Should i have invited my brother to a girls weekend away?

[NatMoz]

It is both my mum's 70th and my aunty's 60th in March/April.

My brother had made 0 plans and his only idea was a Chinese. I said that I'll book a girls long weekend away (myself, mum and aunty) to make it memorable and he can be in charge of the inclusive family meal where everyone will be invited to celebrate which he agreed to.

So I've planned, booked, organised an itinerary for a long weekend European city break for the 3 of us for a girls weekend. My brother is now absolutely hounding me because he has decided he would also like to join in on the girls weekend. Telling me he doesn't mind carrying the bags and is there room for a little one. I explained it would spoil the dynamic of the trip and at 31 why would he want to spend a girls weekend with us anyway🤣. He is already going on holiday with my mum and dad for 10 days in June to Greece so it's not like he's missing out on going abroad and spending time with my parents! He lives at home so spends every day with them so again it's not like he lives on the other side of the world.

He explained he hasn't been on holiday with my aunty in 10 years. The last time he did, i organised that trip too!!! I did say if he felt so strongly about it, why has he not organised something prior to this point as there have been 10 years of opportunities.

I've now been told I'm banned from the family meal he is organising 🤷.

To clarify further, my husband, my dad nor my daughter (aged 2) will be attending this weekend away either. Just myself, mum and aunty.

Am i in the wrong here?

You really do come out with a load of rubbish!

You are right - but it wasn't me that started on about "why shouldn't a man go on a girls' weekend - it's so unfair to exclude him just because of his genitals" and then launched into the gender bollox.

Are you serious?
I chat to husband about all the above mentioned.
My brothers frequently overheared conversations about the above mentioned when we were all still living in the home .

Yet my best friend do not want to ask if I also experienced let's say vaginal dryness/saggy boobs/stinky farts etc post birth in front of my husband ??
Like can we not be able to educate our husbands and sons, but not want to go into personal details in front of all our male friends at a BBQ?
That we reserve these chats for girls weekends?

No one here is confused about what gender means in this context.

And gender is a perfectly appropriate term to use, not just because it's an acceptable and widely used synonym for sex, but because this IS about gender. There's nothing fundamentally biological about OP's aunt feeling she can't properly relax on holiday if there are men around who'll expect her to care for them, that is society's gender roles.

Have a lovely girls only weekend @NatMoz

This is your gift (which you have paid for) for your mum and aunt and they have said that they're looking forward to a long weekend away from the men in their lives. Say no to your brother and have a wonderful time!

It says a lot that your brother has only brought this up now you've researched, organised, booked and paid the trip. Not before you started all of that so he could take on some of that (and share the cost!!). Interesting...

I think women can complain that men are ignorant about these things without feeling obliged to give up their single sex activities in order to educate them. If men want to understand menstruation, birth, menopause (as well as they ever could given they don't experience these things) there's a wealth of resources out there. However, I'd bet my house that it's not a desire to empathise with women's biological experiences that have men in a flap over being excluded. Nor would many want to spend their time in female company sitting on the periphery while women share them.

I think this would be a substantially different question if, when you first brought up the idea of this trip, your brother had suggested a family trip as a gift from the two of you instead. However, the trip has long been planned and anticipated and everyone has been happy with the plan. The only thing that has changed is that your brother now wants to come along, and as you've said no he is now attempting to bully you into including him. Why should the plans that everyone agreed to (and everyone else is happy about) be changed on his whim? It's perfectly fine to continue to say no to him and go ahead with your original plans.

I do think that calling this a "girls' trip" may be pushing his buttons (and the buttons of certain posters here), but it's also generally culturally understood shorthand. It's very easy for your mother to, for example, tell her friends "I'm going on a girls' trip with Sis and Nat" and avoid a lot of nosy questions. It's an acceptable way for your mother to get some time off without having to delve into the whole dynamic of inequitable gender roles in her household, which may be more than she's ready to take on right now. It would be great if your mum could single-handedly dismantle patriarchy - or at least remove its most pernicious effects from her life - before her birthday, but if she can't that doesn't mean she shouldn't get a long weekend away from it.

As for asking her, at this stage, if she wants Bro to come along, I think that's terrible advice - if your mother feels she must take care of all the men in her life even though she would prefer a different arrangement, she's VERY likely to feel pressured to include your brother if she discovers he has any interest in going.

I agree.

And I hope the OP, her Mum and Auntie go to nail bars, join up with hen-dos, wear pink, get all giggly and screamy and go to Chippendale type shows.

That'll teach him!

Nice way of saying unmarried, child-free women aren't real women, without actually saying it.

The ravages that birth takes on the female body are far more relevant to, for example, men who are married fathers, than to me, a child-free woman who has never and will never experience it.

@PrawnLiberationFront

No it's still sex, gender is totally pointless. OP's brother could just change his gender tomorrow!! He can't change his sex, he's male, this is a female weekend and those facts are set in stone.

The females want a nice time together, Op put in the work and paid for the trip. He can organise his own trip.

Yes there's huge differences between men and women and sometimes women want a trip with women! There's no way I would have certain conversation with men present. that's just how it is! No I don't feel the need to educate a man, I just want to talk with women who already understand.

@gannett
That’s not at all what that poster insinuated. If you’re struggling with the fact you don’t have children then I’m sorry, but you can’t look at everything through that lense and make up things to be offended by.

You’re still a woman, affected by menstruation and menopause and possibly infertility or even the expectation on women to have children, or the sadness when you don’t, which is different to the sadness men feel due to societal pressure on us. You still have things which I’m sure you would discuss with other woman but maybe be a bit more guarded around a man. Stop trying to make everything someone sort of attack on your child free state.

If you're insisting it's about sex and gender is irrelevant, what you're basically saying is it's a biological fact that if male members of the family joined in OP's aunty would be obliged to act as a carer for them. I don't personally think it's a biological inevitably that women have to act as care givers for men.

No, you're not serious .
I am a mother and wife, so are most of my friends. These are the conversations we have when we are alone. These are conversations we don't have when men are around.
I've included menstruation and menopause which includes all women.
How you can be offended at the fact that I say we chat about birth is beyond me? Geez some woman chat about childbirth and to some it's not relevant. Others chat about menopause and it's not relevant to me yet either .

It's just a few examples, surely you didn't expect me to list every single thing women chat about?

@gannett in this case the women are married and have had kids, having those experiences doesn't exclude anyone.
I assume you do still experience menstruation and menopause?

Let's not get resentful about women sharing common experiences and supporting each other. Single women can also do that as part of a group. Hopefully most of the time the focus is on fun though!

@PrawnLiberationFront
NO, at no point did I mention any roles the mother performs, I never said a word about caring!!

I just said sometimes women want to be be with women!! It's very simple.

There are a lot of killjoys on this thread. Can't women just get together without men and do whatever they want? Why the interrogation and qualifiers?

I think some people are tying themselves into knots as to if/how the dynamic changes, perhaps in a deliberate attempt to deflect and derail this argument .

A group can have the dynamic changed by the addition (or absence) of any person irrespective of if they’re a man or woman. In this case, it’s probably a combination of the brother being male AND the fact he is seemingly quite petulant, lazy, immature and self centred etc .

They may or may not want to talk about menstruation or childbirth or wearing the correct size bra etc, but it doesn’t mean that the dynamic isn’t changed by him coming along .

And more generally it’s also reasonable to want men to be aware of women’s health issues etc but also not always want to have them in your presence when you discuss these matters with other women.

OP said this :
“Also to the person who keeps harping on about whether my mum has specifically said she doesn't want my brother there...she has said she is looking forward to a weekend away from all the hopeless men in her life!”

This and the fact that OP is organising and paying for the trip which the son(her brother) who lives with his mum that looks after him chose not to do, means there can be literally no (reasonable) argument in favour of her brother attending.

He can easily organise and pay for his own trip with his mum & Aunty if he wants this so desperately!

I'm sorry that these basic feminist concepts seem to be too complex for you.

A weekend away talking about menstruation, menopause and childbirth sounds very boring.

If my brother - a man in his 30s, explained to my family that he had uninvited me to a birthday meal because he was throwing a strop over the fact that he wasn't invited on a girls trip with his 70 year old Mother and Aunty he would be laughed out of the room.

I'm not offended, but it's striking that whenever people bring up examples of conversations they simply cannot have with a man in the room, it's usually to do with either birth or hating their husbands. Neither of which are relevant to me! So that's a reason that "girly weekends" and the like don't make sense to me.

I don't really talk about periods with friends at all tbh, though I wouldn't hesitate to make an offhand reference in front of men. If I had an actual health issue I'd want to talk to my GP, and I definitely wouldn't want to bring it up over cocktails with the girls.

Same here.

@NatMoz is he expecting you to pay for him as well?

Girls want to talk about periods and boys want to talk about football and that - apparently- is biology.

Would you like to define for us what you mean by "women" and "men" in that last sentence, please? Because we all "know" that there are umpteen "genders", which is the term you seem to prefer.

It may not be a biological inevitability that women (adult human females) have to act as caregivers for men (adult human males), but some males can't respect that some females want to spend time in female-only company. if those males manage to force themselves into that company, they will invariably spend the time making the time miserable for the females by whinging constantly, so even if the females don't act as care-givers, they can't enjoy themselves fully.