Women Educators on Male Violence Against Women & Girls: Reading & Watch List

Aug 10

18 min read

How Female Separatism in Our Consumer Choices Helps Us Escape Males' Violence, Woman-Hating Culture, and Dumbassery

No time or energy to read this piece? Skip down further for the Reading & Watch List:)

As more and more women learn that the males whom they believed were thought-leaders are actually predators, it becomes clear that female separatism is no longer a choice but a necessity. The built-in safeguarding of female separatism means the reduction of crossing paths with, absorbing thinking from, or being interrupted by males. The neutral fact is that, yes, males are our biggest threat to safety, whether they’re strangers OR they’re close to us. No other living thing is as dangerous to us as males. It really is a harsh reality to sit with. Not even COVID-19, a virus, could be more destructive than males’ woman-hating, which increased from horrible to even more horrible during the pandemic. Males don’t go around fearing being hunted by women and girls, or being trapped in close-quarters with women and girls. None of us do. Even males don’t fear women as a sex-class, but they do fear the entire male sex-class. Yet women and girls being targeted and hunted by men and boys is just another day under male supremacy. We’re supposed to go about our business like this is usual, because it is. Male harm against women and girls is so fucking prevelant that even the “gurus” are the abusers, the rapers, the con-artist money takers. It’s just not worth the risk to let males into your time, space, and place unless absolutely necessary. Of course, they’re 51% of the population, so we must contend with them at times. My apartment complex only hires male contractors. When my fridge is busted, I don’t have the option to hire a woman to fix it unless I want to pay out of my own pocket. When I walk down the street to get my dinner, I can’t stop the males, who are also out, from inflicting street harassment. When a male started following me last night, I had to walk an extra two blocks so he couldn’t find out where I live. I have to strategically walk through the world like I’m Rambo; weapons out, on the offense and defense. Luckily, outside of these forced male interactions, there are plenty of pockets where I can create female-only space. But it does take effort; the information super highway is paved for males, not women and girls. A great place to start with your female separatist practice is asking yourself why you support so much male culture and so many males in general, yet so few women and girls? Even as a radical feminist woman building my female separatism daily, I routinely see new blind spots in myself. I see so many ways in which I’m coerced to support male options based on a myriad of life factors. Do I want to join every retail boycott? Yes. Can my wallet, my life struggles, etc. allow me to fully cut Walmart, Target, and Amazon? No. Do I have the time to research female alternatives within an internet that is male-centric? Not always. Do I sometimes default to the easily accessible male option, because of time? Sadly, often. I don’t live by purity myths because I know that will make me give up before I even try. I accept that I will always contradict myself in certain ways, I’ll fuck up and make mistakes. But I can control my ability to be as female separatist as I possibly can be. I might not be in a 100% female-only bubble, but I can still find ways to increase my woman-centric world even in the big city. The easiest and most important way for me to do that is through the things I read.

I’m not a big book reader, so I don’t actually drop a lot of money on books. I’m a bigger article, blog, social media post, entire comments section reader. I break books up into bits and read them over time. I’m also practicing improving my auditory skills and listening to more audiobooks to increase my long-form reading. When I do buy a book, I only buy from women authors. When I read free content, I take steps to only take in women. Even when I’m reading a comments section, I skip through to find women commenters. I only read female Substackers. I only listen to podcasts by women. Sometimes a male writer will have an intriguing headline and I get sucked into reading a bit of his work. But every time, I quickly lose interest because automatically, there is never an awareness, understanding, or direct, consistent analysis of male supremacy. Males will write everything about “we the people” but “the people” actually ends up meaning “the men and boys.” The fact that “the people” never acknowledges how male people target female people individually, systematically, and globally, tells you everything you need to know about male culture. The reality is that males can’t write about male supremacy or female liberation effectively because they’re part of the male sex-class. They’re part of the oppressor class. Only women can write from the angle of being targeted by male violence and dismantling it. I urge fellow sisters to be more discerning about the voices you take in. I’ve even stopped listening to males that fellow sisters share with me. Instead, I only absorb male voices in strategic, limited ways to learn what the oppressor class is saying. But you won’t catch me reading male authors. I’m the kind of woman who thinks anyone whose logic is steeped in any male–Hippocrates, Aristotle, Marx, Gandhi, MLK Jr., Freud, Malcolm X, Foucault, Chomsky, Darwin, etc.–that you are absorbing knowledge from an untrustworthy source. It’s not that these males never said a thing that was intelligent or useful, it’s that all of them either directly or indirectly upheld male supremacy, so their thinking is actually poisonous to me and every single woman and girl. Even if I accept bits of their knowledge, I do so very carefully. This realization was probably the hardest one for me in my path of knowledge-seeking. How the fuck do I read anything, analyze anything, without it being fruit from the poisonous tree? It might be futile at times, but I will never stop trying. I do have hope that centuries from now, there will be enough female culture writing in all disciplines out there that we might be able to wash away the poison from the past. Until that point, I kindly skip any of the content that sisters share that comes from a male voice or a male culture-centered woman. The more a woman recommends male media to me, the more I do question her critical thinking skills and assessments.

When we talk about female separatism, the image that comes up for some is living on a Womyn’s Land in an intentional community, with no males in sight anywhere, dancing naked and unafraid around a bonfire. That’s the dream, and some women are absolutely living it. But female separatism is a practice that starts much smaller, with the everyday choices you make in your personal life. The choice to think about the maker you support when you buy your household goods, the choice to think about the musicians you listen to, or the authors and content creators you follow. These choices, when put through your female separatist practice, can have profound consequences. Each dollar you spend, each second you absorb content, you are supporting the maker as well as shaping your thoughts. You are what you eat, what you read, what you take in, the people you surround yourself with. A lot of life works like osmosis, where we absorb bits of everything in our immediate ecosystem. Female separatism is the process of analyzing that ecosystem and making sure it is filled with women who also look to fight for women’s liberation.

I specifically want to look harder at the authors and content creators I consume. Information exchange–media–is the cornerstone of human civilizations. For many centuries, males have controlled the dissemination of media and who gets access. For many centuries, males have barred women and girls from all spaces. We had to and still do claw our way in. We fought for space, for recognition, and even today, males try to take it away. Many of our foremothers had to write under a fake male name just to be published, or just to be taken seriously, read, and labeled a “thought leader.” Women are wholly ignored in the world of influence, yet women are actually some of the most influential people to exist. Women are like the flower that grows out the crack in the sidewalk; somehow, we shine brilliantly and reach for our full potential even in the most dire of circumstances. But under male supremacy, we’re taught to downplay that, we’re told it’s boastful to even say that, and in much of the messaging, we’re told we’re useless subhuman garbage by males’ culture. So most of us could be a fucking orchid growing out of a cracked sidewalk in the desert, and we still see ourselves as a pile of shit. That’s what males’ female denigration does to a woman or a girl. It wears you down so deeply that even as you still stand somehow, you are shamed for it. When you think of the sheer magnitude of bullshit we have to wade through just to survive, it’s a real testament when a sister goes so far that she gains media power. When a sister makes bank, publishes a book, graces the big screen, commands amphitheaters, it’s our duty to uplift her with our choices. We can build such powerful solidarity without ever even talking to a fellow sister. Just buying a sister’s book, song, artwork, services, or consultation means you’re investing in our collective growth as women. You are planting seeds for the future of girls, who need each and every female role model that’s possible.

If you feel apprehensive to only support women and girls, ask yourself why; who are you afraid of upsetting? Think about how that is the overwhelming standard for many males all over the globe. Many men only read work by males, use male services, and avoid anything that is created or controlled by women. A big part of this male behavior is rooted in woman-hating, but there is also another part of it that is rooted in sex-class solidarity. Males know that by investing their money and time into other men, males hold onto their power and control. When women choose to put sex-class solidarity first, they become unstoppable in numbers. Women don’t have or believe in entitlement or supremacism as a foundation of our sex-class, which means we don’t face the nonsensical beliefs which define male culture. We are not the same. We gave males the chance at coexistence, and centuries later they’re still on a suicide mission. We want to live separately from them, but otherwise we’re indifferent to them despite their depravity, cruelty, and parasitism. That’s because we have our eyes on the prize: female joy. And we won’t get distracted by anyone or anything, as hard as we can try. For males, they refuse to live separate from us, want to enslave us, desperately seek our time and attention, and have quite literally created an entire sex-class identity on hating themselves and hating us. We women and girls just want to be free to be ourselves, go our own way. We’re not looking to compete with males, because we’re not even looking from the same framework. Males are stuck in hierarchies and we’re busy creating work plans. Female culture is about cooperating with the universal ecosystem. Women want to create, be one with nature, be fat and happy, dance with joy, sleep under the stars in safety, make love, not war. Supporting female-only should truly be the mission of women and males alike, because we are not the same. Female culture, if ever given the chance to be fully unleashed, is the only sustainable model. Male culture is always a snake eating its own tail.

The data shows that women create more balanced, thriving, sustainable communities and societies. Female culture needs a chance to flourish. Male culture had its run for centuries. Males had their little myth of “supremacy” that was just leeching and masking mediocrity (aka parasitism). Males’ culture and “civilization” only works through males’ nonstop violence against women and girls, as well as men and boys, and the entire universal ecosystem. Their culture of violence even starts partially infecting women and girls, until we are all swallowed whole by the most illogical brutalism masquerading as “civilization” to ever exist: males. The more women (and men) invest in women, the more we all have a fighting chance to right the wrongs of males’ behaviors and culture.¹

This is not about all women being perfect or up to the job. Some women are dangerous, similar to males. There are women we don’t want to support with our dollars, whose ideas and books should not be spread. Just as much as all people should invest in women and girls, we all need to be discerning in our decisions. If the truth about Lundy Bancroft taught me anything, it’s that no one is above reproach. Question everyone and everything around you. Don’t take my words as fact. Question what I write here. Always listen to your gut and work to come to your own conclusions. That way, when you invest in a woman, you know you did your due diligence. And when you’re wrong in your choice to trust; learn from it instead of shutting down and isolating.

Along with the consumer reasons to practice female separatism comes one that for me, is paramount to my core, my work, my entire belief system. I try to only take in female knowledge because of the fundamental shift in my brain. When I go out of my way to only listen to women YouTubers, read women writers, listen to women musicians, all of a sudden, my influence is through the female culture lens. I can see an unbelievable difference compared to when I was in more of a male neoliberal echo chamber. Now, when I return to listening to males from that past echo chamber, I can’t even believe I ever listened to their supposed knowledge. I also make sure to take time to listen to female comrades carefully, to determine if she is a covert enabler of male supremacy. We’re all inhaling those toxic fumes, so you have to stay alert, and respectfully move on when you realize you and a sister diverge way too much, despite any small parcel of common ground. It took me years to realize my brain is way too precious to let any possibly shitty information enter it, from men or even women. Just watching the opposition’s viewpoints for research is risky enough. I feel like I lose so many brain cells when I have to listen to males’ analysis, because it’s always painfully unaware and anti-woman. Left, right, center, brown, black, white, straight, gay, bi, old, young, rich, poor, it doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, a male will reveal himself to be ignorant to the realities of women and girls, and therefore ignorant of the entire world. Even the ones that really seem different, like they get it, can never fully shake their entitlements and years of sex-based stereotype training (gender). It’s not about males being “good” or “evil” which is a simplistic way that some thinkers default to. It’s that males’ behaviors and culture harms women and girls and female separatism allows us to build female culture where we won’t face males’ male-only lens of thinking and behaving.

https://femaleliberation.substack.com/p/beware-of-males-in-female-centered

In today’s content creation marketplace, where “all or nothing” thinking and short soundbites rule, try to take a deep breath, get centered, and search for women able to say the hard things in as balanced a manner as possible while meeting women where they’re at. I rather stick with radical feminist women who see the intersections and nuances of reality while never losing sight of strong root cause analysis. And I also try to find the nuggets of wisdom even within women whose root cause analysis I don’t trust. That’s part of me learning to be more balanced and break out of my “all or nothing” thinking. Even when a woman frustrates me with ignorance, she might have other really important things to teach me. So I give her time, and I give myself the same. I’m a work in progress. I no longer try to be perfect or search for perfect women creators; I try to find ones who I see as mostly on point with a strong foundation of critical thinking. We all get shit wrong, we’re all still learning, trying to figure out life through our thinking, writing, making. I’m also prepared to trust a woman, but then doubt her when she shares hypocritical viewpoints. I’ll try to call her in, try to help her see another path, and also know when it’s time to put up a boundary and move on.

One challenge of my deepening female separatist practice is that for years I was indoctrinated by male culture and many of my long-standing references are male. I never read or referred to males like Lundy Bancroft, but I read and referred to plenty of other males who I later came to find out were predatory in some way. In some of my darker times, I used to watch Tony Robbins specials, then later found out he’s just another male violator. I have recommended the book, “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk for years, even though he’s male, and I read it many, many years ago. But in “trauma-informed care” circles, it’s the name everyone knows. I can’t confidently say if I still support his book. Many things I once liked I don’t anymore. I see things through a different lens with time and knowledge. But I still say his name when I’m speaking on autopilot. What I want to do is build my female separatist practice to the point that when someone asks me for a recommendation, only women’s names flow from my lips. But forty-two years under male culture means I have a lot of work to still do to get there. So for now, I leave you with a list of women authors and content creators who specifically focus on male violence against women and girls and male violence culture. Several commenters asked for book recommendations that are by and for women. Please share any additional recommendations in the comments section, sisters.

What women are great resources for information on escaping male violence?

Women Educators on Male Violence Against Women & Girls: Reading &

Watch List

This list of book recommendations I’ve compiled come from online forums, some from reading them, and some suggestions from comrades. Please add your critiques and additions in the comments.

Shoutout to the women on the interwebs, like Reddit. They helped me add so many wonderful books to this list. Just a reminder of the other types of free labor women do out there. Remember to support sisters monetarily for their labor when you can. Female separatism is about showing how we value women and girls, how we respect our worth, and how we create sex-class resources that will protect and bring female joy to future generations of your daughters, our nieces, and for women and girls around the world.

Under male supremacism-parasitism, the books that get recommended in the mainstream are 99% of the time written by males. That’s why we all end up recommending the same ol’ male books. We can break that cycle by creating our own lists and sharing existing ones of women writers in all different subject matters. When it comes to topics that could be corrupted by male thinking, always air on the side of caution and seek out female creators. It’s worth the extra labor and monetary investment. Women are so ill-supported that they don’t get marketed in the mainstream to the same level as males, they don’t get paid the same so they don’t have the same access to capital to self-promote, and the biggest form of advertising–in-person and online word of mouth–rarely includes female examples. We have to actively fight the automatic training of males’ society that plugs certain references into our heads. There’s a reason so many of us say Lundy Bancroft, Bessel van der Kolk, Gavin de Becker right off the tip of our tongue. The care work industry that most radical feminists are tangentially connected to, teaches these same authors. Our industries share their books in trainings, on websites, in conversations, and it becomes easier to parrot the same male thing. The more we support women, the more the names we reference become female ones.

When I take in the creations of women, I always remind myself of all the realities making up her life. I think about all the hoops she had to jump through, just to write that book, paint that portrait, pass that law, or pay for that meal. Whatever a woman is doing, she is also contending with male supremacism-parasitism. Thinking about that makes me feel even stronger about the need for me to buy whatever directly supports women, because my small contribution could be the path to her greatness. And her greatness creates more space for women and girls in the world. I’m weary of many of the women who do rise to fame and wealth, since being “at the top” means being deeply embedded in male culture. But even so, when I see women like J.K. Rowling, Rihanna, or Taylor Swift rise in power and influence, I do get that grin of pride knowing they’re women fighting tooth and nail against the odds. I’ve never read or watched Harry Potter - the male protagonist just didn’t intrigue me. I don’t agree with all that J.K. Rowling has to say. I’ll forever be annoyed by her not telling off Elon Musk when he had some shit to say to her. I can’t believe she fell for the white male supremacist bait of “Charlie Kirk’s Murder = Freedom of Speech Battle” along with so many other “gender critical” women who I thought understood the full breadth of male supremacy and what protecting ALL women means. Yet stepping back from my rage, I still see her as a profound example of the absolute strategic importance of supporting women through our spending, or supporting women’s voices on common ground, while critiquing their blind spots. If years and years ago women and girls didn’t support J.K. Rowling's work, if she never grew into a household name, and fempire, she would not have had the capital necessary to invest into women’s liberation for women who call themselves “gender critical.” She had to not only be a millionaire, but the richest of rich, a billionaire, to pull off all she has for sex-based rights protections. Not a single one of her flaws erases the truth that she has single-handedly invested more money than any other person into the 21st-century fight to hold onto women and girls as a sex-class. No woman, no man, no person has done what she has. That’s why so very many women around the world put aside any of her ignorance and say her name as a member of the fight for female liberation. It’s not only the money she drops that matters, but the words she shares on the female sex-class of women and girls existing and needing to be protected. I’ll never be able to see J.K. Rowling as a radical feminist because of all her blind spots. I take her analysis with a giant grain of salt. But I also know that women’s liberation needs as many avenues to market our message, and I don’t have power or control over which voices gain traction. There is inherent risk in uplifting the voice of a billionaire and also of anyone who is blind to conservative white male supremacy and can only see certain forms of liberal white male supremacy. But I only take such bold risks when it comes to women. I practice the watchful-waiting method to see if her use in the chess game is still a help or becoming a hindrance. Because she’s a woman, I give her leeway and attempt to believe she can be further educated on her blind spots. And that’s the ultimate point here. Support women always, without paralyzing yourself with purity and perfection. Put your hard-earned money into women in your community. Realize that you can call out a woman’s dumbassery, aka blind spots, while also uplifting the smart shit she says. Realize you, me, all of us, have been dumbasses at times too. You’re planting seeds for all of our futures when you pick women and girls. You’re building our female power and control, which is the only way we will ever get free enough to build a collective female culture that is finally rooted fully in our own story and analysis. Invest in women as a sex-class, not because they are perfectly in line with your analysis, but to be strategic for the bigger picture. Males will always work to rip female solidarity apart. Our wallet, our choices, are a small but vital step to stand up and fight back.

Footnotes:

Even though I don’t use the logic of having to convince the oppressor class to support my liberation or include them in any way, the reality is that males as a collective will fare far better by destroying male supremacy than they do by leeching off its entitlements. My work is for women only and through a female-only analysis so it can’t be superimposed onto males and their thinking. But males ignore my request for this to be a female-only space and do find their way to my work and my comments section trying to superimpose my words onto their maleness. Remember to not give them attention! I leave this footnote here as a reminder to women that when I reference males in this section of the article, it is simply for women to see how males actually work against their own self-interests. This is just another reason to never trust their logic and not feel pressured to include them in the women’s liberation movement. They’ve always had their own battle to fight, and it’s time for them to stop siphoning off our work.

Women Educators on Male Violence Against Women & Girls: Reading & Watch List

How Female Separatism in Our Consumer Choices Helps Us Escape Males' Violence, Woman-Hating Culture, and Dumbassery

Recent Posts

Comments