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.

Right, have read the whole thread now.

I suppose I am one of those that dislikes the label 'feminist'. Possibly because my understanding of the history of it and the issue as a whole is a bit weak. To me, it has some negative connotations. Perhaps becuase I feel that there shouldnt be a need for feminism. To best explain how I feel; its like saying loudly that you are a Xenophile. Why do we need to proclaim a lack of racism/xenophobia in ourselves...shouldnt it just be 'normal' to have xenophilic behaviour? Thus, not have to proclaim yourself as such.

I suppose, thats a very idealistic view.

That's not to say I disagree with feminism, or feel that there arent many issues that remain unresolved. One of the issues I had with my ex-manager was that he had said to a colleague "Dont have children yet, you are doing so well, it would spoil it for you". That told me exactly how he viewed me and my role now that I had started a family and was working part time. This attitude is still rife.

It should be possible for women to disregard unwanted advances in the work environment without fear of reprisal or adverse treatment in future, amongst other things.

This quote from that rather amusing link hunker posted about some things having changed....

On Equal Rights

"The woman suffers due to her natural disabilities (menstruation, pregnancy, lactation), age-long repression, and also by the fact that she must be sought but never seek, and finally for her economic dependence on a man."

This hasnt changed much at all, has it?

in response to WWWs question as to why i dont call myself a feminist. - well its explained in my previous post.

Paula, I think that some of what you are asking for is already being addressed by mainstream feminists - campaigns for longer parental leave, better maternity / paternity pay, the right to work flexibly (which may include the ability to apply for career breaks to meet caring responsibilities and have a job to return to) all help. The idea that work in the home should be salaried and valued as work outside the home has actually been an important strand of feminist campaigning.

I think that most feminists would argue that caring responsibilities are not valued enough, but also that women should not be expected to be the carers because of their gender. They would be wary of institutionalising the idea that women should be expected to stay at home, and concerned about women being deskilled and losing the confidence to return to work.

There is a campaign group which is calling for benefits to be paid to mothers who stay at home. Personally, I find the rhetoric to be reductive, based on an inherent expectation that full time parents will be women, and suspicious of women who do not want to stay at home. It is also not a feminist organisation - but then you do not identify as feminist either. It can be found here .

Firepile - I just hovered over the link and saw the name of the organisation - I think the phrase 'full time mother' in itself is reductive, almost insulting. I am a full-time mother, I am a mother all the time, I don't stop being a mother when I walk out the door to go to work. I much prefer the terms SAHM and WOHM (I insist on the OH bit of that because just 'working mothers' implies that staying at home with children is not work - also an almost insulting judgement).
That said, I do think there is an incredibly strong case for more financial support (but even more so, working flexibility) for stay-at-home parents. I'm proud of Germany (where I live) for having introduced a benefit of 67% of the average wage from the last 12 months for the first year of a child's life, which either the mother or the father can take (and the size of the benefit makes it feasible for the father to take at least some of it) - with an extra two months on top if the other partner takes over. The conservative press was very derisive about these two months in particular, referring to them as 'father's nappy-changing course' (wtf) - the German govt is ahead of people's thinking.
Personally I would love to be a SAHM, but realistically it's not going to happen in the foreseeable future (atm I'm the sole breadwinner) - so I work as flexibly as I can, and atm indeed am a curious mix of SAHM and WOHM, so able to see both 'sides' very sharply. Before having ds I never thought I would want so desperately to be a SAHM, but do - which is why I do believe to some degree that the experience of having young children is always going to be very different for men and women - despite the fact that dh is a very (for want of a better word) 'motherly' dad indeed and wouldn't have missed his SAHD role for the world. We are currently in job limbo and looking for a PT job each, which is doable because of the generally fairly affordable cost of living over here, even though it means we certainly won't be anywhere near rich until I've written that Booker winner . I do think the way forward for society in general is what dh and I are struggling towards now - genuinely equal partnership in earning and childcare, even if there has to be a reduction in living standards - but I do have my moments of longing to be in a more 'traditional' model, i.e. a SAHM with a full-time breadwinner. I don't think that encroaches on my feminist credentials, though (and I definitely define myself as a feminist). I just think it's a fairly usual (to avoid the word 'natural' reaction to the experience of motherhood.

I do think the term feminism has been derided within the media to the point where I cannot imagine it coming back into 'fashion' again.

I devised a thought experiment in my undergraduate dissertation about this.

If Kate Moss were to be photographed in a t.shirt with the slogan (with thanks to MI) 'This is what a feminist looks like' , which of the following three scenarios do you imagine to be more likely?

1. Feminism would suddenly become fashionable again
2. Kate Moss would be derided in the popular press
3. The magazines wouldn;t print the photos but chose ones where she wasn't wearing the slogan

i think if feminism has to have a poster child. the ironies are too many to mention.

equality for all
justice for all
not just women

Amen

MT, they would finally decide that Kate Moss at the advanced age of whatever-she-is, is past her sell-by-date.

I'm a feminist, but in a pretty downtrodden way, in that I do think that feminism is largely about women learning to take full responsibility for themselves as individuals. Often I get angrier with women allowing themselves to be abused than with the abusers. I know there are other feminists like me (I think Betty Friedan was one, I recognise a lot of the anger in the Feminine Mystique, e.g. against women who dropped out of college degrees to get married) and this is probably one of the ways that women get put off feminism. It's an attitude that IMO has validity, but can shade pretty easily into blaming the victim.

It's also frustrating that the 'all men are bastards, cut their d*cks off' or more kindly 'oh aren't men children really, you can't expect them to do [insert random domestic responsibility here] kind of attitude was labelled as feminism by the media, when in fact that attitude is as old as the hills, or at least 16th C which is as far back as I go historywise.

Capitalism is creating more and more segregated sex products (e.g. children's clothes - as recently as the 50s all babies regardless of gender were in rompers, whereas now we are sold small sex-based uniforms from day 1) to reduce our opportunities to reuse stuff. One of the side-products is to make gender seem more important than it is, IMO.

WWW,harassment (of all sorts) is a fact of life.
Overreaction imbues it with an importance it doesn't (or shouldn't have)
Educated middle aged Western women in the main know fuck all about what real harrassment entails.

Feminism was never just about women. It was and is about men and women fulfilling their real roles in society - you can't have one without the other. A women can't have the choice to go out to work if her partner/father of her children isn't prepared to take over a reasonable part of the parenting role traditionally seen as female. It was called feminism because the gender with seemingly the most to gain in upsetting the status quo was the female.

I used to wear Doc Martins in the 80s and roll my own fags! You should be able to define yourself as you wish - with or without lipstick or 'f*ck me shoes'. What I hate about post-feminism ("post" as in "ex" I presume) is that it has brought back all the old shackles - how you look, how you dress etc but without really addressing the issues that make women's live harder than mens in many situations. People assume the battle's have been won because it's now OK for women to drink as much as men and behave loutishly like men. Can't help thinking that there's still some way to go.

BTW I don't give a flying sod if people think that feminists are hairy-legged, bare-faced harridans! Who cares about that. Sometimes the message is more important than the image.

Protect!!??
From what!
A hand on the knee ffs!
Are we so frail that we need protecting from this?????
If we are,then we really are the weaker sex.
And what the hell was the point of bringing it all back up??

Do you think a person's career should be broken on the grounds of an ill advised sexual overture becasue i sure as hell don't.

Is it ok if it is just a 50 year old plumber who lives in your neighbourhood then?

And these lecturers have power over the students further lives. Or "An A for a lay" as one of my lecturers so charmingly put it.

Oh really?
Did you see your lecturer in loco parentis when you shagged him then MP??
You can't have it both ways.

I had an affair w/my 43-year-old philosophy professor when I was 19.

There was deffo nothing parental about him.

This sort of thing was celebrated in that department, however.

The hand on the thigh is a euphemism for what I've personally seen go on which is predatory older male lecturers pouncing on very drunk women.

Issues of drink yes, but young men and women are subject to the same messages in our society and none of those messages (apart from very marginalized feminist ones) are about sobriety and responsibility - as they run counter to consumerism and these young people are their biggest market, especially the drinks market.

FWIW, if a man I respected professionally put his hand on my thigh at 18 I would have been devastated, not because of the physical intrusion but more because of the symbolic one. If UI was in his office to discuss something I?d bloody well expect him to be listening to me not looking at my legs, tits or anything else that too his fucking fancy ? literally!

Haven't been able to read the whole thread (it's that thing about being at work!). However, just wanted to flag to the wider world the truly frightening thing spotted in the Observer yesterday.

David Cameron has committed the CP to withdrawing the UK from the EU social charty thingy (so technical...) which would mean the end to the rights of part-time workers and rights of women to maternity benefits being legally encapsulated. When the Obs reporter phoned up the CP to ask if that's what they really intented they said yes...when challenged about ending the current legal safeguards and benefits for part-time workers and working mothers they said they would entreat employers "to do the decent thing".

Now if feminism means protecting the rights of part-time workers (most of whom are women, me included) and for women to have maternity benefits (have benefitted in the past) then we should be shouting this from the rooftops = can you really believe that a political party today is contemplating dragging us backwards!

If ever there was a reason to not vote Tory...

Here is the extract (Nick Cohen writing). Read and weep:

I have always thought that the most interesting stories barely make the news, and last week Cameron proved my point. He gave an extraordinarily reactionary pledge that made a nonsense of his hippy image and no one in the media raised a questioning eyebrow. Writing in the Telegraph, he promised that under a Conservative government Britain would opt out of the European Union's Social Chapter. The immediate effect would be the removal of legal protection for part-time workers and the ending of the rights of women to extend maternity leave. Not much compassionate conservatism in that announcement, I thought.

I double-checked with Cameron's friends to see if there had been some mistake. Not at all, they told me. You don't understand David if you suppose he believes in regulation, particularly regulation from the EU. But what is going to happen to part-time workers - most of them women and many of them poor? Well, they replied, we will exhort employers to be nice to them. David's views on employment rights are like his views on WH Smith selling chocolate oranges instead of real ones. He's not going to force employers to extend maternity leave any more than he is going to ban Smiths from selling chocolate. He is just going to ask them to do the decent thing.

The TUC is appalled and points out that workers will have nothing to fall back on when employers ignore Cameron's lectures, as I'm sure they will. I asked their officials why with the exception of two tiny articles, there had been no follow-up, and one of them said that she feared that Cameron had an alarmingly accurate understanding of the tensions and double standards of middle-class life. As a leading figure in the Labour movement, she hears daily diatribes on how Blair has sold out from members of London's progressive middle class. With barely a pause for breath, the apparently sincere left-wingers switch to anguished wails about the law forcing them to give their nannies flexible working and other benefits. She doesn't dismiss their problems, and accepts that finding and paying for child care can be hellish. But she does come away thinking that many of them would quietly welcome a cutback on the rights of Britain's new servant class, as long as Cameron could make them feel good by covering a right-wing measure in the unctuous language of moral exhortation.

Well,I am studying for an MSC at present and noticed that when I met my supervisor recently,he left the door open which i found startling but on reflection,sensible i suppose.

Funny thing is,he never did it before in my previous capacity as a colleague.

protecting the rights of part time workers shouldnt be a feminist thing.

it should be a society thing, why should it be feminism that carries this torch?

it should be voters, society, trade unions, the people en masse.

feminism divides.

not in intent custy. womens liberation was for the liberation of all people, not just women but also the poor, disenfranchised.

feminism and socialism are part of the same thing aren't they? the wish for all to have equal opportunity.

patriarchy and it's consequences are a damn good place to start though.

Precisely Sophable. Liberation of all people is the aim.