Butch KAngel

the purpose of breasts is the feed infants and you honestly think there’s nothing under the skin except fat? clearly biology class has failed you so here’s a free lesson:

Firstly, breasts are not useless and having them removed results in chronic pain for around 30-60% of women. This is not just the pain of recovery, this is damage that can be, and often is, permanent. It is quite risky and when it is done cosmetically as a reaction to living in an extremely sexist/homophobic society, that is a feminist issue.

But secondly, uteruses are absolutely not useless. They are extremely important to your health. There are so many negative side effects to having it removed because it is there for many reasons beyond growing babies. The fact that you seemingly don’t know this is just depressing. The way you see female anatomy as useless if it is not being used to reproduce is depressing.

So who fucking knows what complications opening your flesh to scrape out ducts, veins, and fat off your chest muscles could cause? The ones already known (chronic pain, difficulty with arm movement, skin not adhering to muscle, loss of sensitivity, hypersensitivity, etc.) are bad enough. For all you know, there’s an undiscovered organ whose removal is linked to something horrendous.

A woman born with no womb is still a woman.

A woman with a beard is still a woman.

A woman with no periods is still a woman.

A woman with high testosterone is still a woman.

A woman with an enlarged clitoris is still a woman.

A woman with ambiguous genitalia is still a woman.

A man who is infertile is not a woman. A man with no beard is not a woman. A man with a micro penis is not a woman. A man with internal tests is not a woman. A man with low testosterone is not a woman.

if you're sick of misogyny/rape scenes/sexualized murder in male written horror, these books are for you! all of these come with varying levels of trigger warnings, so i highly recommend looking them up before you dive in!

-Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a classic. most people look over the clearly feminist theme to only remember the Creature, but it's a heart wrenching feminist book about autonomy, misogyny, with pretty significant religious misogyny undertones

-Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado will always and forever be on my all time favorite books list. it's a collection of short stories, but the first one is the absolute best, called The Husband Stitch. she's such a gorgeous writer, The Husband Stitch especially is so haunting and heartbreaking, telling the story of a woman's life marrying and having kids, and what her husband takes from her, and just generally a representation of married women's pain and oppression.

-Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth is addictive. also incorporates marriage themes and complex i cities but deals especially with female "paranoia" and "hysteria" (quotes bc we know those concepts are man made for women and forced onto us). it has this domestic aesthetic that's very creepy and also just very cool

-Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. ohhhhh my. i'm in love with this author, she's so incredible. Cursed Bunny is a short story collection that deals with misogyny, generational trauma, aging as a woman, and even delves into being kink critical if you're keen at interpretation. she's from South Korea, and also deals a lot in Korean culture and Korea-specific misogyny. it is translated to english, so unfortunately i will always mourn the writing style of it in original Korean but it's still written so beautifully!

-Hangsaman and The Haunting of Hill House both by Shirley Jackson. i'm sorry to clump them both together but for the sake of space + time i will. they're both gradual-horror, they definitely build. a lot of female hysteria type stuff, female loneliness, just generally such a good, creepy vibe that culminates in a truly scary ending.

-Maeve Fly by CJ Leede. a lot of people here on radblr call for truly insane female leads. this is that book! the main character is truly just a bad person, a psychopath, and she isn't moralized or justified in any way. she is allowed to just be crazy and evil without being diluted because she's a woman. women don't tend to get to be evil--truly evil--in media like men do, so it's cool to see a true madwoman. it's very witty, very clever. it's also a love letter to LA in a way, which hit home for me lmao. it's really just a peek into the mind of a psychopathic woman and the crazy stuff she does. very entertaining. not for the faint of heart.

-Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester is sooo good. i don't normally get too jumpy about my horror, but this one had me looking up every two seconds to make sure i was safe. genuinely very scary. it's got heavy mother daughter themes, it's primarily about the demureness and politeness expected of women and girls. the "pretty smile" thing is obviously a reference to catcalling, but also to the expectation that we should always be pretty and polite and content and demure. it's a lot of women just breaking free and going mad.

-A Guest in the House by EM Carol. i read this one online and then NEEDED to own it so bad i bought it immediately. it is a graphic novel so a slightly different medium, but the art is so stunning and moving. it's also got marriage themes, about repressed lesbianism, women's desires etc etc. it's so good and beautiful and moving

-Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird by Agustina Bazterrica is another short story collection. not necessarily all horror, but most. i had to read this one twice it was so good. it's harder to talk about short story collections because there's so many different plots and themes, but trust me, it's fantastic

-The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert. it's a bit more rudimentary writing, but it's so so so good. it captures girlhood so wonderfully, especially the whimsical, daydream part and equally the dark, insane, human-sacrifices-with-barbie-dolls parts of that makes any sense. it's about goddesses and monsters and dreams and girlhood and the trauma of growing up a girl and it's marvelous

-A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers. not exactlyyyy a horror but kinda?? it's about a female cannibal who kills and eats her lovers. it's hilarious, like laugh out loud until the people around you stare hilarious. the main character is so witty and man hating and cool. she's a misandrist icon, just so suave and clever and ruthless.

(And the few movies that do pass the test often do so by accident. The original comic strip had the punchline that Alien or Aliens passed because Ripley talked with the alien queen.)

People keep treating it like it’s this huge feminist thing that’s super important to judge whether a movie is good or not. And then other people keep pointing out that it doesn’t actually work for that. They’re right. But that’s because it was never meant to.

This test is the most simple, most meaningless hurdle for depiction of women in media to clear. The absolute bare minimum. That’s because it originally was the setup for a joke. Today, it is only useful if it is the start for a discussion of women in media; not the end of it. And I think it’s still very useful for that.

A good point to help visualise this is the inverse test: How many movies have two men, who have names, and talk to each other, about something other than a woman? Well, all of them, give or take a few. That imbalance is really the issue here.

Allison Bechdell is an openly Lesbian comic artist that likes to make comics about her experiences as a Butch Lesbian. The Bechdel-Wallace Test was an inside joke between her and her friend, Liz Wallace.

If the only the women get to talk about in most forms of media is their male romantic love interests, then lesbians are excluded from media by its very nature.

I got sick of the extra labour involved, adding more time to my morning routine by having to spend ages rinsing the pants in cold water before I could even shower, then hanging them up as I can’t do laundry every day so had to wait until the end of my period to wash them all at once. I also felt gross and smelly after a few hours of wearing them.

I just kept thinking “this is what my grandma had to do with old rags in the 1940s and she lived on a fucking farm in the Austrian alps, how have we not progressed from then?”

It pisses me off that women and girls are now under a lot of pressure to choose the most eco friendly option - reusable pads and underwear or cups. I don’t want either of these options and I’m not going to be made to feel guilty for that. I’ve got another 20 years of dealing with periods, and I’m not going to waste hours of my life scrubbing blood out of underwear and doing even more fucking laundry while the rich and powerful are carrying on with their private jets and pointless wars and releasing sewage into our water and forcing more plastic shit on us.

Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for dealing with your period in the way that works best for you.