(Sep 29 2025, 8:47 AM)Magpie It might be ill-advised but I'm reserving judgment until they announce the mod team. If they leave the women's liberation circle in the hands of some actual feminists I'm willing to give it one last chance. I owe the original r/GenderCritical for introducting me to radical feminism so I'd hate to see one of its successors get taken over by conservatives completely. The fact that they waited so long to create this circle in the first place doesn't make me feel optimistic about it either, though. (And I do agree with your general assessment of Ovarit/Vexxed, if that wasn't clear.)
Trust me, I get wanting to rehabilitate the space. r/GenderCritical is still the only place where I saw women express similar frustrations with gender as me (what would popularly be called "dysphoria") that didn't immediately get reduced to simplistic "omg boysoul!" vs "disobedient little whippersnappers and their interwebs these days!". I used to assume most people there are like that, that their frustrations with gender ideology come from a similar place of unhappiness with the box we've all been crammed into based on being female. I haven't seen these women in a long time, though and even back then I think they were a minority, it's just that the conservative sentiment wasn't SO overwhelming to make it obvious where most people stand.
These GC communities love to prop up the occasional gender nonconforming woman as a gotcha that proves "You can just be GNC and not transition!" to show how enlightened they are and to draw in more women like that who might otherwise flirt with transitioning, while not actually caring one bit to question the system itself and why it makes so many girls and women want to disappear from it. It's just their stupid TickTocks and the interwebs! It's just a trend among immature kids! Why would anyone not be happy bootlicking their Nigel? They must just be a disobedient little shit!
And over time, I found myself not really wanting to express feminist opinions beyond the most basic milquetoast ones so as to avoid "drama" and the mods swooping in to stop "hostility". And meanwhile conservative women could say really offensive shit without being called out, or seen as "hostile and divisive". Then they went mask off with "why can't we all get along?" and "Stop purity politics!" came - so what if some women are anti-abortion and think makeup is empowering? Can't we just put our differences aside and focus on being anti-trans? Even if you think anti-female policies are bad, it's all the liberals fault, anyway for forcing conservatives' hands!
I can't see a radical feminist circle there as anything other than yet another way to draw moderate, politically lost women in, and sneakily try to sell them patriarchy back in the form of getting back at those yucky trann***. The mods would be cherrypicked to agree with the overal site mods who consciously let the space turn into a conservative shitshow - so I imagine the radical feminism would be allowed to be anti-porn and anti-prostitution...and that's kind of it. Stuff that old conservative women conveniently also don't like.
I refuse to debate two obvious facts: 1. the patriarchy exists 2. and that's a bad thing
