Male feminism

I think Dad realises the choice of words is bad, they're not his words, he's saying that other men say these things to him and he wants for example to protect his dd from that sort of thing.
Dad, if I've understood you correctly, once you start seeing through this stuff it's an ongoing process and none of us can change the world overnight or alone. One easy thing we always do in our family is to keep a running commentary when watching TV. E.g. Eastenders is ripe for a feminist analysis, also 99% of advertising.

The thing is DadofGingers87 you are doing what you can. From your position of being a man. You are seeing individual things and addressing them.

It will have a cumulative effect and the pattern (ie cause) will be clear. Saying 'let my wife go out' is addressing the situation you see, but still with a difficult-to-shake viewpoint, hence the choice of words.

It's very wonderful to behold when a man simply holds no other viewpoint that could be considered at odds with his actions. When the belief is not tempered by a decision to 'do the right thing'. It just happens.

It's not the job nor the responsibility of feminists to educate you op. There's heaps of literature out there.

Frankly very few men are going to want to take feminism seriously because it would mean taking a long hard look at themselves. It's easier and more beneficial for them to stick with the status quo.

To be perfectly frank, taking off the goggles is quite a painful experience. Seeing the huge prevalence of sexism or misogyny is a downer.

Very much so. For so many reasons I wish I never had but once done it's impossible to undo it.

letting my wife go out

This choice of words isn't ideal. You can't "let" or "not let" your wife do anything.

The kind of comments you allude to are grounded in sexism (against women and girls), the idea work at home is women's work, that behaviour deemed to be "feminine" by society is shameful and weak, so bringing your daughter up away from these kind of opinions and free of stereotyping is important.

Dervel

Completely agree. It's also depressing that many women also haven't connected the dots. They too, see it as 'just the way things are'.

To be perfectly frank, taking off the goggles is quite a painful experience. Seeing the huge prevalence of sexism or misogyny is a downer.

It's like when they put red dots on paintings in a gallery denoting that they have been sold.

Suddenly you see red dots everywhere. It all fits. It's truly not about man hating and blaming men because...reasons. It's about seeing everyone, men (and women) through something like the matrix. It's undeniable. And shocking.

'Male privilege' is so real. It's tangible. When someone like the OP, has the smallest, almost imperceptible inkling that sexism may just be the teeniest, tiniest bit more rife that he first imagined, feminists can see the rusty cogs beginning to move.

You've got a fledgling concept, that you partly want to nurture, but you know the pushback is ingrained.

I find my generations so poor at understanding bewildering, at schools any boy who had any effeminate behavior was teaseded and bullied for it leading them to go to the other extreme. I still find comments being made to myself like under the thumb or whipped for helping out at home letting my wife go out and have a break sharing jobs. I also refuse to let my father in law look after dd as he had lots of opinions that are so horrible I can't bear them. I still wish there was more but how I can make it better seems to be a stumbling block. After the life I saw my mother have I vowed to be better I just feel I fail somehow.

Very good post Dervel.

Op you may also run into the trouble that I did, is that this is so far outside of your own experience it's a struggle to empathise. If broadly speaking you aspire to not be sexist and treat women in your life well they are hardly going to want to make you feel shit about it.

So a little bit of homework for you, open up the discussion with the women in your life be they friends and family members and ask them what's life has been like for them? Touch on subjects like catcalling, how they would like to be treated in the workplace, and how far from that the reality is?

Something (I hope!) you'll notice is how the tone of those conversations may develop. I predict you'll hear a LOT of verbal gymnastics designed specifically to make YOU feel better, to reassure you that you are one of the good ones, and examine are you socialised to take women's feelings into account to quite the same extent? If you open up with something like "I'm beginning to get a little concerned that women get a bit of a shitty deal in our society, and I'm worried for my daughter, what can I do, and what should I be aware of?" You might find some of the responses quite depressing.

I can almost guarantee some women you know and respect will have had to have dealt with some spectacularly shitty things. Then ask yourself how many of your male peers have had to deal with similar? Then you'll have the beginnings of your answer to what feminism is all about.

cheese xenia hasn't been on the board while I've been here and I've been about a few years.
Unless she's NCd

@CheeseBubbles
Fair request, and I was looking for a discussion, but I'm hesitant to start talking again.

Dont forget the reason I started this was to consider my own assumptions... work in progress. And as @Datun sort of says, I'm deliberately trying to prick my conscience.

Women aren't excluded from power. Right. So the lack of female politicans and ceos is because women don't want it. Or just aren't good enough
I think there are about 200 female MPs, about a 3rd of the commons. Not 50:50 certainly, and quite a recent shift, but not trivial either. 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.

Do you think black men are equally unambitious?
I don't think unambitious is a common cause, but (like me) maybe not interested in being an MP or CEO. Possibly for equivalent reasons to the above, but I'm not assuming and not in a position to speak for them (I'm white BTW).

Actually. Do you believe white middle class rich men are just naturally better and smarter? Because if they aren't then they are excluding other people who don't fit that mould
No, I don't believe that at all, we all know incompetent people of all genders and backgrounds. I'm still absorbing the comments from Eolian and others, but yesterday I would have said "white men aren't excluding people"

Returning to listening.

Mainly not manly! Fucking patriarchal auto correct

I completely agree with your post. I also had that moment and from there explored and discovered more. I also agree that once you see these things you can't "un-see" them.

Mainly not manly! Fucking patriarchal auto correct

One thing that annoys me normally when men suddenly want to debate feminism, is that they immediately dismiss any anecdotal evidence, emotion and personal journeys.

But feminism started this way, certainly second wave. Women got together in female only spaces shared experience, then some bright woman did the research and got the statistics and another bright woman made sense of it all.

I completely agree with the lightbulb moment. For me feminism is deeply personal and I am a feminist manly because of my own experience first of all, being a girl child growing up in a violent household.

This isn't some social theory that I wish to cooly debate, its been a healing for me to listen to women much smarter than myself make sense of my own life and put it all into a wider context.

Women should probably stay away from men if they don't want to be RAPED OR KILLED. But diddums to the men they couldn't help it. Women are such nags and teases, it's their own fault.

I'd be all for the kind of men who encounter trouble when interacting with feminists not interacting with me or any woman or girl, ever.

Dat - yes, that too.

Give over cad.

What you mean is, less you interact with feminists, the less your conscience will prick you.

The less you interact with women - the less trouble you are likely to encounter.

Great post Datun.

I am an intuitive radical feminist but no little theory (beyond a module on the French feminists at university about a hundred years ago!) I have "Delusions of Gender" next in my reading pile which I got a few weeks ago. It's good to hear it talked of here as a good starting point into learning more about feminist theory.

This is an interesting advert from Australia. The tagline is violence towards women starts with disrespect. Feminists know this to their soul.

Men on here questioning, next time you are in the pub and man says cor look at the rack on that - you hear sexist banter, we hear this

I'm not very knowledgeable about feminism, but it strikes me that a lot of men who don't get it are not looking deeply enough or far enough back at the causes of inequality. And you don't really have to look very far at all.

So they see women making 'traditional' choices about work and child care and they assume that because these decisions are, on the face of it, free choices ( because women are allowed to make 'non-traditional' choices), then all is well and fair, and women have the same freedom to choose as men.

But this is clearly total bollocks. Women do not make these choices in a vacuum. Their 'choice' is hindered by all sorts of features of a patriarchal society, both past and present. Not just things about the way men behave, but about the low and skewed expectations women can still have about their own possibilities in life. To name a few...

1. The woman's own upbringing (whether she was treated equally with male siblings, example of equality set in parents' marriage etc)
2. The woman's husband's attitude, if she has one
3. The subjects girls were expected to do when she was at school
4. The careers that she was led to believe were 'suitable for women'
5. Her treatment by men during her lifetime
6. Lack of equality and social acceptance around division of parental leave and childcare

Equality as a belated concession in human history is not the same as proper, inherent acceptance that women are in fact, and always were, equal to men in every sense and therefore deserving of equal status and treatment. I'm not sure we even can totally eradicate the mindset that being a man is the default human setting, because it has been built into society for so long. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to. And that means some unplalatble truths for men and some facing their own intentional or comfortably misguided denial about the differences in what it means to live as a man compared with a woman.

'Allowing' women to have equal access to (most) things men can do/have does not in itself magically level the playing field, because many many women have not been privileged enough to grow up with the tools and attitudes to enable them to take full advantage of that access and are still prevented from doing so by the still prevalent anti-equality attitudes of many men and some women.

Oh lordy!

So who'se going to be cleaning all of this blood off the carpet, hmm?

Op I'd really love answer to this question please.

Women aren't excluded from power. Right. So the lack of female politicans and ceos is because women don't want it. Or just aren't good enough

Do you think black men are equally unambitious?

Actually. Do you believe white middle class rich men are just naturally better and smarter? Because if they aren't then they are excluding other people who don't fit that mould

^Perhaps this definition is more to the anti feminists liking;
“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”^

That's definitely what swung it for me.

Dadofgingers. With all the horrible things that men do and it is mostly men. Do you get why women might find it a big that a man would get her up about a tiny fraction of women who might judge your daughter for too much makeup?