u/tryingtobekindonline

I am afraid too many people do not seem to understand what intersectionality means. It does not mean being tolerant of every opinion, especially when those opinions are based on the exclusion of vulnerable groups. We understand that many people can end up in TERF spaces and rhetoric due to traumatic reasons. However, one's trauma cannot be an excuse to perpetuate that trauma to other groups.

I also think that too much TERF rhetoric is tangled up in hypotheticals rather than the material reality. The reality is that there are already limited resources for women and when we start excluding a category of women who can access them, we only further marginalize them.

We also need to remember that just because we are hurt and we are traumatized, that does not make us immune from hurting and traumatizing others. When we portray ourselves as powerless we abdicate the responsibility for the hurt we cause others. Let's remember our power and let us not form our wounds into weapons to hurt others. We have a lot more to gain from supporting each other.

I think a part of that is also to assume that others are coming from a genuine place and responding accordingly rather than resorting to the worst possible interpretation of their points. If you see people making bad faith arguments please report them rather than engaging with them. The point is not to put down others, but to see how we can build better positions.

All power to all the people.

Just came across this paper: Winning the Bread and Baking it Too: Gendered Frictions in the Allocation of Home Production by Kyle Hancock, Jeanne Lafortune & Corinne Low.

They show that even in households where women earn twice or more than the husband, they still do more housework than their husbands. I wanted to share this as a sort of warning. I don't think I have really seen any heterosexual couples that are actually equal either.

You can read the paper here.

thought this was a good case for punjabi medium education

I think most of us seen many men simultaneously wanting partners with 'clean past' but also wanting to become intimate with women they are dating early on. Not to mention the mocking of marital rape etc by bringing up how women may be comfortable with sexual act with some but not others.

They don't want women to be sexless, but they don't like when women act or express their sexual agency. And then it hit me that the issue is not the act but on whose terms it happens. The same act can be celebrated if it's on the man's terms, but looked down on if it's on woman's terms. Obviously it can be mutual also, but that doesn't get talked about as much.

I wanted to ask others, because this framework just made so much sense for me. Have you experienced this?

trying to understand something and i am not sure that it's a gender thing or a broader thing. but i have noticed often when you call out certain men they will say sorry but not change their behaviour? as if saying sorry gives them a pass to continuing to do the same behaviour just with an apologetic cadence?

have noticed this that if i don't laugh or pretend to laugh at their jokes they get offended. haven't noticed this with women so it seems gendered. idk it feels like an entitlement to be received in a certain way.

people also don't laugh at my jokes sometimes, but i just say oh maybe that wasn't as funny and move on, but many men seem to take it personally if you don't laugh on their jokes and think that you are the problem.

idk wondering if others have noticed this

Construction going next to my place and i am wondering if anyone has any product recs. I've tried foam earplugs and they block maybe 70/80 percent noise, but also feel uncomfortable to me, so thinking of investing in ear muffs.

I've noticed a lot of times in social situations when I say 'no' I face push back, often from men. And one of the things that has kept me safe is that I stop engaging if they compel me again and I have to repeat my 'no'. I don't want to form connections with people who think it's okay to test my boundaries or compel me to change my mind even in low-stakes situations, because that tells me something about how they are receiving my 'no' as something that they need to convince me out of rather than accepting it. This is crucial, especially when it's gendered, because women's no is treated as negotiable and people who do that are not safe to be around.

I thought to share, because I realized this may not be common knowledge and it's really important when it comes to our safety. Especially since we might not clock this behaviour as harmful.

i am trying to figure out what's going wrong with a friend and me, and a significant portion seems to be that she doesn't think i give her enough grace when she speaks. that whenever she shares a stance i always 'contextualize' it or add modifiers/nuance. i don't see myself doing that, i see myself clarifying that i agree with her while having certain caveats. i think i feel the impulse to do this, because if i don't then i think the assumption is that i also think the same way and this seems uncomfortable when i have a different view point, to the extent it can feel a little like lying.

i am trying to understand if others have also experienced this and would also appreciate if you have any advice. i think the solution is to be more diplomatic and to maybe not say much when i have small disagreements. but i am struggling for a solution that doesn't involve some level of masking, because while i don't want my friend to feel like shit, i also don't want to by hyper-vigilant around her.

edit: some added context that i am not sure will help, but we became friends when we were about 18 and it's been 12 years now. she's only brought up this for the first time now because we are going through a rough patch and i asked her to be very honest. i was the one to initiate the dialogue because i've been feeling very emotionally on guard around her, and she's been sharing how she's been also struggling in our friendship. it's all been very destabilizing because she makes very global claims about who i am as a person and doesn't anchor those as much in the specifics. this is one of the things she brought up to say that i don't give her grace, so i am trying to figure out what's going on.

This is something I am still articulating so please read and respond in a charitable way. I am trying to see if others have noticed/experienced this.

Something I've been noticing for a few years is that it often feels like when men talk about getting access to women, they almost have this transactional attitude as if they have to treat us with respect/buy us gifts just to get access to us. Almost as if there is some sort of a disdain for us as persons, but that they have to treat us as persons if they want to have access to us.

For example, recently saw a poster complaining that women don't choose him despite him earning a high income as if the money entitled him a certain access to women. He also made a comment about how women go for more good looking men which had an undercurrent of disdain towards the women who do this, as if by exercising their agency they are denying him?

I also see this in the way some men talk about how some women don't call it sexual harassment if the man is attractive. While I do not deny this, I think it's more of a comment on how attractive people get away with being unethical more easily than unattractive people [something that I think that the tv show jessica jones explored to some extent]. They rather take it as not that the harassment is wrong, but that it's being called harassment because of how they look, as if it's a ploy against unattractive men. As if somehow it's the attractiveness which makes it harassment and not the action itself.

I wonder if this is because for so much of our history, and even our present in some cases, people could get away with treating women as less than while still having access to their bodies and their labour. And now that more and more women are financially independent, but men are still coming of age in a culture that treats women less than, it's often a shock for them that the old ways don't produce the same results.

I am not sure if I have managed to articulate this very well, if any of you have any reading material on the same please do share. I am putting this out here to see if other people have seen or felt this to try and have a better understanding of what I am seeing. Please do let me know if this is something you have noticed or not. Looking forward to your responses.

Disclaimer: I am aware that people can be transactional regardless or gender dynamics and can be transactional for other reasons, but I am the moment trying to understand these gendered dynamics.

Note to men: while I am primarily interested in hearing women's experiences, if you have something to share, requesting you to reply to the automod as per rules rather than hijacking women's comments. Thank you in advance for understanding.

it sounds like a nightmare and i am grateful that i am not it!

obviously there can be 'good' marriages, but for a woman being married to a man in a patriarchal society, those seem few and far between. and just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge this!

this was originally a song by hayley kiyoko and then a book and now a film!

found this very helpful so thought others might also <3