Thread by @WomensLibFront

For us, we look at the roots of women’s oppression in male violence & coercive control against women.

It’s not so much an issue we take on as it is a perspective shift; the violence and coercion, the ubiquity and acceptance of it, being seen as the material engine of oppression.

https://twitter.com/sarahwoodwrite/status/1329146292942069765

We don’t believe that sexism is an ineffable essence of society, or something that men enact just by existing in our presence.

It’s a constantly reproduced pattern of relationships, where women are made to shrink ourselves in fear of real harm, as men perpetrate or excuse it.

Coercion and violence against women becomes a joke men tell each other, and excuse in each other, while teasing us about it.

We’re asked why we didn’t prevent harms, why we didn’t predict them, because doesn’t everyone *know*? Didn’t you expect it?

We’re also often told that we’re exaggerating, making it up, when we do try to tell anyone. Because doesn’t everyone also know that women are liars?

So we come up with proof. Reams of proof. But did that happen to you, we’re asked?

It did, we say.

Anecdotal! Cherry-picking!

None of this was inevitable, and none of it is necessary. This casual acceptance of male violence, and casual disbelief of women about this topic above all others, isn’t biologically innate. It’s just habit.

Habits can change.

Radical feminism is premised on the belief that men can make the choice to be civilized and rational towards women, rather than barbaric and cruel.

Sometimes, it seems we believe more in men’s capacity to choose to be decent than they do, themselves.