radmebabe

[radmebabe]

this is so compelling and heartbreaking and important and i wanted to share it. this is the reality of getting an abortion even with roe v wade in place and it's about to get worse.

[radmebabe]

website

[radmebabe]

I remember that once, in a comedy skit a man used to do, he was joking about how a woman would apply so much makeup that it would imprint her face on someone's shirt and if the pulled a little by her chin on the end of the day, a literal thick layer would come off her face.

video context: the woman in the video is applying mascara and the text on the screen has a quote that says "I could never spend that much time on my mascara." The audio overlaying the video is a sound bite that says "what a lame gimmick," which is inferred to be a response to the quote on the screen. this is essentially just another video defending wearing makeup and the time women waste on it, and that it's somehow "lame" to make any dissenting statement about not wanting to waste half an hour of your day carefully applying mascara.

this video has tons of likes and most of the comments under this video are like the ones above. it might seem like a harmless, playful video on the surface, but it just goes to show you how feminine beauty rituals like applying makeup every day are a complete time waste and energy suck on women's daily lives. men are not required to spend half an hour doing their mascara to make it "perfect." men aren't encouraged to set aside an hour or more of their morning just dedicated to putting a mask on their face that they're just going to take off at the end of the day anyway, rinse and repeat. like why have we normalized that it is a worthwhile use of our time to spend hours applying makeup each week? how is this mindset good for girls and women? why is it seen as "lame" to even mildly criticize these practices? this is how the patriarchy steals away women's time and energy, by enforcing these beauty standards and rituals onto us so that we don't have the time or energy to do or think about anything else.

[radmebabe]

Answer by Ernest W. Adams to ‘What contributions has feminism made to the western world?’

[radmebabe]

oh so they’re just saying the quiet part out loud? Good to know they’re just out and open now

[radmebabe]

@W_Asherah

[radmebabe]

Men on Twitter seem really, really devoted to pushing the idea that no rich or white woman has literally ever been forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. 😐

[radmebabe]

I wonder if the reason why women, even those who call themselves feminists, don't let go of sexist things in their lives like makeup, shaving, uncomfortable clothing and shoes, misogynistic media, even religion, is because most of them think they live a useless little life that has no influence on other people.

Does anyone remember Tumblr feminism from ten years ago that was about being a good role model for other women? The second it was replaced with pro-porn, pro-kink, pro-beauty industry, pro-plastic surgery, pro-religion "feminism" it was over, it became "who cares, as long as I like it". "Influencer", instead of being about speaking up about personal values and societal change, became synonymous with promoting weight loss products to insecure people.

In my experience, when I showed up at school or work without makeup, without a bra, with hairy armpits and legs, without even saying anything about it, several women would follow. When a popular, very dolled up student in my school admitted that she envied me, I told her that I would have her back. So she stopped wearing heels, even makeup, and started wearing sneakers and jeans. My niece is growing up knowing that women wear all sorts of colors and clothes, have body hair, can have short hair, don't have to worry about their appearance, and hopefully, when the outside world inevitably teaches her that "beauty is pain" or even that beauty matters, she will laugh in their face.

(Speaking of laughing in someone's face, a muslim (male) college classmate said after the Charlie Hebdo massacre that "people can spit on [his] mother, but they cannot make fun of the prophet", causing quiet tension and anger in a classroom with a female-majority, until a woman yelled back "your mom is the one who gave birth to you, dumbass!!" All the women laughed and he never dared saying misogynistic nonsense like this to us again.)

Every time one woman rejects sexist standards, she gives other women the courage to do the same, she makes girls understand that those standards are not natural, they can be free. That's why, once I rejected all of this, I never went back. (I didn't even do it because of feminism, I just valued practicality and comfort more than obedience and conformity.)

Governments and billionaires are shaking in their boots because women have less and less children. The makeup and lingerie industries have to change because way less women have been wearing makeup and bras during lockdowns. When we are honest and firm about what we want and reject what we don't like, that influences women around us and that influences society, that's how change is made!

[radmebabe]

IMPORTANT: So they had these cards in the women’s restrooms at this doctor’s office that I was at. I’m really happy that they put them in there because it makes it easier for a woman to escape an abusive relationship without the abuser expecting anything. It gives me hope when I see things like this.

[radmebabe]

Dylan Mulvaney

[radmebabe]

"Sex work is work".

Okay, then why not teach it at school?

Why not fight for making it a 50:50 business where men are just as represented and available?

Why not introduce an anti-discrimination policy so customers can‘t reject a worker due to their sex? (that would be fun)

Why not cut down unemployed men‘s unemployment benefits when they reject a job offer from a pimp? (it already happened to women in my country)

Just wondering.

[radmebabe]

The gender homophobes have really moved on to holocaust denial and disinformation. Gay men specifically targeted, kidnapped from their homes, tortured, starved, murdered. Because nazi policy targeted gay men specifically.

No no no, they say. Most of those gay men were really straight women who were born wrong. Those books being burned weren’t by Jewish authors, weren’t research on how homosexuality was a normal biological phenomenon, weren’t books by political dissidents. No, this was all motivated by a hatred for a group of people on absolutely no one’s radar.

These were real human beings. Real life gay men, tens of thousands more just like them, sent to brutal nazi prisons and death camps. Their names and faces lost to time and genocide, having their history, memory, and very lives erased and plastered over with a false modern deeply homophobic narrative.

Real human beings, whose lives were destroyed by an explicitly homophobic fascistic government

“An unnatural sex act committed between persons of the male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil liberties may also be imposed” -paragraph 175 of the German penal code

[radmebabe]

“No business can afford to create a product for which there are no buyers. The first step in understanding the sex industry is to understand the customers, the johns.

Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything.”

-Joe Parker writing in Not For Sale, eds. Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant, 2004 Spinifex Press.

[radmebabe]

[radmebabe]

[radmebabe]

Second vid

[radmebabe]

surgical abortion really shouldn't be called surgical abortion, i think it does so much harm. i hear and read so many stories, where the majority of women choose the abortion pill over 'surgical abortion' (sometimes because it's their only option but also) because 'surgery is more risky and invasive, it'll just be easier taking a pill', but then go through days, sometimes WEEKS of bleeding and painfully passing large clots, and sometimes they are still unable to pass all of the tissue, and so have to get the procedure done anyway.

PROCEDURAL abortion (or aspiration as some call it, but that term can be difficult to parse what it is for some, and accessibility is key) does not involve any cutting of tissue, it is not surgical. it is quicker (taking only a few minutes) and more effective at tissue removal than medical abortion. many women who choose procedural abortion report being pleasantly surprised by how one and done it is, and receive the comfort and support of a nurse during the procedure, which if you are secretly getting the abortion and so not informing family, friends, or partners, it can make the whole ordeal much more emotionally bearable.

of course, it's all about what's best for an individual woman, and some may prefer the abortion pill if they want thee privacy of staying in their home, with their support system, and quietly dealing with it as quickly as possible, but i do really think that the misnomer and stigma around procedural abortion causes a lot of women to go through unnecessary physical and emotional pain when if given all the information, a simple term change (and a shift from its association with exclusively later term abortions), and hospitals/clinics being more patient focused, they would have potentially chosen procedural abortion.