Today I matched my watch. #peakfashun ?
Author: D
Traveling has this strange effect of taking some of the mystery out of the world.
When we look at photos or videos of exotic places, architecture, foreign cultures, natural phenomena… it’s all in isolation. It’s through a lens, without context. When you experience it firsthand, everything changes. The Mona Lisa is tiny and surrounded by a mosh pit of study-abroaders with selfie sticks. Some Caribbean beaches really are that electrifyingly turquoise, but a stone’s throw away from the all-inclusive resort are sprawling miles of slums.
Everything is different in context.
And the more you see, the more you start to realize… it’s all the fucking same. The world is more or less the same, everywhere. Everywhere you go, everyone is struggling. Most people don’t have the resources to live a full, satisfying life. Sexism and misogyny and gender roles and unbearably dull heteronormativity saturate every nook, cranny, and crevice of the globe – not a single culture immune. Everywhere, women are secondary. Everywhere, children are born and grow up in poverty, likely to repeat the cycle as adults. Everywhere, animals are tortured for consumption (and only in rare cases is it out of necessity). Everywhere, capitalism (or worse) ensures inequality. Everywhere, there are patriarchal politicians dictating the fates of their communities.
Life, the world, existence – it isn’t inherently good with some bad sprinkled in – like you thought as a child. It’s mostly… neutral at best, a nightmare at worst.
It makes it harder and harder to believe in anything magical.
I always say the only thing I really want to see before I die is the discovery of extraterrestrial life. I think I just want to believe really, really badly that there could be a world out there better than ours.
I often fantasize about how much easier and more appealing existence would be if I could just… like baseball. Eat steaks. Go to church. Breed some brats. Be heterocentric. Settle into some pathetic ideal of upper middle class suburban life. Imagine having an entire culture of people just like you… I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. It sounds so fulfilling, even if the life itself is empty and pathetically normative.
I’d rather feel like I fit in the world than feel complex and aware. In a fucking heartbeat I’d pick ignorant bliss over ~woke and depressed. Why even fight for this world… for any of its causes? If all the idiots would stop breeding we wouldn’t have problems anymore. We could just die out quietly, long overdue.
Most days I just feel so lonely. There’s just hardly anyone left I can stand to be around.
Tell San Francisco Public Library to Remove Exhibit of Weapons Intended to Kill Feminists
The silver lining in this hot mess is that more and more people will gain awareness of the ludicrous ideology and misogynistic aims of trans activists. Women will reach peak trans en masse. Keep exposing your disgusting selves, I say. These men are their own worst enemies.
There are always a few people who derail every meaningful movement, and here I’m calling out the subtle cases of biphobia in the online radical feminist community. Not in the ideology itself, but amidst a handful of lesbian elitists who clearly think their orientation is superior.
Fuck that.
Thankfully, this issue is not representative of the community as a whole, but it’s enough to piss me off and enough to be worth calling out.
I’d be described as a Kinsey 5. I hate having to call myself bisexual. I try to be proud of it because the bi community needs proud and positive voices, but I fucking hate the label. I hate that it implies I’m “into men” (I am really, really not, nor would I ever date another one). I hate that it carries the stigma of “undecided teenager.” I’m 35. I’ve had more relationships with women than with men, and spent a decade of my youth exclusively attracted to women before I was ever drawn to a man. I would love to be able to still call myself a lesbian, to be able to say I reject every incarnation of patriarchy. But I can’t, because I fell in love with an awesome man – who, by the way, would easily be labeled a TERF. I’ve since married again, to a woman, and am now subjected to the same judgment and prejudice that other same-sex female couples experience – just as I was with my two previous girlfriends, for years. If I had met her just a few months earlier, before same-sex marriage was legalized in the U.S., I would have lost her to another continent. She isn’t a citizen; that landmark ruling allowed us to be together.
Despite the fact that I can no longer call myself a lesbian and I don’t have a place in lesbian-only spaces, I am still here fighting for their rights, defending them from the misogyny and lesbophobia of modern liberalism. So when I hear horseshit like “maybe we should drop the B from LGB rights” or “women who marry men aren’t contributing as much to feminism,” I say fuck you. Fuck your narrow-minded assumption that everyone who isn’t a gold star is a hindrance to our liberation from patriarchy. You know what really isn’t contributing to the movement? Your elitism. It only serves to alienate the women you say you want to protect.
Radical feminists are a small enough minority as it is. Don’t divide and weaken us by turning bi and straight women off the movement. Not all bisexuals are liberal straight girls trying to look cool and kweer. Most of us still experience homophobia, and straight women still contribute to feminism. We don’t have control over our orientations; we have control over our ideologies. So don’t turn women away from this one.
Blood oranges are so pretty. ?
I hope straight and bi radfems who date men don’t give up hope entirely. I know 99.9% of them are useless shits, but there are a few great ones out there, I promise. There is more to life outside the narrow lens of the Internet. Don’t let Tumblr convince you there are zero males who deserve to be alive. You will eventually find one who doesn’t watch porn, doesn’t expect you to wear makeup or shave, calls out other men on sexist shit, and knows what to do with your clit. They’re out there, just be patient. ❤