Posts by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
(DIR) Post #A8PoRqhWbCbMphBDzE by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-06-18T15:51:56.175846Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@PennyLope In fairness, I have some experience with groups of giant TIMs terrorizing a neighborhood. I used to live a block from a highway overpass under which a group of TIMs would do crack and solicit men for sex (to buy more crack with). More than once, I saw them attack people. One of those people was my female neighbor, who had to go to the hospital for a few dozen stitches after one of the TIMs ripped open a muscle in her hand with his sharpened talons-- she was covered in blood and missing hanks of hair. They had harrassed her as she walked by, calling her a "fat bitch". She responded with "fuck off, trannies" and this was all the justification they needed for five grown men to descend on her and beat her up. I peaked before trans was even trendy from this experience alone. The reality is that they were just a gang of drug addicted, traumatized gay prostitutes physically attacking women.
(DIR) Post #A8XpIwksNJwoDnkJ0q by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-06-22T12:54:26.486242Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Quellist1 Ah, well. While the concept of white privilege is real, in my opinion the term is currently being used primarily to prevent any possibility of solidarity in the middle and lower economic strata. The word-choice is specifically designed to alienate and divide. Again-- I do agree that white people have relative privilege in most aspects of society. But I believe the reason the concept has even gained mainstream traction is because it is extremely useful as a way to both prevent poor whites from moving to the Left and prevent people of color from even considering the possibility of political collaboration with whites -- as either of these outcomes would represent the worst case scenario for the ruling oligarchs, at least in America. TL;DR the confusion is the point. @sansa
(DIR) Post #A8eqrNxvAqHyWHYKTg by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-06-25T22:14:14.476673Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Had a frustrating conversation with my best friend yesterday. I knew this was coming, though. She works in school psychology. Two years ago I asked her apropos of nothing about the trans stuff, whether she had received any official guidance or encountered any "trans kids", etc. She had no idea what I was talking about. Had never heard of gender ideology. I tried to get out ahead of it, warn her, explain the issues. She didn't seem particularly interested. I think she was skeptical that it wasn't an isolated online phenomena.Fast forward to yesterday. We have not discussed trans issues since the last time, but the hideous guidance has finally reached her school district. I confided in her my dismay that my beloved teenaged lesbian niece is being transed by her friends, her school, and the media. Two years ago she was a lesbian. Then she was nonbinary. Then a "they/them" with a new gender-neutral name spelling. And now, as of last week, has chosen a male name for herself that she's too afraid to use till she goes off to college this fall. (It's also, truly, a stupid name. Among male names it is a dumb one. I cannot understand it.) All along this road I've been supportive so as not to alienate her from me, as the only family member she can talk to about sexuality issues without being subjected to some kind of exorcism by her disgusting religous right wing parents. But now I'm reaching the point that I'm afraid if I don't say something critical, the next development for my niece will be "hey aunt I've decided I'm chopping my tits off"-- and at that point I will feel morally culpable for not pushing back harder. (Although I did attempt to respond to the name change news with some cautioning-type statements). My best friend responds to this with some version of the following: "everyone has their own opinions and we have to trust that people know what's good for them, who are you to say she shouldn't chop her tits off" and then, verbatim, she said: "And if one day she decides it was a bad decision, she can just get tits again!" She said this blithely, like she was talking about going to pick up headache pills from the corner store. I said: "That's insane. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard." We argued some and it went nowhere. It was clear to me that she has no understanding or even interest in the logical underpinnings or results of what she was taught in these professional trainings. We ended by agreeing never to discuss trans issues again. It was less than satisfying for me.
(DIR) Post #A8etZGiDhbZifrGGdU by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-06-25T22:01:05.796112Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Chronic-Yonic I'm not a fan, as this is a one-time band-aid to improve their plummeting PR. It'll probably work, too. I can already hear people telling me that it's perfectly fair because the gods intervened directly to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Once.
(DIR) Post #A91mg0YXjUFRYs9IZc by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-06T23:49:10.473244Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@operaghost Let me be very clear about this: they understand that penises are threatening. Anyone with a penis not only understands but also usually appreciates that it is threatening-- especially when you consider that men routinely use their penises to intimidate and harass other men as well as women, so the vast majority of men have either used their penis to threaten OR been threatened themselves by one. They know it's threatening-- they are gaslighting us because they are afraid of a world where real-world sexual politics are discussed in the open, free of the gender obfuscations. Men have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to gain and EVERYTHING to lose from a widespread consciousness among females that we are oppressed on the basis of biology. This is when you confront your abuser and he pretendsto have no idea what you're talking about, partially to exhaust you. @Hollahollara
(DIR) Post #A9E33wLSyE50cBz8kq by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-12T21:22:51.607827Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Yemaya It doesn't read to me as a diaper fetish thing. It reads to me as him being savvy enough to know that (1) pretending to care for five minutes about his wife's mental state will probably win him literal awards in our culture and (2) as a man who has experienced a single fleeting altruistic impulse towards the mother of his child he can't just do something boring like BE THERE QUIETLY AND STEADFASTLY (that's a woman thing), he has to turn this into an opportunity to further his own PR and do some hilARious physical comedy. Also, in a regressive way, stuff like this reinforces the idea that women who are in no fit state to be penetrated are in some way disabled and deserving of sympathy.
(DIR) Post #A9GCUB5Y484dm02stc by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-13T21:35:51.133004Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@BitterFleabane For a lot of these guys, having the flimsiest license to call their elderly aunt a fascist murderer for using their "deadname" is part of the fun. The histrionics are the point! @Ladyfat
(DIR) Post #A9IHO3yqT7MI4qjYAq by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-14T22:40:01.901600Z
3 likes, 1 repeats
The loons on TRA twitter have simply decided to disseminate the lie that the Wi Spa incident was a "hoax". I shouldn't be astonished at how easily they all decide to sign onto lies together, but it still gets to me. The wokebros I argue with in a group chat about this stuff have unilaterally decided the hoax narrative is true, as well.
(DIR) Post #A9QTs8poWuTCKorC5Y by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-18T20:58:47.432389Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@meghanmurphy Can I simply ask why it’s “retarded” to cut open porn users out of your life? What practical harms result?
(DIR) Post #A9QW7QVXIvbrOlmwSW by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-18T22:12:08.479382Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@meghanmurphy It was my understanding that the radfems suggest refusing to have sex with or date porn users or (for some) count them among your friends, and that this is what is meant by cutting people off for porn. Are you saying they’re extending this to every situation involving a man? Because that wasn’t my impression. Or are you saying it’s not feasible to find men to date who don’t watch porn?
(DIR) Post #A9j5CLwL36o9Da6NCC by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-27T16:58:03.580560Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@meghanmurphy It is clear that you are not (or no longer are) a radical feminist. Everything you describe as unacceptable is the “radical” part. It is simply a fact that heterosexual women are more likely to accept less from men, more likely to be invested in the status quo and less capable of changing it. The reason for this is because of their sexual proximity to and emotional dependence on men. This isn’t controversial— only liberal feminism would call it sexist to point out that many women are DEFINITELY brainwashed. I say this as a heterosexual woman who has enormous trouble reconciling my relationship with what I know to be true about this world and about men. It makes sense that you wouldn’t like radical feminism because you are clearly a liberal feminist. As for this: “ Being a nice or good guy doesn’t require a specific politic.” — it’s just a lie.
(DIR) Post #A9j5IkaQKKAVOZtyee by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-27T17:04:30.054408Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@meghanmurphy “Women are brought up to conform: all the rules of femininity—dress, behavior, attitude—essentially break the spirit. Women are trained to need men, not sexually but metaphysically. Women are brought up to be the void that needs filling, the absence that needs presence. Women are brought up to fear men and to know that they must please men and to understand that they cannot survive without the help of men richer and stronger than they can be themselves, on their own.” - Andrea Dworkin
(DIR) Post #A9j5IlCi1ynFJJoYKW by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-07-27T17:46:12.378380Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@meghanmurphy There’s so much more to be said, especially about the political import of living with, having sex with and loving members of the class that oppresses you. A friend’s mother married a total louse in 1971. After they were divorced I asked her why she had married him in the first place. She said “It was 1971 in rural South Carolina. That’s the type of man that was available.” We are all limited in our personal choice to the men that are available in our society today. This does NOT mean that the men are categorically good or decent, or that we don’t make real sacrifices when we put up with their sexism (such as porn use). It makes sense to make concessions in the interest of having a fuller, more engaged life. It does NOT make sense to dilute an essential political viewpoint in the interest of making compromise more palatable. I’m sorry if you are annoyed by these “attacks” from radfems. But heretofore I have greatly respected you and your work and I believe you are making an honest mistake here.
(DIR) Post #A9zkuj6hzqipRGI0HI by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-04T22:03:53.223887Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
The Time I Was Put on Trial for Suspected Lesbianism at Age 11, Part 1I lived in the wrong time to be transed as a child, but I did struggle with strong feelings of wishing I was a boy so that I could have a better life like my brothers and be respected by others -- so that I could see myself as the center of my own story instead of at the periphery of someone else's doing the laundry and the childbearing and the reminding. At school, I learned that boys were physically violent, cruel, utterly unforgiving of weakness, and well-versed in the language and attitudes of sexual menace even at ten or eleven. My wistful feelings of wanting to BE a boy started to turn into angry feelings-- resenting boys for getting undeserved perks I wanted and attacking me at school. My best friend at the time was an extremely "boyish" girl who didn't fit in because she was large, loud-voiced, wore baggy clothes, and didn't give a shit about how she looked-- let's call her Jackie. We went to a hyper-religious private school where rich girls were planning their future plastic surgeries while they were in fifth grade. Appearance was important, especially appearing feminine. Pleasing boys was the. most. important. thing. you. could do. Nothing came before it, although we were of course also indoctrinated in general religious sexual shame. Being pleasing to boys was a determinant of one's placement within the FEMALE social heirarchy. I felt smothered, dreaded the future, was filled with a vague fear I could not name. One day, I passed Jackie a note in math class, saying "I think I don't like boys." I was a VERY sheltered child from a religious family. I didn't know what lesbianism even was at that time. The "cool" girls who intercepted the note without my knowledge definitely did know. Days went by while I was oblivious to the rapid spread of gossip and even official reporting going on as a result of my note. A week later I was summoned to a vacant classroom with Jackie. When we arrived, waiting for us was the principal of the school (herself a lesbian-- widely acknowledged privately but never discussed publicly in our community), the assistant principal (a mean, repressed nun) and the lady biology teacher who secretly lived with the lesbian principal. At the back of the room stood a large group of sniffling, chagrined "cool girls", whom I had never seen made this low before. They had gotten an earful before we arrived, I could see. 1/2
(DIR) Post #A9zkujdK2aoH4PY372 by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-04T22:06:35.069054Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
Part 2The note was read aloud, and Jackie and I were asked intrusive questions. I was stunned. Jackie and I, eleven year old girls, were made to stand up before the three adults and declare that we were not lesbians, that we had never touched each other sexually, and that we never would. I was made to swear I hadn't meant what I had written. That I did like boys. I felt violated, humiliated. I remember being confused about why the other girls who had gossiped were being punished. Before we adjourned the principal told them: "I tracked down every single person who heard this rumor. If I ever hear that one of you repeated it, you will be out of this school." In later years I realized that she thought we actually WERE baby lesbians, and she was trying to protect us from our own community in her own misguided, authoritarian way. The best way to protect us as supposed young lesbians in a catholic community would be to hide us. She wasn't really wrong.I was so embarrassed that I didn't even tell my mother-- but mostly my feelings were of extreme confusion. I couldn't parse the intentions of the adults in the situation, and so I largely put them out of my mind as soon as it was possible. This event, however, has become more relevant to me as I have aged. I won't go into the details of questioning my sexuality-- it's largely irrelevant. But I've only ever been with men, even though a fair amount of people I meet at first clock me as a lesbian. My oldest and best friends, after my last break-up with a man, gently asked me if I intended to pursue women. I was again (publicly) accused of lesbianism at the conservative southern graduate program I attended for not performing femininity in class, instead choosing to wear comfortable clothes and no makeup. It always seems to come up-- it always seems to be something I am being asked to prove I am not. Even now, calling myself heterosexual (because that's what I am in practice) doesn't feel entirely truthful, for some reason. (Although I know this aesthetic deficit in heterosexuality also motivates a lot of traitorous "queer" women today.)I think it comes down to this: I don't know if I will ever know the truth. I think back to the "trial" and I don't know how I could ever know my real, organic feelings after that. It was deeply traumatizing. Since then, thinking about other women in a sexual capacity has always been tinged with shame-- not the sexy kind-- the kind that makes you stop thinking about it immediately because it hurts. It is impossible to know who I might have been without that intervention, or what my life could have become. Maybe it would have been the same. Maybe I would have been a straight woman anyway, and this is just a self-serving fantasy of a more authentic or interesting version of myself. Maybe the single-sentence note I sent would have been the beginning of something before it was immediately jumped on and punished by my community-- before I was quite literally forced to recant my statement like a heretic or a witch.Jackie has been an out lesbian for ten years. I'm very proud of her.
(DIR) Post #A9zoPJQVpHFIdCpQQ4 by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-04T22:52:44.268571Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
One nice fact to diminish all the doom n gloom: for the rest of my time at that school, I was strangely "lucky". I was always mysteriously winning raffles and random drawings for prizes, or being picked for special jobs, especially reading aloud at our church services. When "luminaries" would visit the school I'd always be picked as part of the welcoming committee-- or for the group of kids who were going to be touting the school fair on the local news. I was always the kid in choir who got the solo. One year, our choir was chosen to perform at Carnegie Hall. My family couldn't afford the trip, and so I couldn't go. (Cried, was devastated, etc etc.) The choir director called one night and said the cost of our trip had simply been "covered". She wouldn't say any more. I think the principal was trying to win back some of her desecrated karma. :)
(DIR) Post #AAISxbyiqpEN1h1D6G by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-13T22:47:38.927159Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@NoniRose The pronoun stuff is awful, but let's be honest. If you think that "literature" and other academic disciplines-- even the sciences!-- are without ideology, you are not smart.
(DIR) Post #AAIWs4GXANEIpwxgpM by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-13T23:30:11.767258Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Today a handmaid told me that surrogacy and sex work are fine because penetration and childbirth ain't no thang, basically. In her words: only modern western societies think that sex and childbearing are "special" enough that women are harmed when these acts are commodified and turned into work. Being penetrated, having a baby--totally routine human activity-- not at all distinct from other behavior, according to her. I make my tea, I make my toast, I pee, a man penetrates me (Who's to say who he even is? I dunno. Who cares? It's just my hole. I barely notice. Not special!) Then I have a baby, which I also barely notice and wouldn't care about if I had to sell it to some gay men so I can eat. Very realistic idea of being a woman. All in a day's work.Here is how I responded. (In short, I responded at length.)
(DIR) Post #AAIuyBXVQvty28Llk8 by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-08-14T03:45:49.604594Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@eyfzbmji I'm so glad you're here. It's interesting that you phrase the question this way: why should men "allow"? All of male culture and male civilization for the last few thousand years has revolved around the implicit assumption that men have nothing whatsoever to offer women, while they simultaneously need (and want) women not only for bare survival but to give their lives meaning and enjoyment in the first place. I honestly pity men-- beginning their biological lives as females and then exposed to external substances that force their maleness-- they are the non-default human: built only for insemination and violence. Each of you is fully aware of his utter failure to offer anything of substantive value to a woman in a world where you haven't rigged the game against us so we need you -- painfully aware of your contingent status within nature and the universe if women do not validate you by having sex with you and conceiving offspring by you. This painful awareness not only motivated all of traditional male "advancement" and "civilization", but also motivates the persistent animus that most men-- like you-- have towards women. You resent us because you fear our natural power over you. And you have historically used your larger physical size and greater willingness to destroy to dominate and control the people you perceive as indispensable resources. It is therefore not a question of where you "allow" us. Women will of course always be "allowed" in some capacity in male institutions because the instutions largely exist in the first place to secure your access to us. It might assuage your ego, but you aren't really making a meaningful statement when you say to oxygen: "I allow you in my home". @EmmaFaber @MrNobody @Rogue_Koala
(DIR) Post #ADL8Wjo9ziiKeC3ZaK by harpyharpyharpy@spinster.xyz
2021-04-07T16:42:19.460598Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
@Lilitu @FSI Let me clarify something -- I don't think females are in some metaphysical sense "meant" to suffer. I look at the way nature is organized and I see that female mammals come up with the short end of the stick reproductively and biologically, always. What is "our inherent female power of selfhood"? Can you explain in real terms what that is?Men DO want to steal something from us. Our sexual and reproductive capacity. Not our "essence" or our "vitality". They have converted all females of the species into commodities from which they extract sex, domestic labor and children. They need and want these material things. It's not about spite, it's about natural resources. There's a lot of mystification in the culture about their motives, it's all to cover up that they insist on relating to us as commodities. Yes, women can do a lot, we hold up society itself. Men know this, take advantage of it, and try to buy it (mostly succesfully) from us with leverage, with money, with force. If you're doing all the work to keep something going and you are not in charge of it and don't have representatives in leadership, you are indispensable and powerful in the way a slave is indispensable and powerful. Women laugh in public because we are encouraged to, and conversely, because men are sometimes trained not to. Laughter is a sign of openness, submission, being relaxed. Men want us to be like this, so that we are open to their incursions. I love laughter, but men encourage and benefit from this relaxed openness on our parts. I believe everything both of you say about how amazing women are under the circumstances. Women fucking amaze me every day as well. I think we are almost universally better human beings, I prefer the company of women and in general view them as superior. But: Courage and ingenuity in the face of oppression is found in every oppressed group regardless of sex. And these are not answers to my questions. I asked "what inherent traits make femaleness good". There are none -- it is not an identity, it is a physical state of being, and is therefore measurable.Women in countries where they have no control over their sex lives, reproduction or physical movements are not outliers. They are us, without our money and social technologies. In the absence of a certain type of societal structure, men will always overpower women physically and sexually. It is, quite literally, the female condition for female mammals. Rape and forced childrearing. Look it up. Otters. Bears. Big cats. All but one of the great apes. Most female mammals in nature are consigned to this fate. It is, on the most basic level, our "destiny". Women are physically weaker than men to this day because the females in our evolutionary history who could not physically fight off male advances were the ones who most often had babies (of course). Before we even had sentience we were bred for passivity and smallness simply as a natural side effect of the male-female reproductive dialectic. I reject this tendency, I despise it, and I demand that we organize our society and our technologies in such a way that females are NOT forced into this. But it is "natural". It is our "natural state". Freedom and choice are extremely new in the history of femaleness. We cannot organize a coherent emancipatory project around females without acknowledging these fundamentals.The statistics on longevity are all riddled with confounding factors and vary widely across cultures. Does it count that women live longer on average if the reason is that men impulsively chip away at their longevity out of stupidity? Does it change things that the more babies a woman has, the shorter her lifespan will be? Also -- both of my grandmothers lived into their late 80s, and both of them begged to die for years before doing so. I have worked with many elderly ladies who begged to die day after day. Living longer is not always a positive. Lilitu -- you claim to be an antinatalist. How can you also believe that more life always = good? Those are contradictory viewpoints.I'll repeat this: I don't think my identity is suffering because being female is not an identity. It is a state of physical being and nothing more. As such, it has objective and measurable characteristics. I understand and endorse wanting to feel good. I reject and abhor adopting that as a form of political praxis.