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

There is nothing new there. Men have always wanted to have a pool of women who want casual sex with them, and to end up with a woman who is not part of that pool, because they don't like the thought that other men have 'used' her as they feel they use women.
I think there may be fewer men like this now (partly necessity driven as 'pure' women are too thin on the ground for then to find one) but it's still a prevailing attitude.What women do with that, I don't know, but I guess it boils down to either comply with male expectations, withhold and go without casual sex in order to be valued; or decide that what men want and value is not their concern, and live their lives as they please. It seems to me that women want to both do what they want and have men approve of them. Which is very often mutually exclusive, so they need to choose. I know which I'd pick.

Sadly it isn't a new thing.

Women have always been damned if they do or damned if they don't.
Fridgid or a slag, while men are studs, patted on the back and praised.

I do agree with her about the backlash. There is always backlash when women inch a tiny bit for themselves. It gets bigger the more we inch forward

Men don't want to lose their power. Especially the men who hold no power over other men.
They also don't want to have to take responsibility for their own behaviour.

she believes that feminism driven by millennials has caused a huge back lash amongst men

Maybe you should as her to reflect on this and ask why, like in so many of these situations, the blame and anger, instead of being directed at the men who hate women wanting to be treated equally, it is always turned back on women?

Why are some women so angry at other women for wanting better, instead of the men who want to keep women beneath them, less than, obedient?

Never heard of ‘bodies’ it sounds horrible. Does she like using that word? And raped by 2 men? Poor poor girl! I think I would be arranging some therapy for her if she would accept it?

Maybe I’m getting old but it was just so different when I was younger - at uni even if you did sleep around a bit I don’t remember much judgement, men didn’t tend to ask your ‘number’. I don’t think me and my husband have ever really discussed it! I suspect his is fairly high from stories from his friends 😂 and I don’t think he could care less about mine.

I think online porn has made things a lot worse.

Am gen x and was very lucky with the boys and young men I encountered.

So nothing has changed. Men covering up their insecurities and anxiety by trying to control women. Referring to "competitors" as bodies, dehumanising them. They watch porn and think that is what they are up against. Sad in a way, but they are doing it to themselves and then turning it into a problem for women, so my compassion is limited. Next time this comes up, your daughter could ask them if they are worried about how they will compare. That might shut them up.

BTW, yes the ‘body count’ thing is a real thing amongst young people. It’s a rather disturbing revelation about how their culture has disconnected sex from human connection. .

This is interesting. I think there is a lot of truth in this.

My youngest ( boy) from the age of five was very sensitive to me saying anything that he saw as being negative about men. Unsurprising really. He knows he is a boy and will become a man. Of course he is sensitive and bothered about negativity about who he is.

I think speaking to boys and young men’s worth is a much more effective way to think about approaching conversations.

Let’s face it. Boys and men really have nothing to gain from feminism and a whole lot to lose. Equality is never going to be an easy sell to those who benefited from inequality. And the rise of misogynistic and degrading internet porn, and other recent social movements, have shown that feminists have never really won over men’s hearts and minds in terms of seeing women as equal. The hard truth is that we do need a serious rethink of how we talk with boys and men if we really want women to be seen as equal humans. We can’t achieve it without them , and we can’t make them listen. We have to find a way to talk they are receptive to. I hate saying that, but it’s true. Porn, Tate and TRAs have shown just how depressingly far we are from women being seen as equal human beings.

( ps I don’t put a Jordan Peterson in this camp at all. From what I have heard from him, he’s man who deeply cares about human suffering, openly cries when confronted with it, and wants to do what he can to help people help themselves to live constructive and purposeful lives).

This saddens me but doesn't surprise me. OP. I'm involved in a number of lesbian groups and a lot of older lesbians with daughters report that their daughters wish they were lesbians. They are straight and sexually attracted to men but can't find decent men they're attracted to to form relationships with. They envy their mums and the supportive networks that older lesbians have built and maintain.

Since I grew up in the 70s many women have really learned to value their careers and independence and set their standards for relationships high. This is something that society is going to have difficulty adjusting to: it has relied on women being so desperate to marry that they'd have almost any man. And of course so many men are now porn-addled and Tate-addled and can't relate to real women at all that the number of halfway decent candidates seems to be reducing. It's an issue that's not going to go away.

In the meantime, OP, if I was in your shoes I'd tell my daughter to tell any man who wanted to know how many men she's slept with to f**k off and want to talk to her about keeping her standards high and finding ways to build an interesting, rewarding life that may not include a long-term relationship with a man.

Agree with this. Women being judged for 'sleeping around' is as old as time (not that that excuses it). I'm more concerned about the fact she's been raped twice and shrugged it off. Does she just consider it normal?

This is so depressing, I'm sorry OP. I have two v young DS and I want to teach them to respect women.

Social media and easy access to porn is clearly a big issue, I just hope I can show them how to not fall down that rabbit hole when they get older.

I agree that the easy accessibility of porn etc has undoubtedly influenced what men 'expect' and think of as normal from sex, but don't see how being judged on how many people you've slept with is in any way a new thing?

The virgin/whore complex has been a thing since the history of time.
Not wanting sex/very small number of partners = prudish, uptight
Enjoy sex and had a lot of partners = slag/slapper/loose woman etc.

As a 'millennial woman' who has apparently ruined feminism, we might not have used the exact phrase 'body count' but it was normal to discuss how many people you'd slept with with friends etc 20 years ago.

this body count thing is horrible. I agree the basic concept is nothing new - women are better if they’re pure, etc. many cultures still expect women to be virgins on marriage while also expecting there to be a supply of women available for men to sow their wild oats. And uk and western society was like that and retains that attitude.

but I do also think we’ve gone backwards since the 80s/90s when I was young. I wasn’t even especially wild and knew lots of women who had more partners than me, but I was never asked this and being sexually experienced wasn’t frowned upon for either sex. At university I had at least two partners who were virgins and I wasn’t. They were perfectly happy to accept that.

Women who were known/perceived to sleep around a lot were teased/talked about, but that went for men too. There were two notorious “will sleep with anyone” students in my college, one female one male - and he got much more opprobrium than she did as he was known for targeting freshers.

i had a boyfriend at a different college and one woman there was renowned for having shagged absolutely everyone. It was seen as funny/a talking point as she was very quiet and non-wild in personality. But she wasn’t ostracised or rejected or judged.

however no one has to reveal their “body count” if asked. None of your business should suffice, but also if anyone ever asked me that it would put me off them.

I saw a podcast trying to explain this 'phenomenon'.

It basically said that the worst thing that can happen to a woman is a violation like rape. As this is unlikely to happen to a man, the worst violation for a man is a violation of the woman he is with, either consensually, or unconsensually. The 'cherry on top' bad-of-the-bad reault of this situation is that he finds out that the baby he's been raising is not his.

A woman doesn't have this worry, the baby is ALWAYS hers. So this need for chaste women is for men at least, an indicator of the likelihood that their progeny is their own.

Wow, I’ve never heard that term before! I would have presumed it meant number of people you’d killed so would have given any bloke asking the very mistaken impression I was a virgin! Also would have blocked him thinking he was in some type of criminal gang. 🙃

What shocked me recently was a young girl dating a lad for several months told me she was hoping he was going to ask her to be his girl friend.

tjey had been on dates, away for the weekend, brought Christmas gifts, slept together, stayed over at each other homes.

Now that’s gave me the ick.

Agree I have never been asked that.

I feel lucky to have been part of the generation that felt much freer to explore our sexuality in a way - we had easy access to contraception, in my school years we had half decent sex ed and the women on TV we admired (and our boyfriends fancied) were shown as happily dating around without judgement. DP (40) and I spoke about it this the other day, during our teenage years the internet was just becoming more of a thing and young people didn’t have the access to the kind of material that is easily viewable on mainstream sites now - I remember my brothers getting a telling off for trying to download and print a picture of Pamela Anderson on our dial - up! There were the lads mags (problematic in their own way) but for teenage boys in particular it was photos and their imagination, not watching hardcore often violent and degrading porn on their phone. For most of my friends their first sexual experiences were with boys who were frankly just overjoyed a girl was allowing them to touch her and didn’t have any expectations warped by what they’d seen online.

Young women I work with tell me things that shock me about what the men they meet expect in bed - these same men will judge them for how much sexual experience they have had while expecting them to dive straight into rough anal sex or choking.

That’s not to say my generation haven’t been impacted by what they can now view online - but there are plenty of men who haven’t been warped.

I do feel sad things have changed so much in a short space of time. I’ve never been asked about “body count” and would be offended if anyone used that term - I’ve discussed LT relationships with partners but never felt the need to list each person I dated or slept with as a student or in my 20’s.

I'm a similar age and agree that I think the unspoken message was the same then.

Just to expand on this, as I find it really interesting I think standards of masculinity are so unnatainable for most men these days and it is a trap of their own making. Their value is so tied up in needing to be a provider for females that when they see that actually we don’t need them, they react in fear and violence. If they can’t become a provider, they express their masculinity in hugely toxic ways to compensate. It probably used to be easier when women had no choice but to match with a man for financial security and now they don’t have that easy control, they’ve spat their dummy out. It’s actually really sad

I think there’s a lot to be said for young men growing up and struggling to find a place in the world for them. Millennial feminism has been probably cynically latched on by capitalism and reinforced in advertising etc and now men feel like the underdog as there’s nothing “for them”
tbf, any type of feminism is an existential threat to men as they need us way more than women need men and as they feel their power slipping they react in anger. That’s on them way more than it is on us women but what’s the solution? Centuries of subjugation of women can’t change in a few decades and it’s caused a fallout of women with more choice and men feeling like they’re left behind in the dust. They still feel entitled to our bodies and whilst I genuinely believe we can turn this around it won’t happen overnight.

Well the men want what they want and if they can’t get it they need to blame someone. Must be hard to simultaneously desire and despise people.

I always say we should feel sorry for Tate as he’s never had sex with anyone he liked.

It’s a fascinating development in the battle of the sexes. The more women gain control over their lives the less it suits inadequate men. Oh well.

My own young adults are definitely more wary in general. It’s sad to see. My DDs have very low/zero ‘body counts’ and say they just don’t want a man. My (extremely beautiful) eldest DD is very reserved around men and says she’s fed up of being told she’s ’wife material’ as a consequence.

Tate and Peterson would tell her she’s destined to live alone with cats and she’d say 👍🏼.

Both OP’s daughter and mine are wrong in the eyes of the angry men. Women can never win.

There is a growing conversation that men feel like they are loosing their masculinity because of feminism which I think is BS. Women are more independent (in the west) so men feel threatened. I’m a millennial and I am lucky enough to be around and to have witnessed other millennial women that value their independence and self worth more than anything (regardless of how many people they have slept with) and I have noticed it is so much harder to find a decent man that will settle when you hold standards for yourself.

I don’t think the issue is “millennial feminism” - whatever that means in definition. I think the issue is that there is a perceived threat from men that fear the “power” in women. Despite the fact that women are still fighting for better childcare, equal pay, safety on streets - there are a small group of men that have low self esteem and it’s projected through violence etc.

I do hope that your daughter sees her worth. There are good men out there but they are so hard to find when you won’t settle for less. I also hope she is able to get any support needed following the rape - that is awful.

I do agree with her about the backlash. There is always backlash when women inch a tiny bit for themselves. It gets bigger the more we inch forward.

But it's also the media for portraying feminism as "women better than men", "girls better than boys". It's never balanced.

I agree with telling them to mind their own business, or as an indicator they’re not a keeper. The nosey part of me would want to ask them what they consider an acceptable number for a woman and then ask them their body count/the acceptable number for a man so I could point out the double standard.

V sorry that your DD has been raped and had to encounter such men. That’s terrible.