Thanks for posting this—it’s a really interesting read. It reminded me of discussions I had in university about sex work, where some would argue that their work was empowering because they were “exploiting” men rather than being exploited themselves. The idea was that by commodifying their sexual attraction, they were working within the system to empower themselves, rather than trying to dismantle the bigger structural issues.
The femosphere seems to follow a similar logic: working within existing power dynamics rather than fighting to change them. But as the article points out, these spaces often end up reinforcing the same patriarchal ideas they claim to resist. Like, framing traditional or conservative practices—like relying on men for financial support—as empowering doesn’t actually challenge the system; it just works around it.
What really struck me was the part about “anti-feminist feminism.” It’s wild how these spaces can seem feminist on the surface but actually double down on inequality by focusing on individual gain over collective progress. It’s the same vibe as “girlboss feminism” but with an even more cynical edge. It’s all about “winning” against men, which feels very manosphere but flipped.
I get why women might be drawn to this, though. Liberal feminism has been all about individual empowerment and hasn’t really delivered on the bigger promises of gender equality. But, like the article says, just because something criticizes liberal feminism doesn’t automatically mean it’s good for women. It feels like a trap—appealing because it’s a rejection of the status quo but ultimately just repackaging the same old problems.
The radicalisation part is also super concerning. Even if the femosphere isn’t leading to real-world violence like the manosphere, it’s still fostering this toxic, “us vs. them” mindset. It’s a reminder of how extreme and polarised these online spaces can get.
This article really made me think about what the alternative is. Like, how do we create a version of feminism that actually addresses the frustrations drawing people to these spaces, but without the toxicity or regressive ideas? That’s the real challenge here, I think.
I had a old Acer SFF desktop machine (circa 2009) with an AMD Athlon II 435 X3 (equivalent to the Intel Core i3-560) with a 95W TDP, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, and 2 1TB hard drives running in RAID 0 (both HDDs had over 30k hours by the time I put it in). The clunker consumed 50W at idle. I planned on running it into the ground so I could finally send it off to a computer recycler without guilt.
I thought it was nearing death anyways, since the power button only worked if the computer was flipped upside down. I have no idea why this was the case, the computer would keep running normally afterwards once turned right side up.
The thing would not die. I used it as a dummy machine to run one-off scripts I wrote, a seedbox that would seed new Linux ISOs as it was released (genuinely, it was RAID0 and I wouldn't have downloaded anything useful), a Tor Relay and at one point, a script to just endlessly download Linux ISOs overnight to measure bandwidth over the Chinanet backbone.
It was a terrible machine by 2023, but I found I used it the most because it was my playground for all the dumb things that I wouldn't subject my regular home production environments to. Finally recycled it last year, after 5 years of use, when it became apparent it wasn't going to die and far better USFF 1L Tiny PC machines (i5-6500T CPUs) were going on eBay for $60. The power usage and wasted heat of an ancient 95W TDP CPU just couldn't justify its continued operation.