dear sir dear lady this carnival is dead and gone

The rise in popularity of both sadomasochism and ddlg is disgusting yet unsurprising. Whenever women appear to be making any kind of gains towards recognised forms of “equality” (that is, legal equality and lip-service equality), a social/sexual backlash ensues that ensures women remain socially/sexually, if not legally, subordinated. When some (i.e., white, middle-class) women were first granted the right to vote and work, sexologists went into a panic and wrote, in their own words, about the need to force women to “surrender” to men in the bedroom and to force them to derive orgasm via penile penetration so that they would never believe they could ever possibly live without the domination of a man. Same thing’s happening now. Women get more legal/lip-service equality, social/sexual norms get even more perverse and crazy. Heels get higher, fashion trends get more and more feminine (where ‘feminine’ is taken to mean ‘characteristic of a subordinate’, not ‘pink and frilly’; I’m talking tight/restrictive designs, pvc, chokers that look more like collars, waist-cinchers/trainers, harnesses, bondage/fetish-inspired lingerie, etc.), cosmetics and “personal grooming” requirements get more and more elaborate (contouring, complete hairlessness, etc.), and sexual practices get more and more degrading and dangerous for women (anal sex, deep-throat/face-fucking, BDSM, ‘age-play’ - all in addition to the already totally normalised practice of reproductive sex for recreational purposes, which has taken place over hundreds of years of patriarchal social engineering). Legal gains for women, or the types of lip-service “gains” we’re seeing now (where it’s become marginally less trendy for men to be openly misogynistic and to say things like “women are less capable than men and rape is totally fine” - all while the way our entire society functions continues to produce women less capable than men and to produce men who find women’s induced fragility/violability sexually exciting), don’t really mean much in the face of all this. You can make sex without consent illegal and call it rape, for example, but at the end of the day what does that really mean for women/girls living in a culture that grooms them not only to consent to but to regard as natural/inevitable - and even to desire - their degradation, humiliation and violation at the hands of men? 

indignance and confusion. my two main emotions

I also want to say though that you don’t need to have an excuse - an identity, a reason, an explanation, some deep meaning about yourself - to stop doing things which feel restraining, uncomfortable, forced, or time consuming. You don’t have to be trans or butch or a lesbian or a feminist or gender nonconforming or hold any kind of particular life experience, politics, or social circles to stop doing something that has to do with your own gendered body/presentation/behavior, or start doing something else that feels liberating. You do not need an excuse or deep seated reason.

Same goes for who you do and don’t sleep with. You don’t have to cite trauma or anything like that. You don’t even have to figure out What You Are categorically to start living the life you want to live.

Its fucked up that I've seen more women with self harm scars than with unshaven body hair