Thread by @ABRadFems

I wrote the following after the first #GIDYVR talk with #MeghanMurphy in Vancouver, January 2019 to summarise the disinformation being spread about her and what was said there:

Feminism is about liberation of women from the patriarchy. It's not about equality.

Being able to have an open, honest conversation about the impacts of gender politics on women's rights is hugely important and is not actually hate speech. It's not illegal to criticise an ideology. The silencing and targeting of feminists is the fascism we are being accused of.

Radical feminists aren't nazis. We're not fascists. We're mostly anti-capitalism socialists. We want to free everyone from the restrictive system of gender roles.

Seriously, in any conversation about gender, any article, essay, etc., replace the word "gender" with "sex stereotypes" to see why we have a problem with it.

Feminists are not calling for the deaths of or ignoring the existence of trans people. At all. We do not advocate for violence, homelessness, marginalisation, or any other harm to vulnerable communities. Everyone deserves health care, housing, employment, love, safety.

This includes women. We have the right to demand our own spaces, to control who has access to our bodies. We do not deserve to be threatened and doxxed and fired because we are non-compliant.

Sex segregated spaces are CRUCIAL to the development of female community. Historically,

women have been actively prevented from gathering *because* of our desire for community, and the power that community gives us is a threat to the patriarchy. (For more information, please look up how women weren't allowed POCKETS because we could be communicating independently

thus compromising our fathers' and husbands' attempts to keep us docile property.)

More attention must be paid to the needs and struggles of indigenous communities. They have been abandoned by our governments, the treaties are being ignored,

and we are still in the middle of a genocide. The last residential school closed in 1996. We are not past this. We have not earned the forgiveness of the people our government failed to exterminate, and we need to do more to hold our representatives accountable.

We also need to do more to protect indigenous women from white men, who rape, abuse, and murder them with no consequence.

We need to spend more time listening to indigenous women, amplifying their voices when we can, defending them when it's necessary.

It takes bravery to stand in an environment where there are obstacles at every conceivable level and we need to respect and support that.

We need to be holding men responsible for their violence.

Feminism was and is being built on the backs of women. Strong women who started talking to each other and comparing experiences, discovering exactly how normal it is to have been treated like you're inferior and alone your entire life. We're not inferior. We're not alone.

We don't scare easy.

Feminism is a verb. To paraphrase Lee Lakeman, make feminism intentional again.

~~

At the time, I wanted to develop a supportive #radicalfeminist space here in #YYC, so I DID. We have monthly meetings, we have each other, we're doing important work.

Underestimate angry women at your peril. We're coming for this bullshit.

*to summarise what was actually said and correct the disinformation*

dammit