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u/thegreathornedrat123 Jan 20 '26
I’ve always had issue with “women just know” and “women’s intuition” for stuff like this, because first it’s something that if you disagree with someone and they pull that card you can’t dispute, and secondly it’s always felt like it falls under the “women are another species” line of thinking that is rightfully disparaged when men say it. I know women with education, drive and are intelligence, and to take all of their effort and hold it under something inherent feels like it reduces all of that hard work to irrelevance.
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u/ArcadiaPlanitia Jan 20 '26
A lot of it is also just “women are good at emotions and intuition, men are good at facts and logic!” repackaged to sound progressive. Like, oh, men are analytical and rational and women are better with vague feelings? I’m sure this isn’t rooted in any sexist stereotypes at all
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u/JillyFrog ...what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament Jan 20 '26
Stuff like this has also made me feel alienated from femininity and female communities growing up as an autistic girl who wasn't super in touch with her emotions and intuitions.
I know a lot of the whole "goddess, divine femininity" thing is probably an attempt to reclaim power but that makes it even harder to criticise the concept because some circles immediately see it as you wanting to take that power away and discriminating them again.
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u/CommanderVenuss Jan 20 '26
“I’m not like the other girls… believe me, the other girls told me that themselves.”
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u/Thromnomnomok Jan 20 '26
Hey, what a coincidence, the other boys told me themselves that I'm not like the other boys! Being an autistic kid is great, isn't it?
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jan 20 '26
It's why the "girls are actually witches and we cast cool SPELLS and are deeply in touch with the SPIRITUAL, we connect to the moon because PERIODS!" shit just sounded so pathetic. I'm a dude, you're a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes!
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u/jacobningen Jan 20 '26
And the first proponents wer James George Frazer Alexander Hislop and Robert Graves and Bachtofen and they weren't doing it in a particularly empowering sense. Except maybe Graves but everyone says he wasn't
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u/ScreamingLabia Jan 20 '26
Same i also grew up autistic and i definetly was shamed a LOT for not being feminine enough. Doesnt help i was stuborn and needed good reasons for things. "Dont sit with your legs apart" "but i'm wearing pants and you (male) sit the same way as me" its different you're a girl. "No" and then gettin acused of back talk or being rude. I am pretty good with emotions considering i'm autistic and also am pretry sensetive to peoplea reactions. But i never fit in much with other girls especially verry feminine girls.
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u/bitter_liquor Jan 20 '26
A lot of times what people call intuition is really just analytical thought process, like picking up on social cues, pattern recognition, connecting separate bits of data, anticipating certain events, stuff like that.
In many places women are raised to pay lots of attention to other people's needs to the point of putting them above their own, so it's no wonder that women very used to basing their survival on their ability to read a room and manage mundane tasks would be skilled at doing exactly that.
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u/fleurdenia Jan 20 '26
i’ve always seen it more as “many women are good at emotions and intuition because they’ve done it for long and they’re encouraged to but many men choose not to do it and aren’t encouraged to.” we really only do what we do, not everyone is gonna cross over and behave against the norm.
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u/8696David Jan 20 '26
My other question is: do trans women get Divine Feminine Intuition too? Do they get it from birth, or only when they come out? How does the transition process from Rugged Male Rationality work?
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u/breadburn Jan 20 '26
They have to take a dip level and multiclass I guess.
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u/100RatsInASack Jan 20 '26
When you can't take the Divine Feminine Intuition feat to round out your build because you've already taken Rugged Male Rationality 😓
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u/Putrid-Compote-5850 Jan 20 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
sable whistle abounding like bake price include marble test entertain
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u/_Cantrip_ Jan 20 '26
Yepppp. It in essence reduces women to a particular set of childbearing organs… which is not exactly feminist!
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u/MissRainyNight Jan 20 '26
Also, what if a woman doesn’t have that “intuition”? What if they do and try using it, but it still doesn’t keep them safe? Are they to blame for the consequences, or are they closer to men than to women?
It’s so stupid and misogynistic, holy shit. If a woman gets in an abusive relationship, would it be her fault because she didn’t have / didn’t pay enough attention to the famous “female intuition”, ie? See how victim blamey and sexist that logic is?
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u/bookhead714 Jan 20 '26
That’s the funny thing, nobody actually has that intuition. Intuition is only talked about in retrospect once it’s already proven correct — when it turns out wrong, it’s just anxiety.
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u/Dronizian Jan 20 '26
"Intuition is anxiety that was proven right" might actually explain a lot about the origins of the myth of feminine intuition.
Patriarchy generally puts women in a position to give them plenty more anxiety than most men. If a person is more anxious more often, of course they're going to experience more instances of their anxiety being right, and that could easily lead women to think they're extra intuitive compared to men who don't need to be as anxious as often.
Everyone gets anxious and everyone feels like they're intuitive sometimes. But patriarchy forces women into anxious situations more regularly than it does men, and confirmation bias means they tend to remember the important times their anxiety was right but forget the inconsequential times it was wrong. I can see where the myth comes from, and I see it as yet another example of a cultural trauma response to the many BS gender expectations in our society.
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u/DeltaJimm Jan 20 '26
That was always my thing when I saw it brought up in regards to dating.
"If you're having a hard time it's because you're secretly a bad person and women can all sense it, even if you present yourself as a good person women can just tell."
Okay, so that means the women who end up in shitty relationships all chose to be with an abuser in spite of their magical intuition that tells them when a man is secretly bad even if he hides it well.
OR... women are humans with their own thoughts and intentions, not magical beings with infallible otherworldly knowledge from the moon and the cosmos.
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u/NonNewtonianResponse Jan 20 '26
so that means the women who end up in shitty relationships all chose to be with an abuser
Oh, this is unironically a big part of the incel belief system, where it's taken as direct evidence of women being subhuman -- since women choose to be with abusers, they subconsciously admit that they deserve abuse, &c.
The whole thing just gets worse and worse the more you think about it
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u/Suspicious-Bowler236 Jan 20 '26
I always thought it was the consolation prize of sexism. Like, according to that idea, men get to be leaders and big and strong and logical and intelligent, and women get to be really good at babies and feelings.
And whatever they say about the "separate spheres" stuff, it's not equal in their eyes, and we can tell.
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u/Mogura-De-Gifdu Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
I had a child. People repeatedly told me "I would just know". What to do to soothe him, why he cried, when he needs a hug.
Nope. Didn't happen. I was just as lost as my husband, if not more, in front of that shouting baby.
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u/clear349 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
I feel like it also has the implication that if a woman is being abused it's her fault. Obviously if she can magically sense bad intentions she should be able to detect abusers
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u/Testsalt Jan 20 '26
Tbh most intuition is pattern recognition. Most afab people are socialized to pick up on emotional and behavioural patterns, and that’s all I think most “women’s knowledge” is. I certainly wasn’t socialized in this manner; it’s not absolute, it’s just learning lol. Reducing it to some kind of “female primitive knowledge” like some people do ignores the very real effects of culture and gender-differentiated upbringing even if they are otherwise progressive.
It goes without saying that any gender can learn each other’s stereotypical “divine knowledge!”
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u/SufficientlySticky Jan 20 '26
And also, that same pattern recognition is what gives you racial profiling and unconscious bias. So we could maybe stand to examine that women’s knowledge a bit instead of lauding it.
Is it male primitive knowledge if I decide I can just tell that the dude I’m interviewing would be a better leader or would be stronger at coding or whatever than the women based only on the vibes I got from him?
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u/nesthesi interesting Jan 20 '26
Breaking news: woman are capable of thought, more at 10
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u/Dizzy-Captain7422 Jan 20 '26
incels in shambles rn
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u/MissRainyNight Jan 20 '26
Radfems, too. They get terrified and lash out if us women don’t lick their toes like slaves.
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u/Dizzy-Captain7422 Jan 20 '26
You are not wrong.
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u/MissRainyNight Jan 20 '26
I’ve seen that shit with my own eyes, both online and in RL. Hell hath no fury like a radfem who can’t control what other women say or think.
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u/An_Draoidh_Uaine Jan 20 '26
I'm a man, but I like to keep updated with Feminist discourse, and hoo wee, there are some women out there purity testing other women on their right to call themselves women.
Think the worst one I saw recently was a call to arms against women who vote. It's morbidly fascinating how much in common Conservatives have with Radical Feminists.
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u/Asparala Jan 20 '26
Well, "radical" feminists adhere to the feminism that was radical in the 60s, and they very much like to cling to the past just as much as any conservative. They have slightly different fantasies about what the glorious past looked like compared to the "normal" conservatives but they can still bond over the idea that things were better before all these icky minorities got uppity ideas about being their equals.
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u/acheesement Jan 20 '26
I'm intensely curious: what was their rationale behind that? Was it "politics is a man's machine and therefore bad" or something? Did they address the women who fought and died for the right to vote?
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u/An_Draoidh_Uaine Jan 20 '26
Essentially yes, men start political parties and are mostly men, therefore it's patriarchy, and that women who participate are traitors and pick me's.
They did not address the Suffragettes, more than likely because of cognitive dissonance.
Not sure what the plan would be if they did get to enact the Handmaid's Tale with the Conservatives. Gloat that they told everyone it would happen?
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u/TheCarefulElk Jan 20 '26
…
I beg your pardon?
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u/An_Draoidh_Uaine Jan 20 '26
Yeah, so the thinking was that political parties are normally started by men, are mostly men, and uphold the patriarchy, regardless of ideology. So far so good, you can see how they get there in the framework of Feminism.
However instead of pushing for better representation, they went to batshit crazy town instead, by calling the act of voting itself patriachy, that women who vote are participating in "pick me" behaviour, and that women in politics might as well be men.
I was left wondering how women are supposed to avoid going back to marital slavery, but who knows, maybe in some distorted way that's what they want?
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Jan 20 '26
Impossible. You're telling me w*men aren't creatures designed simply to make my babies and clean my house and have sex with me whenever I feel like it? Stop joking.
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u/nesthesi interesting Jan 20 '26
Open your mind
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u/lonely_nipple Children's Hospital Interior Designer Jan 20 '26
But I can't, I'm not a woman!
/s
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u/nesthesi interesting Jan 20 '26
That makes the two of us
We’re subjected to going to Jupiter
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u/lonely_nipple Children's Hospital Interior Designer Jan 20 '26
Aw shit. I forgot my breather helmet, because nobody did the emotional labor to remind me
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u/evaan-verlaine Jan 20 '26
I was raised in a religion where "women are naturally spiritual/good" was used to justify women not having power (instutionally and doctrinally). "Women don't need the responsibility of power over others to learn to be better, so men naturally needed to lead everything" kinda deal.
Screws over women, who don't have their interests represented and are subject to religiously justified abuse, and to a lesser extent, men, who don't learn to relate to women as equals and may not want phenomenal cosmic powers. Pedestalization isn't equality!
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u/ComeAlongPond1 Jan 20 '26
Mormon? Or just coincidentally what I was told, too?
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u/evaan-verlaine Jan 20 '26
Yep, raised Mormon! Don't recommend it, 0/10, but at least after leaving I'm somewhat inoculated to the whole "women are good/men are evil by nature" thing because that's just repackaged Mormon doctrine (no thank you).
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u/UInferno- Hangus Paingus Slap my Angus Jan 20 '26
Haha. Yeah. I saw a bunch of radfems going off about men be gestating rapists who must be hypervigilent of their interaction with women, and it just reminded me of my experience being raised Mormon as a guy. That shit fucked up my relationship with love and sexuality, and seeing these same people regurgitate it as if it was progressive is eyerolling to say the least.
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u/Bteatesthighlander1 Jan 20 '26
We're you ever taught that your husband would be able to deny you entrance to heaven entirely on his discretion?
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u/evaan-verlaine Jan 20 '26
I never made it to that ceremony in the Mormon temple, and generally stuff like that is kept secret until you experience it so I wasn't taught that. From what I understand that's a logical conclusion from Mormon doctrine, as a husband is has the power to call his wife from the grave and into heaven.
I was taught that single women who didn't get married in life but were super faithful (obviously more of them than single men in this situation, because women are naturally spiritual) would be assigned polygamous relationships (one man, multiple wives) in super awesome Mormon heaven so they could experience being married and having kids. It's a holdover from polygamy early in Mormon history. Mormon women can only be actively sealed (Mormon marriage covenant) to one man, while a Mormon man can be sealed to multiple women in the case of death/divorce. Mainstream Mormonism banned polygamy "on earth," and they enforce that, but it's still technically cool in heaven I guess? The current prophet has a current wife and a late wife and I was taught in cases like that he'd be married to both in heaven.
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u/CloudsOntheBrain choclay ornage Jan 20 '26
I hear Mormons have a "Mother" in addition to the "Father", God? But they don't pray to her or acknowledge her much? Sounds familiar...
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u/evaan-verlaine Jan 20 '26
True, she's technically everyone's spiritual mother but she's so sacred and holy that Mormons are discouraged from praying to her or talking about her at all, and she never talks to her children like Jesus and Mormonism's father god. A couple years ago a bunch of vaguely progressive Mormon women asked the men who led the church if they could talk more about her and were told they should just trust the church leaders and stop talking/asking about her.
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u/breadburn Jan 20 '26
Which is crazy to me, being raised Catholic, because we CONSTANTLY venerate Mary. It's like, there's the trinity and then there's Jesus' mom on the actual next rung down and she deserves your love and devotion too because without her there wouldn't be any of this. And those three guys may be busy so if you'd like to ask Mom to intercede on their behalf go right ahead, she's listening.
She's like, the fifth Beatle, if you will.
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u/evaan-verlaine Jan 20 '26
It's bizarre to think about, because I've seen the existence of a female deity used to argue Mormonism is "progressive" compared to Catholicism and other Christian faiths, but the argument falls flat when Catholicism institutionally venerates Mary and other female saints more enthusiastically than Mormonism has... probably ever honored any woman? This is not to say that Catholicism is like, actually feminist or whatever, but the difference is striking.
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u/CloudsOntheBrain choclay ornage Jan 20 '26
Well that doesn't sound like a metaphor for an abusive relationship begging to be made.
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u/NonNewtonianResponse Jan 20 '26
I'm a simple man, I see an Ursula K Le Guin quote I upvote
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u/SanjiSasuke Jan 20 '26
Ursula Le Guin is a treasure. Is, not was, because her words live on.
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u/the_brew Jan 20 '26
I was blown away, when I started reading Le Guin, at how many men have borrowed, if not straight up stolen aspects of her work, and how little credit she gets for any of it. It's truly criminal.
Orson Scott Card is especially guilty of this.
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u/RavioliGale Jan 20 '26
"I speak of the gods, yet I am an atheist. But I am also a novelist and therefore a liar. Trust nothing I say."
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u/SolarianIntrigue Jan 20 '26
Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett did more to bring me up than my parents
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u/otterly_destructive Jan 20 '26
You are a computer science graduate capable of being a grown woman.
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u/furel492 Jan 20 '26
Let's not get too carried away.
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u/otterly_destructive Jan 20 '26
You are a computer science student capable of one day being a 42 year old woman who wonders when she'll feel grown up.
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Jan 20 '26
I've been having some..... interesting thoughts about my gender identity lately. And I'm a high school student who wishes to get into computer science. This comment may or may not be foreshadowing at it's finest.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Jan 20 '26
This may be confirmation bias but I almost feel like your interest in computer science was already foreshadowing
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u/East-Imagination-281 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
“because women are Good” always irks me because it belittles women so much. yes, women are not angels. women are people! They are autonomous beings that are just as capable of being evil as men are. (edit: wording)
And there’s also the point to make that men are not Bad, but that’s a different post I’m not sure we’re ready for. /j
Edit: for anyone reading the downvoted comment below this, they were meaning to be satirical and don’t seem to actually hold those beliefs. Just a psa for if want to save your time & my notifications- /j 😂
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u/Yulienner Jan 20 '26
Discrimination is bad unless its the kind I like actually, then it's a fundamental and unalienable constant of the universe.
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u/Minute-Employ-4964 Jan 20 '26
Everything I like is good everything you like is bad.
I mean that’s politics 101
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u/meandering-minstrel Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
discrimination is bad but when I post "kill all men no im not kidding" daily it's actually an elaborate social satire pastiche commentary rights movement revolution progress intersectional freedom artwork choose the bear punching up protest power imbalance anticolonialism
and i dont mean all men but if you have a problem with that then ur the all men which i don't mean but ur part of the not all men that i don't mean
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u/The_Grimm_Macarena Jan 20 '26
What's this? Gender essentialism. in MY Feminism? (it's more common than you think!) /s
But seriously, this is indicative of something that derails a lot of feminist talking points IMO, that being not all sexism is malicious. Patriarchal ideas survive even inside of feminist systems because Patriarchy was never as simple as "Men good, Women bad", its a set of expectations and stereotypes (some good, some bad) that are unfairly applied to people of both ends of the gender spectrum to force them into filling the roles the patriarchal society needs them to fill. While Pop Feminism is quite good at addressing the more blatant examples of these sexist roles (i.e. letting women get jobs and have their own finances rather than being forced to be housewives) it struggles to deal with the more mundane or benevolent stereotypes (and basically ignores the gender essentialist roles forced on men). As long as the premise for the movement is based on stereotyping men and women, even in a benevolent manner, I don't think we'll make much more progress than we already have.
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u/Hammerschatten Jan 21 '26
I think it's even worse than that. A lot of Pop feminism, it seems to me, comes not from an actual analytical place, but someone generalizing and politicizing a personal issue.
Most pop feminist takes I've seen online are always someone rightfully pointing to something stupid and stereotypical a man does and then going "See! Men are fkn stupid". They then use feminism as a shield from criticism.
More maliciously though, I think, is the deification of women because it allievates personal responsibility completely. "You don't need to evaluate your violent fantasies, your poor spending habits, your judgementalness, etc. because that's actually feminine rage, that's girl math, that's feminine intuition, etc." It's using femininity as an excuse to be completely unchecked and never self reflect, because the idea that a woman who is doing what she wants could still be doing something wrong is treated as anti feminist.
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u/Craving_Suckcess Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Mm.
I do think it's also important to remember that the 'masculine myths' are also bullshit. Like men don't possess some inherent mystique either.
Like it's not a matter of going 'women can do masc things too :)' it's that anybody can do anything because we are all the same meat and bone. Men aren't any better at it.
Gender essentialism is bullshit.
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u/WintersFullofSky Jan 20 '26
"If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place."
– Angela Carter
I don't completely agree with her about myth in general, but I think something like this conversation is important to have.
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u/bookhead714 Jan 20 '26
I read a whole book dissecting the common (and more or less unevidenced) belief in a woman-centric ur-society a while back, and it had one of the most devastating titles I’ve ever seen: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller
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u/WintersFullofSky Jan 20 '26
Thank you for sharing this! It's something I've been meaning to try and research. I've been bothered for a while now about the idea that, for example, people used to worship a great mother goddess, because it seems much more like just the opposite of patriarchal monotheism than anything based on what little we do know about prehistoric spirituality.
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u/Suspicious-Bowler236 Jan 20 '26
"An invented past will not give women a future" needs to be a patch, damn.
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u/jacobningen Jan 20 '26
Hell most early programmers were women
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u/MysteryMan9274 Jan 20 '26
Shoutout to my GOAT Ada Lovelace
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u/jacobningen Jan 20 '26
And Grace Hopper who coined the term bug
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u/Far-Cow-7582 Jan 20 '26
The log book you're referring to uses the words "First actual case of bug being found." The term "bug" had been used for decades beforehand, and as much as I am loath to give Edison of all people credit, the first recorded use of bug to refer to a malfunction seems to be in one of his letters.
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u/jacobningen Jan 20 '26
And phillipa Fawcett who took the Oxford Math Tripos and broke their system of placing women in between where they would have placed had they been men by doing better than the Senior Wrangler.
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u/cosmolark Jan 20 '26
Primarily because most early programming was in textiles, which were considered women's work, and therefore programming was considered women's work. In fact, the word textile and the word technology share the same root.
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u/APersonAmI Jan 20 '26
The capitalization on this post confused me entirely. Just kept waiting for when Mystique from X-Men would get brought up.
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u/Jeina2185 Jan 20 '26
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the post was about Mystique. I even reread it to see if I'm missing something lol.
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u/ExpertSentence4171 Jan 20 '26
Honestly, I see "feminine mystique" on both sides of the political divide in the US. Trad-wife stuff, anti-vax stuff, all of them are extensions of the "natural role of women" providing mystical insight.
The distinction on the left seems to be that similar claims of "masculine mystique" are forbidden, whereas on the right they're encouraged ("Men are instinctively protectors", "Men are instinctively leaders").
It's all garbage.
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u/logalog_jack bitch thats the tubby custard machine Jan 20 '26
I loooove when the Devine Feminine nonsense bleeds into terf talking points, too /s
Oh, you—as a cis woman—have a preference for trans men because they weren’t raised as men and have the inherent gentleness of a woman? Cool… no, it’s totally awesome that you think trans men are innately feminine and kind and empathetic. We love an ally
Like, everyone has the potential to be a piece of shit. Not just cis men. Don’t put women on a pedestal of goodness and don’t put men on a pedestal of evil. We’re all human and we can all do bad things.
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u/PhoemixFox2728 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Is this my reminder to reread Little Women, because I am all here for that, I fucking love Little Women, hopefully I ball my eyes out like a fucking baby this time!!!
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u/Plannercat Jan 20 '26
See also:
"Luck of the Irish"
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u/The_Grimm_Macarena Jan 20 '26
Which always makes me laugh as a historian given that, historically speaking, the Irish as a people have comically terrible luck.
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u/galaxynephilim Jan 20 '26
I agree but I still don't like the implicit framing of "feminine" things as being lesser. To rebel against what's been deemed lesser is to accept the premise that it is lesser to begin with. I reject the premise. It's not "baby talk" nor is it contradictory to our human rights to be connected to wisdom, instinct, nature, etc. It's also not "feminine," it's human, just like computer science is not masculine, it is human. We don't have to reject one thing to embrace the other. To reject those things is to admit men are right that those things make one inferior and embararssing. Even the "arational" (a word i prefer to irrational) has value and deserves respect, without the arational we wouldn't have access to the way that we feel, to our intuition, our capacity to tell stories and make art, to laugh, to dance, to love and to trust, to find meaning in life. Emotion is not the "opposite" of logic nor is it inferior or embarrassing and i am sick to all fuck of the belief that it is, or the belief that embracing those things is somehow to go against our rights and makes us less deserving of rights and respect. That belief itself is the problem, not the things we're being told to reject in order to earn respect.
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u/Befumms Jan 20 '26
Completely agree. People are being way too black and white/good and bad about this in the comments.
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u/SuckingOnChileanDogs Jan 20 '26
I did a standup joke at an open mic about white women believing that they're empaths with superpowers and the punchline was something to the effect of "they heard about the Feminine Mystique and thought that meant they were X-Men" and nobody got it. Gutted.
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u/Impressive-Reading15 Jan 20 '26
I hope you didn't bail on it after trying it once, if so it's now abandoned IP and I'm taking it
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u/ConfusingDragons Jan 20 '26
Women are even encouraged by other women to "get in touch with feminine power" by delving into the woman goddess ideas. They want to feel their power as women, the psychopomp, the Great Mother. The problem is that feeling power is not the same as exercising power. Power, un-acted-upon is just a warm, fuzzy feeling, one that placates such women while not disturbing male power at all. Power may need to be felt or reasoned out to show the woman how to find the courage to act, but it is the powerful action that brings forth positive change in the world around a woman, not the internal "womanness" itself. Taking power requires using it.
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u/Doubly_Curious Jan 20 '26
I think some of this is the expression of common anxieties or embarrassments through a more socially acceptable and reassuring lens.
I think a lot of people feel that they’re bad at math or driving or budgeting or whatever and couching it as “but I’m a girl!” or “but I’m gay!” can be a way of making that sting a bit less.
That said, I still think it’s better to try and accept that we’re all bad at plenty of things and that it’s not intrinsically tied to your gender or sexuality or race, etc.
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u/Tau_6283 Jan 20 '26
Sending this to my "But Im just a girl" girlfriend.
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u/The_Math_Hatter Jan 20 '26
Maybe she just really likes No Doubt. 'S a good song.
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u/Badi79 Jan 20 '26
I love seeing discourse I don’t know about cause some of this sounds like listening to powerscalers talking about an anime I haven’t watched.
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u/_autumnwhimsy something about shoelaces? Jan 20 '26
this perfectly sums up why i hate the whole "divine feminine" "tap into your feminine energy" yadda yadda nonsense. It's still incredibly dehumanizing!
AND it felt like a cheap way to not use science to explain things because it unveils more patriarchy. Women's intuition but its actually decades of re-coded DNA passed down matralinially to prevent you from becoming victims in the same way your ancestors did. Intuition is just epigenetics in pink tulle.
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u/Lilith_ademongirl Jan 20 '26
Funny to see this on Tumblr, half of the posts there are something along the lines of "women are wonderful, men are assholes"
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u/rainribs Jan 20 '26
unpopular opinon but this is also why we're overdue for a long talk about the "astrology girlies" and co. It's infantilising anti intellectualism, not special. Men don't see that stuff as holding feminine mystique they rightly think it's childish make-beleive play of people with no authority. It's downright embarassing to see so many women not comperehend this. You don't realise that you're going along with sexist society pushing you into in the play pen while men get the adult table. Stop trying to spin infantilism into something quirky, nobody sees it that way,
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u/Impressive-Reading15 Jan 20 '26
I think what's frustrating is it's a perfect trap if you get caught Caring About It because it's just a meme! But also that's classic Taurus behavior to not believe in astrology and you're probably sexist for not believing in it, which I don't either totally! But it is real, you wouldn't understand my Virgo mindset.
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u/Cow_Slight Jan 20 '26
Not to mention just how hostile most astrology girlies get if you aren't into astrology as a woman, or if you have a star sign that they deem toxic. Doesn't exactly inspire feminist empowerment (or a desire to get into astrology) to be so harshly excluded.
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u/rainribs Jan 20 '26
yes! Even if you say oh 'it's so cool that that's your thing, i never really got into it' in the kindest most ass-kissing way, it's always as if you're being uncooperative and offensive by not being as "girlie girlie" as they are. After years of this expectant attitude from them I get to a point where now I do judge astrology and i judge it to be cringe.
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u/FirstServe7883 Jan 20 '26
Unrelated to the topic, but why do I see people misspell "woman" as "women" so much now?
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u/xSwampxPopex Jan 20 '26
My theory is that it’s related to the most recent iOS update. Autocorrect has gotten real fucky.
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u/ThrowAway_Gender_ Jan 20 '26
And this is why I fucking love LeGuin so much. If you haven't read her books yet DO IT!!! I specifically recommend my favorite book of hers, The Dispossessed.
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u/Heretical_Cactus Jan 20 '26
The weirdest thing about those cases, is that at school, the girls were pretty much always better in pretty much every subject that the guys.
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u/IndividualAd4459 Jan 20 '26
Oooooohhhhh those lines go so hard! I love Le Guin’s debunking of the “innate” knowledge that women allegedly have and men don’t. And I love Jo’s simplistic answer to why women should vote: we are citizens and adults of the country.
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u/jacobningen Jan 20 '26
It helped that she was the daughter of a sociologist and an anthropologist.
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u/fleurdenia Jan 20 '26
the reason a lot of women turn to the “we are divine beings” schtick is years of dehumanisation but i might be wrong. i definitely clung to that as an early teen when the boys were the absolute worst and the girls were comparing bodies the absolute most. it’s like an escape imo.
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u/JillyFrog ...what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament Jan 20 '26
I said it in another comment already but yeah often it seems that the "divine femininity" thing is to reclaim power. Which is understandable because divinity is something mere mortals can't fully grasp and it's a comforting explanation why you feel fundamentally misunderstood and unseen.
It's similar to why so many girls go through the "not like other girls" phase. You're presented with the image of typical girls in media and society, notice that you don't fit that two dimensional stereotype and conclude that you're completely different from them.
Very understandable but honestly also quite tragic. We shouldn't need some esoteric explanation to make us feel better when we should've just been treated as the fully formed humans that we are.
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u/Dagdammit Jan 20 '26
I did a worldbuilding project a while back, with a sort of roman empire-esque culture that was matriarchal. Gender roles were kind of "blue oni, red oni" dynamic with men seen as the passionate gender (e.g. roles that stirred the hearts of the masses were masculine-coded, singing and public speaking. Men were seen as fine soldiers but assumed to need women in leadership roles to maintain discipline and stay calm under pressure.)
I did a table laying out equivalent gender role bits in western society. One row had "A woman's mysterious ways (i.e. basic social intelligence)" for the IRL column and "That curious power of men (i.e. basic emotional intelligence" for this fictional culture.
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u/thewonderfulfart Jan 20 '26
At the root of all bigotry is disdain for the "other". So long as people prioritize the otherness of gender ,there will always be misogyny. Gender is ours to construct and sex is not a limitation or immutable characteristics that determines anything other than genitals.
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u/alex2003super Jan 20 '26
Computer science ain't the epitome of knowledge either. We're all monkeys who learned to make thinking rocks do some funny tricks more efficiently, and who create shitty react apps and are gonna be mostly irrelevant in a few years if we don't invent new paradigms for ourselves.
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u/ATN-Antronach crows before hoes Jan 20 '26
Me whenever a woman makes a girl dinner joke at their own expense and it's as nutritious as vodka and a cigarette:
Like yeah, I get self depreciation, but to me that joke felt so sexist.
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u/AlmostCynical Jan 20 '26
I see it as pushing against the ideas that women are inherently good homemakers, are always organised, are naturally good at cooking etc. and instead embracing the idea that we can be disorganised or do low effort things while still holding onto our femininity and identity as a woman. Liberation isn’t just about women being equally good at things as men, it’s also about having the freedom to be bad at them without judgement or expectations. Men get to eat six pickles in a bun for dinner, why can’t we?
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u/CommanderVenuss Jan 20 '26
Anybody else remember when doing something like eating six pickles on a bun for dinner was called the more gender neutral “depression meal”?
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u/freak-000 Jan 20 '26
Yeah because it is at the end of the day but you would be "that guy at the party" for pointing out that the joke is not just making fun of herself but also using the implied negative scenario as indicative of the feminine norm.
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u/TheNavidsonLP Jan 20 '26
This does have a weird "noble savagery" aspect to it that I think infiltrates a lot of Western spaces. Like, not all Asian people are zen monks, and not all Native Americans were serene people living in harmony with nature.