RadPoodle

hi everyone, i don’t usually make posts like this on tumblr because i’ve always felt more comfortable talking about serious things in spaces where my voice isn’t anonymous, but i can’t keep watching what’s happening in my own country and stay quiet. especially when i am yet to see anything on tumblr about it.

right now, south africans are protesting, both online and out in the streets against the ongoing epidemic of femicide and gender-based violence. and people across the world are changing their icons to purple in solidarity. whole timelines have turned purple because we’re tired, we’re scared, and we’re angry.

in south africa, a woman is killed or raped every 15 minutes.

let that sink in. every quarter of an hour, someone’s daughter, sister, friend, partner, classmate is attacked. south africa has one of the highest gbv rates in the world, and the suffering is constant, brutal, and largely ignored on a global scale.

and the truth is…i think about the geological lottery every time i see these numbers. so many people don’t realise the privilege of simply being born somewhere safer. if my mother hadn’t moved to europe when she did, there’s a very real possibility i could’ve been one of those girls. that’s not exaggeration—that’s the reality south african women live with every day.

i can’t sit here, comfortable and silent, while the pain of a country i’m part of gets buried under everything else happening online.

here’s how you can help:

share verified resources (organizations fighting gbv, legal aid groups, shelters).

read up on the crisis from credible sources, don’t rely on shock videos or misinformation.

use your platform, even if it’s small. awareness travels fast when people actually talk.

join the purple profile movement if you want—it’s a small gesture, but solidarity amplifies voices.

Nüshu 女书 was a women-only script used by Yao women in Jiangyong, Hunan province, China.

Nüshu works were a way for women to lament by communicating sorrows, commiserating over patriarchy, and establishing connections with an empathetic community. Typically a group of non-related women would pledge friendship by writing letters and singing songs in Nüshu to each other.

It is a sign of enormous privilege if the only single-sex space you can think of is public toilets.

If you can’t imagine any other single-sex spaces, let alone empathise with people who want to maintain the single-sex status of those spaces, you are deeply privileged.

RATING: RELIABLE

The above is from this article from The Guardian.  The images are from MYA Network. The caption on their website reads:

Source: ‘When a sperm and egg get together, the body creates tissue in order to support the developing pregnancy.  Here are photos of that tissue from 5-9 week pregnancies.  This is called the gestational sac, and it’s like the “house” for the pregnancy. Inside this sac there are cells that have the potential to become a fetus but there is no visible embryo at this stage. We rinsed off the blood and menstrual lining (decidua) for these photographs.’

The published images sparked a lot of debate, leading to the story being picked up by other news outlets. For example:

Source: ‘Last week, the Guardian published images of pregnancy tissue after abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The small size and appearance of the tissue were shocking to many. We have all absorbed, knowingly and unknowingly, the pervasive anti-abortion narrative that a pregnancy resembles a tiny baby starting in the earliest weeks. Though an early embryo can be seen under the magnification of ultrasound, it can take months for it to be perceptible to the naked eye.’

Source: ‘People have responded in disbelief, citing the (magnified) images they’ve seen on ultrasounds. […] ”Think of the illustrations on pregnancy and medical websites. The Mayo Clinic, one of the preeminent medical organizations in the country, shows week-by-week illustrations of embryonic and fetal development without any context of scale, like the rulers in the MYA photos.’

As stated in the article, whilst people talk about a ‘heartbeat’ at 6 weeks, there is no heart developed at this stage - only a group of cells that will become part of the heart.

Source: ‘But what exactly do we mean when we talk about a “fetal heartbeat” at six weeks of pregnancy? Although some people might picture a heart-shaped organ beating inside a fetus, this is not the case. Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.’

It should also be noted that the images show an embryo, not a fetus, until the 9th week.

Source: ‘In human pregnancies, a baby-to-be isn’t considered a fetus until the 9th week after conception, or week 11 after your last menstrual period (LMP).’

The co-founders of the MYA Network responded in a New York Times article.

The complete ‘Women Who Changed Science - And The World" collection in honor of the 95th Women’s Equality Day.

There’s a difference between feeding the trolls and making art. One is a waste of energy. The other is a reclamation of it.

When someone launches a bad-faith attack, your first instinct might be to fire back. To correct them. Defend yourself. Make them see. But trolls don’t want clarity. They don’t wish to discuss. They want spectacle. They want you off balance, shouting, wasting your breath while they play both victim and aggressor. They thrive on immediacy and that knee-jerk flare of anger that keeps the focus off their hollow posturing.

Don’t give them that satisfaction.

Instead, take the screenshot. Step away. Sit with it, not in shame, but in curiosity. Look at their words like an autopsy. What are they projecting? What are they deflecting from? What tactics do they use, and what are those tactics meant to obscure? Often, you’ll find hypocrisy, fragility, and fear that's all dressed up as smug certainty. Give yourself the time to see the structure of their cruelty. Then dismantle it. Slowly. Publicly. Beautifully. Not out of revenge, but as documentation.

You are allowed to show people what these performances are. You’re allowed to turn their tactics inside out and hold them up to the light. Not to fuel more fighting, but to make others feel less alone. To interrupt the cycle. To see the patterns. To turn a moment of targeted malice into a lasting statement.

Block them. Mute them. Remove them from your space. Let them scream into the void while you move forward with purpose. The point is not to stay silent, it’s to be strategic. Your voice is better spent creating something that outlives their noise.

Remember: they want chaos. They want us divided. They want us to be too busy squabbling with each other to notice their contradictions and see how little they stand for. Don’t just react. Respond. Thoughtfully. Sharply. With something that leaves a mark, not a scar but a signature.

You don’t owe trolls a performance. You owe yourself the power of deliberate creation.

There’s a pattern I keep seeing, and it’s not a coincidence. I’ll post something hard, something real, something about the aggression that women face from people socialized into male entitlement, especially when those people now claim the category of womanhood themselves. And every time, without fail, the replies start twisting. Not toward the content. Not toward the argument. But toward me.

Suddenly, it’s not about what I said, it’s about how I said it, or why I made it. My tone. My anger. My audacity. There’s no engagement with the actual dynamic I’m describing. No curiosity. No accountability. Just tone-policing, derailment, and moral posturing. “You’re being too harsh.” “You should be kinder.” “You’re alienating people.” "Don't waste your time."

All of it serves one purpose: to deflect from the core issue and make sure we don’t look too closely at male-pattern behavior, especially when it’s coming from people who now claim a different label.

This is how trolls operate. This is how silencing works. First they bait you. Then they reframe your reaction as the problem. They don't want you calm. They don't want you angry either. They want you exhausted, explaining yourself again and again while they shift the goalposts. They pretend it’s a conversation, but it’s really a performance a trap meant to drain you and confuse the people watching.

Let’s get back to the real topic:

There is a very real pattern of trans women, particularly those steeped in male socialization, using threats, aggression, and manipulative tactics against women. And when women name that behavior, we’re called bigots, Terfs, Bitchs, Cunts, Whore, ect. When we express fear or boundaries, we’re accused of violence. But we are allowed to talk about power. We are allowed to talk about patterns. We are allowed to say no.

Male-pattern violence doesn’t disappear with a name change. It doesn’t dissolve because someone adopts a new identity. And women, especially survivors, can feel when that aggression is still present. We see it in the threats. The intimidation. The entitlement to our spaces, our bodies, our silence. That’s the conversation. That’s the thing so many people are working hard to derail.

So no, I won’t get lost in a dozen arguments about tone. I won’t let trolls and apologists center themselves in a conversation meant to highlight harm. You can tell a lot about people by how quickly they abandon the actual subject and turn their attention to controlling you.

We are allowed to name the pattern. We are allowed to speak clearly about the ways women, especially those of us who’ve survived male violence, feel cornered, dismissed, and unsafe. And we’re allowed to do it on our own terms.

Let the trolls flail. Let them talk about everything except what matters and what we know, what we’ve seen. We know what we’ve felt and what we are.

Arguing with them is not activism it’s a time sink, a trap, and a distraction from the actual work.

We don’t owe anyone our energy.

You don’t have to explain the basics of humanity to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.

You know what shakes the system more than yelling at trolls?

Creating.

Write your poems. Make weird, defiant, beautiful art. Read the banned books. Print zines. Scream in colors. Build your world louder than theirs.

Go full 4B.

Dont try to fix them.

They will either figure it out by themselves or die alone in the beds they made.

Not our problem.

Let’s spend our time lifting each other up, not debating strangers who don’t care if we live or die.

Trolls don’t get to shape this space We do!

So block, delete, disengage then pick up a pen.

Gravesite of women’s voting rights activist Susan B Anthony at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York