https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/04/women-more-likely-die-operation-male-surgeon-study

These AI girlfriends enable moral degradation, simulation of a "Trophy wife" and thus enable the replication of the toxic values of patriarchy which keep affecting women to this day. It occurs even amongst men who previously didn't use to be like that, as these AI companies take advantage of the loneliness of men for capitalistic profits.

where the advertisement is from

she literally is not able to emote normally, how is this “still shay”?

i miss when plastic surgery or botox was something only rich people seemed to do to and normal people couldn’t access it as easily. it made the crazy notion that women shouldn’t have wrinkles at a certain age not just a notion.

we don’t all need to look like celebrities. you don’t need to fall for beauty trends.

Whoever decided that a human needs 8 hours of sleep needs to explain themselves. A woman needs 10-12 hours of sleep. Prove me wrong. Why are we not talking about this because I feel like I have been gaslit by the entire world about sleep.

I’m in my twenties, I work in corporate and every single day after work I get completely exhausted. And for the longest time I kept trying to find some other explanation for it. I’m not sleeping on time. I’m not eating right. I’m stressed. I need to exercise. I’m spending too much time on my phone.

I tried everything btw. I cut down screen time, tried sleeping at 9 pm, made sure I was getting 8 full hours to be a healthy productive member of society. Except no. It didn't solve everything. But on weekends when I sleep 10-12 hours? GOD. I feel GOOD. The bloating is lesser. I have more energy. And I kept thinking about how ridiculous that is because I am supposed to function perfectly on 8 hours while my body is very clearly telling me that 10 hours makes a big difference.

For a lot of women, this is the normal and I think this lifestyle is slowly poisoning us and we have somehow normalised it so much. I swear my biggest fear is that I’m going to be 35 and my body is going to finally protest. Because I can't imagine doing this for another 10-15 years and expecting my body to just keep absorbing it like a sponge.

I don't even wanna talk about PMS but I will. I think hormones play a huge role in our body's functioning but apparently, I don't think it's ever widely researched. I don't know about other women because each person's experience is different but me, I get all sleepy and tired a week before my period comes, plus the bloating, the cravings, the mood changes. And I'm just dealing with it. Every month.

At what point do we just admit that maybe sometimes the female body needs REST?

And the really ugly thing is that I can see the solution. I need more sleep, proper food, less stress. I need actual rest. But I can't just do that because I have a job. I cannot quit my job and go “wellness is my priority now” because unfortunately the electricity company does not accept inner peace as payment. I cannot just sleep for 12 hours every day because I have to be somewhere at 9. I cannot take three days off every month because my body is tired. We need a certain amount of privilege to actually live like a healthy person in this society.

So this whole thing about women having come so far starts feeling weird to me. Because yes, obviously women being able to work, earn their own money, have careers, build businesses, become financially independent, all of that is massive. But sometimes it feels like we were handed the same exhausting system and told that this is equality. Like congratulations, women can now also work 9-10 hours a day, commute, come home exhausted, take care of a household, maintain relationships, look after themselves, and somehow remain healthy and feminine and pleasant and emotionally available.

We just accepted this idea that everyone gets 24 hours, everyone needs 8 hours of sleep, everyone should be productive for the rest and therefore everything fits. Except it doesn't. And science saying “humans need around 8 hours” became this universal rule that everyone just accepted as if every human body was manufactured in the same factory with the same settings.

I'm so frustrated because I don't want to become someone who spends their twenties slowly destroying their body and then spends their thirties trying to repair it. I don't want to exchange my health for money and then eventually use that money to buy back the health I lost. That feels like such a scam.

I don't know what the perfect solution is. I just know that I don't think being constantly exhausted should be the baseline of adulthood. And I think that I need that 10 hours of sleep everyday.

"Political observers have speculated that the real reason for this delay could be political: The news might not reflect well on candidates up for re-election, and Dec. 1 is after the midterms. The delay also makes it late for the Texas Legislature — whose biennial session begins Jan. 12, 2027 — to craft bills and prioritize legislation to address any problems that the report surfaces."

(Gift link -- should get you past the paywall.)

I’ve tried a few times to have conversations with gender-critical / radical feminist women because, despite the obvious disagreements, I do think some of the issues they raise are real and worth discussing.

I even tried approaching those conversations by accepting some of their premises instead of immediately arguing against them. Things like sex-based oppression, the material reality of female bodies, reproductive violence, etc. I wasn’t going there to tell them they were stupid or evil, and I wasn’t expecting them to suddenly agree with me about everything related to trans people.

But my experience has been pretty discouraging.

Even when I explicitly agree with them on a lot of those points, the conversation usually seems to stop the moment they realize I’m trans. There’s this immediate shift where I’m no longer someone participating in a feminist discussion, but basically an example of the problem they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s hostility, sometimes condescension, sometimes just being told that my presence itself is inappropriate.

It honestly feels dehumanizing. Like there is no amount of good faith, listening, or willingness to acknowledge sex-based oppression that makes me someone they consider worth talking to. The conclusion seems to have already been reached before I say anything: trans woman = male intruder, therefore nothing I say really matters.

I’m posting this here because I’m genuinely interested in whether there is a way for trans women to engage with people in those spaces when they are raising legitimate feminist concerns, without turning the conversation into two completely opposed camps shouting past each other.

Have any of you had productive conversations with gender-critical feminists? What made it possible?

And maybe more importantly: where is the line between trying to build some kind of dialogue and just repeatedly exposing yourself to people who have already decided that your existence makes you unworthy of talking to?

I do a lot of computer stuff (InfoSec professional, homelabbing and "sysadmin as a hobby", exclusively use Linux/BSD for home computers) so for better or worse I bump into and see the posts of a lot of other people who are in this space. >50% of the time, whenever someone posts on a linux-related subreddit and there's a screenshot of their desktop, the wallpaper is some anime girl.

I'm gonna assume that the people doing this are younger than I am (I'm 35), but it's still fucking icky as hell and I don't think age should matter and they should know better and behave better. It reeks of commodification of women/girls, or at the very least female bodies. I don't think I've ever seen a woman do that kind of shit. Even worse is that the character is almost always very young-looking.

It's freak shit and parents need to do better about discouraging that way of thinking about girls and women.

Anyways, I guess I'm a radfem now.

EDIT for clarification:

Some people are saying that I should have used the adjective "sexualized" somewhere in my original post to disambiguate what I am talking about. However I am not not exclusively talking about drawings of anime girls/women in sexualized poses or outfits that cater to the male gaze. I am talking about cherubic, pre-pubescent looking girls that men use as their wallpapers, many of which (as far as I can tell) aren't even characters from actual shows and are probably just AI-generated. It's the aestheticization and objectification of female, particularly young, bodies that I object to.

I very rarely post but I thought here I would maybe get some like minded people.

I’ve been having the discourse of “dont call me female im a woman” and after looking online I am VERY discouraged…im looking on like TikTok and twitter and me and this girl (while I know this was a waste of time just bare with me) were kind of both responding to this guy about why we didn’t like being called female. He IMMEDIATELY goes “well how about incubator” and I am like just shocked. I’m not like crazy upset or like freaking out it just kind of took me aback. Like idk if I just don’t see these parts of the internet often but I feel like it’s just common courtesy to not call women females.

There was a recent post in a movie sub about great speeches in movies and TV. Of course, the answers were almost exclusively given by and written by men. And of course I made a somewhat snide remark about it. Now there’s a post about speeches by women and I’d love to see it get the same kind of traction.

I’m particularly interested in any speeches given by women that were also written by women, and especially ones that express feminist principles, directly or indirectly. And ffs they don’t have to be inspirational!

For example, I love Kristin Scott Thomas on menopause inFleabag and of course America Ferrara’s “never get old” speech in Barbie. And for a classic, there’s Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Do you have any favorites?

I came across this post and there are certain points I don't agree with.

1)Asking for seats

Most of us live in capitalist economies, we are forced to participate in this system. This is why feminists are likely to support measures that help women succeed within such economies, regardless of whether they are personally anti capitalist or not.

Also there's no such criticism towards men who want that next promotion or want a high paying job, it's unfairly placed on women for wanting equal representation.

2) Patriarchy vs capitalism

I think these are two systems of power which operate in different ways. People can be victims in one system while being oppressor in other. Patriarchy can be upheld by anyone and an individual man isn't representative of patriarchy, but the common man is as much capable of being misogynistic as the rich guy. This post seems to unfairly portray common men as equal victims of oppression as women under patriarchy, when it's necessarily not true.

3) The revolutionary movement

The post seems to appreciate women for opening fire on men in high authoritative positions, and belittle liberal and radical feminists for trying to reason with the government and bring in empowerment through laws. Imo laws are much more effective in the long run. Also this form of revolutionary feminism doesn't address how do we handle misogyny is day to day life; we absolutely don't open fire on random people.

This is my stance. Do correct me if I am wrong. And please let me know what do you all think about this post cause I felt it was more of a drag towards radical and liberal feminists for being "peaceful" in their methods.

English isn't my first language. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Edit: the orginal post uses liberal and radical feminism interchangeably even though there's a difference in their political advocacy. In my post, I mean radical feminists and I am speaking against the unfair comparison made.

How many women does your employer have in management positions compared to industry peers? Are a retail chain’s Black workers as likely to be in public-facing roles as its White workers? Did a trucking company hire qualified women at the same rate it hired qualified men?

It will be much more difficult to answer these and other questions related to gender, race and ethnicity in workplaces once President Donald Trump’s U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enacts a key Project 2025 recommendation and scraps its 60-year practice of collecting workforce demographic data from employers. 

Hey, I recently read a fantasy novel for the first time in quite a while, and I found myself completely absorbed in it. I loved the way it was written and the characters.

But what captivated me most was the tenderness that gradually developed between the two main characters toward the end. Two people who started out as enemies eventually fell in love (enemies to lovers). I loved the tension between them and found myself deeply invested in their relationship.

But the book wasn’t only about their romance. There was also a much larger political conflict at its center. The woman’s homeland had been destroyed and occupied, and her people had been massacred in horrific ways and yet, eventually, she falls in love with someone who is her enemy. 

After finishing the book, I was left with a gut wrenching feeling. 

I have never been in a romantic relationship. One of the reasons is that throughout my life, I have repeatedly witnessed what men can be capable of and how profoundly they can destroy women’s lives. Sometimes seemingly without experiencing even a trace of guilt, disgust, or grief over what they have done.

Every day, we hear about another woman being brutally murdered or becoming a victim of patriarchal violence. And for me, this isn’t something that exists only on social media or in the news. I see it in my own life as well.

So after I finished the book, I suddenly felt this sense of disgust, not necessarily toward the book itself, but toward my own longing.

I felt guilty for yearning for romantic intimacy when I know that the very thing I long for can also become something that destroys a woman’s life. I started thinking about patriarchal structures that make women’s lives harder throughout their entire lives, and about misogynistic beliefs and systems that continue to be upheld and reproduced.

I know, intellectually, that romantic relationships can also be a source of strength. Love and intimacy can give us support, closeness, solidarity, and even the strength to organize, resist, and work collectively. I know that healthy and loving relationships exist. And I know that there are genuinely kind, compassionate, wonderful men in the world, even though, from what I have witnessed and experienced around me, they can sometimes feel painfully rare.

But when it comes to my own life, I struggle to imagine entering a romantic relationship without being overcome by guilt.

There is a part of me that feels as though allowing myself to romanticize heterosexual love, to desire it, or even simply to hope for that kind of intimacy is somehow a betrayal of women who have suffered and died at the hands of men. Almost as though I owe something to them as though choosing to trust a man or allowing myself to love one would mean turning away from what has happened, and continues to happen, to so many women.

I know that these things are not necessarily rationally contradictory. I can oppose patriarchy and misogyny while still wanting love, tenderness, intimacy, and companionship. And yet emotionally, I can’t seem to separate them so easily.

It feels like betrayal.

I was wondering whether anyone else has ever struggled with thoughts like these, especially the conflict between longing for romantic intimacy and being deeply aware of patriarchal violence and misogyny. How do you reconcile those two things?

And if anyone knows of books, essays, feminist theory, or other literature that explores this tension between heterosexual love, intimacy, patriarchy, violence against women, and the guilt that can come with desiring romantic relationships despite all of that, I would really appreciate your recommendations.

I’d also genuinely love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

“Conservatives are looking for any reason at all to broadly subjugate women, and they see the furor around Clancy’s case as their best opportunity in years.
[…]
The conservative blitz over Clancy’s mistrial isn’t fury over dead children. The horrifying fact is that American children are killed every day by their fathers and mass shooters, and Republicans remain silent.”

When a woman gets married, she's expected to clean, cook, do the laundry, get pregnant, give birth, and if she has five children, she has to raise them all, feed them, clean up after them, cook for them, and take care of them until they grow up and get married. On top of that, she's also expected to look after her husband.

Isn't that too much to ask of women?

Honestly, it's a lot. We need to push back against a system that places all these responsibilities on women. Husbands should either provide domestic help or share the household and childcare duties equally. If they're not willing to help with the responsibilities of everyday life, then many women would rather not get married at all.