paleotrees I was paleotrees way before I knew about the paleo diet, which I neither follow nor endorse.

“As we have so recently and publicly discussed, girls and women have “anger issues” in that they are socialized to not demonstrate anger, but instead to sublimate it where it can sometimes then manifest itself as anxiety or depression. Girls are not born less angry and more anxious, they’re rewarded for being less angry and more anxious. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that large groups of stressed out girls and women collectively facing the dissolution of a cohesive social structure might be more disposed to fall prey to mass psychosis. It is arguable that men and boys experience similarly jarring episodes of anger and anxiety-channelling mass psychosis, but we call it male aggression and fund military industrial complexes to deal with it.”

“Fuck-me feminism … is a school of thought that suggests [women] are empowered by reclaiming and controlling our own sexual objectification, by reclaiming the power of pornography and the sex industry for ourselves, and by flaunting our desire and willingness to have sex. In other words, being a man’s sexual object can’t hurt me if I want to be objectified; pornography and the sex industry can’t degrade me if I enjoy it or if I profit from it; being used for sex can’t devalue me if I’m using him too; being regarded as nothing more than a pussy to fuck can’t dehumanize me if I want him to fuck my pussy.”

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To empower means “to give power, authority, or control to.” What is power worth if the only way you can obtain it is to fulfill the patriarchal mandate of beauty standards and sexual availability? What is this power worth if women remain overwhelmingly valued for their sexuality while men continue to be valued for their intellect and leadership abilities? What is this power worth when women are socialised to adhere to these ideas of femininity as defined by men?

This ridiculous “all choices are sacred” mentality has polluted mainstream feminism so thoroughly that it has no meaning or goals anymore.

Some women choose to stay in abusive relationships. Some women choose to steal stuff. Some women choose to abuse drugs. Some women choose to shame other women. Some women choose to be anti-feminist. Some women choose to profit from the low-paid labour of less privileged women. If some of these aforementioned women feel good about the choices they made, despite what harm they may cause to themselves or others, “empowerment” simply has no place in the conversation.

Let’s say you feel happy and “empowered” by posing naked in a porn mag. Well, good for you. But you don’t live in a little bubble world of your own where your choices have no social consequences and are 100% your own idea. Men who look at those naked pictures of you dildo-ing yourself don’t think, “Wow there’s a powerful woman, taking control of her life!” They think, “Wank material!” Every woman who “chooses” to perform in pornography, prostitution, stripping, etc. is maintaining the status quo (for which I do not fault her; I understand that some women do what they feel they have to do to survive in a patriarchy) by ensuring men that they will continue to have the sexual access to women’s bodies they have felt entitled to since nearly the beginning of time, and in light of that fact, “empowerment” becomes an absolutely meaningless, useless notion because it exists only in your own head. Men still hate you no matter how much you capitulate because patriarchy teaches them that women are subhuman objects for them to use and dispose of as they please. You can’t challenge that kind of poisonous misogyny by reframing something that they themselves believe is filthy and disgusting as “empowering.” If you don’t believe me, go listen to the way men talk about women in porn and prostitution.

Feminism doesn’t exist to make every woman feel good about every mindless thing she does. Its purpose is to liberate all women from (heterosexual, white) male supremacy. If you refuse to acknowledge that this self-obsessed, narcissistic, individualist mindset does nothing to improve the social reality of women as a class, you are beyond help and it’s embarrassing that you call yourself a feminist.

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