To ask if feminism has ruined your life?

[Playtive]

Joining mumsnet coincided with having my first baby. Having my first baby coincided with realising I’d married a deeply sexist man. Ergo a feminist was born.

Long story short he did nothing with our baby. He expected his life to continue as he wanted and it was my job to do all the drudge work.

I had huge resentment and really struggled for the first year of DDs life.

Anywho we’re still together and things marginally improved as she got older, however my resentment will not go away and I think it’s only a matter of time before I eventually leave - even though leaving would undoubtedly make mine and my child’s life harder.

Everywhere I look now I see inequality, male privilege, overt and covert abuse of women and it’s actually ruining my life somewhat.

I can’t watch a lighthearted television show without noticing sexism. Innocent conversation with female friends/family can give me the rage inside with all the internalised misogyny. Pretty much every conversation with my husband regarding women makes me think he’s an entitled sexist arsehole. Even though I wouldn’t have batted an eye to these seemingly innocuous comments previously and was a very easy going person.

Has this happened to anyone else? How did you deal with it? AIBU to just want to watch television in peace?!

I’m exactly the same OP. I feel so angry about it all the time - when I’m putting on my make up, when I’m looking at some mess my husband ‘can’t see’ when I’m watching a film and the main female character simply has to have heels and cleavage.

It’s exhausting. It genuinely is.

Once you see these things, you can’t unsee them. I spend a lot of time being pissed off.

AlmostAlwyn - it starts so early. Even when DD was only a year old, there would be all the comments about "isn't it funny how boys and girls are different from such a young age? It's obviously hard-wired. Look at your DD being a little mummy with that doll's buggy. My DS is such a typical boysie boy - look, he's banging on the drum there. Boys have so much energy! They're such little monkeys."

Invariably, DD had only relinquished the drum kit that their DS was playing with about thirty seconds earlier, and within two minutes she'd be playing at crashing the doll buggy into a wall. But it's as though babies and toddlers are only visible when they're exhibiting stereotypical behaviour for their sex. There's a lot of confirmation bias.

Equally, a three year-old girl having a tantrum at playgroup is just having a tantrum, whereas a three year-old boy having a tantrum frequently kick-starts a conversation about how he must be about to get the famous testosterone surge that happens in little boys, per Steve Biddulph.

(My understanding is that the testosterone surge has been pretty thoroughly debunked, but I'm happy to be corrected).

Seriously though, when DD and her (male) friend were about two and a half, they went through a phase of being a bit rowdy at their baby singing group.

As far as DD was concerned, the class leader was kind but firm, i.e. kept leading her back to the circle, putting her on her lap, giving her "jobs" so that DD felt like teacher's little helper.

And DD's little friend? The class leader recommended to his mum that she read "Raising Boys" because it would teach her all about how boys are different. A few sessions later, DD is handing out toys to the babies, whereas her friend is still running riot but his mum is reassured because she now believes it's just natural boy behaviour and probably due to testosterone.

No sir, it hasn't.

Thisway that story is infuriating! This is why some boys grow up aggressive.

Feminism has enriched and improved my life. If anything has ruined it, misogyny has. My father hated women, and he took out this hatred on me, his daughter. My brother also never escaped unscathed from his abuse of me, and we both grew up hating him. I've been raped by two men at once. I've been stalked twice. I can't even count the number of times I've fended off inappropriate sexual conduct, harrassment, groping in bars etc; or just basic casual sexism. #MeToo. And 3. And 4, 5, 6, 7 ...

This story is by no means unique. It's a rare women who makes it through life without even one incident of sexually inappropriate behaviour from men. Misogyny is an old, old social malaise and feminism is its equally old counterpart of resistance. It represents the many generations of women who have stood up against this shit, and faced ridicule and claims of man-hating/hysteria etc for doing so. (Hysteria being another sexist term, relating to the Greek 'hyster' for womb, I believe. Hyena in a petticoat, I believe Mary Wollstonecraft was once called.

Misogyny is real. Abuse of women is real. Murder of women by domestic partners: stalking, terrifying, assaulting of women, the molestation of children, are all real. And whilst women are also culpable in these things, just look at the statistics as to which is overwhelmingly the guilty sex. A society overwhelmingly built around the needs and interests of men; the abuse of women by men from serious assault to casual sexism; exists whether you're conscious of it or not. But being conscious of it empowers you with the tools to fight back, and the choice of whether to accept this kind of behaviour or to oppose it.

No 'real' man would ever feel threatened by observations such as these. He would agree.

I think it is interesting how for some people the problem just doesn't exist, and from my point of view the reason they can't see it is because it's SO huge and all-encompassing and is everywhere.

I once had a discussion on here about kids shoes and how I was pissed off that there were "girls" and "boys" shoes, and DD wanted girls' shoes so as to fit in, but all the girls' shoes were flimsier and made it harder to run and climb etc and wore out sooner.

While some people totally understood and discussed the issue, some just couldn't get it. They were saying "But she's a girl... so why shouldn't she have girls shoes? They're made for girls. I don't see what the problem is." No amount of explanation could make them see that THAT'S THE POINT - we don't need "girls' shoes" and creating this division is telling girls and boys things about how they should look and behave.

I even saw one person on a forum once saying that if seeing sexism in these little everyday things was just ridiculous, if you did that you'd start seeing it everywhere!

@queen - don't get me started on the girls shoes thing. We live in ENGLAND. an Island, known for being wet a lot of the time. And yet, girls school shoes are all cute little ballet slipper style that give the feet absolutely no protection. It sends me into a rage every single time I go to a shoe shop and I'm dreading shopping for DD's school shoes because I know I'm going to get so angry.

It has to be said that my parents clearly felt the same. They refused to let me wear the cute little mary janes my friends had. I had to wear lace up shoes. I was so so angry at them. But I do rather sheepishly remember that in my final year, when they relented, I found the constantly wet feet extremely annoying.

I get what you mean OP, I feel a bit like Neo after discovering the Maitrix.

No superpowers though :(

Yes bling the stupid open top bit as well? They might as well have a sticker on them saying "Women! don't leave the house!"

It's not that I think all shoes should be tough and strong - I'm fine with dainty glam shoes too if that's what someone wants - but it should be a choice of everything for everyone, not a sex-based division. (To be fair, some shops are starting to get this now.)

I mean imagine if instead, there were different shoes for black people and white people. People can get their head round why that would be an issue. And yet embedded sexism is staring them in the face all the time.

DD had very little hair and looked like a boy. It was amazing how the attitudes changed the second people on the playgrounds figured out she was a girl. One minute - boy acting like a boy; next she was treated like a delicate princess who should not do anything as she might get hurt.

Had exactly that with DD. She used to wear a batman swimsuit thing when she was 3/4 and she was a great swimmer and diver...lifeguards never batted an eyelid. When the suit wore out she switched to a flowery number...suddenly every lifeguard in the building felt the need to ask at least twice if she could really swim well enough to be down the deep end. Eventually it began to erode her confidence.

Thankfully some random person who must have seen us previously at the pool spoke to her one day saying she really missed her batman costume, because she had looked so cool. Now I'm not normally in favour of strangers commenting on my child's dress sense, but in this case it worked some magic and she was back in a new batman costume and free to use the pool as she wished within a week!

OP I so get your point about wanting to watch some TV in peace.

My DH is lovely, although his DM did teach him no household skills at all. In the first year of my marriage I dropped my standards a lot.

He and I love opera and when we were dating most of our dates were at the opera. It rapidly became apparent that NO operas were date suitable as they all involved torturing women for having sex or abusive relationships. We bonded over the search for an actually romantic opera.

9 years on I think we've found one, The Cunning Little Vixen and that's about animals, not people, and even then the Vixen dies

As a PP said, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

@queen - yes. I totally agree re the flimsiness issue but it's the wet thing that actually irritates me more. Either way, it's ridiculous. And when I see the girls in PE wearing skirts, i have to admit my blood boils.

Unconscious bias also disfavours women. There have been studies where they sent CVs for one man and one woman with identical qualifications and experience in answer to real job adverts and recorded the call-backs. I wonder if you can guess which got more? There are numerous similar studies showing the same thing.

Female is seen as inferior, and until that changes, women will always be on the back foot (despite some people's experience to the contrary).