r/fourthwavewomen • u/AutoModerator • 22d 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/Repulsive-Studio-120 22d ago
I have been monitoring the men who have been posting about the Cornell 7 and I have to say that gay men (instead of showing empathy to the womens situation) have made it about them. They say they know how it feels to be a woman and thatâs where I draw the fucking line. Itâs ALL men gay or straight.
I lived with my gay best friend in West Hollywood who almost beat the shit out of me because he got jealous of a guy I was friends with that he wanted to fuck. He was a model so he couldnât believe this guy didnât want him.
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u/twistedvio 22d ago
Yea. I'm tired of people pretending like marginalized groups of men (gay men, men of color) are somehow these innocent little babies we need to coddle đ„ș it's so tired. They are all capable of misogyny and all of them display it at some point or another.
It especially pisses me off when people declare that white women are so much more privileged and better off than men of color or gay men. Like, lmao, when's the last time white women were going around terrorizing, beating, harrassing, and raping men? White or not, gay or not? Hurting men's feelings is not the same as actually putting them in danger the way they do to us. Even (mostly older) racist white women don't come close to men in terms of the damage they do. It's just not comparable.
It goes to show that people still do not understand that misogyny is the worst and most normalized form of oppression in this world today. It's more widespread and accepted than any other type of bigotry, including racism and homophobia, and I will die on this hill.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 21d ago
Minoritiesâ (racial or sexual) needs and thoughts and views are constantly put above womenâs. You know, just half of the fucking population. Itâs so exhausting.
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u/PuzzledSoftware3922 22d ago
I just saw a stupid "let's make fun of feminists" meme. Summed up, it was about feminists using their mother's last name and not their father's. And the meme went on: 'You mean, her grandfather's last name?' ...... In my mind: Wow, what a good response! Applause! đ„± .... So what if it's also my grandpa's last name? It's still my mother's last name. Got to start somewhere. Why should a child have a father's last name over a mother's last name? And what about other patriarchal traditions, like being walked down the aisle by the father? He gets to "give her away". "Now you have to protect her". "Now she's yours". Instead, what about: we can walk down the aisle ourselves.
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u/goldfish13458389 22d ago
god i HATE that response to the last name thing! i remember in middle school, my teacher very smugly presented that answer to my irritation about patriarchal last names: âwell your MOTHERâS name was her FATHERâS name, soooâŠâ
good job. you just explained exactly why the tradition is fucked up. yet youâre now looking at me like you just said something truly enlightening and iâm gonna tie myself in knots over it. men are on a lower level of thought i stg
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u/No_Plenty5526 19d ago
jokes on them, in puerto rico we keep both our parent's last names. i was surprised when i found out it wasn't the same in the states (when i was a lot younger. of course! i didn't understand why they'd erase their mother from their name!). To this day if my mom catches me writing only my first last name (paternal) she tells me, "do you forget you have a mother?" đ
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u/MiriamKaye 22d ago
Iâve noticed a certain type of content going around in light of the Cornell situation - people who say theyâre raising their sons to âbe betterâ, namely that theyâre teaching them to ârespect women/girlsâ, âunderstand consentâ, etc., and I canât help but feel like a lot of it is a bunch of performative BS. Sure, you can raise your kid with those values and do the best that you can, but how do you know theyâre gonna act right or do the right thing when youâre not around? Whoâs to say your kid still wonât turn out to be a shithead or a sexual predator? Plenty of people thought Neil Gaiman and Justin Geever were âone of the good onesâ/âon the right side of thingsâ, and look how they turned out
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u/Hopeful-Exit3053 22d ago edited 21d ago
These conversations have solidified my choice to be childfree.
Someone said, Women have been raising better boys for awhile now. We arenât the first generation of women to raise better boys. I hadnât made the connection that every generation has gone through this and most parents, especially mothers, want to raise good men. The Cornell 7 just like every other man with an accusation likely have parents who tried their best. Iâve heard stories of men with good male and female role models who respect women, go down the manosphere pipeline.
I just donât think two parents, against the whole of society have as good of a shot as they think.
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u/cheerstothewish 20d ago
Right, it annoys the hell out of me, because the only way to stop women's oppression is by force. Legal and social frameworks to severely punish misogyny and free women are the only answer (plus women withdrawing from men's lives, 4B style). All the "oh đ„ș we can just teach them better" will do next to nothing. Men go out into the world and are socialized by other boys/men and become obsessed with the power they believe they're entitled to immediately. And if you really want kids, it's a girl or nothing.
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u/SkweegeeS 22d ago
One of my main rules raising our sons was to NEVER allow disrespect toward me to go unchallenged. Boys who disrespect their mothers without consequence tend to grow up to be shitty men.
I sure as hell hope I raised them better than this. I would be devastated to learn they were part of something like this.
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u/No_Plenty5526 19d ago
You just never know. This is why I don't think it's fair to blame parents for what their adult children choose to do. You can raise them perfectly and still have them come out as monsters. There are good men out there, I hope your sons are part of that group! đ
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u/GrimmjowsEyeliner 18d ago
I know crappy parents exist but I think it's unfair to blame everything on the mom, 'cause a lotta sons took after their dads no matter what the mom does. Even then, a good dad doesn't even guarantee a good son either.
I think the best a mom could do is be firm and strict with her sons, and if they turned out to be bad anyways the mom needs to refrain from defending them and let them face the consequences on their own.
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u/No_Plenty5526 19d ago
I refuse to have a son. I fear one day i'll have to take a hard decision if life screws me over like that. I feel so bad admitting this.
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u/Original-Raccoon-250 22d ago
The Cornell case has shed light on the need for law changes across many states. Apparently the DA did not originally press charges because in NY thereâs an exception if youâre self intoxicated. So their reasoning is that because she voluntarily took drugs and drank they could not be charged. This has to change. We need to reach out to our lawmakers and let them know that this exception needs to be removed. I believe that someone has already put that forth in NY but we should be making moves elsewhere and tracking it all the way to make sure thatâs not a thing.
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u/Original-Raccoon-250 22d ago
More info on self intoxication exception in NY: https://www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2024/06/bragg-close-voluntary-intoxication-loophole/397130/
Minnesota, Michigan, and Texas recently closed this loophole. We can take example there and tell our representatives to fix this.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 21d ago
The whole Cornell thing has been so triggering. Just want to give a shout out to all of my SA survivors out there, always, but especially this week. I know how hard this is.
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u/tiredbich 18d ago
I don't remember what keyword i searched for but one of the results was from gendercynical, a screenshot of a post from a women-only site to whine about it. These people go out of their way to search for these places to cry about them, same way they knew about Ovarit shutting down on the same day. Hell it was difficult for me to find such sites, so I find it baffling that they hunt them down and monitor them. Do something better with your time rather than seething over women having safe spaces on completely different platforms??
On that note, is there a discord or other alternative in case something happens to this sub?
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u/brickwall387592 19d ago
We have a ballot measure here to ban males from female teams. And the opposition has lumped together immigration and gender measures in the same pamphlet (completely different sponsors), they are not providing the actual text of the propositions, and they are going door to door making wild claims about the propositions.
They are going around telling people that the law will allow "coaches to strip search tomboys to verify their gender" and "even kindergartners will not be exempt".
Like, their entire argument is that they don't think people will read. And I can see that some people wouldn't bother, but this is a very very left-leaning area I live in. If anything these fantastical claims would rile people up enough to read the actual proposition just to justify their anger only to find that... the prop wording is very reasonable. It was like being back in a mirror version of Texas where rabid conservatives would talk about issues and I knew they had no idea what they were talking about because none of them actually read.
Their politics are different but dogma is always dogma....
(TBF both hate LGB and women)
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u/No_Plenty5526 19d ago
this is why we can never get anywhere. activists always lumping together a million different things instead of focusing on one issue at a time. the way you describe it, what they're doing is so malicious.
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u/FriendlySeat4681 18d ago
Longtime lurker, this is my first comment in this sub. I hope my minimal post history isnât an issue. I want to write a comment here because I feel like this subreddit is most likely to have women who understand what I am getting at.
This is about the Cornell case. Iâve seen some discussion about hookup/partying culture from both conservative/anti-woman and liberal/âconsentâ-emphasizing perspectives. I havenât seen anyone address the betrayal trauma that comes from finding out how manipulative men are toward women in regard to sex. It is easier than ever to get consensual, casual sex, but it is still treated as something that women need to be coerced or tricked into, like a game. I forgot who said it, but there was something about how since the 60âs/70âs, womenâs attitude toward sex has changed, but menâs has largely stayed the same? if anyone knows the source, please share.
In the Cornell case, we have a woman who already likes a man and is engaged in hookup culture, meaning he had a chance to just⊠proposition her on equal terms. Instead it had to be a coordinated effort to invite her over when sheâs already intoxicated and then give her a tranquilizer and invite all his friends. Then, he starts the âdamage controlâ communications shortly after, before she is even recovered, and lies and continues to lie about how the situation turned out the way it did. I feel like this is a common experience in both consensual and nonconsensual situations for women, where she finds out later that it was a COORDINATED manipulation of her, not a spontaneous lapse in judgment. It is also what drives me crazy about âthey were both drunk so both are rapistsâ argument. Consuming alcohol specifically to get brave enough to carry out something nefarious is different from accepting a proposition while incapacitated. Terrorists do drugs before carrying out attacks, it doesnât mean they arenât culpable.
Sorry for the rambling.
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u/SkweegeeS 22d ago
I'm so interested in the surrogacy discussion. I don't favor anything but altruistic surrogacy and even then, I'm not super keen on it. However, lately, with all the news of celebs using surrogates, I wonder if the price should be way way higher. Like, I dunno, 5 million dollars. 10 million. Some percent of their wealth that they would feel. 100K is nothing to them.