What's your take on why many women and girls lost interest in feminism over the decades?

[nestoftables]

Just that...I've read a few things talking about why feminism became an unfashionable word etc.

Having just finished reading 'Material Girls' which has a brief summary of second wave and third wave feminism towards the end, I am interested in different perspectives on what happened, based on different experiences and different reading on this. Thanks!

For me growing up in the 1980's I was bought up to see feminists as embarrassing (didn't wash, hairy armpits etc) my mom is a secret feminist against my dad. Me and my brother are out and out feminists.

I'm another one who absorbed the belief that feminists had hairy legs and burned their bras.

I also thought that feminism wasn't needed anymore it was all done - that men and women had equal rights.

Yes I agree that school gave me the impression that we already had equality pretty much... (Despite obvious things like girls sticking to the edges of the playground whole boys took most of the space to play football).

I remember there being less pressure as a teenager in the nineties to wear professional looking makeup etc. Casual clothes and indie music. But on the other hand 'boob jobs' were normalised in the media.

Because girls are raised to prioritise men, and men don’t like feminists. I’ve never seen any other human rights movement get so much hate, even from the people who are meant to benefit from it.

I've heard men (and some women) push the narrative that women have equality now so there's no need for feminism.

It makes women sound like entitled brats wanting more than they're owed.

So some women will absorb that.

Also they may feel that being a feminist makes them a victim and they want to reject that.

I don't agree of course. I still remember being shocked on a uni open day when the tour guide said 'I'm not a feminist' and I asked whyever not..?!!

I think she mumbled something about already having equality.

I think I thought it had been sorted or at the very least already moving in the right direction.

Two things really changed my mind.

Firstly having my DD, I’m an expat and had my DD in a lovely private hospital with two nurses on call for me at all times, I had a c-section and a nurse would come to change my DD nappy as and when requested. I was provided with physical help, appropriate pain relief, nourishing food. When I talked to people I knew who had babies in the UK i was appalled at how brutally women were treated in the UK by the health system. Womens pain just does not matter. Literally just had a c-section? Tough shit, walk to the shower yourself and look after this baby. You want pain relief? You are going to have to beg for that. I think there is a vast difference between how men and women are treated. Theres a bunch of evidence on how women receive less pain relief and a much delayed rate than men. It’s systemic. This was the gateway into generally how womens needs are just not a priority, the mesh scandal, not taking things like endometriosis seriously, thinking womens time and labour is lesser than mens.

Being on mumsnet really opened my eyes to how shit women are treated, even in their own homes. I had to sit my husband down and explain how if I go to my mums house I’m expected to make the tea, if i go to his mums house I’m expected to make the tea 🤨. It was the easiest way to put it to a man who genuinely doesn’t think women are beneath him but he hadn’t understood it before because it is soooo normal that you don’t even recognise it when it’s there.

Secondly transactivism. Reeks of misogyny.

When I asked questions as a kid I was just told " thise are the rules " or " it's just how things are" I actually felt there was something wrong with me because I thought it was unfair girls had to wear skirts to school and didnt get to wear trousers if they wanted. I didny know about feminism it probably would have made sense to me at that time..Instead I was made to feel my questions were problematic and I seemed to be the only one who was making issues where there weren't any.

In most Western democracies, many of the key human rights for women have been won - right to vote, education, contraception and abortion, divorce, ability to work and own property and wealth in own name etc.

Yes there's still lots of other issues to be tackled, but the average woman in the UK, for example, can afford not to think much about feminism or women's rights as many of the things women are able to do today have been won through the efforts of women in previous generations and through various technological/medical developments.

It's easy to forget how far women's rights have come, and it's usually presented as something that just happened after some women led a few marches and rallies, rather than explaining how these women had to push for the changes against the odds, being mocked by politicians and society in general, viewed with contempt and framed as unreasonable troublemakers.

I don't think it's unique to feminism. Most of the freedoms and rights we take for granted in Western democracies came about because some people decided to fight for it and challenge the political establishment, sometimes at great personal cost.

You can see it these days as many people don't seem to cherish things like free speech and think it's ok to censor or shut down views they don't like or they feel is offensive, without realising that a few decades or centuries ago their own views would have been viewed as grossly offensive by the majority and would have led to persecution or harassment.

@Naunet

Because girls are raised to prioritise men, and men don’t like feminists. I’ve never seen any other human rights movement get so much hate, even from the people who are meant to benefit from it.

This just about sums it up.

I also think that as a pp mentioned, as far as women in the west were concerned, it looked for a few decades as if all our rights had been won and we could all just get on with it.

I was one of those women...that was until I became aware of the genderist ideology and the out and out misogyny at its heart (and hanging on to its coat tails...).

I very quickly realised that the fight for the rights of women and girls would probably never be "won" as "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance"...I know I'm not alone in having the genderists to "thank" for waking up from my torpor.

Becasue at school and in the workplace anything suggesting women and girls still suffer oppression from a male centred system is a no-no. The civil service used to have a women's network. I can't imagine that would be allowed now, because it would exclude men, and it would also imply men as a group have an advantage, or that men can make women's lives shitty. We are not allowed to say anything that might put men as a group in a bad light becausenotallmen.
Young women I work with think we are all equal and poor men. Until they have children , lol.

Complacency.

I tried to discuss what was happening re trans activism and encroachment on women's rights and spaces with a bunch of women at work.
With about two exceptions the response was, “ I've never experienced oppression”

Women who weren’t involved in second wave feminism don't know about the battles, or believe them to have been won.

Yes, I grew up being told that I could do whatever I wanted and I naively believed when I was younger that inequality was predominantly a problem of the past. I was immensely grateful for what the feminists had done, and I don't think I'd ever have said that I wasn't a feminist. I just didn't see it as a live issue that I needed to worry about.

Life inevitably taught me that I was wrong.

I was born mid eighties. I grew up with Spices Girls type Girl Power etc. I went to an all girl's sixth form (ironically as I was fed up of boys controlling lessons etc) and none of us would have described ourselves as feminists. Equalists maybe... As in rights for all (although our political activism was anti Iraq war. We had something to campaign about!)

We honestly believed we could do anything and be anyone. We were told we could be.

I became disillusioned by the time I left university. But a lot of my perrs did get what they want.

Until I had children, I felt my life was equal to men around me. I had everything they had: contraception, uni degree, my career, my own property, my own car, etc. I saw feminism as something that was needed in the developing world. I think many men in the UK see only this surface level too.

I was unaware of the lives that women in the UK were leading with regard to domestic violence and coercive control. Social media has massively expanded my awareness. Traditional media just didn't cover this in the 90s.

Having DC has opened my eyes. Mumsnet has opened my eyes. I don't know how to explain all this to younger women who will see the surface as I did.

If I had remained childless, I don't know that I would've grasped the issues. It's certainly unlikely I would've joined MN.

Yes there's still lots of other issues to be tackled, but the average woman in the UK, for example, can afford not to think much about feminism or women's rights as many of the things women are able to do today have been won through the efforts of women in previous generations

I’ve been guilty of this - not really thinking too much about women’s rights because I haven’t had to in that I’ve seen so much progression for women.

And then along came transactivism and it feels like I’ve been pitched back 30 years.

men hating Feminazi

I have a husband and 6 sons so anyone spewing shit about males out of hatred and prejdice can fuck off.

I absolutely stand up for myself and my daughter to casually sexist relatives (no uncle R, it isn't impressive for a girl, it's impressive for a toddler!) and DH & boys get told off when their behaviour is out of order.
It's true, a lot of the times they just don't think or don't consider certain issues until I point them out. However they are willing to learn, change & accept things.

But I loathe the idea that they should be treated as the enemy by default. Anyone who thinks that penis=scumbag will lose me at hello

I don’t agree with the premise. Feminist activism was always a relatively small proportion of the total population. Do you have any stats on this reduction in feminist belief?

When I was growing up I got impression that my parents probably viewed feminists as hatchet faced man hating bra burning lesbian (yes that would be considered an insult ) argumentative placard waving screeching harridans.

And also that every was equal now, or at least as equal as it needed to be... there was definitely a Theresa May "boy jobs and girl jobs" mentality and I don't think my dad ever picked up a loo brush or an iron.

I've always called myself a feminist (and I'm early 80s baby)

Thought I had equality but having children removed those scales from my eyes.

Also, I really, really underestimated how much current patriarchal society harms men. And I'm astonished at how many people are so dismissive of women (Karens, duck face etc).

I'm doing my piece in the world, recruiting my family to see the inequality and supporting others. I really don't know what else I can do???

I fear we have become unfashionable. There is a weird disconnect between movements like #metoo and fighting the underlying and pervasive patriarchal system that allows that to happen to so many women in plain sight. It's like people don't want to look too closely at what is going on, because it is just too horrific that women may be free to work have access to contraception etc, but the fact is men hate us and pretty much every aspect of society is shaped in men's image. The world is getting harder for women, not easier.

There is also the push for intersectionality, and inclusiveness. Feminism is about advancing the rights of women and girls and is this does not intersect with males.

And possibly we haven't paid enough attention to the struggles of black and ethnic minority women.

*Yes, I grew up being told that I could do whatever I wanted and I naively believed when I was younger that inequality was predominantly a problem of the past. I was immensely grateful for what the feminists had done, and I don't think I'd ever have said that I wasn't a feminist. I just didn't see it as a live issue that I needed to worry about.

Life inevitably taught me that I was wrong.*

This, a lot. I didn't expect any sexism in the workplace so when I encountered it I'd practically gaslit myself into thinking it wasn't happening. There's a bit in Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman (not that I agree with all of it but some is good) where she talks about being halfway home thinking about something at work and suddenly realising "Hang on, that person was doing sexism at me". That struck a chord.

I'm 64 and I don't ever remember it being fashionable.

@SimonedeBeauvoirscat

I don’t agree with the premise. Feminist activism was always a relatively small proportion of the total population. Do you have any stats on this reduction in feminist belief?

This

If anything I think that feminism is gaining support from women quite rapidly at the moment.

I agree with everyone saying they thought we had basically achieved equality until they became mothers. That was my experience too.

I agree with everyone saying that it felt like we were moving in the right direction anyway before the rise of queer theory and gender identity ideology gained so much power and began systematically dismantling our rights and protections by stealth at first and now more openly.

Simonedebeauvoirscat - fair point, maybe what I mean more is why the movement didn't continue to grow or flourish as much, despite so many inequalities remaining, since we can see from the responses here and this forum in general that there are lots of us who have become more aware and more likely to call ourselves feminists recently or as we got older, whereas we maybe didn't pay as much attention when we were young. We maybe weren't thinking as critically about it and maybe weren't receiving messaging from older feminists at the time? (Of course this is generalising and many factors are involved).

Just wrote a response but it somehow disappeared...

Simonedebeauvoirscat - good point I probably mean more why the movement didn't continue to grow and flourish. As we can see from the responses that plenty of us have become more aware and more interested in feminism as we got older. So why weren't we more switched on to it when we were growing up (while we may have been more focused on other equality and justice issues).

So maybe we weren't thinking critically enough as we were younger, maybe messaging wasn't getting through from older feminists, the media has a role - lots of factors.