When unlearning racism, it's always been easy for me. I don't feel challenged by having to acknowledge my privilege. I'm not insecure in a way that I have to feel special and better than others for an immutable and involuntary part of my biology, my whiteness, so no aspect of my identity is tied to it.

 

This thought was born from a guy telling me, unprovoked, that he 'hates my takes'. I know he was talking about how I recognize that the concept of femininity is entirely misogynistic and male-defined.

I'm aware he enjoys and fantasizes about that sense of weakness, the helplessness men say women inherently have. He desires to be taken care of like a fragile child. He thinks being feminine, ergo being a woman, is being vulnerable and dependent, ignoring how that vulnerability and dependency have been fabricated by men. But those are traits opposite to what women have proven to be all throughout history — something men can't say for themselves.

And so, on typical male fashion, rather than listening to those who experienced it ever since we were born, he listens to HIS own opinions. Because to him, being a woman is such a good concept, how could anyone see bad things in it?

Which leads me to think men made a terrible mistake by painting women as the childish, defenseless ones, since it's all they aspire to be. It contradicts the story they tell themselves, of course. So most of them won't admit it.

They're so deep in it, they've already embraced the lie that softness and kindness equal weakness, while also only ever writing female characters as if women's strength can only come from manipulating men by weaponizing their attraction to women against themselves. Always painting themselves as the victims.

 

Basically, I know that guy feels threatened by me, as I'm against everything he loves about misogyny. And in himself, that incites the standard male reaction to the truth: denial and aggression. This is also why no woman should waste her time trying to 'teach' a man. If he wants to learn, he'll do it by himself. But men really only ever show interest in misogyny when it comes to how it can benefit them, or if it arouses them. Remember, conservative men see women as private property, and liberal men see women as public property.

No man should be able to hit women and see acceptance because it turns him on. Abusing women is the same, whether he does it for sexual pleasure or trying to force her into submission.

And seeing women as a set of male-defined traits is still misogyny. A woman is simply a female human, not a 'non-male' human who cosplays a man's disguise of a woman.

 

An excerpt from Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (introduction):

 

''But first we must ask: what is a woman? ‘Tota mulier in utero’, says one, ‘woman is a womb’. But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incarnate this essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and dazzling terms that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the seers.''

[...]

''If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question “what is a woman”?
To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar
situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.'' Etc etc, the entire introduction is a gem.

 

I don't think I need to get into how deeply dangerous it is to erase the definition of woman and the repercussions it has on women's health (as if it wasn't already ignored enough).

Basically, erasing women is not inclusive. It's eliminating the scarce spaces countless women gave their lives for so we could have them. And certainly no man can ever define what a woman is, or tell us about our own living experiences.

 

If men's opinions hold no value to me to begin with, being told by one that he 'hates' what I say is nothing short of a medal of honor. Simone de Beauvoir was never liked by your demography anyway. Why would you be against the very system YOUR kind set up entirely to benefit YOU, all to make MY kind suffer for YOUR COMFORT AND EGO?

 

This is yet another insance of how men think a woman sharing the reality of misogyny is an invitation to debate, while they wouldn't question a black person's (rather, a black man's) insight on racism, as racism affects men, while misogyny only benefits them.

Ah, I turned this into a venting post. I'm just so sick of them. I'm so fucking tired of this. I'm so fucking tired of seeing blatant misogyny in every fucking sentence, every behavior, every design, every advertisement, every LOOK. I'm so fucking tired of men invading us. All because they don't create life, because they don't have control of everything. LEAVE US ALONE.