When your mother blames the woman...

[anxietyaunt]

My mother is... something else. She’s never been much of an advocate for women’s rights. I’ve always known this so I shouldn’t be affected by some of her comments, but I am.

Despite being a smart woman and (allegedly) knowing the statistics around domestic violence against women, she can’t help herself. She thinks courts are unfairly biased towards women. That women should “stop carrying on” and sort things out themselves. “Deal with it.” “Stop making things up and ruining lives.”

This woman raised me. Sorry, not sure what my AIBU is, but I’m so incredible saddened by it all.

You know, I expected a few who had similar mothers but to see it so widespread is incredibly disappointing.

I said in my OP my mother “raised me”. I take that back. I raised me.

My mum could hardly speak to me for a year without going on and on about "those poor boys" in the Ulster Rugby rape trial "who have had their lives ruined".

I'm a rape survivor.

I came very close to ordering her out of my house. It took losing my shit at her, bigtime, to shut her up.

Another woman bashing thread on MN confused

But its not.

Are we not allowed to discuss topics such as these now. I think its a very interesting one and does show how far the younger generation of women has come and how times have changed.

My own mum is the same and she's 72.

She also had a good career, successful, attractive but has some very misogynistic ideas towards other women.

I thought it was just her and its been interesting to read that others of her generation are the same and why she.might be.like that.

My mum always serves the men first at meals and parties and they always get the biggest portion even if there is not much to go round

She says because men are bigger and thats what thats expected..they always come first in a family.

She did it yesterday at my dds birthday

I think also , because my mum worked full time and also did everything at home and her life was really hard, she sticks by this as being the right thing to do . Now things are more equal I the world she probably resents deep down how hard it was but stubbornly sticks to this for her own peace of mind. She was exhausted and lived on coffee and cigarettes!

@speakout what you say about the opportunity to duck out of adult responsibility is so true. My mother gets to be the boss of my dad and my dad colludes with all of her narratives and yet also has no responisibilty to earn. It is childlike. I can see its appeal to women who doubt themselves.

I work ft, single parent to two teens and my mother has a narrative that my kids never eat a vegetable and that im very stressed. This is what she needs to believe.

Selkie1961

Sounds so familiar. And I know what underpins the rhetoric.
The church. It has laid the foundations.

@speakout

*Remember to also feel sympathy for women that feel like this, they may be part of the problem but to live their whole life feeling so much lesser than men must be awful for them.

Is it though? They have a choice whether to be a hapless handmaiden.
My mother wouldn;t have it any other way. She gets to duck out of adult responsibility and be a 6 year old forever.

You make a good point about ducking out of responsibility and basically being a child forever. My ex MIL is not only a fucking awful misogynist very like the OP’s mother but defers to her husband for everything as the expert on everything including stuff he can’t possibly know anything about and in her own words “likes to be taken care of”. She pities women who aren’t married to men including those who aren’t married by choice because we all need a man to take care of us and think for us. The result? Between them they’ve raised a misogynistic sociopath rapist (my ex).

My mother is no better really. She doesn’t slut shame or blame male on female violence on women (to me anyway) but she doesn’t hold back judging women on their looks, size, dress sense etc. Despite not being a well dressed supermodel herself

I just hope that it’s my attitude towards all these things that my children pick up on and not their grandparents

My DM was born in 1926, was in a women’s auxiliary group at the end of WW2, rode a Lambretta in the 1950s and drove a mini in the sixties. She worked from leaving school aged 15 until her mid sixties.

Her advice to me when going out with girlfriends was “stick together, you know what men are”. She was realistic about the way of the world but never considered herself incapable. In fact as my DF had health problems, it would mostly be her lugging the heavy suitcases when we went on holiday.

I’ve noticed some of the comments upthread are about people born later, and now have my much younger MIL living with us. It’s only now that I’ve realised just how many beliefs DMIL has about “a mans role”. As it happens FIL was a misogynistic arse so I can see that she has been conditioned, but she has never learned to drive and stopped working when she got married so was heavily dependent on her DH in a way that DM wasn’t.

So I’m finding this thread interesting. Was my DM an outlier, or were her generation, who had to get on with things during WW2 and were the daughters of the women who had cracked on during WW1 just more pragmatic than women born after the war? I suppose what I’m really wondering is how much of “decent women don’t do that” was a post war thing. No answers, just musings.

I suppose what I’m really wondering is how much of “decent women don’t do that” was a post war thing. No answers, just musings.

I wouldn't be surprised if that played a role. You had women doing everything during the war, all the "men's work", the dirty, hard, technical, complex, mechanical jobs, and they did them well. Then you had all the men coming back and the women being forced out of those jobs so the men could have them again. I can see that a convenient way to both justify and reinforce that would be for men and society to double down on the "women need to be looked after, are delicate and silly, men's work and women's work" etc etc, but there would be a lingering effect on the women themselves, who would have learned just how capable they were.

My MIL is similar the Misogyny is quite subtle (and sometimes not) but I can’t stand it and I don’t like her for it.

P.s. My DM was born in 1941. On top of "those poor rapists", she still shakes her head sadly and says "Poor [my DH]!" every time she sees him cooking or ironing one of his own fucking shirts. She worked FT+ as a doctor and had a FT housekeeper, FFS.

Wow- I’m thinking that I have been very lucky. DGM gave up work in the workplace when married in 1939 but carried on with some paid work done from home (seamstress and embroiderer) and was keen for my DM and aunt to get to grammar school and have professional careers and was proud of what they did. Cousin and I born in 1967 were expected to work hard and encouraged to put careers first. My great aunt on my dads side once said something about it not being nice about women doing men’s jobs and my DM said nothing out of politeness as we were in great aunts house but as soon as we were in the car brother and I got a lecture about there being no jobs that women could not do and that great aunt was reflecting views of a bygone age and to note that Gran did not share those views so not everyone born in the 1930s thought that way. I never heard my mother make victim-blaming comments at the time of the Yorkshire ripper or any other time.

It's very depressing. My mother's attitudes affected how I put up with all sorts of negative relationships both with female friends and with guys. She was always competitive with other women, I can see now (including her own daughters!). I don't get it because I love seeing successful and beautiful young women. It makes me proud that things have moved on and I'm a part of that. I'm very clear with my sons about being respectful to women and I can see with my older boy that it's worked because he's in a very equal and affectionate relationship with a lovely young woman.

My younger son has many female friends and seems respectful in general though I do pick him up on the occasional sexist remark. One of my proudest moments was when he told off one of his friends for saying his other friend's girlfriend was 'only a four'. I feel it's important to pick up internalised misogyny in both men and women but feel it can be even harder to get other women to see that they're affected by it.

My (previously lovely so I thought) dismissed the fact that her partner had groped her 16 year old niece on the grounds that worse things had happened to her and that was just what some men were like. Although DHs father was an abusive alcoholic “very clever man, love of my life” and a subsequent partner was inappropriate with DHs sister MIL still puts men on a pedestal.
I can hardly be civil to her now.

It’s not always generational though, my 80 year old Mum isn’t like that at all

This us all so depressingly familiar! My mother is in her early 70s & has similar views to many already mentioned here.

She's so judgemental of all other women - their weight, their clothes, their choices around working etc. It's v hard to listen to. I challenge her in it but we live quite far away from one another so I don't always want visits to be arguments so I end up subject hopping quite a bit.

She also relishes hearing anything negative about other women & it will forever more be the 1st thing she references if that person comes up in conversation. 'Oh yes, you'll never guess who i bumped into last week? Maureen, remember her husband left her for his secretary, oh she's let herself go. Got very heavy. Big backside on her. Well she was saying.....' this is a v typical conversation starter.

She also has incredible learned helplessness & claims she cannot do things like use Google on her phone or read a bus timetable so she'll message me (250 miles away!) To look up stuff for her. I've ordered a million times to show her but she wil not entertain it & says I don't want to, your father will do that for me

She thinks my dh has a v hard life because I work full time & he pulls his weight but I'm so lucky & spoilt by this.

It's v draining to be around

My take on it is that women like this have dealt with their fear and vulnerability by conjuring in their minds some sort of control, i.e. "if I behave myself, I'll be safe".

I think this is a lot of it. There's internalised misogyny but I also think when my mum talks about this that she's hoping that if she dresses 'appropriately', doesn't get drunk, doesn't go out on her own late at night that she'll be made safe through her own actions. So when women patently aren't safe, she'll blame them, not the men who she should be blaming.

Mum was born in the 1940s and I think she got conflicting messages. She was brought up as a 1950s housewife, then in the 1970s she experienced a wave of feminism that enabled her to go out and work and be the main breadwinner. I won't talk to her about rape any more after she said the Ched Evans case was 'complicated' and that the rape scene in Poldark wasn't rape. (Oh, what do you call it when your ex breaks down your door and refuses to listen to you saying 'no' FFS).

Was my DM an outlier, or were her generation, who had to get on with things during WW2 and were the daughters of the women who had cracked on during WW1 just more pragmatic than women born after the war?

The changes came from somewhere. I think there were brave outliers who pushed through and fought for the women coming along behind them. Yes, my mother has unquestioned, internalised misogyny. But others of her generation were fighting for women's liberation.

My amazing grandmother who ran a business from the 1940s when women rarely did, in a ‘mans’ professional while raising 10 children left the biz to her sons only and not a penny to the daughters. Even tho one of the daughters helped her run the office.
She just valued boys over girls. The girls were supposed to find a decent husband with a decent job, the boys she saw as the providers in their home.
My uncles are all loaded, never having had a mortgage thanks to the inheritance, my mum, aunts have modest, at best, lifestyles.

My mother also.

It's always the woman's fault.

Except when my father left her. That wasn't her fault.

@PicsInRed

My take on it is that women like this have dealt with their fear and vulnerability by conjuring in their minds some sort of control, i.e. "if I behave myself, I'll be safe".

There's nothing you can do except refuse to listen to it.

I think this is a very valid point. OP do you love your mother? Or do you take such exception to her attitudes that she is not good enough for you? If so, I am very sad for you.

@Overdueanamechange it’s more common that people think. I used to investigate rapes and sexual offences. I always found that in court women judge other women so much more harshly than men. Some people had the misconception that many women on a rape jury was a helpful thing. In actual fact it was the opposite. You could see them weighing up the female victim, looking her up and down and judging.

Re Mccann I don’t think leaving three toddlers in an apartment alone whilst you go out for a meal and drinks is anything other than neglectful, regardless of how near the restaurant was, or how often the children are checked on. They’ve paid a hell of a price though but I can totally see why people blamed them.

Offered not ordered (though I may feel like it sometimes)

It's the generation they were born and raised in.

I work with the elderly and every single one of them has a some form of ingrained racism, sexism and homophobia. Some are worse than others, some try to speak about it in hushed tones, some are out and proud. A lot don't even know the things they're saying are derogatory.

When you're raised in a world with strong views on people who are 'different' then it's hard to shake but easy to pass on.

The only way to stop it is to raise future generations to believe that equality is the norm so they then pass that message on.

Is it about always blaming women- or are some complicit?
I agree with BertramLacey- a lot of it was about keeping safe, teaching their daighters how to keep safe in a world that offered women few protections.
Don't speak back, accept what men tell you to do, keep small, if you don't taunt or dress in a certain way you wont be a victim.
These ways are deeply ingrained, but in today's ( slightly ) more liberal society they are destrructive.

My MIL's explanation for most of today's social problems "We've been educating women far too much."

She was born in 1943, not 1843.