Mum’s Attitude to sex makes my blood boil!

[Ceriane]

This may be a generational thing, and maybe I’m overreacting. My brother and his partner recently split up and it has come to light that my brother has cheated on her on several occasions with a number of women and has been regularly visiting sleazy websites. This is bad enough but when I went to see my mum today and we were talking about it, her reaction was to blame his partner, that it means he is obviously not getting it at home and so is clearly her fault. She also blames her for the fact that he has been aggressive and violent towards her on occasions saying that, she should have known when to stop goading him about the cheating. I would have brushed this off as this isn’t really anything to do with me, but when I got home I started thinking about it again as I remembered conversations she had with me as a teenager which left me with really confusing boundaries when it came to relationships and sex in my late teens and early twenties, I ended up in a really coercive relationship when I was younger and then after that had a long period of being single as I developed a real fear/aversion to men and sexual situations for a long time after that. I had been in a much healthier place mentally over the last few years but her comments just left me feeling sick. Anyone else experience similar things with their parents? Is it a generational thing?

I remember, she would say things like once you have slept with someone you can’t just pick and choose when you have sex, men have needs and will want it a lot more than you will. She also blames the woman if a man is violent “men have their limits as to how much they can take from a woman”. When I didn’t agree with her she got really angry with me and seemed to want to make me agree with her.

Is she in her late 90s, early 100s?

I don’t know enough about that age bracket to say it might not be generational.

Women in their 70s and 80s now came of age during the sexual revolution. They got to experience the freedom birth control and increased economic rights provided before AIDS destroyed all the fun.

The women after that, including the middle aged like me, have always expected equality. We haven’t always gotten it, but the major fights for economic freedom were already fought and thus the antiquated notions that we need to need a man and thus must cater to his needs have been dying.

@CiaoForNiao

I just googled it and unbelievably it wasn’t until 2003 that rape within marriage was a crime, until that point men were considered to have ‘conjugal rights’. Pretty sure rape within a marriage was made a crime in 1991/2.

My mum definitely has fucked up opinions on sex. When I finally admitted my brother had been abusing me for years she said it must have been my fault and I'd led him on .

Jesus Christ. I am so sorry.

@Shelovesamystery

Well you still see comments along the lines of "men have needs" on the relationships board on here so I don't think that your mother is alone in her views.

I also hear a lot of people (on here and irl) describe sex as being given by women. "Oh his wife won't give him sex" or "he's pissed off because I won't give him sex". I think this shows how a lot of people view sex, that it's for the man only, something that women do as a favour for their male partners. I've always found this odd as, to me, sex is something you do because you want to, both of you, it's not a gift

That's because it's supposed to be fun for both people. The type of people who make these comments are either men who have never had female partners be keen to have sex with them because they are rubbish at it, or women who have had male partners who are rubbish at it so don't understand that in a normal relationship both people would enjoy and want it! (Obviously just speaking about heterosexual relationships here to illustrate the point).

@Driftingblue

Is she in her late 90s, early 100s?

I don’t know enough about that age bracket to say it might not be generational.

Women in their 70s and 80s now came of age during the sexual revolution. They got to experience the freedom birth control and increased economic rights provided before AIDS destroyed all the fun.

The women after that, including the middle aged like me, have always expected equality. We haven’t always gotten it, but the major fights for economic freedom were already fought and thus the antiquated notions that we need to need a man and thus must cater to his needs have been dying.

Absolutely. A sexual/ romantic relationship/ marriage is a choice now. I teach this to my children. I am perfectly capable of raising them alone. They should only ever be with anybody if that person makes them happy. We need to drum this into our young people, by discussion but also by example.

It’s terrible and I would like to say it’s simply an age thing and something that was taught by their parents but actually you only have to read some posts on here about the OW and how she is worse/as bad as the cheating husband even if she was a victim too.
So I think a lot of people still subconsciously hold the view that it’s always the females fault somehow.

Not generational. Just fucked up.

Not an age thing at all. My mom would be pushing 80 and she wouldn’t be down with that view at all.

@toocold54

It’s terrible and I would like to say it’s simply an age thing and something that was taught by their parents but actually you only have to read some posts on here about the OW and how she is worse/as bad as the cheating husband even if she was a victim too. So I think a lot of people still subconsciously hold the view that it’s always the females fault somehow.

Lol. A sore point is it?

@Ionlydomassiveones

“I'm not convinced that it is a generational thing. My mum is in her 80s and would verbally rip your mother apart if she heard her comments.”

Mine too! I would be challenging each and every statement that came out of her mouth if that was a relative of mine. She’s obviously been brought up to have internalised misogyny and it’s very dangerous. It allows men like your brother to do what they do as they have cheerleaders and apologists making them think that that is ok. It is not and I hate that my daughters are growing up in a world where these insidious ideas are still prevalent - and being voiced by other women who should know better. Her age is no excuse. She is a disgrace.

I agree.

It's not a generational thing, and you aren't overreacting.

I definitely couldn’t be bothered with this. I suppose any grandsons she has will be entitled to force themselves on women as well as they age and any granddaughters expected to endure it, in her opinion. It’s a poisonous world view.

Is it the entitled lovely son who’ll be expected to care for her in her old age? If I was her I’d be ashamed to even call him my son, never mind excusing him his violence.

My mother is 70. I haven't seen her for 10 years and her misogyny and shit boundaries around sex is one of the reasons why.

Things I lived with were -

Women always have sex with men they don't want to have sex with when they don't want to have sex, it's just part of being a woman.

It would be my fault if I were raped and it was my fault when I was - what did I expect if if went out on my own? (I was 18 and had gone out with a female friend. She meant without man.)

Men are always the victim - it's the woman's fault if men have affairs; women are responsible.for domestic violence they encounter. Provocation you see.

When a boyfriend hit me when I was 19, she asked what I'd done to deserve it and told me I needed to be careful or next time he'd dump me.

When my dad had an affair and left, she screamed at me in the garden that I was the whore who drove my father into the arms of another woman (had to be the fault of a woman at home although obviously not hers...) all the neighbours needed to know it wasn't her fault, you see.

She told me that I already had one failed relationship behind me and couldn't afford another when my second 'proper' relationship was obviously unhealthy.

Told me she'd see my children in care before she'd support me as a single mother - and did her best to sabotage my efforts and get social services involved.

I was ridiculous of me to expect to be able to sleep in bed with a man and not have sex with him.

No man would ever want me (because of all my physical and character flaws) but when she met my lesbian friend, told me she was 'concerned' that she was only my friend because she fancied me.

I wasn't allowed to have DMs when I was a teenager because people would think I was a lesbian. Not only was that a Bad Thing but it would be one more reason why I'd never find a man who'd be willing to take me on.

When we were in our 30s, my mother had breast cancer, she opted to have a prosthetic rather than surgery and unexpectedly threw one at my brother one day. He instinctively caught it and she asked him if he thought it felt real. He was incredibly uncomfortable with it.

She had a boyfriend when I was 21 who commented that he often looked at my breasts if i wore a certain item at home. She thought it was funny and asked him whose he preferred. He said he didn't know and would have to see us topless side by side to compare and she giggled.

And comments about child victims (esp young teenage girls) of sexual abuse that I won't repeat here but were the final straw in me deciding to go nc with her. Frankly, I just realised she wasn't someone who was safe to be around my children. And someone i couldn't associate with in good conscience.

Just an utterly vile woman.

I agree with PPs who say this is internalised misogyny is her coping mechanism for her own life experiences.

It deserves some empathy in that sense but also to be come down on like a ton of bricks because unfortunately it does a lot of harm to other people (as you have seen from your own experience and the way your brother thinks it is ok to behave).

My mum wouldn't share all of these views but probably some. I live her dearly but I've been quite shocked by some of the crap I've realised she is harbouring deep down over the years and it makes me both sad for her and cross.

I vividly remember her making a comment about whether or not something a woman we know had accused a man of doing was likely to have actually happened or not. Her stance on it, with absolutely no basis whatsoever, was that "something" probably happened, but not to the extent she was saying. Her position on this was based on absolutely nothing besides the fact she could emotionally cope with the "something" but not the full accusation.

People are funny things like that. It infuriated me (not because I was insistent it was true as opposed to false, but her position was just so illogical and self-serving) but it did help to remind myself that she was motivated by everything she's been brought up believing (which had harmed her life too) and by trying to emotionally protect herself from something she simply couldn't cope with. That afforded me a modicum of patience with her(!) but I do robustly disagree with her. Even if she gets annoyed and defensive at the time, she often goes away and ruminates on the seed I've planted in her own good time, which can't be a bad thing.

A boyfriend hit me when I was in my early 20s and my mum told me I must have really annoyed him. As a mother now myself I often think WTF.

What have her own relationships been like?

I think it is partly a generational thing and partly a life experience thing. If a woman had been lucky enough to marry a man who respected her and was good in bed, I’m sure she had positive views about sex and women’s empowerment. Sadly an awful lot of women knew nothing about sex when they married. It came as a shock. An unwelcome shock . Many men had no idea what women need in bed ( and still don’t). So it was ‘lie back and think of England’. Women largely saw sex as an unwelcome duty that mostly led to unwelcome pregnancies . In the days when there were no labour saving devices and large families were the norm, the consequences of sex were pretty devastating for women.
A man who came home and demanded sex from an exhausted, miserable wife already run ragged, was often the norm.
Women classified themselves as decent married women attending to the needs of men ( in all respects) , or ‘floozies’ . If you weren’t married pretty young, you were seen as ‘on the shelf’. Women were essentially marketable goods with a shelf life. They didn’t work in general and needed a man to support them. Having a home and family gave them social currency and acceptability .Sex was the price they paid and endless pregnancies destroyed their health in many cases. Women were men’s property. A man could beat us wife and demand sex as often as he wanted. If you had a bad marriage there was no escape as divorce was a social calamity.

Times have changed but some of these attitudes still remain in older people. My mother has never enjoyed sex and has very strange attitudes about it. Her own mother never spoke to her about sex and her grandmother actively didn’t want her daughters to know anything about it before marriage.
Another relative divorced her husband in the 1940’ for cruelty . It was unheard of in those days and she suffered a lot of social shunning as a result.

I have a friend of 60 who ended her marriage because her husband ‘s ‘needs’ in her own words were excessive and he told her if she didn’t put out more he would have an affair. He did have an affair so she divorced him. The language she uses to describe the marriage was about his ‘needs’ and her exhaustion with young children making this an unpleasant duty. Women’s experiences, education and understanding of their own sexuality vary so much even in the modern day. Our mothers and grandmothers lives are not so long ago.

In our family sex was never discussed as we grew upthe damage that caused well, I had no sympathy when my first boyfriend turn4d out to be gay at 19, sex before marriage you were a tart.

It doesn’t sound generational as there’s plenty of older women who wouldn’t agree with your mum

Has she had lots of bad relationships? Seems like she has internalised a lot of misogyny over the years

Both my grandfather's would probably agree with that, but they'd be nearly 100 now if they were still alive and they were both abusive, angry, patriarchal and highly entitled. Both my grandmother's divorced them, I barley knew them but I'd guess they didn't agree. My parents definitely don't think like that at all, neither do STBXH parents. They're all 70+ now.

People can be horrible, at work I get people latching onto me with their rascist beliefs because I am white with blond hair and blue eyes so I must want to hear their opinions about immigrants right? Wrong, my family are immigrants from various parts of europe and my siblings are mixed race.
Funny how offended they always are when I get up and walk away in the middle of their rant.

Perhaps you should n’t get so involved in your brothers life.

I distinctly remember once when I came home from primary school aged about 10 and I was crying because a boy a liked wouldn't speak to me, my Mum's response wasn't "Well that's his loss" or "Just be happy in yourself and the right person will come along eventually", it was "Well, let's buy you a short skirt then. That'll make him sit up and take notice!"

Mum's sister (my Aunt) also told me when I was about 16 and with my first boyfriend that "once a man starts, he can't stop" so I must be careful not to imply or lead him to believe I wanted sex unless I really wanted it too as changing my mind wouldn't be an option once he'd got "turned on" and "that's how girls end up getting raped, you know".

My Nan (their Mum) on the other hand was a bad ass feminist who believed all women had the right to say no. She brought me idolising Emmeline Pankhurst and the like and said her biggest disappointment in life was that the contraceptive pill was only invented the year AFTER she gave birth to her fifth and final child. "Bloody typical", she said.

As an adult, I've often thought that it was very odd that my grandmother was the more modern in her views and my mother and her sister instead had these quite poisonous and dangerous opinions about women and sex.

I agree with a PP who suggested you start sending your Mum feminist literature.

@Harlequin1088

I distinctly remember once when I came home from primary school aged about 10 and I was crying because a boy a liked wouldn't speak to me, my Mum's response wasn't "Well that's his loss" or "Just be happy in yourself and the right person will come along eventually", it was "Well, let's buy you a short skirt then. That'll make him sit up and take notice!"

Mum's sister (my Aunt) also told me when I was about 16 and with my first boyfriend that "once a man starts, he can't stop" so I must be careful not to imply or lead him to believe I wanted sex unless I really wanted it too as changing my mind wouldn't be an option once he'd got "turned on" and "that's how girls end up getting raped, you know".

My Nan (their Mum) on the other hand was a bad ass feminist who believed all women had the right to say no. She brought me idolising Emmeline Pankhurst and the like and said her biggest disappointment in life was that the contraceptive pill was only invented the year AFTER she gave birth to her fifth and final child. "Bloody typical", she said.

As an adult, I've often thought that it was very odd that my grandmother was the more modern in her views and my mother and her sister instead had these quite poisonous and dangerous opinions about women and sex.

I agree with a PP who suggested you start sending your Mum feminist literature.

This reminds me. My daughter has a boyfriend in another country, so they don't manage to see each other as often as they would like, especially with recent events. My mother's take on it is 'Well we all know what men are like, it won't last.' In other words if he's not getting sex every week he'll find someone else. It's so depressing.

Where is DF in this. I would say she is first and foremost trying to cover up and deny she has a nasty son. He sounds awful.
I'm 70 and can understand where DM's views come from regarding men in general (though don't know her age) but most people have changed their ideas over the last 20 years and can see women have rights.