Not feminist enough if you're heterosexual.

Re winding posie up, I've seen it a few times as an OP. If posie responded to that and was personally attacked, I don't think that is them winding her up

Can someone link to the online feminist spaces where people are saying things like that women "spew kids from their arses"?

ChocChoc - it was the "letting them get away with" that sounded like a put down. People are who they are, it's not my role in life to control or change who they are. True, you don't stay with someone who pisses you off or treats you like shit, but not doing the ironing (or never putting the bins out) doesn't have to fall in to that category. Even "sulky behaviour" - women aren't "letting them get away with it". They may be choosing to accept it that aspect of the man's personality, that's not the same thing.

Where was Hermione mocking?

I think she's saying that many, if not most women in relationships with men do this (I know I do, I know that women of my acquaintance do, hell, I know that my nanny and MIL pander to my DP - offering to make him dinners when I go away for work etc)

Just imagine what women could achieve if we didn't have to spend all that extra time doing things for the men in our lives that they could be doing for themselves. Just imagine what we could achieve if they did for us what we do for them.

My MIL, still working, continued to iron FIL's shirts once he was retired. If she didn't have time, he would complain. My father comments about me delegating my children to a nanny so I can work - even though he worked throughout my childhood, delegating his children to my mother. I love the men in my life, but there's no two ways about it, they take a lot more energy to maintain than they give back, and I don't think mine's even that bad, and I don't think I'm even slightly unusual

Is DP getting a ticker tape parade for ironing a shirt any different to me getting a ticker tape parade for putting the bins out?

super - I assumed you didn't mean that the "phenomenon" doesn't exist, more that it's nobody else's business if it exists within a successful and happy relationship.

Hermione - if a relationship is happy despite elements of what you call "emotional pandering", why do you think you have a right to talk down to those women and mock their choices?

super I'm astonished you've not come across this phenomenon before - men who have difficult and serious jobs finding it impossible to cook the kids their tea, Iron a shirt, remember their mother's birthday, buy things for th kids stocking at Christmas etc.

Of all the couples I know I'd say there are probably one or two where th men take equal responsibility for home and family. That applies where they both work full time in demanding jobs too - IME it's still the woman who organises the nanny, sorts out who is doing which school runs, reminds about what day the nativity is etc.

You don't have to look far on MN to see posters reporting this as well

I'd like to know where you are that equality is the norm?

HermioneWeasley That sounds very judgemental of you, I have to say. How people in relationships treat each other is their own business. Is it impossible to imagine a woman could be pampered a bit too by her other half? I think if we go around in a state of hyper-vigilance, making judgements and drawing conclusions about what other people do, then we'll always find things to get our own backs up.

Ah, I saw it in a radfem Facebook group. I'd join in on Twitter

I've seen it on Twitter, look hard enough and you find all sorts of idiocy on there.

Op - they are probably just winding you up. Your delivery style is often very vocal and very aggressive yourself.

I wonder if we all saw it in the same place...?

I've seen this recently. I haven't engaged because I think it is ludicrous and akin to the "too pretty to be a feminist" attitude Germaine Greer once spouted about Cheryl Cole. Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of reasons why Cheryl Cole could be said to not be a feminist/role model...but her looks shouldn't be one of them.

emotional pandering probably isn't quite the right description, but letting them get away with sulky behaviour, being the one to remember his mother's birthday, throwing a ticker tape parade if he irons his shirt, that kind of man child behaviour

Feminism's raison d'etre is that women are treated as less than equal. For feminists to treat other women as less than equal is counter productive to the cause.

Yet it happens with alarming frequency, putting women off feminism and disheartening existing feminists.

I'd identity myself as a feminist. But I don't agree with much radfem ideology. Surely it's a broad church and we should respect each other's views without dismissing them.

Otherwise it's becomes a cult/:religion with one leader who's utterings shouldnt be challenged. Calling someone a hand maiden or ant feminist is like one Muslim saying to the other that they're un Islamic.

emotional pandering to adult men How do you mean. Are these men 'they're pandering to' their partners, work colleagues?

Extremists are often alarming and myopic in their views. No reason to think that women would be immune to that.

Most of my friends identify as feminists (probably not as rad fems) but are happily married to men (or divorced from men) and have kids. Raising children to believe in equality and raising sons that value women is an incredibly feminist act IMO.

I do however see fantastic feminist women still being treated as less than equal by their partners - subtle stuff often, and women do enormous amounts of emotional pandering to adult men.

As another poster said, for most women if you want to have kids and have a partner then you have to be prepared to compromise your expectations.

Yes- that is horrible. Not suggesting it is anything other than horrible.

Yes but saying someone has shitty kids, that they spewed from their arse I mean, come on , that's a bit more than being rude isn't it?

More like horribly aggressive and hateful ~ IMO.

Other women silencing or belittling other women because they don't like their particular brand of feminism is appalling

I have no "brand of feminism" I disagree vehemently with anyone, male or female who seeks to normalise prostitution and make it socially acceptable.

The OP, Posie and I frequently disagree on many subjects. We have probably both been rude to each other in the past - that is hardly "silencing or belittling"

Take the two guest blog posts one by a woman who has lived the life and has an understanding and the other by a radical feminist with a book to sell working on second or third hand anecdotal evidence that mirrors her beliefs. It was like looking at a man silencing me for explaining being a woman yet it was roundly cheered by a lot of people

I have posted on both those threads. I am not going to repeat what I said but the shorthand version is I oppose the idea of anything which legitimises the idea that prostitution a legitimate job like any other.

My view is not fashioned by any feminist, religious or right-wing ideology. Normalising prostitution is incompatible with human dignity and society as a whole is coarsened and demeaned by tolerating it.

Bindel might be an unpleasant individual with some rather "strident" ideas. But I do agree with her frustration with the 'progressive' left and feminists who defend and offer succour to Islamofascism. She often gets attacked for that in fact.

I agree with sausageggandbacon. Other women silencing or belittling other women because they don't like their particular brand of feminism is appalling.

Feminism is a belief system. Although there are self appointed "Popes" , it's not science.