watch uh. I'm a biped, uh

There are no exceptions to this rule.

As radical feminists, we tend to be critical of marriage as an institution, and for good reason. But it's also an important legal construct. There's a reason gays and lesbians fought so hard for same-sex marriage. Marriage affords certain rights and protections that are hard or impossible to get any other way.

I guess I see living together as a much lower level of commitment compared to something like an engagement. Living together lasts the length of a lease, max. And living together is where a man truly shows his colors. So I want that part of the relationship out of the way before I've wasted too much of my life. Because to me, spending that kind of time with someone is commitment. That's time I could have been spending dating other people with whom I'm more compatible, or I could have been single and invested all that time and energy in myself. And I'm not doing it with someone who's not marriage material.

“men will never let us go quietly” so? are we supposed to accept this?

there’s an extremist thinking of either we’re handmaidens or living on nudist female-only settlements and it’s divorced from reality.

but aside from the polarized thinking—my fundamental gripe about this talk is that it is literally endangering girls and women. THE WORST thing a woman or girl can do when it comes to protecting herself from men and boys is adopt a posture of weakness and complacency. gender—like the actual behavior of femininity—is fucking dangerous. yes men are dangerous. yes they retaliate when we resist. but our SAFEST BET IS STILL RESISTING. YOU AS A WOMAN OR GIRL ARE SAFER RESISTING THAN COMPLYING. you must signal disapproval and noncompliance as early and firmly as possible with men. that is one of the best ways to protect yourself. the second best way to protect yourself is with COMMUNITY.

it’s not rocket science. men fear your retaliation too. they fear miscalculating how easy you are to take on. men frequently need other men to boost their confidence in getting away with victimizing you. so the earlier you establish yourself as a wild card, the better.

you don’t have to do too much at first either. just refuse to laugh at their misogynistic joke if you don’t feel brave enough to call it out. refuse to respond to their nagging or bullying if you can. report them. share what you know with other girls. create community with them. SHOW DISAPPROVAL in anyway. tell their parents. family members. resist fawning.

I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s easier done when tried. start resisting small, but START RESISTING.

don’t wear makeup to the mall even if you feel like you have to wear it to the wedding. say you won’t watch that movie because it’s male supremacist nonsense and when people laugh uncomfortably or tease you, double down on how you’re dead ass and refuse to explain yourself beyond that. be a killjoy and a negative nancy and a party pooper. express pain when you are in pain, when he hits you, even if playfully. signal that you’re loud. that you’re ready to resist and not planning on coming quietly at any point. believe you can win, because plenty women have or we wouldn’t be here.

men’s transformation does not factor into whether we resist or not. we don’t resist merely to improve our lives as women but to save them in the first place. femininity is how we get punished. conformity is how we get weak and defenseless.

RESIST

calling it fertility rate

saying women aren’t having kids bc lack of good parental leave and health policies in the U.S.

saying women aren’t having kids bc scary future and bad present

saying women want more kids but aren’t bc, see above

here’s some fun graphs and excerpts from an article in the economist that i know i’ve posted before but you can never see them too often

govts have tried just giving new parents straight cash: “The thinking behind [financial incentive policies of giving new parents straight cash] dates back to the entrance of women into the workforce en masse, which happened at around the same time as birth rates started their long decline. “ but these policies “have a relatively small impact [and are] fabulously expensive, as lots of cash goes to parents who would have had children regardless of the financial incentives available. Each child that resulted from Family 500+, in the years from the Polish financial-bonus scheme’s introduction in 2016 to 2019, cost $1m. In France each extra child over the past decade has cost twice that.” so…it ain’t money

male economists remain incapable of understanding parenthood: “Gary Becker, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, suggested in the 1960s that the best way to consider children is as goods that parents purchase according to how many they can afford, both in terms of time and money. Easing the burden of a career and expanding household budgets should therefore boost childbearing, he concluded.” 😒

drop of fertility is bc we functionally fixed teenage pregnancy (for now): “More than half the drop in America’s total fertility rate is explained by women under the age of 19 now having next to no children. Around a third of the missing births would have been unplanned, and the majority of them would have been to women on low incomes. . . . “Similarly, in Britain women born in 2000 had half as many children before they were 20 as those born in 1990. Unlike their rich counterparts, these women will probably not compensate by having more children later in life.”

maybe women just don’t want kids!: “Meanwhile, there is little evidence that middle-class women wish they had many more children, which would at least suggest they might be open to official persuasion. Today, at the age of 24, college-educated American women want on average 2.2 children—roughly as many as previous generations. They will now have these children a little later than before, with the first arriving at the age of 30, compared with 28 in 2000. Although trends suggest that they will fall short of their ideal family size, the gap may be the same as for women in previous generations, who missed the target by an average of 0.25 children.”

“[S]ome programmes are now beginning to explicitly target [low income and/or younger women]. Zhejiang, a province on China’s eastern border, is offering newly married couples a lump sum, but only if the bride is below the age of 25. In Russia women who have a child before they turn 25 will soon be exempt from income tax. Hungary offers a similar benefit to mothers who have their first child before 30—one of only two policies in Viktor Orban’s pro-natal push that economists at the Central European University think has created additional births. Although small families are becoming more common almost everywhere, women who start young still tend to have more children over their lifetime, which is why Messrs Orban, Putin and Xi are focusing on them.” nightmare blunt rotation

“young mothers laugh when asked if $7,500 would be enough of an incentive to encourage them to have another child; after all, low-income American households typically spend $20,000 in a baby’s first year of life. But such money may well have an impact at the margin. As one mother puts it, extra cash “might make me keep one I wasn’t sure I was going to have”. In America poor women are much more likely than middle-class women to cite financial hardship as a reason for an abortion.” cool society we live in

can we please built a society that doesn’t depend on women having children they don’t want: “extra children produced by targeted policies will probably not turn into the productivity-boosting professionals that governments most desire. Only 8% of the children of American-born non-college-educated parents are themselves expected to obtain a bachelor’s degree, and during his or her adult life the average high-school graduate boosts the public finances by less than a tenth of the net contribution of a college graduate. Therefore the financial benefits of pro-natal policies aimed at working-class women would probably be overwhelmed by their costs, given the expense associated with even well-targeted programmes.”

see also: “A first-time American mother in her mid-30s will earn more than twice what she would have earned had she had her first child aged 22. Women who give birth aged 15 to 19 are more likely to develop health problems; their first child is more likely to drop out of high school and to grow up without having both parents at home. In Flint many mothers express regret that they did not manage to “get things sorted” before they started to have children. “Hang on,” says one outside a community centre. “The idea is that I get paid just enough to make me have another kid? But that’s all that changes? Where doing it [raising a kid] right, later on, it’s all me? That doesn’t seem right.” The 26-year-old mother of three leans back, and laughs.”

anyway

"Oh so you're saying people who've had a foot or leg amputation aren't human?? That's fucked up"

"humans are bipedal"

even after millennia of oppression, women have quickly caught up. we are better at studying, better at working, better at driving, we balance work inside and outside the home in ways men could never dream of, we foster communities, we create great art, we are all around better than men even with their boots on our necks.

first off, sorry about any death threats you may have recieved (I say may have because I haven't checked if they're real and taking people at their word doesn't seem to be a given for you given the whole radfem thing)

second, I'm relatively new to this whole debating thing so don't take my arguments to be representative of 'the best' arguments about transness

anyhow let's get into a syllogistic argument because syllogisms are fun

Premise 1: If your soul was somehow put into a man's body you'd want to change the body to become a woman's body again

Premise 1.5: If another woman's soul was put into a man's body you'd let them change the body to become a woman's body again

Premise 2: There are other people who claim their souls are that of a woman

Premise 3: They are telling the truth

Conclusion: They should be allowed to transition

From what I understand, Premise 3 is the one you doubt, why? There's medical research, but also it's their word. Lets assume they're not intentionally lying, so just why?

P.S. mostly out of curiosity and mostly genuinely, why are you called radfems? what's radical about what you do?

Close! We don’t believe in gendered souls so none of the premises make sense. You are proving that your entire movement is a pseudoreligious one and we shouldn’t have to play along with your spiritual beliefs. We don’t believe in GENDER what is so hard to get about that.

If I was in a male body, what I wouldn't do is demand access to the spaces I used to belong to but no longer did. I would accept that until I got my old body back, I belonged in the men's room. That would likely make me uncomfortable and I'd probably seek out the unisex single stall restroom whenever I could, but my discomfort would not override the safety of women and girls--not because I would personally be a threat but because the women and girls would have no way of knowing and I certainly wouldn't expect them to entertain a story of body-switching.

the second episode is even all about addressing this ‘consent’, and that potential audience superiority: “so why don’t they just leave???? if they can??? why did they even do all this to start with?? it’s so extreme, to do all that just for money, i would never”

It's weird this isn't talked about more, but Elon basically kidnapped his son. He used his lawyers to near bankrupt Grimes in her custody battle and it's unclear if she has any access to her son at this point.