Peeking Cat

Women have been forced and pressured into unwanted sex for millennia. Sacrificing your body and your boundaries for a man's enjoyment is seen as practically a right of passage into "true womanhood". "Frigid" has been used as a pejorative against women who uphold their boundaries for centuries.

Link to podcast

For context for anyone who doesn’t know

Lily Phillips was originally only an only fans star but recently slept with 100 men in one go, for free, and filmed it.

In the interview towards the end you see her begin to cry, dissociate, and not even be able to describe how she feels

One thing that really stuck out to me is that she says she felt bad for not being able to fully please all the men and that made it all click for me that she did all of this to feel male validation and got more than what she bargained for.

To punish herself and “put”herself through such an intense trauma makes me feel like the people in her life took advantage of her vulnerability and her wanting to please and exploited it

A tale as old as time

I Can’t stand the people saying that she asked for it or that it’s her fault because she set it up when it’s very obvious she is not in the correct headspace to do things like that, no one is, I really see things like this as a form of self harm and punishment

from @/vero_muerte on tiktok!!

Our disagreement comes from where we go from there. The trans community and allies (who for simplicity’s sake I will refer to as trans activists) take that analysis and work within the existing system, while radfems wish to abolish the existing system.

What I mean by this, is that trans activists look at the existing system of gender, determine that it’s wrong, and believe that the way to fix it is to work within it by accepting the existence of roles and stereotypes that must be applied to different people, but rejecting the idea that the application must be based on sex. The core belief of trans activism is “we should be able to pick which gender role we belong to, based on the stereotypes we fulfil.” Some may take it further with “we should not only be able to pick from the existing gender roles, but we should expand the system by adding more roles to fit into. There are infinite genders to identify with, but you still must identify with a gender”.

Radfems also look at the existing system of gender and determine that it’s wrong. But we believe that the way to fix it is to get rid of that system entirely. We reject the idea of gender, the idea that people can and should be sorted into roles based on “femininity” and “masculinity”. The core belief of the gender critical/gender abolitionist aspect of radical feminism is “the concept of gender is built on sexism. We should not be assigned roles and expected to fulfil stereotypes based on our sex, but we also should not be expected to choose a role to fit into. Sex should be a neutral descriptor like any other physical feature, and everything else is simply personality”.

The most important thing to note here, is that both of these viewpoints reject the conservative viewpoint that “one’s sex determines which gender role they must adhere to, and which stereotypes they must fulfil”.