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Happy 1st Anniversary, Ovarit!
“Men have the power of naming, a great and sublime power. This power of naming enables men to define experience, to articulate boundaries and values, to designate to each thing its realm and qualities, to determine what can and cannot be expressed, to control perception itself.”
-Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Over and over again across time and place, women’s voices are silenced, deleted, removed, and erased. We’re harassed, banished, beaten, and threatened. We’re cancelled, interrogated, sacked, and deplatformed.
Yet we persist.
A little over a year ago, June 29th, 2020, r/GenderCritical was banned from Reddit for upholding a single untenable truth: it’s impossible to change sex. Resisting popular dogma (“trans women are women”), we remained a rapidly growing force against gender ideology and the re-imposition of patriarchy’s definition of “woman.” When J.K. Rowling published her controversial essay our numbers swelled as support grew for gender critical thought and women’s right to speak up and challenge the propaganda being sold.
And then, in an instant, the community was gone without warning or notice. No appeal could be made to restore it. We could have walked away, closed our mouths, shut our laptops, and stopped making memes. We could have found other more popular causes or interests, relaxed into dissociated groups, or joined other popular male-run media.
But we didn’t.
Andrea: “Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it. Thought, experienced primarily as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perceptual values developed expressly to subordinate women. Men have defined the parameters of every subject. … whatever contradicts or subverts male naming is defamed out of existence; the power of naming itself, in the male system, is a form of force.”
Within a month of being banned from Reddit we launched Ovarit.com with 18 circles to replace many of the banned gender critical and women-only subreddits...and more. Within six months we had added another 18 circles.
In the past year we’ve invited over 5,700 users who’ve collectively made ~35,000 posts and ~440,000 comments. In support of each other, you’ve given each other more than 5 million upvotes.
Andrea: “As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so feminists will have to steal the power of naming from men.”
When we are silenced we must speak louder. When we are quieted we must roar. When patriarchy and power conspire to muzzle our messages and suffocate our spirits we will fight back and let them know
This is just the beginning.
GC was banned a couple weeks after my mother died (essentially from complications of misogynistic abuse in her life). I remember the despair I felt on the day, last year. It felt like (perhaps to be dramatic but it was a high-emotion time) women were being squashed and silenced out of existence as anything but objects, and there was nothing we could do about it.
And how much of a cheering godsend this place was, and how grateful/impressed I was and remain to the creators, mods, and admins, and even all the women who participate here. Thank you thank you so much for all your tenacity and hard work. <3
(God I love those Dworkin quotes too!)
I'm so so sorry about your mother's passing, and for what she went through. You feelings are not at all dramatic, they are valid and completely understandable.
One for you ♥️ & one for your mum ♥️
I'm sorry about your mom. I'm glad you're here with some other supportive people, though!
I'm so sorry about the loss of your mother. ❤️
We must continue speaking out for all the women, including those who are no longer with us. Thank you for joining us here.
This site has completely replaced reddit for me as my go-to social media platform. Cheers for one year and the hope that more women can peak and ahem transition from that hateful misogynistic site to here at Ovarit <3
Happy Birthday, Ovarit! Thank you mods and programmers! This place truly changed my life!
Thank you to everyone who makes this community so special and congrats to all for one great year 🍾
I'm not crying, you're crying. 🥲
This was beautiful. Thank you so much to the brave women who created, contribute to, and share this community. I appreciate you all so much for your knowledge and your passion, and for the opportunity to learn and grow.
Thank you to all the admin and mods for this amazing space!
Happy birthday Ovarit! 🎂🎉🎂🎉
This is amazing. You're doing important work. Women's lives have improved because of you.
Wow, Happy Anniversary!!! Such a great achievement and positive step forward pushing back against our erasure. Applause to all you wonderful ladies behind the scenes as well as everyone participating and helping one another here. Such a necessary space.
Has it been a year already?
I was there on the subReddit and was delighted when this site was created. I’m so happy what a positive space it is. People disagree. People have strong opinions. People challenge each other. I have yet to see the trolling and bullying I do on other sites. What an oasis in the internet desert.
Congratulations! This is a big milestone and I thank you for all your hard work. Here's to many more years of raising up women!
Happy Anniversary! I am very grateful for Ovarit, the admins and mods. Most of all, thank you so much for creating it when we needed it the most!
Happy Anniversary Ovarit!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Thank you to all of the admins, devs, mods, and users who make this site what it is ❤️
I really was shocked when GC was banned from Reddit, given all the other horrific subs that are there. Women stating that men can't be woman = bad, but a sub called eyebletch that has videos of... no, I wont describe them because it's too horrific. That's still there. (I only discovered it because I was looking for eyebleach and I have clumsy fingers) Ovarit is like fresh mountain air. Space to think and talk amongst women. No wonder so many men hate it.
This place made me feel like I have a voice again. It emboldened me to speak my mind outside of it. Thank you, ovarit!
I feel so lucky that there are women in the world who would create Ovarit after we lost the last place on the internet for women. I hope you can feel the gratitude I feel, and all of us feel, for the long hours and sacrifice it takes to create and maintain a site like this.
Congrats to those who make this place possible! I'm looking forward to the next year and what changes it will bring.
Love love love! Sending lots of it to all the smart, strong, and hilarious women that frequent Ovarit. Cheers!
Thank you mods!!!! You're all brilliant - real women doing the work of the goddess!
Happy Birthday. Thank you for being here. Thank you to all the women whose guidance, ideas, criticisms, funny stories I read every day.
I peaked on r/GC in 2019 when looking for fellow prostitution abolitionists, and am SO grateful. R/GC made me feel strong and pushed me to find other women in my city and start organizing. We are still losing today, but we will win eventually. Thank you so much, admins, mods and coders of Ovarit. And happy anniversary!
The existence of this website fills me with joy. I wish spanish speaking countries had a site like this. Im from Argentina and we speak spanish here and not everyone is able to understand english. Learning english opened lots of doors to me. Recently we talked about Ovarit in the gc feminist group I'm in and some girls asked me how can they participate here. I remember I contacted a member via Twitter to be able to join. Who can we ask to invite them?
Glad to have you here, sister!
Would you like a group code for your GC feminist group (multiple uses)?
They can also request codes from our official accounts:
@WomenAreOvarit on Twitter @Ovarit on Spinster
Lastly members can generate their own invite codes once they reach a high enough level from posting and commenting.
If you get enough of your group to join this website you could ask the admin to create a Spanish language circle. I think that would be very useful!
Thanks to all the mods/admins, and indeed all the contributors, for all your hard work here.
Hopefully Ovarit will continue to grow and persist well into the future.
Congrats on running for a year. There is still a lot of hate out there and I find it disturbing. I posted an innocent comment on a facebook post that was about how the mgtow was banned on reddit. I mentioned that they probably will start their own web site like how this group did. A female said this group was spewing hate speech but it's not. We have valid discussions and I like this group for its views on trans. I see many woman who buy into this trans ideology and hate people who don't buy into it (like JK Rowling), meanwhile they don't realize they are actually being misogynistic. Even on reddit groups for women, they all go around saying trans women are women. No trans women are not women. They are men with issues who think dressing up as women is ok. If you want to wear a dress, fine, but that doesn't make you a woman. That's sex appropriation. Ovarit to me is necessary and it's not radical to support the views of women so to me, we still have a lot more shitty attitudes to change. It is sad women turning their back on their own gender but they are brainwashed. Thank you Ovarit and those who fund and maintain it.
Thank you for creating this space for us, r/GenderCritical helped me peak. ❤️
I am so thankful for this place. I can’t thank you admins and mods enough for creating and maintaining it.
Hello to whoever sees this comment… at what point can I make posts? I’ve had this account for a long time but forgot about it, and I don’t really know how the site works. Any help would be great. Thanks.
Hey @healingharm! You can make posts at any level. You just need to go to the right circle first, then click the Submit a Post button on the right menu. You can find a Circle Directory here. If you're not sure if you're in the right circle, check the sidebar for rules and info. Hope that helps!
Grateful to all the people who created this website and maintain it. I had just discovered GC on reddit before the banwave and I was so outraged. It's shocking that women have to go to such great lengths to speak freely without harassment or suppression. When I come here I'm always struck by other women's brilliance and bravery, and how vital it is that we have women-only spaces where we can talk without fear about the issues that affect our lives.
Thank you fellow mods and admins for all your hard work! It has been an honor being part of this project with you.
Thank you for being a part of this, flap. 💜💜💜