to think that understanding feminism isn’t that hard

Thats a lot of words to avoid saying "I cant"

So how about try reading the text without your personal bias with one question in your mind

"Why do I think growing a baby and then raising a baby to 18 is not work?"

@SerendipityJane

You also forgot to quote the bit where I stated that feminism does not benefit all women.

My point - clearly too obtuse - was that "feminism" means different things to different people. And those differences - in England - are (in my humble opinion) related to class. There are other factors too. Wealth (sometimes used as a proxy for class) and religion.

I agree that feminism means different things to different people. And certainly some women feel the benefits of feminism more than others. But if you look at what feminism has achieved for women I think its hard to argue that it hasn't benefited women overall.

I can assure I am not someone. Which you already knew because unlike someone I didn't go "gotcha!".

Although surely it doesn't matter who advances a correct point - someone or not ?

You also forgot to quote the bit where I stated that feminism does not benefit all women.

My point - clearly too obtuse - was that "feminism" means different things to different people. And those differences - in England - are (in my humble opinion) related to class. There are other factors too. Wealth (sometimes used as a proxy for class) and religion.

@StarlightRobot Isn't that a case of "feminism but only when it suits me" though? If we say feminism is all about making decisions then could I say, for example, "I like to be subservient to my husband but that's my choice because I'm a feminist"? (Btw I definitely don't like to be subservient to my husband but then he'd never want me to be either).

@AnSolas

I'm questioning your assertion that its the only societal role a woman can play and that the state should support it.

Can you quote the post where I stated that?

You have posted a lot of stuff suggesting you feel women should be being paid to produce more children and seem to take a dim view of women either choosing to have fewer children or of them paying other women to care for children while they work and going on about how important motherhood is for society (which no one has disputed).

I've no idea what your views are on the matter because you've just posted a long line of questions and slightly random statements as opposed to a coherent argument. But your posts give the general impression that you want women to have more babies and work less. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's where it's leading for me!

I completely agree that many people do not understand what feminism encompasses and there are some strange notions of feminism out there.

However, anyone who has studied feminism as a movement will also appreciate there are multiple strands and new feminist ideas can and do arise over time. There isn’t really a sole definition that captures all of these strands except that they promote equity for women.

I do object to those who tell me what can and can’t be feminist and, for me personally, having freedom to chose my life in the context of having the right to equal pay, the right to equivalent appropriate healthcare, etc, is essential. For me, this includes having a choice to raise children and having a male breadwinner support the family financially. I disagree with posters who judge that choice.

I think that feminism is a conclusion of humanism.

Do you think all people should be afforded the same respect, opportunities, freedoms, rights?

Yes.

Are women people?

Yes.

...QED...

How do you fund it?

@Thepeopleversuswork

I'm questioning your assertion that its the only societal role a woman can play and that the state should support it.

Can you quote the post where I stated that?

So then I would argue many feminists want equity.

@SerendipityJane

In England, feminism is intimately bound up with class.

Someone always comes up with that as if its meant to be some sort of "gotcha" but its a facile argument.

Feminism benefits all women. Like most other progressive movements it has tended to be led by women with more money and more time. It's very much the same with socialism. You have to have a certain threshold of money, freedom and education at your disposal to enact any kind of social change - many people are too busy surviving to do anything else.

Does that mean that feminism is irrelevant to working class women? I don't think so. Do you think that women shouldn't have got the vote in England, purely because the Suffragettes were (largely) wealthy? The contraceptive pill was invented by men. Does that make it irrelevant to women?

Just because something is led by people with more means, status and education doesn't mean it has no relevance to people with less.

@AnSolas

Is having a baby an important job or even a job at all?

Having a baby is very important. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a "job". It's a socially important role but a job implies that you are paid a wage or a salary for it. I don't think women should be paid to have babies, as I've said many times.

You say well educated wealthy women will choose not to have babies.

I didn't say all well educated women will choose not to have babies. Clearly many do. I said that in wealthier and more affluent societies the trend is for women on average to have fewer babies than in poorer societies, which is undeniably true. Why is this a bad thing? Societies with large numbers of births per woman are generally poorer with poorer health outcomes both for women and children so its clearly not a net benefit to society. Plus I don't want to live in a society where having babies is all that's expected of a woman.

The UK needs replacement workers.

I think that's overstated. The planet needs fewer people, not more. And no one is talking about stopping having babies altogether. Just having them at a sustainable level which doesn't require women to stop doing everything else.

There are 2 choices Import or Homegrow.
Is it ethical to expect women in poor countries to pay to produce plus to loose their investment to the Uk?

I'm not sure I follow this.

Does the UK need to work out how social change incorporates recognising the work involved in raising a child?

Yes, probably it does and I would certainly support anything which supports women in raising children. I'm not denying that raising a child is a hugely important societal role. I'm questioning your assertion that its the only societal role a woman can play and that the state should support it.

You are unreasonable, NOT because you're a feminist or because you and I hold different theories of what feminism is, but because you're trying to force your opinion of what feminist is onto others.

Just because other feminists don't share your opinion, doesn't mean we're wrong and it doesn't mean we are equal feminists to you.

In England, feminism is intimately bound up with class.

If I've read your comments correctly you're suggesting that "someone" (and I notice you haven't specified who) should support all women who want to have children in doing so, presumably for the duration of their child-rearing time because you think that's their most important job.

Hummm...

Someone has to do the work as children dont raise themselves.

Is having a baby an important job or even a job at all?

You say well educated wealthy women will choose not to have babies.

The UK needs replacement workers.

There are 2 choices Import or Homegrow.

Is it ethical to expect women in poor countries to pay to produce plus to loose their investment to the Uk?

Does the UK need to work out how social change incorporates recognising the work involved in raising a child?

Should feminism in the UK work on that?

@AnSolas

Why?
If Western society accepts that its work why is picking Job A and not Job B a problem if another woman wants Job C and never wanted Job A or B to begin with?

I feel like I've explained this multiple times already but...here goes.

It's not a problem. Women can pick whatever "job" they want if they can fund it. I have no moral or ethical problem with which route women take in life. Where you get into difficulties is in deciding how to fund this.

It's a lovely idea that any woman who wants to have a child should be "supported" in doing so, we can all get behind this, but what does that look like in practice? You can't raise children on fresh air and good will. For better or worse, in most societies, it requires money.

If I've read your comments correctly you're suggesting that "someone" (and I notice you haven't specified who) should support all women who want to have children in doing so, presumably for the duration of their child-rearing time because you think that's their most important job. But you're refusing to engage with the question of who pays.

If a woman is not able or willing to support herself while she has children, and unless she has a private income, the answer boils down to

a) the state
b) the woman's partner or other family

As I've explained, the state simply can't afford to pay for unlimited child support for all women who want to have children. It can barely afford the current safety net and its politically impossible. So the other alternative is the woman's partner.

This is a solution that works for some women but it brings certain societal risks including: a) removing that woman's ability to support herself if the relationship breaks down and b) diminishing the role of women in society more broadly because it takes them out of the public, decision making realm and identifies their value is deriving solely from their ability to produce and raise children.

Why?

If Western society accepts that its work why is picking Job A and not Job B a problem if another woman wants Job C and never wanted Job A or B to begin with?

@AnSolas

You keep telling me that raising a child is not work.
How is that a femnist idea?

You're not listening to what I'm saying at all. I'm not saying its not work, it palatably is work.

I'm saying there is no practical way to financially reward women for raising a child which doesn't actually serve to entrench discrimination against women by making it harder for them to find other ways to support themselves.

None of those is mutually exclusive.

You keep telling me that raising a child is not work.

How is that a femnist idea?

Oh dear… you must be a) a man or b) very privileged or c) deluded.

@AnSolas

Yet when it comes to recognising that raising a child is work Western society is not willing to see a mother as a worker role or as having engaged in work at all.

I don't disagree with this statement.

But the issue is there isn't a practical way to "reward" mothers financially for the role they play in raising children which doesn't end up inadvertently disadvantaging them. The only ways to effect what you're talking about are a) for the state to pay for them to remain at home with their children or b) for their husband or partner to wholly support them.

a) is clearly unaffordable. It would bankrupt western welfare systems which are already nearly bankrupt if the state supported all women in perpetuity with the upkeep of their children. IWelfare costs have already nearly brought down successive governments in this country: what makes you think people would wear a system where all childcare costs for all mothers were shouldered by the state? It would also create a moral value system where a woman who had children was "valued" more highly than a woman without children and hugely disincentivize women who did want to work from working. I don't want to live in a world where it is frowned upon for women to work, thank you very much.

b) is a solution many people still adopt and it works for some families. But it makes the woman pretty vulnerable to be wholly dependent on one other adult for financial security (and by association, the children). Marriage provides a degree of protection but its not a guarantee. It's also, in my view, pretty problematic to live in a society where only men work and only women look after children. It creates a huge divide between the sexes socially and disempowers women politically. Again, the dangers of this outweigh the benefits (for me).

@Chiseltip

We don't have equity, we have privilege.
We have whole systems dedicated to giving us advantage simply because we are women.
We have whole days of the year dedicated to how great we are.
We are given preferential treatment in the justice system.
We are given custody of the children when relationships break down.
We control all aspects of sexual relationships "happy wife, happy life".
We out perform men/boys in terms of academic achievement.
The only reason women don't earn as much as men is because men work longer hours and are willing to sacrifice more of their personal life.
Feminism is a dead concept that doesn't represent me or anything I believe in.
It's embarrassing and outdated.

Literally every single one of these statements is wrong, with the exception of the one about academic achievement.

The claims about controlling sexual relationships (when the vast majority of rapes go unpunished) and being given custody of children (when this is almost always because the fathers are unwilling to care for the children) are insulting.

Educate yourself.

The "Where is the shared social cost ^ here" question?

marriage
This is a temporary contract which can be terminated by either living party or by the death of one. There is no legal obligation on the womans spouse to provide financially with in the marriage. She and her child could be starvimg to death on the side of road and the States starting point is a DNA test and half the cost of feeding and housing any child [(edit) is still the responsibility of the mother]

She can be disinherit via her spouses will.

If disinherit or divorced she needs to be able to afford to go to the courts and argue a legal case that her life and non-financial contributions within her marriage were sufficient to allow the courts to transfer some of her spouses personal property (assets) to her.

You have argued that her contributions have no economic value. If that is true she gets no rights to access any accumulated wealth of her spouse.

by working part time
This at a financial cost she needs to be able to pay for child care before she can free up time work.

choosing a route back into employment at the appropriate time
Again this is at a financial cost. Some of this cost may be covered by public funds by paying a childminder or teacher but regular employment hours are not designed around raising a replacement worker.

It hugely raises the incentive on women not to go back to work. That may work beautifully for families in certain instances (and why not do it if the economics works) but it doesn't help the broader problem that women face in the workplace. It deepens the already strong tendency of employers to believe that a woman with children is less reliable, less hardworking and more likely to drop out of work. That would not benefit the large numbers of mothers who want to work.

You keep using the word work and reward.

Is the childminder (a stranger to the child) rewarded or paid?

Is the teacher (a stranger to the child) rewarded or paid?

If a mother is doing the same work why is it a reward not a payment for the time invested?

At the end of 9 months + 18 years society ends up with the finished product. A human who may or may not be a benificial contributor to society.

Someone has to do the work as children dont raise themselves.

Yet when it comes to recognising that raising a child is work Western society is not willing to see a mother as a worker role or as having engaged in work at all.