Gender’s Troubled: Intro

A Series on Male Supremacy & Sex-Based Stereotypes

I’ve been spinning in circles for some time now, trying to understand how we arrived at the current mutation of male supremacy; specifically, the metamorphoses of sex-based stereotypes (aka “gender ideology”) over my lifetime (1983). Art and writing are how I brainstorm and try to make sense of the world around me. But as much as I try to work out the answers succinctly, I’m seeing it’s futile and I have to take it bit by bit; one piece at a time. Over the past decades, through life, feminism, art, teaching, technology, and community organizing, I have been reflecting and analyzing what sex and gender mean sociologically, biologically, and personally. Sex and gender analysis are topics that routinely come up in the professional spaces I inhabit and simply because I’m a woman surrounded by male supremacists who choose to target my sex-class.

I first started learning that gender’s troubled before I even knew its name. We all start our gender training in childhood as soon as we begin to absorb the male supremacist stereotypes forced onto the female sex-class. As soon as our sex is observed at birth, we’re taught how to act, talk, look, think, and be by every part of our societies. Even though I realized the oppressive nature of gender early on, I still ended up trapped under its weight for years. I fully understand why most women and girls never manage to escape it. Males start training us in gender so young, to make sure women and girls stay compliant; to “break her in” or “turn her out” – whichever pimp cliché you choose. Each day, I free myself a little more from sex-based oppression and live with increased peace and clarity as I dismantle each lie male culture has taught me. Even though I know I should be thankful to break free, I also feel the pain and isolation of dissenting in a “man’s world:” nothing hurts like being put at odds against my fellow sisters who are still trapped under gender’s oppression, especially when they see my viewpoints as a danger.

Source Image: Cover of “Gender Trouble” by Judith Butler

Feminist Censorship

Even though gender’s oppression is so clear to many radical feminists, there are plenty of males (and an increasing number of female enablers) who don’t agree with these views. Whether left or right, males purposely connect gender to naturalism and socialization theories, instead of male supremacy. Both groups of males subvert the meaning of feminism and gender abolitionism to paint dissenting women and girls as oppressors or “dividers.” These males implant their right or left male-culture ideologies strategically into women’s spaces. This has been happening for centuries. Each group of men sees the power of gender ideology and wants to control it while co-opting feminist discourse. Saying that gender is a tool of oppression is chastised in both conservative and liberal circles. Men create gender ideology and push their myths onto women and girls, drowning out any dissent. Regardless of political party or country, men silencing women through the weapon of gender is standard.

I’ve noticed that over the years, I’ve increasingly censored my thoughts on sex and gender to avoid “rocking the boat.” This has long been true around conservative males, whom I hold my tongue around to avoid arguing against their obvious irrationality. But then I started catching myself doing it around liberal males, too. The difference is that liberal males claim to be allies to feminism and frame debates in ways that superficially appear meaningful. They spread their ideologies into feminist spaces, muddying our discourse. It took me years to see past the curtain hiding the fact that all their ideologies revert to the same holy book of male dominance and female subjugation.

My self-censoring wasn’t caused by just one thing: sometimes it was strategy or overwhelm, other times fear. I already had so many other topics I was focusing on within feminism, that debating these male-centered ideological differences infiltrating our spaces seemed necessary to put aside in the pile of “agree to disagree.” That’s because male supremacy stays infiltrating female spaces, so eventually, as a feminist, you’re coerced to pick and choose your battles. This is strategic on the part of male culture; it’s the militarized distraction technique of “throwing the kitchen sink” at feminism and turning woman against woman; girl against girl. All while shrouding the males behind the perpetrating. We see this in all the ways gender’s oppression attacks femaleness: body modification, the formalizing of gender and the deconstruction of sex, beauty/ugliness ideology, commercialized sexual exploitation, rape culture, access to female healthcare, childbearing, self-determination, right to assembly, female sovereignty, and so on.

But there’s this other layer that started to develop in my liberal world, after the first few times I was reprimanded for my differing viewpoints. I found myself pulling more to my “fawning”¹ side than my hold your tongue side. I end up reverting back to some of my learned survival techniques from childhood. Fawning (survival through appeasement) and being viewed as “agreeable” is how I stayed alive and practiced harm reduction as a kid. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for those shitty trauma-response “skills.” When I get triggered and slip into the past, I sometimes revert to these maladaptive coping mechanisms. Sometimes I fawn and fold when I’m told I might harm somebody through my words and beliefs. For much of my life, I’ve been so dissociated that I’m able to compartmentalize quite easily. Shit, I stayed in the closet for 26 fucking years, and even when I first came out I was still trying to force myself back in. When I’m taught a social rule, I try my best to respect and follow it, even if I don’t understand it. I default to appeasement because it’s deeply familiar programming. I want to belong, I want to be seen as “normal.” I hate being “the odd woman out,” a place I find myself in often.

But as I started forming sustainable coping mechanisms, the appeasement, self-sacrificing, dissociation, and compartmentalization stopped working, and getting reprimanded for my differing viewpoints could no longer be ignored. The contradiction of both right and left men censoring my dissent was making my compartmentalization neuropathways glitch. I started realizing that trying to go along to get along in the name of survival isn’t sustainable if I’m hiding my questions and my dissent. Cognitive dissonance didn’t work in my abusive family of origin, and it’s not going to work now. The stifling of my own thoughts started confusing my root-cause analysis, and the glitches only got worse. Once women started pushing back against me in the same ways as men, my brain shut down. If my brain were a computer, I would say it short-circuited, and I was risking the safety of my motherboard. Puns intended (hehe).

Trauma therapy has been helping me to bring the compartmentalized parts of myself together, and each wall torn down through healing has brought both positive and negative effects. The positive is returning to open-mindedness and clarity. The negative is ever-increasing glitches caused by contradictions and the lifting of cognitive dissonance. The negative is the growing pains of change and the fear of being misunderstood.

Seeking Truth Through Root-Cause Analysis

Once a personal experience or a statistical data point keeps repeating, and I see a trend, it eventually forces me out of my fawning response and into the need to fix the glitches. My need to grasp at the roots of truth is greater than my risk aversion or need to be liked. I’ve spent my whole life trying so hard to be liked. I was the “placating jester” of my family, and the “defiant truth teller” who was eventually pushed out. Those sides are always warring within me. But that obsessive need for truth always prevails. It’s not easy, though. I fear fellow sisters pushing me away or seeing me as unsafe, though ultimately, they need to know what I believe to decide for themselves if they think I’m a threat.

I recently started having experiences where women expressed that they did feel threatened by my viewpoints on male supremacy. Women in online spaces have told me my views are male-exclusionary, calling them “divisive,” “sexist,” “transphobic,” and other such terms. One woman said that I wasn’t giving enough empathy to men and boys, even though my work is focused on feminism. Another woman said, “What about female violence?” and claimed I was “sexist,” despite my routinely talking about my own experiences of being victimized by women and girls while breaking down the differences of systemic male violence. I had a woman comment on a piece I wrote that “sex is a social construct.” Since I don’t scientifically agree with this statement, she viewed my piece as “transphobic.” A few months back, I inquired if a female-only group travel agency was for “female-born people” and I was met with admonishment that a feminist like me would “purposefully be against trans women.” I didn’t know how to explain to her that I don’t believe in the philosophical & scientific theories on gender, transgender, and transhumanism, and I see these male supremacist ideologies as socially and medically unethical. I sought out female-only spaces to escape such logical fallacies from men, only to find myself dealing with such statements from women. I used to comfortably state that sex is a material reality, name male violence, say that I’m a gender abolitionist, or ask if a service was women-only without a second thought, but in recent years:

• I’m seeing an increase in the conflation of sex and gender, leading to the flawed scientific understanding of the material reality of sex and the male supremacist weapon of gender

• I’m being told a narrative that my feminist practice must include males, the oppressor class, or my feminism is “exclusionary”

• I don’t know how to word my questions anymore to make sure the person I’m talking to is using the same scientific definition of woman/girl/female and of man/boy/male

• I’m not only afraid of being reprimanded about gender ideology by men, but also by women

When our Worldviews are at Odds, Can We Ever Get Along?

For a long while, I thought that gender abolitionists and gender believers could coexist, much like I once believed secular and non-secular people could coexist. I thought we could all “agree to disagree”, while attempting to create bridges where possible to cooperate in the name of civilization. I grew up in a small town in Pennsyltucky, where “poor, white, Christian, male supremacy” rules, and it taught me how to survive as a multi-minority amongst a major group who disagrees with me, hates me, and even perpetuates violence against me. I hightailed it out of there and ran to the city as soon as I could, and visiting is a guaranteed flare-up of my PTSD² symptoms. But even in the big city, I’ve been on the receiving end of prejudice from people of almost every demographic out there. The difference is that when a person of similar power & positionality is prejudiced towards me, the hurt might be equivalent but the risk of violence is not. I don’t have to safeguard myself in the same ways.

These experiences have shown me how hatred can fester below the surface, and is released even by people I’ve deemed as safer. I don’t have false illusions that “we are all one.” I don’t participate in “all or nothing thinking” that believes an entire demographic is “all good” or “all bad.” Instead, I try to find realistic ways to coexist while holding these worldviews to center safeguarding:

• People of all demographics have the potential to cause me harm.

• Analyzing the trends of violence can help us better avoid demographics that systematically target us.

• Separatism isn’t “emotional overreaction” toward an oppressor class. Female separatism is just the logical conclusion to the root-cause analysis of male supremacism.

• When I’m dealing with prejudiced assholes/bullies/supremacists, I use the tactic of avoidance to find ways to coexist. But the more they come at my freedom, the more I will move from indirect to direct self-defense.

As the two major political parties in my country have reached the boiling point of the fight over how to use the weapons of gender/religion/spirituality for their own male supremacist purposes, I see we can’t even coexist on a superficial level anymore. Diplomacy is falling apart. Firm boundaries need to be re-established because women's and girls’ sex-based rights are at odds with ALL male ideologies in the US and worldwide. And now women are finding themselves at odds as well. My focus on online organizing over the past year has expanded my feminist network globally, and I hear the same stories from women around the world. Male ideologies have wormed their way into feminist spaces, and as predicted, everyone is blaming women for male supremacy’s mutations. This current point in female subjugation, during Late State Male Supremacy™️, is the hardest male supremacist battle we’ve faced yet. Now, males are debating if women’s liberation — feminism — is exclusive to the female sex-class. They’re debating if the female sex is biologically real. Males are refining technology for the sole purpose of further commodifying women and girls’ femaleness. What should be obvious is being philosophically deconstructed, with the end result of taking female sovereignty away. Whether intentional or not, it’s the impact on women and girls’ sex-class rights that matters.

My Goals with the “Gender’s Troubled” Series

I want to write about the topics of sex and gender as an attempt to get back to the basics and build up from there. I’m trying to make sense of this shit. I’m trying to fix my own brain glitches and asking like-minds to come along for the ride. I want to understand how, in 2025, a woman or girl is shamed for acknowledging male supremacy, acknowledging the material reality of sex, and acknowledging that “gender” is a man-made tool of oppression. I want to write to process my difficult experiences of living under “gender,” more precisely, the difficult experiences of living under male dominance that subjugates my female sex-class. I want to reach the younger and older generations of women and girls who clearly see the weapon of gender, and make amends for my failures as an elder and as a peer. I want to explain my dissent to women in my former “leftist”, “postmodern”, “liberal” communities who might feel upset and disrespected by the things I believe. Not to change their minds, but to explain my stance for those who question how I arrived at this place. The idealistic side of me yearns for these women to understand my viewpoints and join me in radical feminist work, but my realist side assumes they’re thinking the same thing about me. Never say never, right? Maybe in the end, there won’t be a middle ground for feminists. I don’t easily give up on women because I get the damage of male supremacy. It’s a philosophical lobotomy created and executed by men. But if there is no middle ground, then as women, we need to create firm lines of agreement. That’s what civilization means; we don’t all get along, but we all live here. So either fairness prevails or we enter self-defense mode. Female culture champions cooperation over competition, peace over violence, and self-defense in the name of female sovereignty.

I hope that this new series “Gender’s Troubled” will allow us to explore male people’s sex-based oppression of female people and question the past and present systems of gender. I hope we can clear up the confusion, reestablish our understanding of sex and gender, and refortify our work within feminism: the female sex-class struggle of women and girls to be liberated from all forms of male supremacy and to be treated as dignified, distinct, material human beings. This series is for all the women who want to have this discussion, including the little girl inside of me, who wishes I had access to radical feminists when I was a kid.

Please join me and share your thoughts, resources, and stories in the comments. I’ve sat back, listened, carefully contemplated these topics, and stand firm in my beliefs. But I also support others sharing their thoughtful dissent. Part of expressing my thoughts publicly is being ready to have them challenged. Please also stay open and seek first to understand.

If we can’t build a bridge, then we will build stronger boundaries to protect all women and girls. One harmed is all harmed. Which means we have to listen to and protect the most disenfranchised women and girls if we believe in fairness, consent, boundaries, and a safer world. And if our analysis remains at odds, then dissenting women can no longer be expected to keep the peace. We didn’t create male supremacy, but we will stand up and fight back until we destroy it, in all its forms.

Community Agreement for Comments:

Please don’t use slurs, name-calling, etc., as a form of debate. Feel free to call people assholes, shitty, fucked up, call out their harm, but I don’t participate in male supremacist ideology, such as bullying through words. The following are terms that will discourage my engagement with your comment, possibly compel me to remove your comment, or block you:

• ANY NEGATIVE TERM THAT HITS BACK AT WOMEN & GIRLS!!!

• B-word

• N-word

• C-word

• F-word

• Homo

• Lesbo

• Queer

• TERF

• Foid, Moid

• Troon

• Tranny

• Pickme/Pickmeisha

• Handmaiden

• Mean girl(s)

• Comments aimed at one’s body

• Colorism, Racism, Casteism, Xenophobia

• etc.

• Hopefully, you get the point - debate with intellect, don’t use male supremacist terms that are utterly meaningless, don’t be a fucking asshole

Things to be Clear On, So You Know Where I Stand (Is This The Right Space for You?)

I practice female separatism. In one way or another, I have most of my life, and lately I’m further formalizing my practice. I still have a few male people who are in my personal and professional life, but for the most part, my life is filled with women. I no longer organize with males in any capacity. My work is for women and girls only. I aim to cultivate female-only spaces. I understand feminism as a movement for female liberation, and I only discuss male issues as they relate to women and girls. My analysis is specific to the female sex-class. It can’t be used as a point of reference for or laid over the male sex-class. It is a wholly separate, female-specific analysis. This series is not a space for males to participate. Unfortunately, there’s no feature on Substack to create female-only spaces. Therefore, if male people do engage in the comments section, I ask all women not to take the bait, no matter how well-meaning it seems, or even to defend me. You can document, report, and block, and I will do the same. Sisters, we will not get duped by male culture distractions. But we will use the legal channels we have access to so we can defend ourselves. Take a screenshot and put him on blast. But don’t give him the direct attention he is so desperately seeking. Remember that a man commenting is already violating my boundary, requesting that this be a female-only space. A male who ignores this boundary is harmful.

Don’t take the bait of male energy vampires!

Over the years I have had friends, co-workers, roommates, comrades, and neighbors in my life that are female and male, including female and male people who call themselves “feminine, masculine, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, stud/butch, femme, androgynous/no-label, transsexual, transgender, trans, cis, non-binary, queer, intersex, hermaprodite, cisgender, AFAB, AMAB,” etc. Even though I don’t use these terms and I have concluded they are male supremacist propaganda and need to be reaccessed, I know far too many women who use these terms to survive and make sense of the oppression called gender. Some even see these terms as their “culture” and “identity,” and struggle to imagine life without them. I also know of male people who use these terms as a way to either deny their access to male supremacy or perpetuate it. I know of female people who use these terms as an attempt to either escape or wield male supremacy. I know female and male people who use these terms to further dissociate into self-loathing. I’ve experienced some of these struggles myself. I, too, got lost in gender’s troubles over and over again.

I was finally forced to question these terms of gender when fellow women started projecting male supremacy’s gender troubles onto me, and I found myself inadvertently conforming. When shit hits close to home, then we have to take notice. Being a lesbian woman, feminist organizer, and child rape victim-survivor advocate, put me right in the thick of it. I aim to be sensitive to the different demographics of female gender believers, while centering my viewpoints. I will not participate in anything I see as delusion. If you find yourself feeling defensive, angry, and compelled to leave a lengthy comment, please write it as a post and share it with me. This respects the unpaid labor I do here and respects my choice to engage or not. I’ll try my best not to trigger women, but I’m also aware it’s a possibility, so I want to warn you now. I typically don’t use trigger warnings, so if this initial intro to “Gender’s Troubled” is upsetting, then you should avoid the entire series, unsubscribe, or even block me.

I want this community to have meaningful dialogue that challenges “all or nothing” thinking, name-calling, fearing triggers more than censorship, catastrophizing, rage-baiting, logical fallacies, etc. I want us to be able to express all our emotions, including rage, but bravely and constructively, ending in brainstorming solutions. I’m not looking for endless debates with women who will never understand my worldviews, because I’ve been there and done that, and it’s ineffective. I’m looking for like-minded radical feminists, gender abolitionists, and female separatists to build a community. If you’re looking for a defensive debate, to only vent/complain/shittalk, to release rage and doom, there are plenty of spaces on the interwebs for all that. If you’re only focused on gender’s oppression as it relates to “transgenderism” but not male supremacism as a whole, there’s plenty of other spaces for that too. Here, I want women to informally organize our thoughts by using the scientific method, root cause analysis, and passionate and respectful debate about the entirety of male supremacy and sex-based oppression. I want us to envision change. I want us to problem-solve. Women and girls are survivors who fight to be thrivers, so let’s put that part of our female culture to use. Gender’s troubled, and we can dismantle male supremacy together, one brainstorm at a time.

Footnotes:

1. My background is in trauma-informed care, where” fight, flight, freeze, fawn” trauma response theories are commonly used. I’m still analyzing these theories and how they’re impacted by male supremacist ideology. I’m unsure if they’re sound scientific theories to apply to women and girls. I use the term “fawn” here as a relatable way to discuss appeasement as a response to trauma, but it’s not an endorsement of these concepts as sound. As I learn more, I will share my findings.

2. Similar to what I said in footnote 1, I’m still analyzing the concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was diagnosed with it and several other conditions. These diagnoses helped me in certain ways, but they, too, are a product of male supremacy that pathologizes the response to male violence against women and girls. As I learn more, I will share my findings.