Really specifically: “all men are disgusting abusive sex-crazed monsters” was a belief used to bolster heteropatriarchy in my old church by positioning women as a necessary gatekeeping & moderating force. Women could aid men in the struggle to keep their Beastly Instincts under control by dressing modestly and eventually entering into a marriage where their love and support and constant sexual availability (and I use that term extremely deliberately here) would help keep that man a productive member of society. This kept men blameless (any abuse or sexual misconduct is just in their nature as men!) while allowing the church to constantly victim-blame women – because if you got hurt, it’s because you obviously weren’t doing Enough to keep whatever man hurt you reigned in.
This system dehumanized everyone in it, but it most specifically used the idea that men are inherently Bad to prop up patriarchy, and that’s why I can’t fucking stand to see the same base ideas crop up in supposedly feminist spaces.
Yuuuup. “Women are the basis of civilization. That’s why they need to be kept barefoot and pregnant and constantly sexually available (and it’s her fault if he cheats, she wasn’t sexy and available enough) yet covered up to not tempt strange men into uncontrollable lust.”
Radfems are far too close to Fundamentalist Christianity.
Radical feminism: “abolishing gender” by asserting traditional gender roles since 1960!
And the whole “you can’t express yourself sexually via fiction bc bad people might conceivably use it instead of something else” is the same thing as “you have to dress modestly or it might give a man impure thoughts.” It’s the other person’s problem what they do with stuff, and following the purity rules at best does nothing and quite possibly makes things worse.
It also reinforces the idea that any time a woman expresses a sexual fantasy that isn’t morally correct or in any way amenable to soft monogamous civilized gatekeeping, she herself becomes the problem. If women are as “bad” as men (”bad” defined here by having a wild sexual imagination – nothing to do with actual ACTS necessarily, just enjoying the idea of “taboo” things in art or fiction) then society will fall apart, since the whole false equation of “good” women with sexual purity is ruined. And of course, a sexually impure woman is far worse than a man with the same fantasies. Because women “shouldn’t be like that.”
This is primarily a heteronormative notion of course but it’s proving unpleasantly easy to echo in largely LGBTQ+ spaces as well.
The “all men are disgusting rapists” rhetoric most DEFINITELY hurts bi women as well, especially the way radfems use it.
I’ve been called all manner of slurs by feminists (bihet, breeder, dick worshiper) and they’ve sent me sexually charged posts because I’m bisexual. I’ve seen other bi girls get told “I hope you get raped” and “the reason why you were molested/raped/abused is because you CHOOSE to be attracted to teh eebul menzzz,” and they claim to be AGAINST victim blaming!
Like, I thought feminism was supposed to be anti patriarchy, yet it seems these days that they’re just two sides of the same coin.
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