feminism – Nothing but My Aching Soul

femsolid:

gostonedkitty:

mediocre-latinist:

my-oddly-drawn-circus:

thecuckoohaslanded:

earthlydreams:

feminismisatrick:

misanthrpologie:

Saving Face (2012), acid attacks on women in Pakistan

Meanwhile, in America, feminists are complaining about how dress codes are oppressive.

You idiots have never experienced oppression, and pray you never do, because this is what it looks like.

As a South Asian American feminist, let me remind everyone that oppression is not a competition.

Just because we fight one type of sexism doesn’t mean we don’t care about other instances of sexism that don’t affect us directly in our day to day lives.

My heart goes out to this woman and the hundreds of other victims like her. I want to educate people about these kinds of incidents. I support organizations that help women like this.

You may think that dress code issues are trivial, but they are related to a larger issue of women’s bodily autonomy, which affects women’s health and safety.

So please, let’s try to bring awareness and bring about change instead of insulting entire groups of people because they are facing issues that are less scary than the one presented.

“oppression is not a competition”

thank you so much for this wording

Every time someone, usually a guy, complains about feminists not experiencing oppression, I can’t help but see what they are really trying to say.

“This is how men could be treating you, be grateful it’s only as bad as it is now.”

And that’s actually an attribute of abusers, I believe I read somewhere. To compare you to someone being treated worse and tell you you should be grateful you have it so good. It convinces the victim they should be silent in the face of their abuse.

It’s literally an abuse tactic.

Every time someone says something like, “You […] have never experienced oppression, and pray you never do, because this is what it looks like.” What they are saying is, “shut up, we could treat you worse if we wanted to.”

^^^^^^^^^^^

Boom.

And it’s used to divide women. Those he decided are worthy of compassion and those who just aren’t. Conveniently, those who “have it worse” usually live far away and that means he doesn’t need to do a thing about it, he doesn’t have to change his behaviour and he gets to pretend he doesn’t have anything to do with it. Ultimately, he speaks from a position of privilege and with the usual entitlement that goes with it he thinks he gets to decide what is real suffering and what isn’t. Of course he does not care one bit about this woman, he just wants to use her to silence other women which is also part of the reason why men disfigure women this way. Shame and intimidation, trauma and isolation. Sisterhood is the biggest threat to men.