Can MNHQ set up a new discussion category called Feminism: sex & gender discussion (inclusive, non-GC)

yes to breaking down the patriarchy thread

tempted to change my name to UppityHarridanOutandProud.

I think a patriarchy break it down for me thread is a good idea

Is there a Patriarchy break it down for me thread? Maybe @haXXor could start one with her post (pretty sure you’re a her @haXXor sorry not sorry for assuming pronouns 😝)

Interesting points thank you @howdoesatoastermaketoast and @Fairislefandango

This twaw issue has brought me to feminism and I’d never considered it deeply before - my eyes are being opened through mn to issues like surrogacy that I’d always thought ‘that’s nice/kind’ about before.

I’ve always thought of myself as a feminist in that I believe men and women should be equal in society but never went beyond that. Growing up in the 70s 80s I suppose I was put of academic feminists because they were painted as uppity harridans who eschewed make up, bras, shaving etc. I thought we had equality back then. It wasn’t till I had my children (still school age) that I saw big difference in how much of the mental load I take on as a mother.

I’m not sure about the patriarchy/ origins etc so it’s definitely put a different spin on it for me thinking of instinctual/ evolutionary drives.

Food for thought. I worry about talk of the patriarchy turning men off from supporting feminist goals though. We are all humans and need to somehow find a way to work together to have a society which has more respect and value for what has always been seen as ‘women’s work’ with no economic value.

@EndlessTea

absolutely, people are rarely walking around consciously thinking, "I worry about my children because historically over evolutionary timeframes parents who worried about where their kids were did a better job of keeping them alive" nevertheless, clearly that's pretty much what's going on.

I’m with you @Random789 - I found @haXXor s post excellent but I disagree on the exploitation being all about pregnancy.

Just because it's not all about pregnancy now (when we have contraception, safer births and when many men aren't that fussed about having children, even if that underlying drive still fuels their sexual behaviour ), that doesn't mean that the whole edifice of the patriarchy isn't still a result of it probably having been originally pretty much all about pregnancy. I think @haXXor 's excellent post made that clear. What started out as commodifying and controlling women as vessels for men's progeny probably just evolved into the right of men to use women's bodies for whatever they wanted.

Intellectually unpicking behaviours that are largely instinctual and rarely conscious strategies means it will always be imperfect.

Bullies bully because they enjoy it, they find it rewarding and they get good outcomes from it.

Rapists rape because they enjoy it. It gratifies an urge. It’s rarely a thought-out strategy.

There may be a greater thrill in the thought of rape resulting in impregnation, but the rapist rapes as an end in itself.

Yes

Our lives are short, children are our only shot at any kind of immortality

as women we just don’t understand the concept of being unsure about your genetic link to your children

Excellent post haxxor.

@Random789 I think the link between haxxor's point and yours is the somewhat obsessive instinct to possess and control a woman as entirely as they can (that some men are prone to and other more civilised ones manage) is linked to evolution and wanting to only invest resources in a child that is going to pass on your genes.

It isn't the only point of our oppression but it is the crux of both societies and individuals who see women as a resource to be owned traded and controlled.

I’m with you @Random789 - I found @haXXor s post excellent but I disagree on the exploitation being all about pregnancy.

I think a lot of it is just down to possession of our bodies but not for pregnancy just for consumption. Testosterone levels make a massive difference to sex drive. And I think rape as a weapon of war is a demonstration of conquering - again not necessarily about enforcing pregnancy but demonstrating power and instilling fear.

I think there might also be an element of using those acts of violence to bolster the psyche for other acts of violence.

I feel a bit unsure about making pregnancy (and penetration) so completely central to the analysis of women's vulnerability.

The thing is, sex inequality occurred long before reliable contraception and safe abortion were available and sex before marriage was destigmatised.

Now that women’s control over her own fertility is pretty much taken for granted, we can have the luxury of blindness to the centrality of our reproductive role in our vulnerability.

I support much for what @haXXor says in her post but I feel a bit unsure about making pregnancy (and penetration) so completely central to the analysis of women's vulnerability.

I know that right-wing politics, esp in the US, seeks to control and oppress women by forced pregnancy, I know that individual abusive men use pregnancy as a source of control and oppression. And I know that becoming pregnant and giving birth is the point in very many women's lives when the superficial equality in their reltionship with a man is revealed to be a fiction, as she becomes trapped in tasks that her parter refuses to percieve and properly share.

But, still, what I see in men's extraordinarily aggressive refusal to accept women defining and asserting themselves as a sex category, seems like something to which penetration and pregnancy are not wholly central

What these men want is possession. Not just physical possession but a kind of psychic possession. The want women to actually be the object of the male gaze, rather than independent subjects that are appropriated by men as objects. They resent our existence as something other than a focus of their desire.

That is a psychological imperialism that exploits psychological vulnerabilities. It exploits women's tendency to readily perceive and readily overvalue mens needs and sideline their own. Whether that psychological vulnerability is partially innate or wholly socialised I don't know, but it possibly explains why so many women are endorsing the mockfeminism of the TRA men'srights movement.

So I guess I would charactise pregnancy as just one of three fundamental vulnerabilities -- the other two being lesser physical strength and a greater likelihood of having the kind of emotional intelligence that leads them to see, acknowledge and overvalue other people's needs (and undervalue, or learn not to see their own).

The reason vaginas, penises, pregnancy are powerful too s of men's oppression of women is that they facilitate possession. But other factors- psychological ones - facilitate that too.

Sorry that was in response to @EmotionalSupportHyena and I spelled it wrong Femmymenism - perfect!

Femmimenism - perfect! 😂

I love that post Haxxor. One for the lib fems who think oppression is lack of pockets and a 10% gender pay gap at their Stonewall champion employer.

Thank you haxxor. This thread moved too fast for me to follow, but I would love to have that post pinned to the top of the feminist board. It could save us all so much time and tedium on FWR.

Absolutely excellent post, haxxor.

Oddly, I've heard similar points made by misogynist and abusive men.

They approve or at least accept that situation, and I guess the whole point if feminism is to uncover and reveal that system/dynamic as well as counter it.

Women are seen as livestock by many, whether they acknowledge that consciously or not.

Absolutely this.

There are some posters who post on FWR who try using the ‘you make women out to be victims‘ line and their arguments lack any conscious understanding of other women’s lives. It is bonkers when you see. Truly bonkers.

I agree! Put it on a separate thread so it doesn’t just get lost in here, please @haxxor?

@haXXor . I think that is the best post I have ever read on MN. I am going to share it with my DDs.

Are you asserting that lesbians commit approximately 100 times as many sexual assaults as straight women, like men do? That's a pretty extravagant claim. I'm very interested to see the data you are citing.

"Paternalistic feminism" is a slur used by misogynists in feminist clothing, aka "libfems", to silence and shame any feminist who states her recognition that men are stronger than women and hence we are more vulnerable than men are to being seriously harmed during violent assault and are more easily overpowered for the purposes of rape etc. They dishonestly conflate asserting "women are vulnerable" with claiming that "women need male protection", hoping that no one will notice the conflation of two very different statements. See also phrases like "victim feminism".

There was a TRA on Twitter called xyr2000, account now deleted, who asserted that women wanting single-sex prisons was based on the "patriarchal and misogynist" idea that women can't defend themselves against men. It takes a special kind of malice to state that and claim to be progressive. Of course we can't, especially if we are a 5% minority in a mixed prison!

The whole premise of materialist feminism is that we recognise the following:

• Almost all women have what I've called in the past "an unpatchable security vulnerability between their legs", it's called a vagina and if a man puts his penis in there he can make us pregnant against our will. Importantly, no man has this vulnerability. The common male experience is that they cannot ever get pregnant, by force or choice.

• Almost all men have a purpose-evolved intrusion tool/weapon between their legs, it's called a penis and it can be deployed to force a woman to be pregnant. Importantly, no woman has this weapon. The common female experience is that none of us can sire children, by force or by choice.

• The two points above mean that women all lack the structural power over the opposite sex that comes from being part of the sex class that a) is likely to be able to use a body part to force a pregnancy on someone else, b) can use the fear of such a forced pregnancy (whether bluffing or otherwise) to intimidate members of the other sex class, and c) is immune to being forced into a pregnancy.

• Men are generally stronger than women, exacerbating my first two points by making it easy for men to overpower women.

• It takes a woman 40 weeks to gestate a baby, but a man can sire a baby in minutes. This makes the woman the rate limiter of reproduction and makes her uterus a valuable resource to be collected (e.g. harems), controlled, and exploited. This also makes an infertile woman broken and worthless because her uterus is not exploitable.

• In societies where violence is used to seize and defend land, men become the land owners because they are stronger and so more able to fight.

• When men own land, they want their sons to inherit, making each man want to prevent other men from using "his" woman/en's uterus(es) to sire children.

• When nation states arise, the State now also wants to exploit women's uteruses to create future citizens. When the State thinks women have too few children, we get Romania's Decree 770. Too few, we get China's One Child Rule.

• Corollary to the previous point: The freedom of individual women to be child-free is conditional on the State allowing it, which in turn is conditional upon other women having children in sufficient numbers to keep the State happy.

All the rest - the double standards for sexual behaviour, the restriction of women to the home, the wife battering, the abortion restrictions, the existance of porn and prostitution and how female porn performers and prostituted women are treated, the blaming of rape victims, even the different clothing expectations for the sexes and the punishment of cross-dressers - are all consequences of my points above.

In particular, realising that last bullet point went a long way towards obliterating my previous belief in the libfem "choice feminism" narratives, because I realised how little agency we all truly have. We aren't all isolated individuals living isolated lives making isolated decisions; our decisions are made under the influence of social, financial, etc pressures and coercion from the State, which made me question other narratives about the "choice" to turn to prostitution or pornographic performance.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you see it, you can never again regard transwomen as more oppressed than any human female, because they have known from birth that they cannot get pregnant and have not spent their lives being oppressed because of their assumed reproductive potential.

I already said this upthread but if you're turning up to a peaceful women's rights event wearing balaclavas and armed with weapons, ready to commit acts of violence against women who are just speaking about their own rights, you ARE the Nazis.