Venus Envy

I was talking on this on twitter before my account got locked for a week, but think about it. It's the the ultimate strike. If women stopped birthing sons en masse, it would deny the patriarchy hundreds of thousands of men. It wouldn't require 100% of women or potential mothers to abort their male children, or even 50%. A stark enough drop in male births for an extended period of time could do some serious damage to male supremacy.

We are the creators of life, this is why the patriarchy denies women sex ed, birth control and abortion; this is why men coerce women into miserable marriages and breed them to death. Males need to us to produce their male heirs. It's never been about the wellbeing of those future children. It's always about controlling and subjugating the female body so she, and all women, cannot revolt in any meaningful way.

Men and female defenders of patriarchy decry feminism and define it as hateful and the game of harpies, witches, hags and old spinsters. Men want women to avoid true feminism, feminism that attacks misogyny at the root; the kind of feminism that actually aims to destroy patriarchy rather than just survive in it. Feminism is mean, harmful to men. Feminism is anti-sex, cringey, they're just mad they can't get some dick! Feminism is the reason there are so many men unjustly imprisoned. Feminism is white supremacy. Feminism leads men to kill themselves. Why don't feminists care about men and boys? What about how patriarchy hurts MEN? It's all a distraction.

The patriarchy needs women to fear being labeled a "man hater", or the more effective "bigot". The patriarchy aims to prevent women from realizing our full potential; they need us to be vacuous and complacent women, content with the hand we've been dealt; and they need as many female shills of the patriarchy as possible to enforce that amongst the rest of women. It's normal, commonplace. This is always how it's been. Patriarchy is that ingrained into our lives it deter women from achieving female class-consciousness. When women speak of their desire to not birth male children, men cry "nazi! genocide! man-hating witch! They do and say everything they can to hinder women from hitting their peak.

"What if we told you not to have daughters" Men have literally forced women to have sons, and killed baby girls since the dawn of time. The Greeks would leave newborn girls on the top of hills. King Henry had his wives executed for not birthing his male heir. There are so many female-selective abortions in certain countries that the female population plummeted to an extent that the female population was or still is a fraction of the male population.

Men know we could feasibly do this to them. This is why the patriarchal system is designed to prevent us from doing so.

Men are fully aware of the fact women and women only are the creators of life. We could end their humanity-spanning reign of terror of we had the resources to, which is why they deny is that. This fact fills them with terror, anger, and envy of female nature and power. Male womb envy is real, it runs deep. It makes them feel weak in comparison. Men aim to keep us in place for a good reason. Because women are powerful. Female consciousness is powerful. This is why patriarchy is designed to prevent us from gaining consciousness.

We could cripple the patriarchy if we had bodily autonomy and female class consciousness. We could. We just cannot do this without hundreds of thousands of women coming to the same conclusion. We cannot liberate women under the current system of the world. We need to destroy it, destroy the rose tinted facade.

Do you feel the same?

I started reading the insert for Vagina Obscura and fell in love; I had to have this book! Here's the first half of the insert:

A myth-busting voyage into the female body.

A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet.

That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making—the uterus, ovaries, and vagina—and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient, and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura, an odyssey into a woman’s body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters.

In Boston, a pair of biologists are growing artificial ovaries to counter the cascading health effects of menopause. In Melbourne, a urologist remaps the clitoris to fill in crucial gaps in female sexual anatomy. Given unparalleled access to labs and the latest research, journalist Rachel E. Gross takes readers on a scientific journey to the center of a wonderous world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs, and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves.

Sounds amazing, right? Finally, the unacknowledged issue that harms and kills women is being acknowledged! And then I turned to the back where the insert continued, and here's the last paragraph:

This paradigm shift is made possible by the growing understanding that sex and gender are not binary; we all share the same universal body plan and origin in the womb. That’s why insights into the vaginal microbiome, ovarian stem cells, and the biology of menstruation don’t mean only a better understanding of female bodies, but a better understanding of male, non-binary, transgender, and intersex bodies—in other words, all bodies.

I immediately gagged; what the hell? How can someone write a whole book about how one of the two sexes (from the first paragraph in the insert: "half of the bodies on the planet") have been ignored & understudied, and then backtrack and argue against your own acknowledgment that sex isn't binary? How can females have been ignored if we don't even exist? And I know I'm not alone in not giving a shit if the understanding of my body helps males, because the understanding of male bodies has maliciously left my body out on purpose, knowingly causing me and every other female unquantifiable harm. And does the research into female bodies really have to be quantified through it's usefulness to the male body? Why can't science study our bodies because it's necessary for our own health & wellbeing?

Still intrigued, because this topic is very important to me and I am ravenous to learn more, I flipped to the table of contents. Every chapter focused on a different female sexual organ with an adjective reflecting their uses (ie, "Resilience (Vagina)"). I was getting back into it, thinking about sucking it up & purchasing it. And then I got to the last chapter name... "Beauty (Neovagina)". I almost threw the book. Why can't women have anything for ourselves? This is supposed to be a book about female anatomy, about how all of our organs - from our sexual organs to our brain - work together in complex and still partially unknown ways; why is there a chapter about male anatomy? And the adjective used for the chapter title is telling itself: "beauty." That's all a neovagina is. An artificial copy based on aesthetics, only meant to look "beautiful" because it's unable to copy any of the other functions of a vagina. So again, why was this chapter included? What does a cosmetic replication of my complex organs, part of the complicated orchestra of my female body, have to do with me, my body, and how the medical institution has ignored both? And are women supposed to not be utterly offended by this inclusion of an offensive replica of my disrespected sex organs?

I always occasionally read the newest liberal feminist books to see what's popular, what's passing for feminism, and I've never been more disgusted. Males have totally and completely colonized our movement. We can't even discuss our own anatomy without discussing male anatomy - the only sex who's had their anatomy talked about for centuries. The books that get published now are weak, ineffectual, pathetic. Book stores have become disappointing.

Classic

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 by Adrienne Rich

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

Fiction

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The Gate to Woman’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

History

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles

Women of Ideas: And What Men Have Done to Them by Dale Spender

Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World by Rachel Swaby

Intersectional

Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

It’s Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan (editor)

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga (editor) and Gloria Anzaldúa (editor)

Lesbian

Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective by Sheila Jeffreys

The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture by Bonnie J. Morris

Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism by Suzanne Pharr

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich

Liberal vs. radical

Female Erasure: What You Need to Know about Gender Politics’ War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights by Ruth Barrett (editor)

End of Equality by Beatrix Campbell

Feminisms: A Global History by Lucy Delap

Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 by Alice Echols

Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism by Sheila Jeffreys

Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism by Miranda Kiraly (editor) and Meagan Tyler (editor)

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism by Dorchen Leidholdt (editor) and Janice G. Raymond (editor)

The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male by Janice G. Raymond

We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler

Pornography, prostitution, surrogacy & rape

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking by Lydia Cacho

Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines

Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade by Sheila Jeffreys

Only Words by Catharine A. Mackinnon

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade by Janice G. Raymond

Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women’s Freedom by Janice G. Raymond

Psychology & trauma

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Lewis Herman

Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean Baker Miller

Theory

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly

Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin by Andrea Dworkin, Johanna Fateman (editor) and Amy Scholder (editor

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks

Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis by Robin Ruth Linden (editor), Darlene R. Pagano (editor), Diana E. H. Russell (editor) and Susan Leigh Star (editor)

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State by Catharine A. Mackinnon

The Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman

Other

Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now by Jenny Brown

Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression by Christine Delphy

Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffreys

Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A. Mackinnon

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection by Janice G. Raymond

How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ

Man Made Language by Dale Spender

But actually, I wanted to discuss heresy. This professor teaches a women’s rights course every year. Every year at the beginning of the class, he calls attention to why he, a man, is talking about women’s rights. He looks us in the eyes and says, no one else is doing it, and I’m sorry it’s me.

This man made us read the SCUM manifesto, Gerda Lerner, Maria Mies. He grazed the subject of the Lesbian Sex Wars, delicately, so gingerly, posing the question: “Can sex work ever be just work?”  And my  (all woman) classmates, generally mute—in a Women’s Rights class, they all seemed averse to saying the word “woman,” at all. Then one woman raised her hand. and she said, “Sex work is real work.”  A statement that, as I hope you know, is a deflection and a discussion killer.  

At the time I was non-binary. Hah. I submitted a comic at the end of the year of my final project. My thesis for that project was this: the very language female people have to use for themselves was constructed by the patriarchy. for example, the english word “vagina” comes from the latin word for “sheath”. so the vagina invokes the act of penetration upon its utterance. Whereas the word “penis” has no clear etymological root, implying that it is original while the vagina is constructed for him. Why should I carry the fact that I will always be a tool, the hole, of the human that is man? My solution, at the end of the comic, was to continue using they/them pronouns, to shield myself from the horror of being a wo-man, a s-he—an appendage of Him. 

I got a good grade. A stellar report. And it wasn’t a bad comic, for what I knew then. For my condition of blindness and deafness. I made a compelling argument, using sources from class.  But oh, how much older I feel now. I’ve always felt old but now I feel almost like I’m dying. Like I don’t have enough time to fix the world before I disappear. And women’s stories never survive. They are not surviving. networks spring up like mycelium and then every century at least they are burned. Witchcraft is in the air shared by women in a room of their own, and witchcraft is doused in gasoline.

I don’t have enough time to explain how the veil lifted for me. Maybe I forget the big moment. the days after were a blur of searching the no-no tags like radical feminist, GNC, gender critical. Amazed at the wealth of journals that these women linked to with real statistics showing that children are being sterilized for no reason. Mostly gay children. like me, a lesbian, who now lives in a house with three  “non-binary afabs”. This summer, one of these women, who I have known since freshman year, will start taking testosterone, a procedure I took up  for three turbulent months during my freshman year of college. I get to watch her become what I turned away from, knowing the experience fractured my sense of self to a point of  terror and estrangement. I get to watch her hide from her problems and cut herself off from womanhood the way I did for 3 years. I am not a woman, so do I not feel Woman’s pain, she is telling me, I told myself, when I was in a dream.  She has so many problems, she laughs. But trans is a separate problem that has nothing to do with those other problems. A coincidence.

 (For any trans people reading this, you may think: This transtrender fake-trans never-was-trans woman is treating these nonbinary people as if they were dead! as if they weren’t happy people finally living their truth! —well. I put my mom through the process of trying to convince her that I should have always been a man. and I did lose her, for months. For her it was the height of cognitive dissonance that I should want to go on a life-altering hormone to cure my lifelong social awkwardness and self-hatred and self-harm and depression. And I blamed her for not accepting my real self. I was basically made to shun her and my family because of transphobia.. It is disrespectful to anyone’s sanity and integrity for me to perpetuate that cognitive dissonance in this post.)

So I eventually got through to the professor. I knew because of the texts he had us to read for class. He is gay.  He has read all the theory, and lives by it.  And no (woman) student wants to speak to him. To bring the theory alive. They cannot breathe into it and it sits dead in his mouth.

Maybe it is because he is a man. because the presence of one man in a space of all women immediately sends up alerts.  lockdown. Certainly that is the case. Radical Feminists here: I know he’s a man. But I don’t have a woman. And I felt on the strength of the texts he’d given us that he would be my best bet. Maybe somewhere in the corrupted, rotting heart of my college there was a person who knew about thoughtcrimes and was thinking them anyway.

My professor starts with diversion. He starts by talking about my paper. I find it disconcerting that he starts that way. I worry that he won’t want to refer to my email. Where I say: I have woken up from a dream to the apocalypse—Does this man think I’m crazy? Chipper and kind of frantically, he lists off  primary sources of medieval nuns and women saints. for my paper.  Does this man think I’ve turned into a bigot?  Am I confessing lunacy, like a flat-earther?

But I steer the conversation to the meat at his first tentative encouragement. I tell him something like: “children, mostly gay children, a whole generation of gay children, are being sterilized. Porn is a symptom of late-stage capitalism—men’s ownership of women’s bodies. trans is an extension of this. I was part of this. I was in a cult.” I was shaking a bit. I don’t think I’d uttered those words out loud. They sound crazy. Some of the things I said did sound far-fetched. disorganized, remote. But I prayed that my professor would believe some of it, any of it. 

 What I will say is that he believes me.  Thank fuck, right?

He tells me something along the lines of this, vocalizing my fears: 

that all of academia is being scrubbed of anything that doesn’t support Trans.

And it is trans-identified female students and women who are reporting him to Title IX, who spend all their time in his classes fuming at the lack of validation for trans women in the  history of women. My sisters, footsoldiers for the cause. What cruel irony. This man is holding onto this class by his fingernails, speaking through his teeth, hoping any of the twenty young adult women staring blankly or angrily at him will hear him and listen.

 Looking back, the professor’s responses to my emails are vague, completely refusing to acknowledge a point of view other than “WOW. I look forward to discussing this.”  I think he thinks he could be blackmailed. Anything he says on gmail dot com can and would be used against him. It’s like, really, really, really that bad. 

No ideology should involve a cultural cleaning of women’s history feat. witch hunts. 

I will end here with an excerpt from my first email to this professor:

“I’m here for ALL the witches by the way.”

All the witches, except J.K. Rowling, who is the main one responsible for your presence in that stage.

It’s bad enough the Harry Potter actors lack talent. No, no, no. They also had to be a bunch of disrespectful, hasty brats who refuse to show even a sliver of gratitude to the woman who made them who they are. They could have plucked any child actor off the street to play those three. Of course, Daniel Radcliffe was picked because he shared a likeness to the character that Rowling fancied. I don’t even know how Hermione and Ron got snagged. Again, they could have been played by anyone. Either way, I guess we could say that their acting has improved slightly throughout the years. They’ve convinced everyone that they are hefty supporters of the gender cult and will spite anyone who says otherwise. As we’ve seen in these recent years, it seems that the stake at which any opposers are burned is solely reserved for women. Rowling is far too influential, leading into every bit of the gender cult’s lives. They read her stories and loved every page of them. They related to them. I’m sure the actors related to them as well. What the heck happened?

“Transgender women are women,” said Radcliffe, like every other "scientist" on the bird app.

Ron, played by Rubert Grint. has also expressed concern over Rowling’s own tweets, alongside the other dogs in the cast willing to roll over and beg for forgiveness from the gender gods. I expected less from the males who will receive little if any consequence from women losing not only their status, but also the very name to describe themselves. That is why I find Emma Watson, who has decided to be the most vocal about it, all the more disappointing. She is a woman, but she believes a man, regardless of his history of abusing or opposing women, or basic biology, can claim female one day and be validated accordingly. She brought this belief to the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards of 2022, where she expressed her subliminal yet pivotal comment that she’s here for “all the witches”. This was after Rebel Wilson, who has also taken shots at Rowling (join the club!) introduced her as not as feminist, but a “witch”. Arguably, feminism and witchcraft go hand in hand. Using your inner power to effect the world is about as feminist as it gets.

There is a power in realizing one’s sense of self, which women have been stripped of. If she channels that power by waving a wand or meditating to positive mantras every single day, go for it, girl. It means nothing, however, when you use that “power” as a means to verbally put down another woman in her show of power. Especially when many of us with common sense know that prioritizing ourselves in the midst of gender ideology is the only true power. Giving in to the social contagion does not make you brave, Watson, et al. It just means that you are more than willing to lay down and take whatever these abusive jerks have to give you. I don’t even know which celebrities are worse: the ones who go out of their way to appease the gender cult, or the ones who stay silent. They have all that power and influence, but they would rather push or ignore this dangerous ideology than lose their status. They will chant “transwomen are women” and effectively leave trans men—->biological women<——in the dust. Why? Because they are still women, and they will always be oppressed by the dominate male society, regardless of what they call themselves.

It would be foolish to say that women have no solidarity. We are allowed to believe and act separately of each other while loving one another. However, that can not be at the expense of our own rights. A woman should be able to state clearly what a woman is. Not the IDEA of a women, but the basic science of one. A woman is an adult human female. A girl is an infant, adolescent or teenage human female. Women with DSDs, who the gender cult loves to throw under the bus due to how they've developed, are still adult human females.

A male’s delusions should not be our conclusion.

If Emma Watson is here for all the witches, those witches certainly don’t consist of women. From this incident, most of us women are wondering how Hermione would behave. Arguably, Hermione is the true feminist AND witch of the two, fictional or not. Hermione never backed down, especially if it meant another person being bullied. Heck, if it was HER getting bullied. None of us non-celebrities can truly describe what goes on behind closed doors with most people in the entertainment industry, but it doesn’t appear to be good. J.K. Rowling, due to her status as a writer, may have more freedom with her words. As with anything, people are free to critique those words. More celebrities are subjected to slander. What is not okay, however, is the threats of violence that have been made toward her. Men and women alike, threatening to have revolting things done to her, and all because she acknowledge biology. What would all of them do with those special little labels they put on themselves if biology wasn’t real? It seems real enough if you want to change it, medically or by name. Their idea of gender is no more real than the Harry Potter characters, but their minds have not grasped that because these people are experiencing a strange case of Peter Pan Syndrome. The rest of us have to coddle them like Wendy Darling as they scream and kick up a fuss over something people have known for ions but now seem to have forgotten.

Even more interesting (and again, I don’t expect a single valuable word out of her male co-stars), while Watson claims to be a feminist, she seems more than willing to ignore the violence being spewed toward Rowling in particular. While she says nothing, this action reveals everything. Acts of violence against women are fine, especially if we disagree with her.

Hermione, fellow savior of Hogwarts and founder of SPEW (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare), does not approve.

P.S., SPEW was also adapted from the real life organization, Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. As more proof of her witchiness, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she states, "The truth is, you don't think a girl would ever been clever enough." Hermione knows the game of the wicked world we live in.

And J.K. Rowling got into this whole disaster for speaking out FOR another woman. Not against her. She knows a woman shouldn't be fired over a non-violent opinion, nor should we ignore the dangers that gender ideology poses.

Emma Watson thinks everyone can be a woman, if they wish. Even the males that have harassed her and other women, both on and off stage. She has been brainwashed.

But she's the feminist.... Okay….

The origin of the word 'witchcraft' means 'Craft of the Wise' and there never was anything supernatural about it, only women being smart and knowing everything about nature. They were forbidding women to be smart, to practice their own knowledge of medicine, herbology and healing. If a woman chooses to be wise thats her deal and nobody should stand between her and her skills. But they did that, and that's not all they did.

The practice od burning witches wasn't 'insanity' or 'everyone suddenly believing magic is real', it was strategic takedown of female social and economic standing. Women in that age would inherit property and wealth from their deceased husbands, they could hold their own and practice their own trades and say no to men and men didn't like that.

So they simply made it legal to kill women.

All of the land women owned, was now back in male hands, all of our crafts, knowledge and trades, lost to future generations, all the economic value changed hands back to male via torture and murder. It became incredibly easy to threaten women again; if she said no to a man, he would simply accuse her of witchcraft and have her tortured and killed, if she talked back, threat of burning, if she misbehaved, threat of torture. It was legal. They could kill women and force them into slavery, legally.

This is talked about as if it was very long ago. On the land I stand on, witches were burned 250 years ago. That is only 3 lifespans. There are books women wrote about it, that I read as a child. It left a mark on my life; it left damage on all collective female land ownership, economic power, female knowledge of medicine, nature and plants. I can't imagine where we'd be if it all kept being passed down, I bet far from trying to convince male doctors that our pain is real, far from endless female-specific chronic and debilitating illnesess, far from having to appeal to males or work all our life in order to have land to live on.

Things I believe which would qualify me as a radical feminist, to my understanding:

- trans women are men and trans men are women (women = adult human female), therefore transbians and gay trans men do not exist

- no woman should be forced to be pregnant, and abortion should not only be legal but accessible to any woman at any time for any reason, as should proper sex education and contraceptives (pro choice)

- sex buyers deserve criminalisation, sex workers deserve support and resources, ways to escape (Nordic model)

- sexualising yourself and/or catering to a man’s desire is never empowering and harms women who wish and work for their liberation

- exchange of money and or goods for sex is coercion and coerced sex is rape

- we live in a patriarchal society in which women are discriminated against and oppressed on the basis of our biological sex

- a choice is not feminist simply because it is a choice made by a woman

- men of all cultures/races/backgrounds/identities contribute to the oppression of women

- female separatism would be beneficial for some women

- Kink and BSDM are often steeped in misogyny, abuse, often further harm trauma victims, and deserve criticism (even though I am kinky, myself)

Things I do NOT believe, which I have been made aware may disqualify me from calling myself a radical feminist, to my understanding:

- all heterosexual sex is rape

- all PIV sex is rape

- women cannot consent to men

- sex was rape if one party regrets it

- exclusive homosexual attraction is something that can be chosen

"All PIV is rape" -see above

"women cannot consent to men" I have never heard a radfem say this, don't know where you got that from, might be some extremely fringe belief, or a misinterpretation of something. I could see someone arguing that female consent under the constant threats we live under isn't worth much, but I don't agree that women can't consent (although I do think female consent would be worth more in a hypothetically egalitarian society).

"sex was rape if one party regrets it" only ever heard incels and MRAs say this. The bar is low for what women are allowed to consider rape, and there are sexual experiences women describe that were obviously done to them because they were coerced/brow-beaten into it. It's okay if it takes them a long time to realize that they were gaslighted by society into thinking that's not rape. But that's not the same as "regretted it the next day" or whatever incels say.

"exclusive homosexual attraction is something that can be chosen" Only time I here this is from rad-leaning or rad bi women or celibate straight women who are trying to pull the "poli lez" card. We're not having it. There are a few older radical febfems (to use modern parlance) still around preaching poli lez (looking at you, Julie Bindel), and that's unfortunate. The vast majority of rads are against this, though. If you come across it, just know that they are febfem bi women or straight celibates appropriating the word 'lesbian' for themselves, and that they are and will be taken to task by other feminists. Ask me how I know.

"inherent exclusive homosexuality doesn't exist" I have never heard a radfem say this, but I suppose in the bi women's appropriation of lesbianism, this is heavily implied, even if it isn't said outright. However, I see this implication, or it being outright said (especially in reference to female homosexuality) from lib fems the most.

So all of that to say, most of the things on your list don't represent radfem beliefs that are commonly held by radfems. They CERTAINLY do not represent core beliefs which, if you don't share, would perclude you from being a rad fem. I don't believe in a single one of these, but I am a radical feminist. You only really need to believe one thing to be a radical feminist, and all the conclusions you come to will derive from that one belief: the 'root' of women's oppression by men is bodies, namely our capacity to reproduce which males have subjugated us so they could exploit us as a resource to extract goods from. The 'radical' in 'radical feminist' literally comes from 'radix', or 'root', that was a bog part of why it was chosen for the movement's name (that and 'radical' was slang for cool in the 70s, and slang never goes out of style, right?).

Keep reading radfem stuff, you will find some insane cockamamie ideas (Firestone*, anyone?), because radical feminism has been contributed to by women from so many different walks of life, different eras, places, experiences, etc. You will also find some of the most enlightening, brilliant ideas. You will have many "oh, of course" moments (you probably have already). I wish you well, feel free to reply or message me if you want.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5780623/amp/Female-protesters-break-men-lido-leap-pool.html?__twitter_impression=true

Hats off off to the ladies of #ManFriday raising awareness of self I.D and the loss of single spaces.

There is a mixed sex swimming area directly next to the women’s pool.

It is WOMEN’s pools ONLY that are being targeted.

#ManFriday is a peaceful protest to highlight the hypocrisy in the loss of women’s spaces while the men’s remain strictly protected.

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/hampstead-heath/visitor-information/Pages/byelaws.aspx