To wonder what happens when your boyfriend asks your father for your hand...

[PumpkinLatteMyArse]

And then he says no?

Do adults just not get married then?

I don’t think my life is anything remarkable whatsoever, nor should it be something that needs justification.

Men who get girls pregnant and evade the CSA and take no responsibility (even multiple girls / women) are sadly no longer an “extreme” or anything particularly unusual either.

Its doesnt need justification. I am not asking you too. I just disagree with you.

You are the one that's keeps justifying it by comparing your version, where everyone is happy to the worst version of a different stance. You are in a better position than your builders ex. Its doesnt follow that's the case for all or most women.

I was in a better position than most single mothers, however that doesnt mean that all single parents should have it as good as I did.

Men have been abandoning women and their children all through history. Even in patriachys. Its shit and it's wrong. Patriarchal societies dont stop that. The way you live isnt a solution to that. It's just worked out well for you.

I have two daughters and when I think about the futures they are likely to face, I’m not worried about whether they choose to observe certain traditions such as “asking” for the hand in marriage; wearing a white dress to be married in; being “given away”, changing her name etc. They are free to ascribe whatever meaning they want to these traditions.

To me, there is an important distinction between this kind of “benign sexism” (which you can dip in and out of according to your personal inclinations), and proper misogyny.

I think we need to stop worrying about the past and look to the future because the biggest misogynistic threat to my daughters, I think, is the increase in violent porn and the normalisation of this.

I have a half-baked theory that as women have achieved greater freedoms and agency in so many areas of life, porn has arisen to put them back in their place (but I won’t get into that).

In terms of their future marriages, I hope they don’t tolerate having children with a man who insists in separate finances, even though he earns more and ends up with greater disposable income. I hope she doesn’t see this as fair or “equality”. To me, that is misogyny and abuse.

I hope she has the choice about whether and when to return to work after children and meets a man with similar values to her.

If they do decide to go the SAHM model, I hope she won’t be made to feel “lesser” for this choice, either by her husband or society.

If she does return to work, I hope her DH is prepared to take on his fair share at home, but also acknowledge the reality that physical and emotional impact of childbirth and child rearing are different for men and women and make allowances for this.

Pa1oma, I have to agree with Put -- you sound as if you think you benefit from patriarchy, therefore it can't be all bad, and this is affecting your objectivity.

I think you're confused about the definition as well patriarchy isn't men pulling out chairs for women, or taking their roles as provider seriously, it's simply a society where men hold most of the power and authority. And you can't cherry-pick the bits you like having a high-earning husband who supports you, or 'courtly' old-fashioned manners -- while leaving out the ugly facts of the ongoing pay gap, women's underrepresentation in government and at high levels in the workplace, the risible rape conviction rate, female poverty, the ongoing imposition of social conditioning into rigid gender roles (on both sexes, resulting in issues like male suicide rates), FGM, etc etc etc.

I asked up the thread whether you've ever had meaningful/well-paid/enjoyable work outside the home, whether you've ever thought of yourself as the provider for your children, and what you feel would happen in the dynamic of your marriage if some catastrophe meant your current assets, income, savings were gone beyond recall, and your husband unable for some reason for earn?

I'm not asking whether you would get a job, because of course you would, but what it would mean for your sense of the way the world works, because, for you, masculinity seems so thoroughly bound up with providing and working, and being a woman with staying at home looking after children and facilitating his career. What would happen if that changed, and the onus was on you to be the sole provider?

Bulb - I’ve already explained that upthread. I don’t really want to get into our finances, but, god forbid, if anything happened to DH I would be fine financially and no, I wouldn’t need to get a job going into the future. The DC are also sorted for the future. He has gone through exactly how to access everything and it’s all in his will. I realise I’m in an unusual situation here, but you asked so that’s the wider context.

But it doesn’t matter about me. Nor is it about “cherry picking”. Do you think women refusing to change their names will have any impact on FGM? Or access to violent porn? Or incest? Or domestic violence?

They are free to ascribe whatever meaning they want to these traditions.

But they arent because you said this is important to your husband, who like the tradition roles. If they marry within your community, it wont be their choice. It will be between their partner and your dh.

To me, there is an important distinction between this kind of “benign sexism” (which you can dip in and out of according to your personal inclinations), and proper misogyny.

Well that's why theres 2 words. Sexism and misogyny. Everyday or benign sexism is damaging to women.

I think we need to stop worrying about the past and look to the future because the biggest misogynistic threat to my daughters, I think, is the increase in violent porn and the normalisation of this.

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Ever hear that before. Yes violent porn is worrying. It still used with in patriarchal communities. As you know, so is violence, rape (within marriage). Meb in your community are just as likely to abuse their wives as other communities.

I have a half-baked theory that as women have achieved greater freedoms and agency in so many areas of life, porn has arisen to put them back in their place (but I won’t get into that).

So porn is a response to feminism. Interesting. But doesnt account for widespread abuse of women going back hundreds of years. Nor does it account for the fact that porn is used in patriarchal societies. Abuse of women is also wide spread.

You supposition that women, essentially find it harder to work because of the physical and emotional impact of having children is bollocks. It's true for some women. Lots of us are happy to go back to work.

As for your daughter futures. They can have a marriage like that. But are no more likely to have it in a patriachy.

I'm not asking you about your actual finances, Pa1oma -- and I'm not saying, imagine what would happen if your DH (God forbid) died or divorced you!

I am saying -- what would happen if all your assets and savings and investments wills and future-proofings and inheritances were simply gone, for some reason, and your husband could not earn because of illness, and you had to support your family on your skills alone.

You just don't sound even willing to contemplate what that would do to your world view. It's as if your husband's comfortable financial situation has dulled your imagination on that, because you have never had to think 'How would my life and my marriage and my priorities be different if I were the sole provider for my family, and my husband was my dependent?'

The patriarchy will only be dismantled if women and their male allies, obviously continue to work at it. People with historic privilege have never handed it over without a fight, and yes, that takes place on all fronts, all the time.

Women being conditioned to think it's normal in 2019 to drop their birth surname and adopt someone else's on marriage is part of an entire pattern of female conditioning in favour of objectification whereby they're conditioned to see their husband's porn use as normal, or that painful sex acts which do not involve female pleasure are normal, or that women and children are there and available for male sexual pleasure -- and if I had a pound for every time I've seen on Mn someone saying 'he doesn't actually hit me, so it's not actually abuse', I'd be rich. And yes, FGM, which is as much a logical conclusion of patriarchy as violent porn.

Things you consider are 'small issues' are part of a tissue of social conditioning which tells women they are still ancillary and subject to men.

Sorry just with people but I’ll reply to all this in a while

This is quite a lot to respond to. Firstly, to the “have you ever financially provided for your family?” question. Well no, as I explained, I do however know exactly what I am planning to do to get back into work in the next year or so. I have an MA I did in my 20s and I’m half through another one which will enable me to work for myself, seeing clients one-to-one. So I can work yes, and my imagination has not been dulled, though I admit that in the early years with the kids I probably did lose sense of much outside the DC and family. But that’s ok. There are pros and cons to everything and I have no regrets.

Bulb - I understand your point about everything being interconnected. Maybe I’m more of a pessimist in that I think if you’re going to annihilate patriarchy, you essentially need to annihilate human nature and start over again because as soon as you rid yourself of it in one area, it will just re-manifest into another form. Patriarchy is an expression of human nature and unless we’re a different species to thousands of years ago, it won’t go away. If men needed to subjugate women and their sexuality millennia ago (hence religion), do we think male sexuality no longer has this characteristic? Can you brainwash this out if people? Sexuality has nothing to do with logic. Sorry if that sounds depressing, but that’s how I see it.

Also, sorry Lamp, but I don’t really see myself as part of a particular “community”. Like any other parents, DH and I will try and instill certain values in our DC. No parents are “neutral” and no parents are perfect, but you have to do your best. We live in the middle of London and they’re exposed to allsorts. My girls know that there’s nothing they can’t do and we’re behind them all the way, but also if they do genuinely experience the instinct to be at home with their children, then they shouldn’t feel that this instinct demeans them.

Religion wasnt created to control women. It was manipulated and used to control the masses and then, more specifically, women.

You believe that people are sexist in their nature, rather than nurture?

I would disagree

My girls know that there’s nothing they can’t do and we’re behind them all the way, but also if they do genuinely experience the instinct to be at home with their children, then they shouldn’t feel that this instinct demeans them

No one said it should demean anyone. But either decision should mean they fully think out the pros and cons and their own security.

But they cabt do what they want. If they marry from your DHS culture, work would mean people will judge their husband. Which will influence them. Her husband to be will need to seek your DHS blessing. Because your dh thinks it's a sign of respect.

Yes I do believe the male need to subjugate / control women is intrinsic within human nature. It’s also nurture because human nature is what determines nurture. Everything we experience in terms of external society comes from within us. If humans were intrinsically different, societies across the globe would have developed differently to reflect that. As it is, they’re all misogynistic to some degree or another.

"Yes I do believe the male need to subjugate / control women is intrinsic within human nature."

downcast - is that the right link? It’s music and something about “Dave.”

I thought you might appreciate the abridged version, here's the whole thing

I don’t speak that language, sorry.

I disagree mysogeny or sexism is a nature issue.

You obviously would because it fits your life structure.

There have been civilisations that dont feel the need to control women the Egyptians allow women to retain property, divorce if they wished etc. How would you explain that?

Don't start the Chomsky-Foucault debate.

Can you brainwash this out of people? Sexuality has nothing to do with logic. Sorry if that sounds depressing, but that’s how I see it.

I don't see it as 'brainwashing' -- quite the reverse. I see it as educating people out of previous brainwashing or conditioning, and enabling them to live lives free of gendered inequality. (Which obviously is not the only form of inequality, but the one we're talking about here.)

If I didn't, I wouldn't have had a child. But said child is growing up in a household in which both parents' jobs are equally important, both parents support the household financially, cook and scrub the bath and check his spellings and take him to the dentist, and where he's encouraged to question messages about gender he gets from wider society or from books (currently explaining why Aslan keeps taking the male Talking Beasts off to discuss affairs of state, and not the female ones ) and he's allowed to have an emotional range larger than grunting at the football, and where his friends' parents include women in historically male jobs and two stay-at-home-fathers, and where he sees mutually respectful male-female friendships and marriages, as well as same-sex ones etc.

Obviously, he'll be exposed to porn, the way he'll be exposed to misogyny and racism and homophobia, and rigid ideas about masculinity -- but I hope that having had the base he's had, it will give him to tools to question and resist.

And not just him -- I'm an academic, and I find myself at times very impressed with the younger generation, and many of my friends teenagers and twentysomethings are brilliant. And one of the nicest differences I notice with my own upbringing and single-sex education is male-female friendships. A teenage boy who has close girl friends is not going to be able to see violent porn as normal, any more than a girl who has close male friends is going to see men as a different and superior species.

A lot of my students are first-generation university-goers, and a significant minority are from conservative BAME backgrounds -- their experience and expectations will be very different to their mothers' lives. Education matters.

How are you planning to arm your daughters against what you see as an innate male instinct to subjugate women, Pa1oma? You're right, that is a depressing view.

I don’t speak that language, sorry.

You need to put captions in. Or Google it. You can get the general gist from articles.

I just reread, and part of my last post sounds insufferably smug, which I didn't intend. I'm not promoting us as some kind of utopian family far from it, we have our issues we're not even particularly unusual.

But I'm saying that at least some of today's children are growing up with more egalitarian role models and ideas around them, which will form their worldview, or contribute to it. It's not much more than 100 years since Emily Davison died on the Derby racecourse, and 100 since women over 30 got the vote in the UK -- things have come on, even if there's a long way to go.

Well I’m no specialist in Ancient Egypt and women’s rights, but so do know modern Egypt has the highest rate of FGM in the world.

But yes, Bulb, I do think misogyny is innate. That’s not to say you have to be paranoid, or give up entirely, believe it’s inherent in all individual men. Far from it. But just be realistic. I would agree with your observation about young people today. My DS and his friends would fit that description - he’s at a co-Ed school which is known for its liberal outlook and challenging pretty much everything. He said to me the other day, “You are successful mum. Your life is a success and I value you”. He said “You know who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”
However, I’m also aware that my kids live in a very privileged bubble and teens in general are nearly all watching hardcore porn the click of a button. What is this doing to their minds in the formative years? Probably all, if not the majority of men are getting off fairly regularly on scenes that subjugate women. Why? Also the insinuation that women have to accept this as inevitable, even join in and watch it themselves, or conform to practices that we’re not on the radar when I was a teen.

Paloma, what criteria do you use for deciding whether an act of misogyny should be fought against or accepted as inevitable?

As for my daughters, well I can’t tell them who to be attracted to or why they should be attracted to a particular type. It’s not exactly rational, is it. I would just tell them to be honest with themselves about what matters most to them in life and find someone who shares that outlook. Trust your instincts. Don’t try and fit into someone else’s ideology of what you should want, or should do, because you only get one life.

Sorry I wasn't clear. I'm talking about general misogyny as opposed to relationships. Is there a limit beyond which you are prepared to challenge and fight sexism as opposed to accepting it as intrinsic?