Are/should male norms be the benchmark for female 'equality'? Should 'femininity' be prized too?

Missy - socialism is not the only alternative to the capitalist/consumerist world we live in. So much of the ill we see in the world, not just women's rights, is because of this destructive Atlantacist economic/societal model.

That's where I come into conflict with much of popular feminism. Women ARE the strength in our communities but have been brainwashed into thinking otherwise. So we try to even things out by getting mums to throw their charges into childcare and don the power suit, all the while complaining OH won't pull his weight. Women's lot has changed in some ways yet in others it hasn't. Despite the wealth, I don't think Western women are hugely happier than 50 years ago. They are paid more, better educated and have many more legal rights and protections, thank fuck. BUT they work disproportionately more (in the home plus outside), shoulder more mental load than ever before, and as divorce has liberated many women from crap men, it has also meant many crap fathers getting away with not paying for their offspring. Then the rise of pornography has set women back. Plus I believe (I'd like to know if others think likewise) that those communities of SAHM backalong have been replaced with this nasty individualism of modern society. Sisterhood has disappeared...at least in RL - of course MN and the internet in general have brought us together in other ways, but too rarely physically.

Social democracy, not socialism. I’m not advocating socialism

"While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal healthcare, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism" FEE

No if you want to see full on socialism check out Venezuela.

As for abortion, that's a divisive issue. I still don't see this "take down" of women.

Social democracy works pretty darn well in Sweden, Iceland and the scandiwegian countries...

Missy, there are massive assaults on women’s reproductive rights in the USA. Abortion availability is zero in many counties, leaving women with no options. Women’s bodily autonomy has been overruled in Texas last year in order for a brain dead car crash victim to act as an incubator for an unborn baby (not for a day or two at the end of pregnancy, but from early trimester two, against medical advice AND against the wishes of her family.) if that’s not a tiny bit handmaidenly then I do t know what is.

I’m ok with capitalism, as long as it’s subjected to stringent checks and balances. A more social democratic capitalism, rather than unchecked free market flavour.
In terms of quality of life for the majority the social democratic model of the nordics / Scandinavian countries consistently ranks at the top of QOL measures (aside from our fucking awful weather.)

We have socialist aspects to our current society, and many women are paid for caring work through tax credits and/or carers’ allowance. Feminists fought for these kind of payments, and will continue to do so.

Tax credits have helped poorer women enormously.

"A million inadequacies in these set ups, but it's a world away from the Stepford/ Handmaid's tale dystopia we are seeing in the US and

oh please it's really not that bad, this take down of women nonsense. We have a relatively privilidged lifestyle in Britain compared across the globe.

Yes because what we all really need is to be "liberated" of our children and strive for communal child rearing setting. Then we can focus on the important things in life- going to work. I'm sick of people making out children are a burden.

Socialism is always a bad idea, it fails everywhere it's implemented.

I think most of you are living in an alternative universe.

Cheers

We need some new ideas and above all education and solidarity between women.

I think we have a lot to learn from sisters in Africa right now.
My sense is that it is particularly 'anglo saxon' take down at the moment, see trumpbrexitputin.

Whereas, in countries like Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone, women are taking on male power and winning, and of course Scandinavian and to some extent the other EU27 countries.

I think this is peculiar alliance of the extreme right needs a this sort of psychotic patriarchy to survive.
(Especially what with caucasian sperm counts going down and all.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/25/sperm-counts-among-western-men-have-halved-in-last-40-years-study)

< checks how much it would be to get to west Africa on fact finding jolly for mums net >

Doesn't help with the housework though. Or is that my housework.?

Sigh pressed send too soon.. eroded by the election of a man who actively glorifies sexual harassment as the potus.

It’s staggering, and yes it is a takedown. And we need to resist it

woman11017

Yes. Nodding along to everything you have written. And may I add its getting worse

Women’s rights are secondary to just about every other group, including things like religions that do not need and should not have rights for an ideology. Note I do not mean the individual holding that religion has no rights, they do and they should be free from discrimination because of it. But an ideology itself should NOT be protected from criticism. And yet women’s rights are being eroded on all fronts. Women in Vienna told to cover up to not ‘arouse’ men because the poor darlings do t know any better. NO ffs you conform to the social norms and laws of the country you’re in. Women’s rights eroded by the trans lobby. Women’s rights

woman11017 - great post. It is up to us as a society to reclaim femininity and define it as our own. Women have great power. I too have seen first hand the power of the hand that feeds and cares. Without women, the whole system would collapse. In the Wild West, it is said, women reclaimed the prairies from the young, violent men - they cleaned up the drinking holes and cleared out prostitution to create communities safe for raising children. Because women are the child bearers, and thus take the physical risk and cost of bringing babies into the world, they have a greater interest in settled, safe communities.

The last 100 years of life on Earth has been an exception, yet we can't imagine anything different. We need some new ideas and above all education and solidarity between women.

In China they worked in the fields with bound feet when they failed to marry up

In China too, women work or did work as builders. It was striking, when I was there in the early 1990s, to see women labourers working as road builders.

Everyone hates kibbutzim in the west because of anti Israeli feeling, but when I worked and lived on one, no work was segregated on sex grounds. Woman work was collectivised and the kitchen workers produced the great food, the children's house did the child care. Kids were loved, strong resilient, cheeky and very socialised, being brought up collectively. Kids were loved, strong resilient, cheeky and very socialised, being brought up collectively. Women followed their skill sets, men were forced to challenge genders norms. Privatisation and the unfashionability of socialism as well as international condemnation of Israel has now all but destroyed kibbutzim.

More close to home, the Greenham protest was an example of lived feminism. Men worked as facilitators to enable wives and mothers to forego 'traditional' ( don't accept this term! ) work to do political work.

Miners' wives had a different but matriarchal structure during the Miners' Strike.

A million inadequacies in these set ups, but it's a world away from the Stepford/ Handmaid's tale dystopia we are seeing in the US and britain.
Feminism(and civil race rights, for another thread) is the most frightening thing to have happened to caucasian men in the last 100 years. This is a take down.

Talk of 'traditional roles' is bizarre when you have Chaucer in the 1400s writing of the Wife of Bath who's rich, self employed and sexually liberated. Although our story has been written out of history, we have an ancestry of independence, collective actions and self reliance. Particularly if you look at international women's liberation movements from the 1880s onwards, from Russia, through to US to here.

Patriarchy is spreading a lot of nonsense to make us question our egality. This is a systematic take down of the equality we've sought.
Dworkin talked of the fact of our enforced isolation leading to our oppression. Being trapped as financially dependent carers suits patriarchy.

Rights are not won, they have to be defended.

"Producing roles": women produce at least half of humanity's food and they always have. "Male breadwinner" is a patriarchal myth. Women have slaved away in the fields, food factories, farms, soup kitchens, on plantations, gathering, fishing and small scale horticulture n pre-agrarian tribes. In China they worked in the fields with bound feet when they failed to marry up.

I've already made my point when I said men don't feel a need to analyse their own routines, things that are seen as feminine have to be assessed

Missy - are you sure you know any men? Because in my experience they question loads - and have you seen how often some men go to the barber? Or the gym? Plenty of men care about their appearance, care about being masculine, worry if wearing the pink shirt is too feminine, whether they can still get away with an earring, etc.

In the spirit of 'quickly searched links' have a google for Piston heads 'should I have a beard' and you'll see there's a number of links talking about the merits, the social impact (bosses, interviews etc).

To answer the OP's question, masculine patriarchal norms should absolutely NOT be the norm in the long run because they're sociopathic. We need to abolish socialised sex norms altogether. But in the meantime women + girls need to paid and acknowledged for the unpaid work they do and the physical reproductive labour their bodies put in.

Missymoo, men don't debate their grooming norms because they made the rules and have the freedom from being decorative objects. I find pit and leg hair on Caucasian men to be far more unappealing than on women cause it's thicker but I don't have the institutional power to push them into shaving. I'm more attracted to men from ethnicities that naturally have sparse body hair because most dudes can't be stuffed to remove theirs (while guilting women into it).

So I'm totally with femininity being a whole lot of crock constructed by patriarchy. Hormones do influence human behaviour somewhat but childcare has been dumped on women solely because men couldn't be arsed with it. W

The Stanford prison experiment showed that humans of both sexes get drunk on power shockingly fast. Men have been drunk on power for millennia while have been deprived, so this would also drive feminine behaviour seen as innate.

Nature and nurture are entwined because of neuroplasticity. Gender socialisation begins before birth so all this caring business could be softwired into girls 100% because very little in our brains is hardwired. Maybe there are some bonding chemicals resulting from carrying the babies in female bodies + breastfeeding, or perhaps just rationalization based on having put so much pain and risk into producing bubs- so better keep them alive not to waste it. But it's been hijacked by men and blown out of all proportion.

Well no because rejecting imposed concepts of femininity does not make you any less female. Rejecting aspects of femininity does not meal you have to instead embrace masculine stereotypes either.

Yes most men do not worry about their beauty routines (lucky them) but girls and women are socialized to spend time and money changing themselves, with the message that if they don't there is something wrong with them. Feminism says there is nothing wrong with them, there is something wrong with society. Women should be as free to dress and adorn themselves as much or as little as they like without censure.

That censure doesn't come from feminists. You seem to be trying to claim that the feminist boards here are full of people saying that women should not wear make up, or heels or pretty clothes, that they shouldn't shave or have other beauty treatment. It's not a truthful claim and you can't back it up.

The threads show women questioning things like make up, body hair etc, I've already made my point when I said men don't feel a need to analyse their own routines, things that are seen as feminine have to be assessed. Things associated with femininity are looked on with suspicion, as though preferences are pressured/forced.
As I said women who lose their hair, have masectomies feel grief because of the feeling of lost feminity, it does affect their self image and identity.
You may identify/ express yourself however you please no one has issue with that, but to suggest feminity is merely an imposition, I think is quite offensive to many women.
If all we strive for is to ditch feminine in favour of masculine traits and benchmarks we become neutered males.

femininity isn't a 'unit' of my identity. Gender might be really important to some people, but it generally to me it feels like an imposition. I don't do lots of things that society says I should do (and should want to do) and I think it should stop.

Re the threads you have linked, they don't say what you claim them to say, so what's the point in linking to them?

Also women who have had cancer, and had a mastectomy or lost their hair, find it deeply upsetting. It impacts on their feminine identity-the way they perceive themselves as a woman. I think it can be under estimated the value of "feminine", it is part of our identity, not all social constructs.

Yes I see, my point is though that men aren't discussing should we shave our beards, wear hair gel, go to gym to tone up, shave body hair etc... so why are women looking judging their own behaviours under a negative light.

Also, women are shamed into shaving their legs, whereas men are never shamed into shaving off any body hair. Even when they have really long gross sweaty armpit hair that clings to your shoulders when they hug you.

Why are women shaving their legs a topic of discussion, anymore than men shaving their facial hair?

Because if men don't shave their face, they end up with a long beard like Dumbledore that makes a HUGE difference to their appearance, plus is inconvenient and gets food stuck in it.

If women don't shave their legs, nothing happens. You have a few hairs on your leg. There's no practical reason to shave. It was literally invented by razor companies in the 20th century (fact).

Luckily my BF doesn't mind me having yeti legs for 8 months of the year - I only shave in summer because I'm scared of judgy comments (usually from other girls).