Intersectional Feminism

Yeah! It doesn’t work ALL the time but as a general rule, half your age plus 7 is actually a really good rule of thumb to use.

I don’t consider any teenagers to be grown adults. So I think an 18 or even 19 year old attracted to a 17 year old isn’t the end of the world. I’m 19 and I personally couldn’t see myself with a 17 year old, but I also recognize that there isn’t a huge developmental or power disparity like there is in other relationships.

I’d be more concerned with someone in their 20’s wanting to date a minor, or someone in their late 20’s and up and up wanting to date a teenager in general, even if they weren’t a minor. A lot of this is just personal opinion as well. For example, IMO:

- 17 + 19, okay as long as age of consent/romeo and juliet laws are being followed. Not my cup of tea but I wouldn’t consider a 17 year old and a 19 year old dating to be a pedophilic relationship by any means.

- 17 + 21, gross, different life stages, potential for power differences. 4 years is a lot at that age.

- 18 and 26, predatory, completely different life stages, high schooler or young college student vs person established in their career, with almost 10 more years of adulting experience

- 20 and 30, also predatory, when you’re 20 you’re just out of your teens, still very immature in terms of brain development alone. Any normal, non-creepy person in their 30’s will not want to date someone who is just barely beginning to understand adulthood

- 25 and 40, also predatory, likely some sort of misogyny in het relationships where the man is older (some men think women are “used up” by the time they hit 30 and will only date young women in their 20’s - see Leonardo DiCaprio), different life stages, when the older person in the relationship was 25, the younger person was TEN. In FIFTH GRADE. Ew.

- 30 and 40, fine, by that time you’ve gained enough life experience and self exploration that it’ll be easier for you to identify and stand up to the red flags they tend to be present in age gap relationships. 30 and 40 also aren’t that different developmentally or in terms of life stages so there isn’t as much of a probability of an abusive power differential.

Now, this is all very much my opinion. Do I think it should be legal for a 22 year old and a 32 year old to date? Sure. Am I entitled to judge the hell out of them and consider the older person a gross creep? Also yes. But you asked, so that’s my opinion.

Agreed! Being a woman is so much more than just what’s in your pants. It’s why trans women are women too!

It’s definitely super gross to reduce people to their reproductive organs by telling their chromosomes define something as personal and unique as gender.

Very true. Context definitely matters, and terfs tend to use terms like “females”. Incidentally, so do incels. So while the word “female” may be appropriate in some non-oppressive instances, it’s always better to use and normalize the term “women” instead whenever possible.

Saying “the female body...” is different then saying “females are...”.

Females refers to any species. Hence, why you’ve probably seen it used a lot in biology. And there isn’t inherently a problem with that. BUT - there’s a term for human females, and that term is women. If you’re talking about human women instead of, say, female cats, there’s no reason to use the term female instead of woman.

Again, I understand the word being used as an adjective (female patient, female baby, etc) but it doesn’t have a place in commonplace, non-scientific language - it’s dehumanizing because it lumps women in with other animals.

If you type in the word “females” on twitter, most of the tweets that show up are derogatory towards women in some way. That should go to show you that in our society, “females” is not a nice word to use.

So, there’s a lot to unpack here.

First of all, not all sex workers are women. Not all clients are men. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll use those gendered terms in my reply, but please keep that in mind. There are plenty of sex workers of all genders.

Secondly: I never said women who are starving should be forced to turn to sex work. I don’t like to think of people being forced to turn to sex work because they have no other job alternatives and if they don’t engage in sex work they will starve. That’s not consent. I don’t blame people for choosing sex work over starving, but it makes me angry that capitalism has pushed them into those circumstances. Hence why I am am anti-capitalist.

But let’s talk about individuals who do sex work voluntarily, of which there are many.

Sex work is a valid form of work, but it’s not the exact same as any other job - say, retail or restaurant work. Sex work involves intimate parts of people’s bodies - often marginalized bodies - which means sex workers require special care and protections because they are more vulnerable to abuse than workers in other sectors. (Take that statement with a grain of salt, though - I don’t mean to minimize the many other forms of oppression-based workplace and labor abuse that occur far too often). The best way to do this is by decriminalizing sex work so that sex workers are able to seek help if need be without putting themselves at risk.

I would also be especially concerned for younger sex workers (~18-22) because again, there are lots of older men who will do anything to get with “barely legal” girls (🤢). Although maybe that’s just the fact that I’m personally disgusted by large age gap relationships in general - I feel they’re inherently predatory and imbalanced. Regardless, I don’t blame young sex workers, but I do blame/judge older men who seek out very young sex workers.

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to engage in sex work is a very personal one. It’s not your place to judge sex workers who are consenting, staying safe, and going about their jobs like any other person. And it’s definitely not your place to judge sex workers who are not consenting and are not staying safe, because that’s called victim-blaming.

You’re allowed to have your feelings about sex work. It’s an uncomfortable thought for many people because it’s so taboo in our society. It’s okay to feel however you feel about it. What’s not okay is to take that out on sex workers, liken sex work to pedophilia, and call people misogynists for supporting people’s choices.

I do! But as far as I know, you can’t queue answers to asks. The only option I get is to post them directly. I do queue regular posts and reblogs, though. And I try to only ever answer two or three asks at a time. 

There is something I should make very, very clear. 

There’s no such thing as a centrist when it comes to nazi-ism, pedophilia, the safety of sex workers. Either you support it or you don’t. Either you think nazis and pedos are dangerous, or you support them, at least implicitly. 

Failure to condemn something is, by definition, implicitly supporting it. 

I never said debating right-wingers (I won’t even use the term centrist, because as I just explained, centrism doesn’t exist - it’s just a term to make some conservatives feel better about themselves) is bad, but we don’t owe them debate, especially not public debate, because that gives them a platform. And when they’re debating publicly, they don’t care about making good points. They care about using dogwhistles to lure bystanders and listeners into their ideology. That’s why I don’t support debating them publicly. 

Nope! Because not all people with uteruses are women, not all people with uteruses have periods, not all people with uteruses are capable of getting pregnant. The only thing they ALL have in common is that they have a uterus :)

She was a kid. Any men who were into her were pedophiles.

If she was breaking the hearts of pedophiles, robbing them, extorting them... I don’t care!! They’re pedos! They’re the scum of the earth!! Good on her for treating them like shit!! She’s blameless because she was a MINOR, an UNDERAGED CHILD, who was being preyed upon!! I have no sympathy for the adult men she “hurt”, no matter how mentally ill they were, and I have all the sympathy for her, who was murdered by an abusive piece of shit incel.