I hate the implicit approval I get from Everyone whenever I dress feminine. Suddenly everyone is 10x times nicer. I also fucking hate how much I like the approval and that I feel so relaxed.
thats how we’re getting brainwashed into thinking that we like it and that we’re doing it “for ourselves”
Is there any real purpose to it? Nope, but we are supposed to spend hundreds of dollars on makeup. Why? Looks.
Skirts. Do they function better than pants? No. In fact, you have to be careful when you wear skirts. Sit a certain way, don’t move a certain way. They’re more restricting than pants. But we’re supposed to wear them. Why? Looks.
Fake nails? You can’t do shit when you first start wearing them. You have to learn how to function while wearing them. But we wear them. Why? Looks.
Heels. Uncomfortable, expensive, painful, and damaging. But we wear them. Why? Looks.
Long hair. Takes longer to care for. Takes more product to keep clean. Takes more effort to style. Yet we’re supposed to have it. Why? Looks.
I can go on. Everything that is intended for women is purely aesthetic. Whether it’s pointless, time-consuming, painful or expensive.
Yeah, but see, it’s a double-edged sword. You can choose not to participate, be a gender non-conforming woman, which is what I am. I’ve shaved my head, I don’t wear heels or make up or fake nails.
But while following female gender roles is a punishment we’re conditioned to enjoy, being GNC results in social punishment. I’ve been told boys aren’t allowed in the bathroom, I’ve been called “sir” multiple times. A little girl asked her mom why a boy was looking at nail polish. Someone informed me that since I choose to look this way, I must view myself as a man, and I’m really a transman.
You either follow these archaic, pointless, toxic gender roles, or you forfeit being recognized as female.
So deeply does society associate womanhood with femininity that we are taught we are not women if we don’t conform to the roles men decided we should conform to.
Is there any real purpose to it? Nope, but we are supposed to spend hundreds of dollars on makeup. Why? Looks.
Skirts. Do they function better than pants? No. In fact, you have to be careful when you wear skirts. Sit a certain way, don’t move a certain way. They’re more restricting than pants. But we’re supposed to wear them. Why? Looks.
Fake nails? You can’t do shit when you first start wearing them. You have to learn how to function while wearing them. But we wear them. Why? Looks.
Heels. Uncomfortable, expensive, painful, and damaging. But we wear them. Why? Looks.
Long hair. Takes longer to care for. Takes more product to keep clean. Takes more effort to style. Yet we’re supposed to have it. Why? Looks.
I can go on. Everything that is intended for women is purely aesthetic. Whether it’s pointless, time-consuming, painful or expensive.
Yeah, but see, it’s a double-edged sword. You can choose not to participate, be a gender non-conforming woman, which is what I am. I’ve shaved my head, I don’t wear heels or make up or fake nails.
But while following female gender roles is a punishment we’re conditioned to enjoy, being GNC results in social punishment. I’ve been told boys aren’t allowed in the bathroom, I’ve been called “sir” multiple times. A little girl asked her mom why a boy was looking at nail polish. Someone informed me that since I choose to look this way, I must view myself as a man, and I’m really a transman.
You either follow these archaic, pointless, toxic gender roles, or you forfeit being recognized as female.
Since y’all are so focused on sex based oppression, that means we can’t talk about gender based oppressions right? We can’t talk about rape culture, since it has nothing to do with biology but rather has to do with the way women are viewed as weak sex objects for the male gaze. We can’t talk about the wage gap, since that has to do with women being viewed as less valuable and intelligent, which is also not rooted in our biology. What about sexual slavery and sex work as a last resort? Catcalling? Sexual harassment at work? Domestic violence? Hate crimes?
None of these oppressions are based on what biologically happens to women but rather how women are perceived based on our gender role. ALL of these things also affect trans women, often to a greater percentage per population than cis women.
I’ll wait. ☕️
Hi there!
Radical feminist philosophy does not acknowledge a distinction between gender and sex; sex is a biological reality whereas gender/gender roles are the social expectations people are subjected to based on their sex. The use of gender roles as a social and political tool for subjugating women is well-documented in radical feminist literature.
Rape culture is not, as you say, “the way women are viewed as weak sex objects for the male gaze”; the male gaze and the act of viewing women as sex objects is discussed as a part of rape culture, but the concept of rape culture as a whole relates back to the use of women’s bodies for their reproductive capacity.
Similarly, the wage gap has nothing “to do with women being viewed as less valuable and intelligent”; the assumption that women’s contributions to the workforce are less valuable than men’s may be a piece of the puzzle but the existence of the wage gap is part of a larger social trend designed to keep women economically dependent on men. This, too, relates back to the use of women’s reproductive capacity as a resource.
If you’re interested in learning more I would recommend starting with Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” as it’s one of the more popular/easily accessible pieces. You can read a PDF here. I would recommend the whole thing, of course, but what you’re specifically talking about is covered starting in Section II; it’s going to be page 12 of the PDF but labeled as 641 in the book.
Specifically, Rich talks about the oppression of women as being rooted in using our reproductive capacity as a social/economic resource (sex-based oppression) and the correlations between this and sexual violence (rape culture), economic oppression (wage gap), intersections of sex and class (sexual violence in the workplace; survival sex work) etc. I would also recommend reading all of the material she references but that may be more work than you’re willing to do here if all you’re looking for is a basic explanation.
TL;DR: Radical feminist philosophy posits that “gender-based oppression” is a tool used to reinforce the use of women (as a class) by men (as a class) as a means of labor production due to women’s biology. This is sex-based oppression.
As for the experiences of trans women, my understanding of the philosophy is that the experience of this oppression is either rooted in erroneously reading trans women as female-sexed, or in sociopolitical backlash for being GNC and therefore threatening the hierarchy. Someone else could probably address that better than me, though.
For real, OP??
~ “Feminism: A Beginner’s Guide”, by Sally Scholz.
Why do these asshole think they are smart when they are really dumb and think males are more oppressed than women?
“can you explain why radical feminism doesn’t includes males in all of these issues that it addresses in terms of female oppression?” lmao
I know they list all the things that happens as a result of sex based oppression. They think that sex based oppression ends a reproductive issues.
They don’t have a clue that sex based oppression is the starting point.
If they considered why discrimination against women is referred to as sexism or misogyny they might figure it out by themself.
Ps. man/males who want to to wear feminine clothes or call themselves women or take on the roles assigned to women are not more oppressed than women. You can fuck right off with that assertion.
men CHOOSE to perform femininity. females are coerced into it because we are female. this seems to be the major point of misunderstanding for most of these “gender based oppression exists and sex based doesn’t!!!” assholes
Men/males get a choice as to whether the adopt a feminine persona or not.
Women are punished no matter what we do and we can’t opt in or out.
“Pain is an essential part of the grooming process, and that is not accidental. Plucking the eyebrows, shaving under the arms, wearing a girdle, learning to walk in high-heeled shoes, having one’s nose fixed, straightening or curling one’s hair – these things hurt.
The pain, of course, teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the woman who would be beautiful.
The tolerance of pain and the romanticization of that tolerance begins here, in preadolescence, in socialization and serves to prepare women for lives of childbearing, self-abnegation, and husband-pleasing. The adolescent experience of the “pain of being a woman” casts the feminine psyche into a masochistic mold and forces the adolescent to conform to a self-image which bases itself on mutilation of the body, pain happily suffered, and restricted physical mobility.
It creates the masochistic personalities generally found in adult women: subservient, materialistic (since all value is placed on the body and its ornamentation), intellectually restricted, creatively impoverished. It forces women to be a sex of lesser accomplishment, weaker, as underdeveloped as any backward nation. Indeed, the side effects of that prescribed relationship between women and their bodies are so extreme, so deep, so extensive, that scarcely any area of human possibility is left untouched by it.
Men, of course, like a woman who “takes care of herself”. The male response to the woman who is made-up and bound is a learned fetish, societal in its dimensions…
…
The meaning of this analysis of the romantic ethos surely is clear. A first step in the process of liberation (women from their oppression, men from the unfreedom of their fetishism) is the radical redefining of the relationship between women and their bodies. The body must be freed, liberated, quite literally: from paint, girdles and all varieties of crap. WOMEN MUST STOP MUTILATING THEIR BODIES AND START LIVING IN THEM.
Perhaps the notion of beauty which will then organically emerge will be truly democratic and demonstrate a respect for human life in its infinite, and most honorable, variety.“
Masculinity and femininity are both oppressive to women, both intended to be enacted for the benefit of men no matter who performs them, and both integral parts of institutional heterosexuality (otherwise known as just heterosexuality). Gender is a system which is built fundamentally on harming and marginalizing women and for us there can never be safety within its confines.
Masculinity and femininity are equally fragile, and their frailty shows most at the point of sexuality- that is, boyfriend jeans and men not wanting to wear pink are halves of the same coin, not separate homophobic phenomena.
Fuck this “we’re oppressed for being feminine uwu” bullshit.
If women were oppressed for performing femininity and not for being female, men would be making laws on appropriate shades of lipstick and amounts of eyeliner, NOT OUR FEMALE BODIES.
Unfeminine women would be safe from female oppression and men who wear makeup would be just as oppressed as feminine women. You could literally choose whether or not you want to be oppressed. Just stop wearing dresses and makeup and you’ll be fine!
I can’t opt out of female oppression. Even if I went by male or neutral pronouns and identified as a non-woman, I would still be denied medical procedures including but not limited to abortion and sterilisation, I would still be paid less than my male colleagues, I would still be seen incompetent and unfit for anything but child rearing and housekeeping, I would still get interrupted and silenced by men and I would still have to plan for escape routes and carry a weapon of some sort for protection, just in case. I would still be female and I would still be oppressed simply because of the fact that I am female, no matter how I dress or ~identify~.
It’s also very western centric.
There are countries were girls and women don’t perform what we here see as “feminine”.
That would mean they aren’t oppressed. But they are because OF THEIR SEX!
Gender roles are different in different cultures. This is what makes it clear that gender is a social construct.
I just realized why the whole tomboy-》WOMAN transformation trope bothers me so damn much. It’s because I’ve been in that scene too many times in my own life. Getting dressed up for some event or another meant pulling on some dress or another tighter-than-I’d-like oufit, getting color brushed on my face, and getting my hair done in some way. Always a 360 for my father or whoever else was waiting to see, always proud smiles, always talk about how much different- how much older I looked. Always seeing myself in the mirror and not seeing me, always feeling like an imposter, and always wishing I was too sick to go. That trope is bullshit, the culture it’s a part of is bullshit, and I hate femininity make overs. They are bullshit.
There is also the implication that women must become feminine to be an adult.
look, if you think that a woman’s strength isn’t authentically women’s strength unless she’s doing it in heels and an hours worth of make-up you need to reevaluate what you think makes a woman a woman
Celtyradfem 