Yes, you can make very valid arguments for pirating textbooks, medical texts or other books that are necessary for your survival or the betterment of your life. But as everyones derogatory comments in the notes already show, we all know Booktok books don't fall in that category. If you think you have a right to read because reading will make you more intelligent or empathetic, you still must admit that some books have no such effect. They're just entertainment, and thats fine, but it's also a luxury! It is not something you NEED, let alone something you have some unalienable right to. And honestly I don't even care that much if you pirate a book (some people really cant afford to buy it or have no other way to access it), but to act as if you deserve to read everything you want for free even though you could afford to buy it, is pure entitlement.

You are not entitled to perpetual "rent" from every person who encounters your work. It is unreasonable to demand payment from people who have no ability to pay. A right to be compensated for creating a work is not the same as a right to extract payment from every possible reader forever.

Once your books leave the publisher's printers, they become physical objects circulating in the world. You no longer have the authority to dictate every use of those objects. People may lend them to friends, donate them to libraries, resell them to used bookstores, or give them away. None of these actions requires additional payment to you because your compensation was tied to the creation and publication of the work, not to every subsequent transfer or use.

The same principle applies to digital copies. If someone uploads your book to the internet and it reaches people who would never have purchased it in the first place, that does not necessarily deprive you of income. Your payment came from the publishing agreement that enabled your work to be printed, distributed, and sold. The existence of a digital copy does not automatically create a new obligation for every recipient to pay you, particularly when they lack the means to do so.

The value created by your labor is the book that enters circulation through publication. That is the tangible product of your work and the basis on which you are compensated. Digital copies shared among people who cannot afford to buy the book do not generate additional value from which further payment can reasonably be demanded.

i am doing a shop sale to raise money for my fiance's FFS recovery. any support is appreciated. TYSM

Hey family, we are back at it again with wanting to spend as much time as i can with my daughter who has complex trauma and health issues just like me while also making time to study to escape from this situation while also being forced to do sw cos there's just no alternative that makes any of that possible - except your help if you have it to give

My job is dangerous in every sense and the less I have to do it the better. Thank you for reading ❤️

And this was not unusual for feminist groups at that time. There was a sense that we were close to the end of a century-long struggle to desegregate society: Universities and most schools were now mixed (my own former school had just become co-ed at this point), youth groups like the Scout Association had recently made it mandatory for all groups to admit girls, there was growing public pressure on men-only spaces like The Garrick Club to admit women, most modern swimming pools had co-ed changing facilities, and gender-neutral bathrooms were starting to become more common.

One of our campaigns was to make all bathrooms in the Students' Union building gender neutral. In the end this failed because of pressure from a group of (white, wealthy, English) men in the Conservative society who insisted that sharing bathrooms with women violated their devout Christian beliefs - they weren't even Christian actually but they managed to spook the lawyers enough in light of the recent Equality Act.

We also frequently discussed desegregating sports - it was widely understood by our (pretty much entirely cis women) members that sex-segregation was a misogynist project that resulted principally in women being paid less. The long mission to get equal prize money at Wimbledon had been won only a few years earlier, and there was pressure on other sports to follow suit. Now we were discussing introducing mixed-gender University sports teams to play competitively.

Bear in mind that the issue of trans women basically never came up in these discussions (mainly due to ignorance: the only reference to trans women I had ever encountered at this point was Ace Ventura). It was principally a matter of desegregation as a moral position that positioned the logic of segregation as part of the systemic oppression of women. The fact that it was right-wing men who were the ones objecting to desegregated toilets (something that has been true throughout the history of toilet segregation) just solidified this point.

Anyway, I gave all this as context to my trans guy friend to explain why I felt frustrated at recent attempts to paint bathroom bans as a win for feminism. That it's depressing to see the feminist activism of 15 years ago sacrificed on the altar of transmisogyny.

This guy has been medically transitioning for a little over a year, and has been discovering feminism in that time too. He recently learned about things like the gender pay gap, and will try to explain it to me like he thinks it's news to me. The gendered nature of domestic abuse is also a favourite topic of his. Before he transitioned, back when he referred to himself as a woman, he tended to take a more liberal normie "men and women are equally oppressed by gender expectations, just let everyone do what they want" line, but tbf we didn't talk about feminism much back then anyway.

The combination of being an early-transition trans guy who is also learning baby's first feminism can be a really dangerous one. He is only now discovering how much he has suffered at the hands of this form of oppression called "misogyny", but at the same time he is a man. He is reading all this literature that positions "men" as the oppressor but also positions people like himself as the oppressed. The easiest way for him to resolve this conflict is to mentally transpose "men" with "AMABs" and "women" with "AFABs", even if he's not aware that's what's happening in his brain.

So in response to my frustration with bathroom bans he starts saying all this stuff about women's reasonable concerns about male violence, how it's difficult to balance the various needs of different groups, how trans men are "obviously" not a threat to women so they should clearly be allowed to use women's toilets. He views the existence of trans women as a spanner in the works of an otherwise rational system with cis men on one side and AFABs on the other.

I try to point out that toilet segregation is actually a real concrete problem for me, the flesh-and-blood person in front of him who he has been friends with for years. That I am risking violence no matter which toilet I use, no matter what clothes I'm in, no matter whether I'm wearing make-up or not. If I use the women's I will get harassed for sure. If I use the men's I have a high chance of being assaulted. His only response is that he also is nervous about using the women's because after a year on T he already passes for cis in nearly all situations. The idea that he should just use the men's since he's a man who looks like a man gets a blank look from him: why should he not be able to use the women's, he's experienced "AFAB oppression" too, hasn't he?

By this point I'm getting quite frustrated. We're talking about feminism as a leftwing movement and I bring up the kind of socialist guy we all know well who says stuff like "misogyny isn't really a priority for me". He hasn't really been listening but he hears me quote this hypothetical man and assumes I'm saying it in earnest. "Did you say misogyny isnt a priority for you?"

Suddenly I, the woman who has been involved in feminist activism for 15 years, am having to defend myself against accusations of misogynist bigotry from a man who discovered feminism a year ago because he decided to not bother listening to what a woman was saying until it was something that sounded incriminating as a soundbite.

"No matter how bad it got, at least I never idolized a billionaire"