Male feminism

Hi OP, lots of points have been made here and it's encouraging you want to understand more. A couple of points if I may? Appreciating you may have hit your limit.

1. the pay gap appears in research before woman leave for child care choices (is this a choice though? If we want society to keep moving forward, or should it only be unemployed people having children?) and.. 2) if you want to read up of feminism in general, can I recommend Caitlin Moran, readable, funny and great for a modern understanding esp if you've a daughter.

Overall though, woman do tend to get a shittier deal, in the uk two deaths a week to domestic violence - I don't know of a peril that effects men like that without lots of noise, on average worse jobs, more likely to be a victim of crime, disproportionately victims of violent crime, woman who don't have career breaks for children still aren't getting to board level in the same number of men.....It's really hard to see how this can go on accidentally or unnoticed. It feels more likely that those in the position do change things don't have it at the forefront of their priorities. Why not? Woman are 51% of the global population. The info I'm putting above is is the west, where woman 'have it best'.

You say that you have a son and a daughter. Look up the statistical chances of their earnings over a lifetime, there chances of experiencing violent crime, death in their own home, etc and ask yourself if you are happy with these differences, and you may answer some of your own questions.

Ask yourself, OP: do you regard your body as a mini-management project? Do you constantly stress about how on earth to find the time, energy and pain tolerance to remove hair in the myriad different places that it is expected for women? Do you resent having to do it? Do you suffer severe self-consciousness when it's impossible for you to do it and anger that society doesn't give a fuck about your legitimate reasons and still judges you? Do you plan this around the clothes you wear? Do you welcome the cold months because that burden is off you for a bit because of winter clothes? Do you dread the amount of hair removal work you'd have to perform on your body in order to have sex, while your partner has to do none or marginal? Do you dread the self-consciousness due to being unable to do it because of a health problem? Does that kill your sexy mood? Does the whole thing make you feel like your body is public property?

I doubt he does. Do you? I don't. I don't know any women who match that description.

Honestly, OP, I'm stunned that you apparently "don't see it" regarding sexism. STUNNED. It's there every moment of every day, and you and your sons are benefiting from it at the cost of your daughter and her mother. And that's with the knowledge that both the women you presumably love have it a million times better than women and girls in the undeveloped world.

In some places, your daughter wouldn't even be born because her mother would've been pressured to abort her because girl babies are seen as useless. In others she would've had her external genitalia cut off without anesthetic in order to deprive her of sexual pleasure for life. Yet in others she would've been forced into child marriage to a grown man. On a milder scale, in some regions she would be expected to wear high heels all the time, which would break her body down and may even cripple her later in life. In others she could die because of being denied an abortion (Google the recent Irish case).

On the other hand - you and your sons would be just fine anywhere you could've been born at any point in history. None of those would be applicable to you and you would still be benefiting from those things being done to women.

Ask yourself, OP: do you regard your body as a mini-management project? Do you constantly stress about how on earth to find the time, energy and pain tolerance to remove hair in the myriad different places that it is expected for women? Do you resent having to do it? Do you suffer severe self-consciousness when it's impossible for you to do it and anger that society doesn't give a fuck about your legitimate reasons and still judges you? Do you plan this around the clothes you wear? Do you welcome the cold months because that burden is off you for a bit because of winter clothes? Do you dread the amount of hair removal work you'd have to perform on your body in order to have sex, while your partner has to do none or marginal? Do you dread the self-consciousness due to being unable to do it because of a health problem? Does that kill your sexy mood? Does the whole thing make you feel like your body is public property?

Does your head hurt now? Welcome to a woman's world on one of the smallest, most innocuous issues of womens' problems resulting from the patriarchy. Now just imagine the rest, which are a zillion times more severe. Do you feel like your head is about to explode?

#I should patent this as a psychological exercise#

I'm laughing that women being mean to their friend about make up is 'feminist extremism.' God I wish that was all I had to worry about with my DD.

'Feminist extremists' might be rude to her. Men might rape her. I think I'm going to worry a bit more about one of those things than the other.

Datun your final line is something I've noticed so often - it's quite something how enraged it makes some men.

YY.

The video was excellent but I did think they should have disabled comments for it due to how sadly inevitable it was nonsense like that would be posted.

Datun your final line is something I've noticed so often - it's quite something how enraged it makes some men. Any campaign or even just a woman standing up against misogyny met with such vicious disdain.

venusinscorpio

I know. Comments starting with 'feminist retards' and then maintaining the only reason men beat up women is because women start it. The 'Why do you make me hit you' mindset is alive and well and is getting very pissed off that no one buys it.

Women saying no and standing up for their rights make some men so angry. How dare we?

Wow. I know YouTube comments are awful but read the comments on that Australian advert.

Dad you seem lovely and your daughter will thrive with a father like you looking out for her. As the daughter of a feminist father I can tell you how important it is to have that support.

Read most of thread and this matter comes up fairly frequently over the years.

Am to quizzical about the supposed 'neutral' position on womens rights. Which basically means 'I'm okay with the current arrangements.'

This thread, has made me feel better about the chance at a better future for my DD. What's more it has allowed me to see more than I realised. Thank you!
I hope more people are like you every generation so we can have a truly equal Society.

Sylvia good point, girl guiding UK have done a lot of surveys and research into how life is for girls in UK at the mo

Some great posts there Eolian.

The "neutral" position is never neutral though is it? It is generally the position that society holds (or more often worse). And as we live in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, ableist society...

OP, two points:

1. Why would you start from a position of neutral on feminism (which you earlier said)? I honestly don't get this. I don't sit around going, hmm, activism against genocide, I'm on the fence about it. Why would anyone adopt a 'neutral' position on women's rights, much less find yourself in an 'anti feminist' bubble?

1. You want to know the situation for your daughter. Wouldn't your first stop then be the UN, looking up their most recent reports on the rights of women and children in the UK? Or do you not trust the UN, with it being the primary organisation for promoting women's rights aka feminism?

But once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

Yep. It's so bloody irritating.

Well I have MN to thank for helping crystallise my thoughts then. I was no kind of a feminist before lurking on here. I'd echo what others have said - sometimes it's hard to see the everyday sexism until it is really made clear to you. But once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. I'd like to think my daughter will make her choices with clarity and a mind less encumbered by sexist influence.

You are very knowledgeable and are articulating perfectly how the oft-used lines about "choice" are impacted so hugely by existing in a patriarchal society and that choices aren't made in a vacuum, if I may say so.

Thanks. As I say, I am very unknowledgeable about feminism, but I'm sure many of us can look back on the path our own lives have taken and identify all sorts of things in our past that have influenced them.

I chose to go part time when I had children and let my career take a back seat, while my husband (who was junior to me in the same career when we met) whizzed up the career ladder. I wouldn't necessarily say I regret it, but neither do I feel that I went into that decision with eyes truly open or unencumbered by social and family expectations. Plus I had probably been conditioned to accept that role (partly by my mother, who thinks women should stay at home and look after the children). To the response "But you had the choice!" , I would say yes, but what led to me being the person who made the choice that I made?

Great post Eolian.

Indeed. These messages are so pervasive.

Holy f**k, I'd put money that was designed and OKed by men.

Then there's advertising such as this attached.

Eolian very good example regarding leg hair. I'm exactly the same. You could say I'm choosing to do it, and I know the reasons I'm doing it for are ridiculous and would be the first to say to a woman or girl she should never feel she has to nor is there anything wrong with having it, yet I still do it.

I don't know how many female politicians there are overall (councils etc). Female CEOs are very rare I believe. I'm not assuming any "why's" for that, and @Eolian listed some good examples for why that might be. I'd still say "not wanting that" is a reasonable reason.

What do you mean by "Not wanting that" is a reasonable reason?

Do you mean that you believe that lots of women don't want those kinds of jobs and that that is fine because that's their choice and it's probably something inherently different about women that makes them not want to be CEOs?

Because the point I was trying to make was that you simply can't judge women's (or men's) wants and ambitions without considering the society and environment that shaped them.

A more trivial exampe: I shave my legs. It is my choice to do so. I can say that I do it because I prefer the way they look when they are shaved. And that is true. But why do I prefer the look of them shaved? There is nothing inherently unfeminine about hair. All women's legs grow some hair. Why did it become the norm for women to shave their legs, but not men?

It's not that I don't have the right to choose what to do with my leg hair. It's about what led us in the first place to being in a situation where I even have to make a conscious choice about whether to shave or not.

No actual feminist thinks that women who wear make up or stay at home with children are letting the side down.

Women wear make up to make themselves feel better... well, yes, but this is predicated on years of messages both overt and implied that women are only acceptable in public if they wear it. Dirty if they don't shave every single hair on their body off. It comes from every form of media as well, not just beauty magazines, but films, tv shows, the radio, we're saturated in it. Couple this with the idea that women should be decorative and you not only have a world where women are valued on their looks but also a world where women who don't conform to those standards are assumed to be lesbians or trans.

So yes, women do choose to wear make-up for themselves, but they make that choice in light of the sum of their experiences.

Women who stay at home with children are letting the side down... well, this is not true. However, women who do give up jobs or careers to stay at home with children do sacrifice their financial independence and are more vulnerable should their husbands decide that the little woman is now dull and take off with someone new. Or turn out to be an abusive arse. Feminists didn't fight for all women to be made to go back to work after having children, they fought to stop women being summarily fired once they popped one out there's a difference.