I Hate That You’ve Called it a Femosphere

How is a reaction to abuse the same as abuse?

An illustration by visual artist Gerard DuBois. Credit: Visual Arts Passage

Lately, everyone and their mother is on this app writing the Next Great Think-piece about how and where they discovered the femosphere, what it means, and where modern women are headed from here.

Important pieces, like ones that bring up the fact that much of the sprinkle-sprinkle and soft-life content creators were actually Nigerian influencers, still call it a femosphere. Like it was made from the rib of the manosphere.

[embed]The Femosphere Was Built by Black Women — Watch Who Gets the Credit When digital feminist culture extracts Black women’s labor and erases their names, it’s the patternmedium.com

I don’t blame them, the term first solidified in the media when British Journalist Jilly Boyce Kay published her journal titled, A tale of two angers: The manosphere, the femosphere and the gender politics of mediated rage.

Except, when I hear “manosphere,” I think of Andrew Tate and his sex trafficking racket, the unnecessary harm he inflicted on women because he thinks he deserves to own them.

When you say “femosphere,” you’re referring to the likes of SheraSeven. She taught women that there’s a high chance any man they meet is a misogynist, so they may well marry the richest and most generous one if they plan to have children. She cried when her husband died, and even now calls him a great husband and father.

Notice the difference? One is spearheaded by a violent criminal, the other by a woman who doesn’t want her children to fall into poverty in a world that spits in the face of single mothers.

So, why are we pretending these two completely different types of heteronormative “influencers” are the same?

And why did white women become the mouthpieces of a movement made by women of color?

The “femosphere” was made by black women to keep each other safe

I understand why it was Black women in nations with crippling gender discrimination who theorized the mental load and soft life.

I’ve had the privilege of reading incredible stories by writers like Esther Uwanah Edet, Nofisat Damilola, and Gemini McCain in the last month or so, sharing valuable on-site as well as big-picture articles about what it’s like living in a patriarchy that sees female suffering as necessary, even morally correct.

It’s no surprise that Black women as a whole are pushing back against the trope of the Strong Black Woman in order to live a life even half as cushioned as a white woman. Even within a single-race context, there is a racially motivated bias where light-skin women are treated with softness but women with dark skin are masculinized.

[embed]

Women in the global south decided to combat these patriarchal norms by teaching women to secure their futures, work on their beauty while attracting a high-profile husband, and simultaneously ensuring they’re never treated as less than. Getting men to give you capital is important in a country where women can’t be legal heirs. Ensuring you marry a man who won’t leave you a single mother is imperative in a country where abortion isn’t legal.

Working on your beauty and using that as armor to attract the best mate in a country where no unmarried woman is safe? That’s security.

Not allowing your skin color but rather your ability to access funds through a man to determine how you’re treated in society? That’s power in a white-supremacist world.

Black women wanted to game a system that thrives on their abuse. Who can blame them?

Then, the white women found it…

The way that white women endorsed this phenomenon was very interesting for me.

When white women speak of a soft life, they think of having the safety of infinite time, of doing whatever they want when they want, of not having to worry about bills. They already show up as the beauty standard and don’t show you how to dress or how to act — they tell you how to manipulate.

When women of color speak of a soft life, they think more about not having to be hardened by the world, treated like they’re tough enough to take abuse but never soft enough to be sympathized with. We’re told we’re too ugly, too curvy, too sharp, or too meek to be chosen. So women of color made their content around beauty, softness, how to show up and then command respect.

Women of color want softness because the world thinks our features are hard, our beauty is only legitimate in the narrow perspective of whiteness, or childishness.

But when were we ever really children?

Women of color aren’t allowed the luxury of being children. I was six years old when I was first molested. Younger still when I learned how to make tea. That’s the first test with getting a marriage offer — when you know how to make and serve tea. I’m 31 years old now and married. Even this year, I was molested, the only real difference was I could fight back.

I learned early that I was not really a child in the way boys were children. My education was a burden, not a responsibility. My existence was to be of service to the real men around me or an imaginary one I’d marry. I was always old enough to cook, but never old enough to decide who ate, or how much. I was old enough to clean but never old enough to own the home. I couldn’t play too loud or who will marry you?

I was brought my first offer for marriage at 13 years old. I fought to stay a child, and stay in school. I was from a privileged family, and raised abroad. Girls in the wetlands, in the marshes by the Indian ocean don’t always win the fight I fought. Sometimes, they have no will to fight, at all. Married at 13, pregnant at 14 — this is common in my country.

[embed]“I was a child bride at age 13” on YouTube by CNA Insider.

A girl like me didn’t know a soft life was possible for me. A girl in a more impoverish State in India can’t even conjure the image of one. She’s never had a life where she asked for love, for safety, for happiness, and lived to tell the tale.

I don’t want to be a child, again. I still find myself weeping for the child I was barely allowed to be. I just want that child to know she can author her own life.

When women with less melanin talk about a soft life and getting what they want from men, they tend to use much more aggressive speech. They feel a sense of entitlement, they demand excellence from men. Their beauty is a weapon to weld on the unsuspecting rich man they deserve.

Women of color want softness because the world thinks our features are hard, our beauty is only legitimate in the narrow perspective of whiteness, or childishness

Women of color don’t even know what that level of self-assuredness looks like. We are never sure when our bodies will be snatched against our will — either to be a child bride, a low-wage laborer, a comfort woman, or just someone to be violated.

So when you watch a woman say a good life is possible, that there’s a world where you can earn your own money, have your own home, and even relationships with men can be a choice you make rather than something thrust upon you, you let yourself dream.

Then, you start to plan. And you stop seeing that planning as something cold or ruthless. You see it as you trying to have the best life you can in a world that’s cruel to women.

Men listening to Andrew Tate want to control women. Women listening to SheraSeven want just feel like they’re in control of their own lives.

Women of color in the “femosphere” want something very different from the non-colored women in it

When creators like the Wizard Liz — the Arab content creator on TikTok — or MJ Gray — the American one on the same app — talk about being with rich men and having their lifestyle paid for, they become a dream for the white woman. Having a corporate job is hard. Indians know this, considering our rates of work-related deaths are some of the highest in the world. So, love and romance becomes an escapism from the silent tax that single women pay for being unmarried and childless.

[embed]Death by Burnout is Entrenched in Our Culture It’s time to shuck off our corporate chainsmedium.com

Women of color, on the other hand, see romance not as an escape, but as legitimacy. Most of us are married off for convenience. When my friend married a major businessman’s son in Dubai, she had perhaps the most lavish wedding imaginable. She looked like a doll dressed in the finest Banarasi silks and dresses embroidered with real gold and silver. She was only twenty-one, and her wedding was one for the books.

He didn’t let her work for money. He would break things during arguments that she had to pick up. She wore a lot of makeup to hide the angry purple bruises of his wrath. He hid her jewelry so she couldn’t sell it for cash. He gave her a stipend to only shop for groceries.

She had to ask him for money to buy new clothes, or to mend old ones. He made sure she bought designer, and had her post about it. About how generous her husband was. How great this marriage was.

To white women, a man with money is the dream. To Indian women? That’s sometimes a nightmare. And my friend did everything to snap out of it.

One wants her life paid for while she does pilates next to a pool. The other wants even just the option. To choose, to be chosen, to stay, and also to leave

My friend joined a business women’s group for odd-job opportunities in secret, then started doing translations from French and Arabic to English during the day just to build a nest-egg. I brought her on some of my projects, and sent her seed money that I didn’t expect back, so she could spring for legal assistance.

We’re both 31 now. She and her new husband now live in the UK, where she works at a bank and he’s an engineer. He gets her whatever she wants just because he loves her. She loves SheraSeven’s content, and she was my source for it. She tells me about how important security is over love.

“The man must love you, even if you don’t really love him. Because his hate is dangerous.”

Her first husband hated her in private, and was generous in public. Her current one shows generosity in private while his love is public. Her beauty isn’t a status-symbol for this man, it’s hers to cultivate — or not — as she sees fit.

Love, to a woman like her, feels like legitimacy. She can now say:

Yes, I made it in life. I didn’t stay in an abusive marriage to a bad man who wouldn’t let me have financial independence just like my father. I make my own decisions, and I have support in doing so. I’m now with someone who treats me like an equal. How many other women can say that?

She’s right. Most women of color never get there.

To her, that’s the flex. Her labor is no longer invaluable and paradoxically also treated as lower value than her husband’s. Her labor is compensated in every way. He is invested in their lives just as much as she is. Yes, her second wedding was a courthouse one with chosen family, no multiple dress changes. But it was a life she chose. It’s softened with love, with equality, with being chosen.

Women in the West and women in the East are chasing very different dreams when it comes to a soft life. One wants her life paid for while she does pilates next to a pool. The other wants even just the option. To choose, to be chosen, to stay, and also to leave. One wants to live a life that looks even better than it feels. The other wants her life to, just once, be for herself.

Perhaps this divide is what makes white women’s content flourish — it’s incredibly esthetic to have money in a world where groceries signal luxury, now.

[embed]How produce became the hot new celebrity status symbol *As the price of groceries rise, food is becoming a recurring motif in*

Indian women rarely have their own money. It’s either her father’s or her husband’s. Even when they have their own paycheck, the father or husband becomes her sponsor, he controls her accounts, he oversees her finances. This is similar to what a lot of women in places like Nigeria go through, where the patriarchy thrives. When Sherese “Charlie” Taylor then tells you, hey, you won’t have a safety net, get up and start financially planning your life… Well, that just makes for a boring and depressing doomscroll!

The one place a lot of these ideologies converge, though? Men.

The man-shaped hole in the “femosphere”

There are still problems within these movements. Some of these are male-centered enough that they dictate women’s behaviors almost exactly like the patriarchy does, making women’s primary quest in life to unlock a higher socioeconomic status with the richest, most generous husband they can find. These movements are predominantly heteronormative because queerness is punished severely in most societies.

Things like sprinkle-sprinkle and choosing the right man are still ultimately about compulsory heterosexuality. Two women in a home are a target. Even a big rock on your finger will protect you more than a wife at home. So, if you’re gay, marry the man and cheat while you’re at work. That’s something I remember SheraSeven saying on a live. I remember laughing, then feeling the depth of what she was saying.

Much of the movement on decentering men tries to solve the ills of these movements that still center a man as a plan. Decentering men is, simply put, removing the looming shadow of a husband from over your decisions.

[embed]I Decentered Men, This is What it Cost Me From a woman who did it, and then married a manmedium.com

Not waiting for a man to enter your life so your life can finally begin. Not stopping yourself from moving, traveling, meeting people, simply doing what you desire because a man might disapprove. Not letting society tell you you’re living a half-life because you’re alone.

This is not a threat to men. If anything, it’s an invitation for good, independent men to show up for good, independent women. Even in decentering men, women aren’t erasing them the way men have to women. We don’t lobotomize you, we don’t rape you, we don’t kill you. But you’ve done every last one to us. Why wouldn’t we find something — anything — that brings a little bit of order into our lives, then?

I take offence at the idea that these parts of fourth-wave feminism are, well, a “femosphere” as a parallel to a “manosphere.” Nothing these women have done — even if that’s marrying for money — will ever come close to the pedophilia, the rapes, the physical and financial abuse, the murder, the terror that men have committed against women. And a response to abuse is not parallel to abuse.