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Feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy. We stand up for the rights of women to control our own bodies as individuals and to control women-only spaces as a class.
Women are adult human females. We do not believe that men can become women by 'feeling' like women or 'identifying' as women. We condemn the erasure of females and female-only spaces, the silencing of critical thinking, the cancelling of feminists and critics, the denial of biological reality and of sex-based oppression. We oppose the 'cotton ceiling' and the pressure on lesbians to have sex with men. Women are oppressed to exploit their biological sex characteristics, and women have a right to a movement that is about their own liberation from that oppression. We resist the redefinition of both "women" and "feminism" to make them serve men.
"Women do not decide at some point in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity.’ Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex." –Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts
109 comments
The “women can be rapists, too!” rhetoric is so obnoxious, because much of the time, no one disputes this fact. Anyone who brings this up clearly has the intention of downplaying the actual statistics and shaming women for our rightful wariness around men.
It also completely ignores the reality that women committing sexual crimes in general and rape in particular is extremely rare and most female sexual offenders commit their own crime with a man.
I hate it, too. Conflating female rapists with males (even though female rapists are extremely rare) is ridiculous. And, even if female predators were more common, it would still be stupid to conflate them because at least females are equally matched with one another. If a female attacked me, I'd have a fair shot at fighting back. Whereas, if a man attacked me, I'd most likely be overpowered
Also, you would not run any risk of pregnancies or STDs.
However, I find such rhetoric mainly to be harmful because we all know it’s males who rape the majority of the time, so saying a trans woman who raped you with his penis is a “female rapist” merely elides that fact, which is a grooming tactic; by equating a trans male with a woman, it’s implying such an attack is an aberration, just as rare as if it had actually been a woman, so really there’s no need to worry, ladies. Trans women are totes safe!
It’s a grooming tactic to pretend they’re not much stronger and much more predatory than women because they’re men, with male-pattern violence.
It’s appalling, gaslighting, misogynistic and evil to tell a woman raped by a male penis that her rapist was a woman.
No, you can get STDs from another woman. Definitely no risk of pregnancy though.
Very true, unless they're FTM and on testosterone. Then it's pretty similar to being pinned down by a man.
There are a not small number of FTMs that are ready and willing to sexually assault women and now have the physicality to do it effective. I think it's a validation thing, a male bonding things, and/or an outlet for the self-hating misogynistic rage the FTM is feeling. It's a way for her to place herself in the powerful "rapist" (aka dominate, aka male) category while distancing herself from the pitiful "victim" or "female" category.
My FTM rapist was incredibly insistent on me touching her fake dick (she's in her 50s, got phalloplasty in the late 90s, transitioned in the 1980s after her and her fellow female officer were followed on their secret date by their fellow male military members and violently gang raped for being lesbians, especially lesbians in the military (she insists this has nothing to do with her transition, though).
She forcefully babbled about how good I'd feel because it was just like a real dick, "it gets hard and everything, I can fuck you hard" and kept forcing my hand onto it. It was just as scary as a real man but it had this undercurrent of guilt, sadness, and desperation. It felt like she truly NEEDED this, not as a sexual release but as proof of her dominant "manhood".
I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.
I think the testosterone is a factor as well. "Roid Rage" is a very real, documented phenomenon in both FTMs and males who use it for doping purposes. I remember reading about Chastity Bono's partner and how they broke up after Chastity's transition to Chaz because the hormones changed her personality and made her more aggressive and angry.
Not to say that excuses bad behavior by FTMs. Just that many of them aren't properly warned about how much testosterone fucks with your personality & libido
Wow that's frightening on a while different level. I'm so sorry she did that to you. Hugs if you like them.
I'm so sorry you experienced that. And Pennygadget is right, "roid rage" is a thing. Even women who use T for bodybuilding can wind up unable to control their tempers and blow up happy relationships. This FTM you knew is a whole other depraved story, though.
And I agree with you that it probably wasn't for sexual released, but for a feeling of dominance and the power of being the abuser instead of the abused. That doesn't make it any less depraved and harmful.
Men terrorize women. It's not just a strength thing. Women (and even men) are afraid of angering a man because they dial retribution up to 11 and everybody knows that's a risk. So the risk of escaping a female rapist will be different from escaping a male rapist and everybody knows it.
Just like with domestic violence. A man leaving an abusive wife or girlfriend stands a much, much greater chance of survival than a woman leaving an abusive husband or boyfriend. The woman may stalk him or make him miserable some way but she doesn't usually try to kill him.
Knowing that actually makes me even less sympathetic than I already am when some dude interrupts a conversation about DV with "men are abused too." I'm like "aaand it's safer for you to leave so why didn't you?"
A mere 3 years ago MRAs on social media platforms were arguing with me using this line of reasoning. That used to be their argument for allowing men in women's DV shelters. They couldn't have their own shelters because [scoff] the feminist society would never go for male DV shelters. Oh, is it because women rarely kill their partners who leave them, I'd ask? You'd think I was a magician by how fast they'd disappear after that question.
Anyway, I guess a bunch of these MRAs figured it'd be a lot easier to just say the men were women to get them into women's DV shelters and that telling them to get their own shelter was LITERAL VIOLENCE.
This is plain old men's rights / incel rhetoric
And legally in a lot of countries, no they can't. They can sexually assault but rape is a male crime in the laws.
I'm DONE. I just peaked all over again. Under no circumstance, EVER, do you try to tell a rape survivor what to feel to protect the PERPETRATOR's feelings. You don't get to redefine their experience. You don't get to say it was less serious of a crime because it wasn't a "real penis"/"real man" but more "like a strap on"/"actually a woman". You don't get to skew crime statistics by including predatory males in the "woman" category. How anyone can say such things and still believe to be on the right side of history is truly beyond me. ETA: Also that "Many women use them" aside. WHY. WHY. WHY. What does the fact that some women use toys for pleasure have to do with being raped? It sounds incredibly like "come on many people like doing this for fun so maybe you shouldn't consider it rape if someone forcefully does it to you". Some people like gardening, am I going to hit them with a spade and claim they have to enjoy it?
Yes, exactly! "Some people enjoy BDSM, so if you're forcibly tied up and tortured, just think of it as role play!" (I would like to think that no one would ever say this but unfortunately I can imagine a "er, mustn't kink shame" response to a victim of torture in the current climate. In an ostensibly feminist group, someone posted a meme or photo of a t-shirt showing a standard "female" sign with "your girlfriend" and a second graphic depicting a woman tied up with "my girlfriend". Initial responses were "yuck, this is not okay" and then we got the "it's shibari though. Let's not kink shame". Fuck off.)
Also, where I live, the legal definition of rape includes penetration of a vagina or anus by object so even if it was a strap-on, it's still rape.
Gah, just the idea of policing the way a rape survivor can or cannot speak about her trauma to spare the feelings of the rapist sends my rage meter off the charts. We shouldn't even have to debate the technicalities of strap-on vs penis but here we are. It makes me sick.
I don't think it's to spare the feelings of the perp, who I suspect really doesn't mind being thought of as a man. I think it's just to extend the rape even more by dicktating how the victim can or cannot speak about her trauma. He gets off on controlling her after the rape just like he did during the rape.
It just shows how entrenched in male privilege TiMs are. We hear this type of language policing from normie dudes all the time when it comes to sexual assault victims. We are told to say "NOT ALL MEN" and everything else when discussing our trauma because some man somewhere might get his feelings hurt. This is the same shit. They just wanna shut us up so we don't invalidate anyone, regardless of what we're saying. Use considerate language when discussing your rape! You're hurting the penis havers feelings!
They also love to bring up outliers like Mary Kay Laternaeu as "proof" that women are just as rapey as men (as if feminists were lining up to defend or excuse what she did)
Tell me about it! Why do they know that case? Because it was infamous. Why was it such a huge story? BECAUSE IT WAS SO WEIRD DIPSHIT!!!!
When men do this it’s so common it might make the local paper if that.
This very succintly highlights the absurdity of it all. And it's not even an exaggeration. This is what they're telling us. Even at our lowest, we're STILL being asked to put others first. Men will stop at nothing until they have utterly and completely taken everything from us. They're already fantasizing about harvesting our wombs.
But this is happening. In court women are being forced to use their abusers’ and rapists’ preferred pronouns and get told off by the judge if they don’t. Literal victims of crime being treated as the bad guys because they hurt their rapist’s feelings.
This is the biggest reality about female socialization. And its something TIMs can NEVER understand or empathize with!!
See, as scary as the womb harvesting thing sounds, I don't worry about it too much. There's still a hysterical right wing group that believes women should be barefoot and pregnant. Theyll have the most to say if decisions start being made about uteruses without their consent.
Right? One would think that if they were so concerned about being called men, then they would stop their male-like behavior.
I see you like to serve your tea scalding hot!
Without a doubt! Recently, I've made a conscious effort to reserve my patience, compassion, and generosity for women over men whenever possible. Men only take advantage of those traits in women to get away with ridiculously misogynistic nonsense like the original post.
"It's not to protect your rapist, but for trans women in general! They suffer and we don't want them to get horizontal fire!"
That's usually the bullshit explanation I hear. There's no reason to treat trans women as anything other than men, and it's not harming anyone to do so.
Yeah but wouldn't it actually benefit trans women if people assumed the crime was committed by a man? To insist that the rapist was a TW / that people shouldn't misgender rapists makes trans women look bad. That's why some TRAs do like to claim that any trans person who commited a crime "wasn't actually trans". It really shows their priorities: they don't actually worry that there might be rapists among them, all that matters is that evEryOnE Is VaLiD
Schrödingers gender identity. These rapists are simultaneously not really trans (men pretending), and actually trans (actually women so it’s a less serious crime), but we don’t get to know which until the activist is certain which line of argument is most convincing.
Probably better to demonstrate that trans women have similar offending rates as women... if only that were true.
It's gas lighting of the highest order. I am mad as hell, that someone would dare to go into a support group and try to spout this kind of theorem in the first place. They are specifically targeting the vulnerable.
Much like a rapist.
Its especially cruel because support groups are supposed to be places where victims can honestly vent their feelings to other people who understand their plight. Its supposed to be a place where they can turn off the filter and speak their truth without judgements. Now these women and girls are being told they're worse than their rapists if they can't pretend that a lady assaulted them!!
RAPE. IS. STILL. RAPE.
IT. DOESN'T. MATTER.
Edit: I mean that as in I'm PISSED that they're giving any fucks about gender identity to BEGIN with when it should be about helping and centering the victim!! fucking nerve of these assholes! Don't talk to me about fucking strap ons, that's not the point! A woman was raped, help her!!
I have been raped by men and by a TIM. It was worse when it's a TIM because the "feminist" wokies, including lesbian and bisexual women I thought I could count on as my long-time friends, all helped him continue abusing me once I was ready to talk about it because they were desperately worried I might talk about having been raped by a man and thus hurt other delusional gender LARPers with my truthful account.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
So am I. It's so much worse to think you have friends and realize you were wrong than to understand you're alone from the get-go.
Disgusting
99% of all rape is committed by men. If a woman commits a rape, she must use some kind of object or her digits to penetrate a vagina or an anus. These are the legal definitions of rape and VERY SPECIFIC physical outcomes as a result of rape that may happen (STDs, pregnancy, tearing of the vaginal wall which can lead to long-term problems like incontinence, genital lacerations, anal lacerations and damage, etc.)
Of those, all may occur to women, but only two (anal damage and STDs) can happen to men. It's horrifying for anyone to be raped, but WOMEN ARE NOT COMMITTING RAPE.
In 2019, 5 children under the age of 8 committed homocide, but when one discusses murder nobody seems to need to clarify, "Believe it or not, kindergartners kill too."
I love to use this analogy as well because it perfectly encapsulates how absurd it is to treat extreme outliers like they're normal.
This is a complete tangent, but - what? Given that intent is a feature of homicide, I'm baffled that a legal system found children that age to have intent. Do you happen to have any links?
(I'm not saying you're wrong - just have been having discussions in a totally different context about the age at which we deem children/adolescents to be capable of making decisions/suffering consequences/enjoying benefits of a range of behaviours, so this links to that.)
Murder is homicide with intent, and homicide is simply the killing of a person (all murders are homicides; not all homicides are murders), and may or may not carry legal consequences depending on what was involved in the incident.
Although the definitions of both can and do vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So in some U.S. states, for instance, they may weigh intent more heavily with homicide than they do with others. In one state these kids wouldn't have been charged with anything, in another maybe they got the lowest possible charge and it'll be sealed in their juvie records when they turn 18. Depends on the jurisdiction and what the kid was doing.
Ah, so if in one of those cases where idiot parent leaves gun under a couch cushion, and a four year old finds it, discharges it, and it kills someone, that's homicide? (although surely not murder)
What would the parent be charged with, it being their fault and not the four year old's in any sane sense?
I think ...
I think similarly could be said about rape and female rapists. Honestly - rape is not sexual. Rape is male domination of women. I suspect that female committed rapes have a sufficiently distinct mens rea from male committed rapes that we could create a separate criminal category just like homicide vs manslaughter.
Rape is most definitely sexual.
Edited to add: the idea that rape is not sexual is one of the stupidest things to ever emerge from second wave feminism, and it's one reason people don't take feminists seriously (or believe that they could have ever experienced rape, considering such a line of reasoning). No one is saying rape is only sexual; of course it is about violence and power, it is about "making hate" the same way that affectionate mutual sex is about "making love."
That doesn't change the fact that it's very much sexual, and that sex is being used as a weapon against a woman because of her sex. If we fail to understand rape as sexual, we fail to understand male sexual violence, male sexuality, and we fail to understand the origins and mainstays of patriarchy.
Oh, absolutely...it's not an even comparison, but I was trying to show within some demographic groups, there are people who do things that are highly improbable based on a specific demographic. Of course intent and age matter in sentencing (no 8 year-old goes to prison even if they pick up a gun and pull the trigger or if they have drown a baby, but it doesn't mean they aren't the cause of death).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251884/murder-offenders-in-the-us-by-age/
A question for them: Has anyone ever been forcibly impregnated by a strap-on?
Not to mention, people don't walk around wearing strap-ons that can be used as ad hoc sexual weapons on an unfortunate woman. Penis people always have that thing and its privileges and protections ready for whenever they want to take advantage of it.
One of the replies said "I’m told it was taken down but he wasn’t removed so he just reposted and was private messaging dick pix to women he considers terfy and still not removed. By libfem admins." Disgusting.
TRAs are evil people, who downplay the horrors of rape.
Making it easier for themselves when they want to commit it.
Crazy how the tra is telling women not to listen to their brains and if they have ptsd it's their own fault ..
Also, women who have been raped need to work on their triggers with a therapist but men who have triggers need all women to pretend sex isn't real.
This is a great example of the need to "Respect the Space". This is a support space, not a place to educate people.
And I see this a lot in support/recovery - someone coming and trying to "educate" people who are suffering - it's hard to peg someone who is at rock bottom in their life as the one that needs to "examine their privilege".
Exactly! The point of support groups is to allow victims to speak honestly and vent without judgment in a space that understands their pain. Its not a place to shame traumatized people for not being politically correct
"not a cult" while sounding exactly like a fucking cultist trying to brainwash rape victims for his(?) own personal gain. How are these people allowed to harass vulnerable, traumatized women? You'd think the disregard most of society has towards women & girls would clue people into the fact that nobody really thinks TIMs are women.