A good job there aren't many men on MN

[Truckulent]

I think men would be shocked at the level of resentment leveled at them on MN. Almost a seething mass of contempt at times.

I'm a man, been on here for years. And I was surprised by it.

AIBU to think it's a good job there aren't many men on here, or would more men posting help men and women understand each other better?

Also, I'd like to add that feminism benefits men as much as it benefits women. For one thing, I saw the issue of maternity/paternity leave mentioned above.

Sweden has introduced very fair parental leave aimed at ensuring that women don't lose out too much in the workplace by being out of it for too long and that men take more of a role in parenting.

That's the kind of thing that would benefit men and women that feminists are striving for.

DP...My DH earns six figures and he has no issue with relaxing at the weekend. And DP don't lie, when you said 'made it' you meant work, money and success.

No I didn't. "made it" means being happy and satisfied.
Most feminists aren't either of those.

jess usaully on mn if anyone mentions men& feminism they get rebuked down with a "what aboot the menz" and told they are prioritising men over women or some such.

I'd be really happy and satisfied if the patriarchy was brought down, if that helps? :o

...and others disagree scottishmummy. You are not such a delicate flower as to be put off by one or two people's comments surely?

TFP - of course you do, that goes without saying, anyone who disagrees with you is talking rubbish arent they?

I've never claimed there was/is a poor little me thread (another straw argument) just that many posts on the feminist reek of that attitude and from the same few proliferate posters.

and replaced with the enlightened few who will tell other women they are oppressed (but dont know it yet)

because apparently they think

1. too much im alright jack
2. cannot see the obvious mad oppressive machinations

and the solution is....

someone else to take power and tell us how to rise up?

I can't think of anything worse than the world being run by women - really, I can't.

Think Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott.

why are you talking about my delicate flower.whats happend

Hi ScottishMummy - I haven't seen that yet, personally, and I've been on MN for a few months. I think that it depends on the discussion. I come across it a lot IRL and it is frustrating.

As an example, I phoned in to a discussion on Radio 5 last year to talk about abusive relationships and whether we should offer 'healthy relationship' education in schools. I was on within the first ten minutes talking about my experiences and what I thought could be done about it.

Within 15 minutes of the show starting, the topic had completely flipped around to "what about men" and the remaining 45 minutes of the show was given over to talking about abuse directed against men. It's the same when people talk about strip clubs. There are over 300 aimed at a male clientele and a handful of male strippers and shows like the Chippendales.

It just doesn't happen on the same scale. My own employer, the NHS, recognises this, hence the public health department focuses on violence directed at women as this is the biggest problem area.

I'd be really interested to know, from the perspective of those who are against feminism, why the level of male to female abuse is still so high and isn't coming down (1 in 4 women - and one study of 1000 women quoted yesterday by the IRIS project carried out at GP surgeries suggested the figure was more like 40% of women).

And what we can do about it?

Feminists have their own ideas and are trying to tackle it in several different ways but, if feminism isn't the answer, can someone who calls themselves a "non-feminist" please give us some suggestions?

As someone who works in finance in the NHS, I'd like to be able to try and save some of that £7.2m that we spend on treating the victims of domestic abuse every year, especially as we having to make so many other cuts.

I'm afraid that is another misunderstanding about feminism.

'What about the menz' is shorthand for situations where women are being told to be quiet on women's issues that are clearly related to their gender because men have issues too.

Using race analogy again, a bit like white people telling black people not to object to race related poverty because some white people are poor too.

Feminists (both male and female) tend object to how a patriarchal system affects men too. Many feminists just happen to think that women have the right to be more concerned over specifically female issues than they are over the rest of the world's problems.

Feminism benefits men because it is about equality and questioning a patriarchal system, not about being 'against men'.

BB, yes I am now a quota supporter; just until we equalise things a bit more.

I disagree with people who say women who work are less happy. Women who are stupid enough to tolerate or enable sexism at home and end up diong a second shift may not be happy but more fool them for tolerating that. Most sensible women now and in the past have not accepted unfair deals. They need the Xenia weekend course in how to ensure a fair and equitable life... I just invented it.

In fact it's the housewives who have traditionally been on the valium or gin or cocaine or whatever they take these days (or even on the chocolate biscuits) because they don't have happy lives many of them and no balance in their lives.

However the point of thread was simply that some comments are anti men as indeed you woudl find on any male forum being anti women. The reality is that most are not and the good thing about the internet is that people can venture where others who are not like them (men to women or places where fundamentalist christians or muslims or whatever group might be different) and exchange views and we are lucky that the law and many sites in this country allow that freedom but sadly that is not so around the world, not even in China where I think 1 person in 6 lives.

All feminism really is is ensure equal rights for men as much as women under the law (and plenty of feminists stand up for male rights all the time , who could not?) and fairness at home. Most men and women agree with that in the UK but the word has got a bit sullied. Let us hope it can be won back.

That's a good question Jess, from my point of view i'v wanted for a long time to see stronger laws and harsher punishments for those who commit violent attacks against weaker/more vulnerable members of society.

I want those who feel like attacking women/children/the elderly/the disabled for whatever reason to be in fear of what will happen to them when they are caught and punished. That's not going to happen though is it, because the left hate punishment and will make sure it doesnt.

Beachcomber,

Some feminists are against men and some are not. It is such a broad church. My mother would call herself a feminist and was a huge fan of Germain Greer in the 60s/70s when women could not open a bank account etc. She has no truck with the 2nd wave though.

If you write a statement such as "men are responsible for rape" without any qualification, that means you are against men. I understand the issue, but it would be easy and correct to write "some men" or even, if you feel it to be the case, "far too many men". Once you start using the plural without the definite article, it implies men as a gender or all men. So many people deny that they mean that and say "men" is short for "some men" but it isn't in any reasonable interpretation of the rules of grammar. It is a provocative anti man statement, liable to annoy any decent male.

Also, when you talk about the overthrow of the "patriarchy", what would that actually entail? Overthrow is a pretty dramatic word if you merely mean changing a mindset. It sounds like violent revolution against men as a gender, as opposed to trying to change the way people think.

I think this guy needs to spend more time with women!

My question above was serious. I'd be interested to know what "non-feminists" think we can do to tackle DV.

These are the figures that were quoted to us yesterday on entirely preventable abuse - and this is for one small PCT in a year out of 152 PCTs:

£5,993,000 on hospital and ambulance services
£910,000 on mental health services
£160,000 on prescriptions

Plus a few other lines that I didn't manage to scribble down in the time. These figures are based on Home Office DV incident stats.

Whilst services for women who are experiencing domestic abuse (that's emotional, sexual, physical, financial) the rate of incidence isn't decreasing.

Where does this come from? What can we do about it?

DP - funny how you ignored my several mentions of my DP and DS and my extended family. What made you focus on my job as the indicator of how successful I am? I quite clearly stated that financial remuneration was not my indicator but I didn't know what constituted as having 'made it' to you so I put it in? From my perspective my greatest personal achievement to date is to have a son - no amount of scholarships/promotions etc come close to that joy - and in an overpopulated world it's really no achievement at all, but christ does he make me happy!

And no I don't have it all - but neither did I expect to. What I expected to have was choice and to a certain extent I have had that. And the flipside of choice is that it is a killer of happiness. You mention young women suffering from anhedonia - doesn't surprise me - but so does a lot of Western society. I will try and find the survey but I remember reading about the slum-dwellers in Delhi self-rating as much happier than city professionals in New York. Choice means you could always have been doing something else/seeing someone else etc and prevents people from living in and enjoying the moment, the now. But however true that is, I can't possibly deny any other woman the choices and opportunities I have been fortunate enough to have on the basis that it might make her unhappy.

Since being a very small child I remember shuddering at what would have happened to me if I had been born in a different time - a kind of anachronistic there but for the grace of God go I sort of feeling - and I feel grateful that despite being born the daughter of a bus driver I have been so fortunate to have choices and opportunities just by virtue of having been born now and the women and men born before me who struggled to make that possible - I could have been a bus driver too or a soldier or a doctor (not with a C in biology GCSE but er...I could have tried it at least!).

Good point Jess - I meant to say about the Scandinavian approach to paternal leave before as BeenBeta mentioned. If I was a feminist because I was a woman before, now I am a feminist because I have a son. I want him to have equal choice as fervently as I would for any daughter.

ps. DP - the higher up the ladder you get the less hard the work is (experience, skills acquired etc) and the more people you have to do it! Something men worked out a long time ago! Why do you think golf courses are fully booked during the daytime

lemonmuffin Tue 23-Nov-10 10:08:52
No those things are not hilarious they are serious criminal issues and most sensible people, both men and women, take them very seriously, it's just that so much of the feminist section seems to be so self-indulgent and 'poor little me' naval gazing. Sorry.

You did.

LemonMuffin - Are you suggesting that stronger punishments will put people off offending?

That may work but the current legal system isn't geared towards harsher punishments. I wouldn't say that that's a problem of the fluffy left not wanting to punish people. To me, it goes back to an earlier point about the legal system being originally set up by men for men and the fact that it's still dominated to a large extent by men (a point made by Helena Kennedy QC recently), e.g. the current rape conviction rate being so low.

Also, the punishment acts as a deterrent but doesn't educate people as to why it might be wrong in the first place. And, for a punishment to be meted out, a crime has to be committed in the first place - it doesn't stop it. Also, many people do not report the abuse they suffered because, if it's not physical, they don't have the vocabulary to articulate what has happened to them (which was my problem at the time).

Public health departments (and feminists) would argue that a wholescale cultural change needs to happen to make it completely unacceptable to treat women as objects, as subservient, as lower in status than men.

That's the most effective way of treating the problem - get at the root causes of it. Teach boys from a young age to respect women and to treat them as equals and teach women to expect nothing less. That, to me, is whole premise of feminism.

We discussed the question yesterday of "why doesn't she leave?" and the person leading the seminar said that the real question should be, "why doesn't he stop?"

From a public health perspective, the question should be, "why does he start?" That's the only way to change things and yes, men have a role to play in this too by challenging bad behaviour when they see it.

I certainly don't hate men! I have a great relationship with my dad and my 2 brothers. Our public health director is a great man who "gets it". As I said before, I dislike misoynists and sexists but not men as a whole and I would say that that's true of 99% of the lovely feminists that I've come across in the last few years.

Also I agree with BeenBeta's views on radical feminism drowning out the message of what equality can mean for EVERYONE. That's the same for any 'movement' including religion - the moderate Muslims for example don't get a look in in the media, (look at the stick Riven gets on here and I've never seen her be anything but measured and considerate in her expression of her views) but that doesn't mean I have to believe every Muslim is a secret member of Al-Qaeda. Intelligent debate can only help further understanding and MN is very good for that.

Wow - I think I may just have agreed with 3 of the men who have posted on this thread! DP - does this mean I am a traitor or that they have been deluded and brainwashed into becoming feminists? Or is there a middle way - we all want to see equality happen?

Nice reply BDJ - and I know the further up the ladder you get the less work you do - but if something goes wrong you're the one who gets the chop. ( buck stops with you - that's what you're getting paid for )

And yes. Feminism is about choice. I chose not to have a career at all, since having children I've lived the quiet life & have had a man supporting me throughout.
I've really enjoyed it.

I will get a job when my youngest is at secondary school however, but my priorities were always with my children, they came first.
I'll never regret that.

Just worked out a conservative estimate that this country spends at least £1.1bn a year on health services alone for treating the victims of domestic abuse.

If the Government could focus on tackling DV, that's £1.1bn they wouldn't have to shave off child benefit, for example.

I think it was Theresa May who recently decided to cut the proposed police order to keep abusive men out of the house for 2 weeks to allow an abused woman to get her life together and leave (leaving is the most dangerous time).

She has admitted that she is more supportive of women's services and women's rights than she dares admit because of pressure from above.

I don't think it's being radical to suggest that we end violence against women and hence save the NHS huge amounts of money at the same time. A win-win for everyone, surely!

Although there is still some sexism still existent in modern society. My problem with feminism is the way that feminists go round telling women that they are oppressed and yet they don't know it. I'm pretty sure if you're being oppressed then you would know about it.

And that DP is the beauty of feminism at work - you have had that choice and you are happy with it. All power to you. Just because your choice happens to fit with what has been traditionally expected of women does not either lessen the validity of your choice or mean that you can then deny other women the opportunity to choose differently surely? You have been able to choose your priorities - and while I said choice is often the harbinger of unhappiness, from another perspective lack of control or personal autonomy causes much unhappiness.