lafememeistnoire:

oceanlesbian:

rad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know:

inferior-mirage:

pro-uterus-agenda:

Brilliant article on how choice feminism is garbage and how it hurts women in third world countries.

Usha Vishwakarma runs the Red Brigade, which protests widespread rape and teaches self defense to girls and women. Ruchira Gupta runs Apne Aap, an anti-trafficking organisation that also runs schools for girls who are targeted by sex traffickers. Vijayalaxmi Sharma fights child marriage, Masooma Ranalvi resists female genital mutilation, and Manju Yadav protests the veils women are pressured to wear in her community. Supriya Sonar and Mumtaz Shaikh petitioned president Ramnath Kovind with Right to Pee, for female-only bathrooms and toilets.

It is not our own rationales, though, that are the issue; but the patriarchal, sexist idea that “women want it”.

It gives us the illusion of power while betraying women by normalising support for patriarchal institutions like prostitution, marriage, surrogacy, genital mutilation, conversion therapy and the veil. It makes us hypocrites – because why have a rights movement, when there is almost nothing but the pay gap that, in our eyes, actually constitutes a violation?

Just to pick up on one thing the ‘right to pee’ when women in third world countries say this it’s because there are no options for them. When first world trans activists complain using the same phrase it’s because they don’t like the options of toilets provided for them. And isn’t that a microcosm of entitled choice feminism as opposed to global feminism, the difference between not liking the choices available and having no choice whatsoever.

one of the main things western-style liberal feminism has achieved and it’s absolutely one of its actual aims - is to make women feel ashamed of caring about women’s rights and issues. there are race and class differences that play a huge role in complicating this issue, and the phenomenon of white/western feminists assuming they know what’s “good for” woc/gmw is a real problem, but what liberal feminism presents as the solution is to STOP CARING. not step back and learn from women on the ground and ask, what can i do to help, or even just gain awareness and learn from their activism, which is often much more useful and realistic anyway since true change can only be begun within one’s own community… but to stop caring, because caring itself is automatically reframed as “speaking over” and “patronizing”.

it’s not a coincidence that issues that affect the vast majority of women around the world, like poverty, lack of reproductive rights, prostitution, religious patriarchy, the right to female-only spaces like toilets, are all issues that liberal feminists think aren’t relevant at all or have only limited relevance to white/western feminists… and this is immediately used as an excuse to dismiss those issues altogether or, in the case of modern gender/queer/trans activism, to press for the inclusion and centering of males instead.

so you end up with a lot of performative white guilt and a lot of white males getting to define feminism over and over again - and this is somehow a better feminism, this is somehow progress.

no movement is as vilified for attempts to make connections around the world, as much as the movement for female liberation.

this should be a huge warning sign that liberal feminists don’t want female liberation, they actively fight against the understanding of sex as an axis of oppression.

Holy shit