So what if your father was a misogynist bully?

HerBex- It's quite shocking for me to realise this because I think it's just 'normal' to you when you are growing up. My sister and I don't get on brilliantly, our relationship is damaged and I find myself acting towards her as I did as a child. She severed all ties with my dad a long time ago. Wiser than me.

I don't have a great relationship with my mum, I feel a lot of anger towards her for 'allowing' things to happen. Sometimes she seems so completely oblivious or just doesn't want to acknowledge the damage our upbringing has caused us. It makes me angry and snappy with her.

thebody- A lot of hat you are saying also rings true with me too. Something you said in your post made all my maternal instincts shout 'NO' when you said about the 'boys club'. It makes me bristle and I want to punch him for passing on his distorted views of women onto your perfect little dcs. My dad was also argumentative and had to be right. Are you still in touch with him?

What completely fucked up men. You know what, this thread has really opened up my eyes and got me all fired up.

also to add ,sorry, when my dcs were little he instituted a 'boys club' where they would whisper together about 'silly granny and daft mummy' and he would undermine me about silly things like giving the boys 2 packets of crisps each before dinner..(or anything i had said no to) he never did a girls club for dd... so sad really..

TheBreastmilk thats a bit like me.. not sure..

i love my dad, usually,.. he was brilliant when me and my sister were little but seemed to change when we got older.. he has always hit mum.. lots of memories of this.. he used to laugh after doing it and i remember laughing with him to try to make the situation better, concequently mum always said that i stuck by him in quarrels.. i was 8!!!

i used to wet the bed for years and mum took me to the doctors and told me to tell him that it was because of my dads temper.. i didnt.. of course.. again she blamed me..

he cant stand any of us to argue with him.. he has to be right and gets nasty when i disagree with him.. he was most argumentative when i am pregnant
he broke my sisters nose when she was 20, she is a head teacher and very clever and no longer has contact with either of them.. he is dismissive of her as she didnt want children..

i have 3 teen dcs and a dd of 13.. he was wonderful with them as children, played games for hours with them(just like with me).

i havnt had a shopping trip or conversation with my mum alone since i was 24 and shopping for my wedding dress.. as we were buying it mum produced a letter that dad had written stating what i would look nice in!!! he insisted on paying for all of it and i was grateful at the time.. but now i belive it was a control thing.

now my parents are in their 70s, have NO friends and spend all their time together.. my dh actually hates my dad but wont admit it. his parents were bloody lovely so i was lucky to have a wonderful fil and mil.. they didnt like dad either that was obvious..

i always want to please dad but its impossible, i work full time now but he is so dismissive..he also always mentions if women are fat.. i am 8 stone and a frantic dieter and think thats from childhood...

at least i know how to treat my dcs though, we have a laugh and are very supportive of each other.. and me and dh have NEVER quarreled in front of our kids EVER...

i wonder though if dad does actually hate women.. and why.. and what he would have been like if he had had a son..

TheBreastmilk - er, yes, in short. You might want to go over to the stately homes thread. It might help you to thrash it out there with a supportive bunch of posters. Your father sounds absolutely appallingly abusive, tbh. He made you the golden child and scapegoated your sister - emotional abuse to both of you. How is your relationship with your mum and sister now?

This thread is amazing in the sense that it positively shines with women's courage and strength. It is also very sad to hear the stories and I feel a bit confused as it's making me question my own thoughts about my father.

Can someone please enlighten me? Is my father one of these men? I've always felt that he fears/hates women he was strict when my sister and I were growing-up, didn't want us wearing skirts/make-up or playing with my school friends who came from a council estate (we lived in a detached house, rurally).

He would shout and scream and be short tempered and would sometimes hit us. We were scared of him. He favoured me as the eldest but was bitterly dissapointed when my sister was born as she wasn't a boy. He excluded her and bullied her and got me to join in when my mum went out for an evening.

He made my mum get an abortion after falling pregnant with my sister as he never wanted children anyway. He would criticise and put my mum down and jibe her about her weight.

I idolised/feared him as a child and he turned me against my sister. He would criticise my mum's family for being 'common'.

My mum had an affair when I was around 8yrs old (i don't blame her) and my dad told me who it was (my primary school teacher, I was in his class at the time) it affected me like living through an earthquake. He turned me against my mother and tried to poisen me against her and her new partner. I stopped speaking to my mam for a couple of years.

I no longer speak to my father after he didn't akcnowledge my sons 1st birthday. I only sent him an email asking him why and I haven't heard from him since so there couldn't have been much love there in the beginning. He alwasy told us that he never wanted children.

I have had crushingly low self-esteem, awful past mistakes/men but now that nugget of self-preservation has found me an amazing partner so it's ended well.

Is he a misogynist bully?

Yep, the feminism section has definitely added to the reason the bastards hate mumsnet hasn't it?

It was bad enough that you had a bunch of that lowest form of women, mothers, talking to each other - but that you now have them talking to each other and analysing their experiences in terms of the systematic oppression men are perpetrating on women and children and sending them out of the virtual world with the weapons and language to recognise it - that must be terribly alarming for them.

My step-father was. He was the only male in my and my sister's lives and he was awful. Simply, he believed that we existed for his convenience. My Mum became an alcoholic, my sister became anorexic (she has been for over ten years now) I was bloody lucky and because I happen to be a stubborn, not people pleasing person, I just got the physical abuse and neglect for refusing to tow the line.

He has royally fucked my sister's life. She can't conceive due to the anorexia and is married to a misogynist. She is so terrified her H will leave her that she enthusiastically endorses him paying prostitutes and going on 'lads holidays' to Eastern Europe in public.

I was blessed to meet DP when I was 16 (and still being beaten up by step-father) I honestly had no idea men could be lovely.

i've just read my post on here under my old name and it made me cry. However on a very positive note I realise how much strong I am as a person now. I can attribute that strenght to two things my DH and feminism.

Tall, you must not let him have contact with that sperm doner (I cannot call him a father as he doesn't deserve that title)

I was in a relationship w/ a very hot-looking man and quickly fell in luv of course..he was 42 and I was 38, it was after my divorce and I stupidly thot due to our age this new man would act his age/do no wrong...
I had noticed that he would have little quips,snide remarks here and there ab. certain people and things...but let it go due to none of it being harsh and let it all go..very stupid of me. Hind sight 20/20 definately. After 4 mths of being w/ him we had gotten hot and heavy,spending almost everyday together/at his house/going on trips ect. I had definately fallen for him and thot this was the guy for me and at my age...it was time. One day we were all over eachother and he tells me we dont need protection bec. he had a vesectomy(fixed). I was very scared/in shock when I wound up pregnant!! I decided to keep the baby and when I told him..he thru a big fit,told me I was a whore who had cheated on him bec. he had a vesectomy!! I was trying to pin some other man's baby on him. If I ever tried to contact him ever, he would call the police!! I told him he was crazy bec I was inlove w/him/wanted to spend my life w/him...he just started screaming the same thing above!! I had noticed during our relationship that he was very Knit-Picky ab. how I talked...i could not wear a shirt that showed skin below my collar bone either. I thot it weird but he said he didnt want me to bend over to grab something and then flash men my whole chest(I have kinda small chest area, so kinda weird)..that would be disgusting and show that I was a slut. I understood some of his concern on that and stupidly let it all go and made sure to wear something appropriate in his mind. He had always been kinda controlling and told me he was bec. he was concerned. I didnt know what to make of it all bec I had never been in anything like that before..
Anyway I cried all the way thru the pregnancy,was in shock ab the whole thing... After he was court ordered to pay child supp(after DNA utilized) I told him our new baby girl needed a family. He agreed to trying again on a relationship. We had a 2yr relationship where the 3 of us acted as a family, but lived in diff houses. would hangout as family,go to park, spend weekends at his house, go on trips.ect. He soon became verbally abusive and very knit picky on a daily basis..soon becoming violent... One day I checked on his "record" and found he had been violent w/ ex wife and a girlfriend after his marriage!! I chatted w/ex wife who told me he would have problems w/ his own little daughter when she got older..bec he had lots of problems w/ women. I soon found that he was violent infront of daughter/would throw things into walls like throwing a fast-ball...That was IT for ME!! I got a restraining order and we were DONE!! He sees our little daughter who is now 3/beautiful...and he tells her controlling things like how he expects her to be a little lady(hey, NO pressure!!)..and I dont know how things will go w/ them,very worried for my daughter!! She has come home after being at his house and has told me he threw a plastic tea set of her's right into the wall and I could tell she didnt know what to make of it/concerned look on her face!! I have looked up some of his behaviors online and found that he is a misogynist!! I have had convers. w/ his own mom who he talks down to and she is tired of him throwing little fits/rage and doesnt know what to do...so Im worried ab my daughter...very scarey!!

It's a cycle, I don't think your father planned to condition your brother, it's just that that is one way of how patriarchy hands down its legacy to the next generation: fear and dominance.

I should imagine it's slightly harder for men to admit they were abused as children because culturally it would place them on par with females: weak, abused victims, which would be a huge blow to their identity as men. So I think this is why so many go on to identify with the abuser, rather than put themselves in the shoes of the frightened little boy they were.

Sakura My father was very abusive and occaisionally violent towards my brother whereas he never laid a finger on me or my sister but was verbally abusive. Whether this was condition him or whether it was just away of maintaining his dominance I don't really know.

Oh I know! I hate gyms. Thankfully I have a women-only gym round the corner and the sport I am involved in the women train together and the men train together (generally). Alhtough that leads to other issues !

I was going to start a separate thread about this because I just feel, sometimes, as women, we just end up chasing a male ideal.

Scallops all you have to do is go to a gym to see how sport excludes women.

There I was in the gym this morning, unable to use half the equipment because it is designed for men.

All the setttings of the machines are based on the average heart beat etc., of the average man.

Because they're the default human aren't they?

And of course, every time you go in there, there's the subtle (sometimes unsubtle) feeling, that you're walking into male territory, that you have no right to be there really, that your paltry amount of weights is nto the real deal and is not valid.

But the fuckers charge you the same...

how it upholds...

In sport too. Being, by nature, competitive it can leads to all kinds of bullying, oneupmanship, indoctrination of ideals such as body shape, standards. Ridicule of anything less than those standards of course includes ridiculing women doing those sports too.

I grew up in a sporty household and have always loved it. Always been very competitive too. However, looking at it through feminist eyes is making me think differently about the whole ethos of competitive sport and how upholds a patriarchal society.

At public schools as well

And fraternity societies...

roseability I remember what you wrote about your grandmother, and how awful it was to read about real mother asking people "Why is she calling her mum?"
Your grandmother totally displaced your mother, and did not allow her her true place in society: as a mother of a young daughter
I mean FFS, we go through childbirth which is bloody awful but there are rewards for it, and it's so sad that your grandmother refused to allow your mother to have those rewards

numotre ANother product of patriarchy is the male pecking order , whereby "elder" men lord it over younger, weaker males as well as all females
That ties in with the way your father treated your brother

In many societies, young males are "hazed" by older males and socially conditioned through this to become just as cruel. A good example is the Russian army hazing techniques, where new recruits are literally tortured by the older ones. And all boys are drafted into compulsory military service there Then they go on to repeat the cycle with the next batch of recruits
Patriarchies are fucked up

rose, yes I do remember that thread

there was an outpouring of outrage at the way the "girl" was treated and such a profound sense of shock when it was revealed that "girl" was you

Could you link the thread Roseability i'm curious