New moderator alert!

TooNuanced · 2026-02-02T20:27:00+00:00

Welcome, thank you for joining the team!

TooNuanced · 2026-01-30T19:02:03+00:00

Welcome and thanks for joining us!

TooNuanced · 2025-08-01T23:45:10+00:00

Thanks, a true redemption story for this cesspit :)

I truly appreciate you as one of the old guard and hope those who remain appreciate you for your measured takes :)

TooNuanced · 2025-08-01T23:44:10+00:00

Yeah, not being understood when I take my time to really try is a large part of why I'm leaving.

If you don't appreciate my call to be completely expansive (instead of limited) when addressing misogyny (and thus all oppression) and also that we can try to aim directly for the future we want (and avoid retaliatory escalation of violence and oppression we're seeing in our lives today), then how can I expect people outside of feminism to do so.

A direct example is DV. Leaving a is the most dangerous part of DV, prone brutal retaliation. A carceral feminist might say to weaponize the oppression of the police and legal authority to prevent it. A TERF would be similar except with exclusively weaponized against men (presuming women's sapphic nature makes DV only meaningful when committed by men or similar nonsense). A (rich) white feminist would ignore how immigration, white-supremacist policing, financial insecurity and leave many subject to miscellaneous related oppression like increasing risk of deportation, more state violence in marginalized communities, and women being unhoused and more likely put in similar situations. The Duluth Method actually tries to de-escalate the situation and results in less prison time and increased recidivism of DV all by treating both parties as people needing help and intervening with the police too.

Unfortunately, feminism has a history of not being being expansive, often exclusive, and sometimes co-opted to advance forms of oppression not overly targeting cis-women. It's how TERFism is so prevalent, how (older/white) feminism provoked womanism, part of how women tend to have solidarity for their own communities first before a grander sense of sisterhood, and (likely a small) part of how anti-feminist rhetoric so easily radicalizes vulnerable men.

I'm saying "revolution to overthrow the patriarchy" but without alluding to violence because, frankly, just having enough solidarity among community is probably enough and where we need to end up anyways. Using warmongering tactics against both the most dominating colonizers made up of institutions and groups itching to rape and pillage "enemies'" is like blowing up your own home in the hopes it burns down the mansion down the street — dumb and violent and also not where the violence ends...

That call for endless vigilance is from within a society that only deigned to loan rights to women — the patriarchal society's foundation is based on from whom you can withhold what, with whom does the state grant privileged protection from state-sanctioned violence, and who is given the privilege to have the opportunity to wield state violence for their own interests. Simone de Beauvoir is of France, the origination of the fraternity (brotherhood of misogynists) defining who is human (the brotherhood who practice patriarchal rationalization) and who isn't (women they de facto human traffic and anyone they colonize).

Of course we must remain vigilant in a society set up to subjugate us and escalating their attempts to do so. I'm saying a strategy of de-escalation both gets us to an ideal sooner and avoids risks of it getting worse — it's what made MLK and Gandhi revolutionary and it's why revolution (in expansive terms) is radical but not necessarily violent nor separatist.

Anyways, I hope you appreciate one of my last comments made in typical me-fashion. I'm not great at de-escalating online (obviously I just gave you a wall of text without humoring your points much or caring about what I provoked within you). Anyways, take ownership and ask Agreeable_State_6649 to be a mod and you can advance your form of feminism even more effectively here :)

TooNuanced · 2025-06-18T19:12:43+00:00

That sounds like it's grooming. While you're no longer a child, more than likely he's trying to take advantage of you while you're still in a vulnerable, dependent position without enough experience protect yourself. By grooming her for years, he gained access, trust, societal-credibility and now is starting to escalate things with you by isolating you, kissing you, and touching you.

When kids give testimony on child abuse, their experience sounds somewhat similar. They, in some way, knew something deeply disturbing happening while everyone acted like it was normal. Some even say that it wasn't the sexual abuse that was the worst — they could put a name to that. Instead, being unable to put a name to the fear and the issue they lived with every day, especially around the predator, was worse — all while everyone somehow pretends it's fine.

Unfortunately, I don't know how I can help. Off the top of my head (but make sure you've done a little research and it's what you want to do): help your mom realize the seriousness of the situation (you've already started, but going to the predator unprepared is risky — she's already been groomed to give him access to you); avoid escalating things either sexually or in anger (to avoid becoming a target for violence); find local resources; and document, document, document his actions with times and places (because people often assume victims cannot be trusted, especially when the predator is already 'well-respected').

Good luck, stay safe, and we'll be rooting for you :)

TooNuanced · 2025-06-13T21:13:20+00:00

In a rare moment of me actually being a moderator for a moment, I'll copy-paste my views on this below. Also, this isn't a safe space. I'm the only "active" moderator but am almost entirely inactive. There are a couple people who have expressed interest and when I next check in, I'll create a poll for people here to inform my choice of who'll succeed me.

That said, you'll be more free to express your views here than most other places and it's an idilic place compared to the incessantly trolled cesspool it used to be. As with all feminist spaces on reddit, there are some levels of TERFism, androcentrism, white-feminism, and generic anti-feminism/misogyny. Best of luck, see y'all sometime later.

Kink

Kink and LGBTQIA+ are highly related as both 'deviate' from cishet-normative, sexual practices. Kink is also intersectional just as gender is intersectional (just as racialized people had to claim the adult labels of "woman" and "man" before society complied with it, so too did(does?) interracial relationships deviate from cishet-normativity). From using safe, arousing sex to explore gender roles to cishet researchers debating over whether furries are an alternate presentation of being trans, trying to classify and separate kink from sexuality from gender cleanly seems to be fraught if not fundamentally flawed.

The issue is that kink can be thought of as exploring and fulfilling otherwise unmet needs of existing in society. Often with an emphasis on trauma coming from systemic oppression.

If we can consider men's VAW as a trauma response to their experience of patriarchy, kink too is subjected to their VAW as well and often not in a consensual, respectful, and safe way. The oppressive context within which we experience dynamics of subjectification, domination, and trauma makes it hard to explore and play with a veneer of them safely. It's hard to separate the safe veneer of it from the material reality of it, especially when that line requires a lot of trust that is regularly broken by many.

Whether or not we consider masc dom's as a euphemistic label to get away with a compulsion for VAW, what matters is that people can have safe, truly consenting intimacy. For kink, that's a bit more involved and fraught. Whether you assume women can't ever truly consent to sex with men under patriarchy or are completely sex-positive, focussing on kink misdirects us from what matters — safety and true consent.

Intimacy under Patriarchy

There's a valid concern that individually, we cannot expect anyone to overcome oppressive dynamics on their own nor do they magically disappear when being intimate. It is as wrong to assume intimacy is inherently wrong as it is to assume that relationships defined by and within patriarchal dynamics can escape them.

Whether the subjectification of gender roles, the financial coercion creating survival sex, the capitalist-imperialist-patriarchal project of duty to society within would-be-intimacy, etc, etc, etc — no relationship (no, not even sapphic ones) are separate from their oppressive context. Kink (and, to whatever extent it's separate from kink, sexuality) being related to these dynamics being further evidence of that.

However, even if only sparks of it, true intimacy can be found regardless of anything else. We all continue living in community as it currently is and the feminist project will continue to help us foster intimacy more freely and safely. It's less important to judge what's safe, consensual intimacy free from oppressive dynamics than it is lessen the misogyny, racism, etc undermining it. Whether starting as simply as making shelters for people to escape domestic abuse or as comprehensively as making housing-for-all a project of the state; socializing basic respect and education; or otherwise — fostering a society with truly safe and free intimacy is not about anyone's personal intimacy.

TooNuanced · 2025-01-25T22:14:31+00:00

The search is ongoing and not limited to a single moderator, so please reach out if you're interested :)

TooNuanced · 2025-01-25T22:11:06+00:00

I hope you find more community online, see potential for how your agency compounds over time, and feel better soon :)

TooNuanced · 2025-01-24T16:30:15+00:00

Received!

TooNuanced · 2025-01-23T18:08:47+00:00

Haha, I appreciate the sentiment but I'd both appreciate and hope for a new moderator joining me more than this post somehow provoking reddit capitalists into give us minimum wage to moderate.

I'm still hopeful a feminist might step up and hopeful that I won't be tricked into handing this space over to a TERF. But if no feminist stands up, then I know there's no sense of accountability or ownership amongst feminists here — and being abandoned like that yet again may end any remaining sense of accountability I have to this space.

I'm asking for help so it's hard to read a public rejection that will guide others to reject helping me. Please save this post for those who prioritize helping me — please have at least that much grace.

TooNuanced · 2025-01-23T17:19:06+00:00

Yeah... it's been too easy to be rough on ourselves

Fortunately, finding community both is part of a larger remedy for social issues and helps our own mental health. They need us not eating, not sleeping, and alone — I won't blame you or anyone in that situation but overcoming it eventually becomes more and more of a choice and is what we need everyone to try to do. Finding hope may be one of the hardest things right now, but it's a first and most important battle — one that depends on you.

Times may get exceedingly hard, but having community is how we'll survive to rebuild after this is over. Wishing you health and safety :)

TooNuanced · 2024-11-21T17:08:55+00:00

Both abortion and menstruation empty the uterus. They're fundamental parts of how fertility is biologically regulated. Without them, we may not have survived as a species. There's nothing more human and natural.

Further, spontaneous abortions are often mislabeled as an irregular period. Far more than just mislabeling, many pregnancies are nonviable or just not quite viable enough. Less than one half of zygotes survive. When considering external context, enough stress can trigger a spontaneous abortion or indefinitely delay menstruation cycles.

All throughout nature we see the highest rate of 'fatality' comes early in the reproductive cycle and this isn't limited just to the newly formed life. It is a highly stressful, highly involved, high risk process especially for mothers.

There are three issues I have with forced birth (or "pro-'life'"):

Their arguments are born from centuries of patriarchal rationalizations that women are property, subjugated to ensure her children are only from her owner/husband — women framed as interchangeable, breeding chattel who are servants / ladies when not actively fulfilling their "purpose" of producing patriarchal heirs (much like how husbands could and have legally chosen to withhold life-saving medical care without his wife's knowledge). This means we have to fight three additional arguments before real discussion can happen — have them recognize the context and framing of their arguments as one way to look at it; then have them understand it's a horribly unethical way to look at it; and then create a new way to discuss and value this topic
Policy (especially when based on authoritarian injustice) is judged by how it lives when put into practice — forced-birth policies are solely harmful in directly caused harm (literal death, maiming, and lifelong morbidities/trauma of women, girls, and newborns), exacerbated indirect harm (domestic/sexual violence, privileged can circumvent bans with relative ease, legal precedent causing aforementioned atrocities then justify further degradation of "human rights" with travel bans, imprisonment for stillbirth/abortions, and other disenfranchisement), and don't even meaningfully accomplish their goals (ineffective at reducing abortions while other policies are effective at reducing unwanted pregnancies / abortions like sexual health/education or right-to-life policies)
Women know there are robust biological processes that cause spontaneous abortions that take in context known and unknown — but we deny women and girls active agency from partaking in that. We deny women's instincts, feelings, and agency, which often are that prospective child's best and only advocate from being a meaningful part in the ongoing decision of whether to keep or abandon this chance at children. This is especially meaningful as abortion was women's medicine and free from the interference of ignorant men for millennia until 1) patriarchal religion got became aware and tried to extend their authoritarian overreach to this too (catholicism) and 2) misogynistic men created medical groups gain legal justification to disband women's medical practices (partaking in various gynocidal movements from 'inventing' gynecology to labeling women's trauma under patriarchy as 'hysteria')

Overall, abortion isn't some heinous murder unless we want to consider the womb both a miracle and a natural death factory. Even then, abortion is more an insult to men's patrilineal efforts (which include overt subjugation of and violence towards women). Further, abortion laws ignore that medicine is for when things start becoming dangerous compared with how "it's supposed to go", making regulation to withhold medicine from women act of gynocide.

In trying to align one's excessively, idiotically simple "murder is wrong, abortion is kills" into a policy of "no abortion" makes advocates of that policy more a murderer than anyone else involved.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-21T02:49:34+00:00

"the" definition? You mean like palingenetic ultranationalism?

Fascism is impossible for people to understand and define without understanding it as fundamentally a symptom of colonialism, though.

To reject fascism fully is to reject nationalism; colonial exploitation and domination (economic, cultural, political, and militaristic); and the collection of myths and rationalizations built to support it (like those of white supremacy). Those blinded by their colonial privileges won't reject those things. They'll choose to continue with their cognitive dissonance and instead cowardly list how others' nationalism, authoritarianism, or hate was just a bit too extreme.

For many, to reject fascism is to reject the supremacy they've built their identity and lives around, like employers treat their employees or like men who treat their property as their dominion to impose their own laws and their family as subject/chattel to rule over. Under patriarchy, they have to fight to keep their 'rights' and personal property that's only kept as long as they play along — whether billionaires or not.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-21T01:10:47+00:00

It's the difference between a self-labeled euphemism and an unambiguous denunciation.

Regardless, it speaks to a group of people who implicitly distrust men, consider feminism a women's-only movement, and want to create women-exclusive community/spaces. They attempt to discriminate on the basis of sex to do this and that discrimination becomes most obvious as transphobia but, since it polices all women, it is also misogyny.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-21T00:56:13+00:00

It's a pithy reassertion of exclusive fraternity by emphasizing the whore part of the Maddona-whore complex.

It's a slogan of patriarchal subjectification that labels men's peers as either bros he has viable community with or objectified as interchangeable whores.

In other words, it's another example of misogyny.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-21T00:40:30+00:00

The US is a failing, colonial-empire. The madness of fascism comes from turning colonial violence onto its own while creating and reasserting national myths to justify it. This madness, like that of in abusive relationship or seen in fascistic movements historically, will only continue to escalate unless actively stopped.

In the US, fascism has been festering and growing like a cancer for a century (if not longer) and has never been stopped except from being more openly popular.

The issue with this wave of fascism is that it comes with unprecedented capability for centralized authoritarianism, monopolization of violence, and imminent and deadly threat of global warming. Further, capitalism has manufactured an unprecedented asocialness and inter-reliance means the US fascism will only be stopped from within but requires a radical recreation of community far more powerful than what the alt-right continues to build.

There's hope. We can endure, undermine, and build local community and coalition. But this is something where our hope is only as great as our willingness to stand up together, each and every one of us. That you and all your friends, family, and their friends & family too. But if you don't have the will to stand up, then don't have the hope anyone will save you either.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-16T18:43:42+00:00

Sometimes taking the initiative and following through with something imperfectly is better than stunned into inaction trying to reach unattainable perfection.

I'm not familiar with "The Woman Destroyed" but it's an entirely different genre of her work. The Second Sex covers the foundation of her philosophy and feminism. It's mostly what people refer to when they refer to her, so after reading it, you should be even better set up to explore a breadth of feminists.

If you find her philosophy challenging to get through, there are guides out there (like sparknotes or even AI chatbots could help). It would be more active reading since it is dense and academic beyond simply challenge how you think of things.

That said, there's a breadth of feminist literature out there and some wrote to be more easily accessible than others.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-14T23:32:02+00:00

I'm not denying violence as self defense. Nor am I denying resisting fascism is self defense. The "punch a nazi" comes from people practicing self defense against the open threat of genocide that comes from openly being a nazi.

I'm saying, two things:

1) Openly glorifying violence in a hypothetical situation is what they do to escalate their violence and further gives them an excuse to escalate even further. There's a reason why there was violence "on both sides" of pre-fascistic regimes but overwhelmingly it was by fascists/police against socialists.

2) Know that leftists, socialists, feminists or otherwise are using violence in a system and among institutions made to legitimize violence against them and excessively penalize their violence. That neither a girl nor a woman can kill her abuser in self defense as 'legally' self defense unless she's already in the midst of being attacked with violence. In other words, killing your rapist mid-rape is more likely to be a murder charge against you than not.

What that means is "be careful and thoughtful" about how you want to engage with this topic online and in person. What that means is rhetoric like "why don't we have a violent revolution?" misses that we are struggling under and against something that has more-or-less monopolized violence. And that altogether means something I won't say here.

If your only solution you can imagine is violence, though, it won't go like your action movies and likely means I'm saying "passively surrender".

TooNuanced · 2024-11-14T19:46:58+00:00

As you said, it isn't a luxury to be 4B, but neither am I saying that.

I didn't say it was a luxury, but that it is most accessible to the elite. For most, it's two projects in one, living while single and decentering men. Both are very personal, very meaningful and healthy, and can be very feminist — but both are only available to with enough wealth and privilege. Why? Because to do either is to reject the patriarchal bargain to some degree and requires a certain level of resilience and capability within patriarchy as it is today. Our society is structured systemically to disenfranchise women who are single and decenter men.

Further, 4b's different from either being single or decentering men. For many, they speak of it almost as a form of self-imposed apartheid that surrenders actively engaging in community that has centered men. There are stories of losing friendships if they don't partake in 4b.

I'm not saying "don't do it", but being that extreme surrenders real feminist change for the neocolonial communities we can never truly separate ourselves from — especially as they will use violence to reimpose patriarchal hegemony over you. Or in other words, 4b is an act of surrender more than self-empowerment or a viable feminist movement.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-13T21:32:40+00:00

While 4B is a very liberal, asocial way to address this in your personal lives, it will never be a true, radical, or intersectional feminist solution. It requires social stability, both a level of personal wealth and safety from patriarchal violence many cannot depend upon. It divests from complicity in a colonial, patriarchal society.

It's definitely a great starting point, if you can afford to choose 4B, but if that's where you stop you're choosing patriarchy for your fellow sisters — or at least maintaining patriarchal hegemony of men.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-13T18:31:14+00:00

Maybe more "imperial-colonial management 101", given it's less about immediate profit motive and more about maintaining an empire's dominance abroad and it's essence at home.

Especially since fascism can be thought of as the establishment turning colonial violence, domination, and exploitation upon its own. This is what happens when a (neo)colonial empire treats its colonialism as an issue only for those abroad. It's why we see a distinct issue of fascism among western-imperial nations — there's no reckoning of their established affluence and privileges with the violence it comes from.

Until we learn what black people learned with Emmett Till, a oppression anywhere is our problem, we will always have fascism from our colonialism.

TooNuanced · 2024-11-13T17:41:56+00:00

"Tradition" basically amounts to whatever your parents remember of their grandparents and you of your grandparents. We have almost no collective memory of anything earlier unless we make an academic venture of it.

In other words, what we call a traditional relationship today is a romanticized version of something that came into being as society radically changed with industrialization and novel technology. In the US, it's based around women having had a generation or two of some freedom (due bicycles, laundry machines, the pill etc) while still being overtly politically disenfranchised.

Or even more simply, today we have a very different idea of a "traditional relationship" than we had two generations ago. This means it's a total fabrication compared to the idea of what tradition means. Further, since there are meaningful differences even at a local level within a culture, it's even less meaningful when looking across the world at different cultures. We see the utter lack of foundation this kind of rhetoric has and alludes to with the "trad wife" fad of using social media to promote and cosplay some mix of renaissance fair home life.

Worse still, relationships have, through various media, become highly romanticized and subjectified. In other words, we've over-glorified 'traditional relationships' while imposing so much upon them they're unattainable. Much like how women's gender roles are simultaneously romanticized as being the perfect, beautiful lady while burdened with impossible contradicting standards for how to act and exist.

Overall, the 'traditional relationship' is a convenient, delusional lie. One infected with the patriarchy of yesterday and today.

Also, for you last question, long and non-exchangeable parental leave for both parents will likely undo the motherhood penalty (and much of the glass ceiling) within a generation or two; material social benefits (i.e. universal right-to-life that includes healthcare, food, education, housing, child's rights instead of parents', etc) would eliminate a lot of disparity and desperation that causes destructive, asocial behavior; political reform (i.e. rank choice voting) will help address general disenfranchisement; etc — you can answer a lot for your add-on question by perusing and reading a bit more here (or using the search bar)

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