Post AH5EQ2f4Db81T1ar6e by MzTash@spinster.xyz
(DIR) More posts by MzTash@spinster.xyz
(DIR) Post #AH5EQ2f4Db81T1ar6e by MzTash@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T22:33:43.690599Z
5 likes, 0 repeats
"The truth is, women become more rebellious, more radical, less conservative with age. We become more INVISIBLE as well. Men no longer see us as resources to exploit. Through this wisdom, women start seeing the world for what it really is. Older women are vital to women's liberation, and younger women need to sit down and listen. Lest history keep repeating. If only, right....But young women keep making the same exact mistakes, generation after generation, because women's communities don't exist and we are cut off from one another. If older women were able to influence younger women instead of patriarchy getting a hold of them, things would be so different in the world today.Firstly, young women would stop catering to the male gaze and obsessing about getting male validation. Young women wouldn't have their sexuality and identity colonized because they would value relationships with women over men, look up to women instead of men as authority, and strive to make one another proud, rather than forever desperate for male approval and visibility.Wouldn't that be great if we wanted pride in one another? Wouldn't that be great if we trusted each other, saw strength and opportunities in one another, rather than in men? The only way to obtain this is by connecting with and valuing older women.Young women: Listen. To. Old. Women. They are the reason the movement continues. You should thank them."~ Kaitlin RobertsonArt by Aleah Chapin
(DIR) Post #AH5Gwzv9d0zEQqxbgO by ninapaley@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:11:58.503424Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@MzTash Having been young once, I believe the reason young women cater to the male gaze is not because they don't listen to older women, but because they are horny as hell and want to get laid, or perhaps in addition they are broody and want to mate and make babies. No wisdom I can offer as an old woman will change that. We're animals, we mate, I don't like it any more than you do, but reason is impotent before sex. It's a nice idea, the wisdom of the old woman in the body of the young, but we are our bodies, and young bodies have different needs and desires than old ones, and that influences our thinking, and there's nothing wrong with that other than life being suffering.
(DIR) Post #AH5HQ9SHG8AaOrM4ga by ninapaley@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:17:15.044599Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@MzTash That said, LISTEN TO YOUR ELDER GEEZER SISTERS, young'uns! AND STOP FUCKING ON MY LAWN!
(DIR) Post #AH5I3qigKuZhsOxQQa by MandyJane@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:23:58.965864Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ninapaley @MzTash My sister is fresh out of a 30+ year marriage, and is in her fifties and just wants to find a man to love and to fuck. She's already fallen for two creeps! I keep hoping her old age wisdom will kick in. Every surface of the bathroom and her bedroom are covered in beauty products, too. I don't know what to do with her. lol
(DIR) Post #AH5IEDWWPHuJUtDIFE by ninapaley@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:26:17.933531Z
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@MandyJane @MzTash Menopause is such a blessing.
(DIR) Post #AH5IHMJUBQLTcvc8Uy by MandyJane@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:26:48.396052Z
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@ninapaley @MzTash I'm almost there!
(DIR) Post #AH5IIsysDBIxEVhW3k by ninapaley@spinster.xyz
2022-03-04T23:27:08.449535Z
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@MandyJane @MzTash I'm rooting for you to make it!
(DIR) Post #AH5MVCQY8TxEpvm0Lw by LoveACurry@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T00:05:52.462590Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@ninapaley @MandyJane @MzTash Apparently the tanking of libido in menopause is considered to be something to fix but I'm quite enjoying it. Tbh, I think husband is relieved.
(DIR) Post #AH6PifyI62WhFedJdQ by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T06:42:37.896509Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ninapaley @MzTash Maybe…but young men are just as horny and we don’t see them devoting their lives to gaining the attention of women to the exclusion of relationships with male peers and the respect of older men.
(DIR) Post #AH6PqtarKkofofanuy by EmmyNoether@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T10:13:01.930520Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@DoctorDee @ninapaley @MzTash Re why does women’s horniness/broodiness make them centre romantic relationships, while men don’t go down that line, I’d put that down to a combination of nature and nurture myself. Women are intensely socialised from infancy to see romantic relationships as the central facet of their future as adult women. Ask yourself how old were you when you first saw a Disney princess movie? I have memories from about age 6 or 7 watching my female school friends drawing endless pictures of brides emerging from churches in big pouffy dresses (interestingly, looking back, the groom was always absent from these drawings 😂 ) and knowing even at that age that I was odd for not wanting that in my future.Then there’s nature. There is and always will be a huge asymmetry in human reproduction. A woman knows, all other things being equal, that her offsprings’ lives will be better if she can snag that rare animal, a decent man, and bring those children up as part of a couple. I say that as a single parent, who is quite happy being a single parent and has a decent enough job to make parenting possible: as a single parent, there is no safety net, and you are always painfully aware of that. In fact, some women make the quite calculated decision that an almost-acceptable-man is better than going it alone (and of course, once you’ve shifted your boundaries from “decent” to “almost acceptable”, you’re at high risk of ending up as the frog being slowly boiled). A man, however, knows that he can spaff and run, and some other bugger will pick up the hard work of looking after the resulting offspring. If a woman wants children, finding that rarer-than-hens’-teeth decent man has a centrality in her life that it will never have for a man.
(DIR) Post #AH6fCCGIcQqf6oahzE by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T10:25:42.529534Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@EmmyNoether @ninapaley @MzTash Still not sure about the 'nature' part. Obviously all else being equal it's better for everyone if parenting is done by more than one person, but even in practical terms it would make more sense for women to bond to parent together. Still not seeing the 'natural' component of women completely rejecting other women (particularly older women, who can actually help them in material terms, with parenting responsibilities, career progression, life skills, health information...) in favour of even 'acceptable' men.
(DIR) Post #AH6fCCgt1a7ERH1wQa by EmmyNoether@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T10:27:04.867342Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@DoctorDee @ninapaley @MzTash That’s a good point - we have a socially constructed emphasis on the nuclear family, when in fact aunts and grandmothers could fulfil the safety net role as well if not better.
(DIR) Post #AH6ncCLzhPWgYYAF72 by RockTheBoat@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T14:01:30.629191Z
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@MzTash I was involved in a discussion on Ovarit (my reply was deleted, who knows why 🙄) about how a space for older women would be a good thing. Cue the younger women coming in and telling us that we need to understand them….it went right over their heads that we actually understand them better than they think we do, and that’s why we say what we do. The self centered stance really struck me because they were demanding that we try to understand them, but they made no effort to understand us.
(DIR) Post #AH6nd9HmaiDLKZeDEu by TheWitchBitch@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T15:21:39.466632Z
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@RockTheBoat @MzTash they're such idiots. We're trying to save them from that because we did it too. They'll just have to make all the same mistakes before they realize. We were them 20 years ago.
(DIR) Post #AH6nq15eNEfPg26n7Q by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T10:30:03.867177Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@EmmyNoether I'm not at all questioning the immense pressure and brainwashing women experience from, basically, infancy to (attempt to) bond with men and reject women, to our huge detriment and to the advantage of men, who are trained to bond with other men; I'm just trying to get a handle on whether any of this is related to 'natural' behaviour.
(DIR) Post #AH6yq04ZFucU17nTHc by shrikefliesfree@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T18:54:19.361565Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
@ninapaley @MzTash I read an article once (decades ago) that said since women get treated better by men (in general) when they are young and pretty, that is an age where the young women can easily decide to see older women as frumpy old hags who are just jealous because the men are NICE to them!And the men are right there to praise the young women for being "not like those nasty old uppity hags" who try to warn young women against men who are manipulating them.And we are raised to see older people in general as stupid, doddering old fools so that does not help.
(DIR) Post #AH70llgZ0Lom97g9r6 by TriptychTwins-partdeux@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:06:42.508090Z
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@shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash Personally, I love being a frumpy old hag. The pay-off is that I don't give a shit about what anyone thinks of me - least of all men. I've been the golden-haired teenage girl that got male attention (most of it unwanted) and been the 20 something in the office that got harassed by the sleazy boss and who felt powerless to do anything about it. Maybe we have to go through those things to get to where we are now. If only we could literally cut out the middle-man.
(DIR) Post #AH70wVNRykFqkhrIWm by LisbonMuse@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:13:57.086538Z
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@TriptychTwins-partdeux @shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash I love hearing your perspective because I can't wait to get older like this. So many of my friends hate getting grey hairs and complain to me, and all I can say is "I WANT grey hairs. I can't wait to reach my crone stage in life!" To hear a woman who is living that sentiment makes me feel valid in my wants!
(DIR) Post #AH70wVsI84vOIMHvbE by ninapaley@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:22:01.657755Z
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@LisbonMuse @TriptychTwins-partdeux @shrikefliesfree @MzTash Cronehood is great. At least being a young (53) crone is. Once the hardcore geezerhood sets in I expect to complain of my body falling apart, as would any elderly human. But for now I'm fit and healthy and I love it so much.
(DIR) Post #AH729dAkPLnOeBjvQ8 by TriptychTwins-partdeux@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:31:40.246107Z
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@LisbonMuse @shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash I got lucky with the hair thing. My mum didn't go properly grey until her 70s and I'm 57 and have about 4 grey hairs so far. It's all the other stuff that I love. I was such a people pleaser - never wanted to upset anyone no matter how shitty they were to me. I can walk away from that shit now, without a backward glance. The people I spend time with are my friends because they want to be and because we're all comfortable in our own skin. There's no pretense. It's wonderful and liberating. Life should always be like that for everyone.
(DIR) Post #AH7AYNacHSGTBu9TA8 by LisbonMuse@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:44:01.469253Z
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@TriptychTwins-partdeux @shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash This is really positive for me to read. I can be just like how you were, it's gotten a lot better but I have a long way to go. I hope your story is a peek into my future. Thanks for sharing your experience.
(DIR) Post #AH7AZ8CSz3sDkcDLXs by Eleutheromaniac@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:48:43.918569Z
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@TriptychTwins-partdeux @LisbonMuse @shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash I’ve been going grey since I was 19 and I love it. Getting older in general is lovely. The general creakiness is mildly annoying but I’d take that over being young again every time.
(DIR) Post #AH7AZFoIgnIRLyy9zM by TriptychTwins-partdeux@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T19:49:18.117796Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Eleutheromaniac @LisbonMuse @shrikefliesfree @ninapaley @MzTash For me, the swap is more than worth it.
(DIR) Post #AH8bbAXo8B9TWMLuuO by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2022-03-06T07:02:52.898970Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@EmmyNoether @ninapaley @MzTash So I have had a few more thoughts on this, and realise that for nearly all women 'their' resources are not theirs to give. I can say that older women have lots of material, emotional and intellectual resources to provide to younger women, but up until very recently, and for the most part still, those resources technically and socially 'belong' to these women's male authorities--fathers in family of origin, or husbands in family of choice--and are 'meant' to be dedicated to her male relatives. So a) it's not really true that younger women can go to older women for support, most of the time, and b) younger women are sensible to realise this and consequently do their best to tie themselves to the man with the most resources that's within their reach. If we suggest that women would be much better off bonding with/supporting each other, that's only relatively recently been true on any kind of scale. And I guess I'm thinking about this now because I have lots of resources to share, and am proactively doing my best to share them with women, both informally/casually and on a bigger scale. But it's hard, because no one wants the support of an older woman with resources the same way they'd want the support of an older man with resources. (Having written that I realise how sleazy that can sound! I'm wondering if we just sometimes have an innate wariness of older people who want to help us just because older men are generally so disgusting about 'helping' younger women (some of you may recall I've mentioned this as an issue in women succeeding in 'male-dominated' fields--certainly 'not all men' in this case but the men who genuinely do want to help are justifiably concerned about the optics).)
(DIR) Post #AH8nKgCoMPYKFBR3Sq by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
2022-03-05T20:49:54.064653Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@DoctorDee @EmmyNoether There are lots of cool responses to the original post here that I wasn't sure where to plop my thoughts but I think I'm going to latch onto this conversation!I will say that I am very guilty of... forgetting, I guess, that lots of women like to have sex with men. I feel like it's such a foreign concept to me it's easy for me to brush that notion aside as social propaganda that has brainwashed the masses because in my mind, having sexual relationships with men is pretty high up there as the worst thing that could ever happen to you. And that's weird because all of my friends, with no exceptions, are straight women. While they've all had boyfriends, none seemed all that enthusiastic about it. When I ask about how the boy is doing, they don't have much to say aside from "fine, I guess"... even when they share both an apartment and a dog together. When breakups happen, they don't seem all that bothered by it either save for maybe a side mention months later long after I forgot Danny, James, or Sam ever existed. For most people I spend time around, boyfriends seem like a "nice to have" rather than a "must have." They don't seem to spend much time around men, typically forming friendships with women, and both their day-to-day and longterm concerns don't seem to have anything to do with men. But when single, they do seem to habitually scroll through dating apps. I figure women maybe just feel obligated to say they put in some level of effort trying to pair up because that's just "what you do." But during these pandemic years, I have curiously wandered into online spaces that typically have the theme of "women looking for friends" spurred by quanratine boredom and thinking about how one of my friends in particular views friendship much differently than I do which resulted in some conflict between us at one point. So you have these online groups of thousands of women all desperately wanting female friendships. At the same time, many seem to be broadcasting certain ideas like...."I can't be friends with someone who's too much prettier than me.""I've been trying to make friends but whenever I do, they always get jealous of me because I'm attractive.""I want to be friends with women, but men are just so much easier to be around. The women treat everything like it's a competition.""I really want a solid girl squad where we'll walk into a room and all eyes will be on us."Then, despite these groups being about women looking to form friendships with other women, the vast majority of posts are about men. Like..."What would you do if your man did ______?""What do you think of women who let their men ______?""Would you end a relationship if your man _____?" So I'm sitting there most of the time thinking that, for whatever reason, a lot of these women seem to be almost stunted in their ability to connect with other women... and that their thoughts on relationships with women are all buried in this male-centered existence. And it's not just because they're straight. Other factors must have been at play. And those are between women in the same age group! Throw in older generations and... I just don't 'know. I think growing up having intergenerational relationships with other women is a really positive thing for girls. For a while during my younger years, my dad would spend all week living in another state for a refinery job he didn't want to relocate everyone for. So I was very used to being left with my aunts or grandparents or afterschool teachers or even with other women who went to the same church as my family. Conversations had at hair salons also had me interracting with older women. That's not to say I agreed with everything those of other generations had to say... but it wasn't like I was bothered by their existence or felt they were a waste of space or my time.
(DIR) Post #AH8rABP0Qne1d7ODJY by EmmyNoether@spinster.xyz
2022-03-06T11:30:02.151064Z
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@GalacticTurtle @DoctorDee That’s quite a shocking take on female friendships, Galactic! (Not shooting the messenger here - I can see that this is genuinely what you’re taking from watching women interact with each other on social media).But it does read like the worst misogynistic set of tropes on how women intereact with each other - as jealous bitches interested only in where they stand in the pecking order for male attention. It’s always been around as a trope, but most women have recognised it for what it is - men telling us misogynistic propaganda about how they think women interact with one another rather than how women actually interact.I wonder if it’s yet another example of the toxicity of of social media - the medium is yet again distorting the message?My female friendships in real life, and those I observe around me, are the typical mixture of happenstance (you go to the same college, you work in the same workplace, your kids go to the same school) and shared interests/outlook (from that pool of women happenstance has delivered, you form friendships with the people you get on with). Never has another woman’s appearance crossed my radar as a relevant factor. Nor has the idea of forming a “squad” against the outside world (what the fuck even is one of those?) To me it’s just a bizarre way of conceptualising the world.(Due to circumstances I lost touch with most of my school friends, but I have friendships going back nearly 40 years.)
(DIR) Post #AH8rABzsDj8RTSdemO by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
2022-03-06T15:31:43.678551Z
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@EmmyNoether @DoctorDee I mean, don't get me wrong. I have a really positive view on female friendships which I've talked about at length on Spinster. But it's also true that since stuff like female friendship, community living, and intergenerational knowledge are important to me, I engage with lots of women on these topics and, inevitably, encounter many women who are far less enthusiastic about these ideas than I am both online and offline. I gave this online example because the volume of these instances all happening within the same internet community stood out to me and represents an internet bubble that is quite the opposite of Spinster but still tackles the question of female support and connection.I could label this all as misogynistic propaganda that only exists as rhetoric amongst men. But whether online or offline, these are real women talking about their real thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a group of all women hoping to connect with other women. So if we're engaging in a discussion like that brought up in the OP, I do think it's worth mentioning. Women have different priorities and come from different environments. Obviously, in the hundreds of comments most of these posts get, there are plenty pointing out where these thought patterns/behavior likely stem from. They wonder how many women the person talking like this has actually tried to befriend and wonder what impact the men around her have had. But there are also plenty of comments readily agreeing labeling many women as "fake" and giving tips on how to spot and avoid "fake women."Offline where these conversations can be more personal and nuanced, I have on more than one occasion been told by women that I'm "not like other women" or that I'm the first or one of few women they don't mind hanging out with compared to men who they generally enjoy being around. I ask them what makes them think that I'm "not like other women." And again, I get presented with this slightly more veiled explanation airing out all the same feelings in these online conversations. I start to vaguely bring up ideas of male-centeredness and values and outline the way I see things. Most of these conversations are happening in relatively short-term working relationships (of course in my line of work, I'm often living six inches below and two feet across from my coworkers on a tour bus rather than a 9-5 where it's unlikely any of this would come up) so I'm really just hoping to pant some of these ideas. Who's to say what happens afterward.
(DIR) Post #AH8rACZK5vUXFPDy2C by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
2022-03-06T15:45:31.076559Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@EmmyNoether @DoctorDee Another symptom of these similar thoughts is also something I've brought up before on Spinster. Almost without fail any time I reference the all girls school I grew up in or the female residences I lived in after the fact, the automatic response from women I get on perfectly fine with is "oh, that must have been AWFUL." So outside of Spinster and similar offline environments such as these schools or residences, it is worth thinking about why women react this way towards female communities. I'm not pretending like I know all of these answers. But I do think it's worth discussing if the desire is to reach more people.