Why do I get so irrationally angry at all these "poor men" threads?

"What I see is queer politics arguing that rather than examining and resisting this oppressive system we are in, we should embrace the system of gender and not bother trying to deal with wider problems."

Again, not something I recognise at all! What brand of queer politics advocates embracing the existing system of gender? My understanding of queer politics is that it involves strategies to undermine and subvert the existing system of gender.

But I realise that we've drifted from my original point, which is that even when we're using what one would think are straightforward words like masculinity, gender, and even feminism or feminist we are still potentially meaning different things by them, and we have to take account of that.

I very much see queer politics arguing that we should examine and resist this oppressive system we are in! And I don't see it saying we should embrace the system of gender - surely part of the point is to break out of the straitjacket of 50s style gender where you're born a girl or born a boy and that's that matey.

And as for not bothering trying to deal with wider problems - I don't at all see that it's not trying to do that as well.

"queer politics sees it an individual issue where the individual must change themselves and everybody else must accept that" - or that in the individual changing themselves, they change society so that it is no longer the system that created the traditional gender roles.

Are you also using the words feminist/feminism here to mean something specific - second-wave feminist/feminism, perhaps? Yes, I am involved in queer politics but I don't see it as inimical to feminism-as-I-understand-it - quite the opposite! I do agree that some stuff that is the basis of queer politics comes out of reactions to some parts of (particularly second-wave) feminism.

Masculinity has a pretty commonly-used social and historical meaning but it's not ubiquitous: that's not what I mean when I say it, certainly. I don't think masculinity is or has to be that stereotype of domination and manly-man-ness. I'm also not convinced that if I talk about masculinity with my friends down the pub (many of whom are bi) that they necessarily use the word masculinity in that stereotyped way either. That's why I don't really see why the idea of "masculinities" plural is more obscure than the idea of a singular masculinity - it seems at this point like a natural fact of life to me to think that there are quite a few different ways of being male. (I know that to say something like this is a 'natural fact of life' is to beg a whole lot of questions too!)

Slightly more on topic, I also don't understand why the project of feminism is to get rid of gender? I mean you define gender as "sex hierarchy with men at the top and women submitting, and all the behaviours and attitudes that are supposed to go along with it" but that also seems like an unusual way of defining gender to me. I understand gender to be about the social and cultural ways of defining the differences between the sexes, but precisely because they are social and cultural, they are amenable to change. We don't need to get rid of gender, we need to see its malleability and flexibility. We need to allow for genderqueer individuals, transitioning individuals, people constructing their own identities in many different ways including neuter. Hmm. Maybe not so on topic after all!

But I don't want to harp on more about these specific examples - gender, masculinity, "the academy" - so much as to say that I do think we're using even words that seem fairly straightforward in different ways - and our understandings of even those fairly straightforward words change too, as we go along.

@dittany, I've never refused to consider other views, in life or on this thread. I just said that I find aspects of poststructuralist thought on gender and power plausible. If that means that in your book I'm not a proper feminist, so be it.

"Just as a small point, I don't necessarily equate academia with theorising if that's what is coming across." - dittany, I think this is quite a big part of what's happening, actually. Because you have had lots of discussion about feminism in the past, you're using a lot of words or phrases in what are actually quite specialised and even jargony ways - like "the academy", or even "masculinity". I don't think that the way that you understand these words and phrases are the same as the way that people who haven't been steeped in this sort of discussion do. (I know that the only reason I know what "the academy" means is because of reading stuff like Alison Bechdel's fab "Dykes to Watch Out For", and other US writing that uses phrases like "the canon" and suchlike.) And I think that because of that, people read your posts as if you are yourself an academic. Which by the sound of it is not something you'd want!

The links earlier on in this thread to Feminism 101 was so great to see for just this sort of reason - I don't think it covers my precise examples above but we do need a lot of 101 over here, and probably will do for a while yet.

"Let's go back to MrsBean's husband who, despite his declared feminism is 'uncomfortable' with being the main caregiver. In this recession, plenty of men who think they are feminists, some who have given lip service to feminism and others who disagree with it wildly will be put in a position where they have to be the main caregiver in a household where the single income is being brought in by the woman. "

My husband doesn't know the first thing about feminism as an academic or cultural 'thing' and if you threw him into a discussion like this one, he would be lost, at least at first! I've been sitting here trying to think of how to explain why I would describe him, broadly, as more 'feminist' than not, but losing the battle. I guess because I feel there is nothing in our lives where I am supposed to follow a proscribed role as 'the woman' or, actually, that he has a sense that women should follow a particular path or comply to particular expectations.

I do see why he would feel uncomfortable with the idea of being the full-time caregiver. Truthfully, I'm not comfortable with the idea of being a caregiver full-time either. I think in both our mental reckonings, if one of us has to stay home full-time, the other one will do it. So in that way, maybe we are both guilty of believing that the wage earner's role is the one to have..which means we are buying into a patriarchal value system, whether we intend to or not. Yet I don't know if that's truthful, either.. I think that, ideally, we would both live in a location where we could both work three days a week each and have two at home, with the baby in childcare for just one day a week. Yet there are so many forces that combine to make this an impossibility - the thorny issue of real life, which is bound by patriarchal values, whether we want it to be, or not.

In real life, for example, I think it would be easier for me to re-enter, as there are several women in my department who took 5-10 years 'out' for children who re-entered at the same level and are now in managerial positions. Realistically, that's not the way my husband's industry (engineering) works. (I extrapolate this given that a request for a measly week's parental leave in low season was denied).

And yet, with a heavy heart, I have to say I know that the reason my work is so flexible is because of its relative lack of value in the marketplace; because it is viewed as being distinctly 'feminine' in the 'real world'. In all truthfulness, if you're going to do my job well, you need to be a flexible thinker capable of drawing on a wide body of knowledge and applying it to real-world situations, but hey, you're only doing it for marginalised, disabled kids and adults.. so what if you opt out for a few years and these people no longer access a service because of your absence?

So it's tricky. And I'm not sure what I think about it: there are so many levels to negotiate between the personal and the social it makes my head spin. So I will end my waffling there.. (before this becomes too epic, again). And hope what I said makes sense.

Dittany, I've no intention of picking your argument to pieces if that's what I seemed to be doing; genuinely I just wanted to better understand where you're coming from. I don't have some 'iron belief' in poststructuralist accounts of gender and power although I do find them plausible in many ways. But there's so much to be angry about, and I think we could all do with cultivating a bit more righteous anger about what's happening to women in this world, something that comes across powerfully in your posts. I do think theorizing is worthwhile, absolutely, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't just so much fiddling while Rome burns.

Hi Phokojo.

I had a good reply drafted there and DD2 (18 months) turned the computer off.She woke me singing 'Glory, Glory Man United' this morning. I think I may have a patriarchal mole in my camp.

We don't have to disappear into abstraction. What is the point in book reading of any kind if it doesn't give us more impetus to act? In fact lots of the progress for women in the 20th century came as the inadvertent consequence of patriarchal foolishness. The world wars inadvertently helped to release women from the domestic sphere for example.

Let's go back to MrsBean's husband who, despite his declared feminism is 'uncomfortable' with being the main caregiver. In this recession, plenty of men who think they are feminists, some who have given lip service to feminism and others who disagree with it wildly will be put in a position where they have to be the main caregiver in a household where the single income is being brought in by the woman.

Overall of course the recession has made life harder for women. My husband is on a rolling contract and was gutted yesterday when DD1 (nearly 4)said she doesn't want to be a mummy because 'all the cooking would be boring. His ferocious attempts to hold on to his job means that she isn't picking up on the equality that is at the heart of our family.

The recession is mainly bad for women, but who knows what other inadvertent effects that economic mishap will produce?

hi all

i havent posted on this thread (although been reading avidly) because frankly i havent a clue what you are all talking about. but thats cool, i suspect i will get there eventually.

am actually only posting on it now to say please dont fight amongst yourselves and leave the trhead/topic (and no not because girls should play 'nice') because we need all of you to keep doing what you doing so we can learn.

ta muchly

There's no doubt that a lot of the more academic stuff is going over my head, but it's truly fascinating material. The ideas and discussions have certainly got me thinking in ways I haven't for some years.

I wonder if I have been a bit reluctant to think too deeply about some of these issues, since I'm now happily married and a mum to a little boy, but the truth is now I'm exploring these topics again, it's rather exhilarating to find the blood pumping to my brain once more!

It's a great thread, so I'll keep reading and hope I do okay in RedLentil's review in 3 years time!

Dittany, did you see my post from earlier today? There've been loads of posts on this thread so you might not have done. I have been thinking about this thread all day and was hoping you'd reply to help me understand your argument better. Reposting so you don't have to scroll back:

I think where I was stumbling last night was on the definition of gender as both a power relation and as a source of identity. I'm struggling to understand dittany's viewpoint that gender is only a power relation and wonder if the identity part of it is ascribed to sex instead, in which case she might find the idea of multiple sexes acceptable but multiple genders not. So the 'problem' is shifted onto sex instead.

I don't teach full-time any more as it happens, but when I did I taught mainly mature students with young families, huge novels to read and lots of assessments. Many had part-time jobs as well. If they wanted to watch a spot of TV to relax that was up to them, I thought. I liked to spoil it for them by linking it to the course. The student experience is not what it was ...

I agree with lots of the posters here that you don't have to have read lots of feminist literature to be a feminist, though I do obviously really encourage people to explore that area. But when I was teaching disengaged middle-class girls when the last series of Sex and the City was on, riffing on that while we all unpacked our bags was a way of getting them to see that feminism still had work to do. It took them from stuff they did identify with to the stuff I wanted them to identify with ...

Most young women are heavily invested in patriarchal culture and you have to pick ways to start feminist discussions with them. Where you get them 3 years later is of course another thing.

In three years, I'd like to post a thread here asking people which ideas they've taken from the topic and what they've done with them.

ISNT, I feel you already know this, but to return to your OP for a moment, you are not irrationally angry. Do you ever hear a man blame a surge of testosterone for his feelings? No, if he's pissed off he assumes it's for a reason, not because he's got some kind of internal brain difficulty. Sorry this is of course not an attack on your choice of words - I love this thread and your posts have been fantastic. But I get well and truly fed up with both men and women attributing irrationality and mood swoops to women alone. Luckily we've got someone to be objective about sexism when our poor minds are so bewildered all the time.