gender is a hierarchy

"biologically inferior" do you hear yourself? female people have different physical skills. they are not "biologically inferior" for not being able to dead lift as much as a man or run as fast as a man. Female people have better endurance, but that's not valued by most sports. The idea that women have to be able to match every physical record of men 1:1 or else they are inferior creatures is straight up sexist rhetoric.

i think its telling that basically no meaningful percentage of women who actually play competitive sports have this opinion. because they know most women would no longer be able to play in their sports aside from a few genuine female outliers in a sea of men. the men who would be reaping the money and the glory even more than they already are. I would say I want OPs idea to actually be implemented just so we could all see how fucking stupid it is and put it to rest once and for all, but I wouldn't want female athletes to have to be martyred just to remind first world idiots who don't get off the couch that male and female people are not identical.

Free speech is not absolute anywhere in the world, there are many things that are banned, illegal and restricted to act out, distribute, and exhibit. Free speech and artistic freedom have limits. Hate speech is punishable. Snuff films are illegal. It's illegal to cannibalize a person even if both parties are willing. Free speech does not mean the freedom to say or depict anything and everything anyone could possibly think of, without consequence. Therefore limiting or banning porn cannot be infringing on free speech. Porn is a clearly defined type of media that portrays intimate and often physically harmful and dangerous acts performed on real people. What being in porn does to a person, especially women, is well known and demonstrated by the amount of porn "actresses" who drop dead at 30 from years of drug abuse caused by trying to cope in an industry that thrives on your abuse.

Porn is human trafficking. It is unethical and an insult to humanity and human decency. Consent to sex cannot be bought or contracted especially not with the ability to refuse at any time voided and therefore porn is also rape on tape.

Porn is also completely unnecessary. Porn in its modern format has only existed for a few decades. During that time, porn has gotten increasingly extreme and violent, and studies about its harmful impact on the human psyche and sexuality have been demonstrated to such an extent that further studies aren't being made because the damage caused by porn consumption is considered too big and too longlasting a harm to cause to participants. We know many males who take violence to the extreme have been heavily influenced by porn. What good has porn brought to society? Literally and absolutely, nothing. It has only negative effects. Whose freedom it is then to produce that, why and at what cost?

"And I hate it that everywhere I turn, people seem to accept without question this false notion of freedom. Freedom to do what to whom? Freedom to torture me? That’s not freedom for me. I hate the romanticization of brutality towards women wherever I find it, not just in pornography, but in artsy movies, in artsy books, by sexologists and philosophers. It doesn’t matter where it is. l simply refuse to pretend that it doesn’t have anything to do with me. And that leads to a terrible recognition: if pornography is part of male freedom, then that freedom is not reconcilable with my freedom. If his freedom is to torture, then in those terms my freedom must be to be tortured. That’s insane.”

LGBs are expected to be forever subservient to the TQ+. We’re supposed to be unwavering allies no matter what. Support is expected from us, to the point that people are surprised to hear of “transphobic” LGBs because they don’t see us as individuals with unique thoughts and beliefs, but rather as puppets made to support them. We’re expected to change how we speak about our sexual orientation—can’t say it’s sex-based as we always have, that’s transphobic! Can’t make jokes about how lesbians don’t do dick and gay men don’t do pussy, that’s also transphobic! Can’t say you don’t find the opposite sex attractive, because that’s also transphobic!—and we’re expected to be completely fine with this. The LG are additionally expected to change our sexual orientation, because homosexuality isn’t inclusive enough. We just have a “genital preference” that needs to be examined and worked on.

“Amina*, 25, says she sought refuge in a ‘care home’ in Buraydah, a city in central Saudi Arabia, after being beaten by her father. She says the building was “old, crumbling and unsettling” and the staff “cold and unhelpful”. They belittled her experience, says Amina, telling her other girls had it “far worse” and were “chained at home” and told her to “thank God my situation wasn’t that bad”.

Conditions are reported to be so bad that there have been several cases of suicide or attempted suicide. The women can spend years locked up, unable to leave without the permission of their family or a male guardian.

“Every girl growing up in Saudi knows about Dar al-Reaya and how awful it is. It’s like hell. I tried to end my life when I found out I was going to be taken to one. I knew what happened to women there and thought ‘I can’t survive it’,” says one young Saudi woman who later managed to flee into exile.

Maryam Aldossari, a Saudi activist based in London, says: “A young girl or woman will stay in there for as long as it takes for her to accept the rules.”

While Saudi Arabia celebrates being awarded the Fifa men’s World Cup and meticulously promotes itself on the global stage as reformed, women who have dared to publicly call for more rights and freedoms have faced house arrest, jail and exile. Activists say the country’s care homes are one of the regime’s lesser-known tools for controlling and punishing women, and want them to be abolished.

Saudi officials have described the care homes, which were set up across the country in the 1960s, as providing “shelter for girls accused or convicted of various crimes” and say they are used to “rehabilitate the female inmates” with the help of psychiatrists “in order to return them to their family”.

But Sarah Al-Yahia, who started a campaign to abolish the care homes, has spoken to a number of girls who describe an abusive regime, with inmates subjected to strip-searches and virginity tests on arrival and given sedatives to put them to sleep.

“It is a prison, not a care home, as they like to call it. They call each other by numbers. ‘Number 35, come here.’ When one of the girls shared her family name, she got lashes. If she doesn’t pray, she gets lashes. If she is found alone with another woman she gets lashes and is accused of being a lesbian. The guards gather and watch when the girls are being lashed.”

Yahia, who is now 38 and lives in exile, says her parents had threatened to send her to Dar al-Reaya since she was 13. “My father used it as a threat if I didn’t obey his sexual abuse,” she says, adding that girls and women may face the horrifying dilemma of deciding between Dar al-Reaya and staying in an abusive home.

“They make it impossible for others to help women fleeing abuse. I know a woman who was sentenced to six months in jail because she helped a victim of violence. Giving shelter in the case of a woman charged for ‘absenteeism’ is a crime in Saudi Arabia.

“If you are sexually abused or get pregnant by your brother or father you are the one sent to Dar al-Reaya to protect the family’s reputation,” she says.

Amina*, 25, says she sought refuge in a ‘care home’ in Buraydah, a city in central Saudi Arabia, after being beaten by her father. She says the building was “old, crumbling and unsettling” and the staff “cold and unhelpful”. They belittled her experience, says Amina, telling her other girls had it “far worse” and were “chained at home” and told her to “thank God my situation wasn’t that bad”.

The next day, staff summoned her father, says Amina, but did little to protect her. “They asked both of us to write down our ‘conditions’. I requested not to be beaten or forced into marriage, and to be allowed to work. My father demanded that I respect everyone, never leave the house without permission, and always be accompanied by a male escort. I signed out of fear – I didn’t feel I had a choice.”

Once she returned home, Amina says the beatings continued and in the end she was forced to flee into exile. “I remember being utterly alone and terrified. I felt like a prisoner in my own home, with no one to protect me, no one to defend me. It felt like my life didn’t matter, like even if something terrible happened to me, no one would care,” she says.

For young girls, learning to fear Dar al-Reaya starts from a young age. Shams* says she was 16 when a woman who had been in one of the care homes was brought to her school. She told the class that she had started a relationship with a boy and was caught by the religious police and made to confess to her father. After she became pregnant her family disowned her and the father refused to allow her to marry, so she was sent to Dar al-Reaya. “She told us, if a woman has sex or a relationship she becomes a ‘cheap woman’. If you are a man you will always be a man, but if a woman makes herself cheap, she will be cheap for life.”

Layla*, who still lives in the country, says she was taken to Dar al-Reaya after complaining to the police about her father and brothers. She says they abused her and then accused her of bringing shame on her family after she posted on social media about women’s rights. She remained in the care home until her father agreed for her to be released, even though he was her alleged abuser.

“These women have no one. They could be abandoned for years, even without committing a crime,” says a Saudi women’s rights activist who wishes to remain anonymous. “The only way out is through a male guardian, marriage or jumping off the building. Old men or former convicts who did not find a bride would look for a bride in these institutions. Some women would accept this as the only way out.”

Some Saudi men will say a woman deserves to be there or that they should be thankful that the government provides facilities to protect them, says Fawzia al-Otaibi, an activist forced to flee the country in 2022.

“No one dares tweet or speak about these places. No one will ask about you when you go there. They make the victims feel ashamed,” Otaibi says.

Activists say that if the Saudi regime were serious about women’s rights they would reform the care home system and provide proper safe shelters for victims of abuse. “There are women who have good families who do not abuse or hide them,” says a Saudi activist now living in exile. “But many live under strict restrictions and suffer abuse silently. The state supports this abuse with these institutions. They only exist to discriminate against women. Why are the Saudi authorities allowing them to stay open?”

The human rights group ALQST says Dar al-Reaya facilities are notorious within Saudi Arabia as state tools for enforcing gender norms and “stand in stark contrast to the Saudi authorities’ narrative of women’s empowerment”.

By  NIRANJAN SHRESTHA 10:34 PM EST, February 13, 2025

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Sushila Gautam, 77, checks her smartwatch, a gift from her son living in the United States, to see if she should leave for her reading and writing lessons.

“At home, I get bored when my son and daughter-in-law go to work and grandchildren are at school. I want something to do,” she says with a smile.

When Sushila was young, girls in her village weren’t sent to school.

Sushila Gautam, 77 laughs as she becomes nervous before writing her name on the board during a writing practice in a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Elderly women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Kamala K.C, 66, writes on a note book during a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

For about a year now, she has been going for free lessons near her home on the outskirts of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, at the Ujyalo Community Learning Center. The center was set up three years ago by the local council to provide basic education to women like her.

“Now, I finally have the chance,” says Sushila.

She can now read signs in English and Nepalese, is able to check her heart rate on a smartwatch, and use a smartphone. But the skill she is most proud of is her ability to sign her name on official documents. Previously, she had to put thumbprints.

A woman writes her name on a note book provided by her teacher before the start of a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Bimala Maharjan Bhandari, who runs the center, says she had difficulties at first to convince women to join.

“I had to tell them that being able to read phone messages, product labels and signing documents can benefit the whole family,” Bhandari said.

Women attend a class at the Ujyalo Community learning center in Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

So I’ll put my addition here:

• it's more like a slur

• it's female erasure

• it's an insult

• it's an insult sometimes, but if it just means what they say it means, I'm fine with it

• other

• im cis and I don't care if somebody calls me cis

• I'm trans/see results

Why aren't you talking about it