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i spent a lot of time at my best friend’s place during my senior year of high school. his mom is an exec at a company literally all of you have heard of. she worked hard! and for long hours, longer than many of her coworkers and some of her subordinates (she was overworked, technically, because the company had made her absorb the job of a second person.)

still, on the off occasion that we got to talking in the realm of workers’ rights, there was still some barely-perceptible catch in her view of work that i felt ultimately disallowed her from viewing working lifestyles as something influenced by the systematic and not merely the personal. and when i think about it, this might be why:

when my best friend’s mom came home from work, in the late evening or at night, she would take off her heels at the door before padding across the persian rug and collapsing onto what is probably my favorite couch, a huge sectional with seats as wide as mattresses. the walls intersecting behind it were glass, so as she caught her breath she could see a number of things: always the shimmering lights of manhattan; if it were still evening, and fall, the autumn leaves of the entire length of central park; if it were summer, a whole dome of sunset and, on rare occasions, fireworks that burst right in front of the balcony, at eye-level from a spot on the 25th floor.

on days when she came home late, she never had to cook. my friend’s father, a househusband, may have cooked something already, or we might have ordered sushi, or gone to one of the hundreds of restaurants within walking distance. if she didnt want much there was always cheese in the fridge, or wine in the cupboard, or espresso, or something novel: maybe i had brought them cake, maybe someone else had.

there was a lot of difficulty in raising her kids, but none of it came from their educational environments, which is more than most can say. both of her sons were in top public schools. the one i went to with her older son let us dual-enroll at columbia. if i had known her sons earlier, they would both have been enrolled at new york’s lycee francais. her younger son was disabled, that’s difficult no matter who you are. his speech now is slow, but clear. i imagine speech therapy costs money. i imagine it’s more stressful to have a child who can’t speak when you know you can’t afford to raise them into a teenager who can. but now, when she sits on the couch and asks her sons about their days, they complain about the too-fast pace of columbia calculus or the annoyance of not being able to pronounce a particular diphthong in french. real complaints. complaints that could be worse.

there are other things too, like how the apartment (save for the boys’ room) was always clean even when i visited impromptu . (once, i came completely unannounced to surprise the younger one with a slice of birthday cake, but there was only a cleaning lady— i’m guessing the apartment complex sent cleaners every two weeks or so.) celebration was easy, fun was easy—when she heard i’d received my first college acceptance, she immediately took us all out for dinner, and then back in for a nightcap. i had chartreuse for the first time. when something good happens there is champagne, there is caviar. they do not have to worry about safety, on the 25th floor of a complex with a front desk who calls to announce visitors and packages. beyond these there are surely a hundred other privileges that i cannot imagine because i’ve grown up with the same ones.

radfem presupposes “woman” as a distinct, oppressed class, and doesn’t take anything else (such as race, class, ability, age, education, and so on) into account, to the detriment of understanding “womanhood” (whatever that may mean) as a whole, complex, and fluid category. on top of how this then begs the question of what “woman” then means (and in this context it Always means cis, dyadic, white women), “woman” as a class cannot feasibly exist without differing intersections and experiences.

no one woman has the same life as another, and claiming all women are united on the basis of being women erases how white supremacy has always played a leading role in how white women will side with white men, will uphold the brutal systems in place, will choose their whiteness over their supposed solidarity with “women” in general, while women of color have been left behind and been oppressed by the same white women claiming to be their sisters-in-arms.

beyond this, white feminists in general (but especially radfems) are guilty of only seeing themselves as women – that is to say, they are individuals with agency and autonomy – whereas women in the global south and racialized women more generally speaking will be universalized into an object to be saved. they are no more women than they are victims, the difference between a farmer in nigeria and the pampered daughter of an official in vietnam not taken into account. all women in the global south are seen as an ahistorical, universalized monolith suffering under patriarchy above all else, and must therefore be “liberated” by white feminists who know so much better and have their own freedom to help others… or whatever. intra-community tensions, according to them, do not exist. a lower caste woman and an upper caste woman in india are the same in these feminists’ eyes.

radical feminist thought goes hand-in-hand with white supremacy bc of this, and it goes hand-in-hand with terfism (remember, terf stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist) for much the same reason. the definition of “woman” in their view cannot include trans women because they view men to be the ultimate oppressor and being a man the ultimate privilege; in their view, nobody would want to give up the social capital “being a man” would grant, nevermind the fact that trans women arent men and this is not how any of that works.

bioessentialism and the idea of “woman” as a distinct class/“womanhood” as an overarching experience are the foundations upon which radfem is built, and you cannot divorce these ideals frm the source to talk about what you believe to be “good points” in an otherwise bad movement.

radfem rhetoric is terf rhetoric.

Let me explain:

I’m a professional animator who actually works in the field. And my uni professors would tell us that there has been a disturbing and terrible shift in the industry in many ways but allow me to explain this one in particular.

So the “experience” thing comes from the death of company training. Back in the day if I wanted to become an animator I’d approach a studio, show them my drawings and say “I want to be an animator will you teach me so I can work for you until I die?” And if my drawings were good enough, and my desire sincear the company would put me into the lowest paying shittiest job they had. Cleaning cells, polishing the cogs of the multi plane camera, organising files, sweeping the damn floor.

And then for maybe an hour or two a day I would get to sit with one of the animators and they would show me a little of what they know. I’d get training much like how I would at University except you know… I’d get paid instead of going into crippling debt.

After about three years of doing the dirty work (you know, the length of an average college course for animation) I’d get that entry level animation position. Usually an in-betweener or a cell painter. And then bing bang boom I’m on my way to working slowly through my career. And this company will want to keep me around because they’ve invested so much into me. I have bargaining power, they don’t want me going to another studio that may pay more because they trained me. So they are more likely to treat me better to incentivise that I stay.

Companies realised this and decided to switch the responsibility of training onto the employee instead of the employer. Because I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to educate MYSELF instead of the industry educating me. I have to beg, and work for pennies, to get the experience I need to have actual value in the intustry. And because the companies have no incentive to treat me well because they have no investment in me; I can be hired and fired as they please. Oh your contract was for eight months? Too bad we blew the budget and my nephew needs another raise, you’re fired. Oh and I can’t complain, complainers get blacklisted and then nobody will hire you.

But I’m an INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR which means I have so much FrEeDoM to do ‘w h a t e v e r’ I like… 🤮

It’s all bullshit. They industry has no entry level positions because they want to choke you, they want to strangle the workforce and make them submit. It’s now your responsibility to suck cock, tearfully beg and lie on your resume just to get an unpaid internship where you’re worked like a donkey and don’t you dare complain about it.

And the most insulting lie is “oh we have more college educated kids than ever using that wonderful?” NO! NO ITS NOT!!

There were less colleague grads back in the day because not every field NEEDS a college education to be performed!! Doctors and lawyers duh, but software programmers, artists, film students, animators, fashion designers, photographers ect. All used to get their training from the companies that hired them. Even more technical fields like stock brokers, bankers, miners, mechanics, ect. Didn’t have Colleges educations they just learnt on the job.

i could use donations to help cover copays and soften the blow from missed days of work these next few weeks. 

i had what appeared to be a miscarriage at work on wednesday, despite being on an IUD, and there’s concern i am still pregnant. if i am, i will also have to fund an abortion bc i cannot use my parernts’ insurance for it (lest they literally kill me). 

i also have to drive about 80 miles for every test, so help w gas would be nice.

paypal: [email protected]

(ask for venmo/cashapp)