You Know What’s Funny About That “‘masculinity Is Universally Praised’ Erm Have You Ever Spoken

#peaktrans

We always have the whole "Listen to sex workers" "Listen to POC" etc which of course is brilliant, listen to the victims of an industry/culture, but sometimes all it takes is to listen to the benefactors of an industry and people still don't wanna do that

“I’d like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that." Bill Margold, Porn actor and producer, in reference to the porn industry, 2007.

They aren't quiet about any of it. They never have been. It's amazing how some people still manage to pretend they don't see and hear it.

Trans women showing once again they know nothing about women or what being a woman is like

will never get over what happened to the women’s march. the largest single-day protest in the history of the WORLD. 82 countries and 7 million people. an incredible display of female solidarity, hope, strength, and resistance. reduced to “white women in pussy hats.” not by conservatives but by leftists!! who gleefully dismissed this enormous protest because “white women voted for trump.” never mind that the women who attended the march very obviously did not vote for trump. they were all vilified anyway, even though a huge percentage of the protestors and organizers weren’t even white. the whole protest somehow came to be seen as a cringey, frivolous display of white woman privilege. again, the women’s march was GLOBAL and unprecedented in WORLD history. yet it’s pretty much never talked about anymore, except to joke about pussy hats.

Hey, as a black female I’m pretty sure you’re just using people like me as a prop but if you want a real answer, feel free to respond with a ‘sure’!

me: hey so uhhhh if being a woman must be experienced one certain way then how do you factor in women of colour or women from other countries into that?

radfem i have the displeasure of speaking to: shut up i'm not even going to reply to that go read a feminist book

Social Construct Masterpost

I was inspired to make this post because of the mass confusion on tumblr about what social constructs are and how they function. I will start with a simple example:

This is a one dollar bill. It is an excellent example of a social construct. This piece of paper represents a specific amount of spending power in the society that it exists in (the USA). An individual person could decide personally that it represents 1000$ worth of spending power, but it would not matter because like all social constructs, the collective agreement between individuals in society is what determines the meaning of the construct. There are laws on the books about currency but it doesn’t stop society from changing the meaning of a dollar; after all, in times of scarcity a dollar is a much more valuable asset than in times of plenty. The exact value of a dollar is something that fluctuates in tune with other factors, including things like consumer confidence- meaning, how consumers feel about the economy. Social constructs can change based on changes of opinion in the population. 

One way to test if something is a social construct is to remove it from its native society and see if it retains the same functionality. The US dollar is accepted in some foreign countries, but in other places, it is just a piece of paper. 

Another way to test if something is a social construct is to remove people from the picture entirely and see if it retains its functionality. Without people to give a dollar meaning it simply becomes paper. 

Contrast the attributes of a dollar with say, biological sex.

Male humans produce sperm and much higher levels of testosterone than females. Females produce ova and offspring if their eggs are fertilized and implanted. Individuals who are sterile still have either male or female anatomy which serves sexual functions for the individual. Virtually everyone on earth qualifies as one sex or the other, with or without malfunctioning or variations. Is this binary a social construct?

Does the collective agreement of society give male and female organs their functionality? Absolutely not. Humans did not always have an understanding of how pregnancy happened, and yet it happened anyway. Individuals who don’t know about or understand reproduction can and do get pregnant via sex. No matter how many people got together and decided that females inseminate males there would be no change in the function of testes or ovaries. 

The functionality of human reproductive organs is also impervious to cultural or geographical differences. All over the world people get pregnant and have babies by mixing sperm from males with ova from females. There is no exception. 

Removing humans from the equation also has no effect on the biological reality of mammalian reproduction. Male mammals are male, female mammals are female, and only one of the two can give birth. 

Biological sex is not and never has been a social construct.

Another example is gender. Femininity is the easiest example to discuss. Lets look at different examples of femininity from around the world:

As you can see, what it means to be feminine or girly is very different depending upon the society. None of these is the “correct” femininity, just different versions from different cultures. There is no objective way to determine what makes someone feminine in any given culture- you have to ask people. 

The nature of femininity is totally subjective and relies on the collective agreement of society. If you move one of these women into a different society their defining feminine characteristics instead become physical characteristics with no gender designation at all. In fact, what would make you gender conforming in one culture would make you gender non conforming in another. Gender also changes in individual societies over time, so the meaning of being feminine in America in the 1800s would differ markedly from what it means to be feminine in America right now. How people feel about the construct changes its meaning.Thus we can easily say that gender is a social construct. 

male civility is a facade.

If you sincerely want me to fuck off, say it again in the next reply or don’t reply at all. It seems like you replied because you wanted to have a conversation but if you don’t I won’t make you have one.

That being said I’m not pro-religion and I’d like any kind of citation of ‘faux feminism’ being equally responsible for abuse as an industry where the vast majority of people express that they do not want to be involved in it but lack the means to escape. I’d like to know how faux feminism compares to Pornhub’s founder admitting to profiting from videos made without the consent of its users.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/pornhub-parent-company-admits-receiving-proceeds-sex-trafficking-and-agrees-three-year

Your argument isn’t even pro-sex-industry though, it’s just saying, ‘other groups are also bad so don’t look at this one’. Should I not critique Amazon because it pays its workers and Nestle and Apple use actual literal child and slave labor or are all four groups worth fucking despising for how they take advantage of vulnerable people?

the fact that criticizing the sex industry is seen as more oppressive than the sex industry itself should really make people think

I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.

I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.

i learned that researchers historically have avoided using female animals in medical studies specifically so they don’t have to account for influences from hormonal cycles. This may explain why women often don’t respond to available medications or treatments in the same way as men do (x)