in discomfort? wow who could have seen that coming?

This restaurant thing was just one of a handful of incidents where he claimed to be doing the right thing and wanting people to be “educated” - sure, honey, then why do you always pull this on the people making the least, who are most likely to be ESL or immigrants? He never does this to a lawyer or a doctor, it’s always restaurant waitstaff or Uber drivers or low-income women in Facebook groups. Meanwhile he does jack shit to “educate” himself on how he’s increasing the likelihood of finding spit in his food.

Magdalen Berns did a beautiful takedown of him five years ago, and nothing much has changed for Chuck since then.

bell hooks once said in her essay “theory as liberatory practice” that she came to feminist theory because she was hurting and feminist theory was a way to understand why she was hurting but not all theory is radical or liberatory. I came to feminism with deep scars, part of them were from a mother who is a diagnosed sociopath and inflicted sadistic torture on me, part of them were from my desperate attempts to keep myself safe and make a name for myself (unfortunately, women have no titles to be fought for or legacies to create in our society). I was raped 3 times before I was 20 because without a safe home I was easy prey, I was beaten up by students at my middle school for being gender nonconforming. I had been belittled by the courts, psychiatry (who kept insisting the problem was ME and not my mother sticking my face in dog pee when I was 8). I relied on boyfriends and my father to keep me safe from my mothers rages and schemes, with predictably horrific results. By the time i had turned 21 I had been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning once, had ripped off half of my eyebrow from a fall caused by drug abuse and had tried to throw myself off the roof of my ten story apartment once. I spent all my money on makeup and drugs, I let men do whatever they wanted to me body. I had no worth because men held it in their claws.

I don’t tell you this because I want you to feel bad for me. I tell you this because from the time I made my first tumblr account when I was 13 (2009) I was seeped in the world that liberal feminists had built. I believed that makeup was my choice (my choice to not be ugly) and that it was perfectly normal to have violent kinks. In FACT, so well publicized was the rumor that kink helps abuse victims that I tried it and permanently damaged nerves in my breasts and restraumatuzed myself in the process.

Liberal feminism and misogyny was not my first trauma, my first trauma was having a mom who was incapable of empathy and had developed an obsession with power and pain in response. As an abuse victim, I was well groomed for a life to conforming to my gender role. What liberal feminism DID DO however, was allow me to continue victimizing myself, be celebrating women who conform to feminity, are self efacing, objectifies themselves, lives to please an authority figure, makes themselves small etc…..

Liberal feminism doesn’t give women a framework to heal. By regulating behavior to “choice” women are never asked to examine their bias and develop their own, empowering, sense of self. Liberal feminism never asked me if dieting helped me reach my life goals or made me happier, it never asked me if I like kink, never asked me why we have PIV sex when most women don’t even fucking like it. There’s no critique of power at the heart of liberal feminism, only a cult of women encouraging other women and girls to consume and commodify themselves in relation to the dominant cultural narratives.

Radical feminism helped me heal myself. Radical feminists ask whether or not women should be conforming to gender and sexual roles that cause bodily harm, they ask why we are told to be quiet and they talk openly about male violence. Radical feminism is feminism for women by women where we name the problem (patriarchy) and work together to form useful solutions. The women you call terfs gave American women title IX, gave us women birth control access, led women into the professions, criminalized martial rape, led welfare reform, led to a criminalization of sexual harassment etc….. you can open a bank account, go to law school, report your professor for harassment and get a Nuva ring because of their efforts. That fucking matters. The JANE collective in Chicago, for all their faults preformed dozens of free and low cost abortions for predominantly women of color in 70s Chicago. There are your fucking terfs, on the front lines actually living in solidarity with the less privledged women around them. And it will also matter more than some Twitter bullshit activism or Taylor Swift video.

I found Kate McKinnon’s “what is a white woman anyways” and Dworkin’s intercourse to be particularly helpful in illustrating the problems with some liberal feminists who choose to not examine internalized misogyny. Shelia Jeffery’s the beauty myth is also poignant.

I hate feminity, it is an agent of my oppression. Men who preform feminity and claim that makes them women are only attaching femaleness to gender more intensely-which is not aligned with my class interests. Men who claim they’re women and don’t preform feminity are engaging in discourse and then using threats of violence to ensure compliance are 1.) making a claim that has no basis in the material and thus cannot direct address the material basis of women’s oppression and 2.) using traditional male tatics to suppress women and therefore-subvert northing. I’m uninterested in changing our gender norms and more interested in affecting the balance of power between the sexes so….transgender ideology serves me in no conceivable way.

Do you ever actually read theory? Or do you jerk off to the idea that suicide baiting, a lowly grad student, is somehow activism? My death saves no lives baby. Ideology is a lens we use to make sense of the world, if it’s not helped you build a more fair and just society then what does it do for you? I have a guess, but it’s ultimately your choice

Go take a theory class. Go do some actual work that helps women. Talk to your elders. Literally do something.