Apparently we are a bunch of "stay at home mothers"

Even if we were all SAHMs it still wouldn't mean we were ignorant. Most SAHMs I know have good educations and have worked before they became SAHMs.

Another thing .... whereas a lot of men who spend a lot of time at home just spend it playing some form or other of electronic games; most women I know who spend a lot of time at home read a lot of books and newspapers.

You’d have to live in a very specific bubble not to understand how birth and motherhood politicise women
This is so true. It goes to the absolute heart of the power of lived experience.

Yeah, we've had a few more avocados than other generations

Best line of the day.

My lot seem surprisingly sane - even the lot on the west coast of America and the Scottish contingent. Less surprisingly, the lot from the ME who think it’s hilarious (but there are a lot of doctors and engineers on that side).

Have only met 2 people spouting that line - one is just a bit of a wind up merchant /mr ‘I’m cool with the kids’, and the other a right-on Corbynite - until he wandered in when I was reading the newspaper and there was a piece about boys being permitted to join swimming and gymnastics with the girls on their teams (and changing rooms etc). His little girl had just taken up dance and gymnastics classes (I didn’t have to say a thing).

I suspect I might just be in the snowflake generation and there are younger members of my family who definitely would be.
All of them bar one know men can't be women and that sexism is based on biology. (and the bar one hasn't had kids yet so it may dawn on her yet) Yeah, we've had a few more avocados than other generations but other than that we're fairly normal.

Still working on my peer group though. Perhaps we have a genetic immunity to bs in my family.

Don't be mean, the snowflake generation has a whole 20 years more history to learn than us oldsters 😁

Is it odd, or is it exactly as one might expect, Errol?

I wonder what effect the parlous state of history as taught in school is having on people's awareness of social movements, contexts, histories, the general direction of things? We learned far more in Modern Studies about the broader sweep of history than we ever did in History and I am still, now having to fill in - well, had to start from scratch to be honest.

Seems to apply to many subjects - an intense focus on one very limited area to the exclusion of a wider view, overview, wider context. It gives a very patchy and partial impression of the world, and little framework for creating a cohesive worldview.

It is odd how many people who are apparently concerned about not 'being on the wrong side of history' are so woefully ignorant of the subject, isn't it?

A ... Nuremberg rally?

Do these people have the slightest understanding of history? Can you even imagine trying to get everyone to stand in a formation? They can't even align on minor parking issues, let alone politics.

Does the writer have the foggiest idea how daft and offensive that is as a comparison?

Women being treated so terribly is probably why lots of young people want to identify/hormone treatment out of becoming one

You’d have to live in a very specific bubble not to understand how birth and motherhood politicise women. Perhaps a man, or very young, or just hopelessly consumed by misogyny for some individual reason.

Motherhood is the time when very many women having a blinding and sudden realisation of how the deck is still stacked. Maybe their career takes a hit. Maybe they get sub standard maternity care or crap maternity leave. Maybe it’s their husbands assumption that while she’s washing nappies, it won’t be too much trouble to do his pants, too. Maybe they just get their pram elbowed off the pavement one too many times and realise they’re invisible.

They realise, Hey, hang on a minute, biology is real. We can all prat about on the Internet and play pretend that womanhood is some unknowable inner essence, but the work of having babies, raising children and all the rest of the grubby reality of womens lives doesn’t just vanish in a puff of glitter and condescension.

I'm a work from home mum, I don't recall my opinions on anything suddenly becoming magically more valid than before I started churning out skin care guides and power tool descriptions on my laptop. Unless it's about antioxidants or the differences between a spanner and a wrench.

This is what I was thinking of.

“Last week was my first ever visit to Mumsnet. Honestly, I thought it was going to be lots of stuff about prams, or family-related matters. A sort of online This Morning minus Phil and Holly. The reality is more like a Nuremberg Rally. It’s very scary.”

I assume the male numpties can't even see the many MN women who either never have been, or are well past being, mummies.

Huge mistake. Massive.

I was rather tangentially reminded of this thread by Sarah Ditum's column in the Times today. (If anyone wants to discuss it do feel free to copy the link and make another thread, I don't want to derail this one)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-does-tv-still-hate-middle-aged-women-sgt5m9bs9?shareToken=464adc2a2a58fad4f07a147fec22f64b

Oh oh - have they been watching ‘The Real Housewives of XX’ and think it’s a documentary? I’ve only seen wee snips and it looks pretty hideous.

We certainly see the belief very frequently enacted that all space is male owned, but they may choose to gift some bits of it temporarily to females unless/until male people want it. The anger when female people do not understand and enable this is interesting to witness.

The sexism in all this is quite mindboggling.

Education and maternity, women and children are being targeted, preparing both women and children to lower their boundaries and submit to their subjugation, we must understand that we exist for others and not for ourselves, we must have nothing for ourselves, nowhere to escape, nowhere to relax, nowhere to let down our guards and feel safe. We must know our place, lower our eyes and keep quiet and submit. That appears to be the goal.

It's still the case that not just the default person but the default space is assumed to be a male space. Women's spaces are the exception, carved out for us and easily targeted. Because I think many people still see the public sphere as male.

Just the fact that they describe puberty blockers as safe says it all.

But so many of this lot seem to assume that all MNers must identify as ‘cis women’ and thus be nice cosy support humans, fitting all the feminine gender stereotypes & chatting about nappies, pushchairs & lipsticks - I think that’s what one well-known trans person narrowed it down to. And when they find that most of us think gender is sexist bollocks they can’t cope.

Interesting, isn't it? For two thousand years we've had 'God made man in his own image'.

And here we are, in modern times, being told that patriarchy is a thing of the past, and now it's 'man made woman in his own image'.

No thank you. I'm still a voter. Although frankly, give that a year or two, as women having a vote is going to become a very inconvenient thing, and we have seen how women's rights are disposable at the drop of a hat. I wonder how long before it will become literal violence and microaggression/dogwhistle/white privilege right wing yada yada for female people to talk about wanting to keep their right to vote?

Education and maternity, women and children are being targeted, preparing both women and children to lower their boundaries and submit to their subjugation, we must understand that we exist for others and not for ourselves, we must have nothing for ourselves, nowhere to escape, nowhere to relax, nowhere to let down our guards and feel safe. We must know our place, lower our eyes and keep quiet and submit. That appears to be the goal.

I still find it baffling to meet people who don't apparently see or hear me, or be actually capable of meeting me as another human being. It's really, really weird. Like talking behind glass. When I first heard feminists say this I thought they meant it as a sort of metaphor.

But it happens, in real life, and I see it happen on here. Some people respond to women, feminists, mothers and Mumsnetters in a very particular way. It's quite jarring and confusing at first, and you question what's going on, and eventually what the feminists were saying finally makes sense and everything comes into focus.

It's only when you realise that the women here are just props, just sort of vague smooshy shapes with girlhair and girlfrock and girlboobs. I presume our speech comes out as a sort of half-registered burbling, with the occasional few trigger words picked up on and brought into sharp focus.

The words that are heard are those that are useful to those people who don't see women as human. They'll cherry pick what they please and ignore the rest, ignore the woman behind the words, dismiss us as not actually human.

This has been my biggest shock, I think, among many shocks as I've tramped through the foothills and paths of feminism.

Some people are actually incapable of seeing and hearing and meeting women as equals.

You could almost say that it’s been used in that article as a sort of dog whistle, couldn’t you, to summon up images of the utter worthlessness of working inside the home, and how women who do it are nappy brained idiots whose opinions aren’t of any note.

Not very progressive, is it? Or socialist (except it is all of a piece with a certain section of the left, which has always been sexist as fuck).