Deprogramming

Interesting thread...one of the big ones which came up for me was how I'd absorbed the message that things women traditionally do are shit. As a teen I always said that I didn't want to be a wife/mother- I wanted to go to university and have a 'proper career'. However, once I had a child I realised that I loved being a mother- in an odd way it's was also my most body positive time. I'd grown another human being and my body was just awesome even if it didn't look 'beautiful'. Also, I feel a great pressure to keep working so that I feel I'm 'contributing'.

Of course, I could say "fuck off out of my cupboards you crazy dirt obsessed old bag", but see previous point about people pleasing

I get it, Noble Giraffe. I have to clean before my mother or MIL come to stay, because they do judge me, and they will say stuff. While the adult in me responds by saying "It's my house, I'll keep it as I please, and I don't care what your opinion is", the child in me still wants approval. It'd be great not to care, but it's not always easy. I can shrug off MIL criticisms easily enough, but after 40-odd years of my mum criticising me, I am vulnerable to it. I'm better than I was, but when she makes a cats bum face at cat hair under the coffee table, or ostentatiously empties out cupboards and makes comments about "cleaning this place properly", it fucking stings!

Why do you assume that she is?

Comments made by her.
Also, I know that my mother is judging me.

I've thought about the whole 'why do I care'? I think it's because I judge me too.

I find it hard running around tidying up before MIL visits while DH just says 'it's fine, don't bother'. I try to explain to him that I care because I know that I and not he as the woman will be judged on it, and the reason that he doesn't care is because he's the man and knows it won't reflect badly on him

At what point do you (general you, not you) decide you will make up your own mind about things like this and stop caring about what you (general you) think you are being told to do by society/ patriarchy/ whatever/ whoever?

Why do you care if your mother in law is judging you? Why do you assume that she is?

Is she really judging you or is that your own assumption about what other women think or are supposed to think?

I find it hard running around tidying up before MIL visits while DH just says 'it's fine, don't bother'. I try to explain to him that I care because I know that I and not he as the woman will be judged on it, and the reason that he doesn't care is because he's the man and knows it won't reflect badly on him.
He seems to think he doesn't care because he doesn't mind it reflecting badly on him. Because he has never experienced that judging.

The kids thing is so hard vestal. I had a boyfriend who was disgusted by the whole idea, was sure that it was all just society wanting to trap him (he had many faults actually, but we all get blinded while in the swirl of lust).

I decided, arrogantly, that I thought I was a pretty good person. I thought that DP was a pretty good person, and I thought the world needed more good people, so I've had a couple of kids, and for all the hassle kids are, I'm glad (and may even be softening on a 3rd)

For me, I concentrate on the little things - making sure that I don't default to complementing a little girl on her dress or a boy on being strong, or that I don't gravitate to the kitchen/kids at family events, and definitely making sure there are females in his books as well as males (eg, continuing to try to convince my kids that Zuma on paw patrol is a girl - and they can't find any good way to argue he isn't! - develops their critical thinking too :D)

It's telling DP that running the washing through the washing machine and tumble dryer isn't 'doing the washing' that it's not done until it's back in everyone's draws/wardrobes, and reminding him that if he leaves his coffee spoon on the side, someone needs to mop that up after him, and if he was an adult, it would be him, that he doesn't get extra points for doing the bare minimum - that you actually have to go above and beyond for that.

and it's definitely sowing seeds in my MIL's, my mum's and my other female relatives minds that there are other ways, that they don't deserve to be ironing their husbands shirts even though they work but he's retired, or that if she's home looking after the kids, then the least she should have is she enough money for a tank of petrol to do the shopping rather than have to push his crate of stella and bottle of vodka home in the buggy.

I think women are made to feel they've failed if they don't have children (or a partner) and often it's by the attitude of other women. I am in academia and many of my friends don't have children and I find the comments directed at them just awful. Lots of 'why did you get married if you don't want children?' 'Dont leave it too late' etc but the flip side is that having children destroyed my career and it's only now 12 years later that I'm making progress. So it's dammed if you do, and dammed if you don't

I cannot tell whether I want to have children because I really want children, or whether that's just what I was brainwashed into wanting.

From a rational point of view, it would be idiotic. It's not that I have a career, but I have no money, and with children I would have even less money. I am also not really competent at being an adult myself. And then there's all the disadvantages women everywhere are almost guaranteed when having children.

But there's this nagging feeling that if I don't have children before it is too late, I have failed at life.

To be fair to DH the 'lucky' comments annoy him too because he is perfectly happy with how things are. And he is genuinely a feminist at heart, he thinks we are completely equal, he implemented improved maternity arrangements at his work after seeing the negative impact it had on my career, he wouldn't tolerate sexism. But he still doesn't really get it because he's never experienced what it's like to live as someone who is not the 'gold standard' white middle class male.

So although I feel supported by him, and I know he's a great role model for the DCs - still sometimes I'll see something on tv that's sexist and I know it's passed him by because it just doesn't register. So he noticed sexism if it's blatantly obvious or if I point it out- but the million subtle ways women are undermined are not seen. And if he doesn't see them then I wonder do many men?

Good thread!

For me it's both small and big things.

Small things such as having to make a huge effort to refer to animals and DD's toys as "she" or "it" by default rather than "he".

And big things like feeling uncomfortable when I'm in a female-dominated situation eg at work, because I'm so used to men being in the majority and being heard more.

Also (and I don't know if this is a feminist issue or just my mad family), I really don't know what I want from life - I was brought up to aspire to a weird hybrid of primary-breadwinner and female-servitude, so I feel I must "achieve" but in ways that meet other people's expectations. It's only in my middle age that I've stared to wonder if my lack of career goals that actually inspire me is a feminist problem because I'm doing what I feel everyone else wants me to do.

This is interesting. My family is very female in numbers, but men were definitely considered superior. I thought it had ended with my generation (I'm 48) but recently my sister told me her adult daughters find it incredible that my DH is an equal partner in the work required to run a family. They think I'm 'lucky' and I can't convince them that's it's normal for a partner to treat you with respect.

Also my DD(8) had a friend round for a sleepover and thus girl was astonished that DH made lunch and did the dishes (whilst I took the girls to the park). She told me that men didn't go in the kitchen.

I find it hard to marshall my thoughts and arguments to explain what saddens me about this. I really thought it had changed, but I see a reassurance of this thinking, that women do the wife work and men do the 'important' things and I just don't know what to do.

interesting idea, I like it.

One that I'm grappling with at the moment is my desire to people-please, and to be "kind" (when that means reflexively giving other people's feelings more weight than I give my own).

I was brought up in a family where women tend to the needs of men and expect very little back from them. I replicate it in my own relationships and I'm trying very hard to change it. It's absolutely stifling! All of the tight-lipped "no, it's fine", and "no, you choose, I don't mind"s, and the "if you're happy, I'm happy". Until you forget that you have any actual desires of your own...

in my life it's meant that I find it difficult to ask for my needs to be met, because from a young age I've been told that it's vital to good relationships to always put other people's desires, particularly men's in front of my own. Of course, we all need to do this sometimes, but there's so often a need to "put your own oxygen mask on first", as they say. As a result, I have a tendency to martyr- I put other people first and then resent that I don't get my needs met. I need (there! I've started!) to change this.