Why aren't women feminists? Surely no-one thinks all the battles have been won?

[WideWebWitch]

OK, so I don't have any proper evidence to back this up (so don't post I hear you say, oh well, I bet there is some, so I will!) but I gather that increasingly young women aren't feminists and don't believe there's any need for a feminist movement of any kind. They think all the battles have been won. I know for sure they haven't but WHY do they think this? And why would anyone NOT be a feminist? If you're not, why not? I know this conversation has been had before on mn but I'm still interested.

I agree with Janice Turner about New Woman mag rebranding itself because young women don't like the word 'woman' fgs, this is an example of the sort of thing I mean.

Where do you think his heart lies?

erm, about abortion, paula? [faint but pursuing]. I would say there is a feminist argument against abortion (not treating pregnancy and children, individuals in fact, as problems to be solved medically etc), but myself would expect it always to be sited within a pro-choice agenda. Pro-choice really is not the same as pro-abortion. IMO.

ok as you were.

David Cameron's heart?

sorry but - what? has that got to do with it?

This is such an interesting thread.

I can now see that having had a bit of a 'rough' upbringing has its advantages.

At 18 , if a tutor had put his hand on my knee I'd have hissed, 'Don't to that again, or you'll be trying to pick your nose with a hook!'

Note to self.....make sure dd knows that she doesn't need to take shit from anyone.

Male tutors shouldn't do it (unless thay get jumped upon for a happy shag like expats ). But we ahould also make sure that young women are confident enough to make their own wishes clear....a feminist agenda if ever ther was one.

Hello, hello........

If I sit here with my knickers on my head, juddling small children and blowing bubbles will anyone notice me?

Don't wish to be a primadonna but am I totally invisible? Or do I smell? Or am my comments beneath contempt?

Ah well......

None of those

"Dont agree that heirachy is an acceptable excuse to abuse power at all.:

Never said it was acceptable, I said it happens. Certainly it prevented me from getting any recompense for damage to my health that was attributable directly to decisions my supervisor made. My point was it had nothing to do with sexism, much as the protection of MP's lecturer probably had far more to do with the fact that she was a student, rather than a female student.

wibble

Hello Orm
Difference between 'light sexual harrassment'an 'a bit of gentle banter' Pruni.
Obviously I know there is but at what point does one segue into another?
That probably differs depending on the individual.

I don't condone sexual harrassment but it takes its place amongst a plethora of office gripes.

Amanda's guy is/was in a superior position technically and if it all goes wrong (which I hope it doesn't-I loved that thread) maybe things could get difficult for her.
So,in retrospect,would that put the shag on the desk in a different light?

oh yes how is that going with Amanda1, do we have to wait for the Next Installment or does anyone know?

FWIW I lost my tub-thumping Femnisit tendencies when I realised it would always be me who washed the kitchen floor and that division of labour along biological lines is not in fact a curse put on us by Belzeebub.

She hasn't posted on that thread for weeks.
Fingers crossed....

Hmmm,my dh would never get into a feminist discussion with me but he will spend four hours cleaning the house from top to bottom then pour me a glass of wine and give me a damned good rogering.

Suits me.

don't you mean you envelope him?

Gah,what came over me??
I never talk sex on MN. Ever.
Must be exam stress making me come over all queer.

lol moondog (you old rogue. Glad to see you are enjoying the return of dh ).

PPB, I'm not sure about DC's heart - think he's still at the stage where he's trying (desperately) to make the Tories look appealing to enough people so that they can challenge Labour. He's given the opt out thing more press recently because of the defection of some of the (originally) Tory Lords to UKIP because they want to tow the Eurosceptic line. I reckon DC hopes that by shouting loudly about the opt out clause, he'll sufficiently pacify those in his party (and the donors) who want him to be more anti-Europe.

In all honesty, I think he's got a very difficult job. A polarised party, pressure from donors to be more right wing - yet, I think he realises that deep down, he needs to be more Centrist to gain enough of a foothold to be able to challenge Labour at the next election.

Did anyone hear Paul Dacre, editor of the (urrghhhh) Daily Mail, on This Morning saying that the Conservative party is no longer representative of the British 'small- c conservative' Moral Majority? And that he is in two minds whether to support them at the next election?

This no doubt is also one of the reasons why the hideous, snakelike DC is now desperate to placate Eurosceptics by sacrificing the already paltry rights of the country's poorest to the 'needs' of business.

Anyone who believes that feminism has 'achieved its aims' is IMHO actually an anti-feminist. Scratch the surface with these people (well young girls, basically) and you normally get stuff like 'feminists are MISERABLE' and 'why can't people just have fun and stop moaning about politics', etc.

[stern ranting now out of control- forgive me, I am an evil feminist academic] I think it has to do with the consumerist brainwashing of an entire generation tbh. Buying your own big boobs, marketing yourself as a product/brand, and above all buying stuff is now seen as paramount. We are living through the most horrible morally bankrupt era I think- and at core feminism, though of course it had its flaws and became fractured and sometimes hypocritical, was a moral argument, about freedom from oppression and about equality. Though several here seem to disagree.

hurrah for you charlieq!

God...if the Tories are too left-wing for Paul Dacre I wonder who he would support. Wonder how much it would affect the Mail's circulation if he came out in support of the BNP?

charlieq agree with you on the consumer side of things - I think feminism has gone out of fashion, along with a lot of other isms (like socialism for example) as individualism has been promoted by the establishment. Feminism belongs to a much more optimistic time when people really felt they could change the world (and to be fair, they did, in some ways).

We now live in a very pessimistic time where individual rather than collective solutions are promoted as the only realistic ones. So we can do our bit for poverty by buying fair trade bananas, but marching in the street against the outrage of the IMF's social policies is simply seen as a waste of time. Feminism was part of that collective solutions mindset, consumerism and false tits is part of the individualist one.

"I think it has to do with the consumerist brainwashing of an entire generation tbh. Buying your own big boobs, marketing yourself as a product/brand, and above all buying stuff is now seen as paramount."

I certainly agree with that.

Caligula,maybe just maybe the buying of Fair Trade bananas is more effective?

Alright Foxy? Lol,my dh left several weeks ago leaving me alone to hold the fort.

Paula I have found your posts particularly interesting because although we probably do not agree on some things (i.e. that women rather than men are necessarily predisposed to childcare and nurturing etc- though clearly breastfeeding etc has some impact on this and i think feminists should support that choice...), I am a lifelong feminist, now a PhD student in gender studies and am really disappointed by the feminist attitude to children, carers and the domestic world in general.

The academic feminists I talk to in the course of my work tend to go blank when I mention my son or pregnancy. Very few of them have children, and if they do they don't talk about them. I am constantly banging on at conferences etc about the need to address children's rights and needs for decent childcare, whether that comes from an SAHM, SAHFather or well-paid and educated childcarer. There is just no interest in this politically, and women who try to redress the balance by staying at home are looked down upon. (And God help a MAN who even thinks of it.) They're not 'wealth-creators' or cool 'ideas people', after all.

If I choose to look after my son and newborn long term (haven't decided yet, but will do at least a year before applying for jobs) I will consider that very very important work. My mere 9 months at home with DS were the hardest of my life, I had to develop skills and tolerances that I'd never imagined before, yet I cannot put that on my 'feminist' CV. Why t.h. not? Why is childrearing, the most important job in the world, still the least valued???(for ranty feminist book fans that's a quote from Ann Crittenden, 'The Price of Motherhood', very worth reading).

that's a very interesting post charlie.

Oh and Caligula you're so right about the failure of collective solutions. Even card-carrying feminism now seems too fractured to bother with them.

I agree wholeheartedly Charlie.
It pervades every layer of society.
I have often looked down on myself for staying at home as long as I have.

And how often do I say "oh I have to be at home because of ds1" In fact although he severely limits my time available to work, I am currently at home as much as I am because of ds3.