Negotiating feminist agitation within a hetrosexual relationship

It should also be perfectly clear Julia that I am not telling you how to think.

Julia Scurr I was making a point not expecting a medal or thinking I was great for not wanting to hit or rape women any more than I would expect a medal for not being empted to burgle my neighbours houses. Please don't misrepresent my posts.

Another point I could make is that historically the village where my DW was brought up the men were expected to go down the mines whereas the women worked in clothes factories or became secretaries etc.. Sexism didn't all work in the males favour.

Sorry, inde that's exactly the kind of thing we mean - being told which bits of feminism are important and how to do it better and - most importantly - without upsetting men

inde it wouldnever cross my mind to be violent to a woman

Thanks POBG for pointing out and clarifying what I meant in that post. I did of course mean it the way you say.
I see male violence as a big problem and do feel strongly about it. I have never though worked with or socialised with men who think it is OK though.
On other issues, in the job of work I now do I work 50/50 with women which is a new experience for me as I used to work in a job that historically was almost exclusively male (not now though). We all get on great but without going in to details we sometimes do things that the women mostly don't like doing. My female boss even made it clear to me that sometimes she expected the men to do the things the women don't like (mostly involving driving but that is part of our job). My point is that we live in a sexist world and not everybody gets as annoyed with the small things as you feminists. Also I think women are 100% equal to men but I don't think the differences in attitudes between men and women can be completely explained by culture.

Thankyou Sunshine, I was just trying to work out how to say something similar - you've explained it very clearly

inde I think it's important to make a distinction between historical issues and ongoing ones.

If you accept that we live in a patriarchy (i.e. that our social structure and culture is male-dominated and affords men considerably more advantages than women), then to some extent any man who doesn't actively fight against female oppression or for female rights, is guilty of taking advantage of the status quo and being complicit in the ongoing discrimination against women.

Obviously this is not the same as personally being a rapist, a woman-beater or even a sexist dinosaur who thinks that a man could do the job better than a woman. But in all forms of abuse anyone who doesn't seek to stop it is complicit.

There are degrees of course and this is a world of shades of grey. Many men may not join a feminist group but will counter sexist jokes in the workplace or censure a man who beats his wife. Sadly, many more laugh along or say nothing (or sympathise that they can understand how it happened).

'I would hope that I would support my wife if she were guilty of racism.' - I hope you meant 'if she were a victim of racism'!

Again, you're talking about lecturing all the time

OK, the Palestinian situation is close to your heart - imagine that your partner is an Israeli Jew who sees nothing wrong with what's happening, even when it's pointed out to them. Now imagine that you're a Palestinian married to such a person. You wouldn't have a problem with that?

In this case though BFT her husband was offended. Maybe he is overly sensitive or maybe not. Mumsnet is full of posts were people judge what is going on in a relationship just on one post from one partner though.

But I'm not saying life is too short to fight sexism. Or to fight against for instance the shockingly low amount of men convicted of rape or dv. It would never cross my mind to be violent to a women though.

I think people in normal relationships are probably more capable of communicating with each other than you seem to be able to apprehend inde. I wouldn't worry too much about other couple's communication skills

I guess what I am saying is that it is a matter of degree. Of course you are going to discuss opinions that you hold dear with your partner. In the case I gave of being married to someone of the Jewish race if they became offended I might think I have gone to far and reign it in a bit. I know I am going to get slaughtered for this and that is understandable as forum members feel very strongly about the issues under discussion but I'm glad my wife doesn't lecture me all the time about things I'm not guilty of. Life is too short.

I would hope that I would support my wife if she were guilty of racism. I would hope that she wouldn't make me feel guilty for what white slave owners did or hold me accountable for what the edl get up to. My wife and I sometimes discuss the Palestinian situation but if she were Jewish and not personally responsible for the problem I would be more sensitive and be careful not to make out that her being Jewish made her culpable.

Who's talking about 'continually lecturing'? Things get talked about as they come up.

How would you like to be married to someone who dismissed your lived experience or who saw your sort of people as not quite human? If your DW was black, would you be so dismissive if she wanted to talk about racism?

How would you like to be married to somebody though who was continually lecturing you with regard to their political views? For instance telling you not to use their iphone because the price is subsidised by people working in awful working conditions. Or telling you the clothes you are wearing were manufactured by virtually slave labour. I don't buy fruit if it says produced in Israel in case it was grown on stolen land but my wife is free to make her own choice.

Thistledew
Something else I have found handy for the 'but that hurts my feelings!' crowd is this:

Consider ye a Victorian coalminer. Working class, life is hard, labouring white man. In Country Durham, in, say, 1850.
Is that man personally enslaving and/or oppressing the black man in the west indies who toils all day in the sugar plantations?
Nope.

Is that man nonetheless benefiting from a system which oppresses black people, valuing them less than white people, thinking it's okay to exploit and oppress them.
Yep.

How? Well, the simplest answer is the price of sugar. In 1700 it was so precious it was kept locked up. In 1850 this coal miner can put it in his tea, on his porridge, buy boiled sweets for a farthing, etc. Sugar has gone from being a luxury commodity to an everyday one. And because he is white, he never needs to even think about whether or not that's a good thing. The system is SO good, he never even needs to see the systematic oppression of one people to the benefit of another, he can benefit from being white without knowing it's happening.

It doesn't make him a bad person, unless he finds out that he has white privilege and starts rationalizing that 'that's just the way things are' or 'I didn't do it' or 'some black people actually prefer to be oppressed/bring it on themselves.'

Sometimes the Decent Ones can grasp an analogy to racism quicker than they can grasp actual sexism. It's a shame, but it's true. And it shows how far we have to go.
(tangent: A teacher friend of mine was at one of his colleages telling a snivelling eight year old to "stop being such a girl." He said "aside from the hideous implication that (1) feelings are bad and (2) only girls have them, the pupil WAS a girl: it's not like she'd tell another kid to stop being so fucking black, is it?")

Bumper - that's a great PP. I think we should make it compulsory for all PSHE lessons in school.

Thistle I hope you've got some clarity from this thread. It's difficult for men who don't actively oppress to get their head round. I think the way to try to explain it is to say you're talking about men in terms of group behaviour rather than individual men. Once he's got his head around that, you can move forward on to the discussion of benefitting from male privilege without being aware of it at a later date. Good luck.

Well, the article is crap because it reinforces the myths that men are complete slaves to their penises, that women are not really into sex and that because of this we're not very creative.

Speaking more generally though, I recognise the problem Thisledew talks about. Feminism is challenging stuff - it makes me feel uncomfortable at times - it's far easier to bimble through life feeling all empowerfulised by your crap choices than to actually face what's going on. Of course it's uncomfortable for a nice man, who probably thinks he's got where he is in life entirely because of his own efforts and inherent talents, to have to face his unexamined priviledge and the ways he has quite inadvertently got where he is at women's expense.

messyisthenewtidy touches on the analogy with racism and I agree. It's uncomfortable for me as a white person to think about white priviledge and to examine my own unconscious racist attitudes, but that's not a reason to not do so - change is frequently uncomfortable even when it's positive, necessary change.

Too much like hard work. Be a lesbian, it's way easier.

I haven't read all of the links on this site, but it has some good links on privilege.

scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2009267.html

I don't think the article was that bad, although obviously it painted men as more sex-obsessed than I hope they are. On the other hand quite a few men have pointed to man's so-called insatiable biological drive as justification for porn, the burqha, objectification of women in lads mags etc.

Anyway, I can understand your position as well as your DP's. I remember reading an article written by an american black feminist on the media's beauty standards. It talked about white women in a way that really put my back up, even though I knew the article's premise was right and that it wasn't talking about me personally. I think it's just a natural reaction that you feel hurt and miffed on behalf of your own social group, and you feel compelled to defend them even if you are not guilty of the crime that they are being accused of, IYSWIM.

I often wonder about feminism being alienating to men by being overly aggressive especially as I have a DS, but at the end of the day you have to call a spade a spade and can't spend your time pussyfooting around and not saying the truth for fear of causing offence.

Maybe if you try to point out the ways in which feminism benefits men and alleviates some of their problems that might help.

I think it is hard, specially if you've kind of increased your feminist awareness since you've got together. It's like, first you learn to pick out the men who are actively misogynist and avoid them, and then you realise there's this whole other category of men who are "good guys" but are totally and utterly unaware of their own privilege, and it's frustrating, and very very rare to find someone who is aware too.

DP basically accepts that some things are shit for some women, but thinks on a general level that things are equal and the main differences are down to either choice, or individual men who are twats, not an oppressive system which we are all influenced by.

So, you can basically take one of a few approaches - go for the drip drip one, keep bringing up discussion points, mentioning things, open his mind, although this shouldn't be your job to do. You could send him a few articles on privilege, examining one's own, male privilege in particular, get him to read some books, etc. Or you could give it up as a lost cause and either ignore (I suspect this would become more difficult if you learn more about feminism) or say, actually, I can't be with someone whose worldview is so fundamentally different from my own.

I'm opting for the first one because I don't really mind this last part - I learn things from DP after all. But it does get incredibly frustrating at times, and sometimes I wonder if there is an end point - when I hit a brick wall of something he doesn't want to accept or get so frustrated with it I have nowhere left to go. But generally, he's an open minded bloke and we have interesting discussions about all kinds of topics so this is no different really.

Didn't read the article but if it's like everyone else is saying I would be offended too

Wow BumperD. That is very cool. I am impressed.

Here's the power point I did.