Before I begin this essay, I want to quickly define what Societal Stockholm Syndrome is. In essence, it’s basically a form of widespread denial in which a prisoner (in this case women) forces themselves to view their captor’s (men)’s behavior as acceptable, and go out of their way to enable it because they feel like they have no way to escape them and mentally need to endure. Every single woman ever born in a sexist society has Stockholm syndrome towards men in some degree shape or form regardless of age, time period, and even sexuality, It warps every woman’s worldview (especially concerning their experiences with men) to the extent of (in the words of Radtwt user @femliyana of Twitter) that ‘The ONLY scenario in which a woman is an accurate interpreter of her own life and relationship, is if she has worked on herself, built up excellent self-esteem, holds no internalized misogyny in her belief system, and displays no self-harm tendencies, sexual or otherwise.’ For more information on the subject, check out Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham which I’ll be quoting a bunch of times here to support my argument that Liberal feminists insistence on prioritizing ‘trans-women’ in their feminism, along with their vitriol towards ‘terfs’ is reflective of a nasty case of societal Stockholm Syndrome.
- Perceived inability of escape from Captor
The vast majority of women across the world have been abused by males in some capacity. Most are constantly sexually abused in marriages or on the street. Women only have basic rights in certain developed countries and the statistics make it clear that a good chunk of those women still get sexually abused and raped in marriages. The female default is trauma from male violence. There are some women lucky enough to go their whole lives artificially insulated from it (using myself as an example), but they are incredibly rare. Most women are so used to male violence, that they just learn to live with it, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to raise their children or get on with their daily lives.
To quote @femilyana once more,
> ‘Libfems tell on themselves so often. They go around saying "There will always be a sex (rape) trade, it's inevitable, we might as well accept it." This is such a clear admission of your awareness that males are evil & will always be evil, yet you continue to pander to them.’
Now, it's important to note that TiM handmaidens are ultimately just another flavor of Pickme. For all Libfems claim to despise female redpill grifters and tradwives, they’re honestly not that different from each other imo. And while Pickmes’ need to play female ambassador initially comes off as a belief that men are Just That Awesome, whenever I've spoken to them about their need to pander to the manosphere by waxing non-stop about men’s mental health issues/ loneliness crisis, further questioning almost always reveals that it's rooted in an inability to conceive of a life independent of them. To directly quote from L2S:
> Because of the long-term nature of women's isolation, women feel that, without men, we will be alone and further isolated. We feel that we will have no one. We do not see relations with other women as an alternative.
As such, this form of male-pandering doesn't come across as motivated by genuine passion for men’s issues so much as a desire to earn their approval and kindness through appeasement. Even though we’re lucky enough to live in an age where it’s possible for women to carve out a life for themselves and survive independent of men (at least in the Western world), a lot of women still seem to subscribe to the following sentiments described in L2S:
>People resist taking on a new worldview, which a choice to leave or psychologically disengage with men would require of women. Though current conditions are difficult, at least women know what it takes to survive under male domination, whereas new conditions would be unknown and therefore more scary.
This sentiment might explain why libfems insist on promoting feminism as ‘equality with men’ rather than liberation from them altogether, and spend more effort on begging men to realize how much they stand to benefit from adopting it’s principles than they do raising women’s consciousness regarding the various ways in which we are exploited as a sex class.
>If women can arouse the kindness of any one man, maybe other men will also think we are valuable and therefore won't hurt us because they will respect that man's property, or fear his wrath if they show us disrespect.
Having established this, it is my belief that Liberal feminists are more or less operating out of the same male-appeasement mentality as right-wing women, only towards men on the opposite end of the political spectrum. In spite of all their snarky social media clapbacks to incels, they don't actually seem to think it's possible for women to fully achieve liberation. This might explain why they all seem to believe the only possible way to view women as equal to men is to redefine the word “woman” to include male people. To again quote from L2S:
>It may be that women have lived with male violence for so long that it is no longer visible to us. We may find it impossible to imagine a life without male violence, a life in a safe world.
So instead of even bothering to try striving for the future described above, Libfems settle for the next best thing in their minds- allyship with Liberal men, who are at least willing to pretend to care about sexism. Wokebro support emboldens them to challenge the misogyny from men on the political right, while basking in the security of knowing men on the left have their back.
Of course for all the lip service leftist men spew out about women's rights, they still have a vested interest in upholding the structures that enable male supremacy. As such, their support is entirely conditional on libfems avoiding issues like porn, prostitution, and surrogacy that come too close to divesting men of their sexual privilege or the on-demand access to women they feel like they're inherently entitled to. This is where 'trans rights' comes in. To quote Janice Raymond's book, Doublethink :
> Supporting the transgender program allows leftist men and organizations to publically inject men's rights into their campaigns and claim they are supporting women's rights, that is, the rights of men who declare themselves women.
And because libfems know that alienating leftist men would result in facing the full blast of backlash from them in addition to ones on the right, they let the wokebros get away with it. Which is how they end up parroting mantras like ‘sex work is work’, ‘porn is empowering’, and ‘trans women are women’
- Refusing to acknowledge how much danger you're in or how vulnerable you are around the captor (in this case men)
“Stop flattering yourself that every man out there want's to rape you,” Libfems laugh, when asked about the risks that come with letting intact men into women’s spaces simply on the basis that they ‘feel like’ one of us. “Besides, I'd be WAAAY more scared of encountering a transphobic terf who demands to know what my genitals look like in the restroom! Don't be such a misandrist! Not all men are like that”
How can libfems support an end to single-sex spaces and the erosion of our sex-based legal protections so blithely? Do they really believe that changing one's pronouns is all it takes to eliminate a man's potential for male violence against women? How can they just laugh off concerns that inviting men into our intimate spaces would make it easier for predatory ones to assault us?
The fact remains that taking into account the full breadth and depth of misogyny and male violence, virtually all men are predatory and virtually all women are at a biological disadvantage to them (we have a smaller stature, less muscle mass, have periods, and can become pregnant). Even the kindest, gentlest man out there still has an upper body strength 40-60% higher than most women, a penis, and a stronger handgrip at age 70 than the average female at 25. If left alone with a woman, whose body he decides to use to get his dick wet, there's really nothing she can do to stop him from using brute force to pin her down, penetrate her, and strangle her into silence with his superior grip strength afterwards. Even if the thought never crossed his mind, the fact remains that he still has that kind of power at his disposal.
So why do libfems refuse to acknowledge this reality? Because it's SCARY. In the words of @femliyana “Real, undiluted feminism can be extremely depressing because it requires you to acknowledge the severity of female vulnerability and the depth of exploitation against you and other women as a class.”And women are incredibly, fundamentally, extremely reproductively, physically, and (as a result) psychologically vulnerable to males. Most are usually acutely traumatized by sexual violation and general male terrorism for these very reasons. Objectively speaking, life is much more difficult AND dangerous for women thanks to the threat of male violence.
But acknowledging this kind of vulnerability is not easy even for the most seasoned feminist. It can be traumatizing to admit to yourself that men are one of the most dangerous predators on Earth, that our bodies are one of the things they desire most, and that they have more than enough means to take what they want from us by force if we don’t cooperate. To quote L2S:
> Whether or not a woman directly experiences the more recognized forms of male violence, does not the existence of the more subtle forms along with the knowledge that men's violence is directed at women because we are women and that any woman can be their target, threaten every woman's psychic survival?...
Women on the political right, cope with the reality of male violence by attaching themselves to a male figure like their husbands for a feeling of safety and protection. And for all they try to downplay it in the process, Libfems do so too, but with TiMs, whose protection Libfems probably assume they will receive from predatory men taking advantage of mixed-sex bathrooms/changing rooms as thanks for promoting their interests. Of course the idea that TiMs, themselves will suddenly stop being a physical/sexual threat to us once they change pronouns is one that may sound ludicrous both in theory and practice, but to a woman with societal Stockholm syndrome, desperately trying to avoid facing the grim reality of male violence, wouldn't it just be so wonderfully comforting if it was true?
- Projecting one's own victim status onto the captor in an act of victim solidarization, at the expense of solidarity with other prisoners.
Ever wonder why Libfems seem to have so much compassion and empathy for the TiMs who want access to our spaces, but nothing but hostility and contempt for their own sex who they expect to give them up without question? Why do they insist that TiMs should be prioritized in feminism because 'they're the ones who need it the most'? How can they state with a completely straight face that impoverished women of color have 'cis privilege' over white, middle-class AGPs who up until five years ago, were happy to consider themselves men? Why do they insist until they're blue in the face that 'feminism is for everyone' and that 'men are victims of the patriarchy, too?' when literally no other marginalized group centers their advocacy around those who do the marginalizing in this manner?
All of this is yet another manifestation of societal Stockholm syndrome, in which captives become hyper vigilant to their captor's wants and desperately seek to keep them happy at any cost, out of fear of ending up on the receiving end of the captor's wrath should said wants not be met. From L2S:
> Given that women's primary need is to survive, all needs other than keeping men happy assume secondary importance. To the extent that these secondary needs diminish women's ability to keep men happy, they are denied. For this reason, women as a group are less conscious of our own needs, wants, and perspectives (*such as the need for single-sex spaces, female-exclusive language, and centering ourselves in our liberation movement*), than we are of those of men.... Women's survival depends both on taking care of men's needs and on men knowing women are doing this so that men will (continue to) feel kindly towards women.
This symptom can also manifest through the 'fawn' threat response, which you can observe by watching libfems gush over the ugliest of TiM's 'feminine beauty' with the insincerity of a parent praising their toddler's crudely-drawn crayon drawing.
- Othering your fellow prisoners
According to L2S, when victimization cannot be ignored, 'victims may reevaluate themselves in ways that are self-enhancing', and I suspect that one way this manifests is in the form of contempt for other prisoners, such as by refusing to admit that you have more in common with them than your captor, self-soothing under the delusion that you’re a more ‘valuable’ hostage, superior to them either inherently, or thanks to a deeper connection with said captor (reframing your perception of the conflict wherein it’s yourself and the captor (along with all their power) against your fellow prisoners can offer a much-needed sense of control for those who crave it), or looking down on them for how they choose to cope with imprisonment in spite of the fact that they're simply doing whatever they think will most likely help them survive under the same conditions as yourself.
One way Libfems adopt this coping mechanism of Othering is through trashing a designated group of 'bad' women (i.e ‘terfs) who it's ok to be cruel to in the name of support for the LGBTQIALMNOP community. At times, their attempts to take part in smear campaigns against GC women come across as fueled less by genuine hatred for ‘terf’s’ ideals (your average libfem couldn’t tell you the first thing about GC feminism and is more often than not uncritically regurgitating TRA propaganda when she badmouths it), and moreso by a need to show off how much more strongly they identify with being an ally to the ‘queer community’ than they do with their femaleness. This ties back to a classic tradition for a lot of social justice movements. One of the easiest ways for female advocates to gain social clout for their devotion and commitment to a cause is by disavowing solidarity with other women, usually through some form of rhetoric that essentially boils down to ‘I may be a lowly woman, but I’m an activist, first and foremost!’
The dopamine hit resulting from disavowing one’s femaleness stems from any of the following factors listed by Sonia Johnson below:
> feelings of being powerful, as well as of being "on the right side," which unconsciously means the men's side against women; the momentary feeling of not being like other women, not being a woman at all, not a slave like them, removed from the degradation of our caste altogether; the incredibly heady feeling of escape from the bondage of our gender.
This behavior can also be witnessed in female redpill grifters who go out of their way to pander to the manosphere. I never understood why they insisted on debasing themselves by catering to such a vile subset of scrotes who can’t even be bothered to pretend that they respect women, but it makes sense when you realize that this kind of catering is a great way for rightoid women to signal the extent to which they are fundamentally male-identified via their lack of female solidarity. After all, when you defend incels, passport-bros, and Andrew Tate fanboys, you might as well go around wearing a big old sign around your neck that reads ‘there’s literally no man alive who’s too misogynistic for me to side with women over them’.
L2S states that this ambivalence women may feel about being female reveals an attempt by females to maintain feelings of self-worth by denying our membership in the less valued group (females). This process can also be described as a form of psychological splitting, in which a person is unable or unwilling to reflect on the bad in themselves (the ‘badness’ in Libfems case being female). Instead they project their badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defense of projection is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil and necessary to destroy. The splitter now feels fully justified in unleashing their viciousness and hate onto the other person, who is seen as someone monstrous who must be destroyed.
And what better subset of women can libfems generate all these feelings from publically trashing, than the ‘terfs’ crazy enough to be proud of the accursed femaleness that puts us all at such a disadvantage under male supremacy? Who could possibly make for a better outlet for all the disgust Libfems harbor towards themselves for having a female body and all the weaknesses associated with it?
Furthermore, raging against ‘terfs’ for loving their femaleness and wanting to keep feminism female-focused, libfems gain the approval of liberal men and TiMs in the classic style of virtue signaling allegiance to their androcentric agenda at the expense of solidarity with other women, while also retaining their feminist cred. I doubt any of them genuinely believe that men can become women simply by way of ‘identifying as’ one, but I do suspect that a lot of them enjoy the excuse it gives them to bully women who aren’t quite so cowardly, while getting to be celebrated for their ‘commitment to intersectionality’. In short, sh*tting on GC women in the name of trans activism lets libfems be pickmes for gender ideology while still getting to feel like ‘champions of women’ (at least the ones who tow the party line like themselves). They want to have their cake and eat it too.
But for all the vicious and unhinged diatribes libfems churn out on social media detailing the various ways they'd like for GC women to be gruesomely killed, and for all the glee with which they hop on TRA harassment campaigns, I'm convinced that they don't actually want us to quiet down and go away any more than they want prostitution to go away. Because if GC women WERE to drink the kool-aid like themselves and submit to TiM delusions with no further complaint, what other cohort of socially-sanctioned women would they be able to derive their smug sense of superiority over? Who else would they be able to offload all their internalized misogyny onto while still being able to position themselves as a champion of women’s rights (which trans rights are most definitely not in any conflict with)?
- Scapegoating your fellow prisoners for the captor's cruelty
Another aspect of Stockholm syndrome involves denying one’s anger towards your captor, because that also risks drawing their retaliation. It becomes far easier (and safer) to blame other prisoners for the captor’s actions in a form of sublimated outrage.
The most common example of this symptom of societal Stockholm syndrome manifesting in women is the way Mothers married to incompetent or abusive husbands, often take out their repressed rage over their exploitated circumstances on their children, particularly their female ones. To quote @femliyana,
“A lot of mothers literally tell their daughters ‘you are the reason for my suffering’ and ‘I never even wanted you’ and ‘you are going to lead me to an early death.’ In reality, the husband and the circumstances are the cause of her suffering, but she cannot oppose those. So she abuses the easy target instead, the girl-child.. In these cases, the child is a living reminder of her violation and suffering. These mothers tend to blame all their misery on their daughters--no matter how objectively well-behaved or accomplished the daughters are… Your mother will most likely never acknowledge the actual reasons for her misery, and will instead continue to take it out on you, because you are the softer target & asking her husband to cook a meal or stop being evil will only result in manipulation and trauma.”
Another non-trans example of a marginalized group blaming another one for the actions of the dominant group would be how African American’s scapegoat White women for the lynchings historically carried out by White men, like in the case of Emmett Till, a black teenage boy who supposedly whistled at a White woman named Carolyn Bryant and got lynched for it in 1955. Since she was most likely lying about being whistled at, Carolyn is typically blamed by the Black community for Emmett’s death for being a racist White woman who thought it would be entertaining to get a Black boy in trouble. She was not, however, the one who actually DID the lynching, which was an act of male violence perpetrated by her husband and his brother, and they didn’t do it because they cared about her. In cases like these, the white lady was the dehumanized property over which White men felt the need to stake their claim. Carolyn’s husband lynched Emmett Till because he was angry his property was supposedly violated by a Black boy. But if it had been a White one who whistled at Carolyn, her husband probably have blamed/punished her, and he most likely he most likely subjected her to full on rape, himself since it wasn’t illegal for men to do so to their wives until the 90s. From her sh*tty position as her husband’s legal property in a patriarchal, White supremacist society, Carolyn tried to gain a sense of racialized ‘power, and because of White men’s violence, it had terrible consequences. Was she racist? Yes. A horrible human being? Yes. Was she a murderer? No. So the emphasis on Carolyn as the instigator has always been misplaced
Yet another example of this would be all the Deppford Wives gleefully sh*tting on Amber Heard last year, while finger wagging about how ‘she made it harder for real victims to come forward’, some of them even claiming to be victims of DV themselves. They needed to believe that she was the abuser because of the Just World Fallacy. If they were to acknowledge Amber got placed through the wringer for being truthful, that would mean recognizing that society always hated victims and therefore society hates them- a terrifying truth. It was far easier for them to believe that they were ‘good victims’ who would surely be believed if not for Amber speaking up.
Now in order to understand how scapegoating plays out between female TRAs and gender critical women, ask a libfem why she hates ‘terfs’ so much, and she’ll tell you that ‘their hateful rhetoric puts trans women’s lives at risk’. Yet, libfems rarely if ever seem to have a fraction of that vitriolic energy for the homophobic men that are the ones actually carrying out the life-risking beating and killing of their beloved TiMs. The belief that such men become motivated to attack after reading GC women’s blogs, books, and substacks about the importance of centering females in feminism is so ludicrous that it seems downright delusional for libfems to subscribe to it. However, it makes perfect sense when you consider the following quotes from L2S:
> Stockholm Syndrome theory asserts that because we women fear male violence, we not only deny the violence, but also do not express our anger at men, for to express might well make us the targets of male aggression. The more women fear retaliation, the less we are likely to express our anger. Rather, survival demands that women disguise our anger, even from ourselves.
To quote once more from L2S:
> Women are fearful of expressing anger at men because we fear such expressions will disrupt our bonds with men- bonds we see as life jackets in a sea of male aggression.
To acknowledge that men are the biggest threat to TiMs is to give legitimacy to GC women’s fears of the male violence libfems so desperately try to deny. And for all libfems love to bleat ‘trans women are women’, the theory of Societal Stockholm syndrome makes it pretty d*mn clear they wouldn’t be making TiMs their number one feminist priority if they didn’t consider them men. Thus, if libfems were to acknowledge that other men pose the primary physical threat towards TiMs, that would mean recognizing that not even being a fellow man can offer any adequate protection or mercy from male violence. And as women, what would that mean for libfems regarding their own risk of being a victim of it?
> ... women's violence tends to descend on 'safer' targets than men... When pushed to their limits, some women either explode in murderous rage at their abusers or displace their anger onto more vulnerable targets.
This last quote might explain why libfems often use trans rights as a thinly veiled excuse for their contempt towards older women. Given that most GC women are a group whose members span a relatively vast age range, it might seem a bit odd that ageism would be the most frequently used shaming tactic in Libfem’s arsenal of ostracization against them. One might even find themselves starting to wonder if aging is the True Terf Crime rather than ‘transphobia’!
Fortunately L2S is here to shed a little light on the situation.
>Women as an oppressed group have internalized domination behaviors which we often display towards subgroups culturally labeled as inferior (for instance, women of color, lesbians, old women, or Jewish women).
"It might suck being a woman, but at least I'm not one of those decrepit, old terf hags!!"
Because older women are a subgroup of women deemed ‘useless’ under patriarchy. Men consider them too old to be considered desirable sexual partners, and having gone through menopause, they offer little in the way of being a viable reproductive resource, either. As such, this lack of male value makes older women a safe target for libfems to off-load their internalized misogyny onto, without fear of invoking male retaliation on such women’s behalf.
- Overly identifying with the captor, by taking on their perspectives and beliefs, while neglecting any cultivation of your own.
For the longest time, I was left scratching my head at how so many libfems I once respected and admired, women who’d made a name for themselves as out and proud feminists, could go on to bend the knee to the trans cult without the slightest bit of pushback. How could they call themselves champions of women, only to turn a full 180 and become the 21st century equivalent of those who opposed the right to vote?
After several years of being baffled, I have finally realized the answer. For all libfems’ based af takes about the reality of male supremacy and the raw deal women have living under it, none of them actually LIKED being women or felt any sense of collective pride in their femaleness’. And according to L2S, “Feeling shame for being a hostage is a form of taking one’s captor’s perspective (a cognitive distortion); it suggests one believes one must have deserved the punishment of being held hostage, a belief presumably held by the captor”. The sad truth is that having one’s consciousness raised regarding all the ways in which one is exploited for being female isn’t always a radicalizing experience in and of itself unless it’s accompanied by a healthy dose of solidarity.
To borrow this quote posted by Twiter user @AlessandraAster,
>The enthusiasm for gender theory from a certain section of academic feminism seems to derive from a classist disgust for women (like ‘terfs’) who they view as incapable of transcending their female body to become like men. There is a strand of liberal feminism that recoils at the bodily functions of women and thinks them beneath their intellectual investigation. They were always going to be attracted to an ideology that promises to overcome the embodiedness of the female body. Consciousness-raising feminism was always beyond their grasp. Their feminism willingly adopts male-structured ways of thinking to describe and critique the woman condition.
So how does a serious case of internalized misogyny and overly identifying with men’s way of thinking tie in to societal Stockholm syndrome? In order to understand, look no further than this quotes from L2S:
>Women’s self-hatred, associated with Societal Stockholm Syndrome can cause us to dislike, mistrust, and disparage other women. We have come to see ourselves as our oppressors see us- as unimportant, silly, and conniving.
In hindsight, libfem’s hatred of being female was always pretty obvious tbh. Even before the trans cult skyrocketed into the mainstream, left-leaning feminists were on social media preaching the importance of ‘NeVeR sUpPoRtInG sOmEoNe jUsT cAuSe ShE wAs aLsO a WoMaN’ to their followers. Look at the way they accuse GC women and radfems of ‘ReDuCiNg WoManHoOd to GeNiTaLs’ as if the female body is something inherently reductive, with nothing more to it than a vagina. Only someone who thinks women are biologically inferior to men, and has an incredibly male-centric view/understanding of the female body would think that.
> Because women's survival depends on knowing how things affect men's moods, we come to experience the world from men's perspectives. Eventually, we are no longer aware of our own feelings, thoughts, and moods
This DEFINITELY explains the timeless libfem mantra ‘if your feminism doesn’t include trans women, it’s not real feminism’ which is basically the wokeified edition of the third and fifth rules of misogyny (i.e Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish and that women and feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless).
- Retaining hope for survival by misinterpreting kindness in the captor's actions
Another coping mechanism for those with societal Stockholm Syndrome is desperately reading into the Captor’s behavior to find some evidence of kindness towards themselves. Small kindnesses create hope that the Captor will stop being abusive in the future. To quote L2S:
>Women as a group thank men for the token kindness of male chivalry even while we deny such chivalry arises from- and strengthens- male-female sex roles of dominance and submission (Richardson, 1983). Women thank men for putting us on a pedestal even while we deny that our need for the pedestal shows female dependence on male goodwill for women's individual and group survival… Under conditions of safety, women would not be likely to express gratitude for these kindnesses from men(…) The fact that women DO express gratitude reveals the profound power imbalance in the male-female relationships and suggests that men constitute a threat to women’s survival. Our ability to see men as kind enables us to bond with them and permits us to maintain the illusion that the bond between us lessens their abuse.
So how does this play out with libfems and TiMs? Well firstly, if you’re on Ovarit, I’m going to assume you’ve seen this interaction play out at some point during your time on social media.
>Libfem: (Tut-tutting about the latest celebrity scrote accused of sexual misconduct) Ugh men are the worst!
>GC: Unless they change their pronouns, right? Then they’re pwecious twans women who need to be pandered to at all costs.
>Libfem: DAS TWANSPHOBIAAAAAA! #BlockedAndReported
This sort of cognitive dissonance on libfem’s part may seem odd at first. How can they recognize men’s role in upholding male supremacy in one breath, then fall all over them the moment they come out as trans? How can prominent radfem scholars like Catherine McKinnon devote their entire academic careers to analyzing sexism, only to publish the following drivel below?
>One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed. Yet a group of philosophers purporting feminism slide sloppily from “female sex” through “feminine gender” straight to “women” as if no move has been made…”
Well, it's because when you have societal Stockholm syndrome, it’s more than easy to realize the various ways in which women are exploited as a class, while still believing on some level that Y-chromies are the ‘better’ sex. Thus, when handmaidens like McKinnon see a TiM express his desire to ‘identify as’ female, they feel flattered, rather than annoyed and disrespected at his dehumanizing attitude (and make no mistake, in order to believe you can ‘identify as’ a demographic of people marginalized by a group you’re part of, you do in fact have to dehumanize them on some level) towards us.
This is why it’s all the more amusing that libfems claim that ‘radfems romanticize oppression and think being a woman is all about suffering’ . Radfems and GC women are the ones who love their womanhood enough to want to ‘gatekeep’ it from men. Meanwhile libfem’s first reaction to a male crossdresser is “Oh goody! A member of the superior sex has graciously chosen to deign himself down to our level! All this time I thought my womanhood was nothing to be proud of, but if a man wants to be one of us, perhaps we might have some inherent value after all!”
To which I’d respond to such a sentiment with this quote from an article by Victoria Smith:
>I imagine the message is meant to be “they’re feeling for you, sisters! They’re with you all the way!” Why, then, does it look like these men are ridiculing women? Why is the overall impression one of men delighting in cosplaying the victim, all the better to reiterate that whilst they’re not the perpetrators (the perpetrators are the bad guys, not them) they’re not the losers, either?...Men are indulging in superficial, trivial acts of gender nonconformity — acts which can seem indistinguishable from recreational dress-up, or even outright mockery — then expecting women to be grateful for their norm-smashing brilliance. The fact that men’s oppression of women is facilitated by gender — that the arbitrary codes we live by are not, in fact, arbitrary — becomes an excuse for them to present their own highly selective flouting of certain codes (but not others) as a renunciation of privilege. ‘
- Performative resentment of the people legitimately invested in your freedom in hope the captor won't take their frustration with them out on you
To quote from L2S, “The need to keep men happy, along with women's need to deny the survival dependent aspects of this need, leads to the apparently strange fact that women take on men's perspective even when it appears counter to our interest to do so.”
This manifests as a symptom of societal Stockholm via captives hating the people that are actually trying to secure their freedom. When you’re in a cage with a captor, disavowing any sense of gratitude towards such agents of liberation is a great way to signal appeasement. Furthermore, doing so potentially lessens the risk of bearing the captor’s retaliation.
A non-trans example of this would be the way Muslim women react to White women who criticize the hijab because ‘it’s racist for an outsider to critique their culture’, or when woc in general insist that White women have no right to draw attention to prominent men in their communities accused of sexual violence/domestic abuse. (Case in point, I remember when this one Native American author named Sherman Alexie got hit with a bunch of sexual misconduct allegations and this one indigenous blogger I used to follow called Ali Nahdee posted this diatribe about how she didn’t want to see any White feminists using their platform to draw attention to what Sherman did because ‘it’s Native women’s problem and it’s not like you guys actually care about us anyways’).
To find evidence of this quality of societal Stockholm syndrome in Libfems, look no further than their hatred towards radfems, and their lack of entitlement towards the single-sex spaces radfems fight so hard to retain. It’s also indicative of Libfem’s low sense of self-worth as females because why else would they believe we have no right to the public/legal sex-based protections our foremothers fought so hard for us to be able to enjoy? It lowkey has the same energy of the Bimbo/ tradwife girlies on tiktok whining about feminists fighting for the right to work because if not for their efforts, they could all be playing cottagecore with their husbands and not have to worry about surviving under capitalism.
-Having no sense of identity /self-worth beyond the captor's pov/ your usefulness to them and being too afraid to even try finding out otherwise
> In patriarchy… a woman intent on surviving is at high risk of losing her sense of self. The sense of self she is most likely to develop is one that is experienced through men's eyes not her own eyes.
As a result, another symptom of societal Stockholm syndrome is that “women as a group believe we must win men's favor through our bodies and that our primary worth is as physical beings who bring men pleasure.”
This might explain why Libfems reaction when confronted with the female athletes losing out on scholarships and spots on teams thanks to self-ID is to shrug it off as a necessary sacrifice, why they wholeheartedly believe mediocre male athlete’s need to feel like a winner trumps women’s right to fair competition. It might also explain their apathy towards male violence in the form of their favorite counter argument in regards to 'terf's' concerns that letting men into women's bathrooms will make us more vulnerable to assault (i.e 'Do YoU rEaLlY tHiNk a SiGn WiLl sToP A rApIsT?') As women, we're never gonna be truly free from the threat of sexual assault, right? So why even bother to prevent it, especially when a 'trans woman's' need for validation is at stake?
- Finding it difficult to leave Captor even after physical release has been won
Women in the west might no longer be economically dependent on men to the extent they were in the past, but thanks to societal Stockholm syndrome, “Because women have denied our terror, the danger we are in, and our anger, we see no reason to leave men or to psychologically disengage from them”. In the words of Andrea Dworkin,
> Women struggle, in the manner of Sisyphus, to avoid the “something worse” that can and will always happen to them if they transgress the rigid boundaries of appropriate female behavior.
As such, pandering to TiM’s need to feel ‘validated in their womanhood’ offers Libfems an excuse to continue seeking male approval through the performance of femininity. It’s not a coincidence that most of them are also vehemently pro-makeup and refuse to think critically about the practice’s gendered function in society beyond ‘wearing it makes me feel good and it’s empowering since I choose to do so’.
To once again quote from L2S:
> If women stopped being feminine, would men love us even less than they do now? If men stopped loving women, would we be left all alone? And wouldn't women lose access to men's money, power, and prestige? If men no longer loved women, would women be able to survive? Would we even want to? If women stopped being feminine, would we be giving away a source of power (for example 'feminine wiles') without getting another source of power to replicate our femininity? Wouldn't we then be truly powerless?
Fortunately, for Libfems, this is where TiMs come in! Now, not only do Libfems get to keep wearing makeup, but they also get to self-soothe with the excuse that they’re upholding such patriarchal norms in order to help ‘the most oppressed group on the planet’ pass better. After all, if ‘cis-women’ were to reject femininity in mass and it stopped being associated with womanhood altogether, then how would the poor wittle twanswomen be able to signal their gender identity to the general public?
-Deriving a sense of moral superiority over being able to withstand the captor’s cruelty and abuse
In a world where men love dressing up their sense of entitlement as something any decent person would cater to, it makes sense that women would make a pissing contest out of who can enable said sense of entitlement the best.
Two examples of what this symptom of societal stockholm syndrome generally looks like in women are as follows:
This Twitter thread from a Pickmeisha explaining her decision to forgive her cheating husband and stay with him. Take note of how she keeps emphasizing how ‘strong’ and ‘powerful’ she is for putting up with his disrespectful infidelity. (https://twitter.com/feminine_virtue/status/1709757949441118395). Beyonce did this as well after being cheated on by Jay-Z (see the album, Lemonade). Male-identified women might not be willing to acknowledge the various ways in which women are vulnerable to male violence, but if they truly didn’t believe in the exploitative nature of the gendered dynamics they defend as hard as they do, they wouldn’t have a tendency to romanticize the eff out of being able to tolerate said exploitation the way this woman does. So why act like being able to withstand men’s disrespect and degradation is some kind of moral virtue? For an answer, look no further than this passage from the FDS handbook!
>pickmeisha's never are fulfilled- that's why they're so defensive towards anyone trying to raise their standards & help them out of the snaretrap they mode a home in. They are the types to tell you, your standards are 'too high' & call you superficial- because you will look that way next to someone who undersold themselves, lives in denial & can't be single/ alone with themselves. Women must put themselves in the driver seat, and not mold themselves to low standards for the benefit of low effort men. Pickmeishas stuck doing this can be very hard to penetrate, even with the best intentions, & some of them I think enjoy the victim complex of it all instead of having to face their esteem issues- because realistically they got their answers nine long years ago. We hove to take responsibility for what we tolerate- and learn where we went wrong & contributed to the dynamic. We have to self-reflect, adopt & demand better.
When overworked mothers being forced to do a disproportionate amount of domestic labor/ child rearing randomly pop off at their children for not being more considerate of their exploitation. To once again quote @femliyana:
> The mother begins to define herself by her misery and martyrdom. She is resentful of being broken down this way, but she most likely has lost her career and her other interests, so her only route to feeling important is to glorify her martyrdom.That's why mothers scream "I am a slave in this house!! I do everything you're so ungrateful!!" ...because she's working longer hours than any human being should reasonably be working. She's exhausted and wants her martyrdom to be glorified BECAUSE SHE HAS LOST EVERYTHING ELSE.”
Now this symptom manifests in libfems through the sense of superiority they seem to derive over women who fear male violence, and if my hypothesis is correct, it’s because doing so allows for libfems to avoid the emotional strain of empathizing with them. They always seem to act like not being concerned about the threat of sexual violence from men in changing rooms, toilets, prisons, etc. makes them some kind of a ‘cool girl’ who other women should strive to be more like, as if their lack of self-preservation is something to be proud of.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a direct quote from women’s rights activist and TRA public enemy #1, Kellie-Jay Keen regarding her theory as to why women are so quick to promote the erosion of women’s spaces/language/legal protections.
>I think it’s currency. I think the reason women compete as to who can be the quickest to give women’s rights away is because then they have currency of being these really nice people and I think women are often use psychological warfare and ostracizing and ‘niceness’ shall we say as a strategy to win against other women.
There are people on r/twoxchromosomes who think we are closer to equality than we are to regimented patriarchy, despite raping children being a Hollywood norm, and no female president. When you suggest we just overthrow the whole system instead of bartering with it, they don't fucking KNOW what system you're talking about.
Today I heard that "not all rapists are men," so we shouldn't genderize sexual crimes that way because "that'd be like calling black people violent, because they commit more crime" <- In HER own words.
Patriarchy is men being excused while racism still exists.
Oh my gawd I will have to come back and read this properly and in full. But in my scan I think this needs to be a 'guidebook for survival' for girls given to them at birth.
!!!! I'm so glad you posted this here I saw this post elsewhere (glad it's back up by the way ) I couldn't comment because I don't have an account >:l
But I also wanted to piggy back add a theory I completely pulled out of my 🍑
I think a huge thing with why Handmaids love TIMs is because for the first time they can affirm someone's "_hood" without having to do something degrading!
So you've got Chad who only feels like a man when he's choking TF out of you during seggz and you're scrubbing the stains out of his underwear.
And then you've got Riley, the sweet little 19 year old TIM who just wants to go shopping and get her (his) nails painted by you.
And of course that's also degrading, but they don't get that. The fact that in both scenarios, it's a penis person who requires a warm female body to practice some male invented ritual so that HE can feel like more of a (Gender of his choice) is completely lost on these girls, because "Affirming manhood" is such a self destructive, degrading bunch of nonsense that they're actually thrilled with the TIM BS.
Best of all they can still fulfill that special role that the penis person has so graciously elected them for. So they have a purpose in this gynophobic system. They stay in their "place" and hope that it keeps them safe.
Basically a bunch of dudes said "okay we'll stop with all the boomer misogyny, at least outside of the bedroom, if you shut tf up and tell me my hair looks cute, stupid b!tch"
And Handmaids enthusiastically signed on