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Original RadFem Art: The Surreal Absurdity of Male Parasitism: Taliban 2.0 and the Power of Afghan Women
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The Surreal Absurdity of Male Parasitism: Taliban 2.0 and the Power of Afghan Women, Preeti Pathak, Digital Art, 2025-2026
NOTE: This is a repost that I originally shared on the female.liberation Instagram platform. I have made some updates to the writing and artworks based on the growth of my analysis.
Women in Afghanistan are holding a strength and resilience that fortifies their resolve to fight male parasitism. Women and girls around the world grow in solidarity as we see more and more sisters attacked, and connect the pieces of males’ violence against us. The pathetic irrationality of Afghan male parasitists and their many male enablers will forever live in our history books.
Living under male parasitism is a surreal, absurd, nightmare. None of the rules can ever make sense because they’re not based on any logic. The “rules” shift depending on the cultural peculiarities of the men in power. Though some standards in all forms of parasitism seem to be violence, the siphoning of time and energy from the captive, and the spreading of chaos by the captors.
Women and girls just want to fucking live their lives in peace, build their homes, do their work, protect their families, cooperate with their communities. We just want a stable civilization. But male parasitism is built on chaos and competition. Men rule through violent power and control. So women continually get trapped in these cycles of trying to build within the male-controlled world, only for men to break it down. And what happens after he destroys? Women are blamed. It is no coincidence that algorithms and SEO love “blame the feminists, blame the women” pieces. Each time I see a man or woman write such piece, I laugh at how they’ve been duped by male parasitism. I also lose trust in their capacity to thinking critically. The actions and logic of unintelligent men are the standard for mainstream thinking, and that should terrify everybody. It’s so tiring to try to explain the obvious: that the male parasitist model of thinking and civilization never has and never will work. Never Again is what we should be saying anytime we think of the violent world males’ continually create.
The particular male parasitists who make up the “taliban” know deep down that they are failures. This violence is about them, not us, but we become the scapegoats. We even start absorbing their messages of denigration; the goal of any enslaver. It is the weakest of humans who see violence and exploitation as strategic. And men across the globe keep showing this weakness in thinking, over and over and over and over and over again.
Men of the taliban continue to try and break the spirit of Afghan women, but they just can’t. Because every female person across the world carries the generational trauma of all women ancestors, so we know how to persist. Not in some magical way, but in the scientific way. Our epigenetics includes knowledge of adapting to and surviving male parasitism, just as the rabbit adapts to camouflage her coat, so she can survive predators no matter the season.
Remember that after you cry from the pain of male parasitism, to also spend time and laugh at its absurdity. Enjoy the truth that there is nothing admirable, advanced, intelligent, or logical about the world men have decided to build.
Know that rage isn’t crazy or irrational, it’s the logical response of the captive.
Know that women, despite being justified to fight chaos with chaos, continue to seek a cooperative road. Not because they’re foolish, but because they are always considering the impact and the long-term. And when it comes to self defense, we will fight back. Sometimes you gotta break shit too. Men seek chaos, and we will fight to the death to prevent their destruction of women, girls, and the world. Women don’t look through a simplistic all-or-nothing male lens. We look from ground level and from 270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. We see the long battle of self-defense against males’ violence, and we see the new lands, cultures, and communities we will build from the ashes of his destruction.
To my Afghan sisters: Bread, Work, Freedom. We hear your rally song and we sing with you.
📚 Resources to Explore:
Groups to Follow:
WDI Afghanistan’s Substack, Website, and Instagram platforms
Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan Instagram platform
Women for Afghan Women (WAW) Linktree
Afghan Women Strong Linktree
Articles:
Bread, Work, Freedom—Afghan Women’s Two Years of Resistance, 2023
Afghan women sing to protest a law that orders them to keep quiet, 2024
Decoding Social Media’s Role in Taliban 2.0 and its Implications for Afghan Youth, 2024
Treaty on crimes against humanity: States must give Afghan women a central voice and recognise gender apartheid, Experts say, United Nations, 2026
Videos:
The Last Torch: The sisters defying the Taliban by singing - 100 Women, BBC World Service on YouTube, 2024
‘Every day the situation for Afghan women gets worse and worse,’ campaigner says, 2026
9 days inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, ABC News, 2026
Notice the male culture thinking throughout this piece, from the men who control ABC news, to the men in Afghanistan who control who journalist Meghna Bali can speak to and where she can go, to male global leaders and influencers building ties with Afghan men and creating propaganda to gaslight the world about the violence of sex apartheid. Even when we see men who are struggling because of the taliban men, they still subjugate the women and girls standing beside them. Males build societies, cultures, governments explicitly on dehumanizing women and girls. There is no man who isn’t upholding the foundation of female people’s dehumanization. The Afghan men agree to such interviews because they still control the narrative, they force female interviewers to be veiled, and they strategically send their message of female subjugation to their global male audience without lifting a finger. One of our only ways to hear certain stories is through the men who hold power and control over broadcasting. We get stuck in a bind when we try to use the channels built by male culture thinking. Just another reminder of why we need our own female-only media.
Reports:
“No One Hears Our Voices:” A One Year Update, 2023, Women for Women International
Women for Women International offers news and resources on women across the world dealing with increased instability due to male parasitism
Women’s Rights in Afghanistan News Report, Lara Logan, CBS, Oct 14, 2009
I wish I could speak with Afghan women on the ground and ask their viewpoints on this report as well as what has changed and what has stayed the same since then. Sixteen+ years later and still Afghan women are fighting for their humanity; Shout out to our sister Lara Logan who has traveled the world to bring us knowledge.
♀️🎨Women Artists
Artist: Kimia
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Artist: Mashal Arman
Live Performance, 2024
Artist: Amna Yousufi
Artist: Mursal Ahmadzai
Artist: Sola Mahfouz
And she studies Quantum Computing?!? Here’s to the love of art and science! Go sister! Go STEAM:)
✍️ Journal Reflection Prompts:
How can you support women and girls facing sex-based oppression in Afghanistan (as well as your home country, and in other countries)?
What does it mean to strategically use your power and positionality to help women with less access?
What does it mean to strategically use your power and positionality to help women with more access?
How can women collaborate while respecting the differences and agency of women from other groups/demographics?
How can you tap into your creativity to process your feelings about males’ violence against women and girls?
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