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.

So I wanted to say you’re all being ridiculous. You consume media all the time by actual rapists. You watch movies with actors who have killed people. You read books written by racists and homophobes. All. The. Time. And it is so unimportant to you that half the time, you don’t even know.

This business with JK Rowling is a witch hunt. She follows a different kind of feminism than you do. And sometimes she’s a little rude about it. (But we don’t tone police here.) She has never put hands on anyone. She has started charities with her own money. And she is an outspoken advocate for women experiencing domestic violence.

She has expressed acceptance for LGBT people, yes including trans people. She just does not believe a person can genuinely change their sex, that some ‘inclusive’ terminology dehumanizes women and that sex segregated spaces are necessary to protect women.

There is a reason that JKR is being derided the way she is, and it’s not because she’s the worst person in the world. And if you step back, if you read her words, you’ll see why.

You’d never know that Brendon had physically abused women.

In fact, when a handful of women pointed this side of him out and cautioned people about pouring love out for an abuser…they’d be told that it’s a complicated situation, that he was a complex person, that it’s okay to mourn the person he once was and just put aside that pesky woman-beating side of him. After all, the poor sweet man was troubled.

Perp walk will be star-studded.

When I first read this article I couldn’t shake off the sticky feeling of disgust for hours. It’s one thing to know in theory that surrogacy is unethical and deprived, but it turns out I was emotionally not prepared to be presented with the real story of the woman who went through it. So it would be great to repeat once again what’s already been discussed in feminist community for ages and this article will serve as a brilliant illustration of the key critique points.

So we have a Silicon Valley techie couple set their goal to have children via surrogacy. They have two twin embryos - a male and a female one, advised by their fertility doctor to be gestated by two seperate women. For the male embryo they chose a perfect surrogate - “tall, healthy, young, good job. I showed her off to my friends” - a description fit for a fine mare. ‘Kay. The pregnancy was going smoothly until it wasn’t, and due to placenta complications the baby died before it was born. The reason? Both intended parents had health issues associated with pregnancy running in their families, which wasn’t disclosed to the surrogate mother upon signing the contract. The risk of complications in surrogate pregnancy is 8% compared to that of 2% in natural pregnancy, and these risks often stem from placenta as it carries intended parents’ DNA. What followed Rebecca after hospitalisation (article’s name for the surrogate mother) was a chain of vicious attacks against her and her family, blackmail, threats, expensive and draining judicial proceedings and huge medical bills that were not covered by the intended parents, because the baby was not delivered alive, as was specified in the contract. Remember I mentioned there was a female embryo? It was carried to full term by another surrogate mother, described by the couple as “the best” contrary to “the worst” they were having so much trouble with. They said everything went easy and smooth with the second baby. But it also wasn’t. The second surrogate developed gestational diabetes and placenta previa, causing her to lose 5.4 litres of blood and, eventually, having her uterus removed. But the baby was born alive and healthy after all, so does it really matter?

The problems the story unfolds are very typical for the industry, such cases just don’t show up that often in the conversation, creating this “surrogacy is completely safe” bubble many people choose to live in. But this bubble can’t withstand a single case like this, because there’s nothing safe when it comes to reproductive labour.

Just like with prostitution, any contract - either legal or verbal - is a deal between a client and an agency (a pimp, an online platform, a brothel, surrogacy agency), where a woman performing a labour, reproductive or sexual, is not an entrepreneur signing this contract but a service that being sold to the costumers. That’s everything you have to understand when you ponder these two institutions. And that’s enough to understand that this is wrong on every level.

A woman, choosing to be a surrogate, is not just offering her service of reproduction - because when It comes to gestation it involves so many things, it extends to all spheres of a surrogate’s life - she’ll be controlled for how much she drinks, eats, whether she has sex during pregnancy, whether she changes her job and her pregnancy is not covered by insurance, even what her ex partner is doing for life - all that and she won’t even have a right to know if there’re some serious health conditions running in the intended parents’ family that can potentially harm her. A woman’s life will be sold for 9 months and she will be the most jurisdictionally fragile and unprotected individual on top of that. It’s not even just about renting a uterus, you’re renting a whole human being and buying a new one along with that.

How come that in 21 century it’s wildly known you can’t buy a person but when it comes to women it’s suddenly all progressive and ethical when the bought woman agrees to it.

The surrogacy industry left three women scarred, one of them bearing severe legal consequences because the baby, she was paid to gestate, died; another one had her uterus removed for good; and the third was so blinded by the idea of motherhood and sense of permissiveness she let it cloud her judgement and deprive her of any empathy and compassion.

Surrogacy industry btw is faring more than well, with the global market expected to grow to $201.8 billion in 2034. Billions of dollars off renting women.

being horny is fun and morally positive

having sex is fun and morally positive

the amount of coping these ppl do to pretend they arent porn addicts is wild. imagine if I had been so far in denial about my opiate addiction that i start claiming opiate addiction itself is actually fake & invented by conservatives

funniest part of the "we have research on this" is we literally dont have it anymore bc the negative outcomes of constant porn viewership in past studies were found to be so severe that it is now considered unethical to subject upon test subjects & not allowed to be studied in a lab setting anymore . and using a serial killers testimony that violent porn led him to want to harm women as evidence that porn viewing isn't harmful bc "clearly he was lying to get out of it" (when he was at that time already on death row, obviously no chance of being ever let out) is insane. these people are professional gaslighters. As the commenter above said, ANY DOPAMINE RELEASING ACTIVITY CAN BE ADDICTIVE. FOOD. SOCIAL MEDIA. EXERCISE. These people probably wouldn't deny that. So why is porn the exception?