Its 3014, and we have achieved gender equality…

I was thinking the other day, about the abortion thing, I do of course think that a woman should be allowed and able to terminate a pregnancy if she so wishes. But about the question of a man walking away. Currently if a man decides to walk away there is very little that anybody can or will do about it. Yet if he decides on a whim to turn up seven years later and insist on involvement, he can do. And then he can fuck off three years later, if he chooses, again without any consequence at all.

I think that one parent should be allowed to relenquish parenthood, if they so wish, meaning that they are no longer financially responsible for the child, as the child is no longer legally theirs, but that this is in effect until the child is 18 - like adoption. And then seek child support (with actual, decent, free legal enforcement) from any NRP who is considered responsible for their child but is not actually looking after them more than 50% of the time.

Similarly if a parent is found to be abusive it should be possible to just have that child removed from the child's life but not the other (of course if the other parent is enabling the abusive parent to see the child then they would need to be removed for protection.)

In Germany where I live parents are paid to look after their children up to 3 years old. It's not a huge amount (about €100 a week I think) but the mother or father can take it (they can also share paid parental leave with both having a minimum of 2 months and there is another 10 months which can be split) and if both parents want to work they can have it paid in the form of childcare. You can also work part time during the up-to-three-years period, during which time your employer has certain responsibilities (which I forget but they're good)

Ok, fair points.

But I don't think that saying "if you want help with childcare you need a childcare partner(s) - which will usually but not necessarily be the father" amounts to punishment or control of women by men.

And it is, strictly speaking, equality. I can't swim the channel. Others physically can. Equality is giving people the best possible opportunities taking into account their physical capacities. It is not equality for me to dictate how channel swimmers do or do not swim, or punish them for their capabilities.

It is equality that many women can carry children and should be allowed to do so without punishment or control from men.

No, I am definitely not saying that we should pay women to be childcarers. We should pay childcarers to be childcarers, and mothers will be among them.

Oh, I agree, it's not a solvable problem almond. Just saying it's not, strictly speaking, equality.

Re the rest of your posts: As I read it, you are essentially saying "women have the babies, therefore women are statistically more likely to end up being the main/sole childcarer or the childcarer with other women, therefore we ought to have a society which reflects this and eg pay women to be childcarers".

My issue with this is that it would seem to cement women in the role of childcarer.

Minipie, how would you like men to get children from unwilling women? Popular answers to this condundrum:

1. Rape them.
2. Forced marriage.
3. Forced birth and pregnancy.
4. Slavery.
5. Financial destitution if they don't live with a man.
6. Social disapproval and shaming.
7. Denying social opportunities and excluding fatherless children (no childcare for bastards).
8. Put unmarried mothers in a mental institution.
9. Or a Magdelene laundry.
10. Snatch their babies from the labour ward.

i've always thought it would be very useful if we could refer to people as "it". obviously it's not culturally acceptable as things stand. at work i often come across names where it's not clear to me whether a person is male or female (i may only have an initial and surname) and there is potential to cause offence if you pick the wrong pronoun, so you have to do clever grammatical things to avoid using pronouns.

I've often wondered if we really need gendered pronouns in language. Shouldn't there just be one word instead of he/she?
Doesn't having two different words only facilitate gender discrimination?

Many languages don't have more than one third person pronoun, including my father's mother tongue. And despite being a very accomplished English speaker, he still often uses 'he' and 'she' interchangeably, as do his fellow speakers, and sometimes even uses 'it'.

It startles acquaintances sometimes, but we're used to it. It doesn't actually cause any difficulties. So while I don't know if it would change attitudes (his society of birth is firmly patriarchal), I think we don't need to have different words.

thinking about it it can only really be that way, because otherwise the other option seems to be controlling women's choices... and we're back to square one

Petula, that is a fundamental inequality unless we all live in a commune. The only way anyone who can't get pregnant can usually get access to children is through the pregnant person (obviously this changes once that person has established a relationship with the child and the courts would insist it continues for the child's benefit).

One of the consequences of women choosing their own sexual partners and living arrangements is that many men will never be bio parents and will not get to be social parents of any child either.

But most men do get access to family structures as a step father, a brother, an uncle and so on, as well as simply friends of the mother and child.

manlyalmondcakes

But for a female descendent of mine to have to make private arrangements with anyone (be they male or female) to do childcare if she wants both children and gender equality, well that isn't equality. It is telling women they can only have kids under private contract with men.

But men would (barring adoption) only be able to have a baby through a private contract with women.

What you seem to be asking for is a society where women can have a child by themselves (as is currently the case), but without having to do all of the childcare. But men won't get to have a child, unless they can find a willing woman. Not sure that is equality at all.

Petula, I don't feel that my sex should be considered important in the vast majority of situations.

But for that to be the case, the structural inequalities have to be dealt with.

I don't want to have a pronoun that tells people I identify as asthmatic. But I do want people to deal with structural inequalities by recognisingthe issues faced by people who have long term health conditions.

In terms of constantly dealing with the possibility of inequality arising, pregnancy is not like having blue eyes. It will always need to be looked at structurally, but that doesn't mean it defines me as an individual person.

"calling the shots" was the wrong phrase to use, as it sounds pejorative and i don't intend it to

i'm trying to work out how to say this without sounding like an MRA troll, so apologies if i do and that's not my intention. i'm genuinely trying to think this through but i don't htink i'm as quick as others here

almond in that case, in this gender equal society, how do men who would like child caring responsibilities access that? because if women are calling the shots about who they live with and how much time they spend with their children (which is absolutely no bad thing), how would those men who would like to increase their caring responsibilities in terms of children that are genetically related to them manage to achieve that? or would the genetic relationship not matter, and those men could be childminders or nursery staff or whatever the various options are in this society?

i realise i'm probably not thinking this through in as sophisticated a way as i should

Flora in Thistledew's society, the continuation of gender equality after it has been reached is dependent on gender roles continuing to exist and these roles must be based on bio sex.

A father (gender role) is defined as a person who is the loving companion of a reproductive female who does as much child rearing as her.

That father (gender role) must be based on bio sex- an adult male whose sperm has been in the female.

If large numbers of women go , actually my companion is nobody, my sibling, three women I went to school with, because I don't care about gender roles, the whole mechanism by which Thistledew's society maintain's equality collapses.

Which isn't to say she can't modify how it would work!

ok thanks, i do understand much better now. i agree about the heteronormative thing and what people would choose in a society free from the that being the default option - i said sort of similar further up but less coherently.

and i definitely agree with this "I personally think that one of the reasons many men are unhappy is because they don't spend enough time caring for others. I think one of the reasons many women are unhappy is because they spend too much time caring for others. So I think care should be more equal than it is now, because I think the division is pretty dysfunctional."

i suppose the question for me in terms of the OP's idea of a society with true equality of the sexes is "under what circumstances does it really matter that my sex is identified?", and within that, how important is it to me that my sex is identified at all? i don't think i can answer that latter question because of my own socialisation and society's structure which makes it very clear that outward identification of me as a woman is an intrinsic part of my identity

almond I think the OP was talking about after equality / liberation was achieved rather than the means to get there. I'm not sure about whether long term heteronormative pair bonding would be rare although I expect it would be less common. I also agree with your last post about the dysfunctional division. Just to be clear, are you talking about gender as in sex roles or male / female sex classification?

And sorry, I kind of didn't answer your question.

I personally think that one of the reasons many men are unhappy is because they don't spend enough time caring for others. I think one of the reasons many women are unhappy is because they spend too much time caring for others. So I think care should be more equal than it is now, because I think the division is pretty dysfunctional. But that is personal opinion.

Unless men have started giving birth, I do think we need gender designations. Because gender equality can only be achieved if the impact that pregnancy and lactation takes on women is recognised and compensated for.
It is also important for adequacy of medical assistance.

But I agree that we could do away with Mr/Miss/Mrs designations. At the very least there should be only one for women.

I think there are lots of ways you could socially engineer it so that men as a group did 50% of all caring work. You could, for example, make it the norm that men were the default people responsible for the elderly. Or you could have quotas for people going into childcare, to make sure lots of men went into that job.

But to do any of that, there would always have to be such a thing as gender recognised by society.

The OP's premise is that gender would not be needed because the mechanism for gender equality would be (usually) heteronormative pair bonding. I am pretty certain that in the absence of gender, long term heteronormative pair bonding would be very rare.

OK thanks, I see what you're getting at. Would it need to be engineered as 50/50 women and men for childcare or would it just not matter who was doing it?

Because lots of children are brought into existence by women who neither want nor need a father around.

almond why is childcare 50/50 plus the mother? After childbirth, why not 50/50 mother and father + other people of whatever sex where necessary or desired?

I am sorry if this is too intellectual. I was trying for the opposite but am clearly failing. I am trying to address the situation described in the first post.

The OP asked if gender designation would be required (other than for pregnant people) in a gender equal society.

I am not talking about physiological tasks like breast feeding or recovering from birth.

I am saying that when women choose to become pregnant, they almost always do so because they want to spend some time with that child. That may be all day or it may be one hour a day. If we are talking about the OP's gender equal society, the default of children coming into existence must be women's choice (not forced pregnancy, as that would not be equal).

So the default arrangement is that a child is looked after by the mother - who is a woman, and some other people.

If gender does not matter, childcare is the other people who are 50/50 male female plus the mother.

If the OP also wants her gender equal society to have men doing equal amounts of childcare to women, she would need gender to exist to create a role for the men so as to even up the effort put in by the mother.

There will of course be some couples who are heterosexual, love each other and do 50% of the childcare each. They have an equal (1 green 1 yellow) relationship and childcare arrangement.

But many, many women don't want to be in a heterosexual relationship with a father or have any father around at all. So in society as a whole you can't use compulsory heteronormativity to create gender equality for all mothers.

i think this thread has moved beyond my intellectual capabilities, but could i just ask, what about the men who choose to be involved with a woman who is pregnant because they want to spend some time with them? or by green balls are you talking about the post-birth activities that only the birth mother may be able to undertake, such as breastfeeding, and the physiological and psychological impact of birth on her personally?

i realise we also then move into the realms of whether a father's genetic relationship with the child would still be relevant in this fantasy world.