#die for something

call me fucking crazy but maybe the reason radical feminism doesn’t appeal to a lot of people and actually tends to piss them off to the point that entire subgroups of feminism have been created in opposition of you is because you follow the same goddamn rhetoric used by the patriarchy, with the opposite doctrine

i mean jesus fucking christ i turned to feminism when i was experiencing the shift from the more subtle influences of toxic masculinity and entering the world of blatant up front sexism, i was (and am) so damn sick of being told “how a lady should dress/eat/walk/etc.” its condescending and completely subjective and it makes people feel like they don’t have agency over their own decisions, their own lifestyle, their own goddamn bodies

and you, you come in here and look at people, women, queer women and trans women and women of color from all backgrounds imaginable, and what do you do? you do the same goddamn thing we’ve been running from. you sit there with your infinite fucking well of wisdom and say how we should (or more often shouldn’t) speak, dress, shave, eat, function - and you can’t wrap your heads around why people aren’t interested in your particular anti-brand of activism

you care so deeply, and you have so much passion, and (justifiable) rage at how you have been treated, not only by others individually but by a broken system that isn’t broken, it’s functioning exactly as it was designed, and you know. and you look at these women who are looking for any kind of lifeline to grab, and you rip their last remaining comforts from them. you tell them, with no fucking understanding, as if you didn’t start where they are, that makeup is never empowering, that shaving makes them sheep, that how and with whom they choose to fuck in the privacy of their homes (assuming legally & consenting which should be obvious but apparently isn’t anymore) is the wrong type of feminism and should be punished

i don’t care if you’re right. let me be clear, i do not fucking care if you are 100% irrefutably objectively correct about everything you have ever fucking said if your rhetoric is driving people away from feminism, it is not effective. it doesn’t matter whether or not you “should” have to be nice and supportive and a decent fucking person to get a valid point across, and this is ignoring the fact that those traits should be the bare minimum of common decency

people continuing to wear lipstick doesn’t prevent them from fighting for abortion rights, people being more comfortable in dresses doesn’t keep women from voting for change, people shaving their fucking armpits doesn’t prevent them from running for congress. justice and equity are not finite resources. cis/straight/abled/white women got theirs and we don’t lose anything by trans/queer/disabled/women of color from getting theirs