Why do we bother?

Thank you Sister Wendy & Jessica and so many many marvellous women on here and everywhere fighting to retain our sex based rights. :

Sharing the truth, the facts, the reality, joining the dots, seeing the biggest picture. No more collusion, no more shame and guilt and buying into the projections of others. No more gaslighting

A good start to the day

I’m in my mid 60s and I think you should not be depressed. There have been huge improvements in my lifetime and my mother has seen unbelievable changes in hers. In every walk of life, changes are incremental. You also have to remember that not everyone is quite so determined to bring change about and there still seem to be mothers and fathers who are unable to bring their sons up to be caring young men. If people cared about each other, many issues would be solved.

My mother was required to leave the family home at 15, despite going to a grammar school. She entered the nursing profession. It’s what girls did. Very many professions did require married women to leave. Women had no income and men controlled the money. Most big family decisions revolved around men and they certainly didn’t cook or help with housework. I think many women were exhausted and “career women” (as they were known) were few and far between. All senior teachers were single women or men. Girls were taught ironing, even at mum’s grammar school.

Times have changed, and we have changed. Women now run marathons, can run more than 400 m at the Olympics and even play football at a World Cup. Try looking on the bright side and choose battles wisely.

Jessica, I really value your contributions to this board and your passion and determination to speak the truth.

I don't post as much as I'd like to, because of my own personal situation and all the emotional energy that takes up.

Coming here to read the sane thoughts of so many wonderful women literally keeps me going and helps me fight another day.

It feels like a community and reminds me how wonderful women are. I get so much confidence and determination from posters like you. I've learnt so much.

For me, that's a success story. Sharing the truth, the facts, the reality, joining the dots, seeing the biggest picture. No more
collusion, no more shame and guilt and buying into the projections of others. No more gaslighting!

I left my husband snd got legal aid to divorce him. This was first set up to allow soldiers to divorce their wives who were cheating on them in the second world war.

They might not have helped women a lot, but we have had two prime ministers and several queens running the UK. The firstborn in the royal family can be the regent, rather than the first boy.

Adverts portrayed women as dim housewives or sex objects.

This view is still alive and thriving today. I always cringe when I see references to "1951's housewife" because in my experience they were anything but dimwitted doormats. Very often they were the resilient and very assertive centre of the home and family, who determined what went on within the house. During the war in Britain it was the "dim housewives" who were the very backbone of society, keeping things going when Britain was under siege. I have great admiration for British women of the 50's. They were strong,

And we are certainly still regarded as sex objects. Just look at the way we are supposed to beautify ourselves and keep ourselves sexy and desirable up until old age!

Those are the two areas where I feel there has been little progress.

Jessica, the feminist current roundup this morning was all stuff that I consider to be good news, albeit much of it is putting right serious wrongs

www.feministcurrent.com/2019/07/03/whats-current-ontario-court-rules-man-who-refused-to-wear-condom-after-agreeing-to-committed-sexual-assault/

• An Ontario court has ruled that a man who had unprotected sex after agreeing to wear a condom committed sexual assault. Ontario Superior Court Justice Nathalie Champagne determined that Anibal Rivera’s actions amounted to fraud and caused a significant risk of serious bodily harm.

• Manslaughter charges against Marshae Jones, an Alabama woman who miscarried as a result of being shot in the stomach, have been dropped.

• PinkNews has issued an apology after publishing a defamatory story about SNP MP Joanna Cherry, claiming she was being investigated for homophobia.

• Amsterdam’s first female mayor plans to end “street window displays” in the red light district, saying, “I think a lot of the women who work there feel humiliated, laughed at…”

• The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms will be representing three more of the BC estheticians who face complaints for “declining to perform waxing services for a trans-identifying individual who possesses male genitalia.”

slowly, slowly, we turn the tide

Married women were not allowed to work in the Civil Service in Britain until 1946.

Part of the civil service had a marriage bar till 1973, which I think was the last in the UK, but plenty of professions had marriage bars into the '50s and '60s, which isn't actually that long ago at all.

Some women have always had to work, married or not, through economic necessity.

My mother worked for the civil service in the UK and was strongly invited to leave when she got married.

Thanks Timeforakinderworld. That's what I forgot to mention. My mother had been in the civil service of that country and was supposed to resign on marriage. I'm not sure what happened, but by the time I was aware of what she was doing she did still work in the civil service and did so all her life.

My mother worked for the civil service in the UK and was strongly invited to leave when she got married.

I worked in construction in the 80s, and every time I mentioned a new boyfriend, there was the expectation within minutes of marriage, babies, and leaving.

Married women were not allowed to work in the Civil Service in Britain until 1946. Single women civil servants sometimes had clandestine relationships instead of marriage, purely to keep their jobs.
OP, there have been loads of improvements in women’s rights in my lifetime, (I’m 63).
When I was young, there was no Equal Pay Act, abortion was illegal, the OC pill wasn’t invented, family planning was available to married women only, women couldn’t sign a credit agreement without a male guarantor, there were no women’s refuges, marital rape was legal, medical schools in London imposed 10% quotas on women students, schoolgirls were forced to study cookery instead of technical drawing or woodwork, and also forced to play netball instead of football. There was no Women's World Cup. Sexist jokes were on mainstream tv. Adverts portrayed women as dim housewives or sex objects.
We’ve come so far! Don’t give up now - it’s exactly what the TRAs and MRAs want. Every generation must fight to retain and build on the rights we have won.

Hepzibar my aunt, age 75, worked for the GPO as a telephonist before she got married.
When she married she had to leave work- the GPO would not employ married women.

My mum, divorced in 1965, could not get a store card from John Lewis in the late 60's. She was asked for a male guarantor- her father or husband.
She could not divorce her husband until he co-operated by providing evidence of his infidelity.
My dgm had all her teeth taken out before marriage as a "gift" to her husband so he wouldn't have to pay for future dental treatment (1929)
Mum again- and dgm- had to get a maLe guarantor to sign the rent agreements.
Girls in my secondary school had to get higher grades at maths and sciences at '0' levels than the boys before they were allowed to do 'A'levels as the dept head said girls were not suitable for scientific subjects.

A few examples- life for women is much better now, I think for misogynistic males too much better, so there is push to remove women's freedoms.

Thanks lamaha. I never knew that was a thing.

In the sixties.

My mother worked for the civil service in the UK and was strongly invited to leave when she got married.

Hepzibah: When was this and in what country?

It was in the 50's and in a British colony with British law. I won't name the country for privacy reasons. It was one of the things my mother, an ardent feminist, campaigned about.

I think we all feel a bit knackered now and then, but I'm NEVER giving up. Solidarity!

In my mother's day, a woman could not even work once she was married --- she had to resign
When was this and in what country? Both my grandmothers worked in the 40s/50s.
I think things are getting better all the time, in general. The Internet shows the darkest and most extreme side of things, and in terms of male entitlement is probably the greatest threat to feminism there is.
But in our lives day to day, we know we are deserving of equal pay, respect and autonomy and i think our sons on the whole beleive this too.

I'd suggest a break from these forums. Whilst raising genuinely important issues, they do tend to focus on the negative side of things rather than the majority of people who get by just fine.

I don’t think that’s true. I used to think that was true, but the more I learned, the more I started paying attention, the more I realised that even for privileged women, the world is still a difficult place to navigate. For poor women the world is dangerous and set against them at every turn. That those women achieve as much as they do is a testament to the courage and resilience, not to a “just fine” world.

It is over-whelming Jessica, but some things are better. Women’s education is now seen as important and many barriers have been removed for our participation in society.

I think we’re at a point where we expected that the world was leaning to justice and liberation. But it’s an old house and when we started pulling up the floorboards, we discovered so much ugliness had been hidden, eating away at the foundations.

At least we can see it now, and name it, and call it out; maybe that’s something. In the past, Sevu Reece might not even have been an issue because DV wasn’t seen as serious or important.

But the rage is hard to manage, the endless anger at the many ways men express their disdain for women, even if don’t injure or kill them.

Maybe take a break, retreat for a while. Even warriors need to rest.

We bother because nobody else will.