Women can rise up without dragging men down

Way back in my Ladies Against Feminism days, I recall it being a common argument that feminism was responsible for lowering living standards because men could no longer earn enough to support their families. Looking back I think it was a good example of other forces in play that found feminist ideas a very useful whipping girl, and was one of my first inklings of women being blamed for bad things if they dared to step out of line.

I've only been reading earlier today of women in that mindset who talk in glowing terms of 'the household vote' which was what happened before women got the vote. Their answer to the pernicious effect of women being able to vote now was to really big up this idea that every one in the house voted the same way as the husband/father. That probably sounds really far fetched to you, but I assure you it's a thing because in the early days of my marriage, that's what we did here.

I agree with you, OP. Don't let's pretend that feminism is all about being nice and fluffy for everyone. More female MPs means fewer male MPs. More female judges and CEOs means fewer male judges and CEOs. Men have to give up some of their power.

On balance though most men in my life would rather a world where they can share parenting and be themselves without hyper-masculine stereotypes.
Absolutely. Yes some power and privilege is shared evenly instead of just granted to men, but then other things, expectations etc are also shared with women.

Why I should care about this and more specifically why feminists should even discuss it. True equality would mean advancement based on merit, why would I be worried about men not achieving the potential that only priviledge made available to them.

18 of the world's 20 wealthiest individuals are men, that's a phenomenol amount of power and influence, only 2 are women, I don't think men will be troubled with real equality anytime soon.

"when all you've known is privilege, equality feels like oppression"

I so agree with this statement.

On balance though most men in my life would rather a world where they can share parenting and be themselves without hyper-asculine stereotypes.
The fact they have to compete for jobs against more than just 50% of the population is a small price to pay.

OP - that is the standard Third Wave/lib fem feminist mantra, meant to try to calm men down about feminism and assuage their fears and kiss their arses and try to make them not get angry at us for standing up for our rights. It slowly morphed from that to making feminism all about the men, and the trans.

I don't bother with those caveats anymore. Statements about women's liberation shouldn't include men and how good things will be for men at all. It isn't about them. Everything doesn't have to be about them. I' tired of all the so called feminist little girls who try to beg and scrape and cater to men to "keep them in the movement". If you have to do that they weren't with you in the first place.

PS I agree wrt Theresa May. She is a scapegoat. The damage was done by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage by the time she got the job. (apologies if I've got the perps' names wrong, I'm living in Ireland so I had only half an eye on brexit before the no was passed)

yes this ''viewpoint'' is total obfuscation.

How does wanting equal responsibility, equal credit, equal pay, not to be objectified ''drag men down''.

Only the stupidest stupidest men really believe this. The merely stupid men who believe this know on one level that what equality doesn't drag men down but they don't LIKE it so they obfuscate and say it is anti-men.

YY TM as PM to deliver the impossible is classic glass cliff have been banging on to DH about it for ages.

What's really interesting is the framing of it in the press, its never the govt deal, or the brexit group deal, or whatever, all of a sudden, its teresa may deal, all on her and her alone. Really really fascinating.

OP it seems to me the saying you discuss assumes that only jobs like prime minister are of value, rather than jobs like parent. Which of course is the patriarchy all over.

If women were more equal in all aspects, that would mean more families would share the 'women's work' of child raising / caring and actually I think a lot of men would like that. There would be better work / life balance for all. People in exciting jobs might be different, but most people in the work force would rather spend more time with their families, rather than more hours working.

In general, in being a parent, I think both DH and I would have been better off if we could have both worked part-time and both looked after the kids part-time but things just aren't set up that way (they're getting a bit better with shared parental leave which wasn't around for DD1 but still a long way to go). I do know a few families who manage this and they seem to me much happier than most but they are families who had the foresight / luck to go into well-paid professions where part-time work is possible.

I know DH feels quite fed up at times when he feels he's missing out on the kids growing up.

True equality would also mean employers recognising that the army of women (and men) doing unpaid 'women's work' of child rearing and caring actually contribute a lot to a well-functioning society (which IMO we really don't have).

It will be interesting to see whether David Cameron gets back into politics after his memoirs are published, and how the fate of TM plays out by contrast.

Women have not been represented in positions of influence and have not been at the table historically to shape society as we know it. There is an absence, a void that echoes back through generations. Socially, economically, legally and politically women were excluded deliberately by men.

Given that we are therefore in a position of almost incalculable deficit, then even if equal representation started right now today, it would take decades and thousands of women stepping up in all fields to properly redress the balance.

A mighty debt is owing. As most women simply want a clean slate and a fair split, it does make me wonder what sort of man would complain they are somehow now losing out.

I think it was unsurprising and not at all a coincidence that a woman got the job of PM responsible for implementing Brexit. It was clearly a shit career-ending lose-lose job.

I bet there's an awful lot of men glad a woman has the job of PM right now. Unless TM pulls off some kind of miracle she's going to be the woman scapegoat.
Yes some men will be worse off if women get more power and influence. I think that society as a whole will benefit but I can see why men, who have the advantage and want to keep it, would disagree.

It isn't pandering to men to shift their focus from any potential losses to all the potential gains.

Men suffer from the inequality of the patriarchy too. The men in power less so, so they have an interest in keeping the status quo, and they peddle the myth that by women becoming equal men as a class will have to lose.

It just isn't true. Your Theresa May example is a nonsense tbh and only reinforces the idea that a man is entitled to that role.

If men are losing something, it is only something that shouldn't have been exclusively theirs to begin with.

I completely agree its chicken and egg, yes. And yes, I think the things we would understand as 'male spheres' are ripe for a re-evaluation as to their relative worth.

This is me living up to the alternate meaning of 'radical' in 'Radical feminist' - the misunderstanding that thinks it means 'extreme'. I am calling for a revolution. I'm not about tinkering with the oppressive bollocks we currently labour under and trying to help women succeed in systems that were only ever designed with men in mind.

I'm suggesting something new and actually brave - looking at society as a whole, women as well as men, and rethinking the whole stupid edifice.

'The jobs that tend to fall to women have low status, and therefore women are deemed to have low status, and those jobs are deemed appropriate for those with low status'

Chicken and egg though.

It's been observed that the status of things is low if its women that do it.
The roles if done mainly by men would be high status.

Is not about the tasks /roles/ jobs at all. It's about who dies them.

Eg pay and respect deteriorated in roles that have moved from mainly men to women doing them. Usual examples are medicine, teaching. Or to look at different countries eg medicine in Russia apparently has always been fairly poorly paid as it was seen as woman's job, different to other countries

I don't think that men would lose out if, for example parliament was made up of equal number of women as men.

Competent women would replace the incompetent men, making parliament as a whole better.

Men as well as women would benefit from a better standard of government.

No one would lose out, the men displaced would find jobs that they are capable of doing well.

when all you've known is privilege, equality feels like oppression

This ^

Bumpitybumper asking the oppressed to have sympathy for the oppressors is a stretch too far for me I'm afraid.

Equality is necessary, those who have benefitted from oppression will obviously be unhappy. But then I've spent my entire life being conditioned to think of them first, and now I refuse to.