I got absolutely no mercy and patience left for patriarchy and whatnot

 

"What singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other: an attempt is made to freeze her as an object and doom her to immanence since her transcendence will be forever transcended by another essential and sovereign consciousness. Women's drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and demands of a situation that constitute her as inessential. How, in the feminine condition, can a human being accomplish herself? What paths are open to her? Which ones lead to dead ends? How can she find independence within dependence? What circumstances limit women’s freedom and can she overcome them? These are the fundamental questions we would like to elucidate." 

-- Beauvior 'The Second Sex' 1949

 

Part 1

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Part 2

Everything went wrong. 

I wonder if women a hundred years ago could have foreseen the dreadful twists and turns happening today that are drastically changing humans' future course. 

Until the conclusion of the fourth wave of the feminist movement, most people still held high hopes for how feminism could improve humanity. The first wave (from 1848) pushed for women's education, occupation, property, and voting rights; the second wave (from 1963), influenced by Beauvoir’s "The Second Sex," granted women more freedom to their own lives and bodies, as a result, abortion was gradually made legal globally, riding on vehement opposition from religious fundamentalists, a lot of backs and forths continued to be carried out long after it; the third wave (from the 1990s) started to be more fluid and expanded to all races, classes, and ethnicities, this wave sought to challenge, reclaim, and redefine ideas of the self, femininity, also touched on gender fluidity, sexual identity and decolonization in all aspects such as love, relationship and individuality; the fourth wave (from 2030s) aimed to deconstruct the established societal and familial structures such as the marriage contract of one man and one woman under the imposition of major religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddism, and reconstruct new structures that allowed a diversity of familial relations, such as polyamory, matriarchal-style nesting and the formation of "women and LGBTQ-only" supportive groups and chosen-family framework.

The fourth wave. The fourth wave!

I hail the brave humans who once existed around that time!

If the first three waves were to only pave the way to the fourth one. The fourth wave was indeed a gleaming steel blade thrust straight into patriarchy's heart's core, slicing through flesh and bone with merciless precision. 

Throughout human history, the major religions have often expanded through dominance, absorbing or eliminating smaller sects and sub-religions in their path, shaping the landscape of human belief systems. Until the fourth wave of the feminist movement, patriarchy was unshakably at the center of religious indoctrination and imposition. Religion, patriarchy, and colonization had been the main dominant narratives from the very beginning of human history up to a hundred years back; they essentially told the same story of humans: power, control, and expansion of the male species of humans. 

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