u/Appropriate_Will6311

I was curious about how other anarchists view gender abolition.

I consider myself a gender abolitionist. I don't think the concept of gender should exist at all (I don't think gender exists) and it serves no other purpose than to put people in boxes. I want to clarify that this is absolutely not a TERF post. I don't mean this as "trans people don't exist", I more mean it as if someone is born with parts they don't feel fit their body, they're well within their right to "customize" and "edit" how they look however they want. I think true gender abolition allows transgender indiviuals to be free and express themselves without societal expectations.

No gendered toys, no gender reveal parties (not to derail but gender reveal parties make me sick, placing expectations on a child before they are even born is crazy), no gendered clothing (maybe clothing made for certain body types but not gendered), no gendered bathrooms. I don't think the concepts of masculinity or feminity should exist at all. There should be no expectation on people born with certain body parts to look or act a certain way. I don't think the concept of pronouns assigned by sexual organs should exist.

I think gender abolition is inherently anarchist and I think being an anarchist and tearing down the walls of systemic oppression and giving power back to the people includes gender abolition. I want to know if this is a common view point of other anarchists.

I didn't really know where else to go for this. I'm not a well-informed anarchist at all. I've always had views that aligned with anarchist ideals but recently I've been reading a lot about anarchists from history and reading some of their writings and it is something that really meshes with me.

With that being said, I want to talk to well-informed anarchists about porn/sexually expicit content and sex work. I think porn (or moreso the porn industry) is so bad because we live in a capitalist patriarchy. It's made addictive on purpose to maximize profits, it can be very dehumanizing to women's bodies and it is extremely exploitative. I don't think the majority of people (or moreso women, as that is the gender that dominates the industry) would choose sex work as a path if they didn't live in a patriarchy that emphasizes women's bodies being objects. Or experience personal or societal trauma or didn't have to use sex work to survive. I also think there's much to be said about fetishization of minorities. People of color (black men, "latinas"), trans people (esp trans women), lesbians, etc.. As the saying goes "if you're a porn category, you're probably discriminated against".

I'm 22 and the only people I went to school with who became sex workers were women, all of them straight out of high school. They had bad home lives, grew up poor or had difficulties at school such as getting into fights with students/staff etc.. I know it's anecdotal but to me it's a failure on the system for not keeping these girls safe.

I think in a true anarcho-communist society sex work wouldn't exist. Not in the sense that sexual content wouldn't be produced, but moreso not on the mass scale, accessible to everyone at all times like how it is now. I think sex work and sexual content would have a much more artful approach, I don't think it would involve two random actors getting together on screen and having a director behind the camera taking the profits but moreso groups of people who want to have sex and make sexual content for the fun of it. I think it would feel and *be* a lot less fake and focus heavier on intimacy because those people truly want to be together and are enjoying making the content. And I don't think more focus on intimacy means that it doesn't include obscure kinks or fetishes either.

I don't think sexual content would have such a heavy fixation on women's bodies, I don't think there would be porn categories of fetishized minorities. I don't think certain bodies would be cut out of pornographic content for "not fitting the standard". I also think that other forms of sexual content ie drawings, writings, etc would be more popular with the general population.

I wish mainstream pornographic content was less accessible and more focused on having fun and making art, not just putting out hypersexual slop to fuck up your dopamine levels. I know pornography and sexually explicit content like this does exist but it's not what dominates the market at all. I consume a lot of animated sexual content and even now it's become more and more slop especially with the introduction of ai. And even in amateur porn or drawings or writings, people are not excluded from their internal biases. We live in a bigoted society and it's ridiculous to assume that people don't project what they've been taught by society in the content they create or even in the sexual preferences they have. I think we are all brainwashed by the society we live in to an extent.

Last thing I wanted to add is that I don't really know where prostitution falls in here. I do think it's inherently exploitative to have sex with someone for money or other resources but that's not to say that prostitution wouldn't exist in an anarchist society. So I don't really know where my opinion lies on that.

I know this was really everywhere and was kind of just a lot of word vomit but I'm curious what other anarchists think about porn!

Someone I went to school with recently posted in a local facebook group about how they are prepping for a massage competition and have a discount on their services leading up to it. They specify that it's not a therapeutic massage and that it's to practice their flow for the competition. They claim their "work" has cemented themselves as one of the best in the state.. based on the amount of competitions they've one.

It just rubs me the wrong way, to me, massage is about healing. What is the point of recieving a massage from a therapist if your relaxation/relief means nothing and the therapist is just trying to make it look unique/pretty to someone ELSE watching. The whole thing feels so phony.

You're not one of the best therapists in the state for winning massage competitions and I'd go as far to say there is no such thing as a "best massage therapist". Maybe more experienced or very strong in certain modalities but what clients enjoy or get out of a massage is so subjective.

Trigger warning for mentions of CSA, sex, death, drugs, physical & emotional abuse.

Hi everyone, this is something I've been grappling with since I was 13 years old, I am 22 now. This is really long but I think it's necessary to get the full picture.

When I was 13, I remember having my first dream that my grandpa sexually abused me, it was extremely traumatic and felt very real. I was a toddler in the dream, probably about 4. I don't wanna go into the details but I was scared of him for months after. I remember telling my neighborhood friend at the time about the dream. Her mom was really close with my mom, my friend told me that my her mom told her that my mom's sister (my aunt) had accused him of childhood sexual abuse as an adult. This terrified me even worse (obviously), I brought it up to my mom eventually and she attributed it to a manic episode (my aunt was bipolar, she passed away almost two years ago from a meth overdose). As I got older, I would have these dreams every few months and it was only ever my grandpa.

I just had one the other night but for the first time I was an adult. I was staying at my grandparents house. It started with my aunt walking into the house, everyone was so happy to see her because they hadn't see her in so long. I rember she was wearing bright yellow. I immediately asked her if my grandpa sexually abused her (for some reason) and I can't remember what she said. Then it was night time, I was with my boyfriend in a "sexy" outfit getting ready to be intimate with him, and then my grandpa led me to his room. He started touching me and I remember just being scared and fawning, trying to appease him but he took it too far and I freaked out. I told everyone about this, I blew up and started screaming that he was abusing me. No one believed me.

I started thinking back to my childhood and remembering being weird with kids at that age. I would teach them sexual stuff and do sexual stuff with them, I did some things that are really disturbing and weird for a kid to know and I don't really want to get into them here.

Sex became a major issue when I started dating my first boyfriend at sixteen. Not to be graphic but he couldn't even get a finger in until a few months of dating and it took around a year to be able to have penetrative sex. Sometimes I get freaked out during sex and just feel sick and out of my body, sometimes I even start crying. It just starts to feel uncomfortable and wrong. I still have not gotten a pap smear out of intense fear that I'm going to breakdown and that it will be painful.

I think what is worse is that I love my grandfather, he is truly the best grandpa you could ask for, he brought me and my sister on so many adventures as a kid. He is always so loving and supportive to this day. I just can't imagine him doing that, but when I have the dreams it feels so real. I don't have any actual memories of being sexually abused but I do remember he would get on top of me and tickle me really badly and I would beg him to stop, it was not enjoyable. I just remembered this not too long ago and it just felt... weird. I know my mom was parentified as a young kid and that my grandpa frequently beat her but when I look at him I could never imagine him doing that. I have such bad cognitive dissonance.

The thing is, I have a history of physical and mental abuse from both of my parents, violence is something I remember a lot from my childhood. Maybe it could be that trauma manifesting as CSA? Or maybe it wasn't my grandfather and some other older male figure and my grandpa is just a fill-in?

I've brought it up to multiple therapists and they just brush it off and don't take it seriously. It's really upsetting. I thought I had a flashback when I was staying at a residential mental health facility, I brought it up but they treated it like it was psychosis from my Bipolar.. maybe it was? I'm not sure.

This is kind of a vent but kind of a question too, can I be sexually abused as a child and not remember the actual event?