Are women who have been treated badly by men more likely to be feminist?

The first 'reality tv' i think was Castaways, that bbc thing on Transay - i'm pretty sure it was a millennium project. SEries 1 of big brother aired in 2000 in the uk.

No, I think it was Living in the Past in 1978, some of which was shown on BBC4 a couple of years or so ago.

(This is totally irrelevant, I know. Things have changed a lot since the Iron Age.)

The first 'reality tv' i think was Castaways, that bbc thing on Transay - i'm pretty sure it was a millennium project. SEries 1 of big brother aired in 2000 in the uk.
loaded and FHM magazines existed in the 90s but zoo and nuts (far more extremely objectifying) didn't come along until 2004.
Obviously the internet existed in the 90s but google didn't launch till the very end of the 90s, myspace in 2003.

So yes, i'd agree that things maybe started to change in the 90s but I felt that there was no real pornification of main stream media then. Certainly in my social life the girls were wearing jeans and tshirts with occassionl spice-girls type platform trainers. There wasn't pressure to perform sexually or to dress overtly sexually. We felt that things could only continue to build on the power-suit 80s idea in terms of our future careers.

I was in my 20s in the 90s and I think that's when things started to twist backwards. After gaining some ground in the 80s (I saw two good strong female characters from the 80s on tv today Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sophie Aldred (Ace from Doctor Who) as opposed to dramas like The Fall and Ripper Street which we get today.
Anyhow what im trying to say is that things started to go backwards again in the 90s with the advent of the lads mag culture. Then came reality tv/and a stronger celeb culture.

I always knew I believed in equality. THe gendered emotional/cultural abuse I experienced growing up at home cemented this.

But I didn't realise that I self identified as a feminist until 3 years ago.

I have had nothing but positive relationships with men from my father, through boyfriends to my husband. In many ways it was the positive role model of my father that made me feminist. But I'm not an activist and I wasn't conscious of my feminism as a young woman - I didn't realise that anti-feminism and misogyny existed as I hadn't encountered it. So I was quietly feminist. Didn't realise that not everybody thought as I did so didn't realise how much action was needed.
Also, I was a teenager in the 90s which wasn't actually that bad a time from a body image and sexualisation point of view (baggy jeans and long blonde hair...).

I've been brought up with feminism - but I'd say the older I get, the more active I've become, and part of that is because of my experiences at work. I just didn't see so much inequality when I started out - we were all at the same level, fresh new graduates, and while there weren't so many older women further up, that's partly because they were my mother's generation, who started working before the Equal Pay Act and so on, and were usually expected to give up work on marriage/motherhood and often did. I thought as my career progressed, I'd just see things getting better and better, but in many ways, I'm not.

I suppose I am more of a feminist by seeing men treating women (and other men) badly in the work place, but not so much in relationships - that's not to say there aren't abusive relationships, because absolutely there are, but it's the work side of things that get me most worked up.

I think maybe that women who have been treated badly by men will struggle with their self worth and may even fight for approval from men, which is so horrible and wrong. I never really cared for men, even though I have a great father and husband. I knew very early on they benefited from women`s suffering, even the good ones.

Marriage isnt a protective shield.no one saves anyone else.
and marriage in itself wont necessarily decrease ones interest in feminism

I think, less likely. My birth mother was, as far as I know, given a shit time by men throughout her life. She didn't know her father, but my birth father was shit to her and us and since they split and I got back in contact as an adult, she's had shit people, not on the same scale, in her life again. Lost contact after my youngest brother was born but I think when you are used to men failing you, that is all you expect. I think I'd be the same if I'd grown up with her and my birth father.

This is just anecdote, but in my own life, I think it's less likely, sadly.

I know some women who've come through a load of shit and are feminists, and I do think being feminists helped them to cope differently. Amongst my close friends, there are a fair few of us who're aware we'd have made different choices if we'd been more aware of feminism earlier in our lives.

But then, the women I know who've been treated truly appallingly seem almost all to want nothing much to do with feminism. I think that is completely understandable. You want to believe it's just one truly horrible bastard you met, not a wider system including both bastards and a lot of men who're trying to be nice but are as socially conditioned as you.

I have been a feminist at some level since rebelling against gender stereotypes aged about six. I have never had any seriously bad experiences with men, but male privilege is pretty hard to ignore. (Though lots of people seem to manage it.)

I don't have many bad experiences with men but I'm very feminist. I think all sorts of things can make people question inequality. I am white but am very vocal about how much I despise racism which doesn't actually affect me.
I often see things as bad treatment from men that most people think are normal behaviours.

Sorry for weird typo!

From a small sample of people I know if day that yes, the ones who have themselves been abused by men are more likely to be feminists than those who've had an easy life where they see the system as working for them.

I'm not sure.

I think in certain cases, being a victim of sexism would certainly make people think.

However, having dealt with a lot of women in abusive relationships through work, I would say many of them were so beaten by the patriarchy that they couldn't begin to imagine living in a different way IYSWIM. Thier entire framework was light years from feminism.

vezzie it's a good point but it reverses my causality a bit I didn't mean to imply that everyone suffering injustice is a raving feminist or marxist or anything else, but rather that the people who join social movements tend to feel a sense of injustice in the world (either personally or on behalf of others)

In my case no, I didn't have any relationship issues before I became a feminist. And I still am, even though I have a lovely husband and a comfortable life. The injustices I noticed first were work-related - comments from professors about women studying only for their Mrs degree, comments that oh surely a man needs a higher salary as he will have a family to support etc.

Bonsoir, good way of putting it.

" Injustice makes people think about the world," - not everyone. Injustice makes those of a certain kind of analytical bent think about about the world.

If you are a woman, you have suffered injustice, even if you are married to the nicest man in the world, through luck not judgement. Some women of course marry terrible men, who embody the worst aspects of sexist culture. Whatever your lot, you have the choice to analyse it or not.

All of the following are common viewpoints / ways of thinking:

"My abusive exH was systemically allowed to be a dick to me, and his gfs before me, and probably after too. This is wrong. this is a bad system."

"My abusive H is like that because men are just like that. My friend's H is like that too. What can you do? Who cares why this happens."

"My abusive H is horrible to me because I have done something wrong. Maybe lots of things wrong, or maybe just choosing him. Anyway it is certainly my individual fault. "

"I will buy another self help book. Maybe this one will be the one."

"My lovely DH is lovely to me because we both work hard at understanding the roots of inequality and not replicating them in our marriage. We didn't get it till we had children but then suddenly we had to think really hard about it"

"My lovely DH is how men should be, and generally are. Anyone who has a problem with an anomalous abusive man has made some bad mistakes and is probably flawed themselves."

"My DH is lovely. He makes me do everything at home, and with the children, and this means I work much longer hours than him. I don't have many choices in life as he controls the money. But this is just how it is with men and women isn't it? But he takes me out to dinner on my birthday and buys flowers on our anniversary, so he is lovely."

So you can be analytic or not whatever circumstances you have ended up in

It helped for me when I realised that, for that type of man, not "being looked after" by women was hurtful and wounded their egos. Explaining why I wasn't going to look after them in the same terms - doing so was humiliating and wounded my ego - put us all on the same footing so that we could talk about the assumptions and prejudices surrounding gendered roles.

It's very true bonsoir, and within my own family I have raged against the unfair burden placed on my mother (and me by default). But because they are fundamentally not dickheads, they have taken it on board, and things have improved. It's not perfect, but the socialisation is being eroded slowly

I've been a feminist since my teens and before I had my first boyfriend! So not in my case.

Mine grew out of the fact that my appearance and my interests didn't coincide for people and so they were always confused which was very annoying and when I got a bit older setting and hearing what was going on for females around the world and being horrified. Then when I was a little older still street harassment and casual assault (groping etc) made me incredibly angry.

Lots of nice, polite, well-brought up men of earlier generations are massive piss-takers by modern standards when it comes to sharing the domestic burden.

I've never had a duff relationship and have been happily married for decades. Likewise I've lived in shared accommodation with a group of men, and worked with male colleagues.
One of the elements of my being a feminist is those experiences with respectful, interesting and loving men make me cross that so many other women don't have the same thing.

I think the injustice idea has a lot in it. I've also seen a lot of posters say when they had kids, especially DDs, they suddenly saw a lot more sexism (a) in their own lives with respect to work and to childcare/home duties and (b) for their kids, with gendered toys etc.

Merci bonsoir

TheFirst I don't think it's just for people who have personally experienced it -- it could also be people who are engaged enough to understand the injustice other people are experiencing

But plenty of people sail through life without the first clue about how people in the world are suffering, or who choose to see it as the result of choices and bad luck rather than exploitation or prejudice. I don't think those people would be very interested in social movements of whatever form.