r/fourthwavewomen

I'm hoping you all can sympathize, whether you have kids or don't, have sons or don't. There's hardly anywhere I can talk about this, which I'm sure doesn't shock you given the world and the consciousness most women have.

I'm pregnant with my first baby and was told a couple weeks ago it's most likely a boy. Too early to be sure but odds are good, I guess.

So, now, I have to come to terms with the reality of what I'm doing, how my son is most likely to turn out, and what that makes me responsible for in the world. It's hard to sit with. The extent of my powerlessness as a mother over what this man will be like. All the possibilities of him harming women and girls, even in childhood. The way he's going to see me as a woman. What I'll have to be around and live with in my home, as far as his male friends and shit like porn, video games, podcasts, etc. Everywhere I turn, I'm reminded of how misogynistic males are, at every age. And now I'm adding to that. And there is very little I can do to prevent it.

I made the mistake of posting about my feelings in a pregnancy sub, where women across the political and philosophical spectrum congregate, and of course got flamed by a bunch of triggered boy moms who act like my realistic expectations are worse than male behavior toward women and girls. It just reminded me that I'll never be able to talk to other mothers in real life about my experience raising a boy and how the boy moms around my son are likely to be enablers of their own sons' sexism and misogyny, not allies in trying to minimize how much our sons embrace it.

I know there isn't any real advice or solutions you can give me. This situation is what it is. Men are what they are. I just wanted to vent to women who can understand. Loving a son while also holding a realistic awareness of what he is, is going to be incredibly difficult. And I am afraid that the worst will happen, and I'll have to spend the rest of my life feeling guilty for making another woman's suffering possible. ​

..of course it did

Free to read

I will always maintain that a major reason why Anora was so popular with professional critics and industry players/the Academy (all overwhelmingly male institutions) is because the film serves up extremely gratuitous levels of female nudity wrapped up in a social realist "cinema of the oppressed" packaging, which gave hetero male cinephiles the opportunity to disguise their sexual consumption of the objectified female body as intellectual exercise.

I know some radfems (including some in this sub) are willing to partially redeem the film because the ending portrays prostitution as psychologically devastating but that doesn't change the fact that the first half of the movie completely indulges in not just the hypersexualization of the subjugated female body but also the fantasy of the "sex worker" who's young and fun and sexy and doesn't necessarily like her "job" too much yet is still more than willing to play the part because sexually objectifying herself for the male gaze is her choice yay!!!!!!

No matter how much you try to intellectualize it, the end result always leads to the same thing: a bunch of proto-pornographic images of women that males can jerk themselves off to.

I remember posting a critique of this film in a movie sub and one of my points was that the extended sequences of the protagonist sexualizing herself for the male gaze were boring and cliche so I wrote something like “everyone already knows what happens inside a strip club, how about the director shows us what the main character is like outside of that context” and some fucking moid genuinely responded “Oh you think EVERYONE knows what happens inside a strip club? What about an amish guy who’s on rumspringa and this is the first movie he’s ever watched in his entire life?” like these coomers will come up with the wildest shit to defend their jerk off material lmao

When I talk about this with people none of them care, but it really makes me rage. Why is it that men’s bathrooms always get more places to go? Yes I understand that urinals are cheaper and smaller, resulting in more being in there. But women’s bathrooms have sometimes only half of the toilets as men’s bathrooms do.

This makes me angry for several reasons.

1. Women take longer to use the bathroom
2. Women are typically out in public more often
3. Women are more likely to have children with them
4. Women have smaller bladders
5. Our bathrooms are becoming gender neutral while men get to keep their own

Why are they not making women’s bathrooms larger to accommodate for more stalls? Why are we always forced to wait in such long lines while many of us are pregnant and have children when we are out in public much more than men and then they have more places to use the bathroom? We are forced to have our bathrooms taken away to “accommodate” for those who identify as women or anything but a man. Many places will remove the women’s bathroom making it gender neutral while men get to keep their own bathroom.

Having less bathrooms increases the risk of UTIs (which women are more susceptible to) and bladder loss. I don’t understand the logic with how bathrooms compared to men and woman are. Just because it saves money is absolutely ridiculous. It makes me so angry when I have to wait in line with 10 other women when men can walk in and out of the bathroom in less than 2 minutes.

Hey Everyone! I’m very proud and excited to share the official author discussion for my latest anthology, “She Holds The Line: Black Women Speak on Gender Ideology”, featuring myself alongside two of our co-authors. We went deep / no holds barred into some serious topics surrounding the trans issue but we also had so much fun! I guarantee you there is nothing like this on the internet! 🔥

If you enjoy and learn from our video, please like and leave a comment on the youtube video, and share it with your networks to help broaden its reach. Also you are welcome to order your copy of She Holds The Line here. Thanks so much for your support! Peace. 

If you haven't heard, there's been some discourse about her recent baby doll fashion choices for the rollout of her new album.

Personally, it gives me the ick, as it did when Sabrina started doing it as well. Seeing Olivia follow the trend makes me very disappointed. To me, it's pandering to the patriarchal standard for women to never age and the idolizing of youth in women. In particular, the shot of her in "drop dead" where she's laying in her bed and her bloomers are showing.

Now the internet is split on whether or not this baby doll style is problematic or just a fashion statement. I can definitely understand it as a fashion trend from the 90s, but I would like to remind everyone that this doesn't remove the patriarchal influence. It's not suddenly unproblematic because women think it's cute...why do you think you find it cute and attractive??

I also understand that Olivia is wrongfully taking most of the flack for the return of baby girl clothing possibly due to racism and I fully blame Sabrina for popularising this trend first and escaping criticism due to being white.

Am I just too cynical, or is this discourse emblematic of the liberal feminist mindset of "I will jump but not because you told me to"?

So, I'm from Colombia, and today I found out that prostitution has been recognized as sexual exploitation by the Supreme Court.

I'm happy about this, but the people in the comments were saying that this will make things worse and lead to more clandestine operations and stuff.

Is it? I don't know. I'm happy, but don't know because of these comments??? Is this a good thing?

HELP! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

Edit: Thanks for all the comments congratulating us here and the ones educating me on the situation of other countries that deal with this. I hope one day things get better for the women there as well and sex exploitation gets the recognition it needs for women to be free from it. Thank you all. <3

Welcome to r/fourthwavewomen's weekly open discussion thread!

This thread is for the community to discuss whatever is on your mind. Have a question that you've been meaning to ask but haven't gotten around to making a post yet? An interesting article you'd like to share? Any work-related matters you'd like to get feedback on or talk about? Questions and advice are welcome here.