Feeling depressed after conversations with my young adult daughters regarding female value.

Are you saying you are proud your daughter slept with quite few men by 22 and that there is something wrong with being a virgin?

I'm not quite understanding or believing that a mums first thought , on finding that her young daughter has been raped twice, comes on to mumsnet to discuss female values on a feminism board??? i would be in bits.

@BigButtons I realise you've had a shock here OP

At some point, I'd ask her about this bit "she believes that feminism driven by millennials has caused a huge back lash amongst men, given raise to people like Andrew Tate and devalued women"

I don't think the Tate type appeared in isolation, but women are not to blame for the behaviour of him and his ilk.

It seems op is describing 2 issues

the first, that women who have lots of casual sex are deemed to have lower value.

the second, that somehow OP’s dd has commingled her sexual life and non consensual sexual encounters and given them a kind of equality.

i fail to see what role feminism plays in either issue, either directly or as a backlash. The valuation of women by sexual activity long pre-dates the feminist movement.

that the daughter includes her rapes on her “bodies” list is quite disturbing to me. Yes, in the way I was taught to disclose, everyone you have had sex with matters because everyone is a disease vector. But it isn’t 1990 and I don’t think these young adults are trading lists so that if one of them gets an std they can start sending messages to beepers.

so maybe this is a failure of feminism. A failure to show that sex does have value. That your choice matters so much that if you do not consent, that name should not be on your list.

Yes, i do apply the same value judgement to men who are promiscuous especially if they refer to themselves and women as bodies, keep a written list complete with ratings - only difference there is i doubt they share the list with their mums over a glass of wine. That is a really odd thing for an adult child to do.

I'm a great deal older than all of you and it was always ever thus.

Agree 100%

You think women who have few sexual partners are better ("some are choosier"), than those who have many partners ("meaningless, cheap sex", "saying yes to every potential screw that came along"). Why can't everyone choose what suits them? Why must there be a value judgement? Some, like you say, are looking for deep connection, commitment, love and trust. Others look for fun and excitement and attach less meaning to the whole thing. Why do you think the former is superior?

Having just one partner isn't a bad thing. It is also not a good thing. It is just one choice of many. A choice that doesn't make anyone better or worse.

Do you apply the same value judgement to men who are "sleeping around"?

I used the term inexperience, because nothing comes without a downside and I wanted to make that clear. No one can have it all.

I agree with PP’s that the term “bodies” and the idea of keeping a list is horrible. I’m going to ask my DD ( nearly 19) whether that’s also typical among her friend group, I really hope it isn’t.

Your DD has had some awful experiences, I’m sure you must be very worried about her, OP. I don’t quite know what to advise except to reiterate to her that non-consensual sex (rape) is never, ever acceptable and she shouldn’t feel that she can’t report it.

I think the focus on numbers or “bodies” (horrible derogatory term) confuses the issue. To me promiscuity is not necessarily about how many people you have slept with - that number can easily creep up in your 20s - but your behaviour / attitude towards sex.

Say you start being sexually active at 17/18 and have a couple of boyfriends at uni, date a few different people until you find the right person that you are happy and compatible with, romantically and sexually.

That isn’t being promiscuous to me at all, but could add up to 9, 10 people. Taking a stranger home with you from a nightclub every Saturday? That would be promiscuous behaviour to me.

No judgement here by the way, as long as any sex is safe, consensual and enjoyable. Just making the point that it’s not just about a number.

@ginasevern thank you. I agree, such an awful thing to deal with. I’m so sad that the state of the criminal justice system and the often appalling treatment of rape victims makes reporting these crimes into additional trauma that many victims understandably want to avoid.

I'm sorry, I actually missed the raped twice part of OP's post. I was distracted. I've now properly re-read it. Poor, poor girl. It is extremely disturbing that she felt she had to "shrug off" this crime.

That’s why I said as many or as few. I absolutely think that nobody should be judged for not wanting sex. It may be that on MN as a whole people are given a slap on the back for having many sexual partners but usually on FWR the discussion is more thoughtful.

I'm not so sure what 'millennial feminism' refers to (is it the sex-positive kind?), partly, because it seems to me that the last real feminist wave was the second wave and everything after that has been a reaction to its partial victories, including attempts to erase those victories. Or at least tiny ripples after that big wave.

But in any case it helps for feminism to always ask these kinds of questions (if only in your mind) in reverse:

So if a man asks how many 'bodies' a woman has had, then she should ask how many 'bodies' he has had, and if the number of those brands him as not 'husband' material.

That helps to show clearly which sexist assumptions are operating here and how those assumptions, if not challenged, will make women subjugated (again).

Conversations with my teenage grandsons are pretty depressing - they feel like second class citizens of the "slugs and snails" variety, thinking people regard them as having no morals or respect for girls - wanting to know why they are seen like this. I have to keep telling them that I am proud of who they are and they should be too.

I'm sorry... your DD has been raped twice and shrugged it off?

fuck the misogynistic twats and what they think about body counts

what is worrying here is that your dd attaches so little value to herself that she just shrugs off rape. is it because she thinks no one will listen to her?

Except when women recognise their worth and value and when they ask men to recognise their worth and value?

Thats what Op is saying. That her daughter feel that women wanting to know their worth and value has made men be awful. Women knowing their worth and value, isn’t stopping any hate.

The question should be why do some men feel their worth and value is lower when women recognise their own worth and values.

The body count concept was discussed in this podcast as part of a wider discussion about the return to trad values/trad wife pushback against the sexual revolution and feminist gains. It’s a thing, but fairly recent with that terminology. The double standard has been around for a long time.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-special-place-in-hell/id1631208362?i=1000649352183

You sound like yo approve of both of them.

Terrifying

the culture that feminism created?

So feminists under 42 caused it? They are then to blame.

Women didn’t create this culture. There has never been a time that some men don’t judge women’s worth on how many people they have sex with. So how is it millennial feminism that caused it?

Men caused it. Women asked to be treated as equals. And a good section of men have responded with to that by becoming women haters. That’s not the fault of the person asking for equality. Men created the patriarchy. Men created sexism and some men can’t handle the strides women are making forward. Which are very small in comparison to the size of the problem.

But those men have been in every generation. It’s not new. It wasn’t created by feminism or millennial feminism.

It’s really weird you can’t see that your daughters are, in fact, blaming women for men’s behaviour and I would be worried about who they are mixing with and what content they are consuming.

He and his ilk have stealthily groomed a generation. If anyone has a male aged 13- 26 in their lives they need to talk to them about Tate.

So the culture is women's fault?

Nor should anyone because they have had sex with none, one or few men cone away from a conversation with other women feeling disappointed, abused, disrespected or judged.
On here it seems that sleeping around is valued = good. for her, slap on the back, non promiscuous women /girls =wromg, insulted, derided

I think this is going to depend on the influences she has on her life outside of her family.

my daughter of a similar age hates the phrase ‘how many bodies?’ Is disgusting and degrading.