Why I’m a Radical Feminist – In a Nutshell

It’s not about hating men. I know and love and like lots of lovely, great men. I’m very much attracted to men. Every male I take the time to talk to is a friend who I consider good, so if you are one of my male friends and you are reading this, please know that this is not about you.

Also: “If I hated men, I would treat men the way men treat women.” – Beth Chamberlin 🙂

It’s about how men have always and still influence and control everything in the world and how women are therefore unfairly treated / perceived.

It’s about respect – and the disgusting lack of it society has for women.

It’s about rejecting the limited, boxed-in, second-rate ‘gender role’ women have been assigned by society.

It’s also about appreciating all the hard work of the Suffragettes and the Second Wave Feminists, and not letting it all be for nothing. We owe them a lot – they went through so much shit for us – and I won’t forget that.

And it’s about the way women are discouraged from voicing any kind of negative opinion about the way society views and treats us – silenced via ostracism, essentially. Feminists are reviled. Vocal feminists are vilified.

So, I am very vocal in my criticism of the world, men, and the terrible things they do to women and children, because I am protesting the overwhelming silence of everyone else.

I also like to say FUCK OFF when rejecting bullshit norms. It’s a great way to retrain my brain to embrace the authentic angry reaction I have to injustice. (When I was 5, I threw a mighty tantrum because I wanted to grow up to be a man, but my mother said I couldn’t. I begged her and pleaded with her to let me grow into a man because I could see that men had all the money, the power, and that most importantly they had all the fun – and of course I wanted that for myself. I was beside myself with rage at the injustice of having no choice but to grow up to be a woman, because I could see that a woman’s place in society was decidedly inferior.)

Unfortunately, my valid childhood indignation – my authentic reaction to injustice – was almost brainwashed out of me by society, culture & hormones.

But thanks to the continuous, patient teachings of my strong feminist mother and strong feminist twin sister – plus lots of reading – I am reclaiming my original rage, and it’s coming back to me quite nicely 🙂

It would be great if everyone would join me.

Nujood Ali, the 10-year-old Yemeni girl who found her way alone to an urban courthouse to request a divorce from the man her father had forced her to marry. Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair, National Geographic.

The Case for Radical Feminism:

The world operates via a male-created male-centric, male-dominated religious-industrialist complex that is supportive of men while silencing, brainwashing and oppressing women. I refer to this complex system as the “Patriarchy”.

I like to tell this system to FUCK OFF.

The Patriarchy has (selectively) written history from a completely male perspective. If anyone cares to notice, there is a dearth of female characters, voices and opinions in written history.

I like to tell accepted written history to FUCK OFF.

I also regularly contribute to Wikipedia – and so should you!

The Patriarchy has created several *ridiculous* religions, the majority of which are deeply sexist and misogynistic. Generally, the men are revered as Gods, lords, prophets and saviours while the poor long suffering women are either evil ‘whores’ or saintly ‘Madonnas’. This crapola perception of men vs women has carried over into the way men and women are viewed in society (gee, thanks Patriarchy).

Naturally, I righteously tell all religious books and doctrines to FUCK OFF.

The Patriarchy is contemptuous of women. The Patriarchy sees women as animals/objects to be owned (even bought and sold) by men. Women are seen as “other” and somehow less than human. The Patriarchy grants men the right to control women, their bodies and reproductive abilities via cultural constructs like prostitution, relationship norms, marriage, the nuclear family, and oppressive laws governing reproduction.

My life is MINE, I don’t bow to social pressure. Also my body is MINE and everything inside it belongs to ME. FUCK OFF.

The Patriarchy created and defined all our words, including SEX. The Patriarchy has told us that SEX = Penis in Vagina. But I completely reject that. I’m convinced if women were allowed to define sex, it would be much more foreplay, pleasure and clit-centric. However, women have never been asked or allowed to define what sex is. The Patriarchy just decided that sex was penis-in-vagina, because that’s what men benefit from the most.

If you don’t think sex should involve pleasuring me and making sure I feel good every step of the way, then FUCK OFF.

Patriarchy has succeeded partly because it is very good at dividing women, and turning them against one another. Women actually compete for male attention & approval, and they put their sisters down in the process. Women are STILL helping men to oppress women by putting their sisters down, and prioritising men. It’s absolutely crazy.

I’m a SISTER and I love women. You didn’t succeed with me. So, FUCK OFF.

The Patriarchy has succeeded by convincing women that their anger is invalid. History (written and controlled by the Patriarchy) likes to paint angry women who were unhappy with the shithouse status quo as ‘hysterical’ or ‘crazy’.  Girls are taught that their anger and their other very valid negative reactions to oppression are ‘irrational’. But that’s bullshit. Only a very stupid/placid woman wouldn’t be FURIOUS about her second-rate, caged, controlled, oppressed place in this world.

I’m angry and unapologetic about it. I know my anger is valid. FUCK OFF.

The Patriarchy has also succeeded by training women to focus on their looks, and to pander to the sexual desires of men (even when those desires are gross, like infantilisation). Women are so focused on being attractive and pleasing men sexually that they often don’t take the time to ask themselves why, and often they never see the bigger picture or the real forces at work. Women’s magazines and news articles about women inevitably focus on how women LOOK and how to be SEXY. As a result, women spend a hell of a lot of time obsessing over their looks and sexiness – time that could be spent smashing patriarchy and taking back the world. Sigh.

I’m a woman and biology has made me naturally sexy, so I don’t need to try. Oh, and I want to be authentically turned on by YOU. Plastic breasts on my chest don’t turn ME on, so I’m not going to get them.

On a side note, I see your game, Patriarchy, and I raise you an EAT SHIT. Some of us have woken up, and we are forming a UNITED front. We are actively working TOGETHER to smash you. Be afraid (and start working on your clitoral skills 🙂

Millions of women and girls around the world are STILL being raped by men. Not a minute goes by, every single day, where a female isn’t being raped. It’s relentless and vicious.

Um, how am I supposed to react to this? Because my original reaction is FURY. Somehow, I know that FURY is the ONLY valid reaction to this kind of relentless violent oppression. Because it’s really not that difficult to STOP RAPING women. There’s no excuse. Just stop raping us. (And fuck off)

Girls as young as 5 are STILL being SOLD to disgusting old men and RAPED on their “wedding nights”.

No need to say fuck off to this one. How is this STILL happening? OLD MEN WHO RAPE KIDS ARE DISGUSTING AND NEED TO DIE. THE END.

Women and girls are still being sold into sex slavery. Statistics estimate that as many as 1 MILLION women and girls are sold into sex slavery every single year. And stats tell us that each slave on average services at least 10 “buyers” per day. So we can estimate that there are at least 10 MILLION BUYERS of sex slaves every year.

Who do you think is buying? And WHY are they buying? It’s certainly not because these men love and care about women, or that these men are ‘misunderstood’. It’s because they see women and children as less than human, less than man, as “other”. YECK.

The men controlling and contributing to the slave trade just need to die. The End.

Every newspaper, every magazine, every piece of news media is dominated by and saturated with male opinions on male-created cultural elements like war, (male) sports, religion, law, industry, economics and politics.

All of you self-important old men with your tired old opinions on ridiculous things are boring. Stop justifying retarded decisions like ‘going to war’. War = dumb. If every country was run by a no-nonsense mother who hadn’t had all of her confidence sapped out of her by the Patriarchy, there would be no war. So, fuck off.

The overwhelming majority of pop culture (movies, books, tv shows) contain three dimensional male characters who are heroic and strong, who have adventures, think interesting thoughts and have interesting experiences. Most female characters are overly sexualised and one-dimensional, not to mention ‘weak’, and their focus/objective is usually a combination of their looks, love, babies, sex and marriage – and nothing more.

Your male-centric pop culture is lame. It’s really not that difficult to write a three dimensional female character. Fuck off.

The frightening sexualisation of young girls today.

Girls are smart and funny and caring and kind and wonderful and have so much more to give to the world than sex. For not appreciating that as much as you should, I ask you to fuck off.

The mainstreaming of violent, degrading porn (how did we let this happen?) and the subsequent pornification of absolutely everything.

Your demeaning violent porn is unspeakably horrible. Please cut your penis off. And then fuck off.

Male crime is ubiquitous and relentless (war, pedophilia, rape, gang rape, violence, murder, theft, destruction, etc etc etc), yet it is reported matter-of-factly, as if it’s not an EPIDEMIC. But every (infrequent) instance of female crime is sensationalised and the female in question always has her looks and character dissected / vilified. The media tries to tell us that women are crazy, women are hysterical, women are manipulative, women are ‘evil’, women are this, women are that.

Hmmmm, nope. No, they’re not. Women are still just pawns in this big bad world.

And at the end of the day, women are intrinsically morally superior to men. We don’t wreck the world and hurt people left right and centre –  men do. So, fuck off.

Women are dissected, criticised and vilified for every tiny little thing they say and do. Apparently we are supposed to look Perfect AND be Pleasant while eating Patriarchal Shit every minute of every day of our Oppressed lives.

See response above. Fuck off.

Rape victims have their looks, clothing, motives and everything else called into question. Even if the rape victim is a CHILD.

Please, men will rape ANYTHING, including animals. And not even a naked ‘evil’ woman deserves or asks to be raped. FUCK OFF.

Male buyers of children, porn and prostitutes are never named and shamed, never brought into the light or put under a microscope. They are NEVER dissected and analysed as women are. They are treated as this silent, invisible group whose privacy is mysteriously respected.

I say fuck off to the blanket of protection that covers the creepy buyers. Time to name and shame!

Women in developed countries still only earn 70% of what men do.

Women do all the work in every organisation. Fuck off.

Women still do the majority of the goddamn housework.

WE ARE NOT YOUR UNPAID SLAVES! FUCK OFF

In summation, I declare this male-created and male-dominated world to be utterly dreadful AND boring. I just want to live in a better world that is much fairer, much less scary, and more relevant to me and my interests.

Apparently that makes me a Radical Feminist. So be it.

p.s. Hey Patriarchy, you suck. Please fuck off.