To get annoyed when other women say "I'm not a feminist"

[Nickabilla]

As if it's a dirty word and a shameful thing to be? I hear it every now and then and always question it. Someone said it today and I'm annoyed again.

Do some women not realise that women didn't used to be allowed to go to university, get divorced, own property or vote?

Rant over.

I think it is just better to let the crazies do their own talking. I thought she devoted faaaaaar too much time to this person and hence weakened her own position.

Anyhoo, yes Buffy you make a good point, within each group of disadvantaged people it may be that the women of that group remain at bottom of pile.

But I can think of some specifically male disadvantaged groups - black boys in care. Highly unlikely to be chosen for adoption when compared to girls. Most highly prized are little white girls.

And working class men, surely women in that social group have the advantage as there are more jobs available to them in care and service industries. What aspiration does the unskilled man now have?

On your point yams, no I don't think it is exploitation as the salaries and bonuses for those types of jobs are enormous. But those jobs are just not compatible with raising children. You have to outsource the child care to someone else.

Basically what every working person needs is a wife at home, doing shopping, running household etc.

Fortunately I just noticed that my iPad corrected 'doing' to 'dong' which would have given this post a rather different flavour.

Oh!!

Black boys are at the very bottom of the heap,probably even below disabled children but I dont have the stats to hand.

They are a victim of the racist stereotyping of the hyper violence of the black man.

Hmmm. My experience today suggests that the working class man is much less protected than his female counterpart in terms of access to help and support in legal system.

It did come across that that is what you might be saying.
Glad you cleared that up.

Fine. Thanks.

I'm a white working class woman, and I would be quite interested to hear how working class men are more disadvantaged than working class women. Genuinely interested, I've never thought about it much. My feminism has me concerned about rape culture and gender stereotypes mainly at the moment. I have only in recent months began to be interested in feminism, so please excuse my ignorance on some matters.

I wondered whether the switch away from industry, manufacture and mining etc meant that unskilled working class women could more easily find jobs in a predominantly service economy.

I'm middle class, I did a year long course once and all the other women were working class from very poor backgrounds.

I was shocked by how very hard many of their lives had been, and always down to their treatment by men. So many stories of violence, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, it was a real eye opener.

What course was this? You are making it sound like all working class men are horrible abusers.

I have met a lot of men and women from deprived backgrounds and the horribleness of their lives is generally down to poverty and drug addiction. Of course violence plays a part but it is not exclusively male on female.

It was a beauty therapy course, ironic considering this thread.

DH is working class and from a very disadvantaged background and he is not a horrible abuser, but in my personal experience it is more common for working class women to be on the receiving end of abuse.

At the hands of men

I would have thought that the reason there are more male asylum seekers is that men will often be sent hoping that they can settle get work and money together so family can follow, women from many cultures do not travel alone

also many will come from cultures where a woman's life is just not valued in the same way a man life

another is that the men will also be expected to support family they have left back home

really Nickablia?

it is more common for women from wc backgrounds to use services and it may be they are more likely to be open about the abuse and not try and hide what is happening as from the outside life can often look perfect and some desperately want to hold on to that illusion

I would rather see our energies directed at tackling abuse and deprivation in all its forms than arguing about whether its more men than women etc etc.

if a lot of working class men are abusers as opposed to more privileged men surely we are seeing this abuse as part of the environmental problem, hopelessness, despair, lack of aspiration etc. and if we can tackle that we reduce the violence?

My case today, the violent man had a terrible upbringing with an abusive mother. If he had had a nurturing and loving mother would he today be a violent and abusive man?

Buffy - interesting point about freedom. But I have to say it is not born out in my experience which shows that the people I work with often suffer from an almost absolute lack of any censure for their behaviour - men and women behave appallingly towards themselves and each other with apparently only social services or the police providing any check on this behaviour.

I think when you get down far enough into deprivation, the gender differences become meaningless.

The women I deal with are better off in terms of access to legal services and possibly other services such as drug rehab. The men are thrown on the scrap heap it would appear. Which is worrying, because they don't just vanish into the ether. They carry on having miserable lives and making awful decisions and hurting others. But the majority of people in my field are women, who are scared of them and don't know how to relate to them.

There is always the law of unintended consequences. And this I think is the outcome of pushing this narrative that men are always the violent abusers and should be used to one side.

My female clients can and do behave very badly. It cannot all be down to the abuse they suffer from men.