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While not explicitly said, the main point of both readings is the importance of creating connections between the struggles of different marginalized groups to promote intersectionality. Specific marginalized groups are often so entrenched in their own identities and struggles that they create increased division and become unwilling to advance causes unless it directly affects them. This power split prevents us from consolidating power in order to make real change. Forming coalitions rather than distinct, segregated groups will increase the influence that we have on society and culture. The text notes that when we stop viewing collective identities as fixed, distinct values, we are able to find  “the creative ways identity may be used to generate social change,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 548). In my life, I have observed that many people feel the need to create strict definitions and boundaries when it comes to what it means to be queer. They argue about whether or not asexual and aromantic people are queer (they are). They shame people for identifying as “spicy straight” or “heteroflexible” because they think they’re just a straight person trying to be special. They shit on straight girls that make out with other girls, not for men’s pleasure, but because kissing is fun. They tell straight people that act or dress “queer” that they’re either appropriating queer culture or in the closet.  They argue over and over and over about the difference between bi and pan (it’s literally just personal preference, there aren’t any hard and fast definitions). So much energy is put into gatekeeping not only the queer identity, but queer behaviors. I’ve never understood why people care so much about such minor non-issues when that energy could be put toward combating the issues actually plaguing the queer community. All it does is increase divisions, which is the opposite of what we want. Because of this, I really appreciated Cohen’s reimagining of queerness. It is something that I hadn’t considered before, but it makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of people that transcend and exist outside of the mainstream idea of “normal” sexuality and gender that would be considered cishet. For example, sex workers, swingers, polyamorists, people in open relationships, people that prefer casual relationships over serious ones, drag performers, cisgender people that cross traditional gender lines, etc. may technically be cishet according to how we currently define queer, but they don’t feel queer. Another example is straight couples that has a butch woman filling a traditionally male role in the relationship and a feminine man filling a traditionally female role in the relationship. It might be straight, but it feels queer. Instead of viewing things through the lens of strict definitions, I think it could be beneficial to view things more broadly. This connects well to the ideas presented in Feminism for the 99 percent: A Manifesto. The text said, “Rejecting the zero-sum framework capitalism constructs for us, feminism for the 99 percent aims to unite existing and future movements into a broad-based global insurgency,” (Arruza et al. 2019, 57). Essentially, the text argues for the formation of coalitions. Capitalism stays in power because of the sense of competition between different marginalized groups. Instead of working together, we’re competing against one another not only for rights, but over who is the most oppressed. This is commonly referred to as the oppression Olympics. It’s not healthy or productive. Capitalism and the white patriarchy are the true enemy, and we can’t defeat them while fighting amongst ourselves. We have to band together, finding our similarities and respecting our differences.

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Both the film and the reading argue that the patriarchy erases women to maintain power. The film talked about how during the AIDs crisis, multiple systems including the CDC and social security refused to recognize that women could suffer and die of AIDs. The centered the discussion on male symptoms and experiences, while actively and intentionally ignoring the symptoms of women. This directly led to the deaths of so many women, many of whom were not counted among the victims of the AIDs epidemic. According to the documentary, a common saying among affected women during that time was, “Women don’t get AIDs, they just die from it,” (Hirshom 2017). The AIDs crisis was allowed to become a crisis because mainly the people dying from it were people that society didn’t care about. The epidemic mostly affects queer men, trans people, people of color, and poor people. It is still such a stigmatized subject to this day, and not many people understand the history of it. The queer community is still recovering from it, specifically around young queer people to understanding and knowing our history, because so many of our elders were wiped out. It’s also contributed to the idea that queerness is a new trend, because there aren’t as many queer adults around. The documentary focused on the many, many women that suffered from the disease during the crisis and after, but there women were involved in more ways than that. People tend to think of the AIDs crisis as a gay man crisis, but it impacted the whole queer community and women played a massive role. The reason that the acronym is LGBTQ+ and not GLBTQ+ is because of all the work lesbians did to support queer men and to fight AIDs. They nursed and took care of the victims. They donated blood when queer men weren’t allowed to. They protested and demanded policy change. (https://theforeword.org/832/editorials/the-l-in-lgbt-and-why-order-matters/). The AIDs crisis is one of the many examples of how both women’s contributions and suffering are erased. The documentary expanded my understanding of how women were impacted by the AIDs crisis, because I wasn’t aware of how many women had it, or how flippant health officials were about the women dying.

The reading talked about the ways that the patriarchy and capitalism intertwined. Capitalism relies on the oppression of certain groups, and one of those groups is women. TAccording to the reading, social reproduction is the backbone of capitalism because it creates and grooms the next generation of workers. However, in order to maintain the hierarchy of power,  “the pivotally important role of social reproduction is disguised and disavowed,” (Arruza et al. 2019, 22). Having and raising children is an essential part of maintaining capitalism, but it is so steeped in the systems of oppression that our society doesn’t acknowledge it. In a system that determines the worth of something through money, any unpaid labor is treated as lesser than paid labor. This contributes to the oppression of women, and the oppression of marginalized women that are tasked with taking care of upper class children. This work isn’t considered real work, which can be seen in the fact that being a stay at home mother is considered easy. Also, by delegating a lot of unpaid or low paid labor as “women’s work”, society clearly shows how they value women. Women are not only expected to know how to perform household tasks like cooking and cleaning well, they’re expected to perform those tasks for the men in their life that can’t. I’ve heard grown men talk about how they don’t know how to do laundry because it’s women’s work, even though they are single and live alone. It also leads to men basically acting like another child for their wife to take care of. Through all of this, though, men act like women have it easier because they’re just expected to perform those simple tasks. If it was so easy, you’d think they’d be able to do it, right? This has impacted me in weird ways. For example, I don’t know how to cook. I can make basic pre-packaged pasta and frozen food, but that’s basically it. This is partially because I don’t really care, and partially because I grew up being told that I would have to cook for a husband some day, and I associated it with having to prove my worth to a man. When I dated men, I always told them very upfront that I did not cook and they shouldn’t expect me to. It was almost defensive for me, and it still is. Now that I’m dating women it’s less of an issue, but I still can’t stand the idea of being the main person cooking in a relationship. The reading makes me want to re-evaluate why that is. It’s true that I don’t like cooking and I am scared of being trapped in domestic servitude through societal expectations, but there might also be a part of me that views cooking as a waste of time because it isn’t really valued under capitalism. It is something that I will have to reflect more on going forward.

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The main point of these readings was that technology and advancements created by people in power will uphold the oppressive systems. The first text was about the way that being queer and trans was medicalized, and treated like something to cure. It is strongly connected to essentialism and eugenics. The text said, “Sexologists would continue to explicitly link gender deviance to poor heredity,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 461). This represents the desire of the ruling class to uphold their bigotry with “science”. Even though it’s not considered a mental illness, it still informs the way we treat transness. In most places, you have to be officially diagnosed with dysphoria to medically transition, and you have to medically transition to change your legal gender. This also leads to people not viewing a person as “really” trans if they aren’t dysphoric, which once again ties being trans to a sickness that can and should be cured. The next reading talked about the experience of a disabled researcher researching her own relationship to technology. Something she said that really stuck with me was, “While seemingly pragmatic and solution driven, technology is capable of reproducing the problems associated with medicine in the past,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 476). As shown in the previous reading, the medical community has used their status as experts to manipulate information to uphold the oppressive systems that they benefited from. Now, technology also plays a similar role. Apps use their algorithm to push content from the people that fit their idea of “normal”, while suppressing content from marginalized creators. A notable example of this is the fact that last year, TikTok admitted that their algorithm suppressed creators that they believed were “at risk for bullying”, a.k.a. POC, queer, trans, disabled, and poor creators. They said that they wanted to reduce bullying, so they suppressed marginalized creators instead of actually taking steps to reduce bullying. Even now videos of people saying horrible, bigotted things stay up while marginalized creators get banned for the smallest things, including calling out bigotry. This is also strongly tied to the last reading, which specifically talked about the ways that apps fail to be equitable. The interview with Ari Fitz, a black and queer influencer, noted that Fitz was having posts removed from instagram for nudity when they showed more skin, while “many queer white people post semi-nude or fully nude images on Instagram without facing the same level of reporting,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 488). This shows how apps can discriminate by not applying rules and guidelines evenly to all of their users. Marginalized creators find themselves at higher risk of being shadowbanned or fully banned, under the guise of “enforcing the rules.” All apps have these issues, and when you look at who creates them, it makes a lot of sense. The third reading also talked about inequity in technology, but from a slightly different perspective. That reading addressed the fact that while Uber is more than capable of increasing opportunities for women to work outside of the home, it’s actually contributing even more to the patriarchy. From safety issues to entry cost barriers, Uber is benefiting financially from their mostly female user base, while not providing equal employment opportunities. All of these readings are strongly related to essentialism, which claims that being different is wrong. Unlike the sexologists that categorized being queer and trans as mental illness, modern apps can’t get away with blantantly saying that certain people don’t belong and shouldn’t be on their app. Instead, they use their algorithms to exploit power systems that are in place. The myth that science, and technology, is neutral leads to the majority of people brushing the problems off, while marginalized people continue to be silenced. I create content on TikTok (though I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m a TikTokker) and I’ve experienced these issues first hand. I have to be hesitant posting videos talking about social issues, and I can’t post too many in a row. This is because the videos I do post aren’t shown to as many viewers, and if I post them too frequently my whole account gets shadowbanned. When I first started posting, I was catering pretty heavily to the male gaze, and I’ve also noticed that as my content has stopped catering to the male gaze, my account growth has gotten lower and lower. This is both a problem with the algorithm, and with the user base. Until more marginalized people start creating their own technology, issues like this won’t be able to get better.

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Both authors talk about the ways that technology and science contribute to the patriarchy, and how it might be used to fight it. In order to do this, the writings explain Standpoint Theory and situated knowledge, which says that science is not entirely objective, and the way research is conducted and reported displays the biases of the researchers and the culture they exist in.  The text notes that “dominant ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality shape the kinds of questions [the researchers] ask, the methods they employ, and the conclusions they draw,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 430). A good example of this is the way that most medications are tested on just men, and not women. This represents the idea that men are the default. This can also be seen in the fact that bike seats are made for people with penises, and do large amounts of physical, lasting damage to vaginas. This is made worse by the lack of women in STEM, which is a societal issue caused by the patriarchy. Men, and white men in particular, have a hard time seeing outside of their perspective, and can assume that their experiences are universal. Because they dominate STEM, their perspective dominates the work they do, which leads to marginalized groups being left out of the narrative. While we view science as objective, the perspectives of researchers color research. This is clearly seen in the discussion on gametes. The textbook notes that the way that conception is described leads to “the importation of cultural ideas about passive females and heroic males into the “personalities” of gametes,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 451). The sperm charges in, while the egg is conquered. In reality, they are cells that lack any agency, and are performing basic cellular functions. Something new that the textbook made me consider is the way that we view sperm as efficient, while women waste eggs. It doesn’t make any sense. Early in pregnancy, a female fetus has about 6 million eggs. Assuming that in her life she has 3 kids (rounding up from average), that means five million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-seven eggs are not used to make a baby. While that seems like a lot, the idea that women “waste” more gametes is downright stupid when you look at men’s gamete. In their lifetime they produce about 525 billion sperm. Assuming that they also have the rounded up average of 3 kids, that would mean they “waste” five hundred twenty-four billion nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-seven sperm, which is 87500 times the amount of gametes that a women “wastes.” In fact, if we compare the sperm donor that produced the most known children (200 kids) and a woman that has no children, the man still “wasted” 87499.99 times more gametes than the woman. On the absolute low end, every time a man ejaculates without impregnating an egg, he “wastes” 15 million gametes, which is 2.5 times the amount a woman has in her whole lifetime. If anyone is wasting gametes, it definitely isn’t the people with eggs. This viewpoint represents the way information is often twisted to maintain white patriarchal standards and ideas. A man that produces (and thereby “wastes”) a lot of semen is considered strong and virile, while a woman that menstruates is considered a failure and wasteful. You could easily spin the same information in a completely different way. The fact that women are born with all the eggs they have could be considered exclusive and represent the stability and consistency of womanhood. The fact that men don’t start producing sperm until puberty and then overproduce it could represent how sperm-- and by extension men-- are disposable and unimportant. Women are the only ones that can carry a pregnancy and birth can’t happen without them, while a man is really only important to the process for an average of 7 minutes, or maybe 84 minutes if we’re considering the entire process. Based on that interpretation, men seem kind of lackluster. However, this is again a very filtered view of the issue. It is also very gender-normative and transphobic. Any gender can get pregnant, and any gender can produce sperm, because gender and sex are not related (which is another fact that science has been twisted to dispute).

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The authors are all discussing the ways that gender roles are weaponized against marginalized groups, especially groups of color. This includes the way that trans people are judged based on how well they fit into binary gender ideals, the way that asian men aren’t considered masculine, and the way that fat people that exercise are treated like a spectacle. The first story related heavily to the issue of medicalization in the trans community. To be considered valid, trans people are expected to pass as cis, which more often than not requires medical transitioning. The chapter said, “To be called fish by these women meant that I was embodying the kind of femininity that could allow me access, safety, opportunity, and maybe happiness,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 361). In this context, fish is a term that judges a person's ability and/or potential to pass. The idea that a trans person’s ability to access, safety, opportunity, and happiness is contingent on how well they fit into stereotypical gender norms, especially when society puts so many obstacles in the way is a huge problem. Not only is medical transitioning not accessible to everyone for financial and health reasons, but some trans people don’t want to. The idea that you have to have dysphoria to be trans is really harmful because it ties gender to sex and defines being trans through trauma. It also limits non-binary people and invalidates them. Many non-binary people feel that they aren’t trans, even though being non-binary is trans. If you identify as any gender outside of the one you were assigned at birth, you are trans. Gender has nothing to do with any sex characteristics because gender and sex are two completely different things. If individual trans people want to medically transition I fully support them, but the idea that you have to transition to be valid is deeply harmful.

The next chapter touched on orientalism, especially its impact on gay Asian men. Asian men are considered less masculine, and therefore less sexual and separate from patriarchal privilege. This is harmful for a variety of reasons, including that it contributes to the fetishization of Asian men. It also highlights the fact that even as female sexuality has become more normalized, it is still considered inherently masculine. Because Asian men are considered less masculine, they are inherently considered less sexual. This has an increased impact on gay Asian men because the gay community in most areas is much smaller and puts a lot of emphasis on whiteness. This leads to them being more at risk for things that already impact the queer community. The textbook says that this “may lead gay Asian men to have low self-esteem, possibly be victimized in domestic relationships, and engage in unsafe sex,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 382). Fetishization is oppression, and it actively puts people at risk. This harmful trend can still be seen, especially in the K-Pop community. The way that many people in that community talk about adult, male performers clearly shows that this is still a huge problem.

The next chapter was a fat woman talking about her experiences in the yoga community. Yoga has been appropriated by white people, and is unfortunately now seen as a white, skinny woman activity. The author discussed many points, but mainly how people stare at her and make her feel uncomfortable because she is unapologetically fat and stays fat. She is a yoga instructor and she is still fat. The way people react to this represents a side of essentialism. The fact that people look at her and immediately assume that she is inherently different, below them, and doesn’t belong in that space is an idea created by essentialism. She deviates from the norm, so she is an outsider. Something that the chapter said that really stood out to me was when she said, “change is possible, but it’s not always the change you were taught to believe you should want,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 421). We are taught that we should want to be skinny. But as was discussed in Fattitude, that is because somebody is getting very wealthy off of our self loathing. Yoga, at its core, is supposed to be about enlightenment. So while people may go in wanting to change and become skinny, they might actually go in and change to accept themselves. I also think that idea is really powerful overall. Society teaches us that we are supposed to want so many things, but growth and finding yourself can often mean realizing and accepting that you don’t want that.

The two readings both focused on poetry. The first poem, “Sketches,” is about figure drawing, and specifically about drawing fat people. She tells the reader that they shouldn’t try to make her seem skinnier, because being fat isn’t a bad thing, it’s beautiful and radical. She says to draw her “radically whole and radically enough,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 427). As an artist, this poem really connected with me. Art has the power to represent and humanize people, and fat people often aren’t granted that. We are taught that it’s rude to make a person look fat in a drawing. However, I never saw it that way. When I took figure modeling, there were numerous fat models and I loved drawing them. I thought that they were gorgeous and I loved the way the drawings of them turned out. I would worry about making them feel bad, but then I realized that they had nothing to feel bad about and if they did, it wasn’t really on me. Fat people are so often told that they need to disappear, so taking up space in something like art is radical, especially when the art represents them as a whole person.

The next poem was titled “10,000 Blows” and is a reaction to the story of Freddie Gray, a young black man that died in police custody, and is a direct response to white supremacy. The opening line of the poem is “when did they teach you bodies are for breaking?” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 428). I am a white person, and I can’t even begin to understand the black experience, but this line speaks volumes. It carries the weight of all the black parents that have had to sit down with their kids to teach them how to act around cops and white people to ensure that they don’t get killed. Black children are burdened with that knowledge. The question has the same energy as videos asking women how old they were when they first realized they were being sexualized, and no one answers over the age of 13. It’s a dark truth that people in the marginalized group are well acquainted with, but people outside of it are shocked by. The fact that the poem continues to say that “i stood up once at 12, to stop that beating,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 428) furthers the theme of black children being too young and being burdened with too much. A 12 year old shouldn’t be put in that position, and isn’t responsible for saving anyone. They shouldn’t be burdened with that fear.

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I really appreciated Fattitude. I definitely benefit from thin privilege, but I have struggled with eating disorders since I was 14. The narrative that “fat” is synonymous with “unhealthy” really hit home for me. There have been multiple points over the years where my eating disorder would flair up and I would be really unhealthy. I wasn’t getting the nutrients I needed, and I either wasn’t exercising at all or exercising too much without giving my body fuel. It was not healthy at all. However, since I was losing weight nobody questioned me. Nobody commented on my health, even though I was clearly damaging my health. However, when a fat person just exists, everyone feels like they need to punish them for being unhealthy. I think Lizzo is a great example of this. Lizzo works out a lot and has insanely good cardio. She does entire performances with complex choreography, and while singing and playing the flute. Clearly, she is fit. Yet people would generally assume that I, a person that goes weeks without seeing a vegetable and gets winded from walking up a flight of stairs, is healthier than her because she’s fat and I’m not. This is also a huge problem on social media, especially TikTok. Body checking trends are so common and normalized. There was recently a trend with an audio that went something like “Hi, I’m your new neighbor, I’m a supermodel” and then the response was “I don’t care who the IRS sends, I’m not paying taxes,” For the first part of the audio, people would show what they looked like before they got into their current relationship, which was supposed to show how “hot” they looked before. Then during the response, they would show how their appearance had gone downhill during the relationship. In almost every single video, the person had just gained weight. One of them literally captioned it “Beauty fades <3.” Like what? How are you unable to see how problematic this is? It isn’t self-love or body positivity, and it isn’t funny. They aren’t just degrading themselves, they’re feeding into fatphobia and the systematic oppression of fat people. In the same way that women can be misogynists, fat people can be fatphobic.

As for the other two, they really hit home for me. About a year ago I got out of a very abusive relationship, and similar to the author of Chapter 46 I didn’t realize until a while after the breakup. It was a “straight” relationship, which basically means that he was a cishet man and at the time I thought I was a bisexual woman. I also struggle with really considering a lot of what he did sexual abuse and it’s even harder to say that some of the things could be considered rape because they didn’t involve sex in the biblical sense and/or I technically consented. The whole idea of consent under the power imbalance of an abusive, manipulative relationship is messy, and that relationship really made me rethink the nuances of consent. I am in therapy and my therapist has agreed that it was abusive, but I still have imposter syndrome about it. I have a hard time calling it to abuse out loud because I have this fear that people will tell me that it wasn’t. Unpacking that relationship also made me rethink other relationships I’ve had, particularly the one I had with my first girlfriend. She was a senior in high school and I was a sophomore, and in hindsight, she used that age difference to manipulate me a lot. She would talk to me like she knew so much more than me and had so much more experience than me. She would make claims about what relationships were supposed to be like and what was healthy and I wouldn’t question it because I assumed that I was just being immature. There were so many messed-up things that she convinced me were normal, and I still haven’t unlearned all of them. It took me such a long time to realize that it was abusive because it didn’t look the way I thought abuse looked. She didn’t physically hurt me or force me to do anything, and nobody ever talked about abuse in queer relationships. In fact, people always talked about how much healthier and more loving they were. But abuse isn’t caused by just men, and women can be abusive. They can be manipulative. They can take advantage of you. They can rape. Ignoring those facts not only perpetuates the patriarchy but also makes it harder for queer women in those situations to get help.

The first relationship I talked about in the last paragraph also relates strongly to Chapter 52. At the beginning of the long, painful death of that relationship, I found out that he had cheated on me and hid it for a year and a half. This was deeply upsetting to me, especially since on multiple occasions in the past I brought up opening our relationship to allow me to explore my sexuality and he always made me feel so guilty about it. After that, I told him that I really wanted an opportunity to explore, especially since he had without even talking to me about it. During this, I tried to communicate and follow the principle of non-monogamy, but he kept being petty. He lied to me about having sex with someone just to hurt me, he berated me about not being committed to him and started to engage in increasingly self-destructive behaviors while telling me it was my fault. When we finally broke up, he had the audacity to tell me that it was because “he wasn’t as okay with non-monogamy as I was.” It took me a long time to realize that he just wasn’t okay with consensual non-monogamy, where I also saw other people. At the time, I identified as bisexual, and he really played into stereotypes around bisexual people not being loyal and being selfish to explain why the relationship fell apart, as well as using rhetoric against polyamory. The situation felt very similar to the dialogue around Miley Cyrus and Kirsten Stewart’s breakups with men. The quote from a Twitter user that said, “Bi is greedy and never satisfied”  really hit home for me (Saraswati et al. 2021, 333). That kind of mindset is not only biphobic but polyphobic as well. I spent a long time feeling scared that I would never be satisfied so I would never be able to settle down, or the fact that I was interested in having multiple partners or the freedom to explore outside of my relationship made me a bad person and I should be ashamed of it. I’m only now coming to terms with polyamory and this class has actually played a large part in me realizing that it is possible to have a healthy polyamorist relationship. I don’t really identify as bisexual anymore because I’ve realized that I couldn’t be happy in a long-term monogamous relationship with a man, but I am still very aware of bi issues and constantly work to dismantle biphobia. My girlfriend is bisexual, and when people assume that we are both lesbians, I am quick to remind them that she is bisexual, and the fact that she’s currently dating a lesbian doesn’t devalue that identity. However, I still have to work to dismantle a lot of internalized biphobia and polyphobia. I sometimes have thoughts like “what if she’s just experimenting and she eventually leaves me so she can have a normal heterosexual life,” or “what if she decides that she wants to experiment with men,” and I have to stop myself and go “no, that’s biphobic and she has stated that she is attracted to women, and you have no right to question that. Even if she does leave you for a man, that doesn’t change how she identifies. Also, there’s nothing wrong with polyamory and having a desire for other people doesn’t mean she has less desire for you. Desire and love are not a finite resource and you can’t run out of them.” It’s difficult, and I often feel guilty for having those internalized narratives, but everyone does. It’s part of the work that everyone has to do to unlearn bigoted views that we have internalized. Doing that work and working to educate others is what matters most.

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I come from a fairly liberal household. My mother not only votes in every election, but she also does her research and even volunteers for campaigns she believes in. She believes in social justice, welfare, and recycling. This is why I was taken off guard when I grew up and started realizing how many problematic things she supports were so problematic. These readings reminded me of one of those things. I grew up hearing about harmful large families and how you should only have two kids maximum. She used to joke about a professor that would talk about population growth and say, “what we really need is a good plague.” That kind of talk was so normalized and when I was younger I supported it. Then, I got older and did my own research and realized that overpopulation isn’t a contributing factor to the climate crisis, that the idea that the US population is rapidly growing is a myth, and that this mindset is actually rooted in eugenics. It honestly makes me feel a little sick to think about how normal this was to me growing up, especially since my mother considers herself a liberal, enlightened woman. It wasn’t until doing this reading that I realized how the reproduction rights movement was tied to white feminism. Before, I would describe myself as a supporter of that movement, when in reality my values and beliefs were more aligned with the reproduction justice movement. While I obviously support easy access to publicly funded abortion and birth control, that wasn’t the limit to what I defined reproductive rights as. To me, it also meant supporting family planning, paid maternity and paternity leave, universal healthcare, universal income, and medical reform. It meant being as angry about a marginalized woman being forced to terminate a pregnancy as I was about a woman being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. It wasn’t until I completed these readings that I realized that being pro-choice didn’t cover all of those things. I agree with Sister Song that “reproductive justice—the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls—will be achieved when women and girls have the economic, social, and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for ourselves, our families, and our communities in all areas of our lives,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 287). This quote does a really good job of putting into words beliefs I have had for a very long time, but couldn’t articulate. I think the reproductive choice movement fails because it doesn’t address the root of the problem. These issues are a symptom that can only be cured through the dismantling of the patriarchy.

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Today’s readings do a good job of questioning the conservative idea of family values. For one, queer families subvert the idea of the nuclear family. Chapter 36 asked, “Why do Republicans get a monopoly on defining what family values means?” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 229). In our culture, “family values” have become synonymous with heteronormative, patriarchal, conservative values. It isn’t against their family values to separate immigrant families because many of these families don’t fall into typical patriarchal norms where the husband is the sole breadwinner and the wife takes care of household duties and childrearing. For this same reason, conservatives consider being queer against family values. This idea is clearly illustrated by the discussion in Chapter 38 around issues that trans individuals face. One of the main issues faced by trans youth is homelessness. This is caused by the fact that some conservative parents will refuse to house their children (even if they are minors) once they discover that they are transgender or queer. So much for “family values.” Even if you believe that being queer or genderqueer is wrong, all parents have a moral and legal obligation to care for and nurture their children. If abandoning your child and forcing them to be separated from their family doesn’t go against family values, but being transgender does, it seems like the values have nothing to do with families.

Of course, this idea of queerness being seen as amoral can also be seen in the way that conservatives view queer relationships. This especially true of polyamorous families like the ones described in Chapter 36. Polyamory contradicts modern patriarchal values because these values mandate monogamy. This functions to keep people isolated and under the control of capitalism. However, even among monogamous queer couples, the fact that a family can thrive with two husbands and no wives, or with two wives and no husbands, goes against heteronormative family values that mandate a nuclear family structure with one husband and one wife, typically with two children.  If a family made up of loving, supportive people that communicate and have chosen to live their lives together, possibly even raising children together, goes against “family values”, it makes you wonder what those family values could possibly be.

The idea that a family needs a husband that financially supports the family and a wife that takes care of household duties and childrearing is also the root cause of the pay gap. This concept is the main focus of Chapter 37, which discusses how traditional gender roles are maintained and perpetuated through the pay gap, and in order to close the pay gap, policies that support patriarchal norms must be abolished. These norms not only assume that a woman’s labor (both inside and outside of the home) is less valuable, but it perpetuates the idea that women belong in the home and men should be the family’s primary breadwinner. Both of these chapters address issues caused by the assumption that the most normal and healthy family structure is the nuclear family, which is a myth created by and in support of the patriarchy.

The ideas and discussion held in these chapters make it very clear that there is something very wrong with the nuclear family and traditional “family values''. Traditional family values don’t care about healthy child-rearing practices. They don’t care about loving and safe households. They don’t care about a family’s ability to support itself. They just care about control and maintaining an oppressive system. In my opinion, that can’t be classified as “family values”. They’re just patriarchal values.

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Cultural attitudes toward sex work is something I’m very pationate about. Sex is a large double standard under the patriarchy in general. Men that are sexually active and that have a lot of sex are considered cool and powerful. Women that engage in the exact same behavior are degraded and dehumanized. This becomes even more prominent when we look at sex work. Female sex workers are at best pittied, and at worst demonized. A female stripper is considered sad and desperate. A female prostitute is viewed as subhuman and broken. On the other hand, male strippers are considered sexy and masculine, while there aren’t really heterosexual examples of male prostitutes in media. This difference becomes clear when you look at depictions of female strippers in the media, and Magic Mike. When female sex workers are murdered, the headline often reads “Stripper is Murdered” or “Prostitute is Murdered”, rather than referring to them as people. This also pushes a narrative that on some level, sex workers are asking for and deserving of violence. Because of this, we have to cultivate a culture where “sex workers’ rights are framed as human rights,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 197). When we consider the fact that women of color, queer women, and transwomen are at higher risk for sex trafficking, this becomes even more important.

In our society, women are inherently sexualized, often against their will, and men have no problem with it. They only begin to object when a woman starts profiting off of it. The response to OnlyFans is an example of this. People are upset that these women are asking them to pay for access to “porn” when they have access to sites like PornHub for free. They don’t care that female pornstars are often abused, and that many videos on these sites feature victims of sex trafficking, revenge porn, and minors. This is an example of how pornstars are dehumanized, and of how men feel entitled to women’s bodies. Legal prostitutes would still be in a better position than prostitutes are now, but until we combat the cultural norm of viewing sex workers as less than people, the problem will persist. The fact that she’s in control, consenting, and into it is a turn off for a lot of men. The same issue arises in industries like woman that get paid to engage in phone sex or sexting, women that sell pictures of themselves, and independent cam models. The internet has made it possible for a lot of woman to go into sex work independently and to turn profits, and the patriarchy hates it. Traditional prostitutes and strippers were often desirable for white knights that wanted to swoop in and save them. They are still dehumanized, but they’re also pitied. This is displayed clearly in the “hooker/stripper with a heart of gold trope”. However, women that willingly engage in online sex work often don’t need to be saved, which is a huge turn off. It’s only hot when she’s a victim.

The concept that a woman engaging in sexual behaviors is degrading herself and giving part of herself up is so engrained in our society that it continues into feminist circles. The idea that sex work is inherently degrading comes from the patriarchy. For example, domanatrixes are sex workers, and I don’t think anyone would try to claim that they are pushing dangerous gender roles around sex. Legalizing prostitution and unionizing sex work is necessary to ensuring that sex workers are empowered. Right now, because prostitution is illegal, it makes the market rife for sex trafficking. Also, it makes it so that only desperate people engage in prositution and makes it difficult for prostitutes to access health care and legal help when needed. Legalizing and regulating sex work is the solution to this problem. In the same way that it’s harder to sell illegal weed when weed is legalized, it’s harder to push illegal sex work when legal sex work is an option. However, this also requires a societal shift in the way people view female sex workers. Until woman aren’t dehumanized for engaging in and enjoying sex, sexual violence in all forms will continue.

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All of these authors are criticizing the way that marginalized people continue participating in oppression. There is a trend of marginalized identities having to split from larger groups that refuse to acknowledge forms of oppression outside their own. In “A Black Feminist Statement”, The Combahee River Collective notes that “it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 142). This addresses a trend of “trickle down liberation”. Marginalized people are told to wait their turn, as it makes more sense to liberate the people closer to privilege first. The Combahee River Collective was founded because black lesbians found their interests being ignored in both organizations for black liberation that centered on black men and organizations for women’s liberation that centered on white women. Then, on top of that, they found that in organizations specifically for black women’s liberation, issues related to their queerness were pushed to the side. However, “trickle down liberation”, as with most trickle-down theories, doesn’t work. Ignoring intersectionality not only ignores the root causes of issues, but it also creates an environment of oppression Olympics that makes it easier for the white patriarchy to maintain power. It is a lot easier for the system to maintain itself when marginalized groups actively feed into it. In order to gain women’s rights, white feminists uphold white supremacy. At the same time, some black liberation activists fight for racial equality by upholding the patriarchy. Straight marginalized people fight for their rights by upholding homophobia, while queer people fight for their rights by upholding transphobia. It is a constant cycle of marginalized people trying to appease the oppressive system by basically going, “well at least we’re not THEM.” However, catering to and appeasing oppressive systems will never succeed in creating any real change because, at the end of the day, the systems view all marginalized people as lesser. Creating a hierarchy within the bounds of inferiority is futile and pointless. Change can only happen when marginalized groups band together and refuse to participate in the oppressive system. Only then will we actually be able to start dismantling them.

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Indigenous cultures in North America valued women before colonization. Colonization had to try and destroy that in order to maintain the patriarchy and its power. A lot of early feminists actually saw how indigenous women were treated, and it inspired them to fight for better treatment themselves. Paula Gunn Allen mentioned that the Cheyenna people said that “a people is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the ground,” (Allen 1988, 16). This adds even more significance to the colonizers’ attempts to degrade and dehumanize indigenous women. Not only did indigenous women actively contradict the “natural order” created by the patriarchy, but they also represented the soul and strength of the people they desperately wanted to destroy. The insertion of misogyny into indigenous cultures undercut them in a very significant way. The US has made it perfectly clear that they do not care about indigenous women, which is evident by the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Indigenous women are more likely to be murdered and to experience violent crime than any other ethnicity. These crimes tend to go unsolved and these crimes are typically committed by non-Indigenous people on indigenous land (https://www.nativewomenswilderness.org/mmiw 2021). This epidemic represents the ongoing genocide occurring against indigenous people. I think it’s important to remember that. As a white woman, I recognize the fact that while I experience marginalization for my sex, I am protected by my whiteness in ways that indigenous women are not. It is vital that as feminists we pay attention to the ways that we unintentionally support the ongoing genocide and ways that we can fight against it. For example, while pipelines going through indigenous lands are both an Indigenous issue and an environmental issue, it’s also a feminist issue. As mentioned above, these crimes are typically committed by non-Indigenous people on indigenous lands. A significant source of this comes from camps for the hundreds, if not thousands of workers constructing the pipeline. When these crews are on Indigenous lands, studies have shown that there is an increase in violent crime, including sexual assault and murder (https://www.colorado.edu/program/fpw/2020/01/29/violence-extractive-industry-man-camps-endangers-indigenous-women-and-children 2020). Not only should feminists support Indigenous people’s right to autonomy and control of their own lands, but they should adamantly oppose anything that directly contributes to violent crime against women. This is just one example of the many ways that Indigenous issues ARE feminist issues. As a movement, we have a moral imperative to honor that fact, and we will never succeed if we ignore it.

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Today’s readings all seek to not only define patriarchy as a larger system but also describe it as a symptom of colonialism. In this regard, it does have a lot in common with white supremacy. The textbook said, “Patriarchy is a way of organizing social life through which such wounding, failure, and mistreatment are bound to occur,” and is so pervasive because it’s “the path of least resistance,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 26). It is very easy to passively support the patriarchy, while at the same time it is impossible to passively dismantle it. It’s not nearly enough to not be an active participant if you’re still allowing it to happen. I think a really interesting aspect of what Pascoe talked about was the ways subverting gender roles within the gender binary impact patriarchal standards. She said, “Individuals who deliberately engage in gender practices that render them culturally unintelligible, such as practices that are at odds with their apparent sex category, challenge the naturalness and inevitability of a rigid gender order,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 52). While I agree to an extent, I think it misses the value put on masculinity versus femininity. There’s a reason why women displaying masculine traits are seen as “cool” while men displaying feminine traits are usually the butt of a joke, which was a clear part of the story that Pascoe told. Our culture views femininity as inherently inferior, but also as the natural role of women. Being feminine appeals to the patriarchal system, but people that act feminine are dehumanized. On the other hand, while women acting masculine does challenge gender roles head-on, it often leads to people treating them with more respect and taking them more seriously. However, if a woman acts too masculine, she risks being ostracized for being a “dyke” or a “feminazi”. What people often fail to consider in this debate is masculinity is viewed positively, so women behaving more masculinity doesn’t really challenge the system, and is often encouraged. Nowadays, women aren’t expected to be models of femininity as much as they were in the past. Women are villainized for being both hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine. A good example of this is the “not like other girls” trope. This is part of the reason for defining the goal of feminism as “equality for women”. In the confines of the patriarchy, equal rights for women often means women conforming to masculinity, and that is viewed as progress. That implies that femininity is lesser, and being feminine means that you hold a lesser place in society. That’s why it is inherently more radical for men to participate in femininity than it is for women to participate in masculinity. A man participating in femininity in a genuine way not only subverts gender roles but also calls into question the value we put on different gendered traits. It’s this thinking that perpetuates toxic masculinity, which plays into other oppressive systems such as homophobia and transphobia. Also, I fully recognize that this is not the case for black women, as white supremacy has used and continues to use the claim that they are more masculine than white women to dehumanize them. However, while masculinity in black women hasn’t been as normalized as it has been in white women, toxic masculinity is still as much of a problem in black communities as it is in white communities, which shows that this issue isn’t just a “white” issue. One of the primary goals of feminism should be to eliminate double standards that actively support the white patriarchal system. This current system justifies the dehumanization of people that don’t live up to the standards set by the system. That is a core piece of any oppressive system. Unfortunately, the way women present has a large impact on how "human" the people around us think we are.

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The readings define feminism as an intersectional movement against the patriarchy, rather than a movement for equal rights for women. Striving for equal rights maintains and upholds the current systems, which are inherently oppressive. As I said in my previous post, it’s asking for a seat at the table when we should be dismantling the table. The systems in place require the oppression of one or more groups. Oppression is inherently intersectional, and oppressive systems are all interwoven. Defining feminism goal’s as equal rights for women also ignores the fact that men are not the only perpetrators of misogyny. Misogyny and the patriarchy are “a system in which we all—men, women, nonbinary, genderqueer, and transgender people—participate,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 2). I wasn’t taught that my body hair was gross and I needed to shave by men shaming me, I was taught by the conversations I overheard other girls having. Women are often the ones actively passing down sexist ideals and they are often the ones to provide social punishment for those that don’t conform. The reduction of feminism to the fight for equal rights undermines the whole movement and leads to problems like “girl boss feminism” and the idea that feminism is about women supporting women. Feminism needs to be about dismantling the white patriarchy, but because women can actively uphold the white patriarchy, it isn’t possible to support them universally. Feminists should strive to support anyone trying to dismantle the white patriarchy and should hold those upholding it accountable.

However, the problem of defining feminism as a movement for equal rights for women creates larger issues than watering down the movement. The black and white dichotomy created by the "women versus men" struggle is reductive and misses the point. It ignores the ways that the patriarchy hurts everyone, regardless of gender, and ignores how other facets of oppression such as racism and ableism are tied into the issue. Most importantly, it continues to uphold the strict gender roles that were created by the patriarchy. Gender is a societal construct entirely separate from biological sex, but the white patriarchy has successfully convinced people that it’s innate, synonymous to sex, and binary. This is viewed as completely natural, despite the fact that from a biological standpoint, sex isn’t even binary. Sex is determined by five factors: chromosomes, gonads, hormones, internal reproductive anatomy, and external genitalia. In each of those categories, a person could present one, both, or none. In a medical setting, this could lead to doctors making assumptions about patients based on their binary sex. That could lead to them overlooking things that could be relevant to the patient. Every rule used to determine sex has exceptions, which is why science is moving away from viewing sex as binary, and toward viewing it as a spectrum.

That’s one of the reasons why I find it strange when people consider gender and gender roles to be natural. Gender roles themselves are constantly changing and reversing, yet are still considered by many to be completely natural. For example, dresses, heels, and the color pink are all considered naturally feminine nowadays, when they were originally considered exclusively masculine. This viewpoint also ignores any culture outside of western Europe, many of which have completely different ideas on gender that go back thousands of years. I am non-binary, largely because I just don’t understand gender. It feels completely made up and fake. I don’t see how my gender is related to my behaviors, presentation, and traits. At the same time, I do identify as a lesbian. In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of recent conversations online about how lesbian is frequently experienced as a term that can describe both sexuality and gender, and sometimes I genuinely feel like my gender is best described as “dyke”. I am both a woman and not a woman at the same time. I am not the only one experiencing this as well. Gender abolition is a growing movement that seeks to dismantle not only gender norms but the normalization of binary gender entirely through normalizing things like hyper-specific genders and neo-pronouns. The idea that pronouns are not related to gender and the concept of neopronouns are not new, but they are coming to public consciousness in a way that wasn’t possible before the internet. Defining feminism’s goal to equal rights for women ignores the many different ways that sex, gender, and sexuality differ and interact. If the goal is to fight the patriarchy, we can’t continue perpetuating the gendered boxes that the patriarchy created for us. Queer and trans people constantly fight the white patriarchy just by existing because they bring into question the core pillars of it. Because of that, they are an important part of fighting any normalized oppressive system.

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Hi! My name is Tes Baur (they/them/theirs) and I am an artist, friend, partner, child, crafter, and general creative. I am currently pursuing my BFA in sculpture. I’m heading into my fourth year of college, but I have two years until I graduate because I switched majors after my freshman year. I’m originally from Aurora Colorado, and I was raised by a single mother that works in public mental health as a psychologist. She decided that she wanted a child more than a husband, so she had me on her own through donor insemination.

My art typically focuses on feminist and queer issues. The most notable series that I’ve done is a sculpture series titled “Playroom”. The sculptures are a series of brightly colored vulvas, breasts, and other similarly themed forms. The series is meant to celebrate female sexuality and the title, bright colors, and interactive nature of the pieces are supposed to evoke feelings of fun and play. I made it in response to the public reaction to Cardi B’s “WAP”, particularly how many people thought it was inappropriate that she was celebrating her sexuality in such an overt and playful way. I also heavily incorporate Fiber Art into my work, because it is often designated as “women’s work” and overlooked as art. Because of my personal passion for feminist issues, and the large influence that it has on my art, I decided that I want to pursue a minor in Women’s Studies. This class is the first step in that journey.

Outside of art, my main hobby is TRPGs, particularly D&D. In that same vein, I also really enjoy conlangs and conscripts, worldbuilding, and character creation. It’s a really interesting form of play while also being a powerful creative outlet. I also enjoy crafting and love DIY projects. I practice Tarot and I am trying to learn about astrology (Pisces Sun, Aquarius Moon, Leo Rising). I’m also engaging more in my Irish roots, which has been difficult because a lot of that history and culture have been destroyed. When I get the chance I enjoy playing video games, particularly Skyrim and Bioshock. I also like spending time with my cat, Stormy, but I don’t get to see her often because she’s currently living at my mother’s house. I have also been involved in activism and politics since early high school.

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In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Audre Lorde argues that maintaining divisions between different types of oppression, such as racism and sexism, actually holds up white supremacy. Similarly, in “Nothing to add: A Challenge to White Silence in Racial Discussions'' by Robin DiAngelo, the author reframes whiteness as a system rather than individual actions and discusses how white silence upholds that system. Both of these things have been normalized and they seem harmless, but they stand in the way of actual progress. According to DiAngelo, “Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels,” (Saraswati et al. 2021, 63). People of all races are constantly being impacted by whiteness, but white people often don’t recognize the impact it has had on them because it benefits them and it is so normalized. This feeds into the problems that Lorde discussed in her article. She said, “As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define ‘woman’ in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become "other," the outsider whose experience and tradition is too "alien" to comprehend,” (Lorde 1996, 117). Not only does this contribute to white supremacy by ignoring racism, it ignores the fact that black women experience more oppression because they are both women and black. It is the intersection of those identities that leads them to unique oppression, such as the fact that they are “the lowest wage earners,” (Lorde 1996, 120). Oppression is intersectional, so combatting it has to be intersectional as well.

For example, I am white, but I am also a disabled non-binary lesbian that is perceived as a woman. The way those identities intersect is complicated and often seems to contradict itself, but through all of it, I still have white privilege. While this is not to say that I am not at all oppressed, or that I’ve had it easy, there are forms of oppression related to identities that I have that I haven’t faced because I am white. For example, one of my disabilities is ADHD. For a few years of my early childhood, I was a bit of a problem child because I hadn’t yet figured out how to mask and I displayed clearly neurodivergent traits that weren’t considered acceptable. While I did experience unfair treatment because of this, both from my peers and from adults in my life, I wasn’t branded a “bad kid.” Because I was white and female, I was instead pushed into learning to mask and then continuing to mask almost constantly when I’m not alone. On the other hand, white, male kids with similar problems were allowed to continue those behaviors without intervention under the guise that “boys will be boys.” Out of all of the people I knew growing up that displayed neurodivergent traits, it was only the POC kids that were treated like delinquents at young ages. While being forced to mask in order to fit into the idea of neurodivergent gender roles wasn’t a privilege, it did lead to a less punishing outcome than it did for my black peers. This is a pretty clear example of how it is possible to experience oppression while still benefiting from white privilege. At the same time, ableism can’t be dismantled without also dismantling all the other pillars of oppression, because they are so interconnected.

A new insight that I got from these readings was the insight on when white people should speak up in discussions of race, and when they should be quiet. While I had a vague understanding of the issue, I definitely felt unsure of when it was appropriate and always labored on the side of not speaking over people of color. While I still was an active listener, I was still holding back from conversations, which minimized my ability to unlearn the racist tendencies and instincts that I have.

References
Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Essay. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 114–23. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1996.

Saraswati, L. Ayu, Barbara L. Shaw, Heather Rellihan, and Robin DiAngelo. “Nothing To Add: A Challenge to White Silence in Racial Discussions.” Essay. Introduction to Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, 62–74. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://insite.vitalsource.com/.