Anonymous #1 17w

thats what she compared it to and i guess i just havent seen any content about periods being spoken about in the same sort of “infantilizing” (as she says) way

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Anonymous #2 17w

thats what im sayin!

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Anonymous cherryblossom.baby 17w

i do hear a lot of women talking about how the follicular phase makes them horny monsters lmao. but again, they’re dramatizing it for funsies. women can’t say anything without pissing someone off lmao.

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Anonymous #2 17w

or maybe it’s ovulation, i’m not sure

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Anonymous #2 17w

RIGHT i think maybe she’s fighting one extreme (for fun and being able to be open about bodily experiences) with another extreme (claiming it all makes women seem irrational)

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Anonymous #5 17w

bioessentialism is an interesting take!! i can see that

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Anonymous #5 17w

I think the past five years there’s been so many weird regressive trends like this, “girl dinner/math,” the whole be demure thing, “I’m just a girl,” tradwife (NOT SAHM stuff before someone says it) etc. that get framed as girlbossy even though they’re really just infantalizing and/or play into misogynistic ideas about women being helpless and irrational. Why are we doing the men’s work for them and degrading ourselves??

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Anonymous cherryblossom.baby 17w

The whole bioessentialist worldview has gotten really popular recently from what I can see. I’ve noticed it in manosphere type stuff too. I study eugenics, which isn’t the same but is really closely related, in my professional life and it’s been super disturbing to hear like 20 year olds on tik tok saying really similar things to 1920s pseudoscientists.

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Anonymous #5 17w

i agree! i think a lot of it starts as being dramatic/jokey and coping with some patriarchal standards and then gets to be too much & stereotyping. my issue with this specific influencer is that she seems to be avoiding nuance

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Anonymous #5 17w

omg yessss manosphere and bioessentialism has been popping off. or elon and a lot of tech bros who also spout other sects of eugenics

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Anonymous cherryblossom.baby 17w

100% agree that it starts as ironic/a joke! The problem is I dont think that matters very much functionally and in terms of impact. There’s been some really interesting recent research about the ways irony or the whole “I’m just joking” thing has been a really effective tool for rightwing online radicalization in recent years. I’ve heard it called “the irony pipeline.” Basically it’s a joke until it’s not, and usually on some level it wasn’t really a joke in the first 1/2

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Anonymous #5 17w

2/2 place. “Kidding on the square” as my dad calls it. It’s really eye opening stuff once you get into it. I think these jokes are dangerous tbh.

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Anonymous #5 17w

absolutely!! i think there can be harm in it, someone else commented similarly above ^^ which again is like. the internet not allowing for two truths to exist at once. like i enjoy those memes as someone who can feel “crazy” during my cycle but i also know that doesnt apply to every single woman. people forget that every period is different

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Anonymous cherryblossom.baby 17w

My thing is I think the harm pretty solidly outweighs the good in this case. Not to be a buzzkill but we have a rapist in office, a forced-birth majority Supreme Court, serious efforts to put women back under the Doctrine of Coverture, attempts to push women out of the workplace, and at least one dead woman being used as an incubator. We are at an inflection point and while a lot of people think it’s not that deep, I really think it is.

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Anonymous #5 17w

1000% i just think we’ll never be able to stop people from joking about what they experience. in conversations online (HEAVY) everyone will generalize their experience because the algorithm feeds into that. the only way to combat that (aside from having genuine conversations like ours or talking in person) is acknowledging that multiple truths exist 🤷‍♀️ it for sure is that deep, especially considering fox news is known for citing tiktoks as reliable sources of peoples thoughts

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