(Ranty) DAE feel almost-revulsion any time they hear the word "Privilege" anymore?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-24T17:44:07+00:00

How many times can I upvote this?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-19T14:14:55+00:00

Take a look at this extremely unfeminist sales pitch for HRT from 1968.

It's a shameless pitch for women to be "feminine" (i.e. subordinated and sexualized) their whole lives with the aid of doses of hormones.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-19T14:09:42+00:00

Good work!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-19T14:08:57+00:00

Can someone with a twitter account unroll and archive?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-17T14:17:25+00:00

Fantastic post, thanks for the insights! and hang in there, you obviously are going to be great at being an adult.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-16T18:14:42+00:00

This is much-needed and I hope will help with pressuring the Democrats.

It is massively long and I'm still reading. But the abstract and introduction alone are quite good.

I'm going to print it and send it to my Democratic congressman.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-16T14:53:18+00:00

Oh yeah, one of my young friends performed a very well-written and touching piece about people who are different and their value and ... at the very end it turned out it was all about "queers". As she's very very feminine and definitely heterosexual I naively thought, how sweet and generous (I had to get over my response to "queer" as a slur).

Ha. Some months later she became "they", some months after that had a coming out party with a new, masc name. Still the same sweet, feminine persona, only now with extra ball caps.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-14T14:02:20+00:00

Yeah, the women my own age who believe in this stuff sadden me. Their political analysis seems to be confined to "be nice".

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-14T13:39:23+00:00

Poe's Law?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-13T16:15:52+00:00

This comment made me laugh tho

I think the main reason these kinds of things turn into a shitshow is because the message gets muddied real quickly. You've got the people with a genuine argument or concern and then you have actual transphobes coming in and agreeing with them. Then the activists see the vocal transphobes and assume the entire issue is because of that. Then you get a bunch of arguing. Hell, you can even see it in this thread if you look just a couple comments down.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-13T16:08:08+00:00

That is one of the ugliest quotes I've ever seen. Thanks for uglying up my day.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-12T02:27:16+00:00

I get "sorry that page doesn't exist".

Censored already?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-12T02:23:17+00:00

Late thirties. I'm a slow learner.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-10T15:37:03+00:00

Fantastic summary, thank you! I've been watching too via Mumsnet and if I were going to boil it down even further (waaaaay over-simplifying), I'd probably say Big Factor One is political centralization and Big Factor Two is the way British women seem to value blunt opposition over playing nice (I could be dead wrong on this, so correct me if you think it's dumb, Brits).

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-09T13:07:27+00:00

Thanks Contra, I’ll remember that all the times I’m being told I’m overreacting when standing up for myself after being sexually harassed, when states continue to erode the rights over my own body, when I receive 80% of the salary my male colleagues get, while I’m married and doing all the housework, all the childcare, AND a full time job. But at least men will automatically just DO things for me that I never asked for in the first place, because it would be a shame for me to actually have to figure something out and build a skills I can use for a lifetime, right? AND I’ll get showered in male (false) praise and (duplicitous) affection... until I turn 40 and get treated as though I were invisible.

Great summary!

I'd like to encourage everyone here to use sex-based pronouns. Free your head!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-05T16:04:05+00:00

I haven't seen or read Carolyn Gage's theater work, and I often disagree with her, but she is brave and insightful. She is the author of this incredibly useful essay on "game" for women undertaking careers in male-dominated environments. Here's a quote:

Trying to be one of the boys is not game. They love women who try this. They play along, laughing behind their sleeves the whole time. You will never be one of them. They will never for one second forget you are female. Own your gender and own the differences… which are significant. Men secretly respect loyalty to one’s own sex. What men approve of and what they actually respect are frequently two different things. Choose respect over approval.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-04T15:40:18+00:00

I feel sick. Again.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-03T03:05:27+00:00

My brain hurts.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-03T03:01:37+00:00

Super site!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-03T02:52:52+00:00

I confess I didn't read all of this article. It's probably not wrong about these people, but all this is a distraction from what we need to do. "Good" and "bad" trans people are really irrelevant to our liberation struggle. Why give them all this attention?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-10-02T14:42:23+00:00

I happily send back all their requests for money with a little note explaining why. Ditto for Amnesty International.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-30T02:23:00+00:00

I really don't want to be mean about this well-meaning person. But this article is not making that easy.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-30T02:18:23+00:00

Great, and I want to sign but what is this thing I'm supposed to get an account at? do others have experience with it?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-26T23:19:03+00:00

a woman ends up in a relationship where she lacks sexual desire for her partner because her partner’s desire for her syncs up with her desire to be wanted and her own desire is ignored.

Yes, super common, I think most teenage girls have no idea what their own sexual desire even feels like.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-25T14:46:00+00:00

Wow. I watched the whole thing and it was very interesting! I'm old and it was very strange to me to hear her say such a mixture of things that made me go "yes!" and "no!" one right after the other.

Just one example–near the end when she's really getting down to criticizing the conflation of women's sexual freedom with being sexy to men. She says "I understand sexual desire. I understand wanting to be wanted."

Mixing up sexual desire and wanting to be wanted is part of the problem she's addressing. But I'm not quite sure she knows that.

Then again, because I'm so much older I might not even understand what she's trying to say. Anyone care to interpret?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-25T14:02:46+00:00

It's hard to know what you can do, but one thing that will be useful to you quite apart from the issue of your twin is to educate yourself about psychological self-defense. Learn what "grey rock" means, read The Gift of Fear and Why Does He Do That. Find out what narcissism is (if using the internet, beware Sam Vaknin and similar people). Read fierce feminists.

Good luck!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-23T14:16:26+00:00

I'm with you.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-23T14:15:53+00:00

I feel sick

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-22T14:17:47+00:00

It's not your generation, it's men.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-20T17:59:10+00:00

Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. It's on the internet or get it from your local library. You can skip the last half or so where he descends into self-promotion.

Other than that, read all the good advice in the other comments here.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-17T13:02:52+00:00

It's excellent as usual, and do make sure to read the previous entry as well!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-15T15:39:16+00:00

Wow like opening a trap door in the roof of someone else's mind! Thanks for the look in.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-15T14:32:07+00:00

Excellent mini-essay!

Not unhinged enough to qualify as a rant in my book. Do better :)

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-15T14:16:27+00:00

Every f*ing thing is a "spectrum" now.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-14T17:33:24+00:00

Oh my goddess. Tiny motes of justice floating in the ether.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-14T17:31:30+00:00

Sadly, the only people who will believe this article are the ones who already know how it goes.

Excellent write-up nonetheless!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-14T13:40:20+00:00

Passive aggressive is enough reason to do a slow fade or fast exit!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-13T19:43:59+00:00

I sympathize! Sometimes I just don't want to see my "nonbinary transmasc" friend either. But she is a really lovely kind brilliant person and I have enough distance that she doesn't rub my nose in the "queer"ness of it all.

It must be harder when it's your best friend! Maybe if you introduced some distance the relationship could become good for you again.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-13T02:34:32+00:00

Guerilla Mail

Thanks for the tip! I wasn't aware how easy this could be and it was slowing me down.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-09T14:00:21+00:00

Yes! It's the slice-and-dice view of what it means to be human.

This is why I've never peaked. From the very first moment I ever heard of "sex-reassignment surgery" I thought it was a horrible violation of humanity and blatantly sexist. A woman is not a man with surgical alterations.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-08T13:42:01+00:00

Super playlist!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-07T13:57:13+00:00

Wow, I wish I had run in your circles instead of the bad company I fell into in the sixties.

There were selfish, demanding, pornsick guys then too. Maybe not as many, I don't know.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-06T18:46:10+00:00

Anecdotally I don't see any correlation in my world. Some of my peers (that is, elderly women) who are mothers are super SJW because they want to be compassionate and don't see anything to alarm them, others are super wised-up and do see it. One got indoctrinated into TRA by her children's schools and universities. My younger women friends, mothers or not, are mostly still in the cult. They seem to think I'm dotty but they put up with me anyway.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-06T18:38:13+00:00

To most people, to human cultures at large, female subordination is "natural", thus invisible.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-06T18:23:28+00:00

Holy Mary this woman is tough!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-06T17:33:43+00:00

I totally agree that shaming people for their sexual needs is not a good thing.

That said (you could see that coming, I'm sure) I have a comment based on my experience with a long-term partner who had a variety of fetishes. Sex with this person, for me, was off-putting and dehumanizing because his focus was not on communication with me, but on himself and the thing that turned him on.

On the other hand it's of course perfectly possible to have shitty, uncommunicative sex with a non-fetishist too!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-04T19:22:09+00:00

I feel sick.

Again.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-09-02T12:16:18+00:00

Yes yes yes!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-29T14:14:56+00:00

done

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-29T14:09:17+00:00

Similarly, hysterectomy, which can be life-saving and necessary but was pushed at me as a solution to the "problem" that I couldn't take hormone replacement at menopause due to my fibroids! These people saved me.

Similarly, hormone replacement for menopause itself, which might be appropriate for some of us but not on the mass scale they were thinking in the 90s.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-29T14:02:32+00:00

Seconded!

And if you're not sure about it, know that you can go lurk without an account and decide later.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-29T13:49:31+00:00

Agreed

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-28T15:19:55+00:00

Dr. Em so good!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-28T15:18:51+00:00

ideals that only harm women and further subjugate us and leave us with the status quo but sell it back to us as empowering

Fantastically well put! Thank you for the "novel"!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-28T14:10:54+00:00

What you say is right. I just want some vigilance on this issue. It's notable (Dworkin noted it) that misogyny and anti-semitism often go hand-in-hand.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-27T12:46:16+00:00

Please be careful about pointing the finger at Soros, it's a common anti-semitic tactic. I agree that like other well-meaning wealthy people he is sending money to causes that hurt women, but linking conspiracy thinking to his name is a really bad move.

Yes, there's a lot of effort going into creating political chaos in the US but I doubt very much it's coming from Soros.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-27T12:31:20+00:00

Yes, since you are in the center of the "trans" storm, just set that aside for now. This person has needs that you can't meet, and vice-versa, and that's enough reason to end it.

When I was ending my marriage and felt so guilty about leaving this person who couldn't take care of himself, a friend said to me, "sometimes there's only room for one person in the lifeboat." And that is so true. You're not obligated to save anyone at your own expense, even if you could, which you can't.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-27T12:24:58+00:00

I also think that he's an interesting example of how the political left have a history of turning a blind eye to misogyny in their ranks.

Absolutely!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-26T12:24:53+00:00

I believe you're right. He also was fairly delusional about a number of topics. Nevertheless he wrote a good book, Darkness at Noon. Life is complicated, sigh.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-23T23:42:09+00:00

What's in it for women to be pornified? What's in it for them to shame other women for not being sexy enough? What's in it for us to be cool girls? What is in it for us to give our trust to men blindly? What is in it for us to say "but what about the men" when rape victims, "domestic" violence victims, victims of female genital mutilation, etc. etc. etc. are the subject? What is in it for women to shame rape victims and claim that a 13-year-old girl "knew what she was doing" and therefore wasn't really raped? What is in it for a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust to claim it wasn't so bad to be raped by her Soviet "liberators"? What was in it for me to think I wasn't "like the other girls" and could "take it" when I was sexually harassed on the job? What? What? What?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-23T23:28:13+00:00

I would like to encourage everyone to use sex-based pronouns here. No one will hurt you.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-21T23:05:33+00:00

I bet there's a potential for a truly fascinating story, if someone would/could write it, about how all this came about.

Tablet Magazine, are you listening?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-20T15:04:25+00:00

Oh dear person, give yourself a break! You are 16 years old and your main task is not to classify yourself or alter yourself. It's to grow into yourself and love yourself and accept your imperfections and the failures of everyone else too (a life-long task!).

And why the hell would you shave "down there"?! Get to know yourself well enough that "down there" doesn't any longer seem like an appropriate phrase. In other words, masturbate. a lot.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-20T14:42:10+00:00

This is a stunningly good read! Too good to summarize (and anyway I'm not finished yet) but I had to drop this quote:

Men's physiology defines most sports, their health needs define insurance coverage, their socially designed biographies define workplace expectations and successful career patterns, their perspectives and concerns define quality in scholarship, their experiences and obsessions define merit, their military service defines citizenship, their presence defines family, their inability to get along with each other their wars and rulerships--defines history, their image defines god, and their genitals define sex. For each of their differences from women, what amounts to an affirmative action plan is in effect, otherwise known as the structure and values of American society.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-20T13:02:53+00:00

Stuped smart people are everywhere.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-18T20:43:56+00:00

The cold hard biology isn't sexist, the biological institutions that create gaps in knowledge and medicine is sexist.

Beautifully put!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-18T18:10:04+00:00

Congratulations! You told people what happened to you and they called you a liar. You are definitely a woman!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-16T15:19:39+00:00

I would probably help the guy but I think the writer is wise to de-program herself in this way.

It depresses me to remember how many lessons I needed to understand that for many guys, common human decency from me was perceived as a come-on. And that's only one facet of the situation.

I, too, reserve my charity for females, right down to the panhandlers on the street.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-13T13:04:12+00:00

Gotta vote for Biden because Trump is manifestly unfit and dangerous in every way.

And pay attention to BEB on the Equality Act and be relentless with your Democratic rep and senators, if any, on that subject!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-13T12:59:44+00:00

ahaha -- Ellis, Acton, and Currer Bell were all non-binary, get used to it!

/s

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-10T15:46:55+00:00

The awe-inspiring Julie Bindel!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-06T14:10:38+00:00

Exactly. "Sex" refers to reproductive potential and in humans there are two varieties.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-05T15:00:45+00:00

See here

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-04T14:30:41+00:00

The joke's on me because I barely know who Terry Pratchett is! But I love history and that John Knox title sure stuck with me after I saw it while reading about 16th century Britain.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-08-03T14:37:33+00:00

You don't need an account to see the content so come on over and have a look!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-31T13:47:57+00:00

I sent them money.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-31T13:44:19+00:00

There's a great rant by Ciara Kelly on this video

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-31T13:41:57+00:00

Oh wise CNN, please, please tell me how to figure out if I am an "individual with a cervix"!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-31T13:39:45+00:00

Just browsing around on Ovarit is excellent for my blood pressure!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-30T16:44:04+00:00

I think I asked for a link but didn't get one. Anyone else?

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T17:47:46+00:00

How all-pervasive it is to be treated as a resource for other people.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T17:45:12+00:00

This one is huge in my opinion and experience. And I think it's another reason (besides pure selfishness) so many are ready to call prostitution "sex work".

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T16:47:21+00:00

Excellent! Thank you!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T02:10:36+00:00

Agree – like so much else that comes out of them it just seems completely off the wall.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T02:09:29+00:00

Can you say more about these two views of intersectionality? So many times when the word is used it seems to be communicating not much beyond "I'm more feminist than you are!"

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-29T02:04:39+00:00

I didn't hear anything about how it went, I hope everything worked out!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-28T20:30:12+00:00

Read it all! I need to read it again and think hard.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-28T16:55:16+00:00

Exactly, you are so right, that's why I used the scare quotes to indicate a gross oversimplification :)

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-28T16:47:39+00:00

Did anyone go to the Zoom webinar by Woman's Place UK with Elizabeth Hungerford and Audrey Ludwig? The subject was the current state of equality law in the US and the UK. The UK women have been doing great work. I think it's politically more complicated here in the US what with the lack of a unifying issue like national self-ID legislation. But we could end up there soon and we really need to have some strategies ready.

I signed up and then missed it because of family stuff :(

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-28T16:36:03+00:00

"Medical ethics" my toe.

Hilarious. And I love your username!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-28T16:25:29+00:00

Wow I think you really laid it out! Grade A rant!!!

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-27T16:02:08+00:00

Ahahahaha, this reminds me of one my top three favorite comments received during my career in STEM:

"You don't look like a computer scientist."

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-27T15:57:29+00:00

I feel it too. Also towards pornified women in general. But I try to remind myself that they've been trained into it.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-27T15:33:14+00:00

I feel sick. That is all.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-27T15:31:48+00:00

Oh God it's everywhere! I will never get over having my young lesbian friend explain to me, an ancient straight woman, that she is not "lesbian" but "queer" (a word that still shocks me as much as any other slur) because – omg – her friends have basically bullied her into believing that lesbians are uncool. When I pointed out to her that one of her most admired friends was unapologetically lesbian, she said, "but my friend is too cool to be cool." Oh God. She didn't play the "my ex transitioned so I am queer not lesbian" card but it was in the air.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-27T15:23:58+00:00

Thank you for your story, so full of sweet naiveté (no offense! you're young, it's allowed) and dead-on perceptions at the same time! You did good!

I would like to encourage everyone to use sex-based pronouns here.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-23T21:47:08+00:00

Posie is the best! You can see how much she loves this fight.

MonstrousRegiment · 2020-07-20T17:39:43+00:00

Alice Dreger is a gem! She's not "on our side" but her article and book are full of insights and are good reads. An honest person to the core and one of my heroes.

MonstrousRegiment