AIBU to think that Mumsnet is becoming increasingly less feminist and that this..

[BertrandRussell]

..is a bad thing?

" Because I can very clearly remember reading a thread about women taking men’s surnames after marriage.

You said on there that women are free to do that but it’s not “feminist”.”

Well, it’s not a feminist choice! That’s not to say that women can’t make it, of course. Feminists can decide to make non-feminist choices. And conversely, just because a woman makes a choice doesn’t make it a feminist one."

Absolutely.
I sometimes shave my armpits, but I don't claim it's a feminist choice!

I agree about activities too. Oddly, riding is dominated by girls

Do you find it odd? Horses are 99% caring, looking after, cleaning up, brushing, plaiting, washing, feeding. All “female” activities.

I agree with the riding bit, but i have always though riding was dominated by girls because of the above.

Yes, I do find it a bit odd (in the sense is unexpected), because people who have horses don't pretend that it doesn't involve a lot of unladylike heavy work and shit-shovelling, and it's pretty physical. It will trash your nails and any complicated hairstyle.

For me, it's always been about the actual riding, including risk-taking when a teenager. Though if you're right and it's about caring for the animals, that may explain the number of women now involved in dog training.

Ds does horse riding, the split is I’d say slightly more towards girls. Lots of volunteers who put in more time to work there who are mostly girls. It’s a great thing to do no doubt. Physical, away from looks, mucky.

I’ve been fairly even with what I buy for the dc. Toy kitchen for both, but boys got a tiny hoover, pram and broom and I can’t quite bring myself to get dd a baby doll (might change she’s only 2) and cleaning stuff. I know how that sounds but agree with Bertrand on the small stuff and their world.

The riding thing is interesting.

As an extrapolation- Barbie- that absolute stereotype of femininity - has always been well into horses. But not other sports. 🤷🏻‍♀️

“ Do you find it odd? Horses are 99% caring, looking after, cleaning up, brushing, plaiting, washing, feeding. All “female” activities.”

I suppose that applies to non horse owners- I wonder if the %of boys is higher among horse owners.

IME the volunteers at animal rescue centres and similar are usually predominantly woman. Caring for animals definitely seems to be more of a feminine pastime.

But not other sports

Apologies. I think she may briefly have flirted with beach volleyball.

Barbie pretty does any sport now, eg football, tae kwondo. Not sure how long they’ve been around.

Pretty much

I grew up with horses and when i was riding in the late 70’s / 80’s it was probably 60/40 female.
The great thing about riding was and i guess still is is when you complete its about the pony/horse and ability, not sex. Girls/Boys men/women compete equally and men dont have the advantage

Riding is very female centric at amateur level, which doesn’t necessarily translate of course to the competition level.

Racing is almost exclusively male and virtually impossible for a woman to do anything other than be a “lad” (ironically named!). Female jockeys are few and far between.

“ Girls/Boys men/women compete equally and men dont have the advantage”

That’s certainly not true in the professional world......

When you see how we’ve skewed we’ve become towards image etc through visual social media it feels good to be outside doing physical stuff without the fripperies

I was only rwally referring to pony club levels.
The lack of female jockeys is a joke and down to twatty trainers and owners. Show jumping seems to be dominated by men but in eventing last year 5 of the top 10 were women iirc.

Should add that British eventers

I think the main focus for feminism at the current time should be the free porn websites. How can it be legal, in this day and age, to have free sites hosting thousands upon thousand of videos with “click bait” captions such as “teen slut destroyed..” or “stepdad breaks daughter”.., and that’s just the stuff I can type. Imagine a website that hosts thousands if videos with racist titles, or homophobic. There would be outrage (quite rightly) and they would be banned. I don’t understand how such language and titles are apparently ok, just because it’s women. If anything, standards are going backwards.

Also, there are whole sections featuring supposed incest videos. Just type in “incest” into the search bar and off you go. A couple of clicks and it’s free viewing for all. I can’t get my head around this at all. What an insult to the millions of women whose lives are ruined by incest. Is nothing taboo anymore? What is the thought process here? At some point, people must sit round a table and decide - “oh yes let’s go with the girl being groomed and raped by her father - great plot guys...” And what kind of woman would be prepared to “act” this, knowing that it’s reality for so many girls? Finally, what online forum would think it’s ok to host these videos? I just don’t understand.

Then when women come on and say they’re all fine with porn as it’s “just sex”, I wonder what planet they’re on. It’s not “sex” at all, it’s glamorising rape and incest which are illegal (obviously).

Sorry I know you were taking about horse-riding!

I agree, cosima. I think the impact that poem is having in our society is much more significant than we realise. I think it is seriously damaging to the way men and women relate to each other, and is particularly bad for young women. But I have no idea what we can do about it.

I sometimes wonder if ubiquitous access to increasingly violent porn is some kind of backlash against women gaining equality in other spheres, notably professional life.

To pick up on your point about “mental furniture” Bertrand, it’s scary to think about the impact of such porn on teens, when brain impulses are developing and they have little or no real life experience to balance what they are exposed to.

It’s almost as if where we once had religion to distort our thinking / rewire our internal belief systems in order to keep women in check, porn has come in to fill that void.

Sorry if Im waffling here, but I do think in some areas, the situation for women is worse than in the 1950s (to use the fave MN decade). And what’s more scary, is that somehow women are internalising it all as liberating.

I agree with you 100% about porn cosima. Especially this:

Imagine a website that hosts thousands if videos with racist titles, or homophobic. There would be outrage (quite rightly) and they would be banned. I don’t understand how such language and titles are apparently ok, just because it’s women

Hardcore porn (even just erect dicks and basic penetration)used to be illegal in the UK. So when did such extreme porn become legal? Who decided this? Why is it that so many people just accept that there can be no restrictions on what is allowed on the Internet when it comes to women? If it's illegal to show children being abused then why is it seemingly completely fine to show older girls and women being abused?
Interestingly a lot if men I know who are over 40 have given porn up because it all got too hard and shiny and violent. One old male friend told me that he stopped accessing porn sites when it started to look more about abuse than sex.
It's natural to want to look at sexy images I think but what's sexy about being gagged or having someone spunk in your face?
The easy availability of porn scares me. The fact that I have to talk to my teen son about potentially dealing with images and ideas that I didn't know existed until my late 20s scares me. I feel for both boys and girls nowadays. It's a cancer on the soul it really is.

I think the reason that some women defend porn as "it's just sex" are thinking of something like Playboy or soft porn videos that they may have seen or been aware of at some point in the past. I think that many women have no idea what is out there today and readily available to all, including their impressionable teenage sons.

It’s almost as if, as it’s become less acceptable for men to patronise or humiliate women in the workplace for fear of disciplinary action and the expectation at least that they will accept women as professional equals (I know many still struggle), porn has become more violent to pander to the psychological urge to demean women. So a man might not get away with calling a colleague “darling” any more or using sexual innuendo at work. But instead now, he can watch some gagging /face slapping / violent delight of a video anytime, at a click on his phone, and fantasise that this could be any woman he knows.

You can be a feminist without trampling over others
You can't be a feminist if you centre men.

It is disheartening to see so many negative posts about the FWR board. The main thrust of the posts on that board are not anti-trans but pro-women.
Self-id threatens women's rights. How some women don't see this is baffling.