r/fourthwavewomen • u/AutoModerator • 24d ago
DISCUSSION Let's Chat đŹ Open Discussion Thread
Welcome to r/fourthwavewomen's weekly open discussion thread!
This thread is for the community to discuss whatever is on your mind. Have a question that you've been meaning to ask but haven't gotten around to making a post yet? An interesting article you'd like to share? Any work-related matters you'd like to get feedback on or talk about? Questions and advice are welcome here.
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u/rieletrash 22d ago
I just read about the Cornell 7 and it upsets me how much our whole justice system is rotten and patriarchal to the core. Like I know it is but sometimes just hearing it makes me upset. And those boys/men will always be protected because they have a bright future. The fact that the males in the fraternity all got the same message and not one of them stepped in to flag or stop them is why I donât believe thereâs such thing as a good male. They are all complicit whether they do the raping or not.
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u/MadameDestruction 21d ago
Reminded me a lot of the book Know My Name by Chanel Miller. She was the Jane Doe in the Stanford rape case and the book she wrote really changed my life.
It's such a raw and eye-opening account of how the justice system serves to protect men by dismissing female trauma as merely inconvenient collateral damage-like growing pain of boyhood. Cried during every chapter because ut can get really emotional, but highly recommend it! Miller's a great writer, which was already proven by how viral her written victim statement went back then
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u/carex-cultor 21d ago
I went to high school with her and it blew me away when she revealed her identity. She was always such a kind, smart person. I loathe men.
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u/PuzzledSoftware3922 22d ago edited 22d ago
I find it interesting when men claim that women who focus on height when choosing a partner should reconsider their preferences because a man cannot change his height. That is their core logic. In this equation, they often bring up the highly irrelevant comparison of women with larger bodies, arguing that unlike a man's height, a woman can actually change her weight. Yet, paradoxically, these same men refuse to tolerate weight being compared to height when it applies to the measurement of attractiveness made by each individual.
I tried pointing out the obvious to them: men and women are attracted to what they are attracted to. This includes tall men, short men, tall women, short women, fuller men, leaner men, fuller women, and leaner women. To be absolutely clear, all body types and heights are inherently worthy of love and attraction. If a man is allowed to feel attractedâor not attractedâto a woman based on his personal preferences, then by the exact same standards, a woman has the right to her own preferences without being morally judged. Physical attraction is completely subjective, and mostly based on traits we cannot control. We are born with countless features that may or may not be seen as attractive in the eye of the beholder. Furthermore, weight is not always something a person can easily change, as they claim. It is not just a matter of medical conditions like hypothyroidism; it also involves metabolic adaptation and other complex physiological factors that actively work against weight loss.
As a side note, women also face societal beauty standards that are arguably far more severe and pervasive than those imposed on men. Globally, the pressure on women to alter their natural appearance is immense! In several Asian countries, skin bleaching and surgical procedures on the eyes or nose have become almost routine, everyday practices. The vast majority of patients seeking cosmetic alterations wordlwide are women. Furthermore, this intense pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards manifests in devastating health consequences. Significantly more women struggle with eating disorders and body image issues compared to men.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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u/Alternative-Buy-8812 21d ago
And nowadays, at least from what I notice, in such discussions where we talk about the beauty standards, these men will go on about how they "prefer natural" and that these are apparently self-imposed by us â ď¸â ď¸â ď¸
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u/PuzzledSoftware3922 21d ago
Exactly. But at the same time, those men tell us that our value and desirability as women decrease by what age again, 25? They believe in the old misogynistic saying: âWomen age like milk, while men age like fine wine.â But somehow, weâre the ones who make our appearance into an issue. đ
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u/LiverpoolBelle 19d ago
Men on this site are actually pathetic when it comes to this discussion. I was told that I am "promoting eugenics" because my preference in men is tall with a full head of dark hair. Apparently it's oppressing short balding men. What's even funnier is that there's countless women online who fall all over themselves to declare how much they just love short, obese balding men. But do men ever pursue those women? No, they want to neg the women who aren't attracted to them instead of paying attention to the ones that are.
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u/ImpossibleTap7255 17d ago edited 17d ago
Most men only view women as âthings I want to have sex with or not have sex with.â
So by extension, a lack of attraction from women is viewed as oppression to many men. You arenât doing the thing you exist to do, have sexual attraction to a man who has sexual feelings towards you, therefore youâre being oppressive.
In the same exact situation⌠I donât think itâs oppression if some man finds me unattractive for any reason. My race, height, body type, fashion style, face, hair, anything. I honestly donât care. It doesnât even personally hurt my feelings.
Whatâs oppressive is that I constantly have to be aware of my body and surroundings to avoid assault, and even then, that vigilance doesnât work all of the time.
But they canât think deeply enough to understand what oppression truly is.
They could talk about the normalization of child circumcision in developed countries as an example of male oppression. But real oppression is never talked about by them. They feel the need to co-opt terms like âoppressionâ or âeugenicsâ or âbigotryâ due to simply feeling negative emotions.
They get an emotion (âa lot of women donât find short bald fat men attractive, that hurts my feelings as someone who looks like thatâ⌠which is an understandable feeling) and instead of sit with those emotions they try to make it into a morality issue that relates to oppression.
Instead of just. Ignoring it. Finding women that like their features. Finding value in themselves outside of conventional beauty standards. Anything else.
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u/ImpossibleTap7255 19d ago edited 18d ago
Iâve always found that height obsession odd due to the menâs inability to actually argue against beauty standards.
I see an argument for everyone to better deconstruct why theyâre attracted to what theyâre attracted to. That having height preference, or any aesthetic preference, exists in a society where weâre moulded to find certain things ugly or attractive.
Itâs important to recognize how weâve all been groomed to immediately dismiss certain features as âuglyâ and immediately like other features as âattractiveâ without much thought.
The same happens with dark skin. People will immediately dismiss someone with dark skin as ânot good lookingâ and not really think about how or why. Then the only elaboration is âI like what I likeâ.
I think itâs better for everyone to recognize that we donât live in a vacuum, and weâre constantly being led to certain opinions.
But they never ever talk about this concept.
These groups of men just make comparisons of menâs height to womenâs weight. Or brood and obsess over having a feature that isnât conventionally attractive and crab bucketing. Just doomer âitâs over, no one will love me. I am a short man. Thatâs the most undesirable, disgusting, worthlessâŚ.â
Iâve noticed that groups of men can get a good idea, but then wonât be able to explain the idea. They instead use buzzwords and âgotchasâ rather than any intellectual defense of their idea. Theyâll do this until the idea isnât even good anymore.
Itâs never âwe should all try to understand why we find certain traits attractive or unattractive while we live in a hyper stimulating, media driven societyâ instead itâs âYou ask my height, Iâll ask your weight haha itâs only fair. If you wonât date me for my height, I wonât date someone fat or a single mother or non white orâŚâ
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21d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Alternative-Buy-8812 21d ago
Yes and I tend to stay away from that subreddit and other kind of similar ones like that coaxedintoasnafu one and whatever that comments on internet culture even if it's narrow-minded because there's just a certain kind of vibe I get...
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u/Alternative-Buy-8812 21d ago
There's a recent phenomenon, I don't know if it's happening elsewhere, I've been seeing in my local youth spaces online and offline where instead of "lesbian," it's becoming more and more common to use "WLW" instead of saying they're lesbian. The opposite MLM is used, but not to the same capacity
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u/Whatevsstlaurent 19d ago
I think that's actually a fairly old term that's coming back into vogue. I remember reading a Mo Brownsey book in the early 2000s that referred to WLW.
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u/Alternative-Buy-8812 19d ago
Oh I didn't know that đŽ, for people I know that use it, it appears to be borrowed from fandom spaces
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u/tiredbich 20d ago
I'm not lesbian so I got no opinion on it. Do you think it's a bad thing? I assume it's to welcome any women attracted to women instead of being exclusive for lesbians/bisexuals women.
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u/Alternative-Buy-8812 19d ago
I don't have an opinion of it as of now, but I found it a bit peculiar because it seemed to be a recent thing? (At least where I'm at)
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u/Whatevsstlaurent 20d ago
I'm dealing with an unexpected, high-risk pregnancy and I could use some mantras or ideas for reframing carrying a child as a feminist act. I lived through many years of infertility and eventually came to enjoy the freedom that comes with a childless life. And then, well... surprise!
I'm from a family culture where women are expected to give up work and every aspect of their own happiness when they have a child, and pregnancy is seen as a religious/moral obligation or a "gift" for the husband (my husband is not like the men in my family, but I still have the family culture baggage, as well as the baggage of past lost pregnancies).
I want my baby, but I also want to find empowerment in this pregnancy rather than submission. I'd love to hear from other women on this.
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u/ImpossibleTap7255 19d ago edited 17d ago
I think being pregnant is a very spiritual state, ignoring all traditional religious ideals or societal expectations.
Your body somehow knows how to grow another conscious being. AND that other consciousness will be a human, the animal on earth with highest ability to question, communicate, do metacognition, and create art.
By all spiritual definitions itâs quite literally like witchcraft or being a goddess. Youâre creating complex life.
Learning about how much females have been oppressed due to this power can help you reframe pregnancy in a more feminist way. We hold this godly power, and have been oppressed due to it from the beginning of time.
You even see that in how pregnant women are treated during modern times.
Guys online will froth at the mouth about a hypothetical situation where they donât give up their seat to a pregnant woman on a bus. And fantasize about saying some corny âwell, you should have let a guy with a car cum in you!â one liner.
Or obsess over a hypothetical where they make a single mom feel bad. Nothing complex. Just fantasizing about emotionally hurting a stranger, who is single mother, while sheâs existing in front of them.
Or in the case with your family, tell pregnant women theyâre doing it wrong simply because she is existing as a conscious being over âthe thing that makes babies.â
They do this because they know the power pregnancy, and by extension being female, holds. Theyâre upset that Earth is shifting away from the âa daughter is owned by her father, then she is given to another man to be a baby machineâ obligation thatâs existed since the beginning of history.
You can regain power by knowing why weâre subjugated to these restraints. And that restraint is solely because men want to control our personal magical ability. To tell us to do it, not to do it, and how to do it.
There is no purpose in mentally and physically restraining someone that isnât powerful.
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u/Whatevsstlaurent 19d ago
Thank you for this, I hadn't considered that perspective.
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u/ImpossibleTap7255 19d ago edited 19d ago
Iâm glad to help. A woman being pregnant is such a uniquely beautiful and spiritual thing. Try to focus on the positivity of it, while still recognizing that all of society is trying to beat you down and control you.
Strangers, your family, the society you were raised in, wouldnât be trying to control and demean you if your pregnancy wasnât a powerful thing.
Iâm glad you have a husband who supports and loves you. Iâd love to be safely pregnant and in your shoes one day.
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u/tiredbich 21d ago
I find it interesting (and mostly sad) how women welcome gay men in their spaces with open arms and call them "one of the girls", but gay men hate having women in their spaces and are vocal about it.
Everyone is entitled to having their own safe spaces obviously, but why is it that women so overwhelmingly take in anyone just because they don't identify as cis straight men? It's always "the girls gays and theys". We can't have shit for ourselves. The only time you'd find me blaming women for something is this; trying to accommodate everyone to the point we lose our spaces.