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

[BertrandRussell]

..is a bad thing?

it’s certainly your name, not your father’s

My name indeed. Inherited from my father not my mother......

im doing a fantastic Job challenging the patriarchy by keeping my Father's names as my own not my mother's

When i marry....

I think some nuance is being missed on the 'put women front and centre' issue. I'm the mother of a son, I'm married to a man, I care very deeply about things like male suicide and toxic masculinity, etc. But my activism is for women - that's where I choose to put my time, talents and money. What I want - what many feminists want - is for men to step up on some of these issues, rather than expecting women to do the emotional labour.

So for example, yes it's a disgrace that there's hardly any domestic violence refuge beds for men - so where are the men agitating, campaigning and fundraising? Why are women supposed to give theirs up? The refuge movement was started for women. They paid for them, they ran them, they kept them going. Men want them, men should create them.

I do try not to do that either!

I'm not gonna lie @BertrandRussell, I actually think you are much less sneering than you used to be!

I think my problem is that I am so much older than most other people on here, - I bet you're not much older than me 😁

Mumsnet is meant to be for mums, it's not Feministnet.

Some mums have children feminists don't agree with, but that's not a reason to silence them.

As a mum of a trans person I'm only here to fight that corner. I know of staunch feminist with a trans child, there must be many others. As Mothers we need to help our children. I will never put other women over my own children.

Never mind.

Even my children's robustly public schooly boys' school has issued statements against transphobia. How in the fuck is Mnet not catching onto this?

*Idon'twatchloveisland
*
My life's not too bad either but have you not come across any of these facts?

	Women earn on average <a class="break-all" href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/international-womens-day-2018-statistics-numbers-female-lives-feminism-gender-pay-gap-a8244101.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">9% less</a> than men

	<a class="break-all" href="https://www.makers.com/blog/21-facts-you-never-knew-about-international-gender-inequality?guccounter=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">62 million</a> girls are denied education all over the world

	Worldwide only 22% of parliamentarians are women, in the UK it reached 29% in <a class="break-all" href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/shocking-facts-gender-inequality-international-wom/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">2015</a>

	<a class="break-all" href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/shocking-facts-gender-inequality-international-wom/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">1 in 3</a> women are sexually abused at some point in their lifetime

	Each minute, <a class="break-all" href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/shocking-facts-gender-inequality-international-wom/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">28 girls</a> are married before they are ready

	An estimated<a class="break-all" href="http://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/infographic/violenceagainstwomen/en/index.html#mutilation-3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 200 million</a> girls have undergone Female Genital Mutilation

	<a class="break-all" href="http://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/infographic/violenceagainstwomen/en/index.html#trafficking-3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">71%</a> of all trafficking worldwide are women and girls

	Equal Employment Opportunity Commission <a class="break-all" href="https://mic.com/articles/168585/the-next-time-someone-tells-you-sexism-is-over-show-them-these-statistics" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">dismissed 52%</a> of sexual harassment claims in 2015 despite 1 in 3 women suffering

	There are more CEO’s named <a class="break-all" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-big-companies-than-men-named-john.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John</a> than there are women CEO’s altogether

	Only <a class="break-all" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/womens-march-21-shocking-reasons-2017-has-already-given-women/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">7%</a> of director’s behind 2016’s top-grossing films were women

	A mere <a class="break-all" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/womens-march-21-shocking-reasons-2017-has-already-given-women/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">17% of 3,212</a> producer, editors and writers on these films were women- the same percentage in 1998
	
	Women only make up <a class="break-all" href="http://equalrepresentationforactresses.co.uk/our-campaign/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">17%</a> of crowd scenes on screens yet we are 51% of the population

	<a class="break-all" href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/sep/04/10-comment-comments-feminist-blogposts-responses-sexism-" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">85,000</a> women in the UK are raped every year and over 400,000 are sexually assaulted

	<a class="break-all" href="https://everydaysexism.com/about" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">70%</a> of speaking roles in Hollywood films are men (although actresses are 5 times more likely to be asked to get naked than their male counterparts)
	
	<a class="break-all" href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/international-womens-day-2018-statistics-numbers-female-lives-feminism-gender-pay-gap-a8244101.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">60%</a> of all undernourished people are women and girls

It may not affect you but it certainly will affect your daughter, mother, friend or neighbour.

On the whole I agree, but at the moment my chief concern and annoyance is that MN is being used as a political soapbox - left, right and centre (literally) and I'm getting cheesed off with it.

I don’t think it’s exclusive to mn, i’m finding generally we are going back to the old “women are naturally and want to stay home with children, men and testosterone means they behave like x/y/z”

This time of year, for example. Endless conversations on what are you buying for your boys. Girls are so easy, perfume, make up, smellies. So anything to do with appearance, then

My mother offered to buy me a new kettle for christmas. She gave me money for new curtains last year. I didn’t buy new curtains, so this year she won’t give me money as i “don’t spend it on myself”.

Women who’s names aren’t as nice or as easy to spell as their husbands. Women for who it “makes sense” for them to give up work or go part time as they always earn less, or have a lesser career. Not even thinking long term that their pensions and independence are fucked.

Women are no longer even seeing the inequalities. They are blinded by “pink brain” where they are conditioned to accept their female roles. They believe it is their choice and so there’s no need for equality.

We have a massive gender pay gap in our organisation. A pretty senior female manager questioned it- pay is the same per role, and we have quite a lot of female senior personel, including the CEO.

The lightbulb, when it was pointed out that total spend on males was significantly higher because none of them took maternity leave, decided to go part time, take lesser roles etc - it was always women taking the hit for children, never men, was quite wonderful.

I don't think its patronising to point out internalised misogyny. The whole point about misogyny in the days of alleged equal opportunity is that these days its largely built on a set of internalised social codes which are invisible to people, rather than through explicit rules. And because official sexism is now largely banned, the way it is enforced is through subtle, social and familial means which women (and men) are often unaware of.

All men and women are to some extent inculcated with societal ideas about how men and women "should" be, look, behave, what they should do and where they should or should not work. These ideas are based on millennia of oppression of women by men. We have made some progress in examining and challenging these models and liberating women from the societal limitations which are placed on them, but this is an ongoing process.

As Bertrand said upthread, its not about a fixed conclusion that you're expected to get to. It's about the process of examining your own assumptions and those of others about how you are expected to behave and considering whether this has a gendered filter. And it bears repeating because we have had millennia of social conditioning which doesn't disappear in a single generation.

This doesn't mean you're not allowed to take your husband's last name upon marriage, or that you're not allowed to take time off to raise kids if you so want.

But it does mean its worth questioning whether your assumptions about the way you are expected to behave are based on gendered assumptions which may not ultimately serve your interests.

I think you're looking back with rose-tinted glasses. Mumsnet has always had a very broad range of views on issues that have a feminist component to them.

Think about the many hundreds of threads that have been started about porn over the years. There have always been some MNers who see porn as a bit of harmless fun that all men look at (and even some MNers who profess to enjoying it themselves) and there have also always been some MNers who see porn as intrinsically harmful to women and enjoyed only by misogynistic bastards. Both extremes of opinion (and every shade in between) have always been represented on Mumsnet.

I completely agree and I think it's worrying. MN used to be the one place a woman could go and be given permission to take control of her life whether it be by leaving a DV situation or a bad relationship or setting boundaries. Now, it feels every thread is swamped with a 'what about the menz? Stepford wife mentality' that says women should be happy with crumbs.
This shift is bad for MN. It's bad for women and it's bad for DCs.

If someone wants to spend their life trying to obtain equality for everyone, that's OK.

It looks like generation Z, X and boomers are leaving the name 'feminism' to the equality for all Millennials.

If someone wants to re-define feminism as an attempt to achieve equality for all, that's OK.

If someone rejects feminism because it's been redefined and they only want to spend their resources on what they choose - liberation and rights of females, that's ok!

bluebluezoo I'm also irrationally enraged by the vast numbers of obligatory "it made sense for our family for me not to work" comments.

You get dozens of these on every thread about WOHM vs SAHM choices and its so stating the bleeding obvious and blithely unquestioning.

Yes of course it "makes sense" for a lot of families because women are in general paid a lot less than men and because an awful lot of men are unprepared to pull their weight domestically when kids arrive, more or less forcing their spouses either to pay through the nose for childcare or to stop working.

Of course there are pragmatic reasons why women do this in the real world and I don't blame any woman for doing it. But still people are so unwilling to confront the structural reasons why it still happens and challenge this as a society, and just kneejerk back to "it made sense for our family".

Why does it make sense for your family? Why is it almost always resolved in favour of the man's career and not the woman's? Yes it may be a lot nicer for you to be with the kids now but what happens when he runs off with another woman and you have no income and pension. Why don't you examine a bit more and push back a bit more?

Sorry to drag this back to trans issues, but I don't see how questioning an ideology that could destroy natal women's chances of succeeding in sport, is 'transphobic'.

Why does it make sense for your family?

Doesn’t it sometimes just make sense

Yes it may be a lot nicer for you to be with the kids now but what happens when he runs off with another woman and you have no income and pension

The fact that it’s always assumed a woman hasn’t thought of these things is ingrained prejudice in itself!

Porn is an excellent example. I think it’s only quite recently that we’ve had women arguing that porn and prostitution are empowering and positive for women?

I think a lot of people have become disengaged with feminism.

Especially on MN, the feminist arguments and positions are no longer talked about really unless it is with regards to ‘trans issues’

I think a lot of feminists have left if they do not agree with the ‘trans rhetoric’ on MN and are instead being replaced by some who may not be feminist at all just gender critical.

Just an observation.

I think separating the boards would entice a lot of women back into feminist discussion.

It did actually make sense for me to be a SAHM. That doesn’t stop me being aware that it was the most non-feminist decision I have ever made. In a different climate- or in a future utopian society it wouldn’t have been- in the one we’re in now it most certainly was.

So you can't have a discussion about other feminist topics
Who is stopping you (general you) seems to be a lot of women on this thread saying the same thing. So go start a thread, and others might reply. And if not, sorry but that's the internet for you. We don't have a compulsion to reply to every thread. I feel very strongly about women needing a definition but I'm not on every thread in fwr. I dont have the time.
I have started one thread (not fwr) and it fizzled out 🤷‍♀️ such is life.

I dip in and out of feminism boards. I agree on many things that are the dominant view but I have posted an alternative view and you do get a fair bit of sarcasm in return.

Plus if anyone uses the MRA term I just think fuck off. I have a good feminist grounding so refute that. I can see why others get out off those boards.

I’m happy to remain as I am and comment ad hoc on stuff.

Pornography may go out of fashion, the men using it have rewired their brains into narcissistic immaturity along with an inability to perform. The Millennial Kardashian/West influencing family have started to have a change of values.

Get put off

I was shocked as I hit mid 40's, looked up from the child focussed women led circles I'd been absorbed in, and discovered that: sexual violence was worse than it had been 20 years previously; women are still trapped in abusive relationships; rape is generally a consequence free crime; women's pensions are still massively smaller than men's; circumstances conspire to ensure women take the sacrificial hit for children no matter how hard they try to evade it.

*Out of the top 20 posts in feminist chat 19 are about trans issues.

Agree. Other issues to do with feminism don’t get a mention. It pretty much just a trans issues board now, when there’s plenty of other things going on with regards to feminism.*

You must have missed the 2 threads about the abortion bill today, the many threads about choking during sex and the rough sex defence, the closure of the only girls state school in Scotland, HRT shortages and many more topics.