Something that's been bothering me

oh & the OP is not the perfect feminisist, nor am i, nor anyone else on this thread.

femnist police does not = feminism

its people who think they get to police what other people think

I think this is relevant to this discussion too.

1. Men not being sexist shouldn't be contingent upon women not being misogynist. They should stop being misogynist just because it's the right thing to do.

2. Men and women are misogynist for different reasons: men to marginalize women, and women to ingratiate themselves with the men trying to marginalize them. Neither one is justifiable, but one is oppressive and the other is a (bad) strategy to deal with that oppression.

3. One thus sees that if the men who are misogynists weren't, the women who are misogynists wouldn't have any reason to be. Ergo, exhorting women to stop being misogynists so that men will stop gets it precisely backwards.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage women not to be self-loathing misogynists. It only means that we probably shouldn't treat them as somehow more responsible for sexism than sexist men. They really and truly aren't our worst enemy?if our worst enemy disappeared tomorrow, we'd never have a problem with sexist women again.

The context of the above post is a bit different to the OP on here. But it is part and parcel of the same thing, the Women As Their Own Worst Enemy trope.

The problem is not these breathy women (if they do really exist in the numbers we are expected to believe they do). If there are lots of women behaving like this in the same workplace then there is probably something going on in that workplace that encourages these women to practice this sort of femininity.

Personally, I think that is where the feminist analysis lies - not in the perceived harm these women (if they exist) do to The Cause.

Depends if he finds their actions seductive or annoying.

I read it to mean that the DH was questionning why his female colleagues were perpetuating these stereotypes rather than slagging them off.

Perhaps those women could be encouraged to move away from their learned dependency and submissive behaviour patterns and enabled to acquire the skills they need to do their job.
If the OP's DH helps them, as he is doing apparently, then they should surely become independent learners and start using their intelligence and skill set without needing a man to constantly do things for them that they are capable of themselves.

I think talking about these women's alleged behaviour is missing the point. The point is that the dh is coming home to his wife and slagging off his female colleagues to her, and also implying that they are being seductive to him. Both highly questionable things to do.

Unfortunately the aggressive posts came at the start of the thread so the OP vanished pretty quickly.

wasabi i am a feminist - have i scared anyone away or done anything to merit your scathing criticism? you do get that prejudice is when you attribute negative traits to whole groups of people and discrimination when you treat them all as if those traits were true of them all?

if you have something to say to an individual say it but don't just insult and denigrate a whole swathe of women.

woop woop its the sound of the (feminist) police (scaring away other women).

The patriarchy must be trembling....

SAF, you are making a lot of sense to me.

I am failing to see what this group of women are actually doing that is so heinous and contemptuous. They aren't belittling anyone, ruining their career, raping them, murdering them. They are asking for help. If this is happening regularly to the OPs husband then maybe his attitude is causing it. As saf suggests it maybe because they lack in confidence and the reason for that might lie with your husband, OP and his responses to their requests.

(and i'd say that her behaviour inflicted a glass ceiling onto her career as it would only take her so far - she'd never get a truly senior role behaving like that but it did let her get promotions and pay rises etc by being non threatening)

just to add i was shit at this when i worked - it was totally counter to my principles and i didn't do it BUT i was punished for that so i can understand that pragmatically a woman may go along with behaviours that avoid her having hassle and difficulty at work. i recall a female friend who made a point of making sure she went to her boss at least once a week to ask his help with something she was perfectly capable of doing herself because she had realised in her career that this was a vital behaviour if you didn't want your boss to start getting antagonistic towards you. i can well believe her that this was a beneficial behaviour for her career but i know given my personality and reaction to the conditioning we have all had i would never have been able to do it.

i can't remember what it was someone linked me to do the other day that was explaining some female behaviour as akin to a dog showing submission by rolling on it's back so it is no threat whatsoever and displays that when having to encounter other dogs who have more power. it was a blog talking about how a woman's way of rolling on her tummy was performing femininity. it would fit rather well with this discussion i think.

being forced into demanding attention and help from a man when you're meant to be non demanding and non-assertive is maybe like meeting a bigger dog so they roll on their tummy with a bit of femininity performance to avoid being punished for being too assertive and direct.

I tend to lurk rather than post on the Feminism board and, I'm afraid this thread is one example of why I tend not to post much.

I think the OP is genuinely trying to explore the subject, as have some of the posts on here, like swallowedAfly's very eloquent post above.

It's a real shame that the OP has been scared away.

i do think it's worth reflecting on the fact that 'boyishness' if it was a man regressing would not be viewed with the same contempt, or auto-perceived as being sexual in some way, as girlishness.

the thing is that the change in voice, if it is real, may not be playing the 'little woman' card or flirting to get things done for you. it may be that these women have been socialised in a way that means they don't feel assertive about asking for time and help from people so regress into a slightly childlike deference when forced to do so. their being female would mean that childlike regression would be 'girly' rather than 'boyish' and then you have the values placed on girliness by the beholder that interprets that behaviour as sexual or flirty because they're trained to think that girliness is sexiness (which is disturbing in itself actually!).

what he may be witnessing is lack of confidence in asking for someone's time and help rather than manipulative coquettishness as seems to be implied by him. if he then gets irritable about the way they are asking that is going to make them feel even more anxious about needing his time and therefore they may regress further so could well be a vicious circle there.

if i was him i would make clear repeatedly that it was fine to ask him for help and he didn't mind teaching them how to do it at all. he may find they approach him differently when they're not worried about being irritating or met with gruffness.

I think someone already pointed out the corresponding response of women who cook, clean and manage a home because 'he doesn't understand how to use the washing machine or hoover or how to cook'

I croak like some sort of warped bullfrog with laryngitis, then all is silence for a week, so that doesn't engender anything but irritation when I'm trying to communicate.
I didn't think numbers were mentioned, just that he was surprised that 'with women whom he knows to be capable and competent coming up to ask him to do really ridiculously simple things.'

Not that he was seeing them as helpless and entranced by his sheer maleness, but that he didn't understand why they were asking him to do something that they were perfectly competent to undertake themselves, and in a different voice to their usual one.

"one or two women have "girly, breathless" voices

OP's H is implying there is a whole raft of 'em at his workplace"

Could be an outbreak of laryngitis That could do it.

I'd say the majority of women I come across are actively, though mostly unconsciously, trying not to be seen as "too" intelligent. With men I find the opposite. I guess it is the way they have been socialised but it dismays me greatly and shows that there is a long way to go yet!

I agree that it is something that occasionally confuses me about how arguments and discussion points are made on this site, WasabiTillyMinto.

For example, I know many women who use a particular voice when asking a man to do something that they see either as a man's area of expertise, or something they don't want to do and feel that by making an appeasing signal to his masculine identity or his intelligence will mean that he does it for them.
It doesn't work for gender neutral or perceived female tasks, but any area that 'little women' are supposed to not be good at can be manipulated. Tech stuff, cars, strength, complicated spatial stuff.
That's not a criticism, it is a very small first hand observation of social dynamics. Yes, I am certain that it probably developed as a consequence of living in a patriarchy and within our gender roles.
Yet some posters on this thread are fortunate enough to have never ever seen this particular form of manipulation i action, and so deny the possibility of it occurring to the point of calling others liars or deluded.