Midnight Biscuits

@sophielouisecc Some of us work and still have to claim benefits. How about looking at your own life and leaving us out of your ramblings.

People on benefits should start making the same tough decisions as those in work Can’t afford kids - don’t have them Can’t afford after school club - don’t send them Can’t afford to go to attractions in the holidays - do go These are the choices ordinary working people on lower wages have to make every day Those on UC should have to be the same Why should they get free money and a plethora of discounts that whose working do not get It is not fair

Othering is the business of patriarchy.

What’s one of the darkest ways history controlled women’s voices?

Between the 1500s and 1700s, women in Britain, Germany, and Scotland were punished with the Scold’s Bridle—a cruel iron mask that locked around their head, pressed down or pierced their tongue, and forced them into public humiliation. Women labeled as “too talkative” or “disrespectful” were chained, paraded through the streets, and ridiculed. This wasn’t just about keeping someone quiet—it was a tool of patriarchal control, designed to punish women who dared to speak, stand up, or defy male authority. Some masks even had bells so everyone could hear their arrival, turning their suffering into a spectacle. Today, surviving bridles in museums remind us how far societies went to silence women and why fighting misogyny and patriarchal control is still necessary.

@schiz04renic Focus on something you can do now. Something small like getting a glass of water. Go for a shower, or wash your face. Breathe. Repeat these small things until the tide goes out again.

To any who survived rock bottom… what’s one piece of advice you’d give a someone who feels like giving up right now?

"While many now understand that sexual violence is about power, few still connect that power to socially legitimized authority—the kind men perpetually hold more of than women, even when they aren’t socially or politically powerful. At its core, male authority stems from men’s cultural entitlement to be “knowers,” an entitlement inseparable from women who are simultaneously being categorized, and muted, as “pleasers..” Why “cultivated ignorance”? A few years ago, at a party, I found myself talking to two men. We started discussing books, and they mentioned their long-running book club. When they learned I was a writer, they asked if I liked my work. I said yes, but added that being a woman writing nonfiction is frustrating because while everyone reads men’s work, men rarely read women’s. One man turned to the other and asked, “Have we ever read a book by a woman author in our book club?” The other thought for a moment before answering, “Hmm, no. I don’t think we have.” They were lovely people and considered themselves real progressives. “Honestly, I’ve never thought about it,” the man concluded. Their book club was more than ten years old. This lack of interest, which he himself named, isn’t only a matter of personal preference; it is institutionalized in how our society identifies, produces, recognizes, and validates knowledge and, with it, authority. We see these imbalances in broader media, too. Reading gaps: Men’s lack of interest in women authors and women subjects, fiction or nonfiction, has been documented for decades, and it maps onto larger patterns of how men perceive and treat women as thinkers, experts, and authorities. In 2015, author Nicola Griffith analyzed major literary prize winners (Pulitzer, Booker, National Book Award, etc.) and found that women write from diverse perspectives, while men write almost exclusively about men. Prize-winning books were overwhelmingly about men/boys, including those by women, and, because literary systems reward male-centered narratives, writers (including women) are incentivized to write about men. Today, men buy and read fewer than 20 percent of bestselling women’s fiction and nonfiction; women read men’s and women’s books equally. Men also give women’s books lower ratings, avoid women protagonists, and, when they do read women, tend to prefer “the classics,” meaning books written by dead women from other eras. Women who can’t challenge their thinking in ongoing ways. The only bestselling woman author read consistently by men, according to a 2024 study, is Harper Lee, whose major work was published in 1960, when segregation stood, women couldn’t have bank accounts, and marital rape was legal. In the decade-plus since Griffith’s study, women have sometimes approached parity in almost all major literary awards. Stories about women, however, have not. During times when women have succeeded in higher numbers, they do so on male supremacist terms: they tend to be white, cisgender, non-disabled women. This tends to disguise the persistent exclusion of Indigenous, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and LGBTQ women. Nonetheless, during this same period, the issue of white men’s loss of visibility and opportunity in publishing has persisted, with critics framing it as a zero-sum loss for men rather than a reflection of the way the industry has (remarkably) expanded. Listening gaps: A recent study using Spotify data, for instance, found that men host two-thirds of the top 100 podcasts (with their video corollaries), and roughly 75 percent of guests are men as well. Women are all but absent from sports, tech, comedy, fitness, and business podcasts. I know and love many women-focused podcasts, but it’s easy to lose sight of how male-dominated the sector is, and it’s not only male-dominated, but dominated by white men, who make up 77 percent of top hosts. These statistics mirror those in filmmaking, TV, and children’s programming. Today, women account for only about a third of new Intellectual Property (IP) and patents in the United States. Imbalances like these don’t just shape our influence and incomes as writers; they shape authority by constraining men’s empathy and public imagination. Why do awards and listening habits matter in particular? They have long tails and are a prime example of how men’s erasures of women’s thinking become institutionalized. The right likes to talk about how progressives have taken over college cultures, but this assertion is framed within male, and mainly white, supremacist parameters. Syllabi: Award-winning books turn into other media, such as documentaries, movies, and podcasts. They are also more likely to end up in academia. Here, too, knowledge—and with it, authority—imbalances endure. In colleges and universities, men, the majority white, remain the majority of tenured professors, making decisions about texts and book buying, disproportionately assigning books by men and disproportionately citing other men and themselves more than they do women experts. White men remain the only demographic cohort whose representation continues to grow with each jump in tenure-track promotions. Studies across disciplines show that male professors assign far fewer works by women authors and experts than women do. In political science graduate studies, for instance, women make up only 19% of lead authors of recommended and required reading. When male professors assign male texts so disproportionately, many while defensively complaining that DEI has ruined the canon, they aren’t just teaching a subject; they are teaching students that “knowing” is a masculine verb, “knower” is a masculine noun. Citations and collaborations: A large-scale study involving ~270,000 scientists found that men are more likely to collaborate with other men, while women collaborate more evenly across gender. Men also cite other men and self-cite far more than women (up to 70% more in some fields). Men even omit the work of even the most prominent women in their field; they seem to forget their contributions entirely. To make matters worse (because I am nothing if not all sunshine and light at all times), forgetting or ignoring women’s intellectual and creative work and contributions has, historically, made stealing women’s work easy, a problem that, in the sciences, there is a name for it: the Mathilda Effect. If men aren’t reading women, they aren’t citing them; if they aren’t citing them, they aren’t listening to them or sharing their thinking; and the result is that women’s authority is effectively erased from daily relevance and from the historical and scientific record. It means women are erased." sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/26-its-not-o…

lol they’re on here calling radfems nazis and saying we’re a bigger threat to women than men are… look at our “feminists” bro🥹

And this is why the radfems be calling yall brainwashed. For “power play” to exist as a sexual concept you have to be from a society where there is power imbalance. Power disparity is not inherent. It’s a product of patrilineal & patriarchy society.

@unemployedb22 Was with you until you said "cis" 😑

Ppl that get defensive over discussing rape culture will quite literally act like the average c1s man and will proceed to call you a frigid prudish hysterical fascist citing Freud while simultaneously saying that it is totally normal for women to have fantasies over rape

@soundvuitex I'd rather be a femcel than have an arse like the gran canyon.

the way radfems speak is too often nearly indistinguishable from incel men

All this because some of us are saying butt sex is not meant for us.

This was me when I realised that there was no need for me to be rational about my feminism. Patriarchy itself is so absurd & illogical that my resistance to it doesn’t need to be neat or persuasive to the very people it benefits.

@thegenesisbl0ck Disney called, they want you to write their next trope.

Babies are really easy when you realise all they need is a lot of love and patience.

@linmeitalks You can't quantify "many people" though. Because it's a fantasy in your head.

I used to visit homes where people had rent arrears of over £4,000. Funny enough, nails were always done- full set, designer clothes and bags, everyone had a tv iPhone/ iPad etc And guess what - the council would often clear their rent arrears multiple times with huge lump sum payments - Discretionary housing payments, so many would rack up huge arrears again - all of our taxes down the toilet. Ps some people are in real need and try their best and I’m happy they get help but many have no regard for taxes and are more than happy to abuse the help.

@georgegalloway Less than 0.5% of the female population will ever need to face the heartbreaking decision to abort late term.

Full term abortion is an abomination. An indescribable act of evil. Fewer than 1% of the British public support it. Yet parliament just legalised it. Britain as we knew it is finished.

@Docstockk No woman is out here aborting late term pregnancy without having a massive traumatic experience behind the decision.

Interesting how some women who valiantly fought gender wars now using same tropes beloved of transactivists to defend decriminalisation of late term abortion. - AS IF there will be thousands of sinister men who want to predate in changing rooms/ women lining up to get rid of their babies! (there won't be, but still need legal deterrent for the few, especially with pills-by-post in the mix). - AS IF anyone would do that if they were not totally desperate/ in danger/ traumatised etc! (fact check: there are lots of different motivations, humans are diverse. Check out the stories of actual matricide! The idealisation of 50% of the population is stupid wherever you find it ). - It is MY RIGHT to do what I want to my body, regardless of consquences for others ( how is that not just abject narcissism and selfishness? We aren't living in the 18th Century. Every possible form of contraception was already available. How can it be ok to prefer to try and get rid of a later term baby - especially when you have to go through labour either way - rather than deliver it for adoption?). Starting to wonder where transactivists got this stuff from🧐

All late stage after 20 weeks abortions in the UK are carried out because the fetus has fatal birth defects or there is a fatal risk to the mother. Almost all of them are because the baby will die before it is born or very soon after. So please, no babies being murdered BS.

Remember yesterday when he said he wanted to block all women. This video of him laughing like Mutley has got to have the same effect, right?

@nyaraVT Except they are not powerless. In fact, quite the opposite. They lobby with power and punch down on women with enforced pronouns.

Transphobia is a refusal of educating yourself on trans topics because it makes you feel strong when you can weaponise your ignorance to harm the powerless. It is also extremely profitable.

Another vile peadophile is sent to jail for 24 years. Like 88% of Sex offenders in the UK he is White. All the usual anti-peadophile and 'rape gang' people will be silent. All they actually care about is pushing racism to try get votes.