hi everyone, I'm new here and I just have been having this doubt that is killing me. lately I feel like I can only think about men and what they think of me, how they perceive me and i have been anxious outdoor because I always think that there's something wrong with me. I have always been a radical feminist and when I had these thoughts I just realized how irrational they are and that always worked. I read about feminism, I have hobbies, I have friends I don't know why I've been like this, maybe it's an age thing (I'm 17)? can someone say what I should read or do for it to stop?

I work at a tattoo studio, and I recently posted a Reel on my professional social media account discussing women’s experiences in the workplace, harassment, autonomy, and the importance of respecting personal boundaries.

The video was intentionally general. I did not mention the studio, any coworkers, or any specific situation. I did not accuse anyone of anything, and I even left a comment on the post making it clear that the video was a general reflection and not a personal story.

Shortly afterward, the owner of the studio, who is also my tattoo mentor, messaged me late at night on WhatsApp saying that the video “didn’t sit well with the guys at the studio.” He specifically mentioned several of my male coworkers and said that, because the studio is a place where I am “welcomed” and the staff is mostly/all male, my post could be interpreted as me generalizing about them and creating tension within the workplace.
What bothers me is that nobody was actually named or accused. The video was about a broader social issue, and I never said that my coworkers or my workplace had done anything to me.

I now feel pressured to explain myself and, implicitly, to remove the video. To me, that feels like an attempt to control what I can and cannot say on my own professional social media account simply because some coworkers identified themselves with a topic I was discussing in general terms.

I understand that people can feel uncomfortable with certain opinions, and I also understand that workplace relationships can be sensitive. But at what point does expressing a general opinion become “attacking your workplace”?

I don’t want to create unnecessary conflict, but I also don’t think I should have to delete a completely non-specific post just because other people assumed it was about them.

Am I in the wrong for refusing to delete the video? How would you handle this situation?

I've been researching about matriarchy in history and how it compared to patriarchy. From what I've gathered, matriarchal/matrilineal societies have/had more 'equality' than patriarchal ones did and do have. They are described as less cruel, more moral, but I wonder, why is that this is how they operate?

Do men really have some innate violence that will show itself no matter the century, even if we remove societal conditioning?

Are woman naturally, biologically unwilling to participate in tyranny?

I can't really find answers on the internet, I'd like to believe that as humans we are different from animals, that we aren't docile or violent based on gender (though that may be a foolish hope). After all (according to my limited knowledge) supposedly as hunter-gatherers we were rather equal. Correct me if I'm wrong in any of this though!

I’m genuinely curious what folks think on this. Not what parts are the worst cases, but what parts are easiest to change/replace/disrupt/etc.

Also friendly reminder of the rules of this sub (no TERF/SWERF/etc). Let’s not canabalize.

I went through six situations like this between the ages of 11 and 22.

(There were more extra men who harassed me or pushed me/ gaslight me meanwhile; all during school). I start to suspect those commited men use relationship status to shift the blame onto the victim. Maybe this is common, but kept secret or treated as taboo. What do you think?

We need to hack this.

I did not provoke any of them. Commited men: those were the most adamant/ spicy, involved my cousin’s husband, my coach, and male classmates.

In the more extreme cases (with my classmates), they made inappropriate or intrusive physical contact. Most of them only said provocative things and then acted as if I owed them something in return.

They do not necessarily “like” you or me; they do this because they identify us as the easiest scapegoat.

I did not initiate any of this. Taken together, these behaviours amount to ambiguous but provocative approaches, performative friendship, stalking or persistent unwanted contact; intimidation, taunting, lies, creating confusion and moral contradictions, provoking hostility, shifting the blame, “baiting,” testing boundaries, sexual harassment, unwanted touching, looking without consent or context, and psychological harassment.
All of them were in relationships.
It is taboo, so it seems less visible. Every man would want to hide this.

I am a strong proponent of consent and consent education and I myself have a very complicated relationship with my sexuality, as I am a survivor and have been made to feel all sorts of ways about my sexuality -- I am doing this wrong, I should do this more, whatever. But when I read smut or imagine it, I get a thing out of reluctance/power imbalances (woman is stuck/ gets blackmailed idk). This is all just fantasy and would never be hot IRL but I still don't know how to feel about the fact that this kind of thing is hot to me -----in fantasy only!!!------ Like I don't know how to feel about it as a feminist.

She's Australian, atheist, bisexual and he's a Muslim from Bangladesh. According to what she told me, he's not planning on leaving Islam and he's not questioning it. When she talks about issues women and homosexuals face, he agrees, doesn't really add anything but he's still a Muslim. When I met her she said she's a radical feminist. I posted this on r/exmuslim, it was deleted after 30 minutes but several people commented that he's just pretending, trying to convert her and that they knew of women who were the same but ended up marrying them, converting and becoming tradwives. What is your opinion on this?

I don't talk about how radical feminism and trans people relate enough mainly because of people who lurk. People don't hear the way they sound when talking about trans women and trans people themselves. I've heard people pull out the "they were fine before they started getting vocal" and I just can't help but think about how misogynistic that sounds.

All I can hear is "They were fine when they received their just desserts quietly" like how are you as a radical feminist against queer people having a larger voice. Then continue to chew on misconceptions and cherry picked sources as if they were fact without much pushback from anyone else. Like regardless of whether you view trans women as women or not there isn't a single slice of power trans women have in politics or legislation. They are not your biggest problem, they aren't even a problem at all. If you genuinely believe trans people are an issue, you aren't radically feminist you are radically useless.

When the rape industrial complex (walking while trans/v coding) is brought up and these people are told that there are trans sex workers being targeted by the police and then pimped out by prison staff the primary response is that they don't see them as women so they don't care. It shows me that systematic rape isn't a problem depending on who's the victim, which is fundamentally against any and every radical leftist ideology; but also that they are fine using misogynistic rhetoric so long as they don't view the recipient as a woman.

The legislation and violence being being brought down against trans women and cis women echo each other closely. Planned Parenthood was drained of its funding, clinics that provided care for both were crippled. Violence delivered by men daily, and all are losing rights because of people who are claiming they are protecting women and children. Trans women are funneled into sex work because of selective hiring, and among queer people are page the least in wages.

Regardless of your views on trans women, the system you're living under and the men around you are still slaughtering them like women.

Finally I just want to jot down why I wanted to make this post. I will be posting about trans people and radical feminism a lot more often. When it comes to both, TERFs are a huge elephant in the room because you can't talk about either without some kind of bigoted response. This is me getting that out of the way, a sort of big swing against these people. Because then I can focus on how trans women are effected by the patriarchy. Then I can stop talking about TERFs and start talking about MEN, with the useless banter of cis women vs trans women and trans people vs TERFs out of the way cause as prominent it is, it's blocking our path.

once you process that patriarchy is a global caste system and heterosexuality functions as a structural institution of male appropriation, there is really just no going back. the optics of everyday life change entirely, and with that clarity comes a profound, visceral alienation

political separatism and complete disengagement from men stop looking like "extremist theoretical concepts" and reveal themselves as the only logical, structural conclusion. you cannot stay negotiating and bargaining liberation with the class that benefits from your subordination, nor can you dismantle a caste system while feeding it your bodily, emotional, and material energy every single day

the hardest part of carrying this analysis is watching the ideological capture around you. seeing women participate in performative, liberal "man hating" rhetoric online AND offline while actively prioritizing, catering to, and sleeping with individual members of the dominant class every night feels like a fever dream. it is a complete collapse of class consciousness, where the energy of the oppressed is continuously funneled back into sustaining the oppressor. even worse, this empty performativity directly weaponizes the movement against us because by turning "misandry" into an aesthetic posture rather than a material boundary, these women have reduced feminist resistance to a game of conquest. to men, feminists are no longer a political threat, and we are yet another porn category

holding an uncompromising radical analysis in a society fully comfortable with its own subjection leaves you existing in a constant state of isolation. you see the machinery of the institution everywhere, while everyone else insists it is just personal preference

A very obvious observation, but worth discussing more about; often when the split in STEM representation or other male dominated fields is brought up, many people immediately jump to half-baked "science" such as the greater male variability hypothesis or spatial reasoning "gaps"*.

But when women outperform men (for instance in certain scholarly areas of representation or academic performance), poor men are disadvantaged victims somehow, and it needs to be fixed at all costs.

Women are always deemed less: less capable, less ambitious, less intelligent. When we succeed it's not by our merit. It just can't be - people are so quick to assume the worst ("she slept her way to the top" mindset).

*Of course the greater male variability hypothesis is extremely contested. With regards to spatial reasoning, mental 3d rotation is one the only few skills which show a moderate gap, and may be heavily influenced by environmental/upbringing factors.

Personally, I believe that men are using that one case to frame women as the violent ones and so they can have an excuse to hate women. Because if you come to think of it, the majority of males are now using ‘I choose the bear sticker’ against women because of one case.

What are your guys opinions on this?

honestly i've reached the point where i don't think arguing with men is even worth it anymore.

beyond the paternalistic and condescending attitude they take whenever they are talking to a woman, they almost always assume that, because they're men, they automatically know more than you, even when it's something you're literally educated about. the truth is that they simply don't want to listen.

i recently had a conversation with a man after i commented that telling men "the patriarchy hurts men too" is pointless because they don't care. and even when they do care, they only care about fixing the tiny part of patriarchy that affects them, not the overwhelming majority that harms women.

he got offended and claimed that feminist men only care about women, not men, and that this is why men are supposedly the oppressed sex in society.

i didn't even want to turn it into a historical or sociological debate, so i gave him a simple example. so many men complain that it's unfair to be expected to pay for everything in a relationship or marriage (mind they set that sistem up and even through history we saw periods where women often couldn't even earn their own income but anyway) and i pointed out that if they're against men paying for everything, they should also be against women being expected to do almost all the housework.

of course, he immediately changed the subject. he argued that men have harder jobs, work longer hours, that i couldn't possibly know who do the chores in other people's homes, and when i showed him statistics proving that women still do most domestic labor in heterosexual relationships, he claimed nobody conducts research on "stupid things" like that and then blocked me.

that's exactly my point. men don't care about women, and they don't care about misogyny because it doesn't affect them. even when you show clear evidence that women are oppressed, they'll stay in complete denial and insist that men are the real victims now.

this is also one of the biggest reasons why i dislike the way some women try to gentle parent men by explaining that they should support feminism because patriarchy hurts them too. one of the main reasons i align myself with radical feminism is that i genuinely don't believe feminism needs to center men's problems.

unfortunately, mainstream feminism is moving in a direction where if you're a feminist who only prioritizes women, people act as if you can't be a "real feminist." but feminism was literally created to fight for the liberation of women and for women's equality in a patriarchal society.

throughout history, it wasn't men starting feminist movements for women. it was women. i don't understand why there's now this expectation that, unless a feminist advocates equally for men, she's somehow not a true feminist.

When it comes to abortion and the topic of pregnancy, I often see this phrase floated online when it comes to pro-life rhetoric. Something along the lines of "don't have sex if you don't want a baby," OR "you should wait to have sex when youre married". I never understood this line of reasoning because accidents can happen in marriage too? Just because a woman is married doesn't mean she suddenly wants or is OK with having a baby?

The other thing too, is that most of these people would say "men have needs" when referring to sex. So how do you balance those two things? I don't want a baby so I won't have sex, but my husband has needs and if I don't put out he will leave me, cheat on me, watch porn, etc.

I seriously wish people brought this up more often as a retort because marriage doesn't suddenly mean that a woman is OK with having a baby or wants one. Being married doesn't mean much in this case.

I wish I had something more intelligent to add but I just saw another silly video of prolifers debating prochoicers and I saw "don't have sex til youre married" get brought up a bunch. Rant over

I see three non-exclusive paths forward for radical feminism. Im curious if others see one as better than another or if there is a fourth path Im missing.

A) Consensus: Pass laws and policies within existing patriarchal systems to improve the status of women and reduce sexism and sex hierarchy.

B) Force: Mostly an end toward A or C. Use armed force (direct assault on patriarchal institutions, terrorism, secession and defense of land by force) to achieve ends, whether that's convincing governments to take action or forming new governments that require their own monopolies on violence.

C) Secession: Remove oneself/one's community from the sex-gender system as much as possible. Does not require force on a small scale (see Womyn's Land projects).

D) (edit from a comment's suggestion) Dual Power Scenario: Don't attempt to destabilize or improve the government but rather create an independent system to support women without reliance on the patriarchal state

Most people lean toward A, not being inclined to join communes or an insurrection. However, A requires politicking in a way Path C does not - for example, if we are to turn patriarchal institutions against themselves, we need at least some men to agree with the movement. Yet many posts in this community seem hostile to including men or "choice feminists" in the movement or trying to recruit people to radical feminism. That makes sense if one's goal is Path C but not otherwise, imo.

This isn't a fully developed thought but would be curious as to people's thoughts.

This is about males in your dms as a woman.

Most of them will only dm you with sexual intentions.

They will randomly or constantly state how they are "bored" which means they either expect you to entertain them sexually or be their personal entertainment.

They will write a huge introduction message discussing their hobbies/interests, age and where they are from then copy and paste it.

Some of them will ask "wyll" within just 2 seconds of the conversation just starting. Oh and also a lot of them who ask "wyll" can't show their own face / end up catfishing.

They will say "ladies first" but only when it benefits them. For example when they ask "wyll" they will use "ladies first" to get what they want ( a picture of you first).

They will shower you with compliments randomly and then expect you to suddenly be just as sexually attracted towards them as they are towards you.

Sometimes when you don't text for hours due to a busy life, some of them will take huge offense in that and become quite rude towards you.

If you state perfectly normal boundaries: "i do not send any nudes or nsfw images/videos of myself to others." They will be visibly offended and say that that wasn't their intention anyways , but then never text you again because it actually was their intention.

They will be quick to call you "dry" even if they are themselves.

They will lie about how they like you or have a crush on you, in hope that you get sexually intimate with them.

They will randomly rant/vent about how lonely or upset they are and feel, then expect you to comfort and feel sorry for them or solve their problem by being sexually/romantically intimate with them.

If they say something misogynist, they will cover it up as "it's just a joke" (jokes are meant to be funny though).

Sometimes if you reject them they will suddenly become very rude and misogynistic towards you.

If you state that you are Lesbian, some of them will be ignorant and still harass you or be homophobic by basically saying how they do not think lesbian's feelings are valid and real.

I hate it here.