To have a horrible feeling about the way things are going and a dystopian future

[JonasBogeys]

I’m seeing more and more men on here, or if not men then women who upheld very pro-men, pro-‘family’ beliefs. Usually the only person who matters to these posters is the ‘man’. I also have a lot of friends in shit marriages, controlling relationships, stuck being SAHP as they have disabled children or shit husbands who don’t do any childcare.
I have friends who are being paid £10 a month in child maintenance.
Ive also been told off for my ‘anti male views’ and work and ‘transphobic’ views at uni.
My worry, and it sounds too paranoid to say out loud, is that the powers that be know that there won’t be enough jobs in the future. They know AI is going to wipe at least a third of all jobs out.
If you can see that happening, and can predict the civil unrest etc which will come with it, the breakdown of society, what would be an easy thing to mean there was more jobs available and a return to ‘family values’?
Get women out of the workplace.
And I don’t mean in a handmaids tale way, not an immediate ban, but a gradual chipping away of women’s rights, of our voice, of our autonomy, placing pro male opinions in our safe spaces, convincing us that we don’t really want independence or careers or to be single.
We want safety, protection, to be cared for and bought things. We want to raise children.
Women in the UK scoff at trad wives but notice that rhetoric, those values being echoed on here.
Just notice it.

Are you ok?

You're confusing trad-wives with women who don't want to work.

And yes, you're being paranoid. There's no global conspiracy to remove women from the workplace using Kaitlin from Utah who posts on Insta making her DHs lunch while wearing an apron.

Don’t be so bloody facetious.

Yes OP, I see it too.

The ‘tradwife’ craze is not helping.

It’s not a global conspiracy it’s a societal mindset which is slowly creeping.

Just remember the Erika Kirk Serena Joys are never tied to the stove themselves - they always have businesses, income streams, always seem to be away from their kids.

I don’t necessarily think you are paranoid.

People forget Atwood has frequently said everything she wrote in the Handmaid’s Tale has happened in various points in history.

This is totally beside the by but I saw the first ad for the Meta Raybans yesterday and that was when I officially realised Black Mirror is real. But then I also kind of want a pair so I’m one of the sheep.

Why do you need to air what people label as transphobic or anti men views though? Surely all that talk is what is contributing to this society- person vs person- on mn if you have a problem ltb in every case, not just the ones that actually need it.

If people reminded couples that compromise is a thing, if they reminded them actually you’re a team and you got married for a reason and it is not a woman’s job to serve any more than it is the man’s job to be sole provider if he doesn’t want to be, then things might get a bit better.

I have a disabled child and work. My child was in state run preschool and now is in school. Disabled children have a right to education as much as any other child. I’m always confused how many SAHP don’t work giving ‘disabled child’ as the reason. Get out there. Get a job. Protect your income.

Couldn't agree more but I hadn't attributed it to the future jobs situation! I assumed these macho attitudes had been held at bay rather than disappeared but the current state of things is allowing the deeper, less appropriate, attitudes to surface again. I see it in my own partner and the easy, balanced relationship we once had is disappearing. Suddenly my viewpoint is less meaningful or interesting than his. His statements are made as if fact and 'evidence' is incontrovertible! The statements he makes are so outrageous sometimes it really turns me off. He's also becoming more aggressive which makes me watch my step all the time.
How do we turn this back? How do we educate our younger generation when the boys seem happier to follow the Andrew Tate's of this world?

Trad wives are just rage bait dressed up in a prairie dress. You can't think women are going to opt into this or that men who would lose out on the double labour women typically do at work and at home - would consider this preferable either?

Exactly. They're not trad-wives and I've never met a woman who wants to be one.

What you do see is lots of women who want to not work and be housewives or SAHM but with equal rights, equal access to finances, equality of decision making and the men pulling their weight at home and so on.

Women who seem to think 'feminism' didn't give them equal rights to work, but think 'feminism' made them have to work and they don't want to. But they don't want to relinquish the opportunities or the rights.

It's like any other SM trend. Homesteading got huge during COVID, SM portraying how fantastic it was to grow your own food, have livestock, can for your pantry. Which didn't really demonstrate the huge amounts of labour, time and money that goes into it.

Things go full circle. Factory made bread, food, clothes etc became popular because they were convenient and often cheaper. Same with supermarkets. People were pissed off having to go to several shops over several days a week to buy everything they needed so supermarkets were created and were a blessing. Now people harken back to the good old days when you shopped at a local butcher, baker and grocer.

It's aspirational now to shop at little independent shops, bake your own bread, can peaches, grow a garden but the reality is most people don't have the time, money or even the desire. It's just rose-tinted specs and people forget the high-street died because they couldn't be arsed to go there.

Same thing with trad-wives. It's a social media illusion, not a societal shift.

But there won’t be enough jobs. That is a fact. I don’t see UBI coming in, how is the world going to decide who works and who doesn’t?

Those who operate out of the skill set of ai or, at least, outside of the cost efficiency of ai, will continue to work. How are you using this as evidence that we are on the precipice of a great regression in the equality of men and women that lands us into bucolic cosplaying.

It’s certainly true that women are officially viewed as ‘the reserve army of labour’ and women have officially been kicked out of the workplace by official actions in the past (eg end of WW2). Nowadays I’m not sure if officialdom has the organisation to be honest. But good old male misogyny and the patriarchy are acting in its place, and modern politics is dominated by manipulation and propaganda rather than the old post-war rules of freedom of information and informed consent. Yanbu op, not at all. Men are not good friends to women.

@Upstartledpartly as AI is going to replace a lot of jobs that we do, and those jobs are more likely to be desk based and therefore in female dominated fields, rather than construction say.

Dealing with AI first - I started work just as the IBM PC was released. We were told computer technology would wipe out millions of jobs, young people would never get a job or be able to buy a house. That the whole population would be down to working a three day week and we should all plan our leisure time because we would be forced to have so much more of it. That was in 1982. I've worked flat out ever since. Never had the chance to work part time. The only people who lost their jobs were typists, filing clerks and accounts clerks. Millions of jobs were created. So I'll wait and see what effect AI really has before I panic.

As for a gradual chipping away at women in the workplace, yes there is a nasty streak of social media bullshit at the moment, but there is nothing to stop us working, going freelance, setting up our own companies etc. Half our customers are female. We have equality laws and safeguards and we need to protect those vigorously.

Sexism was rife in the 80s, yet I have been able to buy my own flat, run my own life, survive a 40 year career, have a child as a single mum, send him to independent school, raise him respectably and never hear a word of disdain, simply because I wouldn't tolerate that nonsense.

My reaction to all the negative hype is to keep calm, carry on and don't give an inch.

Maybe Human Extinction is the way to go!!!
There’s a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Fuck that, I'm hanging on in there. Thousands of generations before me surviving plagues and war and famine and ice ages without basic amenities and medicines and god knows what, and then we throw in the towel because it is going to require a rethink alongside ai? No thanks.

"We want safety, protection, to be cared for and bought things. We want to raise children.".

Why wouldn't you want these things? A healthy and sane society would provide exactly the ingredients for this. Your natural instincts have been perverted OP.

Just imagine your quote put in reverse "We want danger, and to be unprotected, unloved and have to fend for ourselves financially. We don't want to be mothers". Seriously.

The sad thing is that I’d feel very supportive of women staying home with the children if the more sub par men hadn’t demonstrated over and over that they can’t be relied upon not to be abusive / lazy / cheaters /insert failure here. Unfortunately so many have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted to have the best interests of women and children at heart that my heart sinks when I hear of a woman deciding to stay at home with no protection. Of course women are far from perfect too but men’s whole lives tend not to be at the mercy of their earning power.

I’ve been happily married for many years to a wonderful man but do I trust my husband to “lead” the family? No, he’s completely clueless in some ways, as am I in others and we need all the brains and perspectives at our disposal in these tough times. Imagine watching your family being “led” into disaster by some of the questionable specimens on display in the press of late.

As a spices, we are inherently selfish and destructive. We’re nothing special.

I think,there is a distinction to be drawn between, on the one hand, doing more to promote the benefits of a functional family and believeing that the pendulum has swung too far to an acceptance of "anything goes" in terms of how people lead their lives.

And on the other rolling back women's rights.

I don't see any reason why recognising the former should necessarily lead to the latter.

No idea what you're saying, OP. I don't feel pushed out of any spaces by traditional men. I don't think AI is targeting women, specifically. Many women don't have bad experiences with men just as many women do. Balanced perspectives are healthy for everyone. It sounds like you're having a really bad day and maybe a break from the news or social media might help bring some perspective.

A worldwide social media ban wouldn’t be a bad thing!!!

I don't need a grand claim to being special to care about being around.