being a female means avoiding eye contact with men to not draw attention to yourself as a potential target
Being a male mean avoiding eye contact with women because they might think we are ugly
hmm yes being a target of abuse is equivalent to thinking you’re ugly
this is literally it. male idea of oppression is women not being sexually available to them when they want them to be. that’s why whiny internet men cry so much about the friend zone. this is literally it for them.
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood
awfully relevant.
Until she convinces me otherwise, I assume that her emotional reaction to a situation is disproportionate to my opinion of what level of emotional reaction the situation calls for. Basically, if she’s on eight, I assume the situation is really a six.
I cannot think of a man with whom I have ever shared negative feelings who did not make it obvious, however hard he might’ve tried to hide it, that he is going through this mental process.
And
yes, if you’re a man reading this and thinking, “Oh no, but she’s told
me her negative feelings and I’ve responded by asking her questions
about why she feels that way, does she mean me???” Yes, I mean you. I
mean all of you. I am calling all of you out for this right now. No, I
don’t want to have a private conversation about it, because I’m done
with that emotional labor. If this describes you and you’re still in my
life as a friend or partner, assume that I have accepted this sort of
microinvalidation as the cost of doing business. But my acceptance of
reality doesn’t make it any more *acceptable*.
one of the only men I’ve ever known who doesn’t do this is my therapist, and he’s literally paid to tell me my feelings are real and valid and justified
I hate to be the one to break this to you, dude, but as a general rule, women don’t pretend to virulently hate men they’re secretly in love with as some sort of elaborate courtship ritual. That’s a trope we made up to justify why the male protagonist always gets the girl in the end even when it’s starkly at odds with prior characterisation. In real life, if she acts like she thinks you’re a creep, it’s because she thinks you’re a creep!
Specifically, it’s a trope invented so that male authors (and readers) can tell themselves that the women who tell them to fuck off secretly want to fuck them, so it’s romantic and totally not creepy to continue harassing them.
I love girls who are proud and uninhibited about their intelligence and will brag about their accomplishments and take no shit from pretentious boys who look down on women in their field. girls who are outspoken and a bit arrogant and ambitious in a world where we are told that we must hide our intellect and to always put the needs of others (i.e. men) in front of our own are amazing
When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women.
Here’s my issue.. I’m generally scared when first meeting cis males and I get a lot of hate for it. I approach them hesitantly, and I get immediately defensive when they compliment or stare at me. Hear me out – I’m scared of sharks as well. I have a 1 in 3,700,000 chance of being attacked by a shark in my life time. Snakes – a 1 in 50,000,000 chance of dying from a bite. I have never in my life had anyone tell me my fear in snakes, or sharks, was unjustified, even though they pose relatively no threat to my life.
In my lifetime however, I have a 1 in 4 chance of being sexually assaulted by a man in North America, and furthermore, an 80% chance of that man being someone I trust. About 80 percent of murders are committed by men. I can count on one hand how many girl friends I have that have not been raped by someone they trusted. I have never met a woman who has not been sexually assaulted in some way or another. I have not walked down the street downtown in 5 years without being cat called or winked at, nor have I completed a walk without glancing over my shoulder repeatedly since I hit puberty. When I was 13, 5 young men chased me in their van and tried to pull me in. When I was 19, a man shoved his hand up my skirt and told me if I didn’t plan on getting fucked I should change my outfit or leave the party. When I was 22, someone who was supposed to be my mentor for criminal law asked me on a date. I have never made a male friend that hasn’t tried to have sex with me, and then stopped being my friend when I wouldn’t.
My slight fear in men is 925,000x more justified than sharks, 1,250,000x more justified than spiders, yet I have been interrogated, called a man hater, verbally assaulted, and made fun of, because I don’t feel comfortable trusting every man I come across. “not all men” they say, just 1 in 4 right? I do not hate me, so don’t even try me with that. I have, however, been violently oppressed and assaulted by men, and my hesitance is fucking justified.
Just a reminder that the first NASA astronauts were supposed to be women because generally they are smaller, lighter (less weight in the cockpit means less fuel required) and eat less than men and so would be easier to accommodate in space.
Both men and women trained (and many of the female finalists had higher scores than the men), but they were completely excluded from the final selection because of their gender.
13 women underwent final training, all were accomplished pilots with at least 1000 hours flying experience, all passed the necessary tests, all could have been astronauts if only they were afforded the opportunity.
[below, Jerrie Cobb photographed during testing]
They are collectively known as the Mercury 13, there’s a great blog entry about them here and a brilliant PBS documentary too.
Their names are Myrtle Cagle, Jerrie Cobb, Janet Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, Wally Funk, Sarah Gorelick, Jane “Janey” Hart, Jean Hixson, Rhea Hurrle, Gene Nora Stumbough, Irene Leverton, Jerri Sloan and Bernice Steadman. They should be remembered and celebrated for their role in the history of space exploration.
It wasn’t until 2 decades later that Sally Ride became the first woman in space in 1983.
7 of the surviving members of the Mercury 13 are pictured below, 33 years later in 1995.
i would just like to point out that the recent conversation surrounding the male birth control trials isn’t just “lol weak men can’t deal with side effects” it’s the fact that when they were testing hormonal birth control for women in the 50s & 60s, the side effects were much worse, and the women who participated in them, mostly in puerto rico, were not told about the side effects or that the drug was experimental
and THEN when women dropped out, they started using incarcerated women as their guinea pigs, and then despite the fact that some scientists who participated in the original trials were like “uh i don’t think this is actually good, it’s making a lot of these women sick,” the pharmaceutical industry & fda were like ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and approved it for the general population anyways, without really warning women about the potential for all these negative side effects
and THEN researchers basically ceased to do any type of research on side effects like depression and decreased libido for 50 years, despite the fact that women were still complaining about them, and because there was no “hard evidence” of these side effects, a lot of doctors basically just assumed women were exaggerating or making it up. and that continued until the first major studyof depression in women who take hormonal contraceptives was released just. this. year.
oh, and fun fact: even after this new study was released, a lot of the scientific community is still being like “but can we PROVE these women aren’t just depressed because they’re LOVESICK?”
shealwaysreads 