"Boys' poor mental health stems from feminism."

[Whattheduckery]

Just been in a training session at my school and this is what the trainer has said. She followed with "because they don't have a club to be part of..."

It's made me so mad.

Women's work in the home absolutely is work, and it is skilled and tough work. Bringing up children is like running a bar and a zoo at the same time. Feminism has done itself no favours at all by devaluing it.

Likewise, though: Harrington & her conservative feminist pals do motherhood no favours by imagining that "traditional marriage" was a safe or happy place for mothers.

Some women had lovely husbands, it's true. And some had to stay with men who were violent, men who were violent to their children, men who financially abused them, men who isolated them. Valium was often the answer.

Wouldn't we be better off with a future that gave women a real choice as to whether to work in the home, or to work in the workplace? Tax breaks for at-home carers, childcare for people who need it? It's not an either-or.

Women's work in the home absolutely is work, and it is skilled and tough work. Bringing up children is like running a bar and a zoo at the same time. Feminism has done itself no favours at all by devaluing it.

I don't believe 'feminists' have devalued being mothers, quite the opposite. Some strands in the second wave campaigned to have it paid. Feminism wants motherhood recognised as the valuable work it is because it's so often dismissed.

Work and therefore financial independence has been pushed by feminism because women were often trapped with no money. Not only were they trapped but they were unfulfilled.

Many feminists would agree with you that it shouldn't be an either or and a free choice. That's almost impossible nowadays especially in the UK where prices for everything are so expensive.

However you'll still find many women expected to do it all because of a lack of basic respect. Hopefully now that girls have been elevated and seen as important, that will change.

It's intriguing though, how quickly those second-wave voices faded out, to be replaced by the people middle-aged women today grew up with. Julie Bindel, Caitlin Moran, Germaine Greer - they're all formidable writers and thinkers, but they started out by dismissing motherhood. Some came to regret it later, but by then they had already cashed their chips.

Advocating for mothers from a position of realism - which "conservative feminists" fail to do - is well overdue. Feminism needs to be saved from (famous) feminists.

As far as I'm aware, none of them dismissed motherhood, but I'm sure you have quotes to back up your assertions.

In The Female Eunuch Greer argued that motherhood should not be treated as a substitute career, she didn't dismiss it. At that time, women were confined to motherhood and feminism was trying to break them out of it.

Greer later argued that motherhood should be regarded as a genuine career option, as an alternative to paid work.

"What this would mean is that every woman who decides to have a child would be paid enough to raise that child in decent circumstances."

Bindle has argued that having children should be seen as a choice and not mandatory. That women can have perfectly happy lives without children. She argues that plenty of women don't have a choice or feel that they have a choice to have children. That it's perfectly acceptable not to want children.

If you read 'The Female Eunuch', rather than quoting the top search result for it, you'll find plenty of dismissal. You could also listen to Bindel arguing (in the present day) against paid leave for healthcare during pregnancy.

They're titans of feminism, of course, and despite the child-shaped blind spot, they have done us all a huge favour: it's impossible to think that women are "naturally soft and agreeable", per conservative fems, in a world that contains fabulous bruisers like Germaine. They have done much good work.

But the work is only half-done, and a pack of rich girls (has anyone else noticed how the British trad-fems ooze poshness?) are carefully, and oh-so-politely, undoing it. They need a good hard knee in the proverbials.

I wouldn't call Bindel a titan of Feminism! But yes there is an issue among SOME feminists around motherhood this contributes to many issues.
The patriarchy is the biggest issue though.

It's very easy to say things. Can you quote what passages from the Female Eunuch you're talking about. I'd also be interested to read Bindle arguing against paid leave.

I'm not sure what 'rich girls ' you're talking about. What do you mean by 'trad fem' do you mean traditional wife or a stay at home mother? Why do they need to be assaulted?

It's common for feminism to be dismissed as middle class and traditionally feminism hasn't been great at intersectionality but that was part of the work of the fourth wave. The new way of dismissing feminism is by calling it 'white feminism'. I'm surprised you're not using it.

Power creates naivety. There's an in-built problem with celebrity feminists, of any kind: if you're out there writing a column, or running a think tank, or leading a campaign, you're probably not at home wiping bottoms for free. You have probably never been beaten up by a husband or a father, or been denied an education.

In short: you might not fully grasp what most women are up against. "Demanding freedom" only makes sense if you're used to having your demands met. The rest of us have to negotiate, balance conflicting realities, act like adults.

Louise Perry and Mary Harrington - "feminists against progress" - are cast impeccably in this mould. If either of them knew what it was like to live with domestic violence, or the poverty of widowhood, they would never advocate for dependency on men.

I've yet to see them receive a proper slap-down in debate, however. And as this thread shows, a lot of people are stepping into their gingerbread house. What a sad end to the struggle.

This isn't a discussion, you're just writing a stream of consciousness.

Can you quote the sections of The Female Eunuch you're talking about and the Bindle piece please. I'd like to have a look.

There are many types of feminism, there are many types of women living different lives (now that feminism has opened doors).

You're making a lot of assumptions without backing them up. You've got no idea who has experienced domestic abuse and rape and sexual assault are very common experiences by all women irrespective of cash

Unfortunately the struggle is nowhere near an end. I've got no idea where you got that from.

She talked about it on trigonometry in the context of very upper middle class women she worked with in children's charities, who would keep taking maternity leave. I think her argument was it was at the expense of the less privileged women the charity should be caring for as more paid mat leave = less overall money.

The problem is, there will always be women with much more financial privilege than others. Any measure you put in (whether that be paid maternity leave to enable women to stay home, or it's "opposite" more opportunities for women to have careers, not be mothers at all) can be said to be privileging those women more than the working class/vulnerable women. But I can't see how you remove these options from "privileged" women who arguably need them less (debatable) without also affecting much more vulnerable women.

Class is a huge issue in the UK and it's clear that lots of debates have centred financially better of women, sometimes at the expense of others. But we are on the crazy position where both the pro-SAHM "reactionary" feminists and the pro-working women (anti trad family) feminists are arguing that privileged women benefitting from things they don't like is proof that those things are therefore bad. It ignores all the other issues.

It'll be ended very soon, if the kind of future the con-fems are trying to coax us all into comes to be. Have a read of Project 2025, put out by the Heritage Foundation. They sponsor all of this.

Zero apologies for doing a hatchet-job on Harrington et al, by the way. Somebody on here needs to, before it's too late.

(And, for the hard of thinking - while a few people need to be debated with no holds barred, of course nobody deserves to be actually assaulted. Including the SAHMs who have no defence in the "traditional" world that reactionaries yearn for. Husband with angry alcoholism, husband with personality change after a head injury, husband who's just a bit slappy? Handicraft your way out of that one.)

That was the main theme of this R4 programme where they interviewed teenage boys.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001yqpr?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Because they are convinced they will be maliciously (...) accused at some later point of assault they are going all rogue male, what with them not being able to process that consent once to do one thing doesn't mean carte blanche to do other stuff

Agree.
If feminism has taught many women to give up being in the role of 'support human' or surrogate mum to the men in their lives, and they are now teaching their teenage daughters the same, then it does adversely affect men and boys.

It would affect a teenage boy's mental health if his mum ditched his misogynistic dad, and the girls at school no longer feel compelled to be nice to him out of social pressure, and he was never taught by dad how to be a fully complete human male. The boy was conditioned to need a support human and he hasn't got one.

Not sure what the trainer meant about the 'clubs' thing.

This is logical, because if a man punches a woman, she is likely to end up in hospital, but if a woman punches a man, he is likely to end up with a bruise.

I am surprised at @Galadriell 's reports that women commit as much domestic violence as men - but I don't disbelieve it. It is just not well publicised.
I think the reason it is not well known is because violence committed by women does less physical damage than violence committed by men, so it affects wider society less (in terms of medical and police resources, etc)

Don't believe everything you read, especially stuff by MRAs, they are not friends to women.

Most of the female on male reports of DV though, come from slaps not punches. That is Not OK - no one should be slapping anyone male or female. But hospitalisation is unlikely.

But specifically those stats on surprisingly high levels of female to male DV comes from women reporting having slapped a partner (in surveys) at a far greater rate than men report having been slapped. This points to underreporting in men of DV. It could be because they are ashamed, it could also be because in some cases they dont remember the time their teenage girlfriend slapped them 20 years ago, while the girlfriend does.

The fallacy, IMO, is thinking that this underreporting isn't also happening in women. Most female victims of DV don't leave after the first slap, or punch or kick etc etc. It usually escalates a lot before the police or other services would get involved. Although it is illegal and immoral to slap your partner-very few police prosecutions of assault are for slaps, they are usually much worse. So there is a idea that when men slap their partner it is taken very seriously, seen as DV, but when women slap their partner it isn't. That isn't the case at all.

Where a woman is slapped, then leaves straight away with no repurcussions from her partner, nothing else usually happens. When a man is slapped then leaves straight away with no repurcussions from his partner, nothing else usually happens. (again that doesn't make slapping OK).

If you look at who is a victim of coercive control/financial control etc (admittedly hard to measure) it tends to be much more women than men. When you look at who is a victim of ongoing DV it tends to be more women than men. It's only in the very specific case that you draw the line at slapping once in the relationship (anything "less than" isn't included, but a slap is considered the same as a violent beating) that you can see, in some statistics that men suffer almost as much as women. If you draw the cutoff line higher or lower it looks very different. It is deliberate massaging of statistics and I don't think it's particularly helpful because it doesn't shed a light on male victims real needs, and helps to obstruct support for women's only DV services.

Sorry - that was really lengthy. It's because, I know we aren't supposed say there is a hierarchy of violence. But actually I think there kind of is. Though it's all bad.

Great interpretation!
It genuinely came across that she thought of feminism as some sort of exclusive women's only club. Bizarre.