to think Delia is a bit of a tosser for saying' I am not a feminist - I like men'

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

Stick to the cooking theres a dear

Grendle you are right many many women choose to have familes but most of them are making that decision with another man. Therefore the good and perhaps not so good effects of parenting on one's career should be shared amongst the family not just women.

This is reminding me of a debate I had in one of my lessons recently in which one of my very charming male pupils said that men and women were very different. At the dawn of time men would go out and hunt while women stayed in and made the cave pretty

A girl then said that women were biologically suited to being at home with children and were the weaker sex and needed a man to look after them, she then paused and said " But I am a woman, I dont want this"

I was just pandering to the prevailing misogyny

Yes I know

"You are right men and women are biologically different, I have breasts and a vagina and he has a penis. So I gave birth and breastfed and he can pee standing up. That is it."

Did any of you watch The Great Sperm Race that was on last night? I just watched it. It was amazing and totally shows how it is women who drive evolution and how breasts/vagina/penis is certainly not it.

And it't only the start of if. Women totallt call the shots in so many ways. It's really sad that we refuse to acknowledge this.

No I didnt Glados am planning to watch it at the weekend. Any differences between dp and I are down I think to personality. We are different but then I am different to lots of women and he is different to lots of men.

I think that many differences between men and women are socially created.

What was he programme saying?

Ah, this is making me smile . It's amazing that what I said has been so misrepresented. I never said everyone should make the same choices as me, nor that the choices I have made are the only options. I love the assertion that I must be twiddling my thumbs and fingerpainting! You really don't know me .

GLadlos (sp? ) seems to have picked up the heart of what I was getting at. Yes, the constant victimhood is extremely unattractive to me and my friends of a similar age. We know we are powerful, we know we can change the world and comfortable in our own skins we are making choices that suprise and perhaps disappoint those who went before. If other women don't feel this way then that's a huge shame . I haven't given up my career, I am in fact in paid employment a few hours a week during which time my husband cares for our children through his flexible working arrangements. I do paid work on my terms and in my way with his support. I will go on to do all sorts of other interesting and exciting things later when my children are older. Meanwhile, yes I do believe I have power. My attitudes and conversations can influence anyone I meet (though apparently not positively on here ), to give just one example.

For me, biology is relevant. I am expecting my third child, and have already spent over 4.5 years of my life involved in the physical aspects of childbearing (pregnancy and breastfeeding). These are elements no man could have done for me, and it's not finished yet. It could be a decade of my life we're talking about. Of course some women choose not to have children and that's absolutely fine, but for those of us who do, the physical component can take a good number of years out of our lives.

I actually agree that non-paid work should have greater status and recognition, rather than automatically being something most educated women would expect to delegate to childcarers of lower status. That's not something in my mind that has been associated with the concept of feminism though. Perhaps there are so many ways of defining the concept as an overall term it's too vague.

Crikey some of you are also judgemental about those of us in the public sector! Yes, discrimination exists (sadly), but it's not the be all and end all and I'd much rather focus on the positives. Yes, it probably does go on more in other sectors and countries, no denying that.

I find the idea that I must be a 'child of Thatcher' and therefore selfish and self-centred, just because my reality doesn't quite concur with the perceptions of others actually laughable. I am talking here with reference to my personal experiences as examples. That doesn't mean I'm so stupid and blinkered that I cannot understand others will feel differently and have different experiences.

Glados, if women have so much 'power' how come men have all the money? And how come so many women (2 a week in the UK) are killed by their partners? How come the 'women's section' is still a small percentage of the daily newspaper and filled with crap, indicating that all the news, business information, TV guide etc is actually not for women at all?

Grendle, misrepresentation always happens unfortunately, when those your discussing with ideologues (?The ideologue is convinced that no amount of data will ever falsify his or her premise.?) I'm afraid experience tells me that you won't be listened to. There are lurkers though, and its worth carrying on for those for whom the debate is still ongoing rather than dead. You never know where a seed will be planted and when it will germinate.

It really is a sad state of affairs, like you allude to, that feminism cannot see the choices women make now as their own, and that they are able to make those choices because of feminism. But somehow, feminism wanted to dictate those choices - it wanted women to aspire to the male ideal, not carve their own path. But women are doing it anyway, and women are in the ascension in every element of society. They don't wait to be given power. They take it. Still feminism tells itself it is a failure. It's very sad.

Biology is very important. For decades feminism has feared 'biological determinism' (something that doesn't exist anyway) only for biology to reveal that women are the primary agents of human evolution. It is still so caught up in denying all things biological, that it cannot celebrate this. You might be interested in this blog dispatchesfromtheclaphamomnibus.blogspot.com/

And where would the human race be without competition? We wouldn?t have evolved beyond single cell organisms for a start! Not all discrimination is bad. Its essential and its part of normal competition. Not all discrimination equals sexism or any other ism. I'd love to know what these areas are that are still out of bounds for women, and how many women really would love to invade them. The fact is there are many areas in the sciences that are dominated by women now. But again these positives are ignored. There are areas that still have a male 50+ share too, but neither are the result of any blocking. Its because women are choosing to go where they want to, and not go where they don't. This is another wilful feminist blind spot.

SGS ? oh it?s so complicated but really fascinating at the same time. Money is the resource that has prominence in capitalism and men have concerned themselves to compete with other men to get as much as it as possible (so they can gather more tangible resources and be attractive to women and also provide for their families thereafter). But money alone does not equal power. That?s a particular cultural distortion, but just because it?s a distortion, doesn?t make it an issue.

But I?m just in the middle of this myself and have not absorbed it enough to describe the complex elements. This is an extract from an essay I?m reading at the moment by the environmental feminist Celeste Newbrough, she is discussing how Marx and Engle?s identified ?natural elements entering as units of production? and how they came to be ?exploited?.

?A subject in which Marx and Engel?s have proven increasingly visionary over time is their environmental analysis: "Natural elements entering as agents into production, and which cost nothing, no matter what role they play in production, do not enter as components of capital, but as a free gift of Nature to capital, that is, as a free gift of Nature?s productive power to labour, which, however, appears as the productiveness of capital, as all other productivity under the capitalist mode of production."43 Without question, capitalism has ignored base-level costs that have not been factored in to costs: first, natural resources and ecosystem services; and second, domestic labor. Concerning the extraction, exploitation and non-valuation of natural resources, change is just beginning? As to the exploitation and non-valuation of domestic resources, such as homemaking, childbearing, childcare, education, and other aspects of life derived from the mode of reproduction, policies and norms are more complex but fall far short of effective intervention(s).?

From Sex Mates Gender 2008

BY the way Grendel, it's GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System)

Glados - you said
"There are areas that still have a male 50+ share too, but neither are the result of any blocking. Its because women are choosing to go where they want to, and not go where they don't. This is another wilful feminist blind spot."

In my experience, it can be difficult to choose to do something/go into an area in which you or people like you aren't normally found. You feel out of place, like you don't belong, like you have no right to be there.

I remember how, when doing a Chemistry degree, the number of women in my course gradually decreased year on year until my last year, when I walked into a tutorial session to find that I was 'the' woman on the course.

I guess what i am saying is that if the culture of a job is predominantly male, it will contnue to be so unless women are actively encouraged in to it.

Actually, 10 minutes in the Relationship topic on any given day ought to give any woman a wake-up call as to how far human equality still has to go. The sheer amount of crap women put up with from men, and the sheer numbers of men who think that they are entitled to domestic, emotional and sexual service from women simply because they are men is staggering. This is why this utter bullshit about women having 'the real power' is so annoying and insulting. 'You have the real power' is what men say when they mean 'Shut up and get on with being a breeding machine, don't worry your pretty little head. Your power is this special mystical sacred stuff with no discernible effect, of course, it doesn;t stop men labelling, controlling, owning and killing you if they feel like it.'

and 10min into any innocous relationship post someone will scraem "leave him/women's aid"

quickly followed by a tirade against men and the hegemony of their tyrannical power over women. add a whole heap of social scinece alarmist generalisations and theories. yep that about covers it

oh and some links to "I-am-woman-i-am-strong-hear-me-roar.com"

not all male famale relationships are fraught and unequal

not all women to women relationships are based on sisterhood and equality and ideology

on MN things can and do escalate really quickly into a men are gits thread. with very strong verbose opinions from females.

dittany -if there are causes that you care about, then I suggest you get out there and figure out how to get involved and make a difference. You have a brain, pen, computer and wallet. Why do you need me to tell you how to make a difference ? The world is full of injustice of all sorts, and it's not all about women. What about gangmasters trafficking foreign workers of both sexes -remember the cockle pickers? Become a lawyer, volunteer in the court system, do whatever you feel will make a difference.

I do all sorts of things in real life that I'm not going to go into in detail on here, including volunteering.

I just don't quite understand the attitude that seems to suggest that the world should be handed to us on a plate because we're women. Do men get to positions of high pay through sitting around doing nothing, or are they cunning and work hard? Do we really think there aren't obstacles in their way and frustrations for men too? If women want to be CEOs then they should just get on with it and figure out how to achieve their goal. The world isn't always a fair place for anyone, male or female.

As for domestic violence, yes of course it's unacceptable, as is all violence. I'm not sure how SGB's diatribe against men is any less man-hating in principle though than the woman-hating thought pattern she's objecting to (albeit I'm not suggesting that in RL she beats her husband or anything obviously!). This is a women's site. Bad things happen to some women, they will be highlighted here. Bad things happen to men too. Women may be less inclined to use their fists and they don't have penises (see -they are biologically different!), but that doesn't mean they can't make mens lives hell. Women on here label and control men every day.

This is the kind of rarefied discussion that can only be had by women who don't have to worry about money. Money is what allows a woman to feed and clothe her children and herself, to keep them housed, to pay for their education in countries where it is not provided by the state, to buy land and tools to grow food (nature is not free when the world is full! It is sold to the highest bidder), to pay for travel to flee persecution and domestic violence.

People who have no income or a low income are powerless and reliant on the whim of a benefactor or the state. If women had decent incomes they wouldn't have to send their children out to work to make plastic footballs for 5p and hour.

If you do not have an income you have no power to determine the basic course of your own life and wellbeing; it has nothing to do with being materialistic.

I'm intrigued by the idea that "women have so much power".

I imagine that, should you have the misfortune to divorce, you may change that particular view. In captalist societies, power is, to a large extent, associated with money. Women almost always come out of divorce in a worse financial position than theie ex-partners. Two thirds of non-resident male parents pay nothing towards the upkeep of their children. Less than one sixth of rape allegations result in a conviction.

Yet, somehow, you continue to assert that feminism has no relevance to women today.

Thanks for your message BigMouth. I was disappointed that your OP just started off a Delia-bashing session, which seemed a bit OTT given what she actually said. I found the long list of patronising insults far more worrying that what she said. This thread has moved on and it is clear that women do see feminism from many different perspectives.

Let me quote from Solidgoldbrass, who sees herself as a feminist concerned with women´s rights:

..?not all women have, or want to have children. And of those that do, not all want to stay indoors doing nothing but cupcake-baking, fingerpainting and floormopping while the children are small?

Well, we can all see how much Solidgoldbrass values women who choose to stay home and look after young children. To me, SHE is far more a disgrace to feminism than Delia, who has probably never uttered more than the mildest support of feminism in her life, but has also probably never been so insulting towards women either.

Sachertorte

I don't see how that statement from SGB is anti-SAHM.

She is saying that some SAHM want to finger paint, make cakes and mop floors and some SAHM want to do something else. What is wrong with that? How is it offensive to say that there are different types of SAHM? Some children want to make cakes a lot and some want to go out to the park a lot. I don't understand what is wrong with the statement.

Chibi, sorry you had a bad expereinec. I wonder when that was because women/girls actually outnumber men in science, certainly at 'a' level and maybe even at undergraduate level. What they still don't do, in spite of this, is go into physics, but this seems to be by choice also. I don't have the data to hand, but it doesn't point to sexist discrimination. In other areas of science though, women have budged men aside and become the magority. This makes the argument for overt sexist discrimination in the sciences weak, as why would some science be sexist and not others?

Slug - "Women almost always come out of divorce in a worse financial position than theie ex-partners." - I don;t know if this is true. And they almost always come away with the biggest prize of all, the children. Also, divorced women are more likely to get remarried. Divorce is statitically very bad for men health wise also. When you weight up all the pros and cons, its men who come out of divorce worse. That may seem counter intuative, but it is true.

Rape is an issue that I am personally working on. Looking at sex ratios in rape juries. Examinine male and female tendencies (if such tendencies exist), looking at the preconceptions people have of rape and rape victims, personal experience. Women are not automatically sympathetic with rape victims and this needs to be looked at free from any ideology to see what is going on. I'm also looking into other areas such as specific biases in rape prosectution policy. Its a massive subject and will take up the next 6 years of my life, but hopefully I'll succeed on helping women find justice after rape. if even by a few percewntage points. At the moment, current feminist dis course on rape has failed women in this area and we (feminists) owe it to these women to look beyond feminism for clues. IMHO.

And the Realationship board is hardly an unbiased info source.

FYI, I got a post deleted the last time I suggested that to Dittany, Grendle. This is an od place at time when the most well meaning posts are interpreted as insults. Focusing on the negative rather than the positive seems endemic.

GLaDOS here here and here. Men, especially fathers, are routinely better off financially after divorce. Other benefits aside, men routinely are allowed to get away without financially supporting their children and are financially better off. Following on from the money=power argument, women are the powerless ones here. An area feminism attempts to address.