cloven hooves The Personal Is Political General Discussion Rant about 'TERFs' vs 'libfems' and the way good feminist ideas are twisted into male-pandering bullshit.

Discussion Rant about 'TERFs' vs 'libfems' and the way good feminist ideas are twisted into male-pandering bullshit.

Discussion Rant about 'TERFs' vs 'libfems' and the way good feminist ideas are twisted into male-pandering bullshit.

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Possum
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Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM
#1
I've had a lot of thoughts since Trump got reelected. This whole rant started as a journal entry so it might be all over the place but I wanted to post it because I think it's worth talking about (and also I want an official record of my thoughts somewhere so I can point to it and feel vindicated if I end up being correct in 5 years.). This also got way longer than I intended so feel free to skip to the bottom for a TL;DR.

Quick edit to add: I say "liberal feminism" a lot in this. I'm referring more to this online idea of "libfems" and the feminism that dominated social media and Universities throughout the 00s-10s-early 20s than like academic liberal feminist theory. Same with "radfem" and "gender critical". I'm not an academic, I'm ranting about how these labels and ideologies work on social media and in non-academic conversations and activism.

I think certain radical feminist/gender critical talking points were appropriated and twisted to help sell Trump to women, and I think rightwing parties in other countries will also use this strategy because it worked. I think we're about to enter a whole new era of propaganda and I want to be ready for it. Zuckerberg, Musk, and TikTok are falling in line with Trump so I think we're going to see a major tone shift across social media platforms. I think we're going to see aggressive "anti-woke" algorithms and moderation the same way we had aggressive "woke" algorithms and moderation through the 10s. I'm not dissing genuine radfem theory (I cannot stress that enough, this is not meant to be an anti-radfem rant), but I am predicting cherrypicked quotes and concepts taken wildly out of context to promote rightwing agendas. And women (especially young women) who are new to feminism are going to fall into this trap where the garbage "feminism" that gets promoted on social media is all they're exposed to, and every feminist concept outside this Algorithm Approved slop will be "woke girlboss libfem bullshit".

Yes liberal feminism (especially online) was intellectually lazy and harmful in a lot of ways, but this whole "TERF" vs "libfem" thing playing out on social media where radfems and libfems are two opposing armies that must fight to the death maybe isn't the answer. And I'm saying this as someone who had a pretty intense "blah libfems suck" phase after I got fed up with TRAs. A lot of the "libfem" rhetoric we all hate originated as good feminist ideas. These good ideas were twisted into something that appealed to lefty males. Liberal feminism believed ideas like:

  • women enjoy sex too, and are allowed to want casual sex.
  • sex can be for fun and pleasure, not just reproduction.
  • women can dress however they want.
  • women can make their own choices without paternalistic scolding.
  • women can have both careers AND children.
  • gender-nonconformity is okay.
  • homophobia and biphobia is wrong.
  • intersectionality is important.
  • anti-racism is important.
  • the entire concept of "privilege".
  • birth-control and reproductive freedom is important.
  • medical autonomy/informed consent is important (this is not me agreeing with TRAs. this is me agreeing with childfree women who want a tubal litigation or menopausal women who want to try HRT for symptom management or "childbearing age" women who want to take medication that "endangers potential fetuses.".).
  • "trust the science"
  • etc etc etc.

These good ideas were corrupted and twisted into a male-pandering mess. I am not excusing the male-pandering mess. Liberal feminism, pro-sexwork, pro-TRA, and pro-BDSM harmed a lot of women and I promise I am not defending it or making excuses for it. What I am doing is acknowledging that there was a core of good feminist ideas that the harmful male-pandering mess was built on. These good feminist ideas were used to make the male-pandering bullshit seem legitimate and pro-woman. I worry that we're going to see these good ideas trashed as "outdated cringe libfem bullshit" the same way libfems trashed good 2nd wave ideas as "outdated cringe TERF/SWERF bullshit". I worry that we're at risk of getting stuck in a reactionary spiral where X=bad therefore Z=good without even considering a middle-ground in Y or a fresh new perspective in A. I worry that this growing backlash against liberal feminism is going to be backlash for all the wrong reasons, and with all the wrong solutions.

I'm worried that this gender critical/TERF/whatever strand of feminism that's currently gaining mainstream popularity as an opposition to liberal feminism will also be corrupted into a male-pandering mess. To be clear I'm not saying radfem or gender critical theory itself is male-pandering. I'm saying that certain parts of it will be cherrypicked, memeified, and corrupted into something that panders to righty males the same way all the libfem ideas I listed above were corrupted to pander to lefty males.

I think the seeds of this have already been planted. Trump has "gender critical" talking points in his platform alongside all his other bullshit. Including an executive order titled Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government where he hides fetal personhood language within gender-critical talking points ("'Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell'.). Matt Walsh got support from "TERFs" with "What Is A Woman?" despite being a dangerous misogynistic freak on every issue other than trans activism. Elon Musk got support from "TERFs" for making Twitter "less woke" despite being Elon Musk (he's ELON MUSK ffs he's not a radfem hero!).

The labels "TERF" and "gender critical" were originally applied to actual feminists who had valid criticisms of liberal feminism/trans activism from a radical feminist perspective, but there is a growing demographic of "anti-SJW" type conservative men and women who identify as TERFs despite not being Radical Feminists and identify as gender-critical despite not being critical of traditional gender roles. "TERF" feminism is being corrupted into a male-pandering mess the same way many decent liberal feminist ideas were corrupted into a male-pandering mess.

Again I am not criticizing actual radical feminist theory and I am NOT saying that radical feminism itself condones any of this. But I'm predicting that we will see good feminist ideas and good criticisms of liberal feminism twisted and corrupted into male-pandering rightwing rhetoric like:

  • Casual sex was harmful for women, therefore monogamous marriage is good for women.
  • Sex positivity was harmful for women, therefore women do not enjoy sex and are not sexual beings.
  • Kink and porn is harmful for women. Therefore vibrators, dildos, cunnilingus, fingering, clitoral stimulation, everything except "natural" PIV that "naturally" focuses on the male orgasm for the "natural" purpose of procreation is "unnatural" and learned from porn/kink culture.
  • "Choice feminism" allowed women to make bad choices, therefore it is ethical for the state to paternalistically force women into making better choices.
  • Trans ideology was harmful for women, therefore gender non-conformity is harmful for women.
  • Childhood transition was harmful for kids, therefore masculine girls and feminine boys need to be forced into conforming with proper traditional gender roles.
  • LGBT activists supported trans ideology, therefore gay marriage was a slippery slope and should be banned.
  • Predators hid behind the "queer community" to target children, therefore all gays and lesbians are pedophiles.
  • Being expected to juggle career + childcare + domestic duties (second shift) was harmful for women, therefore instead of women having two shifts men should take the shift outside the home and women should take the shift inside the home to ensure an equal division of labour.
  • Medical autonomy and informed consent were used to justify medical transition, therefore patients should have less autonomy and choice in their care.
  • "Science" approved of medical transition, therefore the government should ignore science when making policy.
  • Racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, biphobia, classism, antisemitism, etc were used as a bludgeon to shut down any dissent, therefore none of those things are real.
  • Liberal feminism pushed misogyny from immigrants and MOC under the rug, therefore racism/xenophobia toward these groups is good for women and necessary to keep white women safe.
  • Trans activism allowed children to transition without consent of their parents, therefore if a child needs a blood transfusion we should respect the right of their Jehovah's Witness parents to refuse to consent to the procedure.
  • Trans activism allowed children to transition without consent of their parents, therefore teen girls should not be allowed access to birth control or abortion without parental consent. If a teen girl is pregnant all decisions should be left to the parents, up to and including refusing to allow the girl an epidural/pain relief during childbirth or forcing her to give birth at home.
  • Woke public schools had dumb shit like the Genderbread Person, therefore we should decrease government oversight into religious homeschooling and also maybe defund the public school system in general.
  • Trans activists accused loving parents of abusing their children for not going along with transition, therefore we should give parents authority to treat their children however they wish without being investigated for abuse or neglect.

Again (for like the 3rd time lol, sorry) I recognize that the majority of "bleh TERFs are just conservative MAGA women" comes from TRAs and is incorrect so I just want to make it abundantly clear that I am not shitting on actual feminist who are critical of liberal feminism/TRAs. I am also feminist who is critical of liberal feminism/TRAs. My point is that our positions and beliefs are at risk of being appropriated and corrupted by male-pandering idiots the same way totally reasonable libfem beliefs like "it's important to talk about intersectionality and consider the oppression that other groups face" somehow got corrupted into "lesbians need to suck transfemme peen because intersectionality.".

I feel like I should inject a little bit of positivity into all my doom and gloom. In some ways there's a lot of potential here. Many young women will be radicalized by the way their male peers cheer on abortion bans and Christofascist bullshit, and that's a silver lining. But I think they will face an uphill battle to find genuine feminist theory among the righty-male pandering social media slop the exact same way women in my generation faced an uphill battle to find genuine feminist theory among the lefty-male pandering social media slop. Younger women are going to search the "feminism" tag on X and find tradwife propaganda wearing a feminist costume the same way we all searched the "feminism" tag on Twitter and found TRA propaganda wearing a feminist costume. Depending on how far Trump goes, we might even see "anti-woke" policies infesting higher education and NGOs the same way "woke" policies infested them in the 10s, making it even more difficult for young women to find information outside of the social media slop.

I also could be wrong! Maybe in two years America will vote for a blue midterm and in four years have major Democrat turnout for the next presidential election. Maybe things will never actually get as bad as I'm worried about and in 4 years we'll be back to the status quo of liberal feminism and lefty-male pandering social media slop. Maybe this new era of rightwing propaganda I'm concerned about won't actually materialize. But my gut feeling is that things will get much worse before they get better and we're in for a rough decade. The big social media companies seem to be falling in lockstep with Trump and those companies are even more rich and powerful now than they were in the 10s. I get that some of this post might seem like a terminally online conspiracy theory but I am genuinely concerned about what happens if Facebook, X, and TikTok become rightwing propaganda mills. I'm concerned that a republican senate + supreme court could pose a risk to smaller/more independent social media platforms or push for censorship of non-approved information which makes it infinitely harder to counteract rightwing propaganda mills. I think this emerging brand of "rightwing feminism" is A: an actual thing and B: poses a real threat to feminist consciousness.

TL;DR:

Get ready for a generation of young women raised on bullshit "feminist" memes paraphrasing Right-wing Women without including the very important detail that Dworkin was EXPLAINING that mindset instead of ENDORSING it. Get ready for "ugh careers outside the home are lame libfem bullshit" or even "ugh birth control is lame sex-positive bullshit". Get ready for younger women who are being radicalized by their shitty male peers and have the potential to be incredible feminists, but can't find true feminist ideas because mainstream social media has been overrun with "Um actually only dumb girlboss libfems care about having careers. Real feminism is about divine feminine mommy energy #unpasteurizedFeminism.". Get ready for this rightwing social media garbage to be potentially as insidious and unstoppable as the liberal social media garbage was in the 10s.

TL;DR 2 Electric Boogaloo because I'm worried my TL;DR is also too verbose:

  1. Trump is not a radical feminist even though he "knows what a woman is".
  2. Radical feminist and gender critical beliefs are vulnerable to appropriation and corruption in the same way reasonable liberal feminist beliefs were.
  3. I am predicting badass radical energy among the young women currently coming of age into this presidency, but also predicting a deluge of propaganda and bullshit across social media designed to push them away from genuine feminist consciousness and into an Algorithm Approved corruption of feminist ideas. Following the same pattern liberal feminism did with my generation.
Edited Jan 21 2025, 8:46 PM by Possum.
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Possum
angry lesbian 🌈
Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM #1

I've had a lot of thoughts since Trump got reelected. This whole rant started as a journal entry so it might be all over the place but I wanted to post it because I think it's worth talking about (and also I want an official record of my thoughts somewhere so I can point to it and feel vindicated if I end up being correct in 5 years.). This also got way longer than I intended so feel free to skip to the bottom for a TL;DR.

Quick edit to add: I say "liberal feminism" a lot in this. I'm referring more to this online idea of "libfems" and the feminism that dominated social media and Universities throughout the 00s-10s-early 20s than like academic liberal feminist theory. Same with "radfem" and "gender critical". I'm not an academic, I'm ranting about how these labels and ideologies work on social media and in non-academic conversations and activism.

I think certain radical feminist/gender critical talking points were appropriated and twisted to help sell Trump to women, and I think rightwing parties in other countries will also use this strategy because it worked. I think we're about to enter a whole new era of propaganda and I want to be ready for it. Zuckerberg, Musk, and TikTok are falling in line with Trump so I think we're going to see a major tone shift across social media platforms. I think we're going to see aggressive "anti-woke" algorithms and moderation the same way we had aggressive "woke" algorithms and moderation through the 10s. I'm not dissing genuine radfem theory (I cannot stress that enough, this is not meant to be an anti-radfem rant), but I am predicting cherrypicked quotes and concepts taken wildly out of context to promote rightwing agendas. And women (especially young women) who are new to feminism are going to fall into this trap where the garbage "feminism" that gets promoted on social media is all they're exposed to, and every feminist concept outside this Algorithm Approved slop will be "woke girlboss libfem bullshit".

Yes liberal feminism (especially online) was intellectually lazy and harmful in a lot of ways, but this whole "TERF" vs "libfem" thing playing out on social media where radfems and libfems are two opposing armies that must fight to the death maybe isn't the answer. And I'm saying this as someone who had a pretty intense "blah libfems suck" phase after I got fed up with TRAs. A lot of the "libfem" rhetoric we all hate originated as good feminist ideas. These good ideas were twisted into something that appealed to lefty males. Liberal feminism believed ideas like:

  • women enjoy sex too, and are allowed to want casual sex.
  • sex can be for fun and pleasure, not just reproduction.
  • women can dress however they want.
  • women can make their own choices without paternalistic scolding.
  • women can have both careers AND children.
  • gender-nonconformity is okay.
  • homophobia and biphobia is wrong.
  • intersectionality is important.
  • anti-racism is important.
  • the entire concept of "privilege".
  • birth-control and reproductive freedom is important.
  • medical autonomy/informed consent is important (this is not me agreeing with TRAs. this is me agreeing with childfree women who want a tubal litigation or menopausal women who want to try HRT for symptom management or "childbearing age" women who want to take medication that "endangers potential fetuses.".).
  • "trust the science"
  • etc etc etc.

These good ideas were corrupted and twisted into a male-pandering mess. I am not excusing the male-pandering mess. Liberal feminism, pro-sexwork, pro-TRA, and pro-BDSM harmed a lot of women and I promise I am not defending it or making excuses for it. What I am doing is acknowledging that there was a core of good feminist ideas that the harmful male-pandering mess was built on. These good feminist ideas were used to make the male-pandering bullshit seem legitimate and pro-woman. I worry that we're going to see these good ideas trashed as "outdated cringe libfem bullshit" the same way libfems trashed good 2nd wave ideas as "outdated cringe TERF/SWERF bullshit". I worry that we're at risk of getting stuck in a reactionary spiral where X=bad therefore Z=good without even considering a middle-ground in Y or a fresh new perspective in A. I worry that this growing backlash against liberal feminism is going to be backlash for all the wrong reasons, and with all the wrong solutions.

I'm worried that this gender critical/TERF/whatever strand of feminism that's currently gaining mainstream popularity as an opposition to liberal feminism will also be corrupted into a male-pandering mess. To be clear I'm not saying radfem or gender critical theory itself is male-pandering. I'm saying that certain parts of it will be cherrypicked, memeified, and corrupted into something that panders to righty males the same way all the libfem ideas I listed above were corrupted to pander to lefty males.

I think the seeds of this have already been planted. Trump has "gender critical" talking points in his platform alongside all his other bullshit. Including an executive order titled Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government where he hides fetal personhood language within gender-critical talking points ("'Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell'.). Matt Walsh got support from "TERFs" with "What Is A Woman?" despite being a dangerous misogynistic freak on every issue other than trans activism. Elon Musk got support from "TERFs" for making Twitter "less woke" despite being Elon Musk (he's ELON MUSK ffs he's not a radfem hero!).

The labels "TERF" and "gender critical" were originally applied to actual feminists who had valid criticisms of liberal feminism/trans activism from a radical feminist perspective, but there is a growing demographic of "anti-SJW" type conservative men and women who identify as TERFs despite not being Radical Feminists and identify as gender-critical despite not being critical of traditional gender roles. "TERF" feminism is being corrupted into a male-pandering mess the same way many decent liberal feminist ideas were corrupted into a male-pandering mess.

Again I am not criticizing actual radical feminist theory and I am NOT saying that radical feminism itself condones any of this. But I'm predicting that we will see good feminist ideas and good criticisms of liberal feminism twisted and corrupted into male-pandering rightwing rhetoric like:

  • Casual sex was harmful for women, therefore monogamous marriage is good for women.
  • Sex positivity was harmful for women, therefore women do not enjoy sex and are not sexual beings.
  • Kink and porn is harmful for women. Therefore vibrators, dildos, cunnilingus, fingering, clitoral stimulation, everything except "natural" PIV that "naturally" focuses on the male orgasm for the "natural" purpose of procreation is "unnatural" and learned from porn/kink culture.
  • "Choice feminism" allowed women to make bad choices, therefore it is ethical for the state to paternalistically force women into making better choices.
  • Trans ideology was harmful for women, therefore gender non-conformity is harmful for women.
  • Childhood transition was harmful for kids, therefore masculine girls and feminine boys need to be forced into conforming with proper traditional gender roles.
  • LGBT activists supported trans ideology, therefore gay marriage was a slippery slope and should be banned.
  • Predators hid behind the "queer community" to target children, therefore all gays and lesbians are pedophiles.
  • Being expected to juggle career + childcare + domestic duties (second shift) was harmful for women, therefore instead of women having two shifts men should take the shift outside the home and women should take the shift inside the home to ensure an equal division of labour.
  • Medical autonomy and informed consent were used to justify medical transition, therefore patients should have less autonomy and choice in their care.
  • "Science" approved of medical transition, therefore the government should ignore science when making policy.
  • Racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, biphobia, classism, antisemitism, etc were used as a bludgeon to shut down any dissent, therefore none of those things are real.
  • Liberal feminism pushed misogyny from immigrants and MOC under the rug, therefore racism/xenophobia toward these groups is good for women and necessary to keep white women safe.
  • Trans activism allowed children to transition without consent of their parents, therefore if a child needs a blood transfusion we should respect the right of their Jehovah's Witness parents to refuse to consent to the procedure.
  • Trans activism allowed children to transition without consent of their parents, therefore teen girls should not be allowed access to birth control or abortion without parental consent. If a teen girl is pregnant all decisions should be left to the parents, up to and including refusing to allow the girl an epidural/pain relief during childbirth or forcing her to give birth at home.
  • Woke public schools had dumb shit like the Genderbread Person, therefore we should decrease government oversight into religious homeschooling and also maybe defund the public school system in general.
  • Trans activists accused loving parents of abusing their children for not going along with transition, therefore we should give parents authority to treat their children however they wish without being investigated for abuse or neglect.

Again (for like the 3rd time lol, sorry) I recognize that the majority of "bleh TERFs are just conservative MAGA women" comes from TRAs and is incorrect so I just want to make it abundantly clear that I am not shitting on actual feminist who are critical of liberal feminism/TRAs. I am also feminist who is critical of liberal feminism/TRAs. My point is that our positions and beliefs are at risk of being appropriated and corrupted by male-pandering idiots the same way totally reasonable libfem beliefs like "it's important to talk about intersectionality and consider the oppression that other groups face" somehow got corrupted into "lesbians need to suck transfemme peen because intersectionality.".

I feel like I should inject a little bit of positivity into all my doom and gloom. In some ways there's a lot of potential here. Many young women will be radicalized by the way their male peers cheer on abortion bans and Christofascist bullshit, and that's a silver lining. But I think they will face an uphill battle to find genuine feminist theory among the righty-male pandering social media slop the exact same way women in my generation faced an uphill battle to find genuine feminist theory among the lefty-male pandering social media slop. Younger women are going to search the "feminism" tag on X and find tradwife propaganda wearing a feminist costume the same way we all searched the "feminism" tag on Twitter and found TRA propaganda wearing a feminist costume. Depending on how far Trump goes, we might even see "anti-woke" policies infesting higher education and NGOs the same way "woke" policies infested them in the 10s, making it even more difficult for young women to find information outside of the social media slop.

I also could be wrong! Maybe in two years America will vote for a blue midterm and in four years have major Democrat turnout for the next presidential election. Maybe things will never actually get as bad as I'm worried about and in 4 years we'll be back to the status quo of liberal feminism and lefty-male pandering social media slop. Maybe this new era of rightwing propaganda I'm concerned about won't actually materialize. But my gut feeling is that things will get much worse before they get better and we're in for a rough decade. The big social media companies seem to be falling in lockstep with Trump and those companies are even more rich and powerful now than they were in the 10s. I get that some of this post might seem like a terminally online conspiracy theory but I am genuinely concerned about what happens if Facebook, X, and TikTok become rightwing propaganda mills. I'm concerned that a republican senate + supreme court could pose a risk to smaller/more independent social media platforms or push for censorship of non-approved information which makes it infinitely harder to counteract rightwing propaganda mills. I think this emerging brand of "rightwing feminism" is A: an actual thing and B: poses a real threat to feminist consciousness.

TL;DR:

Get ready for a generation of young women raised on bullshit "feminist" memes paraphrasing Right-wing Women without including the very important detail that Dworkin was EXPLAINING that mindset instead of ENDORSING it. Get ready for "ugh careers outside the home are lame libfem bullshit" or even "ugh birth control is lame sex-positive bullshit". Get ready for younger women who are being radicalized by their shitty male peers and have the potential to be incredible feminists, but can't find true feminist ideas because mainstream social media has been overrun with "Um actually only dumb girlboss libfems care about having careers. Real feminism is about divine feminine mommy energy #unpasteurizedFeminism.". Get ready for this rightwing social media garbage to be potentially as insidious and unstoppable as the liberal social media garbage was in the 10s.

TL;DR 2 Electric Boogaloo because I'm worried my TL;DR is also too verbose:

  1. Trump is not a radical feminist even though he "knows what a woman is".
  2. Radical feminist and gender critical beliefs are vulnerable to appropriation and corruption in the same way reasonable liberal feminist beliefs were.
  3. I am predicting badass radical energy among the young women currently coming of age into this presidency, but also predicting a deluge of propaganda and bullshit across social media designed to push them away from genuine feminist consciousness and into an Algorithm Approved corruption of feminist ideas. Following the same pattern liberal feminism did with my generation.

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Clover
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Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM
#2
Thank you for posting this. I feel like I share much of the same sentiments.

Possum But I'm predicting that we will see good feminist ideas and good criticisms of liberal feminism twisted and corrupted into male-pandering rightwing rhetoric like: [...]
I think every single point in the bulleted list that followed was something that I have been worried about and you have worded them all so well. The right-wing backlash to neoliberal politics/feminism is going to hurt.

Possum I think the seeds of this have already been planted. Trump has "gender critical" talking points in his platform alongside all his other bullshit. Including an executive order titled Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government where he hides fetal personhood language within gender-critical talking points [...]
Even the title of the executive order is dripping in conservative patronizing bullshit. "Defending women from" is some pedestalizing white-knight manipulative language meant to paint in people's minds a society where women need to be patronizingly protected. Because we women cannot protect ourselves, for we are just scared little babes. Thank you, Daddy Trump. 🥺 We silly little frail women couldn't have done it without big stwong men like you. 🥺

Possum Get ready for a generation of young women raised on bullshit "feminist" memes paraphrasing Right-wing Women without including the very important detail that Dworkin was EXPLAINING that mindset instead of ENDORSING it.
Oh god. Is this what happened to me on Ovarit? I remember someone wrote a comment that sounded like they thought Right-Wing Women somehow "supported" the way right-wing women are, and when I replied explaining that the book shows how right-wing women are the way they are because of fear, along with excerpts from the book to back this up, the user replied "Wow. You do you." Like I was baffled?! What?? "You do you" for... comprehending a book..?! I asked her to clarify and never got a response. I still can't even with that.

Possum Radical feminist and gender critical beliefs are vulnerable to appropriation and corruption in the same way reasonable liberal feminist beliefs were.
I mentioned this in another post, but I'm planning on writing up a series of posts that is about how the right-wing tries to "court" women who might be interested in radical feminism, in a sense of how they take advantage of the brief overlap right-wingers and radical feminists have over very abstract stances like "anti-trans", "anti-prostitution", "anti-surrogacy", and "anti-pornography", all while having vastly different reasons why they happen to "align" on those topics. I also think they manipulate radical feminist stances as "pretty makeup" for their repugnant politics for conservative women, like "now you too can be feminist!" It's the other side of neoliberal feminism, same shit of making the patriarchal cage comfortable, they're just using different decor.
Edited Jan 21 2025, 10:33 PM by Clover.
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Clover
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Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM #2

Thank you for posting this. I feel like I share much of the same sentiments.

Possum But I'm predicting that we will see good feminist ideas and good criticisms of liberal feminism twisted and corrupted into male-pandering rightwing rhetoric like: [...]
I think every single point in the bulleted list that followed was something that I have been worried about and you have worded them all so well. The right-wing backlash to neoliberal politics/feminism is going to hurt.

Possum I think the seeds of this have already been planted. Trump has "gender critical" talking points in his platform alongside all his other bullshit. Including an executive order titled Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government where he hides fetal personhood language within gender-critical talking points [...]
Even the title of the executive order is dripping in conservative patronizing bullshit. "Defending women from" is some pedestalizing white-knight manipulative language meant to paint in people's minds a society where women need to be patronizingly protected. Because we women cannot protect ourselves, for we are just scared little babes. Thank you, Daddy Trump. 🥺 We silly little frail women couldn't have done it without big stwong men like you. 🥺

Possum Get ready for a generation of young women raised on bullshit "feminist" memes paraphrasing Right-wing Women without including the very important detail that Dworkin was EXPLAINING that mindset instead of ENDORSING it.
Oh god. Is this what happened to me on Ovarit? I remember someone wrote a comment that sounded like they thought Right-Wing Women somehow "supported" the way right-wing women are, and when I replied explaining that the book shows how right-wing women are the way they are because of fear, along with excerpts from the book to back this up, the user replied "Wow. You do you." Like I was baffled?! What?? "You do you" for... comprehending a book..?! I asked her to clarify and never got a response. I still can't even with that.

Possum Radical feminist and gender critical beliefs are vulnerable to appropriation and corruption in the same way reasonable liberal feminist beliefs were.
I mentioned this in another post, but I'm planning on writing up a series of posts that is about how the right-wing tries to "court" women who might be interested in radical feminism, in a sense of how they take advantage of the brief overlap right-wingers and radical feminists have over very abstract stances like "anti-trans", "anti-prostitution", "anti-surrogacy", and "anti-pornography", all while having vastly different reasons why they happen to "align" on those topics. I also think they manipulate radical feminist stances as "pretty makeup" for their repugnant politics for conservative women, like "now you too can be feminist!" It's the other side of neoliberal feminism, same shit of making the patriarchal cage comfortable, they're just using different decor.

Kozlik's regular member account. 🍀🐐

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wormwood
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Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM
#3
Thank you! I am worried about exactly the same things, and see them already happening.

Just as liberal feminism got picked up by the patriarchy and turned to its advantage, so has gender critical feminism already been distorted into extreme gender conformity and tradwife conservatism.

It honest feels like a century’s gains are going up in smoke. Along with everything else.

Here’s a question (and I don’t have an answer).

What can feminism as a movement and we as feminists do to combat it?
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wormwood
Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM #3

Thank you! I am worried about exactly the same things, and see them already happening.

Just as liberal feminism got picked up by the patriarchy and turned to its advantage, so has gender critical feminism already been distorted into extreme gender conformity and tradwife conservatism.

It honest feels like a century’s gains are going up in smoke. Along with everything else.

Here’s a question (and I don’t have an answer).

What can feminism as a movement and we as feminists do to combat it?

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Possum
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Jan 22 2025, 2:10 AM
#4
(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover Oh god. Is this what happened to me on Ovarit?
Omg I'm 99% sure we had this conversation in another thread but yes. It's the same as that “To right wing men, we are private property. To left wing men, we are public property." quote. They miss the entire point and act like Dworkin endorses being private property. THE POINT OF THAT QUOTE IS THAT BOTH ARE BAD, OVARIT LURKERS. FFS. DWORKIN IS NOT TELLING YOU TO MARRY A MAGA DUDE. DWORKIN WANTS YOU TO GET A CAT AND A HOBBY AND YOUR OWN APARTMENT AND A FEMALE ROOMMATE TO HELP WITH RENT. It would be funny if it wasn't so awful.

But yeah like teenage girls right now are probably hearing about this cool forbidden radfem site called Ovarit, checking it out, and (having no prior experience with radical feminism and therefore no ability to spot the bullshit) walking away thinking "Wow! Andrea Dworkin wants me to convert to Catholicism and marry Nick Fuentes! That probably makes sense!!". Exact same way I heard about this cool hip lesbian-friendly blogging site called Tumblr as a teen and walked away thinking "Wow! Feminism is when cis women shut up and defer to men in dresses! That probably makes sense!!".

(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover I mentioned this in another post, but I'm planning on writing up a series of posts that is about how the right-wing tries to "court" women who might be interested in radical feminism
I think this is a really, really good idea. Like honestly depending on how the next few months/years go, this "rightwing feminism" might start eclipsing the threat of Twitter-style liberal feminism. If it hasn't done so already. Especially for young women. Young women are who I'm worried about because they were raised with liberal feminism as the "lame establishment" and now here comes cool edgy rightwing feminism to save the day. Did you read about the TikTok shutdown and the little message when it came back about how Trump saved it? All the teens and young adults are on TikTok, I think TikTok is to them what Tumblr was when I was a teen. This has the potential to be very very bad. There needs to be counterarguments and accurate feminist info floating around.

(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover "Defending women from" is some pedestalizing white-knight manipulative language meant to paint in people's minds a society where women need to be patronizingly protected.
Yep. Also "Gender Ideology Extremism" as if traditional religious gender roles are not a form of gender ideology extremism. "Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government" from the party who thinks pregnant women dying of sepsis is God's will and 12-year old rape victims are fit to endure childbirth. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

(Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM)wormwood Here’s a question (and I don’t have an answer).
What can feminism as a movement and we as feminists do to combat it?
I also don't have an answer. I have no idea if this is good advice so please take everything I say with a grain of salt (goes for all my posts not just this one lol. I am not an expert I am a rando on the internet.). My gut feelings are this:

When you see people say "TERFs aren't conservative/racist/homophobic/whatever! They're real feminists!" push back a little, even if it's someone on our side. I think we need to be saying as often and as loudly as possible:

(Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM)Possum The labels "TERF" and "gender critical" were originally applied to actual feminists who had valid criticisms of liberal feminism/trans activism from a radical feminist perspective, but there is a growing demographic of "anti-SJW" type conservative men and women who identify as TERFs despite not being Radical Feminists and identify as gender-critical despite not being critical of traditional gender roles.
I lurk Radblr and it kind of frustrates me when I see "TERFs aren't alt-right because blah blah blah" because I'm sorry but a lot of people adopting the TERF label are alt-right. It's not fair, it's a bastardization of what the acronym actually stands for, it's a perversion of real gender-critical ideology. But it is happening. Burying our heads in the sand about it won't make it go away.

Also IRL activism/reaching out obviously. That's so important. Especially for younger feminists, I can't go hang around a college campus or high school because I'm 30 and it'd be creepy but teen-early 20s feminists please talk to your peer group about this stuff. Especially your IRL peers. Have IRL meetups. Even if it's not strict feminist meetups. Have a female-only DND group or hiking group or monthly potluck or whatever and be the feminist voice of reason there. Also older feminists with younger female family members and stuff, same advice. Reach out, spend time together IRL, be a feminist voice of reason.

But also having an online presence is good. I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline." but imo online losers got Trump elected TWICE so maybe we do need to be online. Maybe we even need to court the online losers a bit. Maybe feminist presence with female gamers, female-dominated fandoms, female nerds, artists, Redditors, podcasts, youtubers, etc is necessary because these are the spaces where normal people are being radicalized into alt-right crazies.

Gamergate worked. I feel like nobody wants to admit that because it's so fucking stupid but Gamergate helped get Trump elected. Gamergate vs. Tumblr SJWs was lame internet bullshit that is now reflected in serious IRL politics. Because it was lame internet bullshit that caught the interest of young adults and teens, and those are strategic demographics to catch. If I was on Trump's payroll and it was my job to recruit young women into the alt-right I would go try to pull a Gamergate with the Taylor Swift fandom and IT WOULD WORK. If I had cooperation from TikTok admin and a few million dollars I could have the Swifties sieg heiling within the month because GAMERGATE WORKED. Online matters.
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Possum
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Jan 22 2025, 2:10 AM #4

(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover Oh god. Is this what happened to me on Ovarit?
Omg I'm 99% sure we had this conversation in another thread but yes. It's the same as that “To right wing men, we are private property. To left wing men, we are public property." quote. They miss the entire point and act like Dworkin endorses being private property. THE POINT OF THAT QUOTE IS THAT BOTH ARE BAD, OVARIT LURKERS. FFS. DWORKIN IS NOT TELLING YOU TO MARRY A MAGA DUDE. DWORKIN WANTS YOU TO GET A CAT AND A HOBBY AND YOUR OWN APARTMENT AND A FEMALE ROOMMATE TO HELP WITH RENT. It would be funny if it wasn't so awful.

But yeah like teenage girls right now are probably hearing about this cool forbidden radfem site called Ovarit, checking it out, and (having no prior experience with radical feminism and therefore no ability to spot the bullshit) walking away thinking "Wow! Andrea Dworkin wants me to convert to Catholicism and marry Nick Fuentes! That probably makes sense!!". Exact same way I heard about this cool hip lesbian-friendly blogging site called Tumblr as a teen and walked away thinking "Wow! Feminism is when cis women shut up and defer to men in dresses! That probably makes sense!!".

(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover I mentioned this in another post, but I'm planning on writing up a series of posts that is about how the right-wing tries to "court" women who might be interested in radical feminism
I think this is a really, really good idea. Like honestly depending on how the next few months/years go, this "rightwing feminism" might start eclipsing the threat of Twitter-style liberal feminism. If it hasn't done so already. Especially for young women. Young women are who I'm worried about because they were raised with liberal feminism as the "lame establishment" and now here comes cool edgy rightwing feminism to save the day. Did you read about the TikTok shutdown and the little message when it came back about how Trump saved it? All the teens and young adults are on TikTok, I think TikTok is to them what Tumblr was when I was a teen. This has the potential to be very very bad. There needs to be counterarguments and accurate feminist info floating around.

(Jan 21 2025, 10:32 PM)Clover "Defending women from" is some pedestalizing white-knight manipulative language meant to paint in people's minds a society where women need to be patronizingly protected.
Yep. Also "Gender Ideology Extremism" as if traditional religious gender roles are not a form of gender ideology extremism. "Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government" from the party who thinks pregnant women dying of sepsis is God's will and 12-year old rape victims are fit to endure childbirth. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

(Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM)wormwood Here’s a question (and I don’t have an answer).
What can feminism as a movement and we as feminists do to combat it?
I also don't have an answer. I have no idea if this is good advice so please take everything I say with a grain of salt (goes for all my posts not just this one lol. I am not an expert I am a rando on the internet.). My gut feelings are this:

When you see people say "TERFs aren't conservative/racist/homophobic/whatever! They're real feminists!" push back a little, even if it's someone on our side. I think we need to be saying as often and as loudly as possible:

(Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM)Possum The labels "TERF" and "gender critical" were originally applied to actual feminists who had valid criticisms of liberal feminism/trans activism from a radical feminist perspective, but there is a growing demographic of "anti-SJW" type conservative men and women who identify as TERFs despite not being Radical Feminists and identify as gender-critical despite not being critical of traditional gender roles.
I lurk Radblr and it kind of frustrates me when I see "TERFs aren't alt-right because blah blah blah" because I'm sorry but a lot of people adopting the TERF label are alt-right. It's not fair, it's a bastardization of what the acronym actually stands for, it's a perversion of real gender-critical ideology. But it is happening. Burying our heads in the sand about it won't make it go away.

Also IRL activism/reaching out obviously. That's so important. Especially for younger feminists, I can't go hang around a college campus or high school because I'm 30 and it'd be creepy but teen-early 20s feminists please talk to your peer group about this stuff. Especially your IRL peers. Have IRL meetups. Even if it's not strict feminist meetups. Have a female-only DND group or hiking group or monthly potluck or whatever and be the feminist voice of reason there. Also older feminists with younger female family members and stuff, same advice. Reach out, spend time together IRL, be a feminist voice of reason.

But also having an online presence is good. I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline." but imo online losers got Trump elected TWICE so maybe we do need to be online. Maybe we even need to court the online losers a bit. Maybe feminist presence with female gamers, female-dominated fandoms, female nerds, artists, Redditors, podcasts, youtubers, etc is necessary because these are the spaces where normal people are being radicalized into alt-right crazies.

Gamergate worked. I feel like nobody wants to admit that because it's so fucking stupid but Gamergate helped get Trump elected. Gamergate vs. Tumblr SJWs was lame internet bullshit that is now reflected in serious IRL politics. Because it was lame internet bullshit that caught the interest of young adults and teens, and those are strategic demographics to catch. If I was on Trump's payroll and it was my job to recruit young women into the alt-right I would go try to pull a Gamergate with the Taylor Swift fandom and IT WOULD WORK. If I had cooperation from TikTok admin and a few million dollars I could have the Swifties sieg heiling within the month because GAMERGATE WORKED. Online matters.

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ExitStageLeft
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Jan 22 2025, 11:41 AM
#5
@Possum, Very well said! I completely agree.

I'm concerned that, because Trump has issued this EO, it will make it significantly more difficult to have reasonable conversations with liberal feminists and others who follow gender ideology. I'm currently in a facebook discussion in my alum group and the majority of women are clearly misunderstanding my points or refusing to consider them altogether because I must 'agree with Trump' simply because I acknowledge the biological reality of our species, despite the fact that I have repeated, several times, that I don't. No one is taking the time to listen or try to understand.
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ExitStageLeft
Jan 22 2025, 11:41 AM #5

@Possum, Very well said! I completely agree.

I'm concerned that, because Trump has issued this EO, it will make it significantly more difficult to have reasonable conversations with liberal feminists and others who follow gender ideology. I'm currently in a facebook discussion in my alum group and the majority of women are clearly misunderstanding my points or refusing to consider them altogether because I must 'agree with Trump' simply because I acknowledge the biological reality of our species, despite the fact that I have repeated, several times, that I don't. No one is taking the time to listen or try to understand.

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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 22 2025, 1:24 PM
#6
Possum, you're absolutely right. I came here to say what wormwood said but she already said it, so I'll just quote her XD

(Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM)wormwood Just as liberal feminism got picked up by the patriarchy and turned to its advantage, so has gender critical feminism already been distorted into extreme gender conformity and tradwife conservatism.

re: Gamergate -

Possum Gamergate worked. I feel like nobody wants to admit that because it's so fucking stupid but Gamergate helped get Trump elected. Gamergate vs. Tumblr SJWs was lame internet bullshit that is now reflected in serious IRL politics.

Should note that it didn't just work, it was all manufactured and deliberate—it was ground zero for the online alt right movement we see today. Steve Bannon ran a fucking Chinese gold farm in World of Warcraft in 2005, and from his exposure to gaming communities, realized that you could harness troll armies online to mold people's political sentiments. They realized they could recruit all these lonely aimless young men to be their unpaid soldiers.

re: what we can do,

Possum Also IRL activism/reaching out obviously. That's so important. Especially for younger feminists, I can't go hang around a college campus or high school because I'm 30 and it'd be creepy but teen-early 20s feminists please talk to your peer group about this stuff. Especially your IRL peers. Have IRL meetups. Even if it's not strict feminist meetups. Have a female-only DND group or hiking group or monthly potluck or whatever and be the feminist voice of reason there. Also older feminists with younger female family members and stuff, same advice. Reach out, spend time together IRL, be a feminist voice of reason.

But also having an online presence is good. I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline." but imo online losers got Trump elected TWICE so maybe we do need to be online. Maybe we even need to court the online losers a bit. Maybe feminist presence with female gamers, female-dominated fandoms, female nerds, artists, Redditors, podcasts, youtubers, etc is necessary because these are the spaces where normal people are being radicalized into alt-right crazies.

These are all good suggestions. I don't feel like the distinction between "online" and "offline" activism is a useful one; for many young people, online is real life. I'm not that young myself but I have tons of online friends who I game with or whatever that I've never met, but I would consider them close friends. A more useful distinction is maybe "passive" vs "active"...? I'm not too sure how to describe this. Maybe "performative" vs whatever the opposite of "performative" is. When people say "online doesn't matter" they probably mean this, instead of actually thinking that online doesn't matter, because it obviously does. Retweeting something is easy, but passive and kind of useless; having a serious, respectful conversation about politics with someone is hard, but can be very effective.
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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 22 2025, 1:24 PM #6

Possum, you're absolutely right. I came here to say what wormwood said but she already said it, so I'll just quote her XD

(Jan 22 2025, 12:24 AM)wormwood Just as liberal feminism got picked up by the patriarchy and turned to its advantage, so has gender critical feminism already been distorted into extreme gender conformity and tradwife conservatism.

re: Gamergate -

Possum Gamergate worked. I feel like nobody wants to admit that because it's so fucking stupid but Gamergate helped get Trump elected. Gamergate vs. Tumblr SJWs was lame internet bullshit that is now reflected in serious IRL politics.

Should note that it didn't just work, it was all manufactured and deliberate—it was ground zero for the online alt right movement we see today. Steve Bannon ran a fucking Chinese gold farm in World of Warcraft in 2005, and from his exposure to gaming communities, realized that you could harness troll armies online to mold people's political sentiments. They realized they could recruit all these lonely aimless young men to be their unpaid soldiers.

re: what we can do,

Possum Also IRL activism/reaching out obviously. That's so important. Especially for younger feminists, I can't go hang around a college campus or high school because I'm 30 and it'd be creepy but teen-early 20s feminists please talk to your peer group about this stuff. Especially your IRL peers. Have IRL meetups. Even if it's not strict feminist meetups. Have a female-only DND group or hiking group or monthly potluck or whatever and be the feminist voice of reason there. Also older feminists with younger female family members and stuff, same advice. Reach out, spend time together IRL, be a feminist voice of reason.

But also having an online presence is good. I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline." but imo online losers got Trump elected TWICE so maybe we do need to be online. Maybe we even need to court the online losers a bit. Maybe feminist presence with female gamers, female-dominated fandoms, female nerds, artists, Redditors, podcasts, youtubers, etc is necessary because these are the spaces where normal people are being radicalized into alt-right crazies.

These are all good suggestions. I don't feel like the distinction between "online" and "offline" activism is a useful one; for many young people, online is real life. I'm not that young myself but I have tons of online friends who I game with or whatever that I've never met, but I would consider them close friends. A more useful distinction is maybe "passive" vs "active"...? I'm not too sure how to describe this. Maybe "performative" vs whatever the opposite of "performative" is. When people say "online doesn't matter" they probably mean this, instead of actually thinking that online doesn't matter, because it obviously does. Retweeting something is easy, but passive and kind of useless; having a serious, respectful conversation about politics with someone is hard, but can be very effective.

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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 22 2025, 1:32 PM
#7
(Jan 22 2025, 11:41 AM)ExitStageLeft I'm concerned that, because Trump has issued this EO, it will make it significantly more difficult to have reasonable conversations with liberal feminists and others who follow gender ideology. I'm currently in a facebook discussion in my alum group and the majority of women are clearly misunderstanding my points or refusing to consider them altogether because I must 'agree with Trump' simply because I acknowledge the biological reality of our species, despite the fact that I have repeated, several times, that I don't. No one is taking the time to listen or try to understand.

Hi ExitStageLeft - really glad you're trying to have these conversations with women you know, keep up the good work. That being said, I think it'll be difficult to get anyone to acknowledge your points in a group discussion. It doesn't mean you're not doing a good job of explaining yourself, but people are very averse to going against groupthink, especially when they think it'll make them a "bad person" in the eyes of everyone else. It's kind of like their minds are closed by default in a group setting. If you are closer to any women in the group, it may be effective to try to have one-on-one conversations with them. Won't derail this thread anymore, but if others would find it useful maybe we should start a thread on how to talk to other people and help change minds. 😊
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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 22 2025, 1:32 PM #7

(Jan 22 2025, 11:41 AM)ExitStageLeft I'm concerned that, because Trump has issued this EO, it will make it significantly more difficult to have reasonable conversations with liberal feminists and others who follow gender ideology. I'm currently in a facebook discussion in my alum group and the majority of women are clearly misunderstanding my points or refusing to consider them altogether because I must 'agree with Trump' simply because I acknowledge the biological reality of our species, despite the fact that I have repeated, several times, that I don't. No one is taking the time to listen or try to understand.

Hi ExitStageLeft - really glad you're trying to have these conversations with women you know, keep up the good work. That being said, I think it'll be difficult to get anyone to acknowledge your points in a group discussion. It doesn't mean you're not doing a good job of explaining yourself, but people are very averse to going against groupthink, especially when they think it'll make them a "bad person" in the eyes of everyone else. It's kind of like their minds are closed by default in a group setting. If you are closer to any women in the group, it may be effective to try to have one-on-one conversations with them. Won't derail this thread anymore, but if others would find it useful maybe we should start a thread on how to talk to other people and help change minds. 😊

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YesYourNigel
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Jan 24 2025, 10:46 PM
#8
Oh god I have so many thoughts on this, I feel like I could write a book on this...
I love how you worded a lot of this, especially the list of feminist ideas and the conservative conclusions drawn for them - it's exactly these things that have been driving me insane when I was on Ovarit. and I absolutely think it makes sense that this switch is going to happen in a few years, esp now with Trump empowering rich misogynistic techbros owning these platforms.
Most of my thoughts here are on how society manages to so consistently manipulate women to be against their own rights because I think exploiting this is how you get batshit things like conservatives peddling RaDiCaL FeMiNiSm.

(Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM)Possum When you see people say "TERFs aren't conservative/racist/homophobic/whatever! They're real feminists!" push back a little, even if it's someone on our side.

YES! Don't act dumb and sweep under the rug - many people have this reaction when a flaw is pointed out, as if admitting to bad actors will make the whole movement lose credibility. You know what makes you lose credibility? Holding hands with fucking Nazis. This lack of gatekeeping is precisely what made Ovarit and so much of GC into such a shitshow. "We gotta get our numbers up📈📈📈, we gotta attract more people, so what if they're Nazis and sex traffickers? They're the only ones who will give us a platform 🥺"

This is not some imaginary strawman, it's a dark, filthy underbelly trying to appropriate genuine feminist grievances to make itself more appealing to gullible desperate women. These manipulative pieces of trash are not your friends nor your allies and you don't owe them any kind of defence or devil's advocacy. Showing utter contempt that conservatives and their values deserve is how you attract progressive women instead of more conservative handmaidens and altright men's doormats.

Unfortunately it's too late to push back on Ovarit. I think the genuine feminist women there did not recognise the conservative takeover until it was too late, because it wasn't visible when the focus was just on the joint pushback against trans. And now they're outnumbered or broken in and the mods actively censor any attempts to push back.

I think part of the appeal of conservativism for some women, aside from liberalism truly going off the deep end with sports and ladydick insanity, is that liberal feminism has always glorified the sexy, stripperific, hyperfeminine version of empowerment that many women don't resonate with, both due to the Madonna-wh*re complex, but also because women don't actually feel like having the same old patriarchal shitty sex with misogynistic, selfish men who still don't know what a clit is, regardless of how many "cool girl" points it nets them. Liberal feminism doesn't really know what to do with women who don't buy this stripperific makeup-heavy and promiscuous form of "empowerment" - non-feminine women are mostly side-eyed as boring prudes or as suffering from internalised misogyny, or they're just ignored unless they need to be evoked as evidence that, see, not all women are the same! before continuing on with the great fanfare dedicated to the latest stripperific woman (or drag queen) under 3 tons of makeup who can be "sexy/feminine AND (insert some other trait)" or who can be sexy professionally, but they're open about wearing baggy t-shirts and less makeup in their off-time.

The alternative is this conservative doormat life of servitude, where your life and options are still severely limited, but at least you're not painting a target on yourself for men, and you get to feel like you contribute positively to other people's lives as a mother and caretaker, since you can't imagine your own life being so important that others would prioritise and admire it. Liberal feminism portrays itself as "supporting all women" (which is such fucking reductive bs, no, feminism is not about auto-agreeing with every other woman, it's about measurably improving the status of women as a class!) and yet it doesn't seem to give nearly as much attention to tradwives, except the occasional  "It's ok if you choose it". Liberal men don't really idealise the idea of maintaining one tradwife who won't play out as many of their kinks because she believes in Skydaddy, and they want to fuck around. So tradwives get most of the attention from conservatives....who in the same breath go on to complain about these women being freeloading gold-digging sex-gatekeeping b*tches. But uhhh I guess the Bible says it's good for women to be obedient or sth? I imagine these women have to put A LOT of work into maintaining this cognitive dissonance, or maybe they maintain it via bottom-of-the-barrel feminism: it's bad to call tradwives slurs because they're so obedient and meek, and real men would be gentlemen out of romance novels, which these women still haven't realised is an ideal that women are scammed with. Conservative men are not sighing over your romance novels and wishing they could be like that, they're high-fiveing their bros for putting b*tches in their place and justifying serial rape. Learn to tell the difference between fiction and reality!

There's also the fact that many conservative women want one "good man" to "protect them" from all the patriarchy around them, not realising that this "good man" is just as bad, and that having a man 24/7 in intimate spaces with you raises your chances of being victimised. But in a world where women are actively preyed upon by men, especially when not "owned" by another man, this is sold to them as preferable to having a job where male bosses and colleagues creep on you and dehumanise you non-stop, having to endlessly fight the patriarchy, standing up for yourself and women while being treated as a "crazy feminazi bit*ch" etc. Cue conservative handmaiden morons quoting "For liberals we are public property, for conservatives we are ♥private property♥" No you fucking walnut, the point is that BEING PROPERTY IS BAD! Jesus friggin Christ!

This attitude reminds me of stuff like sacred femininity or female-lead relationships/femdom where women dangle this predictably one-sided objectified sexy mistress goddess persona over horny men to get them to do the barest minimum of effort or consideration in a relationship. Or Female Dating Strategy and how its goal is to play hard to get in order to train a man to serve them and do the motions like buying them flowers and treating them like a princess. Also don't give the man sex too early because then he won't respect you and he'll think you're easy. Like...why would you date a man who you need to train like a fucking dog to see you as a Madonna instead of a wh*re, or manipulate him and play games to get him to lift a finger around the house? Oh hee-hee that's just how those silly boys are, us gals sure have our work cut our for us (laugh track). NO. Fuck the laugh track, don't put up with this shit!

It seems that for straight/bi women, their feminism is basically "YAAASS QUEEN girls rule, boys drool! 💅" all while dating these same drooling boys. And putting up with this is presented as...girl power? It's the same attitude you see in conservatives circles as well as historically: there's some awareness of how bad women have it and that it's unfair and that it objectively leads to worse outcomes for them, but the reaction is never to do something about it. Rather, the goal is at best to occasionally salute women for their brave and necessary sacrifice in taking all the abuse by society so we could keep our god/nature-given patriarchy functioning 😌

This is part of how I think women get sucked into these abusive movements. This attitude that even at its best, it's a given that women will suffer and not be treated as equals in straight relationships, because boys will be boys and men just work different 🤷‍♂️ (but we love them for it). Here's an easy rule instead - it doesn't matter how many tears someone sheds over how much women suffer, or how much someone worships women as some sacred divine beings compared to men. If it doesn't advocate for a world where women don't have to deal with patriarchal abuse from men in the first place, then it's not feminism! It's just faux-empathy and "Yes, how very sad....Anyway..."

Quote:I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline."

Yes, it's important to turn words into action. But the vast majority of people are going to be convinced by the media and the common sentiments they see around them, which they're going to see more often and from more people online than irl. And changing minds online is easier than doing it irl because people have time to think and can observe debates they aren't personally involved in, and hence be less defensive or feeling put on the spot (although admittedly internet algorithms actively creating echo chambers is a problem).
I think the boomers saying "Activism is only made irl" are the ones with the attitude that anything other than the most extreme rights violations that would make you go to the street in protest are irrelevant, ignoring how the sum of all these little violations normalises worse and worse treatment of women.

Quote: A lot of the "libfem" rhetoric we all hate originated as good feminist ideas. These good ideas were twisted into something that appealed to lefty males

I think liberalism itself is simply incompatible with feminism, and trying to is how you get the weird paradoxical pretzels of liberal feminism. Pure liberalism acts like anything anyone does is fine as long as it's what they want, that they should never change, that the worst thing you can do is shame someone, that everyone should be treated with equal respect as a special unique snowflake and just live their lives without any criticism or self-doubt. Recognising trends is "generalising" and asking for change is not only oppressive, it's impossible, because each snowflake is born all unique and special. This is perfect for letting men, who are used to not considering others and not suffering consequences or being rewarded for their selfishness, to skirt any responsibility - why even think about social impacts of what you're doing, or change anything when it's just how you are? You're just trying to live your life, maaan! Don't yuck someone's yum!

This is fundamentally incompatible with the need to critically examine our patriarchal society and our socialisation in order to work through it. Like, no, you're not special snowflakes, none of us are, which is why you all behave in such predictable ways that just so happen to align with centuries of supremacist ideas. Liberalism demands that everyone turn their brains off and is antithetical to progress, unless its "anything goes" attitude coincidentally happens to give a pass to actually oppressed groups. Like, I guess being gay isn't that bad. Hey man, I jerk off to child pornography, who am I to judge? 🤷‍♂️

We're assuming that liberal feminism started as good ideas before getting corrupted, but it seems to me that it just started as feminism, period, before it got corrupted by liberal ideas for mass appeal that's more palatable to men, and also to women trying not to rock the boat and still hold onto an idea of "normalcy". Women have always wanted to distance themselves from the "crazy hairy-legged ugly lesbian feminazis who are jealous of prettier women for being able to land a man, and also frigid for not wanting to date men". So liberal feminism by its very nature exists to be as safe and as non-controversial as possible by trying to appeal to existing ideas that men hold under the guise of supporting women, while still treating anything that doesn't benefit men as "radical" and "extreme": it's bad for other men to damage your property so I guess widespread rape is bad, women are lazy golddiggers so it's good if they make money on the side (but not TOO much money so you and your buddies wouldn't feel threatened), sex is good because porn is good and dick likes all this new kinky sex, women can dress like strippers because dick likes that etc. Meanwhile, porn is great, slurs like b*tch are perfectly fine, degrading patriarchal sex is empowering, affirmative action is wrong even when it's blatantly obvious the ratios are lopsided, and we still live in a meritocracy except I guess more women should get a chance to be secretaries.

Liberal feminism at least allows men to be called out as the problem, it's just that they get all kinds of exceptions and excuses the second they don't fit the "cis straight white Christian rich 1% incel male" archetype. Men might be the problem, but any man gets +10000 oppression points if he's so much as stubbed a toe at some point. Under conservativism though, men cannot be the problem ever. Men with brown skin can be a problem because it validates racism, or men who have sex with other men because homophobia, or SJW men because whipped soyboys virgins, but never men.

Conservative women want to explode from seeing all the male abuse and not being able to call it out and having to ignore and justify it, especially when they see libfems being able to openly talk about it. Realising that just calling women slurs isn't gonna cut it anymore, conservativism offers them a deal: you can bash men as loud as you want but only if they're those men that we consider lower on our supremacist pole. Like black men, or TIMs, or soyboys. All those fears and trauma and anger about being assaulted, creeped on, raped, voice them so long as you make sure to target it all at men who are not cis straight white Christian rich 1% incel males! Politically-correct liberals would tell you that making a stink when a man threatens you is "mean" and "generalizing" but we'll not only let you do it, we'll high-five you for it! See, we care about you! You don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance anymore (except you still need to keep your mouth shut about the male problem in general, whoops).

Quote:Yes liberal feminism (especially online) was intellectually lazy and harmful in a lot of ways, but this whole "TERF" vs "libfem" thing playing out on social media where radfems and libfems are two opposing armies that must fight to the death maybe isn't the answer.

Libfems are the lesser of two evils by far - even if they're so stupid, delusional, naive and in massive denial, they at least genuinely want the world to be better and more morally responsible, and recognise that a problem exists with how women and minorities are treated. Conservative women, on the other hand, are guided by nothing other than obediently bootlicking the ruling male class and the terror from the mere possibility of the familiar social order being upended. Other people don't matter, hell, even they don't matter. If their husband rapes or beats them, it's their own fault for not being a good enough wife. They could be respected, if only they tried harder.
These women want to drag all other women down with them to give value to their own suffering. Many of these women have had their lives severely limited by threats, violence and a lifetime of degradation, and now not only would society not respect them for the noble amount of effort and care they put in managing families and their volatile manbaby husbands, they're supposed to be fools who have wasted their lives?!

Religion plays into this perfectly, but just as strong is women's desire for an apolitical existence: it won't happen to you, it's just a joke, it's not referring to you, it's only those other bad women, it's just a couple of exceptions etc. etc. Keep your head down, don't get on people's nerves, suck up to men and reaffirm that the world revolves around them by cheering them on and maintaining male norms, and you will be given an honorary, but always temporary, "one of the good ones" label and be spared their wrath (at least so long as there's enough more fitting hateable targets to distract them). It's hard to overstate the self-destructive cognitive dissonance women consistently have to work with. The exact same contradictory escapist mentality drives a tradwife and your most fervent TIF.

Even if liberal feminism is a scam, the women who are attracted to it genuinely want to fix the problems plagueing our society, even if men pull wool over their eyes. Meanwhile literally the only thing conservatives can do is DARVO, whataboutism and calling the other side hypocrites as if that makes "not even pretending to care"...scratch that, actively making things worse any better. Which I think you touched on with the algorithms discrediting "cringe SJW libfems bs" while doing nothing to actually make the conservative side seem reasonable in turn.

Liberals can bullshit and philosophise and do Olympic-level mental gymnastics about how men jerking off into pink panties and women with "she/they" pins are subverting the binary, but conservatives can't even do that. Like, they can't even try to make a point beyond "eww this new thing is strange and different and it scares me", they appeal only to emotional knee-jerk reactions and that's it. I'd take men having to put a modicum of effort into sugarcoating their misogyny over men openly calling us subhuman like it's the most DUH thing in the world, because wanting to make things better is cringe.
Edited Jan 26 2025, 8:57 AM by YesYourNigel.
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YesYourNigel
Jan 24 2025, 10:46 PM #8

Oh god I have so many thoughts on this, I feel like I could write a book on this...
I love how you worded a lot of this, especially the list of feminist ideas and the conservative conclusions drawn for them - it's exactly these things that have been driving me insane when I was on Ovarit. and I absolutely think it makes sense that this switch is going to happen in a few years, esp now with Trump empowering rich misogynistic techbros owning these platforms.
Most of my thoughts here are on how society manages to so consistently manipulate women to be against their own rights because I think exploiting this is how you get batshit things like conservatives peddling RaDiCaL FeMiNiSm.

(Jan 21 2025, 8:41 PM)Possum When you see people say "TERFs aren't conservative/racist/homophobic/whatever! They're real feminists!" push back a little, even if it's someone on our side.

YES! Don't act dumb and sweep under the rug - many people have this reaction when a flaw is pointed out, as if admitting to bad actors will make the whole movement lose credibility. You know what makes you lose credibility? Holding hands with fucking Nazis. This lack of gatekeeping is precisely what made Ovarit and so much of GC into such a shitshow. "We gotta get our numbers up📈📈📈, we gotta attract more people, so what if they're Nazis and sex traffickers? They're the only ones who will give us a platform 🥺"

This is not some imaginary strawman, it's a dark, filthy underbelly trying to appropriate genuine feminist grievances to make itself more appealing to gullible desperate women. These manipulative pieces of trash are not your friends nor your allies and you don't owe them any kind of defence or devil's advocacy. Showing utter contempt that conservatives and their values deserve is how you attract progressive women instead of more conservative handmaidens and altright men's doormats.

Unfortunately it's too late to push back on Ovarit. I think the genuine feminist women there did not recognise the conservative takeover until it was too late, because it wasn't visible when the focus was just on the joint pushback against trans. And now they're outnumbered or broken in and the mods actively censor any attempts to push back.

I think part of the appeal of conservativism for some women, aside from liberalism truly going off the deep end with sports and ladydick insanity, is that liberal feminism has always glorified the sexy, stripperific, hyperfeminine version of empowerment that many women don't resonate with, both due to the Madonna-wh*re complex, but also because women don't actually feel like having the same old patriarchal shitty sex with misogynistic, selfish men who still don't know what a clit is, regardless of how many "cool girl" points it nets them. Liberal feminism doesn't really know what to do with women who don't buy this stripperific makeup-heavy and promiscuous form of "empowerment" - non-feminine women are mostly side-eyed as boring prudes or as suffering from internalised misogyny, or they're just ignored unless they need to be evoked as evidence that, see, not all women are the same! before continuing on with the great fanfare dedicated to the latest stripperific woman (or drag queen) under 3 tons of makeup who can be "sexy/feminine AND (insert some other trait)" or who can be sexy professionally, but they're open about wearing baggy t-shirts and less makeup in their off-time.

The alternative is this conservative doormat life of servitude, where your life and options are still severely limited, but at least you're not painting a target on yourself for men, and you get to feel like you contribute positively to other people's lives as a mother and caretaker, since you can't imagine your own life being so important that others would prioritise and admire it. Liberal feminism portrays itself as "supporting all women" (which is such fucking reductive bs, no, feminism is not about auto-agreeing with every other woman, it's about measurably improving the status of women as a class!) and yet it doesn't seem to give nearly as much attention to tradwives, except the occasional  "It's ok if you choose it". Liberal men don't really idealise the idea of maintaining one tradwife who won't play out as many of their kinks because she believes in Skydaddy, and they want to fuck around. So tradwives get most of the attention from conservatives....who in the same breath go on to complain about these women being freeloading gold-digging sex-gatekeeping b*tches. But uhhh I guess the Bible says it's good for women to be obedient or sth? I imagine these women have to put A LOT of work into maintaining this cognitive dissonance, or maybe they maintain it via bottom-of-the-barrel feminism: it's bad to call tradwives slurs because they're so obedient and meek, and real men would be gentlemen out of romance novels, which these women still haven't realised is an ideal that women are scammed with. Conservative men are not sighing over your romance novels and wishing they could be like that, they're high-fiveing their bros for putting b*tches in their place and justifying serial rape. Learn to tell the difference between fiction and reality!

There's also the fact that many conservative women want one "good man" to "protect them" from all the patriarchy around them, not realising that this "good man" is just as bad, and that having a man 24/7 in intimate spaces with you raises your chances of being victimised. But in a world where women are actively preyed upon by men, especially when not "owned" by another man, this is sold to them as preferable to having a job where male bosses and colleagues creep on you and dehumanise you non-stop, having to endlessly fight the patriarchy, standing up for yourself and women while being treated as a "crazy feminazi bit*ch" etc. Cue conservative handmaiden morons quoting "For liberals we are public property, for conservatives we are ♥private property♥" No you fucking walnut, the point is that BEING PROPERTY IS BAD! Jesus friggin Christ!

This attitude reminds me of stuff like sacred femininity or female-lead relationships/femdom where women dangle this predictably one-sided objectified sexy mistress goddess persona over horny men to get them to do the barest minimum of effort or consideration in a relationship. Or Female Dating Strategy and how its goal is to play hard to get in order to train a man to serve them and do the motions like buying them flowers and treating them like a princess. Also don't give the man sex too early because then he won't respect you and he'll think you're easy. Like...why would you date a man who you need to train like a fucking dog to see you as a Madonna instead of a wh*re, or manipulate him and play games to get him to lift a finger around the house? Oh hee-hee that's just how those silly boys are, us gals sure have our work cut our for us (laugh track). NO. Fuck the laugh track, don't put up with this shit!

It seems that for straight/bi women, their feminism is basically "YAAASS QUEEN girls rule, boys drool! 💅" all while dating these same drooling boys. And putting up with this is presented as...girl power? It's the same attitude you see in conservatives circles as well as historically: there's some awareness of how bad women have it and that it's unfair and that it objectively leads to worse outcomes for them, but the reaction is never to do something about it. Rather, the goal is at best to occasionally salute women for their brave and necessary sacrifice in taking all the abuse by society so we could keep our god/nature-given patriarchy functioning 😌

This is part of how I think women get sucked into these abusive movements. This attitude that even at its best, it's a given that women will suffer and not be treated as equals in straight relationships, because boys will be boys and men just work different 🤷‍♂️ (but we love them for it). Here's an easy rule instead - it doesn't matter how many tears someone sheds over how much women suffer, or how much someone worships women as some sacred divine beings compared to men. If it doesn't advocate for a world where women don't have to deal with patriarchal abuse from men in the first place, then it's not feminism! It's just faux-empathy and "Yes, how very sad....Anyway..."

Quote:I see a sentiment often that's basically "bleh online doesn't matter, online is lame, who cares about online go do REAL activism offline."

Yes, it's important to turn words into action. But the vast majority of people are going to be convinced by the media and the common sentiments they see around them, which they're going to see more often and from more people online than irl. And changing minds online is easier than doing it irl because people have time to think and can observe debates they aren't personally involved in, and hence be less defensive or feeling put on the spot (although admittedly internet algorithms actively creating echo chambers is a problem).
I think the boomers saying "Activism is only made irl" are the ones with the attitude that anything other than the most extreme rights violations that would make you go to the street in protest are irrelevant, ignoring how the sum of all these little violations normalises worse and worse treatment of women.

Quote: A lot of the "libfem" rhetoric we all hate originated as good feminist ideas. These good ideas were twisted into something that appealed to lefty males

I think liberalism itself is simply incompatible with feminism, and trying to is how you get the weird paradoxical pretzels of liberal feminism. Pure liberalism acts like anything anyone does is fine as long as it's what they want, that they should never change, that the worst thing you can do is shame someone, that everyone should be treated with equal respect as a special unique snowflake and just live their lives without any criticism or self-doubt. Recognising trends is "generalising" and asking for change is not only oppressive, it's impossible, because each snowflake is born all unique and special. This is perfect for letting men, who are used to not considering others and not suffering consequences or being rewarded for their selfishness, to skirt any responsibility - why even think about social impacts of what you're doing, or change anything when it's just how you are? You're just trying to live your life, maaan! Don't yuck someone's yum!

This is fundamentally incompatible with the need to critically examine our patriarchal society and our socialisation in order to work through it. Like, no, you're not special snowflakes, none of us are, which is why you all behave in such predictable ways that just so happen to align with centuries of supremacist ideas. Liberalism demands that everyone turn their brains off and is antithetical to progress, unless its "anything goes" attitude coincidentally happens to give a pass to actually oppressed groups. Like, I guess being gay isn't that bad. Hey man, I jerk off to child pornography, who am I to judge? 🤷‍♂️

We're assuming that liberal feminism started as good ideas before getting corrupted, but it seems to me that it just started as feminism, period, before it got corrupted by liberal ideas for mass appeal that's more palatable to men, and also to women trying not to rock the boat and still hold onto an idea of "normalcy". Women have always wanted to distance themselves from the "crazy hairy-legged ugly lesbian feminazis who are jealous of prettier women for being able to land a man, and also frigid for not wanting to date men". So liberal feminism by its very nature exists to be as safe and as non-controversial as possible by trying to appeal to existing ideas that men hold under the guise of supporting women, while still treating anything that doesn't benefit men as "radical" and "extreme": it's bad for other men to damage your property so I guess widespread rape is bad, women are lazy golddiggers so it's good if they make money on the side (but not TOO much money so you and your buddies wouldn't feel threatened), sex is good because porn is good and dick likes all this new kinky sex, women can dress like strippers because dick likes that etc. Meanwhile, porn is great, slurs like b*tch are perfectly fine, degrading patriarchal sex is empowering, affirmative action is wrong even when it's blatantly obvious the ratios are lopsided, and we still live in a meritocracy except I guess more women should get a chance to be secretaries.

Liberal feminism at least allows men to be called out as the problem, it's just that they get all kinds of exceptions and excuses the second they don't fit the "cis straight white Christian rich 1% incel male" archetype. Men might be the problem, but any man gets +10000 oppression points if he's so much as stubbed a toe at some point. Under conservativism though, men cannot be the problem ever. Men with brown skin can be a problem because it validates racism, or men who have sex with other men because homophobia, or SJW men because whipped soyboys virgins, but never men.

Conservative women want to explode from seeing all the male abuse and not being able to call it out and having to ignore and justify it, especially when they see libfems being able to openly talk about it. Realising that just calling women slurs isn't gonna cut it anymore, conservativism offers them a deal: you can bash men as loud as you want but only if they're those men that we consider lower on our supremacist pole. Like black men, or TIMs, or soyboys. All those fears and trauma and anger about being assaulted, creeped on, raped, voice them so long as you make sure to target it all at men who are not cis straight white Christian rich 1% incel males! Politically-correct liberals would tell you that making a stink when a man threatens you is "mean" and "generalizing" but we'll not only let you do it, we'll high-five you for it! See, we care about you! You don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance anymore (except you still need to keep your mouth shut about the male problem in general, whoops).

Quote:Yes liberal feminism (especially online) was intellectually lazy and harmful in a lot of ways, but this whole "TERF" vs "libfem" thing playing out on social media where radfems and libfems are two opposing armies that must fight to the death maybe isn't the answer.

Libfems are the lesser of two evils by far - even if they're so stupid, delusional, naive and in massive denial, they at least genuinely want the world to be better and more morally responsible, and recognise that a problem exists with how women and minorities are treated. Conservative women, on the other hand, are guided by nothing other than obediently bootlicking the ruling male class and the terror from the mere possibility of the familiar social order being upended. Other people don't matter, hell, even they don't matter. If their husband rapes or beats them, it's their own fault for not being a good enough wife. They could be respected, if only they tried harder.
These women want to drag all other women down with them to give value to their own suffering. Many of these women have had their lives severely limited by threats, violence and a lifetime of degradation, and now not only would society not respect them for the noble amount of effort and care they put in managing families and their volatile manbaby husbands, they're supposed to be fools who have wasted their lives?!

Religion plays into this perfectly, but just as strong is women's desire for an apolitical existence: it won't happen to you, it's just a joke, it's not referring to you, it's only those other bad women, it's just a couple of exceptions etc. etc. Keep your head down, don't get on people's nerves, suck up to men and reaffirm that the world revolves around them by cheering them on and maintaining male norms, and you will be given an honorary, but always temporary, "one of the good ones" label and be spared their wrath (at least so long as there's enough more fitting hateable targets to distract them). It's hard to overstate the self-destructive cognitive dissonance women consistently have to work with. The exact same contradictory escapist mentality drives a tradwife and your most fervent TIF.

Even if liberal feminism is a scam, the women who are attracted to it genuinely want to fix the problems plagueing our society, even if men pull wool over their eyes. Meanwhile literally the only thing conservatives can do is DARVO, whataboutism and calling the other side hypocrites as if that makes "not even pretending to care"...scratch that, actively making things worse any better. Which I think you touched on with the algorithms discrediting "cringe SJW libfems bs" while doing nothing to actually make the conservative side seem reasonable in turn.

Liberals can bullshit and philosophise and do Olympic-level mental gymnastics about how men jerking off into pink panties and women with "she/they" pins are subverting the binary, but conservatives can't even do that. Like, they can't even try to make a point beyond "eww this new thing is strange and different and it scares me", they appeal only to emotional knee-jerk reactions and that's it. I'd take men having to put a modicum of effort into sugarcoating their misogyny over men openly calling us subhuman like it's the most DUH thing in the world, because wanting to make things better is cringe.

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Possum
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Jan 27 2025, 7:30 PM
#9
@YesYourNigel I read your comment and I loved it. I keep meaning to reply to it in detail but then I get distracted by other stuff. But I did read it (3 times lol) and I agree with like all of it. I might come back and reply in detail at some point because I have thoughts on it but like I wanted to leave a quick comment now because I don't wanna ignore it.

(Jan 24 2025, 10:46 PM)YesYourNigel I feel like I could write a book on this...
I would read it.
Edited Jan 27 2025, 7:31 PM by Possum.
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Jan 27 2025, 7:30 PM #9

@YesYourNigel I read your comment and I loved it. I keep meaning to reply to it in detail but then I get distracted by other stuff. But I did read it (3 times lol) and I agree with like all of it. I might come back and reply in detail at some point because I have thoughts on it but like I wanted to leave a quick comment now because I don't wanna ignore it.

(Jan 24 2025, 10:46 PM)YesYourNigel I feel like I could write a book on this...
I would read it.

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