radical feminism

That men who in general champion civil rights defend the photograph without experiencing it as an assault on women intensifies the fear, because if the horror of the photograph does not resonate with these men, that horror is not validated as horror in male culture, and women are left without apparent recourse.

Where weaponized incompetence is the performance of male helplessness, feminized incompetence is its mirror: the performance of effortless devotion. It’s not that these women lack agency or ambition—it’s that pretending not to has always been more profitable.

The questions now really are: why is pornography credible in our society? how can anyone believe it? And then: how subhuman would women have to be for the pornography to be true? To the men who use pornography, how subhuman are women? If men believe the pornography because it makes them come—them, not the women—what is sex to men and how will women... See more

The irony is that advertisers who ignore women’s sports for “lack of audience interest” will happily pay an influencer to wear their brand while filming her boyfriend in-between games. WAGs and female athletes are all playing by the same rules, even if only some of them profit from it.

He forces her to become that thing that causes erection, then holds himself helpless and powerless when he is aroused by her. His fury when she is not that thing, when she is either more or less than that thing, is intense and punishing.

If one values women as human beings, one cannot turn away or refuse to hear so that one can refuse to care without bearing responsibility for the refusal. One cannot turn one's back on the women or on the burden of memory they carry. If one values women as human beings, one will not turn one's back on the women who are being hurt today and the... See more

That meaning is: pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that... See more

It’s not about infantilizing women—it’s about noticing how “choice” only ever seems to matter when it’s about protecting a man’s vision.

This is because the challenges to the civil rights law have been abstract arguments about speech, as if women's lives are abstract, as if the harms are abstract, conceded but not real. The women trapped in the pictures continue to be perceived as the free speech of the pimps who exploit them.