We usually reserve the side eye for people who start talking about empowerment. Why? Because they are usually talking about the second half of the list.
EMPOWERMENT
1. Physicality
becoming physically stronger empowers us. exercising your body not only makes your body stronger and more powerful, but it brings discipline and helps you connect with your body instead of disconnect.
being able to physically be at a location is empowering. feminists should be fighting to make all places accessible to disabled women.
disabled women should also have access to any type of exercises and physical therapy they can do. i would especially like to see more public pools having more physical therapy programs. swimming is a great way to exercise for strength while not putting any gravitational or impact on your body2. Knowledge
Knowledge is empowering. having knowledge about how our own bodies work is empowering. women and girls who are.knowledgeable are not easily misled. in this vein, learning how to properly debate arguments and think critically about yours and others words and beliefs is empowering. having the ability to trust yourself comes with gaining knowledge.
3. Access to Fulfilling Work.
work that feeds our love and passion is empowering. workplaces with atmospheres where everyone is happy and excited to work with women are empowering. workplaces free from sexual attacks empower women. women stimulating their minds and souls is empowering. women doing the work they find stimulating gives us a sense of purpose.
many women of all different walks of life have a high propensity for art. charging them with female representation in media will empower us all by putting forth the huge diversity that women display as human beings with full experiences and lives and stories to tell.
evidence shows that the least depressed cohort of women are the ones who work and who are financially independent, not the married housewives.
4. Reproductive and Sexual Rights.
women having control over our own.reproduction is empowering. women having orgasms and thinking about our own pleasure during sex is empowering. women accepting their own physical form and refusing to be disrespected by men who find them unacceptable because of their physical form is empowering. women refusing intercourse if it does nothing for their pleasure or they dont want to take the risk is empowering. women not being forced to sell their own bodies is empowering. women having control over OUR OWN BODIES is freedom.
Things that are NOT empowering to girls and women:
1. Femininity
being small, delicate, and on display is not empowering and it never will be. wearing high heels damages our feet and is not empowering. wearing makeup because society does not believe we as women are acceptable without it is not empowering. having long and/or fake nails limits the use of our hands and is not empowering. our collective bodies are not for men to look at and enjoy as they go about their day in comfortable, dignified clothing.
kindness, nurturing, and the desire to help others are good qualities in moderation, and they should be thouhght of as sex-neutral qualities everyone should work on, not just women. women are not the only ones who should be expected to be nurturing and giving.
aspiring for smallness is the opposite of enpowering. women need to eat. women are allowed to grow. our goal should be comfort and health, not emancipation and fragility.
2. Self-objectification
our hands are for doing tasks and our feet are for mobility. our faces are to house our brains and feed us, not a thing for men to find either acceptable or unacceptable to look at. every part of our bodies are for OUR use, not for the use of others. we exist for ourselves. our bodies are not naturally political and they are all acceptable and worthy of humanity, no matter what they look like or what issues they have.
3. Submission
Submissiveness is not empowering. lowering your worth until it is under the worth you give someone elses humanity is self-harm. humiliation and degredation arise out of the degraders sense of superiority over the one submitting to him. being treated as inferior will never empower anyone.
4. Marriage and Traditional Nuclear Family
marriage is a contract of ownership where women take on the last name of men. nuclear families are an extension of male ownership to not only include women but the children they objectify as their legacy of power. men expect women to raise children while they work, but women have goals and dreams too. men expect women to drop these goals and sacrifice only their lives to raise children that men see as their property and investment. men leave the majority of menial housework and micro-cleaning to women. marriage and nuclear families will never be empowering.
5. Outside Control over Reproduction.
up to and including abortion. ALSO involving lack of access to childcare and paid leave. this one explains itself.
6. The Sex Industry.
Mens entitlement over females and our bodies will NEVER be empowering and MUST end.
Now, can people stop using this word for things that ARENT giving women any actual power? Glad we had this talk.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
1 comment
September 12, 2017 at 7:54 am
Meg
*sigh* Is it really so much to ask that people stop telling feminists to get back into the kitchen by saying we “should” be doing “this or that” when women can’t even ask men to stop raping us without being shouted over and laughed at.
Statements like that also imply that feminists aren’t disabled themselves (intersectionality fail!!11!1). However almost every feminist I have met has struggled with some form of health problem (including things like depression and anxiety), and sometimes the health problems develop due to the stress of being involved with activism. Of course nobody talks about this, or what it costs women to keep “doing something” about the sorry state of things that are a result of MALE political power and policy.
If someone thinks they can treat women like beasts of burden and pile on yet more unpaid social labor is a misogynist, even if they are a woman and even if they call themselves a feminist. Labeling oneself “feminist” doesn’t magically make internalized misogyny go away. They remind me of children that treat their mothers like shit because they are unhappy with the rules their father created. Perhaps instead of demanding women make everything right for everyone else, they should take it up with the white male Christians that actually have the political power to begin with.
And don’t get me started on anti-choice “disability advocates” who think forcing poor single mothers to birth babies with severe and expensive health problems is progress. They treat women like walking talking wombs and unpaid care givers then turn around and scream “selfish” when women consider our own limitations and needs.
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