a thing that really shook me was the study where women performed worse in a math test when they were wearing a swimsuit vs a sweater whereas for men there was no difference. objectification literally diminishes your brain capacity. i can't help but wonder what we could be in a truly liberated society because there's no way that how we are raised to be objectified and to even self objectify hasn't thoroughly poisoned our brains to always underperform even in normal clothes.
"Men's sexuality is visually oriented women's sexuality is relationally oriented" I really resent the idea women don't care about looks or the idea that women prioritizing warm relations and emotional safety over looks is "natural". Maybe hetero men should get systemically raped and sexually violated for 10,000 years and then we check back to see if they are still only primarily visually oriented or if they start caring about good relations and warm, safe feelings more too. Men just being able to focus on what aesthetically pleases them sexually is not "natural", it's a privilege afforded by social domination and having less to worry about safety wise.
Honestly similar experience here… I stopped shaving my legs maybe 2 months ago and it was weird and a bit unpleasant at first because the hair was kinda prickly when it was growing in, but it’s pretty much fully grown in now and it feels so soft!! I did used to like the feeling of freshly shaved legs against my bedsheets but I’ve kinda found a new obsession with being able to stroke my hands over my legs and feel the hair under my fingers, it makes me smile so big 😄 stopping shaving wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be!
okay, a preface here that i know the point of not shaving is NOT because it's sexy. i hate those articles about how "not shaving is sooo sexy actually 🥺🥺🥺". i hate when people try to make a NATURAL BODY FEATURE that women choose not to get rid of sexual, even though it's just...natural. normal. it's not sexual, it's our normal bodies.
with that said...yall! i officially stopped shaving, and while my leg hair is growing back reallllly slowly, my armpit hair is like full bush right now. and it...is so cool. like im not being one of those people making armpit hair a sexual thing, but genuinely, i feel...the word "pretty" isn't correct, but i feel right. like i feel natural, and im not thinking about it, but then i catch my armpit in the mirror and i can't help but smile! i dont know, something about it feels so cool and right. it's like, "hell yeah, im a mammal and this is how i look, and i look awesome!" like, something about my body looking the way it naturally looks has me feeling more confident + pretty + hot, honestly.
point here is NOT that being natural is 😩like tooootally hot 🥺. the point is: having a natural body actually does make you feel better! not altering or changing your natural body feels really good! it's like something in my brain clicked and remembered that this is how i'm meant to look, and when i let myself look natural i look really really good.
the point is, you won't feel disgusting if you stop shaving. i kinda thought my choice to stop shaving would make me feel gross or uglier. but it's done the opposite! if you choose to stop shaving, you won't feel gross or weird or ugly. you'll feel like a natural normal woman, and-just like me-you might even feel prettier and more confident with your body hair!
I think this discussion came about from a man advocating for a return to handwashing clothes for climate conservation purposes. This is where I get problematic because messages about how small I need to live my life and how much energy I should save the planet by exerting my own and doing things manually will forever fall flat for me.
Respectfully, I will be utilizing every convenience and purchasing every energy-saving machine, gadget and gizmo. I think I would need to live 3 lifetimes to approach the energy consumption of even a moderately rich North American. Therefore, I will be CONSUMING. I WANT TO EAT THE WORLD. And I love how I need to give up hot showers and handwash clothes but nobody can be arsed to stop wars where energy is being used to make trillions of weapons to be dropped on infants. And yes people with say "B-but you have a personal responsibility"- sorry idgaf. I will pick up litter and recycle and not buy stupid plastic shit on Amazon, use one water bottle at a time and buy well made designer clothes that last decades instead of fast fashion- that's me doing my part.
New tin foil hat theory: the rise and propagation of minimalist home decor is meant to manage expectations for a desired culture of renters.
My ultimate pet peeve is women sexualising themselves being defended as “she’s embracing her sexuality”. It could not be more removed from her sexuality. Her sexuality is what she finds attractive. Making yourself more attractive to men is embracing MEN’S sexuality.
hey honest question, did anybody have GOOD stuff happen to them in 2024? cause it was really bad for me and for most people i know, so it would be nice to hear about anything that's been going WELL for any of you. even if it's small stuff. just to know there's light out there.
This post is not mine, but one radfem woman from our community. She works as a sexologist and shared her experience in her work. If you too are a sexologist, or even better, have some statistics on this topic, please share your experiences or links. ---------------------------------------------------------- "When I first started working, I discovered that many men had never experienced the need to refuse intimacy with a regular partner. That is, a man in counseling complains that his partner often refuses him, he attributes her refusals to personal dislike and faded feelings, and when he tries to turn the situation around and remember when he himself had to refuse her, he does not understand what we are talking about. Because he has never had to - he responds to the initiative of his partner every time and considers it a sign of love and attraction on his part.
I heard this very often, I couldn't catch the lie and at the same time I couldn't interpret it. They are not robots, after all, to be available 24/7 at all hours of the day and night?
One day a client in a session literally opened my eyes with one phrase.
She said: “I CAN SEE WHEN HE'S NOT UP TO IT.”
That's the secret. The notorious emotional service. Subsequently, and many other women have confirmed this in a targeted survey: when the desire for intimacy arises, a woman assesses her partner's condition BEFORE taking the initiative. If she sees that her partner is tired, sick, in a bad mood, or preoccupied with something, she does not consider it appropriate to offer sex. I have also heard from many women that in a situation when she can not clearly assess the state of the partner, she prefers to flirt, as if casually get naked, as if accidentally do something that usually arouses the partner. If there is no reaction to this, the woman usually refuses to take the initiative and solves her problems on her own, without forcing the partner to conflict and feel guilty.
Men don't want their partners all the time - it's just that no one gets in their underwear when it's inappropriate. No one forces them to think about sex when they don't want to think about it.
Men themselves don't usually check against anything but their own erections.
They don't care when to offer sex to a woman(the following is a real and far from complete list):
Who is asleep (well, seriously, I don't know any woman who would ever think of waking up a sleeping partner to satisfy her sexually);
who's back from her 24-hour shift;
who just finished cooking a holiday dinner for ten people;
who has a high fever;
who's been vomiting all day;
who is eight months pregnant with a complicated pregnancy;
who has undergone a termination of pregnancy that day;
who is in the terminal stages of cancer;
who's just had a pet die;
returning from the funeral of a beloved grandmother;
waiting for a call from the NICU where their (mutual!) child is (“Let's get a little loose while we wait”) - and so on and so forth.
It may seem like it's a matter of cognitive distortion, that they just don't get it….. But they do. I asked one of them once: does he really think that a person in such a state can want sex? Yes, it is clear that they don't want to, he replied, but I'm just in case - maybe it will work out. I asked him how he would react if it didn't work out, and he admitted that he would be hurt and angry. And that's another “secret” - why it does burn out. Because refusal will inevitably lead to conflict, and a woman often does not have the strength not only for sex, but also for an argument. When he offered sex, she basically can not get out of the situation without damage - either to be raped, or to deal with his tantrums and offenses. And unfortunately, sometimes the first one turns out to be the lesser harm."
sometimes i wish i could tell other women that you can just stop removing your body hair and in many cases the consequences will be way less severe than u expect. you can go to the beach with all your leg hair intact and nobody will stop you or say a thing. you can stop waxing your upper lip and people won’t stare at it the way u might be bracing yourself for. you can quit plucking your brows and eventually they will grow back into themselves and no one will even notice. like for sure women are punished for not participating in beauty rituals but i also feel like so much of it is like The Panopticon sometimes where you just convince yourself that if u stop that kind of gendered upkeep everyone will be mad and stop talking to u forever when in reality you just keep existing and nothing remarkable happens. it’s not always easy but you can kind of just stop for real
Every time I shave my legs I imagine how many radfems are having panic attacks over it.
the answer is 0 because you are not on the truman show