Why am I DOinG ThIs?

OP, you could reach out to the charity Women In Prison - I’ve put their url below. Good luck!

Yes, reading and listening are completely different processes.

And that's okay.

It's not 'reading' by definition, but it doesn't mean it's lesser.

The only reason you'd want to pretend that listening = reading is if you think that there is something wrong with it. You are trying to pretend it falls into the same category as an activity YOU deem as being better.

Bunny enjoying his new bed

Is this an American thing?

In the UK, if you don’t enter your PIN it will just reject the transaction. Unless you use contactless, and even then it will ask for you to put the card in the machine and enter the PIN after a certain number of contactless payments.

The government wants ALL of the people to have strong faith in Islam. They force all the women to wear hijab, even if a woman isn't even muslim.

We do not want this in our country!! Everyone should be free to choose what they want to wear, if they want to be muslim or not and if they want to wear hijab or not.

A couple of days ago, Mahsa Amini who was just a normal 22-year-old girl and was on vacation with her family got arrested, beaten and killed by the moral security police, just because she wasn't wearing hijab.

If you see a young girl get murdered by some random person in the street, what do you do? Of course you go and tell the police. But now, in Iran, the policemen are the murderers who are killing some innocent people. WHERE CAN WE REPORT THEIR CRIMES???

Lots of people in Iran are demonstrating in different places now and we're getting united against this unfair situation. But that's not enough! Many people get killed by the police in these demonstrations and we can hear the sound of shotguns echoing in the streets.

You, the people who live in other countries that are safe enough, please be our voice! Please reblog my post or even share it on other platforms. Do whatever you can! Please don't leave us alone. All we want is just freedom and justice.

Beyond that ,there are plenty of examples of languages that are grammatically genderless, including genderless personal pronouns, and yet those societies still manage to make patriarchal distinctions between men and women, and somehow it’s mysteriously always the same pattern of oppression where “he” oppresses “her.”

Notice how Chinese feminists in the 1910s and 20s actually tried to introduce a feminine character into the Chinese, arguing that they needed a word that referred to women so they could simply talk about themselves in their writing.

Or how in France they are currently doing the opposite of English, actually officially validating feminine versions of words because they’re discovering that people don’t remember that a woman might have a traditionally male career otherwise.

The idea that misogyny comes from socialization is circular logic. Misogyny comes from misogynistic laws and religions? Who made the laws? Who made the religions? How is it possible that women were  socialized to be subservient to men in so many cultures, even ones that had no previous contact with each other?

However, the idea that misogyny comes from men’s nature is also flawed. Yes, men’s hatred of women is extremely common, as previously established, yet it is not completely universal. There have been matriarchal societies. And in our day-to-day interactions with men, we do notice differences between men based on how they were raised and their respective day-to-day environments.

So what is the root of misogyny, if it’s not men’s socialization or men’s nature? 

I think a more useful way of understanding misogyny (and honestly all forms of oppression) is not to focus on socialization or nature but on ability.

Men have a unique ability to harm women in a way that women cannot harm men. Men can impregnate women. Women cannot impregnate men. On top of having this unique ability, men also have major incentives for doing it: by impregnating a woman, they receive pleasure and a lineage. Unlike women, they also run such a small biological risk for producing a child. After having their orgasm, nothing else is biologically required from them. At worst, they might get an STD.

You might argue that some men are gay or do not want children. That’s all very much true. However, I am not arguing that men have a natural impulse to use their ability. I am simply stating that they have the ability. It is also important to understand that men exist as a class, as well as individuals. While individual men might not even have the ability to impregnate (due to infertility), we can hopefully understand that men as a class have this ability.

If it helps, we can think of this unique ability like a gun. Half of the population is born with a gun (ability to impregnate)  and a bullet-proof vest (inability to be impregnated); the other half is born with neither. The ones born with the gun and the bullet-proof vest  are not necessarily born with a natural impulse to fire the gun–but they are nonetheless born with one.

Even if a man never hurts someone with the gun, I want you to imagine how his psyche is formed just by virtue of having it. Imagine walking into a room with a gun and a bullet-proof vest, and no one else in the room has either. Even if you would never use the gun…just having one gives you a sense of protection, and perhaps a sense of superiority and power. Even if you would never use your tacit threat, you nonetheless have a tacit threat. And now imagine the psyche of those without the gun or the vest. They are vulnerable, and know that they are vulnerable, to the ones who do have one. And so their options are to either appease those with guns and vests, always tip-toeing around them–or to band together.

So, women of radblr. Who’s ready for a little real world action?

We put together a list of publishers who might be politely persuaded to republish Andrea’s out of print work. And we contact them, en masse, and we politely persuade them. Call them. Email them. Tweet them. Kick up a fuss.

Simon and Schuster has the UK rights to Life and Death.

And Autonomedia has the UK rights to Last Days at Hot Slit.

"Olivia came home from her school, Godstowe Preparatory School, in November 1962 with a note informing her parents of an outbreak of measles. Neal (roald's wife) contacted her brother-in-law, Ashley Miles, who sent them gamma globulin, then common in the United States, to boost children's immunity against measles. Miles only provided a small amount, which the Dahls used for their son, Theo. Neal recalled in her autobiography, As I Am, that Miles said that "Let the girls get measles...It will be good for them".[2] Olivia subsequently contracted measles, and had a mild fever for a few days before suffering convulsions after growing increasingly lethargic. She quickly became unconscious and was rushed to Stoke Mandeville Hospital where she died the next day.[3]"

Like dude was a succesful writer already, he came from a family with a lot of money, his wife was also a succesful actress and all that. And you are telling me they couldnt buy a single drop of gamma globulin for their daughters?? Even after she started to get sicker?? Or paying for a pediatrician/hospital when their daughter started to become lethargic and suffering convulsions??

I don’t know about not staying with her - they might not have ben allowed to. Hospitals have very strict, short visiting times, even for children in the 20th C.

Also, suggests from the book quote that she was unconscious within an hour of worsening.

They likely gave the drug(?) - which helps people with immune deficiencies - to their son as he was only two, and already had a medical issue with his brain fluid.

Measles was common - there was no vaccine. I imagine it was normal to allow healthy children to get it and build their own immunity. (I would suggest that it being, “then common in the United States”, being pointed out, would suggest that it was possibly not common/available in the UK.)

He advocated for the vaccine once it was created.

Medicine was very different back then - I don’t think they were bad people.

What you’re talking about is confidence. Which, sure, different things make different women feel confident. But that has nothing to do with feminism? Individual women feeling confident isn’t going to dismantle patriarchy, because patriarchy is not caused by women’s insecurity.

So, again, as a feminist, my focus is not on what makes individual women feel good. What I care about is the liberation of all women. I don’t wear makeup, and it’s not because I “feel empowered” when I don’t. It’s because the beauty industry is terrible to women and I want as little of my money going to it as possible.

Radfems aren’t going to give you a cookie for making choices that make you feel good, but don’t do anything to liberate women. Honestly, if you have free choices you’re more privileged than most women, and you should probably spend more time thinking about how to help them, rather than which choice makes you feel most confident.

That’s not how it works.

The 100 companies sell the fossil fuels - the 71% of emissions figure includes the subsequent use of the fuels by customers. 

So it includes basically everyone (who’s ever bought any fossil fuels anyway).