mautlyn:

tagtra:

mautlyn:

whoa yeah I’ve never really thought of it this way but mainstream (liberal) feminism really is about “learning to enjoy patriarchy” 

How is that?

this might be difficult to explain from scratch so to speak but liberal feminism is essentially based on the idea that femininity is devalued and generally under attack. this is opposed to 2nd wave feminism (which is what most of my feminism is routed in) which states that women are under attack and femininity is an oppressive construct intended to keep women subordinate.

the idea that it’s femininity which is under attack implies that femininity is inherent to women, and that women are oppressed for our femininity. again, this is opposed to the idea that women are oppressed with femininity. 

this ends up leading to ideas like ‘masculine privilege’–butch women oppress & have power over feminine women, and butch women reject femininity due to internalized misogyny (since they’re supposedly rejecting their nature). I’ve actually been accused of the above by a liberal feminist. 

2nd wave feminism would state that “masculine privilege” doesn’t exist, because masculine women are still oppressed for being women under patriarchy and are punished in various ways for rejecting femininity (the tool meant to oppress them). only male privilege exists, and masculinity is only rewarded in males.

the foundation that mainstream/pop/liberal feminism has built itself on is why there’s a huge emphasis on ‘weaponized femininity’ (think ‘eyeliner so sharp it could kill a man’), enthusiastically embracing femininity, far more sex-positivity than sex-critical discussion (leading to ideas like “criticizing porn is anti-feminist”,  “criticizing bdsm is anti-feminist”, etc.), a general distrust of butch or gender non-conforming women (“trust no butch”), “feminist” articles about what type of lipsticks stay on best while giving blow-jobs (I’ve actually seen this), body-positivity that centers around ‘all body types can be beautiful’ rather than ‘women do not have to be beautiful and should not focus on it’, etc etc etc. I hope this was an ok summary even though I’ve really oversimplified the whole thing lol.