DH believes women have equality and feminism is no longer needed

He does know that men run the world, though. He's not THAT daft.

I like this recent Slate article. It's written by an Asian male computer programmer about his own privilege in tech.

www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/programmer_privilege_as_an_asian_male_computer_science_major_everyone_gave.html

My DH rolls his eyes whenever I mention the Patriarchy. But I've come to understand that
(1) He also feels his choices have been circumscribed by his sex - but feels personally criticised when I say that mine have been.
(2) He feels powerless when he acknowledges structural problems, so he often chooses not to
(3) He has a colossal blind spot when it comes to his own privilege as a man.

I've stopped trying on point three. He works in a male dominated industry and chooses only to see the positive discrimination implemented to try to redress the balance (and not the incredibly skew-whiff balance itself).

I have some sympathy with him - I'm married to him, after all - and his day-to-day actions are sufficiently egalitarian, so I've stopped fighting the political fight. It's my fight and I choose to fight it in the public sphere more than the private one. He takes the kids while I go to political meetings - that's enough right now.

If I was having the discussion with him, based on the framing of the debate he is arguing that feminism is no longer needed. It then falls to him to define and justify why. Yet he has now gotten you in the position of having to defend your position, when in actual fact it is his that requires the strongest advocacy.

If someone proposes a change, they have to be extremely knowledgeable and informed on their subject matter. He needs to define what he thinks feminism is and how it's objectives have been met, he will probably discover that his understanding of what feminism is is deeply flawed or woefully superficial.

Why does him taking on a female avatar mess with his opponents' heads? Presumably because they have different expectations when they think he's a woman...?

Someone posted a brilliant link on here that I now can't find, called Boys' Club, to a site where someone had collected hundreds of company staff pages and the vast majority of senior staff were all men.

Indeed. Hey back atcha, BC

Hey there AF.

I agree that link is great. I like how it states that this stuff matters for women and that anyone treating it as an intellectual exercise in being right arseing about playing devils whatsit is trampling all over that.

(And inadvertently proving our point.)

scallops I am so glad you posted that blog post "feminists are not responsible for educating men"

on a different thread a while ago I was challenged as to why I wasn't "nicer" and that I should consider teaching people about feminist principles in a "better" way ie. by moderating my frustration and using less "difficult" concepts that "upset" folk

I simply replied "I am not responsible for the ignorance of others" but that piece articulates it much better than I could

And if he doesn't think we have a problem with rape culture get him to read something like this and follow all the links.

finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/rape-culture-101/

He is a man, he has the privilege of not seeing rape culture. It is extraordinarily entitled of him if he dismisses what women have to say on the subject.

Then again, maybe don't bother showing him the link if he is only going to engage at the bargain basement level of devil's advocate. Which actually suggests to me that he just doesn't understand feminism even on a fairly basic level - because men who do get it tread carefully and respectfully around the issues and accept that there is much they struggle to understand about women's lived experience because they are shielded from most of it, just as white people are oblivious to many of the manifestations of racism.

I'm just place marking here - very useful links I'd like to bookmark

Suggest he should change his surname to yours because if there really is equality the it shouldn't matter whose surname is used should it? Then insist on him being addressed as Mr Your firstname yoursurname. Let him experience how his identity is erased by the act of marriage.

Kirk, none of my business, but why don't you use your time to read about feminism and discuss it with women who care about it, rather than spending it on circular debates with a man? I mean this as sisterly suggestion because I suspect you would get much more out of it

Feminism is not a debate; it is a political movement. A movement which aims to liberate women from male supremacist society.

If the politics of women's rights interest you (and it seems they do) there are many brilliant books on the subject and a lot of excellent writing on the internet.

If your DH struggles to grasp what patriarchy is, I wonder how much you can get out of discussions about feminism with him! I find the notion of playing devils advocate really inappropriate and disrespectful - feminism is actually about real women's real lives. Real abuse, real suffering, real exploitation, real rape, real violence, real inequality, real sexism, real harassment, real pay gaps, real disproportionate representation, real inequality of opportunity, real male entitlement, dominance, violence and real lower status for women.

(Tell your DH that patriarchy is a system of social organisation in which humans are awarded status within a binary gender hierarchy according to biological sex. Girls and women have lower status and boys and men higher status. This system is the gender equivalent of white supremacy in which status is awarded according to skin colour via the mechanism of race. If your DH can understand what white supremacist society is (and I imagine he can), he should have no trouble understanding what male supremacist society is as they are very similar. Patriarchy is just another word for male dominated/ supremacist society).

Good luck!

I'll stop now!

There has been a recennt survey done about sexual harassment/assaulted in schools so you may want to dig that out. It is quite significant at showing how early it starts and is ignores/accepted/glossed over.

There were a couple of links I forgot :

Bullying in School

And one just for you :

Feminists are not responsible for educating men

Kirk1, that actually might be a good place to start. Why was he taught to debate and you were taught to be non confrontational? There are different expectations right there.

Lucky girl.
He sounds like a keeper

Yes he's not really playing devils advocate is he? He is invalidating your experiences (and other women's) from a position of privilege and denying there is an issue. That's just simply opposing you.

Here are a few links I like about more low-level stuff before even tackling male violence:

Male privilege. I think someone has linked to this already but worth posting twice.

Workplace sexism
Silent Technical Privilege

Cultural Femicide
Literary women, literary prizes. Not often to be found in the same room
Do they ever make movies about women?
Gender Inequality in Film

Unwanted attention and low-level harassment
But if I can't buy you coffee...
Guide to approaching strange women without being maced

Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism also good on this

Online misogyny
Mary Beard
Caroline Criado-Perez

Rape Culture
So you're tired of hearing about rape culture

Ending Victimisation and Blame is also good on this.

If you want anything on rape/femicide/other sexual violence/DV/prostitution etc I also have loads on that too!

gah www.buzzfeed.com/floperry/12-infographics-that-will-convince-you-we-still-ne-ic9t?s=mobile

Love that devil's advocate link

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/floperry/12-infographics-that-will-convince-you-we-still-ne-ic9t?s=mobile Here's something interesting ]

Sexism is at the very heart of our constitution. Despite the sex Discrimination legislation we are ruled by a parliament in which access to the unelected house of lords is barred to women as either a bishop or a hereditary peer.

The CoE, part of the establishment, can and does legally refuse equality for women in it's employment structure.

Ask him how, in that context, women have equal rights?

*Observable fact: men are massively over-represented at senior levels of, oh, just about everything
Option 1 to explain this: women are a bit crap at being in charge, and also don't deserve to get paid as much as men. Or they're just a bit lazy and don't want it.
Option 2: there continues to be real discrimination against women.

Anyone who really believes option 1 doesn't get to talk to me any more.*

whereisshe I encounter this all the time as well. For some reason the issue of men having made all the major scientific advances in history keeps coming up at work. The options are:

Option 1: women have been oppressed for millenia, denied an education, property rights, the ability to work, the ability to control their own fertility and if they didn't die in childbirth they were birthing and raising ten children so not in a position to dedicate their lives to science
Option 2: women don't have it in the DNA to be creative geniuses

Sometimes I start on about option 1 and it's actually quite shocking how angry I am that some people haven't already understood it.

Show him statistics on rape and convictions for rape and ask him to explain why so many women are raped yet convictions are so low.
Explain that society is run by men. You can show him the percentage of males to females in government and big business and ask him to explain that and examples of how much harder it is for women to rise to the top. Get him to do some reading!

I'm curious. What does HE think the patriarchy is ? He must have an idea in order to be able to deny it's existence.

Same with rape culture.

I often find that in these types of arguments you're often not starting with the same definition.

And yy to the game setting analogy as being one that many men seem to get.

x-post with Thistledew