Ovarit is permanently shutting down.
https://ovarit.com/o/Announcements/676340/ovarit-is-closing
Sending this to your blog hopefully so that those who’ll miss Ovarit might look to your website as the successor. No pressure lol
Thanks. 💜 Ovarit and clovenhooves are slightly different, in that Ovarit is/was for "all women" while clovenhooves is for radical feminist/radfem-leaning women. So while I don't think it'll truly be a successor, I do hope it offers online respite for the feminist women of Ovarit.
i honestly feel so bad for anyone struggling w dysphoria trying to find detrans resources on here, the tags are filled w degrading fetish content
the greatest skill a woman can learn for herself is self reliance
The average man thinks he’s smarter than the average women. And women generally agree.
By Lisa Wade, PhD
It starts early. At the age of five, most girls and boys think that their own sex is the smartest, a finding consistent with the idea that people tend to think more highly of people like themselves. Around age six, though, right when gender stereotypes tend to take hold among children, girls start reporting that they think boys are smarter, while boys continue to favor themselves and their male peers.
They may have learned this from their parents. Both mothers and fathers tend to think that their sons are smarter than their daughters. They’re more likely to ask Google if their son is a “genius” (though also whether they’re “stupid”). Regarding their daughters, they’re more likely to inquire about attractiveness.
Once in college, the trend continues. Male students overestimate the extent to which their males peers have “mastered” biology, for example, and underestimate their female peers’ mastery, even when grades and outspokenness were accounted for. To put a number on it, male students with a 3.00 G.P.A. were evaluated as equally smart as female students with a 3.75 G.P.A.
When young scholars go professional, the bias persists. More so than women, men go into and succeed in fields that are believed to require raw, innate brilliance, while women more so than men go into and succeed in fields that are believed to require only hard work.
Once in a field, if brilliance can be attributed to a man instead of a woman, it often will be. Within the field of economics, for example, solo-authored work increases a woman’s likelihood of getting tenure, a paper co-authored with a woman has an effect as well, but a paper co-authored with a man has zero effect. Male authors are given credit in all cases.
In negotiations over raises and promotions at work, women are more likely to be lied to, on the assumption that they’re not smart enough to figure out that they’re being given false information.
Overall, and across countries, men rate themselves as higher in analytical intelligence than women, and often women agree. Women are often rated as more verbally and emotionally intelligent, but the analytical types of intelligence (such as mathematical and spatial) are more strongly valued. When intelligence is not socially constructed as male, it’s constructed as masculine. Hypothetical figures presented as intelligent are judged as more masculine than less intelligent ones.
All this matters.
By age 6, some girls have already started opting out of playing games that they’re told are for “really, really smart” children. The same internalized sexism may lead young women to avoid academic disciplines that are believed to require raw intelligence. And, over the life course, women may be less likely than men to take advantage of career opportunities that they believe demand analytical thinking.
Lisa Wade, PhD is a professor at Occidental College. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture, and a textbook about gender. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
it deeply concerns me that some popular takes against 4B from political women are “but who will birth the next generation of radical feminists?” and “but how can we change the world by refusing to participate in society?” as if the only morally correct way for women of “mature age” to participate in society is to marry a man. i also notice two key essential gender roles in this rhetoric . . .
american women your objective for the next four years is to make men miserable. exacerbate that male lonliness epidemic as much as you possibly can.
I love this website. It has profiles of over 100 female writers in translation from before 1700, with extracts from their work, relevent secondary sources, and where you can find their works in print or online.
I wish the women jumping on the 4B bandwagon would understand these points:
https://www.tumblr.com/femtoscooter/766688743202684928?source=share
https://youtu.be/b3KswFqFwt8?si=bidXJHUHJ32v5YcH
Anon, you are the one with a fundamental misunderstanding of 4B.
The post and video you sent me both cover the same topics, so I'll simply address them as one.
First, the author of that post is genderkoolaid. This is the same individual who posted a factually incorrect, misrepresentation of abuse statistics, in opposition to women's separatism. After my thorough explanation of how and why they were wrong, they chose to block me rather than admit to their misrepresentation.
All of this is to say, I am entirely unsurprised at their misrepresentation of another female separatist movement.
Sex strikes and 4B
Both posters erroneously compare the 4B movement to a sex strike. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement. A sex strike is a transient protest meant to induce political or social change. For example, women may organize a sex strike to be concluded only once particular abortion protections are passed. (Like all protests, historical sex strikes have had mixed success.)
The 4B movement is not transient. Women who commit to 4B do not stop and later return to men. It is also not designed to directly induce a specific political or social change. The 4B movement was fundamentally a reaction to the intensely patriarchal culture in South Korea. The women who joined this movement did so because they believed that a life without men would be better than a life with men. They are not "withholding sex" until South Korean men stop being misogynistic; they have taken stock of their reality and decided that completely separating themselves from men is the only feasible reaction to their circumstances.
Yes, this focus on women's lives and circumstances, and the mass social rejection of the status quo, is likely intended to bring about social change (i.e., make men stop acting as they do), but this is a byproduct of the movement, not the origin.
All of this is to say: the 4B movement is not a means to an end, it is both the means and the ends.
But American women aren't doing it this way
Some are, some aren't. I'm entirely unsurprised that in a culture steeped in postmodernist theory, some women are attempting to distort the meaning of the movement. While I do not read Korean, I imagine this is frustrating to the woman who created and committed to 4B.
The continuation of this postmodernist pattern is unfortunate, and I truly wish the women who meant "sex strike" said so, rather than co-opting another movement. That being said, the mainstreamed discussion of female separatism is still positive as it brings women's attention to the possibility of alternate choices. (And having men's typical, misogynistic, violent reactions on display to the mere suggestion of such an action have been, as always, enlightening.)
Comparison with political lesbianism
Again, this is a misunderstanding of both the 4B movement and political lesbianism.
Political lesbianism is a practice where heterosexual or bisexual women falsely claim to be homosexual.
This is not the same as bisexual women practicing female separatism (i.e., only forming relationships or having sex with other women) while still indicating they are bisexual. It is also not the same thing as heterosexual women choosing to forgo all romantic and sexual relationships (e.g., major parts of the 4B movement).
The issue with political lesbianism is the homophobia inherent in intentionally claiming you are homosexual when you are not and the associated sentiments (e.g., claiming you can "choose" your sexuality).
The "male" loneliness crisis
The video repeats the misinformation concerning the "male" loneliness crisis/suggests men are uniquely affected by social isolation. Again, this is patently false. There is a general loneliness epidemic – one that affects women and men equally – not a male-specific crisis.
General rejection of female separatism
The rest of their commentary is the standard rejections of female separatism (sprinkled with pseudo-liberal buzzwords).
I'm not going to re-hash every defense and benefit of separatism here, but here are a few highlights:
The same post from above using data to show how female separatism would result in an unprecedented reduction in violence against women
Someone else's post about the difference in segregation and separation
Someone else's post about the framing of separatism as an option
My post about how many men are misogynistic
My post about the fatal effects of misogyny
Actually just the entirety of my #male violence tag and #patriarchal culture tag
In any case, the 4B movement is a form of female separatism. (And notably, not a conservative movement. It is specifically designed to disrupt the current status quo and prioritize women who are marginalized under conservative ideology.)
Conclusion
So, no, women do not need to "understand these points", because "these points" are either factually inaccurate, a misunderstanding of the terms and movements involved, or a simple rejection of feminist principles with a pseudo-liberal veneer.
References below the cut:
The history of sex strikes. (2019, May 16). BBC Three. https://www.bbc.com/bbcthree/article/1fc04f3e-3128-4be7-a78a-28ea31db4101
057. Lysistratic nonaction. (n.d.). Global Nonviolent Action Database; Global Nonviolent Action Database. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/category/gene-sharps-198/057-lysistratic-nonaction
Palmer, O. (2022, January 31). Political lesbianism remains a contentious debate in lesbian feminist circles—Is there a generational divide? Feminist Current. https://www.feministcurrent.com/2022/01/30/political-lesbianism-remains-a-contentious-debate-in-lesbian-feminist-circles-is-there-a-generational-divide/
Kuk, J., Park, H., & Norma, C. (2018, November 8). Radical feminism paves the way for a resurgent South Korean women’s movement. Feminist Current. https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/11/07/radical-feminism-paves-way-resurgent-south-korean-womens-movement/
Lee, J., & Jeong, E. (2021). The 4B movement: envisioning a feminist future with/in a non-reproductive future in Korea. Journal of Gender Studies, 30(5), 633-644.
The lie that testosterone is going to harm your gorgeous body is the most sinister thing I can think to tell young men. Testosterone is not going to make you sick, harm you, or turn you into an unrecognizable monster.
Testosterone is going to make you happier than you’ve ever been in your life. Testosterone is going to make you look down at yourself and finally smile, because the yearning is over. Your skin and your bones finally fit just right, instead of feeling foreign and out of place. Testosterone is going to let you finally reach an enlightened, happier version of yourself. Why would you ever tell someone the opposite if it’s not out of hatred and wishing to see them suffer?