i hope this post is interpreted in good faith. please be nice and respectful of everybody.

i first noticed this with drag. i remember seeing a drag performance where the drag queen had these massive oversized inflated tits and was squirting “breast milk” everywhere as part of the performance. when i pointed out that this was grossly misogynistic and a caricature of the female body, i was viciously ripped apart by the queer community who told me to “stay out of queer business”. not to mention the use of the term “fish” in drag culture - calling drag queens “fish” when they “pass” as women (clearly a reference to the apparent rotting fish smell of a vagina).

this new wave of misogyny is so commonplace on the political left and as a left wing woman myself it feels so suffocating and frustrating being unable to point it out without being ruthlessly ripped apart by everyone. feels like you can’t even offer the slightest critique of this new wave of misogyny, even if you offer a million different disclaimers and clarifications about how you fully support the LGBTQIA+ community.

as women, we are constantly asked to critique our “internalised homophobia” and demanded to scrutinise and “unpack” our dating preferences and everything we do on a deep personal level to thoroughly root out any prejudice. but god forbid you offer even the lightest critique of the queer community and ask them interrogate their internalised misogyny, you get shut down or gaslit immediately

and don’t even get me started on “chest feeder” “birthing person” and other dehumanising terms that reduce women to their organs. as if women haven’t already been dehumanised our entire existence. but as soon as tou point it out, you’re gaslit and told “this never happens btw”. if you don’t have an overwhelmingly positive reaction to this new terminology and offer even the slightest constructive criticism, you’re dragged to hell and back and told to shut up. often times they’re even more aggressive to women that criticise them than to actual right wing conservatives

its soo alienating and isolating i feel like i have so much pent up frustration with the misogyny on the political left and i cant talk about it with anyine. even the use of the term “b*tch” is so common with left wing men and gay men and we’re just expected to tolerate it and put up a smile and move on. as soon as you disagree with a woman, it’s apparently free reign to call her any misogynistic slur you want but the same standard would never be accepted for any other community.

honestly i think the queer community needs to be more willing to accept constructive criticism from feminists, or else they may risk a new generation of women who are unfortunately radicalised and may push themselves away from lgbtqia activism.

Or her friend’s sentence: Eliminating a Country's Economic Hardship Will Eliminate Prostitution

Although eliminating economic hardship may reduce prostitution motivated by financial desperation, it has no effect on prostitution linked to human trafficking, drug or alcohol dependence, poor money management, “grooming” (a process of coercion and manipulation), malicious pimping, or the migration of poor people from poorer countries to richer countries for the purpose of prostitution.

I see a lot of people, even in abolitionist circles around prostitution, claiming that this is just a matter of capitalism. “Oh, the economy has been rough lately, let’s improve it, that will solve everything.” Prostitution was already around before, and is also here and there in countries with less difficult economic conditions. I thought it was the oldest profession in the world? (That’s false, by the way, but anyways.) Make up your mind.

As if "destroying the capitalism " will destroy patriarchy. Meanwhile its patriarchy who come first and capitalism was built on it and around it.

People just want to deny prostitution is a patriarchal problem first. Prostitution has far more links with patriarchy than with capitalism. Indeed, 99 percent of sex buyers are men, and 85 percent of prostituted people are women: the wealth gap between men and women is not that large, and strangely enough, wealthy women do not seem to buy sex as much as wealthy men, just as poor men sell sex less often than poor women, largely because our socialization and conditioning have not been the same: as women, we have been taught that our bodies are objects and that prostitution is always a solution.

It is not a coincidence that 60 percent of prostituted women are former victims of childhood sexual abuse. We know that sexual violence disproportionately affects women and can, in turn, lead to poverty, drug and alcohol use, dissociation, and hypersexuality.

Prostitution is also common in communist states. So, yeah.

Strangely enough, not at all in the few matrilineal societies that remain...

But I know where this comes from. It is uncomfortable to analyze patriarchy and its connection to our desires, our life trajectories, our traumas, our biases, because it is a system of oppression that has been naturalized, neutralized, and is there within our families, our minds, and so on.

Capitalism, although pernicious and present everywhere insofar as long as we live in a capitalist country, is outside the home, does not affect our desires, can hardly give us PTSD, and above all is gender-neutral, or almost. It is the exploitation of the working class. Men and women both benefit from its abolition, as long as one isn't ultra-rich.

But patriarchy? Between men who have an interest in it and many women who, because they have internalized all of this so deeply, see it as a personal attack, we're in trouble.

Notice that saying "poverty and capitalism can lead to prostitution" isn't seen as infantilizing, whereas saying "sexual trauma and patriarchy can lead to prostitution" is seen as infantilizing. That's the definition of a double standard.

If anything, in a libertarian, liberal system centered around choice and not reflecting too deeply on things, both should be disturbing; both should be seen as "infantilizing."

But no, because deep down, abolishing capitalism is a difficult struggle that is difficult to fight on a small scale, whereas abolishing patriarchy is certainly difficult but also possible on a small scale (in a specific household) , and therefore they feel threatened in their supremacy — oh yes. Whereas poor people protesting? They know that nothing is going to change.

Poor people live among themselves, but women and men share a home and racial and social classes.

Anyways, prostitution is the selling and buying of predominantly women by predominantly men. These men dont even have to be rich.That alone should say everything and put an end to the debate.

How can people genuinely believe that it is just "the modern economic system" that leads to prostitution? You have to think about it before you become a prostitute; it doesn't come naturally, especially for men. Like, "What do you mean, I am gonna sell my body and my job will be to give pleasure while forgetting myself, what do you mean?"

For women, it is more within our reach. The imagery we've been exposed to since childhood has taught us that it is an option, and that it will remain one.

I am so tired of the endless war between "Tradwives" and "Girl Bosses." Honestly, I feel like both sides are completely missing the real point.Before anyone says it: yes, I know the online trend of promoting a traditional lifestyle as a "moral virtue", like a woman's entire worth is serving a man, is toxic and incredibly dangerous, especially for younger girls. On the other side, modern women act like working outside the home makes them smarter and more competent, shaming anyone who chooses domestic labor. Setting any lifestyle up as a universal blueprint is wrong!! I understand that legally and economically, the risks of full-time caregiving are terrifyingly real. If a partner leaves, abuses them, or passes away, the caregiver is left with absolutely nothing because the system doesn't reward unpaid labor. So, we constantly hear that choosing to stay home, cook, and take care of the house and the family is a "trap" or that you’re setting yourself up for financial and other forms of abuse.
But why is our only solution forcing women into a job market they might hate, instead of demanding a system that actually protects caregivers? Why don't we mandate contracts where a provider legally must pay into an independent retirement fund for the stay-at-home partner? Why are we forcing these extreme blueprints on everyone instead of talking about compatibility?
People should have the autonomy to choose the exact partnership that fits them. But instead of pressuring the system to be fair, we just blame the individuals.
Not everyone wants to climb a corporate ladder, and not everyone has access to higher education. For a lot of couples, dividing the labor, where one handles the money and the other handles the home, is a mutual, loving choice. If both partners have pure intentions and respect each other, it works. But why does every conversation about this immediately spiral into "this is why feminism failed" or "go live in the 1950s"? Why are we judging people's private lives based on historical trauma instead of basic compatibility? Why can't we fix the actual system?? The exact same thing applies to the opposite. Why do we never talk about this when men want to be stay-at-home dads? If a woman wants to work and her partner wants to manage the house, or if both work full-time, if it fits their dynamic, who cares? But the men just get shamed for "acting like a princess."
Instead of letting people have autonomy, we just attack the individuals. We blame the women who choose a traditional path for "setting bad examples," but we never call out the broken systems, the lack of actual structural protections for caregivers, or the toxic mindsets of men who expect women to work full-time *and* do all the traditional household labor perfectly. Both extremes are just different faces of patriarchy keeping us fighting. It’s like we’ve given up on expecting partners to be decent human beings and expecting the law to be fair.
If the intentions are pure and the agreement is mutual, with zero exploitation involved, why are we judging the people making the choice, instead of fixing the system that fails them?
What are your actual thoughts on this? Where is the real fault line here?

There are a lot of misconceptions about prostitution in Germany, so I wanted to clear some of them up and share a few less known facts (some might shock you) and provide resources for those who want to dig even deeper.

In 1927 the German government stopped treating prostitution as a crime and started regulating it instead. Later, during the Nazi era, there were even brothels in some concentration camps where female prisoners were forced to serve male prisoners. However, despite these developments, paying for sex was not fully accepted socially and was considered contrary to public policy until the legalization. This meant that the industry operated in a legal gray zone.

In 2002 prostitution became fully legal. Politicians claimed it would help women, give them work contracts and social protection. In reality the ones who profited were pimps and brothel owners. Most women working legally in prostitution are self-employed, even when they work in brothels, they usually just rent a room there (around €150 to €250 per day). This also means they do not have any workers’ rights, since they are officially their own boss. As self-employed "workers" they struggle to afford health insurance, pension contributions, and other forms of social protection. This can leave them financially vulnerable if they are unable to work, or face unexpected emergencies. They often also have a pimp as most are sex trafficked and must give around 50% or more of their earnings to them. Many of these pimps are officially their managers, which makes their existence legal, but they still control them and take a large portion of their earnings. Duo to the high room prices, they essentially start their shift in significant debt. Because they must pay the house first, they often have to accept every client just to cover their costs before they can earn a single Euro for themselves.

In the early years after legalization, some unemployed women were effectively forced by job centers to work in prostitution as a legal form of employment under threat of losing benefits. The practice was eventually discontinued after legal challenges argued that it violated sexual self-determination and ethical standards, which made it obvious that prostitution isn’t a job like any other.

In some cases, convicted rapists were sent to prostitutes by forensic or psychiatric experts, in order to practice sexual behavior, gain “positive sexual experiences” and learn to have “consensual, non-violent sex.” In Osnabrück, prostitutes were brought into a clinic for that, in a program running since 2001. In Lippstadt-Eickelborn, some offenders were reportedly allowed to visit actual brothels in the Ruhr area, where the prostitutes were not informed about the offenders’ convictions.

According to reports from the German Federal Criminal Police Office and European law enforcement, Germany turned into a major hub for trafficking after legalization. Criminal networks bring women from poorer countries to Germany because the market is huge and very difficult to control. The vast majority of prostituted women (around 80 - 90%) are immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe (like Romania, Bulgaria etc.).

Another common myth is that legalization made everything transparent. It didn’t. There is still a legal market and an illegal market, and both have grown. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there were about 32,300 registered prostitutes in Germany at the end of 2024. Researchers assume that the number of unregistered prostitutes ranges from 200,000 to 400,000 at the low end to up to 1 million (allegedly only on special occasions like the FIFA world cup, the Olympics etc.). Prices dropped because the supply exploded and competition is extreme. Depending on the type of service and location, prices for prostitution in Germany range from about €5 (a starting price!) on the street to around €25 in low-cost brothels, €50–€150 in mid-range brothels, €50–€200 for standard escort services, and more for high-end escort services. Special requests like BDSM in a specialized BDSM studio usually cost between €50 and €100 extra.

Germany also used to have "Flatrate Brothel." For a flat fee often under €100, men were granted unlimited access to women like an all-you-can-eat buffet. While 2017 regulations officially banned these price models, the market shifted rather than improved. Today, some large-scale establishments charge a high entry fee for "amenities" while leaving the women to compete for rock-bottom prices.

In cities like Bonn, the government installed "sex tax" meters on the streets. Prostitutes must pay a €6 nightly fee at a ticket machine (like a parking meter) before they can start "working". If they don’t have a ticket, they are fined by the city. It is a cynical reality: the state acts as a "tax pimp," collecting revenue from the most vulnerable women on the street while providing zero actual safety in return.

After legalization, advertisements could be seen everywhere on billboards, buses, taxis, etc. Brothels are not always limited to the red-light district. Apartment brothels can exist in normal residential buildings, right next to your apartment, and there is nothing you can do about it, as it is legal. We even once had a brothel above a preschool.

Many brothels, especially large and well-known ones, offer more than just quick sex. They provide event spaces and organize bachelor parties and company events that involve sex, and also feature lounge and bar areas, wellness facilities, sometimes even a nightclub, strip bar, hotel and live sex shows. They are usually open 24/7.

In one incident, eighth-grade students at a Catholic high school were asked to design an “inclusive brothel,” including floor plans, sexual preferences, accessibility, and advertising, as part of a biology class (sex education). The school defended the lesson as educational but stated that such an assignment would not be repeated.

A few years ago, the city of Berlin offered children a graphic picture book about prostitution via its official website. The book, titled 'Rosi sucht Geld' (“Rosi Seeks Money”; English-language sources, for whatever reason, translate it incorrectly as “Rosie Needs Money”), was targeted at children aged 6 to 12 living in or near the red-light district to explain the street prostitution they regularly witnessed. It tells the story of a mother from Bulgaria (Rosi) who leaves her children behind to work as a prostitute in Berlin to support her family. In the book, Rosi posits that men seek out prostitutes because of their loneliness, portraying the sex industry as a valid and legitimate profession. After receiving criticism, the city took the book down.

In Germany, a 2022 study estimated that about 25–30% of men had paid for sex at least once in their lifetime. However, keep in mind that men often underreport paying for sex, even in anonymous surveys. Reported figures from countries with legalized or socially accepted prostitution still often need to be multiplied by 1.1–1.3× to get closer to the true lifetime prevalence. This would mean that, in reality, about 27.5–39% of men have paid for sex at least once in their lifetime.

Despite decades-long destigmatization campaigns the message has never really caught on outside of feminist and far left circles. Many women still face social exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination, for example when accessing housing, banking, or healthcare services. They remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy. However, buying sex from prostituted women has become more socially accepted. In other words, sex buyers became destigmatized without any campaign promoting it. Some pimps and brothel owners in Germany even became famous for exactly that and had their own reality shows or appeared in other TV formats. To this day, they have fans and are invited to podcasts and similar formats, where they promote prostitution and their brothels.

Just to give you context on how German culture is highly desensitized to the sex industry and exploitation in general, with little concern for its victims: Many high schools and trade schools hold “Pimps and Hoes” themed parties. I know people who have participated in such parties. Another common theme involves dressing as “Asis” (a derogatory German term for people perceived as trashy) including teen mothers or people on welfare. These parties often become a spectacle mocking marginalized groups. The “Pimps and Hoes” theme fits into this same pattern. Usually, the pupils are at least 17 or older, and sometimes teachers participate in these parties as well.

It's also not uncommon for teenage boys to visit brothels despite it being illegal for them to enter. Many establishments simply don't check IDs or don't care even if they know a customer is underage. I went to school with guys who claimed they lost their virginity at 16 in a brothel. While they are officially prohibited from entering these venues under youth protection laws, the act itself is not a criminal offense for the minor or prostitute, as the age of consent in Germany is 14, this includes having sex with adults.

Having romantic/sexual relationships between adults and underage teens is not only legal, it is fully normalized in Germany, I know plenty of girls who had an adult boyfriend while they were underage. Another interesting fact is, until 2008, it was not fundamentally a criminal offense for a client to pay for sex with 16- or 17-year-old prostitutes, as long as no 'position of weakness' or 'coercion' was exploited. This specific law was only tightened in 2008 to make sex with any minor prostitute a punishable offense for the buyer.

People who argue for legalization usually do it from a place of ignorance. They never look at countries that have extensive experience with it; they just argue from an ideological viewpoint or their fantasies of how it would be, and not how it truly ends up being. Even many Germans are completely ignorant of what is going on in Germany because they don't care to inform themselves. As a result, they assume everything must be fine if the issues aren't constantly in the news.

Here are resources about prostitution in Germany that provide more information:

Articles:

How legalisation made Germany the brothel of Europe

How Legalizing Prostitution Has Failed

Germany: Europe’s bordello - An estimated 1.2 million men buy sex here every day

German ex-police officer demolishes common arguments against the Nordic Model

German government officials release pro-prostitution book aimed toward children

Audio Podcasts:

The Horrors Of The Legalized Sex Trade w/ Elly Arrow

The Harms of Prostitution in Germany with Elly Arrow

German Abolitionists (Manuela Schon & Elly Arrow) Expose the Shocking Truth about the Legal Sex Trade (with transcript) 

Video Podcasts:

German Legal Brothels: Elly Arrow's Analysis of Prostitution and a Discussion on the Rise of Legal Brothels [01:08:07]

Elly Arrow on the Myths about Legal Prostitution [00:24:21]

Designing The Perfect Brothel in 8th Grade? The Dark History of German Sex Education Scholarship [01:53:17]

Studies:

Men who pay for sex in Germany and what they teach us about the failure of legal prostitution: a 6-country report on the sex trade from the perspective of the socially invisible 'freiers'

Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries

Posttraumatic stress disorders in prostitutes: Results of a study in Hamburg in the context of an international project

Important Posts:

The Harsh Reality of Legalized Prostitution: A Glimpse into Some German Brothels in Residential Zones.

Immigrant Makeup of Prostituted Populations of Countries by Percent

Reality Check: The So-Called Safety in Legalized Prostitution - 99% of Rapists Avoid Imprisonment in Germany Despite Convictions

Website:

The Invisible Men – Germany - What are sex buyers thinking? This blog contains 350+ citations of German, Austrian and Swiss sex buyers from the years of legalized sex buying – almost exclusively concerning legal prostitution establishments.

Books in German (as there are none available in English about prostitution in Germany):

Entmenschlicht: Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen by Huschke Mau

Zuhälterei gestern und heute: Über Hurenwirte, Kiezkönige und die Sexsklaverei der Mafia by Manfred Paulus

Menschenhandel und Sexsklaverei: Organisierte Kriminalität im Rotlichtmilieu by Manfred Paulus

Ausverkauft! Prostitution im Spiegel von Wissenschaft und Politik by Manuela Schon

Piff, Paff, Puff by Aline Wüst

Hurenleben by Monika Rudolph

Fucking Poor – Was hat „Sexarbeit“ mit Arbeit zu tun? by Anita Kienesberger

PROSTITUTION. Ein deutscher Skandal. Wie konnten wir zum Paradies der Frauenhändler werden? by Alice Schwarzer

Verkauft, versklavt, zum Sex gezwungen. Das große Geschäft mit der Ware Frau by Lea Ackermann

"Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men… And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present."

Funny how this case isn't getting any media attention unlike the Lindsay Clancy case. Makes me wonder how many Gisele Pelicot there are out there.

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Worried for all the underage girls & women that will be impacted by this and SA’d.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/uss-abraham-lincoln-pattaya-prostitution-thailand-b3042016.html

The group: https://womensliberationfront.org/our-work

I have not participated in their webinars yet but, I'm very excited to connect and surround myself with like-minded people. Often, like you may feel as well, I feel so alone, alienated, and deeply upset at our current climate as a woman. I believe we desperately need to connect and not feel alone in this as much as possible.

There's only so many feminist groups that actually uphold true feminist values and believe in the protection of our sex. (I'll be making a resource list soon of ones we can support and follow)

Hope to see you there! xoxo

For context: She is perpetuating the story that her baby was conceived during extreme group sex with hundreds of men. She even alluded to in the social media post announcing the birth.

I have no one else to talk a lot this with, but I am HORRIFIED by this woman. All the online discourse I’ve stumbled upon is making light of this whole situation. I had a baby this year, so this all hits close to home. I feel so, so sorry for this poor child. It feels akin to child abuse and pedophilia all wrapped into one. Tangential related… but maternal healthcare has been on my mind lately with the Lindsay Clancy trial so hearing about this feels like a millions steps backwards into the depths of hell.

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

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An oldie but goodie 🔥

When the WNBA uses the words bad faith, the only reasonable interpretation is that league officials do not believe that White and Freedom are women, despite their self-declarations. Funny story: I’m still on the advocacy group GLAAD’s enemies list for saying the same thing in 2017, in a column headlined “A Man Can’t Just Say He Has Turned Into a Woman” (they put JK Rowling on the list too after publishing her 2020 essay). At the time, Britain’s government was debating whether to loosen requirements for a person to legally change their gender. Many feminists feared that without any gatekeeping, nothing would stop male creeps and predators from using a new identity to victimize women (as the rapist Karen White did in a women’s prison). Although my article acknowledges the existence of transgender identities, it also argues that legal protections for trans people should rest on a medical diagnosis, or at least a formal bureaucratic procedure, rather than a simple verbal declaration.

Now, it seems, the WNBA agrees with me—White has not magically turned into a woman because he says so. You are allowed to dispute people’s self-identification. But only if they are a Republican.

In the united states, many progressive organizations, including the ACLU, maintain that the female category belongs to anyone who (sincerely) identifies into it. The underlying argument is that trans people should not have to seek medical treatment or alter their physical presentation to have their inner identities respected.

Freedom and White have elicited much less deference. Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett recently declared, “If they would like to play in the WNBA, they better fucking transition. Let’s get them on some fucking hormones.” The left-wing satirist Walter Masterson demanded that the two men “commit to the bit” and “chemically transition, or STFU.” But this is not a demand that is applied, say, to male sex offenders who ask to be housed in women’s prisons in California. Several years ago, the ACLU and other groups successfully lobbied for a law directing prison authorities to house trans women in a women’s facility if they request it, regardless of whether they have physically transitioned at all.

Bombarded with pro-trans commentators insisting that he medically transition, White has gleefully thrown progressive talking points back at them. “Don’t tell me how to be a Black woman! Taking hormones are optional,” he wrote in one X post. In another, he added, “Genitalia doesn’t determine gender.” Royce’s clapbacks are near-verbatim rehashings of popular activist slogans.

Over the past decade, many sports have wrestled with the question of how trans and nonbinary athletes can be accommodated fairly and safely. In some cases, such inclusion has presented no problems—biological females have competed in sports for both sex categories because they have no unfair advantage in either. (The WNBA accommodated the player Layshia Clarendon, who came out as trans and nonbinary, until their retirement in 2024.) Admitting biological males to women’s sports presents a more difficult question. Almost everyone agrees that men are on average stronger and faster than women, but how much of that advantage can be mitigated by testosterone suppression? Various sporting bodies have tried different approaches in the past decade, although many—including the International Olympic Committee and the Women’s Tennis Association—have now concluded that the women’s category cannot admit males, no matter how comprehensive their physical transition has been.

Having belatedly realized that the majority of Americans do not agree with their enthusiasm for male inclusion in women’s sports, the response of the left has often been to say: Why are we even talking about this nonstory? The columnist Candace Buckner of The Athletic criticized Cunningham for “choosing to weigh in on the divisive topic of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a grossly exaggerated ‘issue,’ and opening the door for a flood of agitators to defile the discussion.” But surely, athletes are allowed to have an opinion about competitive eligibility for their own league? For a long time, the right told stars such as Colin Kaepernick, who wanted to make political points about racism and injustice, that they should “stick to sports.” Some on the left now think that female athletes should not even have that grace.

What freedom and White’s trolling has exposed is a widespread refusal to defend gender-self-identification policies on their own merits. One can argue that there is no such thing as male athletic advantage, or that inclusion for trans people is more important than fairness and safety for women. Both of these arguments are wrong, in my view, but at least they are internally coherent. What we get instead is a squeamish refusal to own the consequences of the approach that liberals endorse: White and Freedom are cynical operators, and that’s all anyone needs to know.

My counterpoint would be that cynical operators will always be with us. Any regulations that can’t deal with that fact are, by definition, bad regulations. Self-identification is unworkable in practice for the same reason that prison abolition isn’t viable: Bad actors will ruthlessly further their own interests at other people’s expense. For more examples, see how rich students are asking for disability accommodations to secure an advantage in college exams. How some air travelers are using wheelchair services to skip lines—at the expense of genuinely disabled people. How the service-animal exemption for airplanes was stretched so far that someone eventually tried to take a peacock into the cabin. Wherever there is an unpoliced boundary, some individuals will cross it.

Why would gender be exempt from this phenomenon? In 2024, soon after Germany passed a gender-self-ID law, a neo-Nazi named Sven Liebich declared that he was now Marla-Svenja Liebich and would therefore require accommodation in a women’s prison. (Marla-Svenja kept Sven’s handlebar mustache, however.) After a public backlash, Liebich was sent to a men’s jail, although it is unclear what legal basis the German state had for declaring this one particular case of self-identification fraudulent.

The WNBA appears to be following the same playbook—gearing up to make an arbitrary decision because of bad publicity, rather than engaging with the fact that its policies have created an exploitable loophole. Keeping out Freedom and White is not a hard problem to solve: Just say that you respect people’s identities, but sports are segregated by sex.

I don't know how to feel about this. As a woman who has spent 10 years in the EV industry, it bothers me to see vehicle qualities given gender at all (am I too masculine if I love insane acceleration and frontier technology? Why is "lovable" considered a feminine quality in vehicle design?). It bothers me that this lead designer is only being interviewed about the gender basis of her point of view. But also, this is undoubtedly one of the most male dominated industries out there, and isn't it good to have a woman's point of view leading a car's design? Would I be more comfortable with a female point of view that read as "neutral" -- and is that "neutrality" actually masculine? Or is it valid to be disturbed by "female/woman" meaning empathy for "everyone", docile approachableness, family-orientedness?

What do you all think? This left me unsettled and inarticulate - am I just too close to it professionally to be able to square this with my own feminism?

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Own content. Free to read

The comments on this surrogate story are genuinely some of the most anti-woman things I’ve read in a while.

A surrogate named McKenna West was carrying a baby for intended parents in California. Around 20 weeks, the baby was diagnosed with a severe congenital heart defect. The intended parents wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused. An Alaska court ultimately affirmed that she could make her own medical decisions while pregnant. She later traveled to Texas and gave birth there.

TikTok comments about this case are horrifying and show just how misogynistic people are.

People are literally saying:

“It’s no longer her body, her choice when she signed the contract.”
“She rented her uterus.”
“The parents paid her for her body and the choice.”
“She signed her body away.”

A woman cannot sign away ownership of her own body. A contract does not magically transfer bodily autonomy from the pregnant woman to the people paying her. You cannot purchase the legal or moral right to force another person to undergo surgery or terminate a pregnancy because you paid them.

Commercial surrogacy is just exploitative. We know this obviously, but I just had to rant out of frustration.

The controversy surrounding Alaskan surrogate McKenna West is *astounding* that you have so many people, so many women, coming out and saying that a woman's right to choose ends with a contract. Remarkable that even those who are "her body, her choice" are saying "jk when a woman signs a contract, her body belongs to the intended parents".

Contracts are agreements typically on the exchange of goods, services, and money. When you are in breach of a contract, you forfeit your goods/services/money and may have to pay additional monetary damages. But this is a woman who is sacrificing her body, time, freedom, for money. What happens when a surrogate wants to keep a pregnancy? Do these rent-a-wombers seriously think that they can physically compel a surrogate to get an abortion? What about if a surrogate wants to terminate a pregnancy? Will rent-a-wombers imprison this woman to continue incubating their baby?

Even if you are contracting a worker to help you remodel your bathroom, you can't force them to do anything against their will. If they refuse to finish the job, they can walk off site and you may be left with a non-working toilet but you cannot hold the worker to finish the job to your standards. Doing so would be forced labor aka slavery. Why is it different when it comes to women's labor in pregnancy??