Latest Posts by thedearladydisdain - Page 3
Whats your unpopular radfem opinion?
Mine is that I do not get mad when radfems still wear makeup, especially if they’re cutting back on it heavily.
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.
This new policy aligns with the patriarchal view that seeks to control and reduce women’s lives and identities to a simplistic Sex-binary structure.
here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.
so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.
It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.
I simply cannot take these men seriously, mostly because I have been big into fandom/fanfiction at various points in my life and alpha/beta/omega has a very different meaning in fandom terms 🤣🤣🤣
This is the conservative male version of neogenders. A bunch of weirdos got addicted to the internet and started calling themselves "omega males" as if that means something. It's their version of saying "I am a fem-aligned non-binary genderfuck who goes by he/she/its pronouns." It's amazing how different communities mirror each other even though they appear to be complete opposites at first glance.
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!
My mum; I don’t think she’s ever identified herself as a radical feminist, but intentionally or not she lives so many of the core tenets. She’s the one that taught me about financial independence and the importance of an education and critical thinking. She’s also a firm believer in comfy shoes and in the almost 30 years I’ve been her daughter I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen her wear makeup.
It sounds silly but seeing her without makeup makes it easier for me to let go of wearing it now. I have my dad’s colouring, but my face is so much like my mother, I’ve seen pictures of her at my age and if you changed my hair a little we could be twins. I hope it stays that way. I hope I develop laugh lines the way she did.
I want to take a break from discourse for a moment. Reblog or reply with a way a woman in your life is awesome.
I’ll go first. My mom is the most determined person I know. I’ve never seen her give up on anything and she always keeps a cool head when solving problems. She knows when to take a break and has impeccable work/life balance, but when she is working on something she is completely focused and always the most useful person in the room.
“the most confident women i know are women with short natural nails”
reminds me of that one video that went viral recently where the woman was saying something along the lines of “i only take advice from women who have a full bush” and it’s crazy that most of the comments tend to agree but only a few are pinpointing why that might be. like hmm… i wonder what it is about a woman who doesn’t adhere to unnecessary beauty standards and simply lives in her life in natural body without wasting the mental/physical/emotional energy it takes to endlessly spend money on hair removal nails makeup etc and WHY it makes her more confident in her body as a dignified human being
i wonder what it is!
RECLAIMING DISCIPLINE CAN LOOK LIKE:
• keeping small + manageable promises to yourself daily
• healing your attention span (ex: reading books, watching movies without scrolling, letting yourself be bored)
• moving from "I'll try" to "I will"
• reframing pain + difficulty as often where the growth happens
• showing up as the person you want to be
• making mindful & nourishing choices VS choices that result in instant gratification
Hey, take it from someone creeping towards 40:
Ignore the fun police.
If you like it, order your steak well done. Get your bagel toasted with jam and butter. Put ice in your scotch and ketchup on your hotdog. Get red wine with fish and white with steak. Who cares?
If you want to, listen to pop music. Watch blockbuster popcorn flicks. Read dime store novels. Enjoy them.
Dye your hair or cut it off. Paint your fingernails blue. Wear whatever the fuck you want on your own time (ie, when not at a job or school or whatever where you can get penalized for breaking rules) as long as you aren’t like welding or shoveling snow.
Anyone who tries to tell you you’re wrong? Say “okay” and go back to what you were doing. You’re not hurting them by enjoying yourself or having things the way you like them.
There are no caveats or addendums to this. No “but what about x?” Nah. You’re allowed the things you like. You don’t have to justify your taste or apologize for it if it’s not hurting anyone.
And likewise, let other people live their lives. We’re all dead in the long run, so tend your own garden before you become fertilizer in it.
i bet there were guys in the 1800s who were super fucking Reddit about everything, but no one had the right word yet for why those guys were so annoying. so they just had to wonder
Why do radfems/terfs feel like that excluding non-cis women from their “correct definition of feminism” is something that,, is remotely acceptable? Considering theyre supposedly feminists?
ex-christian but i suspect life without eve's choice would have been hellish for women. eve was already condemned to the title of adam's rib. when i was a kid, i used to be angry with eve for taking away a chance at paradise (the intention, i'm certain). but now, i suspect she may have just saved us all the plight of her own existence and i like to think she had more in mind before and after she took that fruit.
If you’re having trouble with knowing what’s truly empowering for women just ask yourself these questions.
- Does this benefit men in any way?
- Is it something that’s forced onto women by the patriarchy?
- Are you confusing being empowered with personal enjoyment?
- Does this give women any real social, economic, political power as a class?
- Does this endanger a woman’s safety, mental health, and or comfort?
- Does it challenge the patriarchy?
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.
Can’t reblog the post going round containing these two screenshots:
So I’ll put my addition here:
This also applies to women who complain about feminism requiring them to work, rather than being ‘ladies of leisure’. Women equivalent to them in the past always worked - who do they think were the maids, housekeepers, cooks, nannies, wet nurses, governesses, washerwomen, spinners, weavers, seamstresses, nurses, midwives, etc - and today’s equivalent of the past’s ladies of leisure can afford to be ladies of leisure now. Feminism fought for women’s work to be acknowledged, valued, and fairly paid, and that fight is still ongoing.
Okay I answered my own question:
I couldn’t find the link that goes with the above image, I reverse image searched and only found twitter posts, not the article it supposedly comes from. Advocate.com does have an article (link below) which lists the transgender people killed in 2024, but has nothing about the trans-identified males currently serving a prison sentence.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation also has a report on the above (https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-2024) of the 30 reported deaths, 3 were trans men (female) and 1 was a nonbinary afab person (female).
So, really the statistic is more like
Trans-identified males killed in 2024: 26
Trans-identified males serving a prison sentence for a sexual offence: 609
Also do you notice how the first statistic says ‘all transgender people’ and the second says ‘all trans-identified males’ - does anyone know where this statistic is from, because I for one would like to know how many of those ‘all transgender people killed’ were trans-men ie females
Can’t know for sure without looking at the actual source but I’d be willing to bet money that if we looked at ‘trans-identified males killed’ instead of ‘all transgender people killed’ that we’d be looking at a different number, and that the gap between trans-identified males killed vs in prison would be even wider…..
maybe the actual reason is that your conscience was trying to dissuade you from telling your girlfriend you want to cheat on her
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.
The amount of people that stay stagnant because they’re afraid of having friends that are “better” than them might just be the answer as to why a lot of them are so lonely, too. Having friends that are better spoken, better traveled, better dressed, better educated, better whatever actually enriches your life tremendously and I couldn’t imagine not surrounding myself with people I wanted to learn from out of mere fear of inadequacy
"Defining women as "adult human females" is so limiting"
Literally how? It's just defining the most basic physical traits, and you have complete freedom from there. "Adult human female" prescribes nothing about personality, interests, values, style, talents, skills, careers, or capabilities. Defining womanhood or non-womanhood as a feeling based on stereotypes of gender, meanwhile, is EXACTLY what I'd call "limiting."
So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!
So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.
The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.
So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.
Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.
I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.
So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.
For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.
It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.
So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:
How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.
Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!
Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.
For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.
Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.
Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.