Ella "El" Romero had been about 16 when she'd joined the Line of Sisters. Theresa Petrucci had been the one to initiate her into the collective, and in that time El'd practically hit the ground running. The future of Feminism in the BackDoor rested on young women like her, those who rejected the post-modernist TRA agenda and fought for the true liberation of (true) women.
I fucking wish radical feminists had underground coalitions. We would be much more organized, get more shit done, look way cooler, and men would actually be threatened by us. And no 16 year old girl is gonna be joining a radfem collective. Not only do they have school to worry about, learning about radical feminism, the true power of the patriarchy, and how much men hate women is borderline traumatic at that age, especially if you're attracted to them and even more so if you're going through puberty, another traumatic experience for girls. You start to deeply analyze how boys and men act around you. You understand why that uncle is more touchy with you and not your brothers, why your male teachers don't call on you in class, why you can't walk your dog at 5pm in the winter because it is dark already, even if you live near an elementary school, because something can happen to you. You see that male politicians are okay with men masquerading as you and taking resources set aside for you and your fellow sisters because they weren't good enough to compete against other men. You truly feel the words "You're not good enough because you're a girl". You still have your childhood innocence but your body is forcing you to be sexual, and now you know what men think of you and what men think about doing to you, and that this will happen to you for the rest of your life?
I'd expect a girl to LDAR honestly.
I'm taking too long for the first paragraph.
El wasn't anyone else; she was nineteen, with the rest of her life ahead of her. Even if you ignored the difficulty she presently had with faces, she was top notch. Theresa would kill to be as proficient as El at the age of twenty-seven, let alone the Theresa of eight years past.
What kind of "women peak at age thirty" bullshit is this. Im pretty sure most of the women spearheading the terf shit are over 30, and a girl at 19 would have shit like college to worry about. Also, if El was in college, she would probably never do shit as big as painting murals as she could get caught and expelled. I know friends that put "Woman: Adult Human Female" stickers on their campuses and was VERY cautious to not get caught as each college sent mass emails about the "hate speech" and how they would investigate.
El opened her mouth, but the words came only a little later. "… I'm sorry, it's just that I've been feeling awful. There's… you know, I've been trying to lose weight."
"Huh." Good on her. Optics were an important part of radical feminism. "You're not doing anything drastic, are you?"
Holy FUCK any radical feminist worth their salt will tell you that trying to lose weight to look pretty is anti feminist. You are literally doing something that women are pressured to do from childhood to look conventionally attractive. For men. Goddamnit.
In El's hands was a magazine that literally hurt to look at. Its cover was an eye-searing background array of pinks, more shades than Theresa had a name for and jumbled together like fifty printers conspired to print each shade at the same time onto the same space. On the foreground, clad in more pinks, was a thin blonde baker; if Theresa looked into its eyes for too long, she swore she could feel something push through the front of her mind, like a ravenous crown of thorns. Most peculiar was what the baker held: a tray of heart-shaped cookies that killed Theresa's appetite to look at. That they weren't even disgusting had to be the most troubling part of it all; in any other magazine, Theresa felt like she'd have been salivating.
Impulse kicked in, and Theresa knocked the magazine out of El's hands. It landed in a puddle of rosewater that had to have been rainwater a second before.
Haha I would do the same if my younger friend who didn't look good and said she was dieting pulled that out. Clearly it's some patriarchal shit and a bad influence on her.
"So… so this magazine, 'Just Girly Things', has a bunch of recipes for dieting. There's… well, obviously my biggest weakness is empanadas, and Abuela loves…" El stood back up, shoving the magazine back into her bag. "Look, I've been eating too much meat and sugar, and JGT… helps with that."
Girl just eat the empanadas and be happy. You're 19 these men don't matter.
"Look like you're a minute away from passing out?" Theresa took a long drag of her e-cig. "El, I'm proud of you for trying, but you don't look happy about all this. I'm really going to need you to rethink this decision, alright? Do you think you can do it for me?"
El paused, then smiled.
"Yes. Anything for you."
Her eyes said 'no'.
As much as radfems fight amongst each other, there is always an unwritten rule that you help any woman in need, even if you two are sworn enemies. The lack of response to your sister telling you that she's dieting dangerously (an action that is definitely influenced from the patriarchy) from someone who calls herself a radical feminist just tells me that she is not a radical feminist.
Cut to scene in a bar
"So she said… so she said 'no', and oh my god, the catharsis! The catharsis, girls!"
We would probably say gyns instead of girls here, lmao
"I…" Theresa sighed, taking another gulp of water and palming at the e-cig in her pocket. "I just heard of it today. El mentioned she was subscribed to their magazine… or, technically, that she received the magazine two months back."
"Messed up." Robin took another gulp of her own drink in turn. "All this commodification of womanhood."
"I mean, it's…" Theresa smacked her lips. "You know how she's been trying to lose weight?"
"She's fine how she is." And Theresa sniffed bullshit the minute she looked back into Hellen's eyes, because they were all just as much in the respectability game as Hellen actually put down her drink. "How do magazines fit into this?"
Strikethough isn't mine. Context is about El wanting to lose weight. Unless El is fucking obese they would say and believe that she's fine at her weight. You can't just say how they dislike the commodificaion of womanhood and how women are expected to look a certain way and then imply that they think that El needs to cut back on the empanadas. The dissonance!
Caryn clicked her tongue. "Like… what's this gotta do with El?"
What a vacant, meaningless stare. Caryn was good at those.
Theresa wetted her lips. "So does a literal teenager taking dieting advice from a memetic hazard not set off your alarm bells?"
"Feather." Hellen tilted her head. "Couldn't you just confiscate the magazine?"
"I…" Yes, she could have. So why didn't she do it? "… that's not the point, Hellen. It's just… I mean, what are we celebrating for? Somehow, our best artist got ahold of some magic rag telling her to starve herself, and we're just… what, basking in petty relationship drama? Shouldn't a radfem collective… you know, combat this?"
Vacant, drunk stares.
These are the shittiest radfems I've seen, I'm revoking their membership.
Hellen coughed into her hand. "I appreciate it, Feather. But we should table this until we're sober."
"Yeah, and what about the Wombyn's March?!" Caryn slammed back her drink. "We've got so much, like, planning we gotta do. We gotta plan, Terry, we gotta. Who's gonna… who's gonna go to some half-baked march we didn't plan? The TRAs play constant war, Terry." Caryn slammed her empty mug onto the table. "Constant!"
No one says Wombyn since the fucking 90s, we all say woman because that's our word. This was written in 2021 so the author has no excuse
The radfems I know, and even most of the woman who aren't radfems, will drop everything to make sure a younger woman that is their mentee is okay. Female solidarity and all of that.
Anyways Theresa goes home and hops on to IRC. She tries to find more about JGT, gets nothing, but then JGTBot whispers to her and tells her to go to their website. JGTBot isnt listed on the active user list nor did it join or leave. Spooky.
Theresa finds the PO box and drives 4hrs to get there. It leads to an abandoned house. She goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge to be jumped by a swarm of pink bugs. She fights them off but passes out.
In a dream state, Theresa encounters the benefactor of JGT, Madeleine von Schaeffer. She is the encarnate of female beauty standards.
"Tell me, Theresa: why does one diet?"
"Look, if this turns into another one of your sophist—"
"Because they want to lose weight." Mrs. Schaeffer's cup went back down. "They want to get thinner, Theresa. It is always a matter of 'want'. When you tell yourself you're going to lose weight, and follow through on your actions, you are performing an action of want."
Theresa blinked.
"If I may make one thing perfectly clear, Theresa: Just Girly Things does not manipulate its customers into something they don't want to do. As a magazine, it cannot manipulate its customers into something they don't want to do. What it does do, what we spent years perfecting its capacity to do, is to empower our audience."
This was… this was absurd. "Empower."
"Empower. To infuse one with power. Of choice, Theresa. You would rather have her weak of will?"
"So now it's 'empowerment'? This—"
"So what else do you call it, then, when you impart the will to power onto your audience?" Mrs. Schaeffer leaned forward, something that inexplicably stuck out to Theresa. "Would you rather we control their every move, Theresa? Force our desires onto them? Dictate their every single thought? I do so wonder who exactly that sounds like, Theresa. Certainly not what you're to march against in the coming month."
The magazine isn't exerting power onto it's audience. How would it be by encouraging them to diet. One can interpret the power as the control over your body, but what pushed you to diet is definitely more powerful than you. While you're making your body do what you want, societal pressure is making you do what it wants women to do. This is bullshit logic and exactly how liberal feminists use the word "empower"
Theresa snaps out from dream state and goes back home to her apartment to find Hellen. Hellen is in her apartment because she was worried about Theresa's cat as she hasn't been returning her calls. Theresa ask Hellen if they empower people, Hellen says she hopes so. The chapter ends with Theresa not feeling empowered.