clovenhooves The Personal Is Political Women of Color Discussion Gaslighting about racism

Discussion Gaslighting about racism

Discussion Gaslighting about racism

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dobby
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Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM
#11
I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) since someone was making multiple comments to argue their (admittedly valid) point about the article sounding vaguely misogynistic because of its judgment of heterosexual male-partnered women and they made the comparison that "you wouldn't share an anti-semitic or racist article on this site and expect people to consider it as valid" and I was like "well, actually, the fact that I still engage on this site as a woman of color and do put up with and accept the racism against me and others for our race should make it obvious that my perspective is skewed because I am used to tolerating racism in order to engage on that site, so even though I myself might not share an article with antisemitism or racism against white women or agree with those types of articles since obviously racism against those two races is wrong and I know so because the site removes those instances, but obviously for other races for which the racism isn't removed, ive3had to learn to tolerate it in order to get along." Or I said something like that basically and most of my comments had been downvoted by the person I was arguing with (it's fine tbh lol. I had to upvote a lot of posts and comment by that user tbh, because I appreciated them for sharing a Melanie Hamlet video (because people kept downvoting and sneering about Melanie Hamlet being a "libfem" even tho she says more radfem-leaning stuff than most of the conservative rightwing women on the site lol), but anyways somehow the mods/admins noticed me accidentally alluding to the racism thing and chose to selectively censor me again because the accusation of racism seems like it's always going to be more upsetting to white women than the fact that they did let racism slide or accidentally agreed with it... I don't think that white women with that mindset can ever be allies if they are going to act like conservative MAGA women who are afraid of being canceled for "racism" when tbh literally everyone is a little bit racist and has biases and has to learn to challenge them and literally everyone is susceptible of being influenced by racist propaganda and to start believing in parts of it without realizing despite one's best intentions, because even POC fall for it too plenty of times. We have to be willing to accept the criticism of accidentally being racist and learn from it and/or learn to debate about it or agree to disagree if they really don't want to agree that the examples of racism I noticed weren't racist to them; in that case, getting that answer is still fine and gives more clarity that I can't judge because at least they're honest, in comparison to the selective censoring to hide the call outs of racism tbh. If their intentions are genuinely feminist and leftwing, I wish that they'd see how this pattern of behavior does so much more harm than just admitting "yeah, some of our site users are maybe a little sus at times and we feel like their intentions are good and that they're not racist but I'm sorry that you think they're racist but we're not going to censor them" or whatever. Even them saying something like that would be fine if they weren't censoring the people who perceive or point out racism. Idk how they don't realize that it comes off as gaslighting tbh.

I'm so frustrated by white people honestly. Why is it that big of a deal to just acknowledge that everyone is racist and it doesn't need to be some sort of cancellable crime or unforgivable sin if people were just open to criticism and learning from others to try to be less racist and hurtful/offensive


It's like they know that "racism is bad" but they don't know why racism is bad. Because they forgot that the reason why "racism is bad" is because that it hurts people. That's it. Racism is bad because it's harmful. If it didn't harm anyone, then we wouldn't know the racism is there, so honestly it would even be as big of a deal if people all kept their racism to themselves. The reason why racism matters is because it's harmful to people. So censoring the mention or accusation of racism and yet keeping the harm caused by the racism (and doubling it with the gaslighting) is like the worst of both worlds. And i feel frustrated that white people always seem to not get that. And especially when it's any feminist-minded woman tbh. I think this is why I think in many ways, I often prefer to be in libfem spaces and felt like it used to be more productive to reason with them and talk about racism (before they got taken over with the TWAW chants, I mean lol) but even despite the pro-trans stuff and the racism associated with that, I still think that white libfems seem a little bit easier to talk to because they actually care about being allies to WOC in comparison to feminists who think they're radfem/GC-aligned but don't recognize how much they've been influenced by conservative arguments and reasonings invading their spaces and becoming echo-chambers. Idk. Like, it's not thay i think the mods and admins aren't feminists to some extent. But they seem like feminists in the same way that the reduxx magazine's founder are lol. (Actually, no, that's too harsh to say tbh. The reduxx founders are openly racist, and I don't think that's fair comparison since I'm still trying to be optimistic that Vexxed admins & mods are trying their best, even though there seems to be a miscommunication happening)

Tbh... you all are right maybe lol. The fact that I am wasting time typing up so much to try to explain basic things like racism in the hopes that I can convince feminists about it, seems like i am spending my time wrong lol. Despite maybe the Vexxed mods and admins having good intentions, i need to minimize my time on that site actually since it's not productive or fun or benefiting anyone tbh. I should just at most just stick to posting articles and then leaving or something lol. Idk but maybe i need another long break from the site and just focus on here actually in my free time
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dobby
Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM #11

I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) since someone was making multiple comments to argue their (admittedly valid) point about the article sounding vaguely misogynistic because of its judgment of heterosexual male-partnered women and they made the comparison that "you wouldn't share an anti-semitic or racist article on this site and expect people to consider it as valid" and I was like "well, actually, the fact that I still engage on this site as a woman of color and do put up with and accept the racism against me and others for our race should make it obvious that my perspective is skewed because I am used to tolerating racism in order to engage on that site, so even though I myself might not share an article with antisemitism or racism against white women or agree with those types of articles since obviously racism against those two races is wrong and I know so because the site removes those instances, but obviously for other races for which the racism isn't removed, ive3had to learn to tolerate it in order to get along." Or I said something like that basically and most of my comments had been downvoted by the person I was arguing with (it's fine tbh lol. I had to upvote a lot of posts and comment by that user tbh, because I appreciated them for sharing a Melanie Hamlet video (because people kept downvoting and sneering about Melanie Hamlet being a "libfem" even tho she says more radfem-leaning stuff than most of the conservative rightwing women on the site lol), but anyways somehow the mods/admins noticed me accidentally alluding to the racism thing and chose to selectively censor me again because the accusation of racism seems like it's always going to be more upsetting to white women than the fact that they did let racism slide or accidentally agreed with it... I don't think that white women with that mindset can ever be allies if they are going to act like conservative MAGA women who are afraid of being canceled for "racism" when tbh literally everyone is a little bit racist and has biases and has to learn to challenge them and literally everyone is susceptible of being influenced by racist propaganda and to start believing in parts of it without realizing despite one's best intentions, because even POC fall for it too plenty of times. We have to be willing to accept the criticism of accidentally being racist and learn from it and/or learn to debate about it or agree to disagree if they really don't want to agree that the examples of racism I noticed weren't racist to them; in that case, getting that answer is still fine and gives more clarity that I can't judge because at least they're honest, in comparison to the selective censoring to hide the call outs of racism tbh. If their intentions are genuinely feminist and leftwing, I wish that they'd see how this pattern of behavior does so much more harm than just admitting "yeah, some of our site users are maybe a little sus at times and we feel like their intentions are good and that they're not racist but I'm sorry that you think they're racist but we're not going to censor them" or whatever. Even them saying something like that would be fine if they weren't censoring the people who perceive or point out racism. Idk how they don't realize that it comes off as gaslighting tbh.

I'm so frustrated by white people honestly. Why is it that big of a deal to just acknowledge that everyone is racist and it doesn't need to be some sort of cancellable crime or unforgivable sin if people were just open to criticism and learning from others to try to be less racist and hurtful/offensive


It's like they know that "racism is bad" but they don't know why racism is bad. Because they forgot that the reason why "racism is bad" is because that it hurts people. That's it. Racism is bad because it's harmful. If it didn't harm anyone, then we wouldn't know the racism is there, so honestly it would even be as big of a deal if people all kept their racism to themselves. The reason why racism matters is because it's harmful to people. So censoring the mention or accusation of racism and yet keeping the harm caused by the racism (and doubling it with the gaslighting) is like the worst of both worlds. And i feel frustrated that white people always seem to not get that. And especially when it's any feminist-minded woman tbh. I think this is why I think in many ways, I often prefer to be in libfem spaces and felt like it used to be more productive to reason with them and talk about racism (before they got taken over with the TWAW chants, I mean lol) but even despite the pro-trans stuff and the racism associated with that, I still think that white libfems seem a little bit easier to talk to because they actually care about being allies to WOC in comparison to feminists who think they're radfem/GC-aligned but don't recognize how much they've been influenced by conservative arguments and reasonings invading their spaces and becoming echo-chambers. Idk. Like, it's not thay i think the mods and admins aren't feminists to some extent. But they seem like feminists in the same way that the reduxx magazine's founder are lol. (Actually, no, that's too harsh to say tbh. The reduxx founders are openly racist, and I don't think that's fair comparison since I'm still trying to be optimistic that Vexxed admins & mods are trying their best, even though there seems to be a miscommunication happening)

Tbh... you all are right maybe lol. The fact that I am wasting time typing up so much to try to explain basic things like racism in the hopes that I can convince feminists about it, seems like i am spending my time wrong lol. Despite maybe the Vexxed mods and admins having good intentions, i need to minimize my time on that site actually since it's not productive or fun or benefiting anyone tbh. I should just at most just stick to posting articles and then leaving or something lol. Idk but maybe i need another long break from the site and just focus on here actually in my free time

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Dec 17 2025, 2:49 AM
#12
(Dec 16 2025, 3:39 AM)scrambled-brains-on-toast Finally, I just want to link this article from last year; https://janeclarejones.com/2024/08/17/on-gc-anti-far-right/
JCJ is well known (at least among UK GCs) and she's also fed up with the entanglement between so-called "GC feminists" and the far right. It's cathartic to read her pick apart the arguments of so-called right wing feminists.

There's so many discussions points in this thread that I'd love to comment on if/when I have time, but as a short note: I just started reading this article and wow, thank you for sharing. This does feel so cathartic to read. 💜
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Dec 17 2025, 2:49 AM #12

(Dec 16 2025, 3:39 AM)scrambled-brains-on-toast Finally, I just want to link this article from last year; https://janeclarejones.com/2024/08/17/on-gc-anti-far-right/
JCJ is well known (at least among UK GCs) and she's also fed up with the entanglement between so-called "GC feminists" and the far right. It's cathartic to read her pick apart the arguments of so-called right wing feminists.

There's so many discussions points in this thread that I'd love to comment on if/when I have time, but as a short note: I just started reading this article and wow, thank you for sharing. This does feel so cathartic to read. 💜

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eyeswideopen
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Dec 17 2025, 7:49 AM
#13
Honestly I think the fact that Vexxed
-still- has not managed to set up a circle for Women of Color says it all. People have asked for such a circle repeatedly and been ignored/dismissed.
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eyeswideopen
Dec 17 2025, 7:49 AM #13

Honestly I think the fact that Vexxed
-still- has not managed to set up a circle for Women of Color says it all. People have asked for such a circle repeatedly and been ignored/dismissed.

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dobby
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Dec 17 2025, 10:35 AM
#14
On the bright side, my faith in the WomensLiberation circle mods is still strong! I see all 3 mods actively trying their best to listen and take not of derailing and racism and I think it's worth it to keep on reporting potential rule-breaking shady comments or efforts to derail or go off-topic or pit women against each other, because those 3 mods are listening, and even if they don't find a shady borderline racist comment that we report to be offensive enough to remove, I do have faith in these 3 mids that they're watching to look for the repeated patterns of derailing and propaganda tactics and racist-leaning spiralling, if we all try to be vigilant in reporting some of the borderline racist/derailing/off-topic comments on the WomensLiberation circle at least that has led to derailed threads and using the "Other" option in the report system by giving a brief note of explanation of the pattern we see or explain why it's alienating (tho it's tricky with the character limit for me ngl lol), because I noticed today, one of the shady borderline derailing racist-leaning comments that technically wouldn't have been considered rule-breaking in other circles had been removed today (when I reported it just to try to point out the pattern with one user as a long-term thing to keep in mind). I feel really heartened by the mods in the WomensLib caring enough and being knowledgeable enough to recognize how that comment was going to lead to a derailing spiral if left up (intentional or not) and/or how that comment left up would've alienated non-American site users, women of color (especially black women), and lesbian women. So I am feeling really hopeful about the WomensLiberation circle tbh. And I won't give up on the site just yet, because it would be a disservice to the actual feminist women on the site who are really actively trying, like those 3 mods. They deserve better than to have their efforts be wasted on a site that gets taken over by white nationalists!

I think more women here, even if you guys aren't all that active site members on Vexxed should genuinely consider trying to apply to volunteer to mod tbh, since your chances of being considered are probably higher than mine, since the admins really do seem to be looking for actual feminist women (at least for the WomensLiberation circle, for sure) and they were open to picking a newer site member as a mod (TemporalTea, who is awesome and so sweet! She's also a lesbian woman and ally to WOC, and my thought was that if I can find at least a few other likeminded lesbian women, including hopefully at least one lesbian WOC, then we can encourage TemporalTea to bring up to site admins that she and some other likeminded qualified lesbian women are open to volunteering to help get the Lesbians circle on Vexxed started and active, and that there's feminist women on Vexxed who are allies to lesbian women who are willing to help with recruitment and spreading the word to lesbian women on other spaces like reddit.) The biggest reason that I'm probably not eligible to mod on that site I think is probably because I got involved in too many conflicts and complained too much in unproductive ways without providing the evidence to back up my claims early on and because I got too emotional and heated about the racism thing after I started to feel like I was being intentionally provoked and derailed back-to-back-to back lol. That isn't an issue or concern for many members here tbh if some of you apply to be considered as a mod there, because the lack of conflicts, hostility, or bias shown towards or against anyone is something that will be seen as a green flag, I'm sure.

The one positive thing I can say for sure about the Vexxed admins so far is that even though we may feel frustrated at the lack of mod action towards the racists and derailers on the site, I think that it's also worth appreciating at least that I've never actually seen any of the chosen Vexxed mods get into drama, conflicts, engage in derailing, or say anything racist themselves tbh. That's noteworthy and promising, in my opinion. We just need more Vexxed site members who are firmly feminist and supportive towards all women and girls, and who haven't engaged in the conflicts and controversial debates much (especially in more abrasive ways like I have unfortunately accidentally done lol) to be the ones volunteering to help mod the circles on that site tbh! I think that showing minimal biases and/or showing a willingness to overlook one's personal biases for the goal of supporting all women and girls, should surely work in the favor of any members from here who want to consider volunteering to help mod any future circles on Vexxed! The admins do still seem to be trying to find mods for each of the legacy circles from Ovarit!

Anyways, I think I feel more hopeful about Vexxed again now
Edited Dec 17 2025, 10:35 AM by dobby.
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dobby
Dec 17 2025, 10:35 AM #14

On the bright side, my faith in the WomensLiberation circle mods is still strong! I see all 3 mods actively trying their best to listen and take not of derailing and racism and I think it's worth it to keep on reporting potential rule-breaking shady comments or efforts to derail or go off-topic or pit women against each other, because those 3 mods are listening, and even if they don't find a shady borderline racist comment that we report to be offensive enough to remove, I do have faith in these 3 mids that they're watching to look for the repeated patterns of derailing and propaganda tactics and racist-leaning spiralling, if we all try to be vigilant in reporting some of the borderline racist/derailing/off-topic comments on the WomensLiberation circle at least that has led to derailed threads and using the "Other" option in the report system by giving a brief note of explanation of the pattern we see or explain why it's alienating (tho it's tricky with the character limit for me ngl lol), because I noticed today, one of the shady borderline derailing racist-leaning comments that technically wouldn't have been considered rule-breaking in other circles had been removed today (when I reported it just to try to point out the pattern with one user as a long-term thing to keep in mind). I feel really heartened by the mods in the WomensLib caring enough and being knowledgeable enough to recognize how that comment was going to lead to a derailing spiral if left up (intentional or not) and/or how that comment left up would've alienated non-American site users, women of color (especially black women), and lesbian women. So I am feeling really hopeful about the WomensLiberation circle tbh. And I won't give up on the site just yet, because it would be a disservice to the actual feminist women on the site who are really actively trying, like those 3 mods. They deserve better than to have their efforts be wasted on a site that gets taken over by white nationalists!

I think more women here, even if you guys aren't all that active site members on Vexxed should genuinely consider trying to apply to volunteer to mod tbh, since your chances of being considered are probably higher than mine, since the admins really do seem to be looking for actual feminist women (at least for the WomensLiberation circle, for sure) and they were open to picking a newer site member as a mod (TemporalTea, who is awesome and so sweet! She's also a lesbian woman and ally to WOC, and my thought was that if I can find at least a few other likeminded lesbian women, including hopefully at least one lesbian WOC, then we can encourage TemporalTea to bring up to site admins that she and some other likeminded qualified lesbian women are open to volunteering to help get the Lesbians circle on Vexxed started and active, and that there's feminist women on Vexxed who are allies to lesbian women who are willing to help with recruitment and spreading the word to lesbian women on other spaces like reddit.) The biggest reason that I'm probably not eligible to mod on that site I think is probably because I got involved in too many conflicts and complained too much in unproductive ways without providing the evidence to back up my claims early on and because I got too emotional and heated about the racism thing after I started to feel like I was being intentionally provoked and derailed back-to-back-to back lol. That isn't an issue or concern for many members here tbh if some of you apply to be considered as a mod there, because the lack of conflicts, hostility, or bias shown towards or against anyone is something that will be seen as a green flag, I'm sure.

The one positive thing I can say for sure about the Vexxed admins so far is that even though we may feel frustrated at the lack of mod action towards the racists and derailers on the site, I think that it's also worth appreciating at least that I've never actually seen any of the chosen Vexxed mods get into drama, conflicts, engage in derailing, or say anything racist themselves tbh. That's noteworthy and promising, in my opinion. We just need more Vexxed site members who are firmly feminist and supportive towards all women and girls, and who haven't engaged in the conflicts and controversial debates much (especially in more abrasive ways like I have unfortunately accidentally done lol) to be the ones volunteering to help mod the circles on that site tbh! I think that showing minimal biases and/or showing a willingness to overlook one's personal biases for the goal of supporting all women and girls, should surely work in the favor of any members from here who want to consider volunteering to help mod any future circles on Vexxed! The admins do still seem to be trying to find mods for each of the legacy circles from Ovarit!

Anyways, I think I feel more hopeful about Vexxed again now

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ShameMustChangeSides
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Dec 17 2025, 11:05 AM
#15
(Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM)dobby I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) 
This might just be because Vexxed doesn't work like CH where recently interacted with threads automatically come to the front of the queue and it's an old post so it pretty much stays buried unless mods go looking for it or it gets enough interaction it ends up in the "top posts from the last 24 hours."
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ShameMustChangeSides
Dec 17 2025, 11:05 AM #15

(Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM)dobby I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) 
This might just be because Vexxed doesn't work like CH where recently interacted with threads automatically come to the front of the queue and it's an old post so it pretty much stays buried unless mods go looking for it or it gets enough interaction it ends up in the "top posts from the last 24 hours."

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Dec 17 2025, 4:54 PM
#16
(Dec 17 2025, 11:05 AM)ShameMustChangeSides
(Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM)dobby I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) 
This might just be because Vexxed doesn't work like CH where recently interacted with threads automatically come to the front of the queue and it's an old post so it pretty much stays buried unless mods go looking for it or it gets enough interaction it ends up in the "top posts from the last 24 hours."

I think that's still pretty disappointing. Like, what's wrong with being able to discuss things on old posts? That's something I didn't like about Ovaexxed either — Reddit style "hot" algorithms make older discussions seem irrelevant when they absolutely don't have to be. Like, why does a discussion on like, The Second Sex, for example, become "irrelevant" because it was discussed seven months ago? It isn't, but Reddit-style "trending" feeds make it so. I'd get locking something that's like, an old news article that's no longer getting updates, but other than that scenario, locking discussion sucks.

Honestly with Dobby it just seems like unfair targeting and censorship. And none of us can even judge for ourselves, since deleted posts on Ovaexxed can only be seen by the person who made them, which is even more censorious than Reddit, where at least if a subreddit mod deletes a user's posts, one can still go see them on the user's personal profile. 🤷‍♀️
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Dec 17 2025, 4:54 PM #16

(Dec 17 2025, 11:05 AM)ShameMustChangeSides
(Dec 17 2025, 1:13 AM)dobby I got censored again by having a comment removed because I accidentally alluded to the racism on a comment because I was replying to someone about an old 4B post I had shared months back (which mods just chose to lock right now because I guess they wanted to avoid me being able to chime in on that post any further) 
This might just be because Vexxed doesn't work like CH where recently interacted with threads automatically come to the front of the queue and it's an old post so it pretty much stays buried unless mods go looking for it or it gets enough interaction it ends up in the "top posts from the last 24 hours."

I think that's still pretty disappointing. Like, what's wrong with being able to discuss things on old posts? That's something I didn't like about Ovaexxed either — Reddit style "hot" algorithms make older discussions seem irrelevant when they absolutely don't have to be. Like, why does a discussion on like, The Second Sex, for example, become "irrelevant" because it was discussed seven months ago? It isn't, but Reddit-style "trending" feeds make it so. I'd get locking something that's like, an old news article that's no longer getting updates, but other than that scenario, locking discussion sucks.

Honestly with Dobby it just seems like unfair targeting and censorship. And none of us can even judge for ourselves, since deleted posts on Ovaexxed can only be seen by the person who made them, which is even more censorious than Reddit, where at least if a subreddit mod deletes a user's posts, one can still go see them on the user's personal profile. 🤷‍♀️

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Colibri
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Dec 18 2025, 7:21 AM
#17
(Dec 16 2025, 3:39 AM)scrambled-brains-on-toast Finally, I just want to link this article from last year; https://janeclarejones.com/2024/08/17/on-gc-anti-far-right/
JCJ is well known (at least among UK GCs) and she's also fed up with the entanglement between so-called "GC feminists" and the far right. It's cathartic to read her pick apart the arguments of so-called right wing feminists.

She's right about this, and it's been horrifying to watch. 
Quote:The first reason always for drawing a line between any political movement, however loose, and the far right, is that the far right routinely attaches itself to any movement that is generating traction and tries to co-opt it and turn it into a vehicle for disseminating its rhetoric and talking points. It is as little-known fact that the far right generally has a recruitment problem, and if you walk straight up to most people and say, ‘Would you like to become a Nazi?’ they generally say ‘No’. The far right often works, then, by attaching itself to a political movement with energy and turning that momentum towards its own political objectives.
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Colibri
Dec 18 2025, 7:21 AM #17

(Dec 16 2025, 3:39 AM)scrambled-brains-on-toast Finally, I just want to link this article from last year; https://janeclarejones.com/2024/08/17/on-gc-anti-far-right/
JCJ is well known (at least among UK GCs) and she's also fed up with the entanglement between so-called "GC feminists" and the far right. It's cathartic to read her pick apart the arguments of so-called right wing feminists.

She's right about this, and it's been horrifying to watch. 
Quote:The first reason always for drawing a line between any political movement, however loose, and the far right, is that the far right routinely attaches itself to any movement that is generating traction and tries to co-opt it and turn it into a vehicle for disseminating its rhetoric and talking points. It is as little-known fact that the far right generally has a recruitment problem, and if you walk straight up to most people and say, ‘Would you like to become a Nazi?’ they generally say ‘No’. The far right often works, then, by attaching itself to a political movement with energy and turning that momentum towards its own political objectives.

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Chernobog
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Dec 18 2025, 12:28 PM
#18
This is why I think dialectical materialism (and to only a slightly lesser degree, Marxism, especially understanding social phenomena like contradiction) should not be optional subject matter for feminists. Female people exist, and will always exist, across all groups and cultural divisions. Understanding that those groups and divisions were not born of some mean-spirited desire to be nasty has been essential in understanding why people continue to not get along every time someone says "can't we all just get along?". 
Thinking about "oppression" as an accumulation of individual identities rather than interconnected systems that evolve in direct relation to one another makes it impossible to liberate all women, and having to prattle on at length about how women are particularly impacted by imperialism, war, genocide, racism, ableism, public health policy, workers rights, etc. to make a case to alleged feminists that this is a topic worth discussing is flat out a waste of time. It is disingenuous for them to argue in the first place that "this isn't a feminist issue, so I am not obligated to think about it" (then they'll always turn around and be vehemently against, like, infant male circumcision or something lol). Only certain women can escape to a corner of society where they will ONLY be faced with "feminist issues" and feel they can arbitrate to the rest of us if all of the other things that affect us daily clear the "feminist" bar for their consideration.

I'm disdainful of places like Lipstick Alley for the same reasons. There's an orthodoxy towards hierarchical, reductive, very entry-level discourse in direct opposition to the broader social dismissal and minimization of chattel slavery and European colonization of the African content as one of the most abhorrent and alarmingly recent periods in human history (and even that statement is reductive, because that period has in no way ended, but the perpetrators can more easily put it out of sight, out of mind). 
It's the exact same story in many other political spaces, begging the question of where we draw the lines between correction and over-correction for both personal and political purposes, recognizing catharsis as often simultaneously valuable (or at least valid) and unhelpful. Among many of the anti-intellectual tactics we keep coming back to, I've seen this misappropriation of "the personal is political" to blur the lines of ALL personal and political conversations. 

It is comforting to talk about personal issues in a place where you can trust people will implicitly understand their political context without reducing them to that political context. It is also comforting to come to a place and expect serious intellectual engagement that can lead to material change, not just kvetching about "geez don't we have it so hard!". I am not sure if or how these kinds of spaces can coexist, and I think all this discussion about Ovarit/Vexxed has thoroughly illustrated that ambivalence and why it doesn't work to simply not ask or answer (or refuse to definitively answer) questions about the purpose of the space and organize accordingly.
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Chernobog
Dec 18 2025, 12:28 PM #18

This is why I think dialectical materialism (and to only a slightly lesser degree, Marxism, especially understanding social phenomena like contradiction) should not be optional subject matter for feminists. Female people exist, and will always exist, across all groups and cultural divisions. Understanding that those groups and divisions were not born of some mean-spirited desire to be nasty has been essential in understanding why people continue to not get along every time someone says "can't we all just get along?". 
Thinking about "oppression" as an accumulation of individual identities rather than interconnected systems that evolve in direct relation to one another makes it impossible to liberate all women, and having to prattle on at length about how women are particularly impacted by imperialism, war, genocide, racism, ableism, public health policy, workers rights, etc. to make a case to alleged feminists that this is a topic worth discussing is flat out a waste of time. It is disingenuous for them to argue in the first place that "this isn't a feminist issue, so I am not obligated to think about it" (then they'll always turn around and be vehemently against, like, infant male circumcision or something lol). Only certain women can escape to a corner of society where they will ONLY be faced with "feminist issues" and feel they can arbitrate to the rest of us if all of the other things that affect us daily clear the "feminist" bar for their consideration.

I'm disdainful of places like Lipstick Alley for the same reasons. There's an orthodoxy towards hierarchical, reductive, very entry-level discourse in direct opposition to the broader social dismissal and minimization of chattel slavery and European colonization of the African content as one of the most abhorrent and alarmingly recent periods in human history (and even that statement is reductive, because that period has in no way ended, but the perpetrators can more easily put it out of sight, out of mind). 
It's the exact same story in many other political spaces, begging the question of where we draw the lines between correction and over-correction for both personal and political purposes, recognizing catharsis as often simultaneously valuable (or at least valid) and unhelpful. Among many of the anti-intellectual tactics we keep coming back to, I've seen this misappropriation of "the personal is political" to blur the lines of ALL personal and political conversations. 

It is comforting to talk about personal issues in a place where you can trust people will implicitly understand their political context without reducing them to that political context. It is also comforting to come to a place and expect serious intellectual engagement that can lead to material change, not just kvetching about "geez don't we have it so hard!". I am not sure if or how these kinds of spaces can coexist, and I think all this discussion about Ovarit/Vexxed has thoroughly illustrated that ambivalence and why it doesn't work to simply not ask or answer (or refuse to definitively answer) questions about the purpose of the space and organize accordingly.

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