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.

IV

Christmastime brought everyone together in the upstairs drawing room.

“Be sure to stick it through the centre,” Mother pinched a large, dull needle and a kernel of popcorn just above her knees, before the eyes of little Lulu. Piercing it firmly, she pulled the puffed kernel along the string to meet its brothers. “Your turn,” she handed the needle to Lulu before standing from the settee and crossing toward the window, the Christmas tree, and me.

Up the hill across the long lawn, dark patches in the snow showed melt of a warm day ending. Spotted among them I could see the arc of my own footprints, that morning’s escape plan executed through a particular space between the trees chosen for its darkness.

Things have been rough-going for a while. I have mentioned before how I often feel overwhelmed by personal responsibilities, let alone maintaining any kind of online presence.

I’m trying to keep the blog and YT channel alive until at least Summer, the little guy starts school this Fall so I will suddenly have whole chunks of time to fill. I will miss him, of course, it’s sad to see him leaving such a simple time of life. I do miss my babies, but I also miss my hobbies.

So, naturally, I have started another novel. It began sinking in today just how huge a research project it will be, based on real people and places. But it’s haunting me, following me around and whispering in my ear, and has been for some time, come to find out.

Recently, the Gender Critical community was rocked by the sudden removal of a prominent voice from a prominent platform.

“I do plan to keep making this content, because it’s more important now than ever to keep speaking out.” 

The Case Against The Case Against CAIS

Exulansic made her well-considered views known regarding whether individuals born with the anomaly of sexual development known as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome should be counted as women. There was some passionate disagreement, but she stood her ground and even won over a few people.

“I just don’t want men in women’s spaces, and I don’t care how those men identify.”

The clip is Kellie-Jay Keen (AKA Posie Parker) attempting to converse with someone called James Max, “It’s up to everybody however they want to live their life, but when it impinges on my life – ” 

“How does it impinge on your life?” Jim is cavalier in his home field advantage.

“If I want to go into a female-only space and there’s men in there who decide that they’re women, then it’s no longer a female-only space, is it?”

“Among the ‘strong-minded women’ who met to attend the convention was Amelia Bloomer – The lady who goes in for breeches and buncomb.”

Dress historian Abby Cox quotes a catty article from 1853, describing feminists as women who subscribe to pants and nonsense – You know, that crazy stuff about women being full people who deserve rights.

“I didn’t actually wanna bring it up, because of some personal biases towards it. It gets brought up a lot when people talk about feminism and clothing in the 19th century, so [it was] kinda me being like, ‘Ugh!’ 

“Magic is a female fantasy and a male nightmare.”

The Witch has endured for millennia as a symbolic challenge to male supremacy. She represents our innate understanding of the power structure we live in, her different forms expressing our shifting feelings about Woman regaining her place on even footing with Man.

Magic was traditionally Woman’s purview – Our friends the Ancient Greeks, founders of Western civilization, worshipped a Goddess of Magic called Hecate. Hecate’s three faces are reminiscent of the traditional phases of a woman’s life – Maiden, Mother and Crone.

We are taught that Ancient Greece is the foundation of modern civilization.

Politics, Philosophy, Law – even Democracy itself was supposedly invented there, and we are still living in the paradigm created by the likes of Aristotle. We still discuss the Great Thinkers, offering reverential deference to the first glimmer of our present culture.

Enter: The Veil

Thing is, this seminal societal flowering was misogynist as all hell! These precious pillars developed during the first methodical clamping-down on the agency of women.

Feminism is stuck in a rut. We seem to have settled for joining the world, rather than changing it.

In seeking equal treatment, we have slowly conceded our identity, piece by piece. We’ve taken on masculine affectation to fit in. Our attempts to avoid being framed as needy and demanding have played into our critics’ hands, and we’ve abandoned most of our ideas for change. 

We don’t have equal pay, political parity, or even workplace day care. Neither do we have our own spheres of unique experience and expertise. In not sticking up for ourselves moment-to-moment, we affirm the general message that we are not important.

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!

The Internet can be a dangerous place, but the rabbit hole I fell down this week goes much deeper than I anticipated.

It all started with Abby Cox. She’s one of my favorite YouTubers, and she put the brakes on her whole video concept this week to address a glaring issue she found in her research.

Girlhood As Internalized Misogyny

Abby is an historical costumer with several years in a living history museum under her belt. In comparing recent remakes of classic historical fiction to older productions, she noticed an uncomfortable trend: “I’m frustrated,” she tells us, “by the reliance on ‘Girly-Bad, Boy-Good’ clothing defaults that our feminist characters are shoved into!”

The article’s lumbering title reads like a summary of the past 50 years of feminism – American Motherhood Vs. The American Work Ethic – Working motherhood is getting harder, Let’s fix that!

Meet The New Boss…

Senior Data Reporter Rani Molla sets the scene, "’When you're in a tough position, when you're forced to make a choice that isn't ideal, oftentimes, you'll find a silver lining and you'll find a thing to look to that allows you to feel good about that choice.'”

And Vox is here to help you with that. “The root cause of this crisis long preceded the pandemic … and something's got to give.” Naming the pain gives the illusion of urgency without actually having to fix anything.

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.

Radical feminism has many detractors. Finding Meghan Murphy among them lately has been a surprise.

As her follow-up to defending Benjamin Boyce’s right to talk about ‘whores,’ Meghan has stepped up to tell us How To Feminist. And it’s not a great look.

Even worse, I understand and agree with a lot of what she said! But she paints with a broad brush without so much as a personal anecdote to anchor the conversation. Her bitterness is palpable and she comes across as pretty condescending,

Her title –Radical Feminism Has A Humanity Problem – sets an adversarial tone from the beginning.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Something wicked is brewing in conservative America.

The same culture wars that birthed incels have impacted the girls who won’t date them just as much.

Our refusal to draw mothering into the fold leaves a lot of girls feeling conflicted. Feminism fails them as long as it ignores the more nuanced questions of many women’s lives. 

Jen at Fundie Fridays knows a lot about it, “The misogyny on Caitlin’s channel is rampant and direct. She often uses the same talking points as incels when expressing her worldview.”

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I had no idea what separatism was.

Doing some long-overdue digging, I learned it’s at the root of the weed that’s choking modern politics.

Research Is Safe And Fun!

I quickly found myself lost in a dense, dry old bramble. Kathy Rudy’s tale of joining a ‘radical feminist’ group is littered with breadcrumbs along the trail into the political wilderness.

She describes the lesbian community she joined in North Carolina in 1980. They put separatism first, theorizing among themselves about an ‘essential female nature’ that inevitably reflected their own experience.

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.

“All this time, we have been quietly permitting society to convince us that, in discarding the torturously repressive corset, we have definitively thwarted the patriarchal hold over female liberty Once And For All…

“While in actuality, our material freedom has been gradually snatched from right under our noses in the form of expensive jeans with fake pockets requiring additionally expensive handbags!

“Do with that information what you will.”

It sounds too simple, but the erosion of women’s pockets through the 19th and 20th centuries follows our struggle for liberation. The more autonomy women have, the fewer and smaller the pockets.

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?