perplexis

I think it's genuinely concerning how sex-negative we, as a society, are becoming. (This post brought to you by a few tweets I saw)

Does no one else think it's genuinely worrying how if you even find a fictional character attractive, you're called a gooner, or a degenerate, or some other pejorative to indicate that being sexual in any way is gross and nasty and yucky? Why does art suddenly lack artistic value because it's sexual in nature? Why are we so obsessed with associating a core feature of the human condition with shame and guilt?

Even more concerning is that it isn't just some niche little group of people on the internet, it's rampant. Every nook and cranny of the internet has these people, ready and raring to call you names if you dare speak anything slightly not-safe-for-work.

Like the people on twitter openly calling trans women degenerates and freaks for having an incest/rape kink (I've seen this one A LOT), because how can you claim to be an ally, or lgbt-friendly, or a feminist, but get mad at a woman expressing her sexuality? Why does sexuality gross you out to the point you feel the need to demean people over it?

And where does it end? Are we going to start calling women who dress a little too revealing 'sluts' again? Are we going to ban sex scenes in movies? Start preaching abstinence, say sex outside of marriage is bad, that lust is immoral, and being gay is a sin?

I'm sure that a large part of the problem is that these people are generally children, and still in the "sex is gross" phase, but I know that's not the case with all of them. I'm just worried for the future, because all the people saying these things are just reinventing conservatism under the guise of progressivism, and are (intentionally or unintentionally, I'm not sure) causing more harm than good.

I know we talk about puritanism and stuff all the time, but in my opinion, it's gotten to a point even the actual puritans didn't get to.

I think it's genuinely becoming concerning how hyper-sexualized we, as a society, are becoming. does no one else think it's genuinely worrying that so many women can remember being a child not being able to google their favourite female cartoon character without seeing grotesquely over-sexualized fanart of her that they couldn't even healthily process at the time, and if you talk about that making you uncomfortable or affecting your wellbeing in any way, you're called a puritan, or a prude, or some other pejorative to indicate that having complex or negative feelings about sexuality in any way is callous or judgemental or a display of moral superiority? why is it so difficult to find art or media that isn't sexualized in nature? why are we so obsessed with making a special and unique feature of the human condition our primary focus almost all of the time? even more concerning is that it isn't just some niche little group of people on the internet, it's rampant. every nook and cranny of the internet has these people, ready and raring to compare you to a Christian missionary if you dare speak anything slightly negative about society's many varying views on sexuality. like the people on Twitter proudly displaying their incest/rape kink (I've seen this one A LOT), because how can you claim to be an ally to survivors of sexual assault, or a feminist, but not even be able to recognize that incestuous abuse is one of the most common forms of child sexual abuse that is committed to young girls by their male relatives, and that women struggle to have their rape stories taken seriously because sexual abuse has been culturally normalized by the mainstream-ification of violent, abusive pornography? why do other people criticizing how modern sexuality enables rape culture make you feel personally threatened or limited in your own, private relationship to your own sexuality? and where does it end? are we going to start telling women who say "no thank you, I'm not interested" to 'loosen up' and 'learn to have some fun' again? are we going to ban women from the platforms they created for themselves to talk about their experiences with sexual trauma and assault? start protecting sex offenders from being held accountable for their crimes, start ignoring the role marriage plays as an institution for male control over female sexuality, start preaching that individual sexual pleasure is all that matters, and anyone who disagrees is a fascist? I'm sure that a large part of the problem is that these people generally have a Shadow Complex, and are still stuck in the "I like to pretend I'm being so rebellious against sexual shame culture, but really my shame is just making me act out in hyper-sexual ways just to be contrarian and spiteful to the perceived status quo, because I never developed the emotional tools needed to simultaneously practice destigmatizing human sexuality while also maintaining critical thinking towards sexual culture, which shows that I'm actually still feeling my internalized shame on a very deep level, and it's still very much affecting me in unconscious and almost uncontrollable ways" phase, which is honestly the case for most of them. I'm just worried for the future, because all the people saying these things are just reinventing pornographic rape culture under the guise of progressivism, and are (intentionally or unintentionally, it depends) causing more harm than good.

Men wanna talk about radicalisation when boys start doing badly in school and voting for actual felons? Isn't it funny how leftist men have decided that *now* is the point where they need to put their foot down, as though it's been give-and-take battles between the sexes throughout history and not women getting abused constantly across nearly every single culture and religion and finally deciding they've had enough

I wish that people who identify as nonbinary could just admit that it’s a subculture. They have more in common with emos and goths than with homosexuals and bisexuals…they aren’t experiencing oppression for the way they were born, at worst they’re experiencing bullying for the way they choose to express themselves. So why are we supposed to consider them Super Special And Oppressed Queers when they just aren’t? They need to just leave LGB people alone and embrace the fact that they are an aesthetic-based subculture, not an oppressed minority.

^ the article

"More than half the drop in America’s total fertility rate is explained by women under the age of 19 now having next to no children. Around a third of the missing births would have been unplanned, and the majority of them would have been to women on low incomes."

SUCH good news 🥳 no young girls anywhere should be forced to have babies

"women under the age of 19" children. you mean children.

reporters stop using passive language challenge impossible

“Paraphilia”

Ah, this one’s my favorite:

Old-school / conservative homophobia vs. Woke homophobia

They say all of this and then act like the BBC article was making up lies out of thin air

They always say you can't know someone's gender just by looking at them, so how do they think this works? What about with "genderfluid" people? What do they think attraction even is?

Can people just leave lesbians alone

For one second

i feel like there needs to be more neil gaiman hate, i expected him to get the jkr treatment. everyone has just been like "oh i'm so upset, I looked up to him so much :(". where's the harassment? where's the pipebombs? where's the thinkpiece about how dead boy detectives was fascist this whole time?

the double standard is telling.

people want an excuse to bash women. period. they look for whichever women society has deemed "bad" and "worthy of criticism," and use it to justify their hatred of women.

"women, if you don't include every group in your struggle against oppression, then you are no better than the men that oppress you" bffr

literally fucking when was feminism ever about "inclusion"? it's not a girl's club, it's a radical movement against an entire history of oppression.

and no, we won't include the oppressor himself just because he put on a dress.

reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim

He doesn’t like you, he likes your naivety and willingness to put up with shit most women his age probably won’t

"you're mature for your age" "you're so special" "you're so different from other girls" pls run in the other direction!

I don’t actually care if someone thinks this is derailing because it’s important.

This applies to all genders on both sides. Teen boys often get left out of these posts, but they are also preyed upon like this, by men and women and also people who are neither because no one is incapable of being a predator. This post shouldn’t be gendered. You can say it happens to girls more, and it could be true. But it happens to boys and they are less likely to talk about it when they get hurt. Less likely to get support if they do, especially if the older person was a woman. I don’t think we have an accurate statistic on how often it happens to boys because of this.

But regardless. Don’t you think they should be told how to stay safe too?

So even though every statistic tells you that not only does this overwhelmingly happen to girls more, but that there is no significant reporting gap between men and women (so your vague claim about boys not speaking out was completely pulled out of your ass) but chose to derail a post about men grooming little girls because for some reason you people are incapable of caring about women’s issues.

"this post shouldn't have been gendered" make another post.

you can (and should) support male victims of grooming AND also support female victims. not everything has to be about men.

So why make two separate posts about the same thing? If it affects people of both genders and it's always bad when it does (regardless of how often you think it happens to one or the other), why is it wrong to include everyone when making these kind of statements?

You say to say support male and female victims, but don't talk about them at the same time, because going "don't forget boys can be groomed too" somehow makes it all about men? It's derailment to acknowledge that underaged boys can also be taken advantage of and need to hear this stuff too?

Nevermind that women can also be predators and same sex predation can happen too. Guess there should be four posts to say the same thing. We can't care about all victims simultaneously after all, empathy is a limited resource!

people aren't saying "you can only talk about male victims and female victims sepertaly," they are saying that not everything has to be about men. op made a post specifically targeting 14-19 year old girls and was trying to specifically help them. op was not saying that anyone outside of that group can't be preyed upon.

there was nothing wrong with the original post, and adding an addition to said post about other victims of predation is fine, and actually can be helpful. but saying it in such a way that demonizes the original post by accusing op of not caring about male victims, asking "don't you think they should be told how to stay safe too," attacks someone just trying to spread support.

not explicitly including every single group in a help-post isn't oppressive, and staying that girls can be groomed doesn't mean that men can't be groomed either.

my fyp is beautifully curated

creds to @moidh8ter on tt

When people are saying that rape is worse for male victims than for female victims, I feel like the quiet part is "because women are used to it."

No, it’s because men don’t have as many resources, some rape definitions actively exclude ways men can be raped, society perceives male victims of rape a lot differently than how society perceives female victims of rape, there’s a lack of rape crisis centers for male rape victims, etc.

Men get fucked up due to patriarchy, too.

Women experience all of this too.

Wow really? No fucking way. Anyway, being raped is not a competition of who has it worse. Everyone deserves respect and resources.

”Rape is not a competition of who has it worse” they say, after trying to prove men have it worse.

they don't have male rape centers because men don't want to build them and male victims would likely be further victimized in an enclosed space that could be easily infiltrated by predators

She was intimate w a transfem and showed allyship and her reward is being sexually degraded and mocked in public without her consent. If this is how they treat the women that sleep with them and support their identity, then what's the benefit of not being a TERF.

Notice that "transwomen are women" but they always go out of their way to specify "cisgirl" when bragging about "pounding" or being sexually degrading. They know exactly who the real women are.

Men never change.

Did you stretch before you made that fucking reach?

what reach? The girl expressed that she was uncomfortable with it and OP continued to laugh about it.

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

official anti terf post

"I'm a feminist, I support women! Except trans women, and sex workers, and women of color, and muslin women, and queer women, and women that watch porn and have kinks, and lesbians that date trans women, and intersex women, and women that were SA'd by other women, and basically all women that disagree with me and aren't perisex cishet white middle class." — average radfem

OH NOUS A RADFEM FOUND ME, and they didn't even refute anything I said. Actually they just proved my point, "being a sex worker isnt empowering" working isn't empowering. Sex workers need support and yall just want their job to remain criminalized and stigmatized. "Stop using black women to defend men" I'm not by the way. Being AMAB isn't a cursed thing, men always experience SA, abuse and feminism isnt about hating men. "Most radfems I know talk about SA" good, they're still transphobic btw 👍🏽

"It is not bigotry to blindly support everything a woman does" local terf comes dangerously close to self-awareness

I’d like to refute some of this, if you’re open to having a sensible conversation.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

As a 30 year old man who escaped the Alt-right pipeline, you're not going to be happy about the answer.

All I hear from leftists is how much they hate me for my immutable traits, how much they blame me for everything wrong with the world, how much they want me and everyone who looks like me dead.

Whereas Alt-right types would call me "brother" and welcome me into their ranks so long as I hated the right ways.

Do you understand the difference?

I'm an ally and support equality because I feel it's the morally correct choice to make, but holy fuck is it difficult to reconcile that with the fact that means fighting for a lot of people who see you as the scum of the earth.

Read this and then read it again and then read some fucking bell hooks because this is a legitimate problem on the left.

"To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being." - bell hooks, The Will to Change https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/the-will-to-change/

I keep seeing this post with those awful reblogs on my dash and I genuinely wish most people in the reblogs were more ashamed to speak about this. Even if those specific reblogs don't name it, this is very blantantly about women since they are the overwhelming majority of people who say they hate men and hold them accountable. Even the other reblogs understood this since a lot of them are openly blaming women (regular feminists or radfems) for this. Some of them are even talking about misandry all the while women are losing their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy because men decided it. Have more shame in your life.

Women being scared of men in the streets is not oppression. Women having to make spaces just for themselves where they don't have men constantly sexualizing them isn't oppression. Men ARE factually destroying the lives of millions of women, sometimes even before those women are born. The most women do is mean posts online and not being sexually available to men. With the current political climate it is very much normal for women to be angry at and distrust men when they all overwhelmingly voted for them to lose their rights. It is normal to blame them, because they are to blame. Misandry is not real, men aren't oppressed, the most they get is side effects from forcing their way into a position where they are able to alienate a bit over half of the population. Minority men have power over and oppress the women in their own minority groups. Feminism does not need to center men's issues to be "good feminism". Feminism is for women and women are the victim of the patriarchy, not men. Men's biggest enemy will always be other men, not women. Women don't need to be nicer. It's not their responsibility to put themselves in actual danger in hopes that maybe some guys won't want to rape or murder them anymore. I would actually strongly argue that leftist men are in the position with the most power to change things. Men listen to other men more than they would ever listen to a woman, even moreso when they are radicalized misogynists. I just can't with tumblr and all the people claiming this is "the terf rhetoric that made leftist spaces bad :(". Just say you hate women and feminism at this point, because this is the most basic of feminist analysis: that women as a class are oppressed by the class of men, and that they won't stop by kindly asking them to. This isn't even radical feminism with how basic it is and has nothing to do with trans people. What actually makes men misogynist is, shockers, misogyny. Andrew Tate was popular not by being a nice guy who helped out other men but because he dangled in front of millions of men's noses the patriarchal dream they've been taught to want: being the money earner and having the ability to own women as property. And constantly shutting down women and their fight for their rights or telling them they're actually the ones who caused this because they were too mean is what is encouraging more men to be this way. Complacency with systemic misogyny will just create more misogynists. And to break out of that, people (mostly men) from both ends of the political spectrum need to stop shutting down feminism and actually take responsibility for their own actions and thoughts. All men are complicit in this until they finally call misogyny out too. Women's hatred of their oppressors isn't the issue.

You are the person that this post is addressing.

Please read bell hooks.

The young men in your life can see and hear you, and your bioessentialism is radicalizing them.

You’re using a V-Tuber to make a point.

Women educating men the slightest bit on how they’ve oppressed us for centuries is not what’s radicalising men.

can't get over that the character the v-tuber chose to talk about feminism hurting men is showing at least half of her chest. like they aren't evening trying to hide what they think about women.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

As a 30 year old man who escaped the Alt-right pipeline, you're not going to be happy about the answer.

All I hear from leftists is how much they hate me for my immutable traits, how much they blame me for everything wrong with the world, how much they want me and everyone who looks like me dead.

Whereas Alt-right types would call me "brother" and welcome me into their ranks so long as I hated the right ways.

Do you understand the difference?

I'm an ally and support equality because I feel it's the morally correct choice to make, but holy fuck is it difficult to reconcile that with the fact that means fighting for a lot of people who see you as the scum of the earth.

You clearly never left the alt right pipeline if you think a neo-nazi calling you brother is a legitimate reason to try and strip marginalised groups of their rights.

it probably is difficult to chose between:

mean people challenging existing and exploitive power structures that directly benefit you and nazis that are nice to you

reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim

He doesn’t like you, he likes your naivety and willingness to put up with shit most women his age probably won’t

"you're mature for your age" "you're so special" "you're so different from other girls" pls run in the other direction!

I don’t actually care if someone thinks this is derailing because it’s important.

This applies to all genders on both sides. Teen boys often get left out of these posts, but they are also preyed upon like this, by men and women and also people who are neither because no one is incapable of being a predator. This post shouldn’t be gendered. You can say it happens to girls more, and it could be true. But it happens to boys and they are less likely to talk about it when they get hurt. Less likely to get support if they do, especially if the older person was a woman. I don’t think we have an accurate statistic on how often it happens to boys because of this.

But regardless. Don’t you think they should be told how to stay safe too?

So even though every statistic tells you that not only does this overwhelmingly happen to girls more, but that there is no significant reporting gap between men and women (so your vague claim about boys not speaking out was completely pulled out of your ass) but chose to derail a post about men grooming little girls because for some reason you people are incapable of caring about women’s issues.

"this post shouldn't have been gendered" make another post.

you can (and should) support male victims of grooming AND also support female victims. not everything has to be about men.

"In a capitalist culture that generates continuously-evolving countercultures and promotes self-discovery and uniqueness — a culture in which “basic” is an insult — the person who transitions even though their original “box” was a better fit is doing so in order to be measured as unusual on a new yardstick. If you’re a person who likes video games, does computer programming for a living, and watches a lot of pornography, your place on the “man” yardstick positions you as not terribly unusual, and not terribly desirable. But on the “woman” yardstick, measured from the perspective of their own male gaze (“why, I’d love to meet a woman who liked video games, porn, and programming!”), they become an unusual, desirable nerdy girl."