/r/Feminism
Welcome to the feminism community! This is a space for discussing and promoting awareness of issues related to equality for women.
Feminism is the pursuit of equality in regards to women's rights. It has manifested across centuries and continents through various movements, currents and ideologies.
Welcome to the feminism community! This is a space for discussing and promoting awareness of issues related to equality for women.
a selection of feminist works
on the history of feminism
feminist blogs and websites
tagged browsing: posted studies, classic works
Our FAQ also has sections on issues related to LGBT rights and men's rights.
/r/twoXchromosomes | /r/AskFeminists |
/r/CriticalTheory | /r/domesticviolence |
/r/MeToo | /r/relationship_advice |
/r/rapecounseling | /r/ainbow |
/r/BodyAcceptance | /r/titleix |
For a larger selection of civic issues subreddits, click here
- all posts and discussions must be relevant to women's issues
- all posts must come from an educated perspective
- promoting regressive agendas is not permitted
- be respectful and courteous
- respect the "assume good faith" principle
Rules regarding debating:
Criticism of feminist concepts/organizations/persons is welcomed if it meets the following criteria:
- it is topical/directly relevant to the topic at hand;
- it is verifiably sourced (i.e. it doesn’t rely on mere dismissiveness/speculation, non-feminist preferences or anecdotal evidence. In particular, pure anti-feminist propaganda is not allowed, since personal non-/anti-feminist preferences are deemed as not informative or relevant); furthermore, presentation of relevant data must not be biased against the feminist position (i.e. there should be a best effort to include the evidence/arguments supportive of the feminist position);
- it is properly qualified: i.e. it correctly identifies the problem at the appropriate level, instead of unwarrantably generalizing it, especially if it does so for the whole collection of movements that constitute feminism;
- all ideological considerations must contribute to understanding the feminist perspective, and be consistent with an attitude of encouragement towards further learning.
/r/Feminism
Misogynists say, "Deepfake porn is just a joke, and to call it sexual violence is utterly ridiculous. For feminists, anything they find uncomfortable is automatically SA. It’s absurd to suggest that just because someone feels uncomfortable, it should be subject to legal regulation."
In a misguided attempt to mirror this perspective, they make statements like, "Well, if I get rejected for sex, that’s SA because it hurts me!" or "If an ugly woman’s face comes into my view, that’s SA because it makes me uncomfortable!" They genuinely believe they are reflecting the same logic, but their examples only reveal a profound misunderstanding of what SA truly is.
In memes they’ve created mocking feminists, there’s an illustration of a woman saying, 'Any act that makes me uncomfortable is sexual violence!'
This shows just how limited their understanding of SA really is.
Humans are sexually dimorphic but not in a crazy degree, our bodies are quite similar after all, especially if you pay attention to real life bodies instead of what the media/art tries to present as "appropriate often hyper sexualized bodies".
One thing that is clear from the start is how a lot of feminine clothing has a focus on revealing as much skin as possible including a boob window, male clothing meanwhile doesnt focus on reveal any amount of skin at all, if anything a man in a crop top is extremely rare and its mostly seen as a gay culture thing.
Then you notice how its extremely hard, especially if you are plus sized to find low rise clothing, almost everything seems to either focus on a) Wear baggy clothes to hide belly b) Wear high rise pants to hide the belly. If you actually like your body and find clothes that keep the belly out of the trousers. which feels comfortable, you are out of luck usually.
Like why do pants start on a different point for men and women? Rhetorical question, I would guess its because the fashion industry tries to promote the hourglass figure by combining the belly/thigh into one big curve. (As opposed the belly fat being a curve in the middle that ruins their beloved shape). but like why is this tolerated.
Like clothing just kinda feels outright sexist to me but its something that is completely accepted and normalized, if anything people will defend it more often than not.
Just to be clear, people can wear whatever they like, but we cant ignore there's a degree of pressure to wear "appropriate" clothes for our gender, but that oppressive force should lead to at least some being quite unhappy with the status quo, which honestly I havent seen much.
I'm a part-time A Level teacher (mostly 16-18 year olds) but top myself up with secondary supply teaching work (substitute teaching) one day a week.
Last week I was in a Catholic school with a big of a reputation for bad behaviour. I was told the new Year 7s (11 year olds) were lovely, but even they were little horrors.
Second lesson I had a low ability Year 10 class (age 14 and 15). Every time I looked at the computer screen for anything, one of the boys from the back of the classroom started yelling questions at me. It was only when I looked at the computer so I had no idea who it was, I could just narrow it down to 6 boys.
This started with "Do you have a boyfriend Miss?". I'll be honest, I've had this plenty of time before, although usually from girls who are just very nosey. I chose to ignore that one. It then went to "Are you single?" This was the point I knew it was getting wildly inappropriate.
It then escalated to "Do you have AIDs?" and finally "Are you a virgin?".
I have never been so shocked in my life. I've heard teenage boys say sexually inappropriate things in the classroom, but never directed at an adult. The closest was when I heard in a staffroom that a 13 year old boy had pretended to thrust behind a female supply teacher. I've never experienced first hand anything like this, or even spoken to a teacher who has had that experience.
None of the boys would own up. None of the boys would say who it was if it wasn't them. I took down all 6 names and emailed them to their head of year and the school's head of behaviour. I told the boys that all of them would be interview individually and they would all be in trouble for refusing to say who it was. I half expected at least one boy to come speak to me on his own after the lesson finished to tell me what happened without being seen as a "grass" in front of his peers (which I've had happen before), but none did.
Thankfully the school did actually deal with it exactly how I had warned them it would. The boys were pulled out of their lessons and spoken to. One of them did point the finger at one boy and all 6 got phonecalls home. Unfortunately, I haven't heard what did happen to the boy who was yelling the questions.
I found these two women from Oklahoma, who have no problem calling it like it is. Fantastic podcast I wanted to share!
https://youtu.be/BD3QX2sxfco?si=WXBlEpZl3qMaciQI
It's not just a few Nazi flags, folks!
I'd like to point out that I, as an American, moved to Germany at the age of twenty...that would have been back in 1976, and then spent 25+years there, before returning to care for elderly and ailing parents in the US..more for my mother's sake, whose health had never been good, rather than for my father, who was, as far back as I can remember, a racist, misogynistic bigoted POS. I simply did not trust him with my mother's mental and emotional health.
That all having been said..in that position, I had ample opportunity to talk to Germans from the NAZI era, and I can categorically back the asessment of the participants in this podcast.
I can also categorically draw parallels not mentioned in the podcast between the NAZI slogan for women-Kinder,Küche,Kirche...children, kitchen,church...to the Christian Nationalist movement supporting Trump's descent into a full-blown NAZI dystopia. If this:
https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-motherhood-medals
is not quite what you had in mind when it comes to aspiration for the women/daughters/granddaughters/nieces in your life...
Do all you can to pass this on, and show people what their vote really and truly means!
Share..and make sure others share!
I was reading an article on design systems for work, and this quote resonated with me:
Even cisgender women and men are performing against gendered ideals that, like Quetelet’s measurements of the average man, no one really fulfills. (We just don’t recognize it as easily because gender explodes more quietly than a fighter jet.)
The article, Queering design systems thinking, is about upending how we think about design systems using queer theory. The quote is referring to how there were a lot of fighter jet accidents before about the 1950s because the cockpits were designed for "the average man", and no fighter pilot matched that measurement.
As should be expected from the title, there is discussion of how queerness fits into the designed gender binary system. (There's some great discussion in the article, even if you don't know or care about design systems.)
Queer theory looks at institutional violence like this and asks, if this system is built on innate, immutable truths, why does it require so much enforcement to sustain itself?
And
Society has been designed with cisgender and heterosexuality as its defaults. We set the system in place and set about shaping the world to its rules.
Going back to gender exploding more quietly than a fighter jet, that does seem to be true through much of history, with people not performing their assigned gender ideals without much notice. But then there have been times where there have been metaphorically loud explosions. Those loud explosions have seemed to lead to legislative change, but the quiet explosions seem to lead more toward shifting perspectives and norms.
At least, that's the way I'm seeing it at the moment. I would actually really like to read others' thoughts on this.
I'm wondering if hardcore faith is compatible with feminism? No feminist I know of is associated strongly with a religion. Wondering what the venn diagram is... my experience is showing no overlap. Thanks!
Hi everyone, Years ago I received jewlery that used to belong to my abusive father or was passed down to him.
I'd like to get those melted and turned into something else. I'm looking for ideas of symbols of feminism, freedom, resilience or new beginnings. Would anyone have suggestions on what shape/symbol i could request ?
Context: As a cis/het white man, I've recently been blown away by "White fragility" because it manages to depersonalize racism while exposing the mental models we're socialized with, effectively breaking down resistance on the path to white allyship.
Do you all have any recommendations for similar books for Feminist literature? I'm imagining something targeted towards men who still experience a kind of male fragility that drives them to ignore or dismiss feminist activism.
If I'm imagining a false parallel here, by all means enlighten me. I'll certainly take book recs regardless.
Trigger warning// This study relates to sexual images being publicly shared without consent
Hello all, I hope you are all doing well. I’m Kathryn, a final year postgraduate psychology student at the University of Buckingham. I’d be very grateful if you would take part in my study as part of my PhD investigating perceptions of women who have had their nude/sexual images publicly shared online without their consent. I am conducting remote individual interviews to explore people’s perceptions of women’s sexual behaviour across different contexts of this online behaviour.
To take part in this study you must:
• Be aged 18 or over
• Have not been a previous victim/survivor of non-consensual sexual image sharing/revenge porn
• Have not had previous experience with non-consensual sexual image sharing/revenge porn i.e. Know of someone close to you such as friends or family who have been a previous victim to this online behaviour
If you wish to take part, please click the following link to read more about the study and sign up to participate:
https://run.pavlovia.org/pavlovia/survey-2024.2.0/?surveyId=fc49cae1-5c17-4aaf-80c5-86b118550ddc
Thank you very much, and I hope to hear from you soon!
Regards,
Kathryn Gilfoyle (Doctoral Student)
Writing a paper on contemporary (last 10 years or so) art that still objectifies women / partakes in the “male gaze” where women are an object of men’s viewing pleasure. Any suggestions for relatively successful artists that still do this?
When I was child I wanted to be a boy. Now at 30 years old I know that I was like this because my father constantly devalued women and femininity. I also was in a girl’s school and there where teachers who told us we where sluts (12 years old). I didn’t know it was misogyny but I recognized it as unfair.
When a woman living alone was raped by a male air conditioner technician, many people said they were scared to call in a tradesperson. Misogynists then reacted by claiming this was "blue-collar discrimination" or "discrimination against men." However, when a man said, "Women shouldn't call air conditioner technicians anymore," misogynists agreed with him, while feminists called it victim-blaming. The misogynists then criticised the feminists for their response.
It’s contradictory to say that a woman fearing to call a tradesperson is discrimination against men, while also agreeing that it's a woman's fault for calling one in the first place.
When feminists asked, "Why do misogynists constantly tell women to wear longer skirts, take women-only carriages, and take all these preventative measures, but then criticise women when they actually take steps to protect themselves? Why are they so against women protecting themselves?" misogynists responded, "Self-defence isn’t the problem, but using it as an excuse for discriminating against men is."
But is that really the case?
Back in 2015, a schoolgirl who designed a badge to prevent groping faced accusations of "male discrimination." The badge simply said, "I won’t stay silent about sexual harassment" and "I won’t tolerate groping," without generalising all men. Yet, it was still criticised for "provoking" men.
The badge was aimed at those who commit sexual harassment, not at all men, so if someone feels personally targeted, doesn’t that suggest they see themselves as part of the problem?
This is a sentence I had translated by ChatGPT
the more i see of the interactions between men and women, i feel this deep deep set anger just getting so much worse. it’s always been there but it’s scaring me now and i think it’s because i’m genuinely becoming more terrified of men every time i hear of the heinous things they do. i’m very autistic and i dont think i can actually comprehend the horrors that half of our species commits and accepts as the norm or even encourages. i heard on tiktok recently of a “sex position” that guys came up with where they do doggy style and say a different girl’s name and them when she tries to get away they try to stay inside her for as long as they can. it’s just. rape. it’s disgusting and it terrifies me that enough men think this is so hilarious that it’s on a video with several thousand likes. I’m always scared and it’s so exhausting and i feel like i cant enjoy anything anymore. i work in a golf club and i know that at least a decent percentage of members that i speak to and am friends with and see every day have abused people, hurt people who love them and they’re just able to go about their lives unscathed. i know that people have been traumatised beyond belief at the people i smile and serve drinks to every day and i have no way of knowing who. I’m terrified to travel, i go to my boyfriend’s house via a 20 minute train and 15 minute bus and it’s exhausting to go see him because i have to do public transport, which i have been harassed on and unable to escape and i’m paranoid that it will happen again. i cant even enjoy movies anymore because i’m so hyperaware of gross tropes and subtext (i study media and media theory is a special interest). i watched the first kingsman movie with my bf yesterday and (SPOILER) there’s a few scenes with this princess lady and she’s set up to be a really interesting character as she’s one of the only super important ppl who dont want this elite microchip thing and doesnt want o kill all the people that arent billionaires, anyway, the protagonist finds her trapped in the evil guy’s place and she says “if you go save the world, we can do it in the asshole?” and i was disheartened that they did that with such a cool character, just turned her into a bond girl. i thought they’d hopefully forget about the bit, but no, the protagonist goes and does exactly as offered and as much as it is a spoof movie and it’s making fun of this trope, i felt almost personally attacked??? like i was enjoying it so much and then this trope that i find so uncomfortable comes up and ruins the perception i had of the protagonist and movie overall. which in fairness is probably a wokey snowflake getting their feelings hurt thing, but idrc anymore bc i cant watch hollywood movies, which is an industry i used to want to work in, without feeling at least a bit uncomfortable about how the writers present women and it is just. how they view them, as less than, and the whole audience laughs along.
i’m just waiting to become part of the rape statistics and even then, i suspect i may already be part of it, but was too young to remember or have blocked it out. i’m so tired of being afraid of creatures that are supposed to be my companions. and even after all of this shit, if i were to tell people that i’m at least a bit scared of every male figure that comes near me it would be seen as stupid and crazy feministy and completely invalid by the rest of the world. i hold your typical views of feminism and intersectionality, i want men to thrive and have their issues that this patriarchal society has caused them, i want them to be okay and truly happy, they just time and time again prove that so many of them see me as a sex doll instead of a peer.
i’m sorry for this, probably concerning rant, if you’ve got here thank you for listening, this was way longer than i thought it would be lmaooo
There is a recent post about why women still take their husbands’ last names (at least in the US) and it seems to be supported as long as the women have reasons to do so and it’s their choice. I was born in a south-east asian country and it is obviously more patriarchal than the US, but no women change their names upon marriage and thus almost no women even entertain that thought while 70% married women in the US take their husbands’ names. I believe if it was a choice without any social influence, more men would take their wives’ names or no one changes their names at all. Is it really because that so much more women have abusive fathers or their names are difficult to pronounce than men that women want to get rid of their names but not men? Or is it because we believe only men own their names while women don’t and only have men’s names anyways?
Will choice feminism helps us make progress if we accept every “choices” made in a still-and-alive patriarchal society. Like for example it’s some women’s choice to be stay home moms so why do we even bother addressing “motherhood penalties” that sometimes cause the financial dilemma pushing women to quit working? And if it’s a choice totally out of free will without social constraints then are we accepting that it’s natural for women to be homemakers more than men? My point is not about shaming women for making choices that may align with patriarchal values. But more of asking how can we criticize why certain choices are common without making it sounds like we’re just doing exactly what patriarchy does, pressuring people to conform and removing women’s autonomies?
P/S: Please excuse any grammar mistake as English is not my first language:(
I think I have an ok-ish understanding of feminism, but that's being boastful. So, men walking in heels just seems unnecessary to me, I mean I guess it's endearing but don't they have an already open mind? This is just an incomplete articulation of my lingering thoughts. I need to know how women see it. Is it redundant, effective, etc.?
I am upset. I went to an interview the other day for a sales jobs. I am a senior salesperson.
The GM interviewing me had one arm, and during the interview, apropos of nothing, he said something to the effect of, “When I was starting out I could just bat my eyelashes, so I actually had to learn how to sell,” implying that the only reason I’ve been successful is because I’m an attractive woman.
No doubt it’s been helpful, however; I AM A SHARK when it comes to sales, follow-up, and cold calling. I just cannot believe in this day and age people are still saying these things-he must think I’ve had like, huge advantages in my life because I’ve got pretty eyes and my face is more symmetrical than the average Jane??
Do all men think this way?? I’m so pissed off. Tired of this system where I have to dance and perform to satisfy the white men interviewing me, when I’m probably better than they are.
I don't consider myself a radfem (and nowhere near being a TERF thank fuck), but find myself agreeing with radfem sentiments when I stumble into discussions about feminism online.
I'm looking to start reading more non-fiction philosophical and social ideology books, and would love to see what books/authors everyone likes that relate to radical feminism. Plus points if they're sapphic!!
How do you all talk about women's rights and history with your partner?
I have some pretty strong views about what's happening around the world to women. I see us being silenced again. I try to talk about these things with my male partner and today he said something that stuck out to me.
He said "the way you're talking about this I'm scared you're going to become too feminist."
I asked him to clarify and he said, "Like those women who believe they don't need a man to have a baby."
Then, "I asked some girl what if God was a woman and she had no argument and said God has to be a man, that that's a "mans" doing".
I just got real upset and asked what does God have to do with anything. I just feel like his ego or whatever gets hurt every time I mention this. I feel like I can't say anything critiquing men around him. He automatically inserts himself into the men I'm talking about. And at this point, he's not really looking any different.