The libfem concept of boundaries
The libfem concept of boundaries
First, I hate any thought-stopping tactic whose only strategy is "I don't like how this makes me feel", because that is so fucking easy to abuse - racists don't like how black people make them feel, kinksters don't like how "kink-shaming" makes them feel, smokers don't like how no-smoking zones make them feel, really I could go on. Having a negative emotional reaction does not entitle the world to bend over backwards to fix it for you just by virtue of it making you feel bad. Sometimes you should feel bad, and the real question is whether this is justified, rather than labeling any and all negative feelings as bad and inherently oppressive.
I also disagree with the concept because it allows toxic people to set demands while completely avoiding considering how healthy or harmful they are and the impact on others. Perfectly reasonable demands are placed in the same basket as insane irrational ones, and treated as equally valid, and, in typical liberal fashion, above all criticism lest you be accused of being an abusive bigot.
ofc men have already used this to control women and insist on misogyny and then hide behind "that's just my personal unique snowflake preference, I just like what I like 🤷♂️". The only retort I've seen libfems try to make to that is that boundaries are never about controlling what other people do. But like...they are. If my boundary is that I don't tolerate cheating or misogynistic slurs, that's very much reliant on preventing another person from doing something.
And ofc this gets abused along gendered lines in predictable ways: men use the concept to avoid doing any critical introspection and at best just dig their heels into their brainless patriarchal expectations, and at worst straight up pressure women into pandering to their misogynistic "boundaries". Result: the same old controlling behaviour, and women being convinced that really basic human decency is some irrational individualistic preference rather than normal self-respect. It allows women an "apolitical" way of maintaining this decency, but it also puts them in the same basket as men who don't let their girlfriends post photos on social media or have friends.
I think "boundaries" was developed as an apolitical way of pushing back on all the sex-positivity and "cool girl"-ness demanded of liberal women. When a woman says she doesn't want to engage in degrading or painful sex, or doesn't want her partner masturbating to footage of desperate women engaging in painful, degrading sex for money, that is not the same boundary as, say, not wanting to be with someone who won't perform your porn kinks for you, or be a part of your harem of barely adult women, or needing to game for 6 hours straight for your "mental health". I wish women didn't need to artificially set and be uptight about "boundaries" for the barest minimum of human treatment, but they do, and this isn't because they all happen to have strange individual preferences that need to be accommodated because they're uppity like that, but because being treated as human beings is not something they can count on.
Different experiences are never considered in this: women deal with a horribly misogynistic culture, and to a very limited degree, we accept that this demands different treatment for the sake of their safety and basic decency. Because women's humanity is not the default, women should get to set a lot more "boundaries" than men, especially as it pertains to patriarchal behaviour, because they have more trauma, danger and mistreatment that needs to be managed. And yet this is seen as evidence that women should return "tit for tat" and if a woman has a "boundary" of not wanting to hear misogynistic jokes and slurs, she's required to also respect men's irrational, narcissistic and misogynistic boundaries in turn. And women will already have used up so many boundaries on really basic things, creating the illusion of being "controlling", whereas men will demand absurd entitled shit in return. How likely is a woman with a huge list of boundaries to reject her male partner's one boundary that's "act out my porn video for me or I leave"?
Bottom line, "boundary" reeks of "dismantling the master's house with the master's tools". It doesn't give credence to women's patriarchal trauma, it just gives a simplistic, brainless way to package reasonable self-respect in with men's shitty entitled demands, and that ofc ends up with predictable results.
YesYourNigel
Jan 19 2025, 6:03 PM #1Something I've noticed recently is how popular it's gotten to talk about boundaries, and while this superficially seems good, esp for women who are so used to having any standards eroded by endless pestering and calls for reconsideration, I think it's a minefield that predictably gets turned on women by entitled men.
First, I hate any thought-stopping tactic whose only strategy is "I don't like how this makes me feel", because that is so fucking easy to abuse - racists don't like how black people make them feel, kinksters don't like how "kink-shaming" makes them feel, smokers don't like how no-smoking zones make them feel, really I could go on. Having a negative emotional reaction does not entitle the world to bend over backwards to fix it for you just by virtue of it making you feel bad. Sometimes you should feel bad, and the real question is whether this is justified, rather than labeling any and all negative feelings as bad and inherently oppressive.
I also disagree with the concept because it allows toxic people to set demands while completely avoiding considering how healthy or harmful they are and the impact on others. Perfectly reasonable demands are placed in the same basket as insane irrational ones, and treated as equally valid, and, in typical liberal fashion, above all criticism lest you be accused of being an abusive bigot.
ofc men have already used this to control women and insist on misogyny and then hide behind "that's just my personal unique snowflake preference, I just like what I like 🤷♂️". The only retort I've seen libfems try to make to that is that boundaries are never about controlling what other people do. But like...they are. If my boundary is that I don't tolerate cheating or misogynistic slurs, that's very much reliant on preventing another person from doing something.
And ofc this gets abused along gendered lines in predictable ways: men use the concept to avoid doing any critical introspection and at best just dig their heels into their brainless patriarchal expectations, and at worst straight up pressure women into pandering to their misogynistic "boundaries". Result: the same old controlling behaviour, and women being convinced that really basic human decency is some irrational individualistic preference rather than normal self-respect. It allows women an "apolitical" way of maintaining this decency, but it also puts them in the same basket as men who don't let their girlfriends post photos on social media or have friends.
I think "boundaries" was developed as an apolitical way of pushing back on all the sex-positivity and "cool girl"-ness demanded of liberal women. When a woman says she doesn't want to engage in degrading or painful sex, or doesn't want her partner masturbating to footage of desperate women engaging in painful, degrading sex for money, that is not the same boundary as, say, not wanting to be with someone who won't perform your porn kinks for you, or be a part of your harem of barely adult women, or needing to game for 6 hours straight for your "mental health". I wish women didn't need to artificially set and be uptight about "boundaries" for the barest minimum of human treatment, but they do, and this isn't because they all happen to have strange individual preferences that need to be accommodated because they're uppity like that, but because being treated as human beings is not something they can count on.
Different experiences are never considered in this: women deal with a horribly misogynistic culture, and to a very limited degree, we accept that this demands different treatment for the sake of their safety and basic decency. Because women's humanity is not the default, women should get to set a lot more "boundaries" than men, especially as it pertains to patriarchal behaviour, because they have more trauma, danger and mistreatment that needs to be managed. And yet this is seen as evidence that women should return "tit for tat" and if a woman has a "boundary" of not wanting to hear misogynistic jokes and slurs, she's required to also respect men's irrational, narcissistic and misogynistic boundaries in turn. And women will already have used up so many boundaries on really basic things, creating the illusion of being "controlling", whereas men will demand absurd entitled shit in return. How likely is a woman with a huge list of boundaries to reject her male partner's one boundary that's "act out my porn video for me or I leave"?
Bottom line, "boundary" reeks of "dismantling the master's house with the master's tools". It doesn't give credence to women's patriarchal trauma, it just gives a simplistic, brainless way to package reasonable self-respect in with men's shitty entitled demands, and that ofc ends up with predictable results.
