How should feminism respond to growing blame and backlash from men?

Even if it were true that patriarchy doesn't exist in the majority of Western countries¹, do women in the other Western countries - and the rest of the world - not also deserve the same?

¹ https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/global-gender-gap-by-country on this ranking, for example, no country scores 100%. Some you might expect to be pretty high up the 'modern Western country' scale - e.g. Canada, Netherlands - are only around the 75% mark. France, Greece, Italy perhaps less of a surprise to find lagging, but they're still firmly in the 'Western countries' group.

A look through these graphs might be ineresting, too. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/gender-dashboard.html There's no country anywhere in the world that has both no pay gap and fully equal political representation. Luxembourg is the only country where women out-earn men; but only 1/3 of their parliamentarians and less than 1/4 of board members in large companies are women. There's country where unpaid labour is equal or male dominated. The very best score for discrimination in social institutions (0 = no discrimination against women, 100 = total discrimination) is Norway's 6.7.

This is a laudable goal on the face of it, but it risks suggesting that feminism gets left until 'after the revolution'.

Women can and should work for their rights regardless of other social issues. We don't have to wait our turn.

Actually I've come to believe that there is a small dose of "natural" patriarchy linked to the fact that, like it or not, men are statistically stronger and more power-driven than women. As a feminist, I believe however that we should strive to eliminate all elements of cultural patriarchy and that we are very far from it (gender ideology being a good example, dreadful as it is), though I think we are very close to having removed all elements of legal patriarchy.

Whether we should compensate natural patriarchy by introducing cultural or legal matriarchy is a moral question that I have no definite answer to.

Indeed.
Cato said in 195BC
”Suffer women once to arrive at an equality with you, and from that moment they will become your superiors”
Didn’t work then, won’t work now.

(To be fair, British People are also crazy, but just in different ways).

1). Americans are Crazy

2). Women will respond in the only way they can respond. By asserting their rights and saying no. Women are always going to require rights that men don't and this will always inconvenience men.

100%

As long as sex exists so, most likely, will sexism - which is the habit and practice of making negative or stereotyped judgements and observations based on the sex of the subject . Legal equality does not make sex based differences go away, nor does it over-ride the inclinations, choices and patterns of behaviour which most often lie at their root.

Personally, I feel that transgenderism arose out of certain strands of feminism and 'gay rights': those that propose that there are no essential differences between the sexes, and that any generalised differences which do exist are culturally conditioned. Whereas it is evident to me that there are some generalised differnces at group level between the sexes - and in males that includes a greater propensity for sexual abuse, violence, sexual paraphilia etc.

That these differences persist ( and to the detriment of female people) is not down to patrarchy, as such, but down to the fact that the male sex is pre-disposed to certain types of behaviour or inclination, and that females tend to be vulnerable to these differences - which is why we have single sex spaces and facilities in the sorts of situation in which females are more vulnerable to negative male behaviour or inclination.

Ignore it. It’s the usual bollocks.

I agree - I'm interested too, Manyanamanyana!

Just because there are laws on a statute books saying that men and women should be treated equally doesn't magically make sexism go away.
In fact, the rise of the trans movement has shown how easy it is for men to subvert those laws: men claiming to be women destroys the definition of the two sex-based legal categories and makes a nonsense of sex equality legislation.

Re-interpreting 'sex equality' in law as 'gender equality' makes it about something other than equality between men and women.

But even if there were rock-solid laws that made discrimination against women illegal - how is that lived on a daily basis? Does sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, violence against women, rape, femicide, etc disappear in countries with strong anti-discrimination laws?
Clearly not.

I don't have a perfect definition of 'the patriarchy', it's not a word I use because I think it sounds a bit cartoon-ish, but if pushed to use the term, I'd say it is the thing that ensures the continuation of sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, violence against women, rape, femicide, etc even in countries where 'in law men and women now have equal rights that are well established'.

Furthermore, 'it' is the rocket fuel that continues these attitudes/actions/crimes against women in all cultures, all socio-economic groups, all social classes.

Economic equality would be a good thing in and of itself, but there's no reason to believe that getting rid of economic inequality will make sexism disappear.

The 'stupid women's libbers were asking for it, got what they deserved, and are whinging how' attitude is just one of many lines of attack that just keep coming, time after time, because whatever else 'the patriarchy' is, it sure is persistent, it keeps coming up with new lines of attack to keep women 'in our place'.

OK so I watched it, he’s pointing out that the Tate brothers are not operating from a traditionally conservative framework. i think he’s criticising the christian right who support the Tate brothers and the left who prioritise personal freedoms over what he would probably think of as Christian behaviour (in this case he doesn’t seem to be denigrating women he seems to be pointing out that the Tate brothers can exploit it).

I’m not actually sure this is an attack on women as such tbh and I have to say I have sympathy with the criticism of “sex work is work” position.

Would also point out that in the Uk they had a higher approval rating amongst ethnic minority men than amongst white men which is interesting. I think this anti-feminist thing is a particularly american thing because of religiosity more than anything else.

Yes - some of the commentary I've seen on the Lindsay Clancy case has been disturbing, to say the least. Some men really hate women.

We have imported huge numbers of families from cultures where women are completely subjugated to men - hardly surprising that women are being forced back to the dark agrs.

Part of 'women's rights' lies in recognising the differences between the sexes and giving value to each; and also in acccommodating those differences when necessary.

Because in law men and women now have equal rights that are well established; unlike in many countries in which women do not have equal rights in law and in which there is still the official rule of the father and of males in general.

I don't think you can carry on referring to all perceptions of unfairness as 'patriarchy', nor the continuing differences between the sexes - at the level of the group, that still exist, either.

If feminism is just another ideology or an 'ism (with fixed category baddies) then it is no different to any other branch of identity politics, in my view.

@Manyanamanyana Sadly I think that this is going to have to break for the real revolution. But in the meantime we need to talk to each other

What is going to have to break? Our attachment to the men in our lives?

Hey @PeachyDaisy , genuinely interested in why you think patriarchy doesn't exist in Western society anymore?

I don't entirely agree. Patriarchy and misogyny cannot be neatly be wrapped up in all those other issues you raise because the subordination of women exists (I'm gonna say almost because historically some cultures were equal) in almost every culture and has existed since millennia - men have dominated and used women as resources across cultures denying them autonomy and equal rights. Ithink the intersectional feminism you are describing depletes the energy women need to fight for women, globally. I also believe that trans issues are in opposition to women rights for loss of reasons and do not accept that we are fighting the same fight as men who claim to be women and then claim to be "more oppressed". Like it's a fun competition or something...

I'm a feminist, and I hate that fertility is falling. I think a world without children (worse: which considers having children to be wrong) lacks love, lacks future, and is severely dysfunctional. And I say that as someone who's had trouble becoming a mother and who has never judged other women who choose not to become one.

100% agree. I'm not a feminist (as I don't think patriarchy exists in most western countries anymore). But economic inequality is increasing and is only going to get worse unless we address it. I'm quite worried about the social consequences of letting this gap grow so wide.

The USA feels like a bad influence on every front these days.

Feminism is the future, whether men like it or not. It's ultimately the only way humanity will survive. It's one of the reasons the West has a falling birth rate – because women now have agency and choice. It's where the rest of the world needs to follow – and fast, to stop populations becoming too big, poverty increasing, the toll on natural resources becoming too unsustainable.

100%. We can never stop. In Lerners "the creation of patriarchy", she says that women are the only oppressed group who are "distributed among our oppressors", which makes it very hard to organise, and also that it ensures we have an attachment to them (husbands, sons, brothers, fathers) which makes it hard to fight back. Sadly I think that this is going to have to break for the real revolution. But in the meantime we need to talk to each other and be single issue voters, and support female businesses, writers, artists, politicians (aligned to womens rights of course) and so on. I love MN for this.

How should feminism respond to growing blame and backlash from men?

With weariness and grim determination, I suggest.
If there's one thing I've learnt in the past decades, it's that linear progress does not exist for women. 'One step forward, two steps back' - maybe twenty-two steps back - some of the sexism on open display now is shocking.

There have been moments where women thought we were in the home stretch 'We've come a long way, baby', only to find misogyny staging a powerful comeback.

For instance, the massive commercial promotion of all things pink, glittery, Disney Princess-y and butterfly-y in the mid 2010s, which led to the re-emergence of heightened gender stereotyping.

Which feeds into if you're not a girly-girl, maybe you are actually a boy? and should avoid puberty, and transition? Ditty boys who like glittery things - maybe they aren't boys at all, but girls born in the wrong body?

I'm afraid we are never going to 'win' for once and for all, we are in an ongoing struggle on many fronts for rights and respect and even these days for our very right to the word 'woman'.

It's depressing, but true, I think.

Just wow!! I've seen similar before but it never stops hurting tbh xx