Internalized misogyny runs deep. Even insightful women may find themselves suspicious of women-lead movements.

Van Badham writes for Guardian Australia. In addition to the coolest name in journalism, this week she has some sharp words about the current state of the Battle of the Sexes.

She trumpets the results of a new study from the University of Bath: “Married mothers who earn more than their husbands take on an even greater share of the housework, a study from the University of Bath in the UK has found – the more they earned over their partner, the more housework they did.

In an act of pure desperation, I gave in and finally just Googled ‘femininity.’ Turns out, the definition and example are both very interesting:

“Qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women – ‘She alternated between embracing her femininity and concealing it.'”

Who among us doesn’t relate to that, right? I can only assume this definition remains so straightforward because it doesn’t offend Wokeness – So long as you assume a woman is anyone who identifies as one, of course.

But Wokeness is only concerned with women as commodities. As the movement dedicated to our needs, Feminism should have the final word in defining who and what women are!

What is Woman?

After centuries of having this question answered for us, we have struggled to rise to the opportunity of defining ourselves. It’s become an individual project, each woman left to figure it out alone because the thing we all have in common is portrayed as our greatest weakness.

The primordial origins of what it is to be female have been weaponized against us so effectively that we are terrified of them. To even suggest that the potential to gestate offspring is fundamental to femaleness is controversial, and feminism has traditionally been about exploring all the other things women can do.

There’s been a lot of discussion in Radfem spaces about whether cooperating with conservatives is a good idea.

Plenty of writers and activists have stepped up to remind us why conservatives don’t make good allies. Just because Sky Daddy agrees the sky is blue and talks real sweet, doesn’t mean we need to go back to him. He’ll only hit us again sooner or later.

But with such a complete media blackout, with social platforms banning us for nonsense like ‘misgendering,’ it’s not hard to understand why some feminists choose to take advantage of the few opportunities on offer to get the word out.

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.

Control over men’s physical access to us is the very essence of women’s liberation.

Which is what they're taking from us right now. The spectacle of Trans Rights is a shiny distraction from the erosion of our rights, but it’s such a compelling one because it goes right to the heart of the matter.

It literally hits us where we live!

A US federal judge recently ruled against a religious school’s petition for exemption from co-ed everything. She agreed with the Housing Authority attorney that irreparable harm couldn’t be established. That the Biden memorandum “does not specifically address the kinds of issues the college has raised here – showers, or bathrooms.”

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.

Tribalism has really gotten out of hand, hasn’t it? Everything must be on one side or the other in the Culture War, no front line is too remote.

But tossing everything in two huge piles throws together things that have no business anywhere near each other.

The simple dichotomy of Conservative = Republican / Progressive = Democrat has shown itself inadequate for a while now. For one thing, a ‘conservative’ is someone who wants to conserve things as they are. But this makes the Biden administration’s Back-To-Normal schtick a little weird, doesn’t it?

The pandemic has demonstrated how little has actually changed for women. 

We spent the past year getting used to being at home. Many lost their jobs, or quit to take care of the kids. Many more soldiered on, playing Mom, Wife and Worker on a single, ramshackle set. Meanwhile, Joe Biden executive-ordered us out of legal existence.

Adding insult to injury, #NotAllMen refuses to go away.

The response #TooManyWomen was pretty satisfying, but it exposed some confusion in the feminist conversation.

How Many Men?

“No one is saying that it’s all men,“ wrote one commenter, “so we don’t need to say ‘not all men.’“

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.

“America’s sense of what it is to be intellectual, moral, or artistic; what it is to educate a child; what it is to foster justice; what it is to express oneself properly; what it is to be a nation – all is being refounded upon a religion.“

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? But Professor John McWhorter was writing this week about race theory in America, not gender.

He is talking about the same thing we are, without knowing it.

Last week, I pointed out that Kyle Kulinski over at Secular Talk had stumbled upon the same issue we in the feminist community have been wrestling with for years – That lots of so-called Liberals really aren’t very. 

“‘Womanhood’ is one of their words, I won’t use it. It refers only to identity: Most women don’t have [a womanhood].“

Twitter is only a cesspool if you follow toxic people. I come across gems like this pretty often, sometimes I even learn something.

Who Can Say What A Woman Is?

The Women’s Movement is finding itself. Trying on different terminology can get confusing, and the term ‘Womanhood’ gets thrown around a lot lately. “Before trans I had no problem with it, but the trans usage is part of the way they have convinced many women to accept ‘womanhood’ as this complex state.“

There has been some confusion lately regarding radical feminism and Christian conservatives.

It dawned on me recently why it’s all so hard to clear up on our end. But, once in a while, I meet a liberal Christian.

Liberal Christians are the ones who try to square believing what Jesus said – About the meek inheriting the earth and all that – with what their religion actually teaches.

They’re the ones who will slip into a loud whisper while reminding you that Jesus hung out with lepers, prostitutes and losers. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free were kinda his thing, really, and if someone tried to convince me the US was a Christian nation on those grounds, I might listen.

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. 

The intersection between feminism and wifery is getting crowded.

Traditional adversaries, this convergence has bent philosophy into a massive black hole right at the center of everything.

The Tradwife: Traditional, But Aware

The Tradwife is easy to find these days. She has a big presence on Catholic Twitter in English, Spanish and Portuguese. She is Classically Abby. She likes to write about her “Traditional” life. Tradwife blogs sprout like flashy toadstools along the rotting bark of conservative thought.

They frustrate the shit out of me.

The left has a misogyny problem.

No kidding, right?

Jessica Valenti takes aim at the hypocrisy of so-called liberal men in a recent piece on Medium. Using as her example the disgusting current case of a 19-year-old Democrat congressional candidate in Kansas, she points out that men on the left are using the same arguments to defend him that Republicans used to defend Brett Kavanaugh.

"Men might want to take a pause and examine why,” Jessica suggests, missing the obvious explanation – It works!

"They said he was just a kid at the time of the abuse, but didn't dwell on how his victims were children too.” Drawing much-needed attention to the girls, but missing the fact that people who are abusive as children very often go on to do some truly horrible things as adults.

Some readers may have heard about the recent nerfing of the RadFem community on Reddit. This was a gut punch for Yours Truly, as I had been an active member for six years. Of course, many a disgusting pornography subreddit was left standing, but women discussing women’s things is obviously something that needs stamped out.

My long-suffering web developer has set his sights on Quora as a good place to build a reputation among readers.

Feminism, to me, is a pretty broad topic. It’s hard to connect with people when you stubbornly refuse to “niche.” Readers and promoters alike enjoy straightforward content. But too many important topics just aren’t straightforward, with women’s issues touching them all and making theme bleed almost inevitable.

“A civilized divorce is a contradiction in terms.”  So says Danny DeVito’s lawyer character, narrating the 1989 film The War of the Roses. This dark comedy was released the same year my parents divorced. Mom has told me she can’t watch it, “It hits too close to home.” Such drama, Mom.

Personally, I think it’s hilarious. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner chew the scenery and DeVito twists the Greek Chorus he loves so much. A farcical gem and definitely one of the best comedies of the era.

The divorce rate peaked in 1981 and has been slowly declining since, for everyone except Boomers. So I venture to say that my experience is a pretty common one. I can think of two friends my age whose parents were still together by the time they turned 20. A couple had parents divorce in high school. Contrary to common wisdom, this seemed to hit hardest.

We have all developed our little quirks in dealing with daily life during lockdown. Your faithful writer has been vacillating between following the pandemic and its politics like a sexy murder trial, and avoiding anything remotely topical to cover the smell of my brain sizzling. Last night I was pulled from panicked reverie by the compulsion to respond to an article on Medium. 

We’re Watching An Economy Die is one of those rare treats that is both inescapably enjoyable and deeply disturbing. Umair Haque goes to great lengths to convince us that we are seeing the death throes of democracy in the United States. That the inevitable, eternal outcome of widespread poverty is a hard turn Right. We will blame minorities, elect fascists and become “the world’s first poor rich country.“

Around the world, the spread of the pandemic has illustrated the existing social patterns in real time.

Here in Tennessee, we are almost last in line. West Virginia was recently declared the 50th state to see an official case.

Watching it take over Reddit, Twitter, and finally YouTube, was like studying a bowling ball from the POV of a pin.

I got to learn which of my friends pay attention to the outside world. Which of my friends, whether on purpose or not, had been absorbing right-wing talking points.

My state was also one of the last places to roll out closure rules, closely following President Trump’s timing. The US’ lack of readiness appears poised to puncture our arrogance. We’re about a week away from getting to see just how bad it might get.

I would bet good money that every straight woman, at some time in her life, has asked herself, “Why do I put up with their crap?“

Do We Need Men?

Walking away is tempting sometimes, but something holds us back. Something more than comfort or children or poverty or all the social pressure in the world. None of these stop a determined woman.

On the intriguingly titled blog She Has The Power, I finally found analysis with some meat to it:

"This need for women to be with men begins to reveal itself as a means for surviving male violence. This becomes even more evident when you read that even men display "feminine" behaviors when they are dominated. What if women have adapted to male domination and violence by ‘sleeping with the enemy’?"

It’s time to talk about breasts.

Specifically, mastectomies – The surgical removal of breast tissue. According to the Mayo Clinic, this procedure is intended for those suffering from breast cancer, or those at high risk of same.

But, like so many other things, this procedure is being used in what can only be called an “off-label” way, to treat transgender people. Transmen (that’s self-loathing women, for those keeping score) are starting to tell their stories of undergoing this procedure without understanding its ramifications. They describe a streamlined pipeline, wherein chopping off titties is treated as just the next step to fulfilling your dreams.

Humans select animals with traits we like, and breed them together to create more animals with those traits. This is common practice everywhere, it’s how we get “breeds” of anything – dogs, cats, horses, bovine.

It’s also done with plants. Controlling the reproduction of flora and fauna is a big part of agriculture.

I’m simply saying that we do it to ourselves, too.

No One is Born Blank

And I’m not the first one to ponder this. Gordon Allport founded the study of personality 100 years ago. His work is the garden in which all others bloom, such as the Meyers-Briggs and Big Five systems.