thisisourwitchcraft:

Misogynists and anti-feminists have always used ways in which women don’t conform to gender norms as a weapon against or something that requires a punishment for feminists and women who work for women’s liberation: they’ve called us “ugly” as a way to have our voices silenced and our worth denied because being “beautiful” according to their norms is an obligation for women in their world; they’ve created the image of the impossible to like and despicable feminist who doesn’t shave; they’ve punished us for being angry and loud (despite us having good reasons for it) by using the old notion of women as irrational and emotional, because they want women to be submissive and pleasant for them; they’ve called us “prudes” when we criticize the sexual exploitation of women and the way men demand constant access to women’s bodies, and “sluts” when we’ve wanted to gain power and control over our own bodies and have our reproductive rights. We’ve been called witches and bitches and whores: all those characters men despise because they don’t conform to patriarchal norms and roles for women, or because they behave in ways which in the eyes of men deny them all right to respect as human beings.

Reflecting upon this, it becomes even more obvious what an offensive crime against women it is, that people attempt to reinforce stereotypical gender norms and (even in the name of feminism!) claim that women who don’t conform to them aren’t really women or that following these norms is what makes you a woman. These gender norms have been used to “keep us in place” and silence us and subordinate us for ages, and women have had to stand being hated and punished for not conforming to them because they believed in and fought for the liberation of women - because they fought for us, women of today. Taking a step back and accepting these norms would be to let them down, and have terrible consequences for women of the future. We must keep fighting against these norms being forced upon women and being linked to womanhood, or else the struggle for women’s liberation will fall just as silent as patriarchy wants women to.