“Being a girl and hitting puberty is so traumatic.”

An anonymous Tumblr post expressed a common shame in simple words. It rippled through Gender Critical social media in the form of screenshots after the original post was quickly deleted.

Her spurt of stifled frustration struck a chord, breathlessly relating a firsthand account of female suppression: “You go from being a genderless little free thing to being hit with shaving and makeup and growing breasts and skincare and menstruation and suddenly being sexualized, 

“When like a few years ago you could take your shirt off to play in the stream and trade cards with the boys and come home covered in mud and not even think about it.”

However you feel about Dave Chappelle, he’s too big for the mainstream to ignore. His special The Closer has broken the cultural dam, unleashing the torrents of questions TRAs have worked so hard to keep us from asking.

The Flow Of Information

The staff walkout at Netflix made the news. NBC probably spun it the hardest, summarizing the day of protests as, “The media giant [was] forced to listen to its workers.” Because a longtime pillar of the establishment, now owned by Comcast, is just happy to see workers getting their own back, right? 

*Women’s History has grown into a series! The first installment, featuring the oldest symbol of our oppression, will be up before next weekend. Meanwhile, we have a cautionary tale of validation mania…

Writer and Queer Theorist Kate Raphael struggled during lockdown.

“I felt flattened by so many weights: COVID-19, Zoom calls, the grind of winter running, depression. I was desperate for a change.” Her ennui is matched only by the drama as she sets the scene –

“I stepped into the bathtub in a sports bra and shorts and held the first ponytail perpendicular to my head. Wielding a pair of scissors, Cole sawed through my thick mane, tugging at my scalp as he hacked through the hair, and the first ponytail fell to the bathtub floor.” 

*This week’s post about Women’s History is taking longer than expected to research. I don’t want to give you something half-baked, this came across my desk and I just had to…

Laurie Penny’s squandering of talent and privilege comes from the same pain we all feel.

Another 80s baby, Laurie used her degree in English to build a personal brand from the remains of 90s Girl Power. She’s somehow been composing feminist screeds for major publications since her mid-20s, possessing an enviable list of credits and media awards.

“I do like the decision to make Janice Raymond sound like an evil witch…”

I’ve spent some time tracing the line Wokists have drawn between feminists and the Right Wing, but this node in the TERF dot-to-dot has a few things that make it special.

Credit is due to YouTuber King Critical, whose encyclopedic knowledge of literature brought this misdirection to light. While reacting to Jessie Gender, he spotted a misquote that changes the whole meaning of the referenced passage. Jessie tweaks a sentence in a foundational text, and uses it to smear radical feminism.

Denial is a helluva drug. It can turn abuse into love, rage into wisdom, and women into men.

Since I spent my writing time this week making videos, I was probably a little too happy to find Female Socialization is a Transphobic Myth by Devon Price. Devon thinks she’s a man, and she loves sharing how her masculine essence insulated her from growing up female.

I’m going to introduce Devon by way of a random anecdote she probably should have cut: "I remember deciding one day in middle school that I was going to emulate my favorite fictional character, Hannibal Lecter.

A powerful tool in our fight to preserve women’s rights may be staring us right in the face.

It’s easy to take the obvious for granted, and confronting this social norm is a flashpoint for many of us. 

But why is makeup mandatory? It’s obviously a holdover from older, stricter ideas of what women should be. What a corset does for the waist, contouring does for the face. And we all know it’s at least as bad for us.

I’m not going to lecture anyone about harmful chemicals or animal testing. There are plenty of other people more qualified to take on these very important issues. 

“If you are concerned with other people’s genitals, that is a *you* problem.”

So concludes a response to women’s discomfort with men in our spaces. This was the first justification I saw trotted out in the aftermath of the Wi Spa viral video. Since then, the narrative has hopped from victim-blaming to saying the incident was staged, and finally to insisting OP made the whole thing up!

The latest coverage in the Los Angeles Blade wants to be conclusive: “Anonymous sources within the LAPD tell the Blade they have been unable to find any corroborating evidence that there was a transgender person present on that day.”

As much as I hate to admit it, I grew up in Ohio.

For a long time people called it America’s Weathervane. A hub of midwestern culture, Ohio picked the President every election from 1960 until this last one.

Despite my six years in Tennessee, I watched with great interest as  State Representative Jena Powell spoke before the Ohio Legislature in defense of women’s rights. She’s a Republican, of course. Representative Powell may not be the best feminist spokesperson, but the aggressive, frightening reaction she triggered made my blood run cold.

If Marion Millar’s case were getting any real press coverage, feminists of every shade would be spazzing out over it.

One young Englishwoman stumbled upon it, and her conscience demanded she say something… Even if her understanding of politics obscured exactly what.

The Authentic Observer is my new favorite YouTube channel. YouTube has pretty much become my TV, I’ve somehow even managed to recreate my middle school viewing habits of bouncing between The History Channel, VH1 and A&E.

The Authentic Observer focuses on literature and culture. Galatea – TAO‘s young writer, director, editor, costume designer and star – gave herself burnout at the end of last year birthing a Halloween video that is truly a work of art. Her posts have been pared down and less frequent since then.

I am done mincing words.

Comorbidity sounds really heavy, but it’s just a psychology term referring to someone dealing with more than one mental issue at the same time.

Psychologists have noticed some enduring patterns. It’s very common for someone to deal with, say, depression and anxiety together. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 7% of the US will suffer through a major depressive episode at some point.

There’s reason to believe it’s much higher than this. Besides life being hella depressing sometimes, the stigma surrounding mental and emotional struggles keeps many people from talking to anyone about them.

The current model of Choice Feminism is riddled with problems.

In radfem and GC spaces, we take them as a gimme. We understand that many of the alternatives we throw around are older than any of us, that radical feminism is not a reaction to Choice Feminism.

In our sheltered enclave, it’s easy to forget how confusing it is out there.

French YouTuber Alice Cappelle takes on some meaty subjects with a laywoman’s perspective. She lays out details and liberally quotes others, while admitting she doesn’t always know where she stands on things.

The irony of feminism supporting transwomen smacked me in the face today.

Hatshepsut, the ancient Egyptian queen, has joined the long list of dead women transitioning recently. You’d think 3,000 years would be too old to matter, but no corner must remain Unclean.

Amnesty UK even stepped in a few months ago to make it official!

Joan of Arc has also been popular lately. Because why else would a young woman traveling with men through enemy territory wear pants, right?

Katherine Hepburn wore pants, too, so she’s on the list. Despite never claiming to be a man in all the hours of footage and interviews and books.

I knew something was up when I woke up to 19 notifications.

They had me right – A smallish account with only so much energy to defend myself. But they just really hated my Cyberpunk article!

After the original poster proclaimed it was “NOT ok to insult anyone because of their opinion,” a group of them wasted no time dogpiling me to tell me why my opinion meant I needed to die.

Hardly bothering with ‘transphobe,’ they labeled me ‘vile,’ ‘disgusting,’ toxic,’ (of course!) and even abusive. My writing was referred to as “a pile of dog shit.” I was told to take ‘feminist’ out of my bio. And called a bigot and a fascist, for good measure.

The other day, I was reading that same discussion again.

“I can’t wait till the tide finally turns and all these loudmouths on the Trans Train will get their just desserts!”

“Yeah, I think about that, too. But I’m afraid the world will just pretend it never happened.”

This goes against the gut feeling of Justice, but the pessimists have a point. How many times have we had something completely off-the-charts insane splashed across our screens, only to have the News Cycle churn onward and nothing really happen?

Ever wonder why so many of the people arguing with you seem brainwashed? Wonder no more!

Gabriel Rockhill lays it all out, but his article isn’t getting the attention it deserves. That’s probably because it’s a slog to read, but it’s as important as it is wordy.

He tells us about a declassified CIA report that describes exactly how the Agency helped to mastermind the current mess:

“In recognizing it was unlikely that it could abolish [the left] entirely, the world's most powerful spy organization has sought to move leftist culture away from resolute anti-capitalist and transformative politics toward center-left reformist positions that are less overtly critical of US foreign and domestic policies.”

Watching Reddit go down in flames this week was way too satisfying.

Supposedly, they got to know ‘Aimee’ through a volunteer relationship. But no one ever bothered to Google the name!

Many people, myself included, had at least a passing familiarity with the Challenor crew before these latest events. David the Elder had gotten himself expelled from two political parties in the UK for generally being a nasty, pedophilic fuck, but especially for doing it in public a little too often.

‘Aimee’ the younger is a well-known validation junkie. So it was no surprise that, upon being given full Moderator powers, this person set about hacking away at anything that hindered this quest.

When your identity is built on a lie, reinforcing it is a constant preoccupation. This obsession bleeds into everything you do.

One Stunning&Brave soul calling himself Bella Blondeau shares his view through a trans lens darkly. The game Cyberpunk 2077 strikes him as pretty transphobic, and he would know!

But while trying to illustrate transphobia in gaming, Bella actually demonstrates his lack of understanding of gender theory or the real world he’s so desperate to avoid. He complains that the game is an “insidious attack on trans personhood” because characters are chosen based on the player’s voice.

Just a quick note of warning to readers and the wider feminist community.

This afternoon in Montreal, a man who calls himself Billboard Dad was out doing his thing. Interestingly, that thing is protesting the Canadian government’s stance on gender politics.

“I was having peaceful conversations on Saint-Catherine Street, joined by a local man. A bunch of these thugs suddenly swarmed me, I'm told there were about 7.“

He got footage of several people surrounding him, one of them shouting, “Transphobes, fuck off!“ while hitting Billboard Dad with a traffic cone!

It’s not every day I find something I think everyone needs to hear.

Today was one of those days. These are the moments that still fill me with hope.

Two Truth Bombs And A New Subscription

Michael Browne has been feministing about as long as I have, with even less exposure. 

I assumed YouTube’s algorithm made the introduction but, retracing my steps, I found his video on Ovarit. He appears to have uploaded it himself.

Michael has been taking on the big boys for a while, releasing long, detailed responses to the likes of Riley J Dennis and Contrapoints. More recently, he commented on Philosphy Tube’s transformation and even Lindsay Ellis. 

What makes a cult?

Dr. Steven Hassan thinks he knows. “After my deprogramming from the Moon cult in 1976, I became interested in mind control… but needed a master’s degree to receive ethical training in hypnosis… I have been attending workshops (and giving them) ever since.“

Feminists on Twitter have latched onto Dr. Hassan’s words from last June, “Young people are not getting good ethical counseling regarding their trauma, their body image issues, their gayness… They are being rushed to taking hormones and in some cases surgery.“

If someone’s identity is built on lies, refusing to play along might be a kindness.

Tough love is out of vogue, but it has its uses. As we argue in circles while Identity Politics and Gender Ideology rewrite our cultural rules, it’s worth considering this as a possible strategy.

An Uncommon Manifestation Of A Common Problem

Why are young girls rejecting their developing bodies in droves? Why do men want to escape manhood?

I really think it could be an unrecognized presentation of C-PTSD.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a newish idea. Psychology has been shaken recently by lots of famous experiments failing. Decades of results have suddenly been called into question.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are going stir-crazy, held captive by Republicans who plainly state they have no intention of working with them on anything, ever. 

Apparently, their self-awarded consolation prize for failing to do much for the American people all through one of the worst years on record, was to make their paperwork More Inclusive.

The changes themselves aren’t all that crazy actually, quite a few ‘men’ are being removed – ‘Chairman’ becomes ‘Chair,’ ‘Seamen’ becomes ‘Seafarers.’ ‘Submit his or her resignation’ becomes ‘resign.’ Pretty straightforward stuff, it seems.

Hey everyone, 

A harried BrazenShe checking in real quick, because I think I’ve solved a little mystery. 

There’s this idea floating around that radical feminists are conservative. More than that, I have seen us called white supremacists with all the authority a Tumblrite can muster. 

At first blush, this confused me immensely. I’m from Cleveland Heights. Racism does not compute for me. 

Ok, some of us have made appearances next to conservatives recently. Scratch the surface and you’ll find a frustrated liberal abandoned by her friends.