Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

That's not any kind of argument, you would pick that up in a moment if someone used it in the other direction. "Men did the research?" It's just an ad hominem dismissal.

Even if there was no research, the most you could say was that there was no scientific evidential basis for thinking men and women are attracted, in general, to different things. It wouldn't tell us that by nature they are attracted to the same things and somehow societiy changes that.

But then you'd still have to give some explanation for the fact that clearly, male and female attractivness are not identical, you've already said as much yourself as the starting point. "Patriarchy" isn't an answer for that, it doesn't tell us why, how it happened, the mechanism. How has this somehow socialized women into being attracted to a different type of man than they would otherwise? It seems a far more complicated scenario than the possibility that male fitness for procreation and female fitness are not measured by the same standard, which is very much a live viewpoint in biology.

male attraction works quite differently than female attraction. So you will always see a tendency to more visually noticeable beauty standards for women. I also think there is a much stronger tendency for markers of youth to a factor in female attractiveness, and for male peak attractiveness to be older, sometimes significantly so, and that will lead to potentially really different approaches to beauty. For women it will be around maintaining an appearance of youth, which is not really that easy.

I think this is clearly evident from an evolutionary perspective. Males are attracted to markers of fertility and women are attracted to markers of success and safety. We are still the same basic animals we've always been, so even though these markers have changed over time, we are still driven in these ways.

Louise Perry's book 'The Case Against the Sexual Revolution' is really good on all this stuff. I also like Bret and Heather Weinstein's lovely book, 'A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century.'

I'm not arguing against feminism. I'm saying we don't live in a patriarchy. It's insulting to women living under male rule to deny our freedoms and claim we're in the same boat.

Very interesting and thought provoking thread. One thing that struck me is Julie Bindel's tendency to mention right leaning people, religious people and far right people all in the same breath. It is a kind of mental bait and switch. I wonder if she has spent any time with conservative and religious people in social and work settings. She paints a stereotypical picture of them which is at odds with my experience. She asserts that these men want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. What I observe is that these women want to stay home with their children when they are young. She asserts that these men think women are dirty, unclean. Where did she get this idea?

It makes be think about that research about sexual behaviour in female rats. When men did the experiments, they essentially set up a ‘rape chamber’ to study the female rats response. When a woman set up the experiment, she provided places of retreat, accessed by small holes the male was too big to fit through, the female’s behaviour was totally different. This was going on in the 1990s 2000s.

A lot of men, in particular, seem to enjoy doing that shit tonne of research. It’s a field with a strong male bias.

You can bash your head all you like, and try and make out like it's an argument that pornography is a good idea, which is just an instrumental argument.

There is a shit ton of research to suggest that males and females do not have the same markers for sexual attraction, even in the animal kingdom. And why would they? They don't exist to be fair, or egalitarian, they exist to efficiently pass on DNA in the context of a natural human reproduction without technological interventions.

How we choose to manage all of that is a different question, but this idea that its all some kind of construction by the patriarchy for the benefit of men (and why does it benefit men in this explanation, anyway?) is just an ideological claim, not an evidenced one.

One being that male attraction works quite differently than female attraction. So you will always see a tendency to more visually noticeable beauty standards for women. I also think there is a much stronger tendency for markers of youth to a factor in female attractiveness, and for male peak attractiveness to be older, sometimes significantly so, and that will lead to potentially really different approaches to beauty.

This makes me want to bang my head against the desk. This is straight from the 1990s anti feminist backlash, when all those fellas were turning their porn habits into ‘legitimate research’ evo psych. I am so not interested in going back down that rabbit hole in this decade.

I just do not believe that Iran is a patriarchy and the UK is a patriarchy. Both things cannot be true at the same time.

I appreciate that we are all probably trying to juggle stuff at this moment in time, but this statement isn’t logical. Oranges and apples are both fruit.

To me I would see it in anthropological terms - like you can see that a troop of baboons is patriarchal. Or a herd of walrus. It’s a society structured around male domination and male hierarchies.

Human beings can live in lots of different ways and we have come very far as feminists. But I do not believe it is over yet, there’s still a lot more to be cracking on with.

This is a hill I will die on. We do not live under patriarchy!

Perhaps I don’t agree with your definition here. I don’t believe we are under patriarchy. We live in a patriarchal society - it’s nuts and bolts were put together in times when women had far fewer rights.

Anyway, I don’t really think this is the thread to be discussing whether there is still any need for feminism in the UK - that would be a very long one. So I’m going to leave this one here.

As far as differences with male and female beauty standards:

I think this is driven by a few things. One being that male attraction works quite differently than female attraction. So you will always see a tendency to more visually noticeable beauty standards for women. I also think there is a much stronger tendency for markers of youth to a factor in female attractiveness, and for male peak attractiveness to be older, sometimes significantly so, and that will lead to potentially really different approaches to beauty. For women it will be around maintaining an appearance of youth, which is not really that easy.

We might reasonably ask why women don't become comfortable with appearing "older" once they have partners, and that is a very interesting question, I think. What it makes me think of is the way we often hear people say, how dowdy pictures of their mums or grandmums looked. Or comparing the appearance of the Golden Girls to the Sex and the City characters, at the same age. There is a real change of much older women working very hard to appear young, and if anyone wants to say that was caused by the patriarchy, I think they need to explain why it seemed less powerful back when there really were different roles for men and women. Instead, this seems to have ramped up as more women are competing for partners at an older age, and maybe as they are competing in the workplace too. The luxury of becoming a dowdy housewife seems to have given way to a perpetual need to remain young and vibrant.

But in addition to that, I think luxury product marketing has for a very long time focused on female consumers, because they have tended to control the household budget. So we have something like 100 years worth of layers of products and practices developed for that market - doing what advertising does, creating a need that didn't exist previously, and then providing a solution. We now, incidentally, see this happening more with the male market, and the gay male market being targeted as well because of it's high level of disposable income.

I'd ust point out two other things - there are, in reality, lots of women who don't bother much with any of this. You see them every day, they are all over the place. And the other is, I think the attempt to dismantle institutions like marriage and monogamy, which are not from the patriarchy, whatever that was, but were part of the supposed opening up of society and progress, have had the effect of sexializing women's clothing and presentation more than they ever were before. And many feminists continue on a regular basis to say that women need to have the choice to dress and present how they want,and that it is wrong to connect this with sexualization. so I am not sure it is the patriarch that is the real problem in this instance.

And despite there being, in my opinion, no unselfish reason for having children, those of us who choose to remain child-free are routinely called selfish.

Literally no unselfish reason, despite her catalog of the ways in which motherhood curtails women's free time and finances?

I am told I don’t know what I am missing, which is also untrue: I know exactly what I’m missing and I want none of it.

I find this very arrogant. "I haven't shared this experience which is very important to you, but I am certain I know everything about it and my judgment that it is not worthwhile for anyone is the only correct position in the matter."

Meanwhile, I have witnessed friends give up on trying to change the world in favour of having children, their focus shifting onto their own, ever-shrinking world.

Perhaps some of her friends have done this; I can't dispute that. But this is literally her only description of parenthood (apart from the unwilling mothers bit). Has she really never met nor can she imagine a woman for whom motherhood opened up new connections to other people and inspired a passion and dedication to take on issues that DO benefit society at large?

I find her contempt for mothers very off-putting, and also extremely poor politics. Since most women will become mothers at some point in our lives, how can we build an effective women's movement by telling them that motherhood makes them selfish and contemptible?

Well the headline is about having kids being selfish, but the actual article I wouldn't describe as a 'screed'. I don't agree with her but she isn't slagging off mothers so much as setting out her reasons for not wanting to be a mother. She writes:

Society can be unkind to those women who choose not to reproduce, but it can also be unkind to those that do. Working class mothers, in particular those raising children alone, often find that affordable childcare is non-existent; women who can’t afford to not work, as well as those that actively wish to, find that their lives are made near-impossible after they have children. Witnessing how these difficulties affect mothers certainly helped me decide that motherhood was not for me.

I don't know if she's written or said things that are more vitriolic, but in the absence of other context, I think that article is okay.

Oh heck, formatting problem there. I didn't mean to strike through the statistic.

You are very generous, Floisme, and it speaks to your character. As for Julie Bindel, I don't think writing an entire screed claiming motherhood is "entirely selfish" represents a one-off frustrated snarky comment.

unherd.com/2022/07/why-i-didnt-want-children/

To be clear, I think it is shitty behavior for anyone to question a woman's choice not to have children. No one should do that to Julie.

I don't understand why she doesn't extend the same courtesy to women who have made a different choice. She feels free to tell mothers-more than 80% of women-that our choice is wrong and selfish.

You don't need a vaccuum to be able to make a choice. If we have to take into account culture, context and history, no choice is ever completely free. That doesn't mean that we can't or don't make choices for our own benefit.

In some jobs, men literally are telling women to wear make up, shave their legs, wear heels.

This is very, very rare now. And against the law, I believe.

The emphasis on women’s appearance compared to men evidence of our lower social status. Stand there and be decorative while the men do the important stuff.

We're just not living in the same world with this! It's not the world I live in at all.

A society where men have higher social status and governing power than women. Also male domination in the home and family too.

I just don't think that's true to a large extent. There are still some sexist attitudes and old fashioned attitudes, but we've had three female PMs now (okay one of them only lasted a week). And women can divorce their husbands, there are laws against marital rape and now against coercive control.

I just do not believe that Iran is a patriarchy and the UK is a patriarchy. Both things cannot be true at the same time. It diminishes the experiences of women under patriarchy to say we also live in a patriarchy. We have incredible freedoms and rights the same as men in every area of life. Yes there are still inequalities (maybe there always will be - we are different, after all) but try telling any girl now that she's inferior to a boy and has to do what boys tell her to do. Or a woman that she has to do what men tell her to do.

This is a hill I will die on. We do not live under patriarchy! (However, I will concede that gender ideology could wipe out all our rights and put us back there.)

Patriarchy is at both the macro and the micro level.

You can’t make a free choice in a vacuum where patriarchy and misogyny never existed.

BeastlySlumber, I would say yes, it is a male dominated society. A society where men have higher social status and governing power than women. Also male domination in the home and family too.

Feminism has come pretty far, but we are not there yet.

In some jobs, men literally are telling women to wear make up, shave their legs, wear heels.

There was the case a few years back of the woman working at Harrods who was being disciplined for not wearing make up, even though the men aren’t required to wear make up in the policy.

The emphasis on women’s appearance compared to men evidence of our lower social status. Stand there and be decorative while the men do the important stuff.

We cross-posted! So you're talking about patriarchy on an individual scale - women who are with men who tell them what to do/wear etc? But most women aren't in that situation. And even then, they have the choice to leave, the legal right to divorce etc. I just don't see how it can be the same thing as actual patriarchy.

But your conclusion doesn't logically follow your premise. Just because men don't follow the same beauty practices as women doesn't mean beauty standards are "patriarchal" - unless by "patriarchal" you mean something which more women do than men.

I don't actually know what feminists mean when they talk about patriarchy because according to the actual definition it means "under male rule." But it's clear that men aren't making women wear make up, so you can't mean that women wear make up/follow beauty practices because men decree it. The patriarchy exists in places like Iran and Afghanistan, so to say we live in a patriarchy in the UK makes no sense to me. It must mean something different, but I don't know what!

Thinking of a couple of friends of mine who are really into make up. They ended up having relationships with men who whine when they hadn’t got make up on. And that is a bit of a dis. The subtext is “I don’t really like your real face, can you paint over it so I can fancy you more please”. It seems pretty patriarchal to me.

Most straight women want to look attractive to men and that is a biological drive, not a social construct.

I agree with this.

I don't think that beauty standards are "patriarchal" either.

I completely disagree with this. Men are not expected to uphold beauty standard to a level any where close to what is expected of women. Men are not judged and scrutinised almost solely upon their appearance as women are. Men don’t have beauty pageants, akin to farmers shows, where women judge them like livestock based on their appearance. Men are not expected to inconvenience themselves, to hamper their ability to breathe, sit or run comfortably, in impractical clothes in order to be attractive… i could keep going on into the night…

Yup, I think commercialism is behind most of it too, and women were targeted because they spend the most household money. Now we see men being more and more targeted too in an effort to mine every seam.

I think my back is on the mend, it's not hurting now, I am making myself stay in bed the rest of the day in hopes I can go back to work the rest of the week before the Christmas break.

This is interesting, especially because I am listening to the Savage Minds podcast in little chunks.

the idea among some feminists that women don't have a will to power is completely naive. They assert it in different ways, but it can be deeply destructive and sociopathic

In the podcast, Posie discloses something which makes me realise that Judith Green is utterly Machiavellian. Something I had no idea about. I had always assumed that the way Women’s Place was started up as a reaction to Venice Allan’s ‘We Need To Talk’ meetings was done with more of a sense of respect, it struck me as odd that they didn’t openly give her credit, but I assumed that VA felt she didn’t have the time and energy or wanted to stick to her own format, so they thought it would be easier to set up WP separately.

It makes me realise how VA and KJK really are the better people about this, that I had no idea until today.

That podcast from the other thread is brilliant. KJK very gracious and forgiving, tbh. More than I would be!