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Not the first time, second time, or last time I fucking see or hear this rhetoric coming from a supposed “feminist” in the name of being queer in any way. There might be lurkers that give me certain accusations and I honestly don’t give a shit because fuck you guys. You people are FUCKED in the head if this sentiment is in any shape or form is defendable to you.
I’m so fucking exhausted of the bullshit about “gosh women are so lucky to be coddled” meanwhile they’re the most oppressed class throughout history and still aren’t anywhere near being considered human beings. Believed inferiority isn’t coddling or something to be envious of, it’s dehumanizing. It’s also being more likely targeted to be raped, to be violated, to be reduced to sex, to be a property to buy, to be anything but a human being. I’m done with the allyship bullshit at this point EVERYONE hates women whether they admit it or not, except the small fraction of actual feminists that aren’t the choice or liberal bullshit feminists. Straight women, gay men, gay women, trans people, all of them fucking hate women just like society taught them too, misogyny is everywhere no matter how far you think you ran away from it. I’m fuming from this screenshot yeah because this isn’t the first time, I interacted with those people before and get disappointed everytime. Just disappointing.
“Privileged” my ass, 90% of the reason I’m so suicidal and have faced the most horrific shit in my life was because I was born a woman, I wish I was in your shoes considering the amount of blind support you get. Not even in progressive spaces are women considered. It’s always you guys above everyone else, wonder why.
The comments on this surrogate story are genuinely some of the most anti-woman things I’ve read in a while.
A surrogate named McKenna West was carrying a baby for intended parents in California. Around 20 weeks, the baby was diagnosed with a severe congenital heart defect. The intended parents wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused. An Alaska court ultimately affirmed that she could make her own medical decisions while pregnant. She later traveled to Texas and gave birth there.
TikTok comments about this case are horrifying and show just how misogynistic people are.
People are literally saying:
“It’s no longer her body, her choice when she signed the contract.”
“She rented her uterus.”
“The parents paid her for her body and the choice.”
“She signed her body away.”
A woman cannot sign away ownership of her own body. A contract does not magically transfer bodily autonomy from the pregnant woman to the people paying her. You cannot purchase the legal or moral right to force another person to undergo surgery or terminate a pregnancy because you paid them.
Commercial surrogacy is just exploitative. We know this obviously, but I just had to rant out of frustration.
The controversy surrounding Alaskan surrogate McKenna West is *astounding* that you have so many people, so many women, coming out and saying that a woman's right to choose ends with a contract. Remarkable that even those who are "her body, her choice" are saying "jk when a woman signs a contract, her body belongs to the intended parents".
Contracts are agreements typically on the exchange of goods, services, and money. When you are in breach of a contract, you forfeit your goods/services/money and may have to pay additional monetary damages. But this is a woman who is sacrificing her body, time, freedom, for money. What happens when a surrogate wants to keep a pregnancy? Do these rent-a-wombers seriously think that they can physically compel a surrogate to get an abortion? What about if a surrogate wants to terminate a pregnancy? Will rent-a-wombers imprison this woman to continue incubating their baby?
Even if you are contracting a worker to help you remodel your bathroom, you can't force them to do anything against their will. If they refuse to finish the job, they can walk off site and you may be left with a non-working toilet but you cannot hold the worker to finish the job to your standards. Doing so would be forced labor aka slavery. Why is it different when it comes to women's labor in pregnancy??
This was the handout for a presentation called Telltale Words: Depoliticizing the Women’s Liberation Movement, given by Carol Hanisch in Boston, March 2014. You can find the full graphic not split up on that linked website, plus a transcript of the presentation she gave.
FEMs and SAMs sit at the volatile intersection of modern gender theory, materialist feminism, and online sociopolitical commentary. These terms describe extremist sex-abolitionist or identity-first frameworks that reinscribe misogyny under the banner of "progressivism."
FEMs (Female-Exclusionary Misogynists) describe perspectives that, in an effort to detach gender identity from biology entirely, minimize or invalidate female biological reality from the definition of womanhood, effectively erasing sex-based social analysis.
SAMs (Sex-Abolitionist Misogynists) refers to positions advocating for the total dissolution of sex categories in favor of gender-only identity, which ignores how patriarchy specifically targets and exploits biological female capacity (reproductive labor, femicide, female infanticide, etc.) and the lived womanhood of many women.
The challenge of dismantling rigid gender norms without erasing the material, sex-based realities that drive systemic oppression is live and real. And I have seen it fall into the latter category more and more.
We scream "intersectionality" and rightly include all forms of womanhood, gender identities included. But what happens in turn? The single most historically oppressed demographic is now denied even validity. Female identity is labeled invalid, vapid, shallow, and dangerous to others. That without capitulation to one's identity being centered on gender, on the socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities of women, your identity in womanhood is somehow more shallow and more patriarchal.
Let's break that down real fast. There is a belief that if a female does not ascribe to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, and expressions of "womanhood," she is supporting patriarchy. I'm sorry, but have we all lost our god damn minds? That is so patriarchal and SO MISOGYNISTIC AND SEXIST that it boggles the mind. And somehow it gets inverted into progressivism.
I never believed in "so far left you go right" until now.
Radical gender constructivism demands adherence to gendered performance for social validation, reinventing the very patriarchal logic feminism originally aimed to dismantle. It is the reemergence of gender essentialism. When "womanhood" is detached entirely from material reality and anchored solely in socially constructed roles, expressions, or internal feelings, it makes patriarchal gender stereotypes the baseline for legitimacy. The irony is stark: in trying to dismantle biological reductionism, hyper-constructivist frameworks often substitute it with performance reductionism. Under this framework, a female who rejects traditional feminine socialization or expression is framed not as a valid woman, but as a fundamentally flawed and empty one.
Materialist feminism focuses on how systems of power exploit physical realities, reproductive labor, maternal mortality, sex-selective abortion, sex-based violence, etc. Completely removing "female" as a distinct material category creates a severe structural blind spot. You cannot analyze or critique a system built on controlling females (patriarchy) if naming that biological reality is treated as inherently exclusionary or politically suspect.
Expanding inclusion for gender identity does not have to come at the cost of erasing the material, sex-based analysis required to dismantle misogyny.
The phrase "you are not your uterus" demonstrates a complete inversion: what began as a feminist defense against patriarchal objectification mutated into a tool for alienating women from their own material reality, identity, and choice. When that statement is turned against a woman who consciously chooses to ground her womanhood in her biological sex, the core feminist promise of self-determination gets inverted. What was designed as a shield against reproductive coercion becomes a weapon of ideological compliance to normative gender roles.
Feminism was built to expand a woman's choices, not narrow them. If liberation meant escaping the mandate that a female must be defined by her reproductive organs, it also meant protecting her right to decide how she relates to her own body. Telling a woman that her conscious, educated choice to center her female biological reality is "shallow" or "patriarchal" replaces old patriarchal rules with a new set of demands.
This dynamic creates a rigid ideological boundary. To be politically validated, a female is expected to treat her biological sex as irrelevant, unmentionable, or secondary. If she instead finds solidarity, meaning, or political relevance in her female body, her agency is dismissed as "internalized misogyny." It asserts that third parties know better than the woman herself what her relationship to her own body should be, a classic hallmark of patriarchal control disguised as enlightened discourse.
True bodily autonomy includes the right to embrace one's physical reality without needing permission or approval. When progressivism demands that women disavow their biological sex to qualify as liberated, it stops offering freedom from rigid norms and starts enforcing a new standard of female self-effacement.
Swapping forced subordination for forced disembodiment is not liberation. It simply changes who gets to tell women how they are allowed to feel about their own bodies.
FEMs and SAMs are an exclusionary danger to feminism.
To the FEMs and SAMs: as an infertile woman, I am my womb and my womb is me, and my identity does not exclude yours. Don't exclude mine.
Welcome to r/fourthwavewomen's weekly open discussion thread!
This thread is for the community to discuss whatever is on your mind. Have a question that you've been meaning to ask but haven't gotten around to making a post yet? An interesting article you'd like to share? Any work-related matters you'd like to get feedback on or talk about? Questions and advice are welcome here.
Medical misogyny is as old as medicine. I was shocked to learn the meaning of "pudendum"!
Welcome to r/fourthwavewomen's weekly open discussion thread!
This thread is for the community to discuss whatever is on your mind. Have a question that you've been meaning to ask but haven't gotten around to making a post yet? An interesting article you'd like to share? Any work-related matters you'd like to get feedback on or talk about? Questions and advice are welcome here.