cloven hooves The Personal Is Political General What People Get Wrong About Christian Women Who Voted for Trump

What People Get Wrong About Christian Women Who Voted for Trump

What People Get Wrong About Christian Women Who Voted for Trump

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Jan 10 2025, 12:06 AM
#11
Possum They're constantly pulling out that Dworkin quote about how the left views women as public property, the right as private property. But then they only use it to criticize the left and forget to talk about the dangers of being private property. Or they whip it out intentionally as a response when they see the right being criticized to prevent a discussion on the dangers of being private property.
Yes! I've noticed this too. It seems to be their go-to thought-stopper, like, "aha, let me throw in the popular radical feminist quote by a well-known radical feminist author, now we don't have to talk about this topic any further!" because I guess the discussion might be getting a little "too close" for comfort? I used to really appreciate that quote, and now I'm like :catcringe: whenever I see it, since it's more likely to be parroted as a thought-stopper than to further a discussion on the misogyny of all men.

I think because it's so obvious what is misogynistic with the right-wing, many feminists don't really feel the need to focus on it so much or analyze it much further (than it already has been, so many times). Analyzing left-wing misogyny is more thought-provoking and unconventional, I suppose.

YesYourNigel actually brought this situation up in another thread about atheist men:
YesYourNigel I'm more passionate about taking down liberal men because they're so much more deceptive if you don't know what to look out for and because I myself have had a long journey in seeing through all their manipulation. Conservatives will straight up tell you women are subhuman, so there's not much more to add there.
But I do think it's good to point out that criticising liberals does not mean that we find conservatives better or even equally bad, because lord knows if you spend too much time portraying liberals as bad, that will attract conservatives like flies trying to brainlessly shit on "libtard SJWs" because that's the only thing guiding their thinking. And before you know it, you're Ovarit.
As a result of feminist women on Ovarit possibly focusing on criticizing/discussing misogyny on the left in more detail than the right, I think on the surface the website looks like a "general" group of women criticizing "the left," which might make people think "oh, this is a place for conservative women" due to all-or-nothing thinking, which then I think causes a bit of a feedback loop (liberal women think it isn't the place for them, and conservative women think it is the place for them).

One memorable instance of such a thought process, was when a woman joined Ovarit and made an introductory post talking about how she's so glad she can have a place to speak freely about issues affecting women that have gotten her banned on Reddit. And initially I was thinking like "Welcome! Yeah, Reddit's censorship sucks!" Well that quickly turned south when she decided to post a "joke" in /o/Radfemmery titled something like "I'd be hanged for posting this elsewhere" and the "joke" was essentially making fun of young transgender-identifying people who commit suicide. Myself and some others called her post out; I was appalled at the idea that someone would think this is the place to make fun of children struggling to grow up in a sexist world and driving themselves to suicide. She either deleted the post or it got removed by mods, but that left an impression on me about "what vibes is this website even signaling to people now?" It was not a good sign.

Possum I think libfem women at the top of the pyramid are materially benefiting from their position (like, famous academics or higher-ups in NGOs who get rich off it) and therefore will never come around to our side.
That reminds me of Upton Sinclair's “It is difficult to get a [person] to understand something, when [their] salary depends on [their] not understanding it.”. In a sense, this is something neolibfem women and right-wing women materially benefit from in their own ways; the neoliberal feminist by supporting neoliberal structures and capitalism, and the conservative woman by her servitude to her husband (who in turn supports conservative structures and capitalism). The conservative woman's "paycheck" is in the form of safety and stability in a man's home (indentured servitude), while the neoliberal woman's paycheck is literal. Neither wishes to criticize the structures which give them their paychecks and thus their ability to remain "secure" in an unjust societal system.

Possum In my experience with libfems if I talk to her privately and she isn't afraid of being cancelled, and I'm careful to phrase it in a way that doesn't sound hateful (ie phrase it as "biologically male person who identifies as a woman" instead of "ugly freakazoid who I hope Daddy Trump sends to a prison camp"), she will agree that things on the left have gone too far.
This "instead of" part cracked me up. And yes, exactly! I mean I'm probably biased in this regard because I came to radical feminism from the standard 3rd wave neoliberal feminism that was/is "en vogue." But yes, it makes more sense to me that a woman who wants female "equality" is more likely to be interested in radical feminism's message of female liberation than a woman who believes women's greatest purpose in life is to have babies and serve men.

Possum One time I got into an argument with a forced birther and eventually her comments got removed but my comments stayed with like 20+ downvotes from the other lurking forced birthers. I get that internet karma points don't matter but it's demoralizing. There's no point in sticking around to be a lefty voice if your comments are gonna be downvoted that much.
That really kinda sucks. And I know the downvotes are literally silly arrows and negative numbers on a computer screen, but it's not about the "popularity points," it's about seeing in "real time" people's refusal to have a good faith discussion and instead think using the arrows as "popularity points", because "what's popular is right" is a "better" (read: easier) system. The fact that someone can make a genuine point and the only "response" is from people who thought "I don't like this so I'm going to hit the downvote button". It's like toddler logic. As if somehow hitting the down arrow helps remove a person's points or makes their post wrong. It's not demoralizing because "oh no people don't like what I said," it's demoralizing because that's sometimes all these people have to give. Actually, I don't know what's worse, the quiet downvoters with no response to give or the quiet downvoters with a one response that spews illogical stupid shit that then gets quiet upvoters because "I like, it not other response I no like." It's the whole thing about how on Reddit upvotes/downvotes were never supposed to be "agree"/"disagree" buttons they were supposed to be for "this contributes to the conversation"/"this doesn't contribute to the conversation". Well, we humans can be emotional and irrational beings at times. C'est la vie.

Something else that kind of has been on my mind regarding the [Deleted] comments is like, how you point out, whatever that person said is gone, and any arguments against their points are now collapsed. So you can spend a bunch of time arguing against forced-birthers, all for your arguments to get collapsed and forgotten, since Ovarit does delete anti-abortion comments quite consistently. But still, it's kind of frustrating to spend a bunch of energy making arguments that end up getting collapsed and swept away.

The other thing I've noticed about simply deleting right-wing women's comments is that their profile actually ends up getting unintentionally "sane-washed" on behalf of the Ovarit moderators.

Given that, I honestly think it'd be better if rule-breaking comments were left up, with an exception of the big no-no's like promoting violence or doxxing, with a moderator/admin response saying that this comment breaks the rules and perhaps a locking of that particular comment thread so no more replies can be added to it. At least that way misogynistic behaviors are left up to bear witness, as well as the counterpoints, and there is an additional added benefit that it is a more transparent showing of what breaks rules. (One problem Ovarit mods/admins have stated in the past is that people just don't report enough content, but it's kind of difficult to do when I don't know what explicitly breaks the rules besides obvious stuff like anti-choice takes and straight-up personal attacks.)

Possum And then eventually the mods delete Trad's comment (but don't ban her from the site 🙄)
Yes. The not banning part. It's kind of frustrating. Conservative women get all the "second" chances in the world, it seems. I guess because they're "nice" when they spout their misogynistic takes? Meanwhile, abrasive feminist women should "know better", I suppose. Idk, I am not fully aware of all that goes on "behind the scenes" in moderating/administrating Ovarit, this is all just based on what limited scope I can see from and also "vibes." I could be off-base.

I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative (as for explicitly anti-choice/forced-birth women, I simply have no idea why women with such internalized misogyny are allowed to stay when a large chunk of their psyche is essentially "women deserve to be tortured and risk death because literally the sheer concept of a baby being born is more important than that woman", but hey, it's a site for "all women" so...), which I know is probably not what you are saying, it's more of the fact that a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules? It's tricky, and this is where I see Ovarit admins/mods having a hard time. This starts to get into the paradox of tolerance, which is tricky to implement in "big tent" online communities.

Possum "every website eventually becomes an echo chamber, so it's time to decide what kind of echo chamber this will be." is an awesome line, I love it. I dislike echo chambers but yeah on social media it's unavoidable so maybe we should go for the less shitty echo chamber.
Agreed. In fact I remember in the past writing a comment on Ovarit, something to the effect of "I know this place is a bit of an echo chamber" and I remember getting a decent amount of pushback on that, with people claiming "no it's not! I see plenty of opinions I don't agree with!" which, yes fair, however it is clear that the website is, for instance, "hostile" to people who are TRAs, and more recently TIPs. In fact, TIMs (the transgender-identifying men who specifically claim to be women) are explicitly banned by virtue of being misogynistic trolls (from my understanding). My point isn't whether this is right or wrong, my point is that there is already specific criteria that blocks out certain viewpoints. How is that not at least an inoculation point for, the possibility of the beginning of, an echo chamber? (And I made that comment months before the "Elephant in the Room" thread, which signifies to me the the vibe has gotten significantly worse since I said that.)

Just based on some of my personal experience with "no censorship" online communities, my guess is Ovarit will continue to slowly become more and more of a conservative "echo chamber," with the quotes being necessary because their message can always be "it's for all women," but it's more of "all women*" with an asterisk because a lot of leftist/liberal/feminist women will just simply not go there for the most part. It's not because they're banned, but simply because it might not feel like a comfortable place to have a genuine discussion beyond the small subset of issues that feminists, gender critical leftists, anti-trans people, and conservative women can agree on: sex is real and immutable, men cannot be women, women's spaces/rights should be based on biological sex. Beyond that, meh.

Cloven Hooves is an "echo chamber." No doubt, no need to be shy about it. By its vetting process alone, and by the introductory account registration message, it consists of women of a certain narrow range of political stances, with a little bit of leeway here and there. It's been that way since the start. I have read that attempting to create such a place, a feminist online community, is going to be "fraught" and a "bad idea", but I think figured it was worth an honest try. We shall see, I suppose.

I hope that at least having some self-awareness that this place is an echo chamber can invoke humility in members.

   


YesYourNigel In fact I'm surprised you mentioned conservative women support surrogacy because that's something liberal feminists are notorious for.
I'm not too sure about conservative women supporting surrogacy, but I do know conservatives are anti-choice in part because it provides conservative women to have their "pick of the litter" when it comes to adopting a "fresh" [white] baby:

What Amy Coney Barrett's Roe v. Wade Remarks Get Wrong About Adoption "Both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting, and insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which forced parenting, forced motherhood, would hinder women's access to the workplace and to equal opportunities, it's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy," Barrett, who has two adopted children, said. "Why don't the safe haven laws take care of that problem?"

Experts and researchers told Newsweek that Barrett's argument ignores the burden of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, and minimizes the impact that placing a baby up for adoption can have on birth parents as well as the children involved.
From Newsweek

YesYourNigel Despite my disagreement with the characterised logic behind the motivations of conservative women, my god is it good to hear a space called a spade and not have to walk on eggshells because poor widdle conserwative women might get chased away 😥
I am glad to hear that. I am trying to not have this place subjected to "tone policing" and respectability politics. I assume things might get spicy at some point, I guess we'll have to see how high on the Scoville scale we can get before some serious rift happens. I figure if this place gets big enough, I'll probably have to make some serious mod calls, but I'll just not think about it and cross that bridge when we get there. :catcringe:

I'm hoping as long as we can do a combination of engaging in good faith, largely staying focused on criticizing the patriarchal structures that keep all women oppressed, and assuming every other women here is guided under a goal of furthering women's liberation, we should be okay for a bit..? lol

YesYourNigel The only thing that treating conservativism with kiddie gloves does is it enables and normalises more conservative rhetoric which attracts more conservatives like flies to shit, and ends up chasing away or straight up banning actual feminist women who won't stay quiet and walk on eggshells.
Mood. The entire reason this place is here is because well over six years ago, after confusedly checking on r/GenderCritical multiple times to understand what the hell that place was on about with gender, a post lit up my little "makeup is a misogynistic mask" part of my mind (a part that had been pushed back in a corner because the mainstream feminism I was offered was largely "makeup is empowering YAAASSS QUEEEEEN eYeliNeR sHaRp eNoUgH tO KilL a MaN hahaha werk it slayyyy!!!"), a post that likely forthrightly talked about the sexism of makeup and beauty culture. Like, it was just accepted that makeup and beauty culture was misogynistic, and the post went on from that basis. In libfem spaces, such a discussion could not prevail, it would be "too mean." Some women are comforted by makeup, don't you know? It makes some women feel good about themselves. So stop being so rude about it!! If the same level of excuses that goes towards conservative women on Ovarit went towards beauty culture (like it does in neolibfem spaces) on r/GenderCritical, I think it would have taken me much, much longer to find radical feminism. How tf are feminist women, or women interested in radical feminism, supposed to have class-based analyses, when a large subset of women on the left and right remain stuck in a codependent relationship with individualism and internalized misogyny?
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Jan 10 2025, 12:06 AM #11

Possum They're constantly pulling out that Dworkin quote about how the left views women as public property, the right as private property. But then they only use it to criticize the left and forget to talk about the dangers of being private property. Or they whip it out intentionally as a response when they see the right being criticized to prevent a discussion on the dangers of being private property.
Yes! I've noticed this too. It seems to be their go-to thought-stopper, like, "aha, let me throw in the popular radical feminist quote by a well-known radical feminist author, now we don't have to talk about this topic any further!" because I guess the discussion might be getting a little "too close" for comfort? I used to really appreciate that quote, and now I'm like :catcringe: whenever I see it, since it's more likely to be parroted as a thought-stopper than to further a discussion on the misogyny of all men.

I think because it's so obvious what is misogynistic with the right-wing, many feminists don't really feel the need to focus on it so much or analyze it much further (than it already has been, so many times). Analyzing left-wing misogyny is more thought-provoking and unconventional, I suppose.

YesYourNigel actually brought this situation up in another thread about atheist men:
YesYourNigel I'm more passionate about taking down liberal men because they're so much more deceptive if you don't know what to look out for and because I myself have had a long journey in seeing through all their manipulation. Conservatives will straight up tell you women are subhuman, so there's not much more to add there.
But I do think it's good to point out that criticising liberals does not mean that we find conservatives better or even equally bad, because lord knows if you spend too much time portraying liberals as bad, that will attract conservatives like flies trying to brainlessly shit on "libtard SJWs" because that's the only thing guiding their thinking. And before you know it, you're Ovarit.
As a result of feminist women on Ovarit possibly focusing on criticizing/discussing misogyny on the left in more detail than the right, I think on the surface the website looks like a "general" group of women criticizing "the left," which might make people think "oh, this is a place for conservative women" due to all-or-nothing thinking, which then I think causes a bit of a feedback loop (liberal women think it isn't the place for them, and conservative women think it is the place for them).

One memorable instance of such a thought process, was when a woman joined Ovarit and made an introductory post talking about how she's so glad she can have a place to speak freely about issues affecting women that have gotten her banned on Reddit. And initially I was thinking like "Welcome! Yeah, Reddit's censorship sucks!" Well that quickly turned south when she decided to post a "joke" in /o/Radfemmery titled something like "I'd be hanged for posting this elsewhere" and the "joke" was essentially making fun of young transgender-identifying people who commit suicide. Myself and some others called her post out; I was appalled at the idea that someone would think this is the place to make fun of children struggling to grow up in a sexist world and driving themselves to suicide. She either deleted the post or it got removed by mods, but that left an impression on me about "what vibes is this website even signaling to people now?" It was not a good sign.

Possum I think libfem women at the top of the pyramid are materially benefiting from their position (like, famous academics or higher-ups in NGOs who get rich off it) and therefore will never come around to our side.
That reminds me of Upton Sinclair's “It is difficult to get a [person] to understand something, when [their] salary depends on [their] not understanding it.”. In a sense, this is something neolibfem women and right-wing women materially benefit from in their own ways; the neoliberal feminist by supporting neoliberal structures and capitalism, and the conservative woman by her servitude to her husband (who in turn supports conservative structures and capitalism). The conservative woman's "paycheck" is in the form of safety and stability in a man's home (indentured servitude), while the neoliberal woman's paycheck is literal. Neither wishes to criticize the structures which give them their paychecks and thus their ability to remain "secure" in an unjust societal system.

Possum In my experience with libfems if I talk to her privately and she isn't afraid of being cancelled, and I'm careful to phrase it in a way that doesn't sound hateful (ie phrase it as "biologically male person who identifies as a woman" instead of "ugly freakazoid who I hope Daddy Trump sends to a prison camp"), she will agree that things on the left have gone too far.
This "instead of" part cracked me up. And yes, exactly! I mean I'm probably biased in this regard because I came to radical feminism from the standard 3rd wave neoliberal feminism that was/is "en vogue." But yes, it makes more sense to me that a woman who wants female "equality" is more likely to be interested in radical feminism's message of female liberation than a woman who believes women's greatest purpose in life is to have babies and serve men.

Possum One time I got into an argument with a forced birther and eventually her comments got removed but my comments stayed with like 20+ downvotes from the other lurking forced birthers. I get that internet karma points don't matter but it's demoralizing. There's no point in sticking around to be a lefty voice if your comments are gonna be downvoted that much.
That really kinda sucks. And I know the downvotes are literally silly arrows and negative numbers on a computer screen, but it's not about the "popularity points," it's about seeing in "real time" people's refusal to have a good faith discussion and instead think using the arrows as "popularity points", because "what's popular is right" is a "better" (read: easier) system. The fact that someone can make a genuine point and the only "response" is from people who thought "I don't like this so I'm going to hit the downvote button". It's like toddler logic. As if somehow hitting the down arrow helps remove a person's points or makes their post wrong. It's not demoralizing because "oh no people don't like what I said," it's demoralizing because that's sometimes all these people have to give. Actually, I don't know what's worse, the quiet downvoters with no response to give or the quiet downvoters with a one response that spews illogical stupid shit that then gets quiet upvoters because "I like, it not other response I no like." It's the whole thing about how on Reddit upvotes/downvotes were never supposed to be "agree"/"disagree" buttons they were supposed to be for "this contributes to the conversation"/"this doesn't contribute to the conversation". Well, we humans can be emotional and irrational beings at times. C'est la vie.

Something else that kind of has been on my mind regarding the [Deleted] comments is like, how you point out, whatever that person said is gone, and any arguments against their points are now collapsed. So you can spend a bunch of time arguing against forced-birthers, all for your arguments to get collapsed and forgotten, since Ovarit does delete anti-abortion comments quite consistently. But still, it's kind of frustrating to spend a bunch of energy making arguments that end up getting collapsed and swept away.

The other thing I've noticed about simply deleting right-wing women's comments is that their profile actually ends up getting unintentionally "sane-washed" on behalf of the Ovarit moderators.

Given that, I honestly think it'd be better if rule-breaking comments were left up, with an exception of the big no-no's like promoting violence or doxxing, with a moderator/admin response saying that this comment breaks the rules and perhaps a locking of that particular comment thread so no more replies can be added to it. At least that way misogynistic behaviors are left up to bear witness, as well as the counterpoints, and there is an additional added benefit that it is a more transparent showing of what breaks rules. (One problem Ovarit mods/admins have stated in the past is that people just don't report enough content, but it's kind of difficult to do when I don't know what explicitly breaks the rules besides obvious stuff like anti-choice takes and straight-up personal attacks.)

Possum And then eventually the mods delete Trad's comment (but don't ban her from the site 🙄)
Yes. The not banning part. It's kind of frustrating. Conservative women get all the "second" chances in the world, it seems. I guess because they're "nice" when they spout their misogynistic takes? Meanwhile, abrasive feminist women should "know better", I suppose. Idk, I am not fully aware of all that goes on "behind the scenes" in moderating/administrating Ovarit, this is all just based on what limited scope I can see from and also "vibes." I could be off-base.

I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative (as for explicitly anti-choice/forced-birth women, I simply have no idea why women with such internalized misogyny are allowed to stay when a large chunk of their psyche is essentially "women deserve to be tortured and risk death because literally the sheer concept of a baby being born is more important than that woman", but hey, it's a site for "all women" so...), which I know is probably not what you are saying, it's more of the fact that a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules? It's tricky, and this is where I see Ovarit admins/mods having a hard time. This starts to get into the paradox of tolerance, which is tricky to implement in "big tent" online communities.

Possum "every website eventually becomes an echo chamber, so it's time to decide what kind of echo chamber this will be." is an awesome line, I love it. I dislike echo chambers but yeah on social media it's unavoidable so maybe we should go for the less shitty echo chamber.
Agreed. In fact I remember in the past writing a comment on Ovarit, something to the effect of "I know this place is a bit of an echo chamber" and I remember getting a decent amount of pushback on that, with people claiming "no it's not! I see plenty of opinions I don't agree with!" which, yes fair, however it is clear that the website is, for instance, "hostile" to people who are TRAs, and more recently TIPs. In fact, TIMs (the transgender-identifying men who specifically claim to be women) are explicitly banned by virtue of being misogynistic trolls (from my understanding). My point isn't whether this is right or wrong, my point is that there is already specific criteria that blocks out certain viewpoints. How is that not at least an inoculation point for, the possibility of the beginning of, an echo chamber? (And I made that comment months before the "Elephant in the Room" thread, which signifies to me the the vibe has gotten significantly worse since I said that.)

Just based on some of my personal experience with "no censorship" online communities, my guess is Ovarit will continue to slowly become more and more of a conservative "echo chamber," with the quotes being necessary because their message can always be "it's for all women," but it's more of "all women*" with an asterisk because a lot of leftist/liberal/feminist women will just simply not go there for the most part. It's not because they're banned, but simply because it might not feel like a comfortable place to have a genuine discussion beyond the small subset of issues that feminists, gender critical leftists, anti-trans people, and conservative women can agree on: sex is real and immutable, men cannot be women, women's spaces/rights should be based on biological sex. Beyond that, meh.

Cloven Hooves is an "echo chamber." No doubt, no need to be shy about it. By its vetting process alone, and by the introductory account registration message, it consists of women of a certain narrow range of political stances, with a little bit of leeway here and there. It's been that way since the start. I have read that attempting to create such a place, a feminist online community, is going to be "fraught" and a "bad idea", but I think figured it was worth an honest try. We shall see, I suppose.

I hope that at least having some self-awareness that this place is an echo chamber can invoke humility in members.

   


YesYourNigel In fact I'm surprised you mentioned conservative women support surrogacy because that's something liberal feminists are notorious for.
I'm not too sure about conservative women supporting surrogacy, but I do know conservatives are anti-choice in part because it provides conservative women to have their "pick of the litter" when it comes to adopting a "fresh" [white] baby:

What Amy Coney Barrett's Roe v. Wade Remarks Get Wrong About Adoption "Both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting, and insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which forced parenting, forced motherhood, would hinder women's access to the workplace and to equal opportunities, it's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy," Barrett, who has two adopted children, said. "Why don't the safe haven laws take care of that problem?"

Experts and researchers told Newsweek that Barrett's argument ignores the burden of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, and minimizes the impact that placing a baby up for adoption can have on birth parents as well as the children involved.
From Newsweek

YesYourNigel Despite my disagreement with the characterised logic behind the motivations of conservative women, my god is it good to hear a space called a spade and not have to walk on eggshells because poor widdle conserwative women might get chased away 😥
I am glad to hear that. I am trying to not have this place subjected to "tone policing" and respectability politics. I assume things might get spicy at some point, I guess we'll have to see how high on the Scoville scale we can get before some serious rift happens. I figure if this place gets big enough, I'll probably have to make some serious mod calls, but I'll just not think about it and cross that bridge when we get there. :catcringe:

I'm hoping as long as we can do a combination of engaging in good faith, largely staying focused on criticizing the patriarchal structures that keep all women oppressed, and assuming every other women here is guided under a goal of furthering women's liberation, we should be okay for a bit..? lol

YesYourNigel The only thing that treating conservativism with kiddie gloves does is it enables and normalises more conservative rhetoric which attracts more conservatives like flies to shit, and ends up chasing away or straight up banning actual feminist women who won't stay quiet and walk on eggshells.
Mood. The entire reason this place is here is because well over six years ago, after confusedly checking on r/GenderCritical multiple times to understand what the hell that place was on about with gender, a post lit up my little "makeup is a misogynistic mask" part of my mind (a part that had been pushed back in a corner because the mainstream feminism I was offered was largely "makeup is empowering YAAASSS QUEEEEEN eYeliNeR sHaRp eNoUgH tO KilL a MaN hahaha werk it slayyyy!!!"), a post that likely forthrightly talked about the sexism of makeup and beauty culture. Like, it was just accepted that makeup and beauty culture was misogynistic, and the post went on from that basis. In libfem spaces, such a discussion could not prevail, it would be "too mean." Some women are comforted by makeup, don't you know? It makes some women feel good about themselves. So stop being so rude about it!! If the same level of excuses that goes towards conservative women on Ovarit went towards beauty culture (like it does in neolibfem spaces) on r/GenderCritical, I think it would have taken me much, much longer to find radical feminism. How tf are feminist women, or women interested in radical feminism, supposed to have class-based analyses, when a large subset of women on the left and right remain stuck in a codependent relationship with individualism and internalized misogyny?

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Elsacat
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Jan 10 2025, 9:26 AM
#12
(Jan 10 2025, 12:06 AM)Clover "what vibes is this website even signaling to people now?"

I'm having some big struggles with that right now. Example: the nonstop praise of Elon Musk re: the grooming gangs in the UK. In a women's liberation subforum of all things. He is NOT a good person, NOT a savior to women. He is not the only person who has drawn attention to those gangs and their behavior.
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Elsacat
Jan 10 2025, 9:26 AM #12

(Jan 10 2025, 12:06 AM)Clover "what vibes is this website even signaling to people now?"

I'm having some big struggles with that right now. Example: the nonstop praise of Elon Musk re: the grooming gangs in the UK. In a women's liberation subforum of all things. He is NOT a good person, NOT a savior to women. He is not the only person who has drawn attention to those gangs and their behavior.

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YesYourNigel
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Jan 10 2025, 10:43 AM
#13
Quote:on the surface the website looks like a "general" group of women criticizing "the left," which might make people think "oh, this is a place for conservative women" due to all-or-nothing thinking, which then I think causes a bit of a feedback loop (liberal women think it isn't the place for them, and conservative women think it is the place for them).

Another crucial ingredient (aside from mods' double standards) is having a common enemy. Both sides will dump on the same group and bond over it despite doing it for completely different reasons, but will think they're in the presence of like-minded people. And then your buddies start adding more and more of their conservative takes in and the mods start side-eyeing you for "hostility" if you don't go all "mhm mhm quite intriguing points, fellow madam".

Quote:I'm not too sure about conservative women supporting surrogacy, but I do know conservatives are anti-choice in part because it provides conservative women to have their "pick of the litter" when it comes to adopting a "fresh" [white] baby

Putting babies up for adoption is an "out" that conservatives give without actually intending the person to go through with it, kinda like "You can just be GNC instead of being trans" or the liberal attitudes towards prostitution that no-one actually respects or wants. They're also counting on the woman bonding with the baby so she'll never put it up for adoption - adoption is just a superficial carrot on a stick they can use to create the illusion of a safety net for women. As for who's going to take care of the baby, idk, someone will as long as it's not me. I don't think conservatives actually want to adopt, it's not "natural", esp for the man trying to spread his genes around.

Conservative women do not think "What if I'm infertile?" or "What if he beats me?" or "What about my eventual career prospects as a housewife?" or "What if he leaves and I'm a single mother?" or "What happens when I'm not young, skinny and attractive anymore?". It's just not going to happen because it doesn't happen in the fairy tale. If/once it does happen, they'll be convinced they deserved it for being bad women and take pride in just how much abuse they can take without complaining about it like those other spoiled women. Remember conservative women get abused as much as any other woman. They just think it's a mark of pride and resilliance to take it all lying down.

Because women learned to internalise all their problems, that means they're always the problem, not the men. Very specific subsets of men that their Nigels don't like could be a problem (i.e. brown men, TIMs) but that's just because it allows white men to better market their own protection racket. ofc the real cause of the problem is never men, but always sth else that makes your next-door misogynist look good in comparison - the race, the trans ideology, political leanings, lack of religion (or being religious, in liberal circles)...but certainly not men just being misogynists like they always were.

Quote:I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative

I'm curious why you think they shouldn't be banned. Ovarit was supposed to be feminist (which is still noticeable in specific subcommunities there even if GC is a shitshow) so I just don't know what conservative women could contribute, other than just parroting whatever "own" their Nigel wants to hurl at the feminazis.

Quote:I remember getting a decent amount of pushback on that, with people claiming "no it's not! I see plenty of opinions I don't agree with!"

Opinions like "women shouldn't be denied bodily autonomy"? lol

That's always my thought when I see this. Hmm is this said by a conservative anti-trans woman who thinks any feminism is "too far" or by a feminist who thinks herself very tolerant for entertaining conservative points as if they have any merit just because they happen to be on the same site?
Edited Jan 10 2025, 10:45 AM by YesYourNigel.
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YesYourNigel
Jan 10 2025, 10:43 AM #13

Quote:on the surface the website looks like a "general" group of women criticizing "the left," which might make people think "oh, this is a place for conservative women" due to all-or-nothing thinking, which then I think causes a bit of a feedback loop (liberal women think it isn't the place for them, and conservative women think it is the place for them).

Another crucial ingredient (aside from mods' double standards) is having a common enemy. Both sides will dump on the same group and bond over it despite doing it for completely different reasons, but will think they're in the presence of like-minded people. And then your buddies start adding more and more of their conservative takes in and the mods start side-eyeing you for "hostility" if you don't go all "mhm mhm quite intriguing points, fellow madam".

Quote:I'm not too sure about conservative women supporting surrogacy, but I do know conservatives are anti-choice in part because it provides conservative women to have their "pick of the litter" when it comes to adopting a "fresh" [white] baby

Putting babies up for adoption is an "out" that conservatives give without actually intending the person to go through with it, kinda like "You can just be GNC instead of being trans" or the liberal attitudes towards prostitution that no-one actually respects or wants. They're also counting on the woman bonding with the baby so she'll never put it up for adoption - adoption is just a superficial carrot on a stick they can use to create the illusion of a safety net for women. As for who's going to take care of the baby, idk, someone will as long as it's not me. I don't think conservatives actually want to adopt, it's not "natural", esp for the man trying to spread his genes around.

Conservative women do not think "What if I'm infertile?" or "What if he beats me?" or "What about my eventual career prospects as a housewife?" or "What if he leaves and I'm a single mother?" or "What happens when I'm not young, skinny and attractive anymore?". It's just not going to happen because it doesn't happen in the fairy tale. If/once it does happen, they'll be convinced they deserved it for being bad women and take pride in just how much abuse they can take without complaining about it like those other spoiled women. Remember conservative women get abused as much as any other woman. They just think it's a mark of pride and resilliance to take it all lying down.

Because women learned to internalise all their problems, that means they're always the problem, not the men. Very specific subsets of men that their Nigels don't like could be a problem (i.e. brown men, TIMs) but that's just because it allows white men to better market their own protection racket. ofc the real cause of the problem is never men, but always sth else that makes your next-door misogynist look good in comparison - the race, the trans ideology, political leanings, lack of religion (or being religious, in liberal circles)...but certainly not men just being misogynists like they always were.

Quote:I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative

I'm curious why you think they shouldn't be banned. Ovarit was supposed to be feminist (which is still noticeable in specific subcommunities there even if GC is a shitshow) so I just don't know what conservative women could contribute, other than just parroting whatever "own" their Nigel wants to hurl at the feminazis.

Quote:I remember getting a decent amount of pushback on that, with people claiming "no it's not! I see plenty of opinions I don't agree with!"

Opinions like "women shouldn't be denied bodily autonomy"? lol

That's always my thought when I see this. Hmm is this said by a conservative anti-trans woman who thinks any feminism is "too far" or by a feminist who thinks herself very tolerant for entertaining conservative points as if they have any merit just because they happen to be on the same site?

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Possum
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Jan 10 2025, 12:55 PM
#14
YesYourNigel But every woman is brainwashed, literally from day one.
But university-educated women in western countries are significantly less brainwashed than, say, an illiterate woman living under Taliban control. I just can't see educated women voting for Trump as anything other than "fuck you I wanna be on top". They have the ability to read and think. They have the ability to make choices and they choose the worst possible option.

YesYourNigel They're really not. It doesn't make sense for women to care about who's the Madonna and who's the wh*re - they don't get anything out of that. Women "care" because men care, because MEN are the possessive narcissists who want a pure virgin they can control more easily and use as breeding stock, and women know their only hope for a normal life lies in sucking up to men.
This just isn't true for a lot of educated western women, especially younger women. This isn't the 70s. Things aren't perfect, but yes if you are educated and financially stable you can live a pretty normal life without having to suck up to men. Or at least not to the extent you need to suck up to men in a traditional culture. What you can't have is domination over marginalized women, which is what they gain from Trump.

YesYourNigel And there's a huge difference between two groups where one is told they deserve to exploit and oppress a whole group due to their fundamental natural inferiority, vs a group that's told all their life they're inferior and nothing but sex objects, and who desperately wants to distance themselves from that by projecting loyalty, obedience and tolerance of mistreatment.
But many women ARE told that they're superior and deserve to exploit and oppress groups who are fundamentally, naturally inferior. Calvinist women are raised to believe they are superior and deserve to exploit and oppress the poor. Women in racist communities are raised to believe they deserve to exploit and oppress WOC. They're raised to believe they're inferior to men yeah, but equally raised to believe that the inferior groups of women are beneath them. Even if we removed men from the equation I think we would still organize ourselves into these castes of "good woman who deserves to exploit" vs "bad woman who deserves to be exploited.".

YesYourNigel It's important to remember that male supremacism doesn't make a lick of sense for any woman to support. It's like a black person supporting white supremacism. It's always a defensive tactic meant to appease the oppressors, the "fawn" option from fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Which is also why we make a distinction between regular and internalised misogyny. Women parrot misogyny, men actually believe it.
My main disagreement is the "always" part of this. I think you're right about this in a lot of cases. But I don't think this applies in every single case. And I think it applies less and less the more freedom women have in society. Not saying that things are perfect, or that women are completely free. But there's more nuance to it than women are always acting out of brainwashing or desire for safety. I think a lot of these women are motivated by a desire to dominate 'lesser' women, not just a desire to protect themselves.

YesYourNigel Also, liberal women chase the same kind of approval from men, and will throw other women under the bus in order to get it, such as prostitutes and surrogates (things that religion at least nominally disapproves of, though usually not specifically out of any concern for women's rights). In fact I'm surprised you mentioned conservative women support surrogacy because that's something liberal feminists are notorious for.
Yeah I agree with this. Maybe instead of conservative vs liberal I should be using different phrasing. Because many liberal women have a similar attitude but instead of mommy-wife vs single-wh*re it's more like cool-sexy vs lame-prude. It's the same mindset just inverted to put the wh*re on top instead. Cool-sexy gets a lucrative social media platform in exchange for trashing lame-prude as a 'TERF'. Cool-sexy thinks prostitution is awesome as opposed to lame-prude who thinks prostitution is bad. Cool-sexy might even materially benefit from sexually exploiting other women, cool-sexy might run an 'ethical feminist' escort agency and coerce vulnerable women into 'empowering' themselves by joining, and might use this threat of being lame-prude as part of the coercion ("smart liberated women love sex work! Only lame-prude Christian wives disapprove of BDSM!").

I feel like I sound a bit hypocritical since I'm almost 'trashing' conservative women. And maybe I'm creating my own madonna/wh*re hierarchy with my women who hate women vs women who don't hate women categories. But I think the difference is that I genuinely believe that all women deserve to be safe even when I'm angry with them. I don't think a conservative woman should be punished for needing an abortion, and I equally don't think a liberal woman should be punished for getting assaulted at the sex-positive BDSM club. I don't want any group of women to lose their civil rights or suffer male violence. But there is a subset of women who just want to be on top and WILL cheer when the "bad woman" (whoever they've decided the bad woman is) gets hurt. They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place. Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid. There isn't always a sympathetic reason behind women hating women.

YesYourNigel This is a decidedly ideological, virtue-signaling kind of selfishness, and it's completely reliant on appeasing men. You lose the men around these women, and they'll eventually see reason. You lose the men around men, and they'll still keep screaming that they should get a bangmaid because they really really want one and why can't they have it WAAAAH
I think this probably sums up why we disagree. I think even without men, women are still going to organize into hierarchies and women on the top of the hierarchy will exploit lesser women on the bottom rung. Things would certainly be BETTER, I'm definitely not saying that women are as bad as men. Without men there will be significantly less violence and especially sexual violence. But I think if we lived on an alien female-only planet, there would still be "good girls" vs "bad girls". If a son was miraculously born on the female-only planet, I think his mother would develop patriarchal attitudes about what her son deserves because there's an instinct with parents to have their child succeed. I think if her son raped a woman, even without patriarchy she'd lean into rape myths about how her baby boy didn't do anything wrong because no parent wants to view their child as a monster. I think if her son fathered a child, she would develop patrilineal and 'father's rights' mindsets toward the baby/mother because that benefits both her son and herself (as the patrilineal grandmother).

YesYourNigel Despite my disagreement with the characterised logic behind the motivations of conservative women, my god is it good to hear a spade called a spade and not have to walk on eggshells because poor widdle conserwative women might get chased away 😥 
Same! For the record I enjoyed your comment even though I disagree with a lot of it. I like that I can argue with you on this forum without getting a thousand downvotes or being dogpiled lol.

Clover The other thing I've noticed about simply deleting right-wing women's comments is that their profile actually ends up getting unintentionally "sane-washed" on behalf of the Ovarit moderators.

Given that, I honestly think it'd be better if rule-breaking comments were left up, with an exception of the big no-no's like promoting violence or doxxing, with a moderator/admin response saying that this comment breaks the rules and perhaps a locking of that particular comment thread so no more replies can be added to it.
Yep definitely agree with this. The elephant in the room is that we all saw the sketchy comment, the poster is still there, the attitude is still there, the upvotes (and downvotes for anyone who pushed back) are still there. But there's no way to even discuss it aside from "the vibes are bad" because all evidence is gone. So we look crazy for complaining about a problem that doesn't even exist.

Clover I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative (as for explicitly anti-choice/forced-birth women, I simply have no idea why women with such internalized misogyny are allowed to stay when a large chunk of their psyche is essentially "women deserve to be tortured and risk death because literally the sheer concept of a baby being born is more important than that woman", but hey, it's a site for "all women" so...), which I know is probably not what you are saying, it's more of the fact that a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules? It's tricky, and this is where I see Ovarit admins/mods having a hard time. This starts to get into the paradox of tolerance, which is tricky to implement in "big tent" online communities.
Yeah "a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules" is my main problem with Ovarit. A woman can say "I think it's fine for lesbians to lose marriage rights and custody of their children for the greater good of stopping TRAs." and it's technically okay because it's 'polite'. But if I say "Wow that's really dumb" it's removed for being hostile. Not necessarily advocating for my right to call women dumb, but certain viewpoints should also be considered hostile even if they're said in a way that's technically polite. Like the trad statement is just as inflammatory and hostile as the "wow that's dumb" statement. Worse imo. Also honestly maybe some comments do deserve a low level of hostility. Obviously there's a line where it becomes abusive (and I have no idea where to draw that line wrt moderation) but if you say something like that on a feminist forum you should expect the lesbian posters to be hostile toward you because you're being hostile toward them.

I don't know if the solution is to ban conservative women automatically but I think moderation biased toward actual feminism is a good thing. I think the application questions and the idea of the Learning Channel subforum is smart. Like women who are more conservative or libfem are still able to participate somewhat but have limited posting privileges on the main forum to prevent derailing.
Edited Jan 10 2025, 1:03 PM by Possum.
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Possum
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Jan 10 2025, 12:55 PM #14

YesYourNigel But every woman is brainwashed, literally from day one.
But university-educated women in western countries are significantly less brainwashed than, say, an illiterate woman living under Taliban control. I just can't see educated women voting for Trump as anything other than "fuck you I wanna be on top". They have the ability to read and think. They have the ability to make choices and they choose the worst possible option.

YesYourNigel They're really not. It doesn't make sense for women to care about who's the Madonna and who's the wh*re - they don't get anything out of that. Women "care" because men care, because MEN are the possessive narcissists who want a pure virgin they can control more easily and use as breeding stock, and women know their only hope for a normal life lies in sucking up to men.
This just isn't true for a lot of educated western women, especially younger women. This isn't the 70s. Things aren't perfect, but yes if you are educated and financially stable you can live a pretty normal life without having to suck up to men. Or at least not to the extent you need to suck up to men in a traditional culture. What you can't have is domination over marginalized women, which is what they gain from Trump.

YesYourNigel And there's a huge difference between two groups where one is told they deserve to exploit and oppress a whole group due to their fundamental natural inferiority, vs a group that's told all their life they're inferior and nothing but sex objects, and who desperately wants to distance themselves from that by projecting loyalty, obedience and tolerance of mistreatment.
But many women ARE told that they're superior and deserve to exploit and oppress groups who are fundamentally, naturally inferior. Calvinist women are raised to believe they are superior and deserve to exploit and oppress the poor. Women in racist communities are raised to believe they deserve to exploit and oppress WOC. They're raised to believe they're inferior to men yeah, but equally raised to believe that the inferior groups of women are beneath them. Even if we removed men from the equation I think we would still organize ourselves into these castes of "good woman who deserves to exploit" vs "bad woman who deserves to be exploited.".

YesYourNigel It's important to remember that male supremacism doesn't make a lick of sense for any woman to support. It's like a black person supporting white supremacism. It's always a defensive tactic meant to appease the oppressors, the "fawn" option from fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Which is also why we make a distinction between regular and internalised misogyny. Women parrot misogyny, men actually believe it.
My main disagreement is the "always" part of this. I think you're right about this in a lot of cases. But I don't think this applies in every single case. And I think it applies less and less the more freedom women have in society. Not saying that things are perfect, or that women are completely free. But there's more nuance to it than women are always acting out of brainwashing or desire for safety. I think a lot of these women are motivated by a desire to dominate 'lesser' women, not just a desire to protect themselves.

YesYourNigel Also, liberal women chase the same kind of approval from men, and will throw other women under the bus in order to get it, such as prostitutes and surrogates (things that religion at least nominally disapproves of, though usually not specifically out of any concern for women's rights). In fact I'm surprised you mentioned conservative women support surrogacy because that's something liberal feminists are notorious for.
Yeah I agree with this. Maybe instead of conservative vs liberal I should be using different phrasing. Because many liberal women have a similar attitude but instead of mommy-wife vs single-wh*re it's more like cool-sexy vs lame-prude. It's the same mindset just inverted to put the wh*re on top instead. Cool-sexy gets a lucrative social media platform in exchange for trashing lame-prude as a 'TERF'. Cool-sexy thinks prostitution is awesome as opposed to lame-prude who thinks prostitution is bad. Cool-sexy might even materially benefit from sexually exploiting other women, cool-sexy might run an 'ethical feminist' escort agency and coerce vulnerable women into 'empowering' themselves by joining, and might use this threat of being lame-prude as part of the coercion ("smart liberated women love sex work! Only lame-prude Christian wives disapprove of BDSM!").

I feel like I sound a bit hypocritical since I'm almost 'trashing' conservative women. And maybe I'm creating my own madonna/wh*re hierarchy with my women who hate women vs women who don't hate women categories. But I think the difference is that I genuinely believe that all women deserve to be safe even when I'm angry with them. I don't think a conservative woman should be punished for needing an abortion, and I equally don't think a liberal woman should be punished for getting assaulted at the sex-positive BDSM club. I don't want any group of women to lose their civil rights or suffer male violence. But there is a subset of women who just want to be on top and WILL cheer when the "bad woman" (whoever they've decided the bad woman is) gets hurt. They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place. Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid. There isn't always a sympathetic reason behind women hating women.

YesYourNigel This is a decidedly ideological, virtue-signaling kind of selfishness, and it's completely reliant on appeasing men. You lose the men around these women, and they'll eventually see reason. You lose the men around men, and they'll still keep screaming that they should get a bangmaid because they really really want one and why can't they have it WAAAAH
I think this probably sums up why we disagree. I think even without men, women are still going to organize into hierarchies and women on the top of the hierarchy will exploit lesser women on the bottom rung. Things would certainly be BETTER, I'm definitely not saying that women are as bad as men. Without men there will be significantly less violence and especially sexual violence. But I think if we lived on an alien female-only planet, there would still be "good girls" vs "bad girls". If a son was miraculously born on the female-only planet, I think his mother would develop patriarchal attitudes about what her son deserves because there's an instinct with parents to have their child succeed. I think if her son raped a woman, even without patriarchy she'd lean into rape myths about how her baby boy didn't do anything wrong because no parent wants to view their child as a monster. I think if her son fathered a child, she would develop patrilineal and 'father's rights' mindsets toward the baby/mother because that benefits both her son and herself (as the patrilineal grandmother).

YesYourNigel Despite my disagreement with the characterised logic behind the motivations of conservative women, my god is it good to hear a spade called a spade and not have to walk on eggshells because poor widdle conserwative women might get chased away 😥 
Same! For the record I enjoyed your comment even though I disagree with a lot of it. I like that I can argue with you on this forum without getting a thousand downvotes or being dogpiled lol.

Clover The other thing I've noticed about simply deleting right-wing women's comments is that their profile actually ends up getting unintentionally "sane-washed" on behalf of the Ovarit moderators.

Given that, I honestly think it'd be better if rule-breaking comments were left up, with an exception of the big no-no's like promoting violence or doxxing, with a moderator/admin response saying that this comment breaks the rules and perhaps a locking of that particular comment thread so no more replies can be added to it.
Yep definitely agree with this. The elephant in the room is that we all saw the sketchy comment, the poster is still there, the attitude is still there, the upvotes (and downvotes for anyone who pushed back) are still there. But there's no way to even discuss it aside from "the vibes are bad" because all evidence is gone. So we look crazy for complaining about a problem that doesn't even exist.

Clover I don't know how I feel though about banning conservative women simply for being conservative (as for explicitly anti-choice/forced-birth women, I simply have no idea why women with such internalized misogyny are allowed to stay when a large chunk of their psyche is essentially "women deserve to be tortured and risk death because literally the sheer concept of a baby being born is more important than that woman", but hey, it's a site for "all women" so...), which I know is probably not what you are saying, it's more of the fact that a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules? It's tricky, and this is where I see Ovarit admins/mods having a hard time. This starts to get into the paradox of tolerance, which is tricky to implement in "big tent" online communities.
Yeah "a lot of what they write doesn't apparently seem to explicitly break any site rules" is my main problem with Ovarit. A woman can say "I think it's fine for lesbians to lose marriage rights and custody of their children for the greater good of stopping TRAs." and it's technically okay because it's 'polite'. But if I say "Wow that's really dumb" it's removed for being hostile. Not necessarily advocating for my right to call women dumb, but certain viewpoints should also be considered hostile even if they're said in a way that's technically polite. Like the trad statement is just as inflammatory and hostile as the "wow that's dumb" statement. Worse imo. Also honestly maybe some comments do deserve a low level of hostility. Obviously there's a line where it becomes abusive (and I have no idea where to draw that line wrt moderation) but if you say something like that on a feminist forum you should expect the lesbian posters to be hostile toward you because you're being hostile toward them.

I don't know if the solution is to ban conservative women automatically but I think moderation biased toward actual feminism is a good thing. I think the application questions and the idea of the Learning Channel subforum is smart. Like women who are more conservative or libfem are still able to participate somewhat but have limited posting privileges on the main forum to prevent derailing.

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Clover
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Jan 10 2025, 1:54 PM
#15
Elsacat Example: the nonstop praise of Elon Musk re: the grooming gangs in the UK. In a women's liberation subforum of all things. He is NOT a good person, NOT a savior to women. He is not the only person who has drawn attention to those gangs and their behavior.
Interesting how, as soon as Trump, a vile misogynistic selfish billionaire which continuously had excuses made for him on Ovarit because "at least he knows what a woman is!!", got elected, suddenly apparently Ovarit veers into praising other woman-hating shitbags like Musk and Andrew Tate, just in time for UK elections it seems? And this time I guess the point they'll drill into women's skulls is "rape gangs! rape gangs!! Your beautiful white blonde virgin Christian daughter is going to be abducted by a Muslim rape gang!!" Wow, totally not suspicious at all that the vibe on Ovarit has switched from fear-mongering about transgender-identifying people corrupting the children (and promoting the right-wing political party that does the same fear-mongering) to fear-mongering about brown people corrupting the children (and promoting the right-wing political party that does the same fear-mongering). All of this is not to suggest that I want to conclude with "we shouldn't be talking about these censored rape gangs in the UK," but that we shouldn't be promoting regressive authoritarian right-wing politicians along with it.


YesYourNigel I'm curious why you think they shouldn't be banned. Ovarit was supposed to be feminist (which is still noticeable in specific subcommunities there even if GC is a shitshow) so I just don't know what conservative women could contribute,
Well, I think any person who continually spouse regressive misogynistic rhetoric should probably be banned from a website that is supposed to be about promotion of women, but I don't know if that is happening (due to what I mentioned previously where it seems like conservative women get so many chances).

The reason why I think they shouldn't be banned (at least just for being conservative without spouting any misogynistic points) is because of Ovarit's apparent mission statement of being a place for "all women." So, it stands to reason it is also meant for right-wing women.

I'd need some evidence of anything that suggests that Ovarit was supposed to be feminist. From all that I can gather, at best it is run by radical feminists:
Ovarit admin Our mission here was for admins to be radical feminist, mods to be women, but for the site to be as broad as various mods wished - to the exclusion of male-centered communities or communities that we thought were harmful to women (we decided we didn’t want our money and time to be used for a GC Guys community or a pro-prostitution community, for instance).
From the stickied admin comment from the "elephant in the room" thread.

I wonder if there was some misunderstanding between those of us originally coming in from the freshly banned r/GenderCritical and the creators of Ovarit, about the website being a place for feminist women versus all women. It's kind of strange to me, because I never would have been interested in r/GenderCritical if it wasn't tied to feminism. The term "gender critical" is feminist in origin. So it's understandable to think that it was meant to be a feminist website. (Unless there is some serious retconning going on by Ovarit staff? But I do feel like their message as consistently been "it's for all women.")

As to what conservative women can contribute... Well, to me it looks like a bunch of standard fear-based right-wing rhetoric. So, nothing too surprising. However, considering the fact that every human being is a complex individual, and they are the way they are because of a series of complicated internal and external factors spanning across their entire lifetime. Allowing conservative women to have a space to talk opens up the possibility to analyze the factors that may have led them to become right-wing and/or anti-feminist.

For instance, sometimes I can see a take of theirs on something like organized religion that I haven't thought of. It causes me to consider new angles of why women might choose to worship a patriarchal structure, as well as broaden my range of arguments.

And as much as the arguments I have had with, say, forced-birthers have been demoralizing, and I'm not really sure if I can 100% say there weren't better ways I could have used my time, they did cause me to have to 1. interact with women with internalized misogyny who I disagree with and see where they're coming from, and 2. collect resources for, and identify any weak points in, my own arguments.

To be fair, a lot of moderate/lean-right/right-wing women's rhetoric on Ovarit from what I can tell isn't particularly surprising, I really don't see much different than what Dworkin wrote about in Right-wing Women. Sometimes people are predictable. (At the end of the day, no matter how complex of an individual we think we are, we all sleep, eat, piss, shit, and die.)

I do think there is value in having a community for all women, despite what I see going on now that has caused me to drastically decrease my participation on Ovarit. I think one of the best ways Ovarit could "stop the bleeding" is open up the creation of new circles. I brought this up in the elephant in the room thread. Clearly, there is some demand for communities for more "rigidly" leftist-feminist women. In my opinion, the gender critical and women's liberation circles feel a bit too "laissez-faire". If that's how the moderators want to run them, well that's their choice. Right now we're getting all stuffed in the same small set of circles. If it's a place for all women, why can't any woman make a circle? I think there are currently not enough circles on Ovarit to hold "all women." How many years and times has a black women/women of color circle been requested? I think Ovarit needs to prioritize allowing women to make circles that showcase diversity of women's thoughts and experiences like MarxistFeminism, BlackWomen, DianicTradition, etc. so that 1. there is more room for women to breathe and 2. these circles can be moderated by different standards.

   

(Also I see Possum's reply now after writing this, but I should probably actually work on a work day now instead of write more forum posts loool, so I'll come back again later. 😆)
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Clover
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Jan 10 2025, 1:54 PM #15

Elsacat Example: the nonstop praise of Elon Musk re: the grooming gangs in the UK. In a women's liberation subforum of all things. He is NOT a good person, NOT a savior to women. He is not the only person who has drawn attention to those gangs and their behavior.
Interesting how, as soon as Trump, a vile misogynistic selfish billionaire which continuously had excuses made for him on Ovarit because "at least he knows what a woman is!!", got elected, suddenly apparently Ovarit veers into praising other woman-hating shitbags like Musk and Andrew Tate, just in time for UK elections it seems? And this time I guess the point they'll drill into women's skulls is "rape gangs! rape gangs!! Your beautiful white blonde virgin Christian daughter is going to be abducted by a Muslim rape gang!!" Wow, totally not suspicious at all that the vibe on Ovarit has switched from fear-mongering about transgender-identifying people corrupting the children (and promoting the right-wing political party that does the same fear-mongering) to fear-mongering about brown people corrupting the children (and promoting the right-wing political party that does the same fear-mongering). All of this is not to suggest that I want to conclude with "we shouldn't be talking about these censored rape gangs in the UK," but that we shouldn't be promoting regressive authoritarian right-wing politicians along with it.


YesYourNigel I'm curious why you think they shouldn't be banned. Ovarit was supposed to be feminist (which is still noticeable in specific subcommunities there even if GC is a shitshow) so I just don't know what conservative women could contribute,
Well, I think any person who continually spouse regressive misogynistic rhetoric should probably be banned from a website that is supposed to be about promotion of women, but I don't know if that is happening (due to what I mentioned previously where it seems like conservative women get so many chances).

The reason why I think they shouldn't be banned (at least just for being conservative without spouting any misogynistic points) is because of Ovarit's apparent mission statement of being a place for "all women." So, it stands to reason it is also meant for right-wing women.

I'd need some evidence of anything that suggests that Ovarit was supposed to be feminist. From all that I can gather, at best it is run by radical feminists:
Ovarit admin Our mission here was for admins to be radical feminist, mods to be women, but for the site to be as broad as various mods wished - to the exclusion of male-centered communities or communities that we thought were harmful to women (we decided we didn’t want our money and time to be used for a GC Guys community or a pro-prostitution community, for instance).
From the stickied admin comment from the "elephant in the room" thread.

I wonder if there was some misunderstanding between those of us originally coming in from the freshly banned r/GenderCritical and the creators of Ovarit, about the website being a place for feminist women versus all women. It's kind of strange to me, because I never would have been interested in r/GenderCritical if it wasn't tied to feminism. The term "gender critical" is feminist in origin. So it's understandable to think that it was meant to be a feminist website. (Unless there is some serious retconning going on by Ovarit staff? But I do feel like their message as consistently been "it's for all women.")

As to what conservative women can contribute... Well, to me it looks like a bunch of standard fear-based right-wing rhetoric. So, nothing too surprising. However, considering the fact that every human being is a complex individual, and they are the way they are because of a series of complicated internal and external factors spanning across their entire lifetime. Allowing conservative women to have a space to talk opens up the possibility to analyze the factors that may have led them to become right-wing and/or anti-feminist.

For instance, sometimes I can see a take of theirs on something like organized religion that I haven't thought of. It causes me to consider new angles of why women might choose to worship a patriarchal structure, as well as broaden my range of arguments.

And as much as the arguments I have had with, say, forced-birthers have been demoralizing, and I'm not really sure if I can 100% say there weren't better ways I could have used my time, they did cause me to have to 1. interact with women with internalized misogyny who I disagree with and see where they're coming from, and 2. collect resources for, and identify any weak points in, my own arguments.

To be fair, a lot of moderate/lean-right/right-wing women's rhetoric on Ovarit from what I can tell isn't particularly surprising, I really don't see much different than what Dworkin wrote about in Right-wing Women. Sometimes people are predictable. (At the end of the day, no matter how complex of an individual we think we are, we all sleep, eat, piss, shit, and die.)

I do think there is value in having a community for all women, despite what I see going on now that has caused me to drastically decrease my participation on Ovarit. I think one of the best ways Ovarit could "stop the bleeding" is open up the creation of new circles. I brought this up in the elephant in the room thread. Clearly, there is some demand for communities for more "rigidly" leftist-feminist women. In my opinion, the gender critical and women's liberation circles feel a bit too "laissez-faire". If that's how the moderators want to run them, well that's their choice. Right now we're getting all stuffed in the same small set of circles. If it's a place for all women, why can't any woman make a circle? I think there are currently not enough circles on Ovarit to hold "all women." How many years and times has a black women/women of color circle been requested? I think Ovarit needs to prioritize allowing women to make circles that showcase diversity of women's thoughts and experiences like MarxistFeminism, BlackWomen, DianicTradition, etc. so that 1. there is more room for women to breathe and 2. these circles can be moderated by different standards.

   

(Also I see Possum's reply now after writing this, but I should probably actually work on a work day now instead of write more forum posts loool, so I'll come back again later. 😆)

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Clover
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Jan 10 2025, 8:10 PM
#16
Possum But I think the difference is that I genuinely believe that all women deserve to be safe even when I'm angry with them. I don't think a conservative woman should be punished for needing an abortion, and I equally don't think a liberal woman should be punished for getting assaulted at the sex-positive BDSM club. I don't want any group of women to lose their civil rights or suffer male violence. But there is a subset of women who just want to be on top and WILL cheer when the "bad woman" (whoever they've decided the bad woman is) gets hurt. They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place. Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid. There isn't always a sympathetic reason behind women hating women.
These are my thoughts as well.

“They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place.” In a similar vein to this, I think right-wing women often vote against women's best interests as a whole because of one specific thing that personally affects them. Apparently any collateral damage that poor women, lesbian and bisexual women, women of color, disabled women can face as a result of electing racist sexist right-wingers is fine because their one top issue of the election cycle was acknowledged by the right-wing party. Yeah, I'm talking about trans. One thing I have realized when trying to debate on Ovarit, is that it did not seem like any amount of progress on the left in terms of coming around on transgender politics mattered. Like, it didn't matter that Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender now existed. Nope, not good enough. Trump will actually fix it, but any Democrats who come forth trying aren't legitimate. It didn't matter that Republican administrations want to hack and slash Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, or that they want to destroy women's right to bodily autonomy, none of that matters. Because trans. Thankfully, poor women who no longer have Medicaid due to federal budget cuts can now rest easy knowing that Trump said "there are only 'two genders.'" God bless America.

“Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid.” This is my view. I don't understand how it isn't sexist to assume otherwise. There can be stupid/petty/sadistic men, and there can be stupid/petty/sadistic women. I don't find feminism to be a place where we're supposed believe all women are great. That's not the point. The point is we don't have to be great. We're just human. And the struggle is in getting people to recognize women's humanity.

Point being, I don't care how mean, rude, anti-feminist, conservative, stupid, petty, whatever, a woman is. She still deserves bodily autonomy, access to reproductive healthcare, domestic violence shelters, same-sex facilities, healthcare, food banks, etc. At the same time, that doesn't mean I have to tolerate their company in my free time or slog through their shit takes online.

Possum The elephant in the room is that we all saw the sketchy comment, the poster is still there, the attitude is still there, the upvotes (and downvotes for anyone who pushed back) are still there. But there's no way to even discuss it aside from "the vibes are bad" because all evidence is gone. So we look crazy for complaining about a problem that doesn't even exist.
Oh, and another thing that adds on to this, is there is some sort of Ovarit rule where like, you can't link to other comments from a user to call out past conversations, I guess it's to prevent drama? Which makes total sense, but then it becomes harder to point out a pattern of behavior..?

I've never even tried to report some users for what I feel like is trolling, participating in bad faith, or maybe even astroturfing. It's not like I collect and document every single instance of a user being "sus", that sounds like a huge fucking hassle and waste of time. Do the admins want me to look like this??

   

But even then, I did once start up a draft to send to the Ovarit admins to discuss my general concerns with some users, but I felt like it was stupid and they were just going to dismiss me as some tinfoil hat whacko, so I just scrapped it and didn't care. Who would want to be the person who brings up concerns with some users participating in bad faith, only for the admins to be like "mmmm... nahhhh". Like, I just don't want to know. Either they'll think I'm crazy or not. If they think I'm crazy, well then that sucks. Then they might disregard any further concerns from me, so what's the point? But if they think I'm not crazy, then why the hell were the users I was concerned about been allowed to just tromp around for so long trolling, astroturfing, or participating in bad faith? It's a no-win situation, it's just not worth my time. I'd rather spend my energy elsewhere. (Reddit :puke: lol, radblr, feminist discord servers, here.)

Possum A woman can say "I think it's fine for lesbians to lose marriage rights and custody of their children for the greater good of stopping TRAs." and it's technically okay because it's 'polite'. But if I say "Wow that's really dumb" it's removed for being hostile. Not necessarily advocating for my right to call women dumb, but certain viewpoints should also be considered hostile even if they're said in a way that's technically polite.
It hella reminds me of respectability politics and it's just gross. I have seen this happen in online places aside from Ovarit, and it's so frustrating. A right-winger can have such a dehumanizing or callous take towards a marginalized group, which someone from a marginalized group might take offense to and "reasonably" lash out at, and well the marginalized group member is at fault because they lashed out. 🙄 Yes, we can all agree that lashing out at people isn't ideal, but somehow the focus of wrongdoing is on the person who lashed out at somebody being prejudiced rather than the person who was being prejudiced to begin with. The person being prejudiced gets the equivalent punishment of receiving an annoyed sigh, while the marginalized upset group member gets a warning. Somehow, the marginalized group member "should know better," but the privileged individual who made a slight against the marginalized group "doesn't know better"; the latter is "excusable," but the former isn't. Make it make sense.

The fact that a person can keep "politely" stating their regressive views, over and over and over, and keep getting away with it, while constantly tiring out and insulting marginalized groups, whose only options are to pOLiTLeY disassemble bigotry (exhausting), ignore the bigotry (makes it seem like it's okay), or just stop participating (same results as ignoring it but worse since it now involves the loss of a marginalized voice)... It's just so exhausting.

Possum I think the application questions and the idea of the Learning Channel subforum is smart. Like women who are more conservative or libfem are still able to participate somewhat but have limited posting privileges on the main forum to prevent derailing.
Yeah, I got the idea from the RadLeft Unity Discord server, if someone doesn't get through the application they can end up in the learning channel and still chat with everyone and maybe get more information on topics that they might not have known about otherwise. Part of me worries it's a bit patronizing on the forum (I think it works pretty good on the Discord server, but on a forum it feels different), but I don't know any better way of allowing women who aren't actually aligned with radical feminist/gender critical feminist politics to participate without the whole forum turning into a hassle to moderate. Oh well, right now I'd honestly rather be more strict with admissions and thus have less moderation needs than the other way around.
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Clover
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Jan 10 2025, 8:10 PM #16

Possum But I think the difference is that I genuinely believe that all women deserve to be safe even when I'm angry with them. I don't think a conservative woman should be punished for needing an abortion, and I equally don't think a liberal woman should be punished for getting assaulted at the sex-positive BDSM club. I don't want any group of women to lose their civil rights or suffer male violence. But there is a subset of women who just want to be on top and WILL cheer when the "bad woman" (whoever they've decided the bad woman is) gets hurt. They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place. Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid. There isn't always a sympathetic reason behind women hating women.
These are my thoughts as well.

“They WILL vote against their best interests for the satisfaction of putting the bad woman in her place.” In a similar vein to this, I think right-wing women often vote against women's best interests as a whole because of one specific thing that personally affects them. Apparently any collateral damage that poor women, lesbian and bisexual women, women of color, disabled women can face as a result of electing racist sexist right-wingers is fine because their one top issue of the election cycle was acknowledged by the right-wing party. Yeah, I'm talking about trans. One thing I have realized when trying to debate on Ovarit, is that it did not seem like any amount of progress on the left in terms of coming around on transgender politics mattered. Like, it didn't matter that Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender now existed. Nope, not good enough. Trump will actually fix it, but any Democrats who come forth trying aren't legitimate. It didn't matter that Republican administrations want to hack and slash Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, or that they want to destroy women's right to bodily autonomy, none of that matters. Because trans. Thankfully, poor women who no longer have Medicaid due to federal budget cuts can now rest easy knowing that Trump said "there are only 'two genders.'" God bless America.

“Women are human and humans can be petty, vindictive, sadistic, and stupid.” This is my view. I don't understand how it isn't sexist to assume otherwise. There can be stupid/petty/sadistic men, and there can be stupid/petty/sadistic women. I don't find feminism to be a place where we're supposed believe all women are great. That's not the point. The point is we don't have to be great. We're just human. And the struggle is in getting people to recognize women's humanity.

Point being, I don't care how mean, rude, anti-feminist, conservative, stupid, petty, whatever, a woman is. She still deserves bodily autonomy, access to reproductive healthcare, domestic violence shelters, same-sex facilities, healthcare, food banks, etc. At the same time, that doesn't mean I have to tolerate their company in my free time or slog through their shit takes online.

Possum The elephant in the room is that we all saw the sketchy comment, the poster is still there, the attitude is still there, the upvotes (and downvotes for anyone who pushed back) are still there. But there's no way to even discuss it aside from "the vibes are bad" because all evidence is gone. So we look crazy for complaining about a problem that doesn't even exist.
Oh, and another thing that adds on to this, is there is some sort of Ovarit rule where like, you can't link to other comments from a user to call out past conversations, I guess it's to prevent drama? Which makes total sense, but then it becomes harder to point out a pattern of behavior..?

I've never even tried to report some users for what I feel like is trolling, participating in bad faith, or maybe even astroturfing. It's not like I collect and document every single instance of a user being "sus", that sounds like a huge fucking hassle and waste of time. Do the admins want me to look like this??

   

But even then, I did once start up a draft to send to the Ovarit admins to discuss my general concerns with some users, but I felt like it was stupid and they were just going to dismiss me as some tinfoil hat whacko, so I just scrapped it and didn't care. Who would want to be the person who brings up concerns with some users participating in bad faith, only for the admins to be like "mmmm... nahhhh". Like, I just don't want to know. Either they'll think I'm crazy or not. If they think I'm crazy, well then that sucks. Then they might disregard any further concerns from me, so what's the point? But if they think I'm not crazy, then why the hell were the users I was concerned about been allowed to just tromp around for so long trolling, astroturfing, or participating in bad faith? It's a no-win situation, it's just not worth my time. I'd rather spend my energy elsewhere. (Reddit :puke: lol, radblr, feminist discord servers, here.)

Possum A woman can say "I think it's fine for lesbians to lose marriage rights and custody of their children for the greater good of stopping TRAs." and it's technically okay because it's 'polite'. But if I say "Wow that's really dumb" it's removed for being hostile. Not necessarily advocating for my right to call women dumb, but certain viewpoints should also be considered hostile even if they're said in a way that's technically polite.
It hella reminds me of respectability politics and it's just gross. I have seen this happen in online places aside from Ovarit, and it's so frustrating. A right-winger can have such a dehumanizing or callous take towards a marginalized group, which someone from a marginalized group might take offense to and "reasonably" lash out at, and well the marginalized group member is at fault because they lashed out. 🙄 Yes, we can all agree that lashing out at people isn't ideal, but somehow the focus of wrongdoing is on the person who lashed out at somebody being prejudiced rather than the person who was being prejudiced to begin with. The person being prejudiced gets the equivalent punishment of receiving an annoyed sigh, while the marginalized upset group member gets a warning. Somehow, the marginalized group member "should know better," but the privileged individual who made a slight against the marginalized group "doesn't know better"; the latter is "excusable," but the former isn't. Make it make sense.

The fact that a person can keep "politely" stating their regressive views, over and over and over, and keep getting away with it, while constantly tiring out and insulting marginalized groups, whose only options are to pOLiTLeY disassemble bigotry (exhausting), ignore the bigotry (makes it seem like it's okay), or just stop participating (same results as ignoring it but worse since it now involves the loss of a marginalized voice)... It's just so exhausting.

Possum I think the application questions and the idea of the Learning Channel subforum is smart. Like women who are more conservative or libfem are still able to participate somewhat but have limited posting privileges on the main forum to prevent derailing.
Yeah, I got the idea from the RadLeft Unity Discord server, if someone doesn't get through the application they can end up in the learning channel and still chat with everyone and maybe get more information on topics that they might not have known about otherwise. Part of me worries it's a bit patronizing on the forum (I think it works pretty good on the Discord server, but on a forum it feels different), but I don't know any better way of allowing women who aren't actually aligned with radical feminist/gender critical feminist politics to participate without the whole forum turning into a hassle to moderate. Oh well, right now I'd honestly rather be more strict with admissions and thus have less moderation needs than the other way around.

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Possum
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Jan 11 2025, 3:17 PM
#17
Clover In a similar vein to this, I think right-wing women often vote against women's best interests as a whole because of one specific thing that personally affects them.
I think this must be part of the rightwing playbook on how to attract female voters. It's the same as abortion, tons of religious women are single-issue voters on abortion because "think of the babies" despite the right being awful for moms and babies in every other way. And this seems to have been a very intentional and calculated move by the right, Evangelicals probably always disapproved of abortion but around the 70s-80s you start to see this really extremist, almost holy war style religious fervor to "save" the "babies" that are being "murdered".

Also oh man I am that Charlie Kelly meme 24/7 about internet drama. I know it makes me sound like a crackpot so I try not to rant about it too much but I've been online since I was a kid and I feel like I've developed a spidey sense for propaganda. I was really into video games, tech, etc as a teen so I was lurking male-dominated internet communities and had male gaming buddies and I watched the shift happen in real time from "edgy" humor into "ironic" bigotry into overt Stormfront recruiting, Gamergate, and birth of the alt right as a real political force. I feel like the same patterns are repeating but it's impossible to explain it without sounding like a conspiracy nutter.

Ovarit just gives me a similar vibe. My wildest crackpot theory is that TPTB are trying to create a female version of what happened with "anti-SJW" males leading up to 2016. Not just on Ovarit but across female-dominated internet communities. There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.

I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it. It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling.

Before someone misinterprets me I don't mean that white Western women are evil Karens and their mere existence gives me a bad gut feeling. I just mean that disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women are being targeted with rightwing propaganda the same way disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western men are. And THAT gives me a very, very bad gut feeling. Especially since the female version of this propaganda is using feminist/gender critical aesthetics to make it seem legitimate. It's like a dual-pronged attack on radical feminist consciousness. Leftwing propaganda says "Real feminism is about lady penis, TERFs are alt right", rightwing propaganda says "TERFs are alt right but that's GOOD actually because Trump totally cares about women!!!".
Edited Jan 11 2025, 3:18 PM by Possum.
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Possum
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Jan 11 2025, 3:17 PM #17

Clover In a similar vein to this, I think right-wing women often vote against women's best interests as a whole because of one specific thing that personally affects them.
I think this must be part of the rightwing playbook on how to attract female voters. It's the same as abortion, tons of religious women are single-issue voters on abortion because "think of the babies" despite the right being awful for moms and babies in every other way. And this seems to have been a very intentional and calculated move by the right, Evangelicals probably always disapproved of abortion but around the 70s-80s you start to see this really extremist, almost holy war style religious fervor to "save" the "babies" that are being "murdered".

Also oh man I am that Charlie Kelly meme 24/7 about internet drama. I know it makes me sound like a crackpot so I try not to rant about it too much but I've been online since I was a kid and I feel like I've developed a spidey sense for propaganda. I was really into video games, tech, etc as a teen so I was lurking male-dominated internet communities and had male gaming buddies and I watched the shift happen in real time from "edgy" humor into "ironic" bigotry into overt Stormfront recruiting, Gamergate, and birth of the alt right as a real political force. I feel like the same patterns are repeating but it's impossible to explain it without sounding like a conspiracy nutter.

Ovarit just gives me a similar vibe. My wildest crackpot theory is that TPTB are trying to create a female version of what happened with "anti-SJW" males leading up to 2016. Not just on Ovarit but across female-dominated internet communities. There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.

I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it. It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling.

Before someone misinterprets me I don't mean that white Western women are evil Karens and their mere existence gives me a bad gut feeling. I just mean that disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women are being targeted with rightwing propaganda the same way disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western men are. And THAT gives me a very, very bad gut feeling. Especially since the female version of this propaganda is using feminist/gender critical aesthetics to make it seem legitimate. It's like a dual-pronged attack on radical feminist consciousness. Leftwing propaganda says "Real feminism is about lady penis, TERFs are alt right", rightwing propaganda says "TERFs are alt right but that's GOOD actually because Trump totally cares about women!!!".

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komorebi
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” – Audre Lorde
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Jan 11 2025, 3:21 PM
#18
(Jan 11 2025, 3:17 PM)Possum Ovarit just gives me a similar vibe. My wildest crackpot theory is that TPTB are trying to create a female version of what happened with "anti-SJW" males leading up to 2016. Not just on Ovarit but across female-dominated internet communities. There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.

I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it. It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling.

I hate that your theory makes total sense. Lemme just get my tinfoil hat...
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komorebi
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” – Audre Lorde
Jan 11 2025, 3:21 PM #18

(Jan 11 2025, 3:17 PM)Possum Ovarit just gives me a similar vibe. My wildest crackpot theory is that TPTB are trying to create a female version of what happened with "anti-SJW" males leading up to 2016. Not just on Ovarit but across female-dominated internet communities. There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.

I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it. It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling.

I hate that your theory makes total sense. Lemme just get my tinfoil hat...

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Elsacat
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Jan 11 2025, 9:37 PM
#19
I'm tinfoil hatting over here too. I think there are people with bad intentions who've gotten access to the site by saying enough anti-trans things to get invites from others, and then they invite more of their own. I'm not even talking about garden-variety trolls or TRA invaders, who i'm sure are present on Ovarit to some extent.
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Elsacat
Jan 11 2025, 9:37 PM #19

I'm tinfoil hatting over here too. I think there are people with bad intentions who've gotten access to the site by saying enough anti-trans things to get invites from others, and then they invite more of their own. I'm not even talking about garden-variety trolls or TRA invaders, who i'm sure are present on Ovarit to some extent.

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Clover
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Jan 12 2025, 5:53 PM
#20
Possum Also oh man I am that Charlie Kelly meme 24/7 about internet drama. I know it makes me sound like a crackpot so I try not to rant about it too much but I've been online since I was a kid and I feel like I've developed a spidey sense for propaganda. I was really into video games, tech, etc as a teen so I was lurking male-dominated internet communities and had male gaming buddies and I watched the shift happen in real time from "edgy" humor into "ironic" bigotry into overt Stormfront recruiting, Gamergate, and birth of the alt right as a real political force. I feel like the same patterns are repeating but it's impossible to explain it without sounding like a conspiracy nutter.
Big mood. I guess we can be tinfoil hat crackpots together. Looks like there's several of us here now lol. I'mma need to go buy some bulk tinfoil from Costco for this discussion. But yeah, I've been a chronically online child of the internet since I was about ten or so. I've been involved in weird internet communities, fandoms, etc. for a long time. I also was a degenerate who browsed /b/ in her free time as a teenager. Point being, I feel like I have a decent grasp on internet culture and how online discussions and communities can morph over time.

Possum There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.
I can totally see that. And /o/TransLogic is one of the "best" circles for promoting such a thing. It's full of low-hanging fruit, and easily dips into bullying and petty insults towards the appearances of transgender-identifying persons. A lot of times it's not even about logic anymore, just making fun of them for being ugly. Hate is easy. Find a group to hate, feed that hate, encourage people to vote based on hate. There's the right-wing way. I'm still unsure how much of it is a deliberate right-wing pipeline (cuz tbf sometimes TIPs, especially TIMs, are ridiculous levels of delusional and rude, so I understand clapping back at them) versus actually people obliviously creating one (likely with the friendly encouragement of alt-right astroturfers).

Possum I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it.
Same, I do not think the admins of Ovarit are intentionally trying to shift it into a propaganda mill, but the way they are currently moderating does not help stop a slow backslide into potential conservative echo chambers or alt-right safe havens.

I would also argue Ovarit is not free speech. That much I have personally witnessed from seeing feminist takes removed for reasons I can only amount to them being "too spicy". Threads that get too heated or have a potential to get that way are often locked. When comments veer too far "off topic" or "meta" (discussing Ovarit) they are removed. It's not a free speech platform, it is some attempt at railroaded discussions towards women's liberation that apparently happens to let conservative Christian women feel quite comfy. I worry that Ovarit is falling into the same "trap" that the second wave feminist movement did, which is ignoring intersectionality in favor of focusing on the "purely female". Conveniently, the straight white Christian conservative woman (especially in the context of the Western world) is the one least likely to have to deal with any other intersections of oppression. She can focus solely on the oppression of being female. As a result, when intersections of oppression get brought up, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, she can say "we'll were focusing on all women's oppression!" without needing to consider how her race, religion, sexuality, class, etc. might mean she is not always "the victim" in every given scenario and there are indeed privileges she may have in the world compared to other people, especially other women. It kind of reminds me of a similar vein to "all lives matter."

Possum It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling. [...] I just mean that disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women are being targeted with rightwing propaganda the same way disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western men are. And THAT gives me a very, very bad gut feeling.
Well, regarding all this and what I've also discussed above in this post, I think it's safe to say you're not alone. A few nights ago I was trying to find a YouTube video where a radfem discussed getting banned from Ovarit. I had seen the thumbnail in the past, but never bothered to watch it. Well, given recent events I was curious. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video anymore. However, while I was searching for "Ovarit" on the internet, I stumbled across some Lipstick Alley posts discussing Ovarit. One was titled Racism and General White Women-ness on Ovarit: A Rant, and the discussions in that thread started in 2021 and went all the way up to 2024 after the US federal elections. Another was Racism is not worse than misogyny, let alone gruesome [sex] abuse (Ovarit.com post) where the OP shares the text of an Ovarit post in her OP (it might be a bit unclear at first since no "quote" styling was used) and discusses her disdain for the white women of Ovarit essentially creating "hierarchies of oppression" where they can justify racism to counteract misogyny. The comments in both of these Lipstick Alley posts are insightful and can arguably be considered quite "spicy" compared to Ovarit, especially due to rules about misogynistic slurs (calling other women bitches, hoes, etc.) which would not have flied on Ovarit. However does the use of, what some feminist women consider, misogynistic slurs while making their points make any of their thoughts less valid as women? It looks like a some posters in the first thread have been banned from Ovarit or just never participated due to the perceived overwhelming whiteness of the website, and their recognition of the website's "focus" on the concerns of white middle-class women (who skew conservative) has been noticed since 2021.

Reading those Lipstick Alley posts felt "affirming", for lack of a better word. Something is not vibing on Ovarit, no matter what the group of women completely comfortable on Ovarit may claim, and I and any others who sense it are not crazy. If a group of women, in this case the black women of Lipstick Alley, sense that it does not feel like Ovarit represents them and they do not want to participate on it, then how can Ovarit talk in their mission statement “online conversation platforms are increasingly restricting the bounds of “permissible” speech and banning, silencing, and otherwise deplatforming women who want to talk about women’s rights and women’s issues on our own terms” without a hint of irony?

It's also interesting to see in these Lipstick Alley threads how there seems to be minimal deletions, women are allowed to disagree, and yes, discussions can get heated, without things getting locked. One thing they mention in the first thread is the censorship and deletions they see on Ovarit. I assume Lipstick Alley is not moderated in such a way like Ovarit, where such moderation causes women to feel silenced. I feel like I especially notice this when people get a bit meta in an Ovarit thread which can swiftly be considered "off-topic" and therefore removed. The issue is, "what you resist, persists."

Possum It's like a dual-pronged attack on radical feminist consciousness. Leftwing propaganda says "Real feminism is about lady penis, TERFs are alt right", rightwing propaganda says "TERFs are alt right but that's GOOD actually because Trump totally cares about women!!!".
Oh damn, that's such a good way to put it, I hate it lol. 😩😭 The double whammy. Radfems can try to spend her time trying to reason with the left-wing because that's where her philosophy is based in, only for the right-wingers to storm in while she's in the middle of making her points with "YEAH FUCK TR*NNIES!! I'D KILL ANY MAN WHO TRICKED ME INTO THINKING THEY'RE A WOMAN DURING A DATE. #PROUDTERF!! GOD MADE ONLY TWO GENDERS 💜🤍💚 MAGA!!" Like bro gtfo we're nothing alike :catcringe: I'm sick of this attempted force-teaming. It's like that bird/crow meme: feminists trying to make nuanced points and then conservatives barrel in screaming and flailing, derailing the conversation and impeding progress.

The neolibs want to force-team radfems and the alt-right because then they can convince anyone left-leaning/liberal/progressive to dismiss radical feminism and gender criticism so they can continue on with their trans bullshittery, dismantling women's rights, and bringing in the big bucks for Big Pharma and unethical doctors/surgeons. Meanwhile, the alt-right wants to force-team with radfems because they're fucking morons who can't make a decent "argument" beyond "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" so they need someone to steal arguments from (which they then mangle anyway because they're still stuck in the illogical bioessentialist garbage that is "men are strong providers, women are caring nurturers, it's just 'natural'" and shit like "trans ppl are lost lambs and just need to open their hearts to Jesus 😔🙏").

Elsacat I think there are people with bad intentions who've gotten access to the site by saying enough anti-trans things to get invites from others, and then they invite more of their own.
I think the same thing. I remember someone a long time ago saying the invite system "works well" at keeping a decent group of women on the platform... LOL. The invite system is so easily gamed. Someone just needs to make an account, post a bunch of radfem/anti-trans memes which can easily be searched for by digging thru radblr, old Ovarit posts, feminist subreddits, etc. or just go screenshot dumb shit or delusional ugly TIM selfies in the trans subreddits, to gain a bunch of points and then level up the account enough to gain access to dozens of invite codes. From there, rinse and repeat. It's can easily become a pyramid scheme for recruiting more right-wing views. And the thing is, someone or some group with that objective is 100% more dedicated than a group of feminist women casually offering invite codes to other women who they think might be a good feminist fit. And believe me, I've actually tried to push hard to get more feminist women to join Ovarit, I posted comments on feminist reddit subreddits, I would post on radblr, I would search #ovarit on radblr to see if anyone asked for an invite code, I'd offer invite codes to women in feminist discord servers, etc. These women are already busy with their lives, so unlike a group dedicated towards shifting the Overton window right, they literally don't have time to fight right-wing propaganda for free on a damn social media in their free time. For what benefit, really? And on top of that, I spent a decent chunk of time personally PMing a lot of feminist women on r/fourthwavewomen offering Ovarit codes (at the time, not only was I hoping to increase the amount of feminist women on Ovarit, but I also was worried about a potential impending banhammer for that subreddit, given what happened with r/GenderCritical) and while some of the women who responded were interested and I gave them invite codes, others were just not interested in Ovarit due to the vibes on it, from what it sounded like. So the difference in the rate of inviting feminist women who want to participate in good faith versus the rate of inviting bad actors who want to create an alt-right pipeline is already quite drastic.

I don't know what's worse actually, it being potentially true that malicious people are trying to create an alt-right pipeline on Ovarit, or it not being true and it's really just largely a bunch of... "normie" :catcringe: women obliviously digging their own alt-right pipeline (and feminist grave).

Now, if you'd like me to go full tinfoil hat...

Certified tinfoil hat club members onlySeveral months ago, I ranted about the stuffy conservative vibe I had been increasingly sensing on Ovarit on a leftist Discord server. A trusted radfem from said server shared this article with me, and from all my experiences with being terminally online and witnessing "free speech" communities form and then devolve into right-wingery/alt-right ideology, I really felt like "ah fuck this feels like what is happening." The article is titled The Rhetoric Tricks, Traps, and Tactics of White Nationalism and it's about how "crypto-conservatives" manage to infiltrate online leftist spaces.

This point is key:
Quote:“Leftists will recognize dog whistles and know we’re crypto[fascist], but normies won’t listen to them.”
I fear this is what is happening, and I don't want to be a pessimist, but I worry it's a bit too late. Judging by the "elephant in the room" thread the answer was "SOURCE???" and "nahh Ovarit is fine" so... Okay then, I guess.

I'm too tired to go on about this (it makes me feel sad to think about how much I tried to counter right-wingery on Ovarit months ago and it felt like a constant uphill battle and now looking at how it seemed futile :catcry:), but I'll conclude with this informative article called Types of Propaganda, Propaganda Techniques, and Propaganda Strategies that may be of use for leftist-feminist women who still want to go up against with right-wing rhetoric on Ovarit (or elsewhere on the internet). It goes over how propaganda works in general (so it also can apply to neoliberal/gender woowoo propaganda as well) and strategies to counteract it.
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Jan 12 2025, 5:53 PM #20

Possum Also oh man I am that Charlie Kelly meme 24/7 about internet drama. I know it makes me sound like a crackpot so I try not to rant about it too much but I've been online since I was a kid and I feel like I've developed a spidey sense for propaganda. I was really into video games, tech, etc as a teen so I was lurking male-dominated internet communities and had male gaming buddies and I watched the shift happen in real time from "edgy" humor into "ironic" bigotry into overt Stormfront recruiting, Gamergate, and birth of the alt right as a real political force. I feel like the same patterns are repeating but it's impossible to explain it without sounding like a conspiracy nutter.
Big mood. I guess we can be tinfoil hat crackpots together. Looks like there's several of us here now lol. I'mma need to go buy some bulk tinfoil from Costco for this discussion. But yeah, I've been a chronically online child of the internet since I was about ten or so. I've been involved in weird internet communities, fandoms, etc. for a long time. I also was a degenerate who browsed /b/ in her free time as a teenager. Point being, I feel like I have a decent grasp on internet culture and how online discussions and communities can morph over time.

Possum There's this pipeline of "haha look at this weird TIM who thinks he's a lesbian catgirl" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right. In the same way male-dominated communities had this pipeline of "haha look at this weird Tumblr SJW who thinks eating sushi is cultural appropriation" (normal thing to mock, draws people in) -> "free speech" communities -> alt right.
I can totally see that. And /o/TransLogic is one of the "best" circles for promoting such a thing. It's full of low-hanging fruit, and easily dips into bullying and petty insults towards the appearances of transgender-identifying persons. A lot of times it's not even about logic anymore, just making fun of them for being ugly. Hate is easy. Find a group to hate, feed that hate, encourage people to vote based on hate. There's the right-wing way. I'm still unsure how much of it is a deliberate right-wing pipeline (cuz tbf sometimes TIPs, especially TIMs, are ridiculous levels of delusional and rude, so I understand clapping back at them) versus actually people obliviously creating one (likely with the friendly encouragement of alt-right astroturfers).

Possum I don't think Ovarit admins are personally "compromised" or intentionally creating a propaganda mill. But I do think botting and astroturfing is happening, and administration is too focused on free speech absolutism to recognize and stop it.
Same, I do not think the admins of Ovarit are intentionally trying to shift it into a propaganda mill, but the way they are currently moderating does not help stop a slow backslide into potential conservative echo chambers or alt-right safe havens.

I would also argue Ovarit is not free speech. That much I have personally witnessed from seeing feminist takes removed for reasons I can only amount to them being "too spicy". Threads that get too heated or have a potential to get that way are often locked. When comments veer too far "off topic" or "meta" (discussing Ovarit) they are removed. It's not a free speech platform, it is some attempt at railroaded discussions towards women's liberation that apparently happens to let conservative Christian women feel quite comfy. I worry that Ovarit is falling into the same "trap" that the second wave feminist movement did, which is ignoring intersectionality in favor of focusing on the "purely female". Conveniently, the straight white Christian conservative woman (especially in the context of the Western world) is the one least likely to have to deal with any other intersections of oppression. She can focus solely on the oppression of being female. As a result, when intersections of oppression get brought up, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, she can say "we'll were focusing on all women's oppression!" without needing to consider how her race, religion, sexuality, class, etc. might mean she is not always "the victim" in every given scenario and there are indeed privileges she may have in the world compared to other people, especially other women. It kind of reminds me of a similar vein to "all lives matter."

Possum It seems like the target audience of Ovarit is becoming disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women and that just gives me a really bad gut feeling. [...] I just mean that disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western women are being targeted with rightwing propaganda the same way disenfranchised "anti-SJW" white Western men are. And THAT gives me a very, very bad gut feeling.
Well, regarding all this and what I've also discussed above in this post, I think it's safe to say you're not alone. A few nights ago I was trying to find a YouTube video where a radfem discussed getting banned from Ovarit. I had seen the thumbnail in the past, but never bothered to watch it. Well, given recent events I was curious. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video anymore. However, while I was searching for "Ovarit" on the internet, I stumbled across some Lipstick Alley posts discussing Ovarit. One was titled Racism and General White Women-ness on Ovarit: A Rant, and the discussions in that thread started in 2021 and went all the way up to 2024 after the US federal elections. Another was Racism is not worse than misogyny, let alone gruesome [sex] abuse (Ovarit.com post) where the OP shares the text of an Ovarit post in her OP (it might be a bit unclear at first since no "quote" styling was used) and discusses her disdain for the white women of Ovarit essentially creating "hierarchies of oppression" where they can justify racism to counteract misogyny. The comments in both of these Lipstick Alley posts are insightful and can arguably be considered quite "spicy" compared to Ovarit, especially due to rules about misogynistic slurs (calling other women bitches, hoes, etc.) which would not have flied on Ovarit. However does the use of, what some feminist women consider, misogynistic slurs while making their points make any of their thoughts less valid as women? It looks like a some posters in the first thread have been banned from Ovarit or just never participated due to the perceived overwhelming whiteness of the website, and their recognition of the website's "focus" on the concerns of white middle-class women (who skew conservative) has been noticed since 2021.

Reading those Lipstick Alley posts felt "affirming", for lack of a better word. Something is not vibing on Ovarit, no matter what the group of women completely comfortable on Ovarit may claim, and I and any others who sense it are not crazy. If a group of women, in this case the black women of Lipstick Alley, sense that it does not feel like Ovarit represents them and they do not want to participate on it, then how can Ovarit talk in their mission statement “online conversation platforms are increasingly restricting the bounds of “permissible” speech and banning, silencing, and otherwise deplatforming women who want to talk about women’s rights and women’s issues on our own terms” without a hint of irony?

It's also interesting to see in these Lipstick Alley threads how there seems to be minimal deletions, women are allowed to disagree, and yes, discussions can get heated, without things getting locked. One thing they mention in the first thread is the censorship and deletions they see on Ovarit. I assume Lipstick Alley is not moderated in such a way like Ovarit, where such moderation causes women to feel silenced. I feel like I especially notice this when people get a bit meta in an Ovarit thread which can swiftly be considered "off-topic" and therefore removed. The issue is, "what you resist, persists."

Possum It's like a dual-pronged attack on radical feminist consciousness. Leftwing propaganda says "Real feminism is about lady penis, TERFs are alt right", rightwing propaganda says "TERFs are alt right but that's GOOD actually because Trump totally cares about women!!!".
Oh damn, that's such a good way to put it, I hate it lol. 😩😭 The double whammy. Radfems can try to spend her time trying to reason with the left-wing because that's where her philosophy is based in, only for the right-wingers to storm in while she's in the middle of making her points with "YEAH FUCK TR*NNIES!! I'D KILL ANY MAN WHO TRICKED ME INTO THINKING THEY'RE A WOMAN DURING A DATE. #PROUDTERF!! GOD MADE ONLY TWO GENDERS 💜🤍💚 MAGA!!" Like bro gtfo we're nothing alike :catcringe: I'm sick of this attempted force-teaming. It's like that bird/crow meme: feminists trying to make nuanced points and then conservatives barrel in screaming and flailing, derailing the conversation and impeding progress.

The neolibs want to force-team radfems and the alt-right because then they can convince anyone left-leaning/liberal/progressive to dismiss radical feminism and gender criticism so they can continue on with their trans bullshittery, dismantling women's rights, and bringing in the big bucks for Big Pharma and unethical doctors/surgeons. Meanwhile, the alt-right wants to force-team with radfems because they're fucking morons who can't make a decent "argument" beyond "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" so they need someone to steal arguments from (which they then mangle anyway because they're still stuck in the illogical bioessentialist garbage that is "men are strong providers, women are caring nurturers, it's just 'natural'" and shit like "trans ppl are lost lambs and just need to open their hearts to Jesus 😔🙏").

Elsacat I think there are people with bad intentions who've gotten access to the site by saying enough anti-trans things to get invites from others, and then they invite more of their own.
I think the same thing. I remember someone a long time ago saying the invite system "works well" at keeping a decent group of women on the platform... LOL. The invite system is so easily gamed. Someone just needs to make an account, post a bunch of radfem/anti-trans memes which can easily be searched for by digging thru radblr, old Ovarit posts, feminist subreddits, etc. or just go screenshot dumb shit or delusional ugly TIM selfies in the trans subreddits, to gain a bunch of points and then level up the account enough to gain access to dozens of invite codes. From there, rinse and repeat. It's can easily become a pyramid scheme for recruiting more right-wing views. And the thing is, someone or some group with that objective is 100% more dedicated than a group of feminist women casually offering invite codes to other women who they think might be a good feminist fit. And believe me, I've actually tried to push hard to get more feminist women to join Ovarit, I posted comments on feminist reddit subreddits, I would post on radblr, I would search #ovarit on radblr to see if anyone asked for an invite code, I'd offer invite codes to women in feminist discord servers, etc. These women are already busy with their lives, so unlike a group dedicated towards shifting the Overton window right, they literally don't have time to fight right-wing propaganda for free on a damn social media in their free time. For what benefit, really? And on top of that, I spent a decent chunk of time personally PMing a lot of feminist women on r/fourthwavewomen offering Ovarit codes (at the time, not only was I hoping to increase the amount of feminist women on Ovarit, but I also was worried about a potential impending banhammer for that subreddit, given what happened with r/GenderCritical) and while some of the women who responded were interested and I gave them invite codes, others were just not interested in Ovarit due to the vibes on it, from what it sounded like. So the difference in the rate of inviting feminist women who want to participate in good faith versus the rate of inviting bad actors who want to create an alt-right pipeline is already quite drastic.

I don't know what's worse actually, it being potentially true that malicious people are trying to create an alt-right pipeline on Ovarit, or it not being true and it's really just largely a bunch of... "normie" :catcringe: women obliviously digging their own alt-right pipeline (and feminist grave).

Now, if you'd like me to go full tinfoil hat...

Certified tinfoil hat club members onlySeveral months ago, I ranted about the stuffy conservative vibe I had been increasingly sensing on Ovarit on a leftist Discord server. A trusted radfem from said server shared this article with me, and from all my experiences with being terminally online and witnessing "free speech" communities form and then devolve into right-wingery/alt-right ideology, I really felt like "ah fuck this feels like what is happening." The article is titled The Rhetoric Tricks, Traps, and Tactics of White Nationalism and it's about how "crypto-conservatives" manage to infiltrate online leftist spaces.

This point is key:
Quote:“Leftists will recognize dog whistles and know we’re crypto[fascist], but normies won’t listen to them.”
I fear this is what is happening, and I don't want to be a pessimist, but I worry it's a bit too late. Judging by the "elephant in the room" thread the answer was "SOURCE???" and "nahh Ovarit is fine" so... Okay then, I guess.

I'm too tired to go on about this (it makes me feel sad to think about how much I tried to counter right-wingery on Ovarit months ago and it felt like a constant uphill battle and now looking at how it seemed futile :catcry:), but I'll conclude with this informative article called Types of Propaganda, Propaganda Techniques, and Propaganda Strategies that may be of use for leftist-feminist women who still want to go up against with right-wing rhetoric on Ovarit (or elsewhere on the internet). It goes over how propaganda works in general (so it also can apply to neoliberal/gender woowoo propaganda as well) and strategies to counteract it.

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