Spiny Seed Pod

I don't think it's talked about enough how the knowledge of women's millennia-long subjugation under patriarchy feels so incredibly demeaning and what it does to young girls self esteem when when they learn about it in school. I remember being 12 or 13 in history class learning about the Romans and how women were considered property to be passed from their father to their husband and for the first time feeling this awful and disheartening sense of humiliation and embarrassment, especially sitting there among my male pupils, being told by the male history teacher over and over throughout every single historical period that we were second-class citizens. What it must do to a girl's self esteem on a subconscious level, how it then might affect everything you say and do, not even mentioning how the misogyny in their daily lives affects them. My heart kind of broke when I realised that

it is a bit sad and worrying seeing a lot of women who get cosmetic mastectomies apparently to resolve a severe body anxiety, who after the surgery seem to become only more focused on that part of their body, and become symbolised by the scars and made into someone who’s had something removed. There is having pride and comfort in how you look, but there’s also presumably being able to move on from being fixed on your body when you’ve had the thing that’s apparently supposed to fix the problem, and becoming more focused in on exactly that area does not seem like moving into a healthier mindset. It likely does not help that so many get stuck with surgeons who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a scalpel, who’ve done genuinely terrible work that wouldn’t fly in a field that wasn’t so female specific (saying that, are you even allowed to stitch up a cesarean that badly?)

LITERALLY HOW DO YOU SAY CONVERSION THERAPY "WORKED" AND STILL THINK YOU'RE GOING AGAINST SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS

the fact that people expect a woman to suffer thru unwanted sex more often than they expect a man to suffer thru no sex says all you need to know about how society (mostly men, but women do it as well) sees women and their role in the relationship.

Who has better feminist cred, my 90+yo christian centrist grandmother who says "men are barely civilized animals" and put each of her daughters through college so they could aspire to be more than "waitresses or secretaries", or my 25yo leftist atheist cousin who identifies as pan demigender,, tweets about men's soft tummies, and thinks her boyfriend spending $200 a month on OnlyFans subscriptions is empowering female entrepreneurs

I used to wonder as a teenager why it was that men seem to think that their straight female partners are going to find it erotic to go to strip clubs, have threesomes etc. I narrowed it down in recent years to this perception that men have of women as inherently attractive, thus the belief that any woman, no matter her sexuality, is going to 'get something out of' seeing another woman in an erotic context. But I've come to a further realisation that it is not simply that women are intrisically sexual, erotic, attractive beings - but rather that men own the concept of attraction altogether. Men believe that they are the only ones capable of 'carnal knowledge' and that it is their 'role' to educate the woman - the perpetual child - in the world of eroticism. And women are supposed to find this education erotic in and of itself, for the education is built on a foundation of female submission. The act of being taught is inherently submissive, therefore the act of being taught in eroticism is inherently sexually submissive, and submission is erotic, therefore the act of being taught in eroticism is eroticism itself. Men like children and virgins not simply because they are 'inexperienced' (although the practical reality of that helps), but because the student-teacher relationship is inherently erotic. Every-time a woman watches porn, every time she goes to a strip club, every time she involves herself in a threesome, he is less concerned with her as a willing participant but rather as naive enough that she can be educated in total submission to him: she is disconnected enough from her own natural sexuality and is willing to embrace his, thus proving to him that he was right all along: he is the only one with a true, natural claim to sexuality: he understands what sex is, and she never will fully be able to, but can always learn from him.

This is critically important. For many years, men who murdered women would blame abusive mothers for their hatred, but men learn misogyny from other men. There’s nothing unique, special or obviously different about men who hate women, except that they hate women. There are entire groups of men who would happily rape, beat or murder any woman available to them if they could get away with it - because they’ve learned from other men that women are subhuman. We don’t need to ‘save’ men as part of feminism, but we do need to de-radicalize them and call on male allies to stop men from instilling this hatred in other men.

It's definitely a disturbing read. The author is very much harassed and threatened by anti-feminists by the way.

I think there’s also an element of what Lundy Bancroft (?) talks about, where men will consciously inflict damage they consider to be reasonable and that will not lead to consequences, rather than actually ‘losing control’. Also, I think an assessment takes place, but I do believe the emotional drive is ‘real’ - in the sense that they have no motivation to resist anger, or to find non-threatening ways of processing their anger. They really are angry, but they choose to be, and they choose what to inflict that anger on.

The house I grew up in had stone walls. My brother knew very well what he was doing when he punched through a particle board door instead.

i know one adult man who punched a wall (like, a brickwall) when his gf broke up with him and he broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder LOL

my stepdad throws things instead of punching walls, bc he doesn't want to have to pay to fix broken drywall