Was Greer Right When She Said Men Hate Women?

You are having no success at all putting words in people's mouths here, CritEqual . I suggest you try another thread.

All we want is to bre treated as equal partners, treated fairly in the relationships that we have.

To suggest that women develop (as a group) strategies to reverse the current dynamic so that they have financial control and through that wield dominance over their male partners, is not what women want. We are on the whole not interested in dominating our partners. feminists on the whole want a better society not one where the existing power dynamic is simply flipped so that women get to be as awful to me as men so often are to women.

The other point is that this doesn't work anyway as:

• Society still strongly enforces the current dynamic, it's hard work to go against how everything is set up, and things can ve difficult
• Men still have the option of asserting their dominance through physicality, there were some stats about household makeup and DV that were interesting, I'll see if I can find them

This is a man issue to sort out, really. if men truly believe that women are their equals then they as a group need to start acting like it.

Expecting high-flying women to partner less ambitious men doesn't work though. Even when women are the main breadwinners, the majority of men will do 50% of the housework/childcare/meal planning and still feel like they're doing their wife a favour by pulling their weight.

The cultural narrative of men supporting wives is about acting in a partnership, not in self-sacrificing to enable their wives to succeed. It's not comparable.

thebewilderness are you saying that we have no agency in how we meet people?

LastGirlOnTheLeft who is it that is making the rude comments about your SIL. Is it mainly men or women?

I think plenty of men do see women as less than full human beings. Sources of their pleasure etc. Which is why they see ugly women as worthless. Older women as worthless.

They will be lovely to family members, but any women outside their immediate circle? You're invisible. You're an object of contempt and derision. You're irrelevant. You're not worth much as a human being.

It doesn’t have to be high flying careers. Dh and I have more flexibility in some ways than say, a nurse rostered on shifts.

The same dilemmas apply. Childrearing is seen as women’s work. Too many of those nurses, and surgeons, and hospital cleaners are going to work after a broken night because their male partners ‘need to be ok for work.’ And society enables that.

Putting your disdain for people who do not wish to pursue high flying careers to one side for a moment.

That escalated quickly. Putting aside your ignorance of the way the majority of people meet people is impossible since that is the elephant in the room.

Putting your disdain for people who do not wish to pursue high flying careers to one side for a moment. One example I can think of two people with similar aspirations would be if both partners are entrepreneurs and can build the same business together. That actually happened in my own family with my grandparents.

As each year passes I become more convinced of its truth.

Some women do shop for servant husbands the same way men shop for servant wives. Perhaps you have heard of women going to Uni to get their MRS.
So you are suggesting that women should do what some women are already doing. Brilliant.

It's not a failing it's a choice. If there is a failing it's the assumption that maybe someone from a different socio-economic bracket you won't have things in common with. One of my friends is an extremely successful Doctor and her husband looks after the kids and all the domestic stuff and it works very well for them. They still shock horror have values in common as well as plenty of other things.

So odd how women date and marry men they have things in common with. Clearly a failing on the women's part, eh?

More women need to avail themselves of a choice taken by many men. Namely be more willing to date/marry partners with less education and fewer career aspirations. As it stands as women are getting more educated and ambitious but still tend to prefer men of similar education/economic class or higher. This hamstrings them in the workplace as they are less likely to have a househusband putting them at a disadvantage compared to the men with housewives.

Even the nice ones expect to be unencumbered by domestic life. And even the ones who accept they are not (my dh) butt up against this.

I had to go to hospital the other week. Dh took a late meeting with ds perched on his knee (because dh is a decent chap and frankly had no choice.)

Every man in that meeting had the same comment ‘oh why isn’t your wife/the nanny taking him?’ And we talked about this afterwards, about facilitation and how men expect to be able to just have late meetings and travel at the drop of a hat. And we concluded that this is going to be an issue - dh is very good at his job (I am too but magically I’m on the mummy track, which I’m sure will shock you all...)

So the default Male opinion was ‘oh cute kid, but why on earth are you not having a stay at home wife or a nanny?’

We both found it very depressing because we try our very best to parent and work equally, but I can SEE it coming - he’s going to be offered some fabulous job somewhere. Then what?

The whole world is set up like this - none of the senior women have young kids. (And incidentally they are then called ball breakers so you can’t fucking win either way...) Some, in fact a lot of the senior men do but they have a wife at home or a couple of nannies. So they’re off the hook.

Even ‘nice’ men who don’t loathe women, benefit from this shit. I bet not a single bloke in that meeting would say they were sexist - and they’re probably not in themselves. They probably say things like ‘well we would promote women but there just aren’t enough at the level we need.’ And the conclusion they draw is because maybe women are just not wanting it enough, or just not up to it. And none of them seems to connect that with the fact that there’s a small army of women behind them, enabling them to live that life.

It’s so frustrating.

And when men hate women, they hit and kill them. Rape them. Their response is violence.

Our response, as a PP said, is just to get annoyed. Frustrated, maybe a bit resentful.

The saying should really be, 'hell hath no fury like a man scorned'.

Absolutely flew. Even when you have a woman in power she still only feels like a placeholder - like Teresa May coming in like a mum to sort out the Brexit shitshow and once it’s done and the game is set up back up again, the boys can come back in and take over, as per fucking usual.

Mn is full of threads about abusive, dismissive and thoughtless husbands and partners. If men in general truly saw women as they see themselves these threads would be rarer and more individualised - there would be no chorus of men don’t see dirt or men can’t remember birthdays.

Haha! Me too, that's a great summary Dodo!

As long as you accept that you'll only ever be second-best...

It's as though the cultural assumption is that individual women are lovely, men can love and appreciate them and genuinely like them as individuals, but they are essentially supporting actors in the Man-Show who make sure men have the life they're entitled to.

This. I’ve never seen it summed up so well before. And it makes me sad because it’s true.

I think GG is right that there's a complete dismissiveness of the lived experience of women and that this can turn nasty when women don't go along with what they want.

My father has always been lovely to me but gets great joy bonding with male friends by sending misogynistic videos on Whatsapp. My uncle always talked to me about being able to do anything I liked in my career, but had a quiet word when I got married about supporting my husband and being ready to follow his job around (that one really stung). Even my husband started from the assumption that we could have children without having it impact his life in anyway, with no thought of how he'd adapt his hours or have to rethink cycling on the weekends etc.

It's as though the cultural assumption is that individual women are lovely, men can love and appreciate them and genuinely like them as individuals, but they are essentially supporting actors in the Man-Show who make sure men have the life they're entitled to.

I don't think the men in my life hate women.

The men in the comments section on FB, on the other hand, unswervingly do.

ironic that people call men boring when we have to listen to the same old shit constantly about men being inherently bad

I think you are a man.

Fuck off then, if you don't like the conversation. Just piss off. No-one's going to miss you.

It’s pointless arguing (and no no I’m not a man) given the narrow mindedness of people on here.

We all know nice men. And nasty ones. Even the nice ones expect things 'just because you are female'. Get the fuck over it or use your spare time to change that if it bothers you so much.

ironic that people call men boring when we have to listen to the same old shit constantly about men being inherently bad.

We ? This sounds a lot like you are a man to me.