Based In Shoreham-by-sea, England Master Glass Worker

Sphagnum squarrosum a distincitvely spiky sphagnum moss.

Fake, performative support is worse than being indifferent about something or not expressing an opinion

'but-but bsdm and violent sex doesn't affect anybody!' yes it does. now girls who want to be seen as attractive and loved normally by their partner in bed is considered a 'puritan' and 'vanilla'. they are shamed and routinely made fun for liking something normal by people irl and in the media.

Ironically, I think that it's the modern evolution of political lesbianism, just without the (historically accidental, because back then it was encouraged by some actual lesbians too) lesbophobia.

There has been the idea from at least 1970 that to be a lesbian is to be an inherently better feminist, because lesbians are supposedly magically better at seeing through patriarchy, they're so pro-woman that they even centre other women romantically, and they reject male supremacy so much that they would never be attracted to a man. It's a strange fetishisation of what is (or at least should be) a neutral sexuality that a woman happens to be born with.

It makes lesbians the top-tier of feminists that all other women should emulate and aspire to be, but also be separated from. It then allows the smaller number of misogynistic lesbians that claim to be "feminists" to feel entitled attack bisexual and straight women under the guise of "feminism," and then when called out for that misogyny and biphobia, claim that they're doing nothing but speaking out about their oppressors, and accusing others of lesbophobia for demanding that lesbians centre their oppressors after that criticism.

In reality, no lesbian ever has to centre straight women. It's understandable if they don't. The problem is that the smaller number of lesbian "feminists" who behave like that like the idea that they are the peak feminists that can speak for everyone, and they enjoy wielding power over women that they like to deem as lesser. If they didn't, if they genuinely wanted to stay focused only on lesbian issues and lesbian support networks and other lesbians (which is entirely reasonable!) then they wouldn't cling to call themselves "feminists" while spouting misogyny and trying to make certain types of misogyny "acceptable" in feminism.

The fact is, to be feminist is to support all women. The vast majority of women are straight. The vast majority of those women have been socialised to get married and have children or be seen as a failure, where it's drummed into their heads so much that they fear dying alone and unloved and unwanted. That's even before the anon's facts that love can happen whenever and wherever, and it is hard to stop it from happening.

That doesn't mean that straight women need to be front and centre of everything, fuck us bisexual women and fuck lesbian women too, but it does mean that their struggles are equally important because freedom for all women is important, and to ignore them or dismiss them is inherently anti-feminist.

I really appreciate your response to the post victim blaming straight women. I was astonished when wanting a life partner was compared to "hitting a hornet's nest". That's like. Not remotely the same thing. Or calling a desire for a partner simple "socialization". No. It's an *instinct* that most people have. And romantic love can be an absolutely incredible and lovely experience. Some of the most beautiful experiences of my life involved romance. Saying that forgoing it is a simple and easy thing and you're just stupid if you don't is massively simplistic. I especially hate this when it comes from lesbians. You're asking straight women to give up something amazing that you aren't at all expected to give up. It is indeed true that most men are terrible and getting into a relationship with them is a big risk, because repeatedly men have shown that they have the ability to be deceptive about the truth of who they are until marriage and/or children have tied their female partner to them. But that doesn't somehow make straight women simply stupid or pathetic for getting into relationships with men. It makes them human beings with human desires. I'm lucky enough to be bisexual, so I'm not inherently going to be deprived of romantic love if I want to keep myself safe from men. But I have fallen in love with men before. Not because I went on dating sites looking for them--I actually select only looking for women on them--but because I've met men at work and school, and fallen for them. Resisting the urge to act upon those desires is massively difficult if not impossible. It's not going out of your way to kick a hornet's nest. It's trying to ignore the call of something primal and potentially beautiful. Sneering at straight women is unempathetic and disgusting, and I would expect better from women who purport to be feminists.

It's because those "feminists" are just lesbians with a superiority complex.

I am also fortunately bisexual, honestly I'm finding that the only people I can trust to be Normal about women is bisexual women.

What makes it even funnier is if you DON'T think straight women are helpless dumb dick addicts swatting at a hornet's nest, you MUST support dating men. Like. No I have a whole ass tag of reasons to never date men, because based on the data it is my belief that it is not beneficial to women. But I do not view women as inherently lesser for giving in to biology.

Ways In Which Harry Potter Is Bigoted Trash

Rowling uses names like Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt for her Characters of Color.

Werewolves are a metaphor for HIV. Fenrir Greyback is a werewolf who likes to infect young children. Seeing as the Aids Crisis primarily affected gay men and there is a stereotype that gay men are sexual predators, this is pretty damning. Especially seeing as she has no visibly queer characters in her story.

Dumbledore is the only confirmed queer character in her story and she kills him off. I suppose Grindelwald was also confirmed as being gay, but that's not the best representation seeing as he was evil. She never explicitly states either of these characters are queer in the text, though.

Dobby wanting to be free is treated as an anomaly amongst the house elves. The rest are content being slaves.

When Hermione creates S.P.E.W. to try to help free the house elves and gets them rights, Ron and Harry both become annoyed with her and Ron outright mocks S.P.E.W.

The book treats any character who is overweight poorly. Typically, heavier characters are either nasty people or incompetent people whom she makes fun of.

The whole thing where the girls can get into the boys' dormitories but the boys can't get into the girls'. You could probably find something transphobic here, especially since JKR is a TERF, but even so, she ignores that through the use of magic, the girls could be just as dangerous as the boys.

She is oftentimes misogynistic, as seen when Mrs. Weasley believes the rumors spread by Rita Skeeter in Witch Weekly and begins to treat Hermione, a fourteen-year-old girl, poorly for them, but treats Harry just the same.

Even characters we are supposed to like, like Hagrid and Ron, make nasty comments about Muggles. And not just the Dursleys. Ron even makes ignorant comments about Muggle doctors, calling them people who "cut people up" and acting like they aren't as good as wizards. Considering they can't just wave a wand and make everything better, what Muggle doctors do is amazing and we all know it.

The goblins are antisemitic caricatures.

Feel free to add onto this if there's any I missed. It's been a long time since I read the series, so there's probably something in there that I've forgotten about.

Bisexuals were banned from attending the Mardi Gras gay & lesbian pride event in the 1990s.

In the membership forms, if applicants tick the boxes marked gay, lesbian, or transgender their membership will be accepted with no further ado.

However, if the applicants tick the boxes marked bisexual, they had additional questions to answer to justify their presence at the event.

The irony, given Mardi Gras builds on the celebratory traditions of Pride – an event devised by a bi woman following the Stonewall riot in 1969 – will not be lost.

(picture taken from Melbourne Star Observer 3 May 1996)

X X

Ugh, that's true. I stand corrected, I could imagine that brainrot turning into, "I'm NB because black nail polish is fun, and if I'm NB and into women, that would make me queer/bi" stupidity.

If you’re ever feeling insecure about your intelligence just remember there are males out there who call themselves bisexual because they’re attracted to females and trans-identified females

gay men are not discriminated against because they're gay. they're hated because being attracted to men is seen as a feminine trait, and our society sees being a woman as shameful.

men, no matter their sexuality, are not oppressed.

gay men are not the victim.

i loved an Angel, but it made me weak.

Feminism is unique in the sense that different groups of women have oppression and privilege on different axes, but we still need to work out the best way to have true solidarity on the basis of being oppressed as women.

I don't disagree with you. There's a lot of deliberate weaponisation of woman-on-woman violence by MRA and right wing types that want to undermine everything with "but women are worse, actually!" and it's entirely right to call that out for the distraction that it is.

At the same time, ordinary women who haven't read feminist texts, who are living their lives as best as they can, who then fail to relate to feminism because there's no space to talk about systemic vs interpersonal are then going to dismiss feminism as useless, and we're no further forward.

It's also true that every attack, abuse and act of misogyny large and small from men to women is interpersonal, but we just can't individually promote stories or offer individual protection to every single woman out there. It would be the dream to be able to do that. We can continue to donate to women's shelters and women-focused charities and offer support to individual women in our lives, but feminism's focus is on breaking down the patriarchy.

For me, I think it's more important to do as much as reasonably possible to reach out to women who have rejected feminism or who think feminism is useless to them. If we don't, then all that's going to happen is that feminists will sit and shake our heads and scream until we're blue in the face while nothing changes at all.

We need more women to wake up and be feminist, and telling the daughter of an abusive mother, essentially, "Mentioning your abusive mother is just amplifying the wrongs that women do while men get to get away with the very same thing" is going to do absolutely nothing but inflict more trauma on that victim, and turn her away from feminism, because while you and I will be able to sit back and have a reasonable chat about why that is thanks to the patriarchy, she is going to think feminism is full of abuse apologism, and she can't be near it at all because it's just triggered her PTSD.

One of the things that feminism needs to better grapple with is the difference between systemic and interpersonal issues.

The biggest reason that a lot of women push back from feminism with their additions to #NotAllMen is because those women know and love men who aren't rapists and who aren't physically abusive. It's entirely natural to rail against something that you see as attacking someone that you love.

When feminists advocate for single-sex schooling to protect girls, there's an automatic push back and outcry over the very real bullying that goes on in girl-only schools that have had long-lasting impacts on ex-students.

Glossing over the abuse that mothers put their daughters through often gives the impression that anything that counters any women-supporting-women narrative has to be stamped down on and ignored, or at worst, even denied, for the good of feminism.

It's far too easy as feminists to see criticisms like the above from women and then dismiss them, or repeat more statistics and then get frustrated at those women or call them handmaidens, instead of engaging and understanding why they're railing against what's being said.

No, not every single man is a raping woman-beater, but there are a ton more male abusers than female abusers, and a ton more female victims than male victims. That's a systemic issue, and we need to fix it. That doesn't make those loved fathers, brothers, cousins, friends or partners suddenly monsters out of nowhere.

No, female-only schools aren't perfect and there are bullying scandals in all schools, that doesn't excuse the individual abuse that victims have been through, but in general, they're safer for girls, and girls achieve higher grades than in mixed-sex schools, which is important to discuss and improve on.

No, abuse victims shouldn't be silent over what they've been through, and female abusers deserve to face justice. Continued cycles of abuse and female socialisation and mental illess etc might explain some of the abuse, but it doesn't excuse it. The point of feminism is to free all women from patriarchy, so that even the worst of the worst of women don't suffer with misogyny, not coddle the evil and the abusers just because of their sex.

There is so much difficult nuance, and there's too much reliance on the systemic to the point that the interpersonal is completely erased. It stops individual women from seeing anything in feminism that's useful to them. If they have counter-examples to any systemic issue, then they'll use those personal examples to dismiss that there's a systemic issue at all. If they're met halfway and the systemic vs the interpersonal is explained, then there's a much better chance that they'll pay attention or even go away to think about it to eventually become feminists, too.