Are you a threat to the Patriarchy?

Yes, I agree JTTB. It wasn't where I was going, but yes.

I suppose that's true, depressingly, RFFU. I wonder also if the divide between fiction and fact will get narrower. Older generations, I'm sure, are very much of the opinion that everything online is not at all real. Younger generations are maybe more likely to blur the lines.

Unfortunately monty I don't think it works that way. Porn will become boring ...so they go to more "hard core" porn. There is a lot of research on it. :( I'm actually quite worried that the expectation will be for young women in 20 years time.

And we're expected to go along with it and find it 'empowering' and 'ironic

Oh, like poll dancing?

That's a very point about the effect of the internet and smart phones etc. I rather forlornly hope that a generation might grow up where they're all a bit bored of porn by the time they grow up.

Yes, in my small way. I am a high earning lone parent, raising two teenage boys. I fill both the traditionally male and female roles in our household. I feel I should do more but I am just too knackered

I don't think the patriarchy is looking for a sammich any more, it's more telling us to give it a bj. And damn well like it!

Yes to that. Patriarchy is alive and well it's just different from the 70s. I see things as being infinitely worse for girls of today compared to girls growing up in the 80s.

Surrounded by pink (so you know what you can and can't play with) seeing porn at the age of 8 (on average)

Being expected to show pictures of yourself naked to someone, and when you do it having it be available forever and to everyone you have (and haven't met). Expectations of what you should do in bed become more and more degrading what you can wear becoming more and more revealing... women's body hair is becoming extinct.

I think I was actually quite lucky to be born when I was...

And yes, I do see myself as a threat to patriarchy. Dh is a different man form the one I met over a decade ago (and put up with because I was young and naive). My children are all being raised to be feminists.

yes I am a threat to the patriarchy.

and so is every other feminist. shop being so self deprecating!

I try to be but not as much as I'd want. Will do my best in the next few years.

Def yes in raising the dds, or so I hope.

Yes I think I am. I challenge any sexist rubbish I hear, whether from men or from women. I work with parents and I always challenge any gender stereotyping I hear from either them or from fellow professionals - this is steady work, believe me!

I encourage the female staff members I manage to behave like adult professionals, rather than giggling and hair tossing their way through life at work. I challenge them but am also quick to highlight any good work they have done and I praise their judgement when appropriate.

I don't think the patriarchy is looking for a sammich any more, it's more telling us to give it a bj. And damn well like it!

Another I like to do is when a man at work says his wife is expecting to ask him what childcare he will be using.

So nothing's changed for the better since the seventies? Clearly the answer is yes... so clearly the patriarchy is not as strong. It doesn't make it not strong, it makes it less strong.

One of your examples is also really about money, not gender. Even if the wildest dreams came true wrt gender, the rich would still have power over the poor. So many of these issues are also about economic class.

unapolegetically slug?

I call it when and where I see it.

So probably not a threat but perhaps a niggling PITA to the patriarchy?

I think the very existence of feminism is a threat. That's why we do see backlashes. No threat? No backlash necessary.

I do the daily thing of squashing stereotypes and confounding stereotypes.

Occasionally I let the sexist comments go if I think the speaker is too stupid to understand why they are being offensive or ignorant. You can't treat everything as if it's the Battle of Waterloo or you would spend your life with your guts churning in indignation. Doing is usually better than talking.

One of the most useful things I think I have done is to teach my daughters not to be victims and not to willingly put themselves in a position of dependence or vulnerability i.e just simply not to stand for shit, zero tolerance of abusiveness, always make sure you have the wherewithal to walk away and take responsibility for your own actions as that is part of being liberated and part of equality.

We are still in the interim generations of liberation and equality and to continue laying the groundwork for our daughters and granddaughters I believe is where it's at currently.

And I agree with Jane - out earn men if you have the talent and ambition. In a capitalist society money is real power.

He patriarchy isn't as strong as once was? On which planet would that be? Because it sure as he'll isn't this one, where women in developed countries still earn less than me. For doing comparable jobs, where women's healthcare is the business of her boss and men's isn't? And that doesn't even consider developing world misogyny.

Patriarchy is alive and well and very quietly patting women on the head and telling them to fuck off back to the kitchen and make it a sammich. We do what we can to chip away at it. We have a long old way to go yet though.

I threaten it by being quite successful in a career usually designated for men. I think I threatened it this morning by comparing biceps with our Estates team and winning. I challenge it by encouraging my daughter to regularly piss off the boys in her school by being apologetically better at science and maths than all of them. DH threatens it by cheerfully abandoning his career to be a SAH parent. Now that he's finally gone back to wok he's open about the fact that I'm the one with the career and he just has a job that allows him time to do all the parenting tasks.

Yes, I am a threat. I have to be, I'm a woman who wants a better world.

I try to outearn all men and help my daughters to do so. Gradually women are starting to earn and continue to earn more than men year by year and more men are being forced to do domestic stuff at home in equal amounts to women. Never let a man for a day at home do less domestically than you do.