Social breakdown in Britain and Feminism

[SkinittingFluffyBunnyBonnets]

I've been reading up on social Breakdown in Britain...and trying to understand the contributing factors. There is little point in denying that things are quite bad....with teens at risk in so many ways and vulnerable members of society being neglected....violence inthe streets and communities which are falling apart...can anyone tell me how they feel women's position in society has been affected by the gradual decline of the traditional community?

Or any thoughts in general?

Sorry it's vague....I come here to get my thoughts crystallised! [bugrin]

[intellectual vampire emticon...with bunny ears]

[Xenia]

They certainly did. Women went from not even being able to own property ultimately to getting the vote. I am sure Camerons knows lots of friends who have divorced and are happier and indeed his own mother in law I think is in that category and his wife is none the worse for her broken home.

[garlicbutter]

I'm in danger of becoming a sycophantic Xenia slimeball! (Or: I heart Xenia.) Don't agree with all your opinions, milady, but I love your awareness of the "mud that grows the flowers".

Drives me nuts that Dickens et al put all that effort into portraying the real desperation of Victorian life, and all we have left is a sanistised image of the flower girl! Still, they effected real change in his time. Maybe more commentators need to get out on the streets today ...

[HerBEggs]

LOLOL Xenia, I hope you've shared that piece of wisdom with David Cameron.

I agree with you actually. In a way. I don't think it means that women and children are necessarily happier, but I do think it mans their expectaion of being happy, is higher.

[Xenia]

Most people have never had much money and never will. Plenty of them are doing better now than in Victorian or Elizabethan or 1950s England. Even the middle class in the 50s still had rationing and most had no servants and no central heating. The fact divorce rates rise is often a great sign of progress and means children and women are happier. It's cultures where women are trapped in marriage for life with no money or power where life is worse. Thus a high divorce rate could be something the state should show off about as a sign of progress.

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

I think a lot of these myths of a golden age have arisen because the people who mythologise them lived through them as members of the privileged classes ie children of the well-off who were pretty sheltered. If you were growing up in a middle class or upper classe family in (for instance) the Victorian era or the 1950s, your life would probably have been fairly lovely (assuming that there wasn't actually a paedophile or a seriously nasty bully in the family, then it would have been hellish as there would have been no escape and you would have been blamed for any abuse you suffered rather than believed and protected) and you would not really have encountered the poor and the desperate apart from at arms' lengt such as being encouraged to put your sweetie money in the poor box at Lent.

[Xenia]

The social breakdown thing is a bit of a myth. Go out on to the streets of Victorian London. you would find women and men addicted to drink. There were openly child sex brothels. Every generation has had people who couldnt' cope. There was no past nirvana of everyone happily coupled off and coping well. Most childern under 5 died. If there is a nirvana it's now where most people are fed and people have benefits that ensure in general they don't die of starvation and people are obliged to stay with a partner who is unbearable to them.

[HerBEggs]

I don't think it's accurate to say that society culled males.

Wars were actually quite few and far between and only a very small number of men participated in them. Even in the 100 years war, it wasn't actually going on for every second of every hour of those 116 years...It was only in the c20 that the industrialised scale of warfare was first seen.

[garlicbutter]

SFBB, I know there are plenty of feminist christians, muslems, jews, hindus et al! I'm sure it depends on your interpretation of your scriptures. I'm also sure, though, that all religious fundamentalism is oppressive to women and is on the rise worldwide.

[garlicbutter]

I like your point, Edith, so I'm going to pick it up and run with it a little.

A greater proportion of men living in a society might lead to reduced competition amongst females for a mate.
This might free the females up for a wider range of activities, and allow them to channel their competitiveness in other directions.

There might be more competition amongst the males for a mate.
This might result in more male grooming activity and males trying harder to please the females.

Without war to channel male competitiveness, males might seek other outlets.
This might lead to increased civilian violence amongst males.

Received male and female values, which were predicated on a different balance of the sexes, might prove not to be useful for current generations.
This might lead to widespread questioning of gender roles and some insecurity amongst both males and females.

Historically, nature appears to have redressed population imbalances by means of disease or natural disaster if there was insufficient war or famine.
Is this truly the case, or is it just a convenient lie I was taught at school?

[SkinittingFluffyBunnyBonnets]

Oh dear garlic is being a Christian completely against feminist ideals? I'm a Christian and have always thought of myself as a Feminist.

[EdithWeston]

Society used to cull its young men ruthlessly through warfare.

We are now living through a different shape society as this has not been done in Europe for over a generation, at a time when the world popoulation has rocketed. I think you can fairly point to changed pressures on society in those terms.

[garlicbutter]

The major religions, I believe :)

[SkinittingFluffyBunnyBonnets]

What woman hating superstition SpringChickenGoldBrass?

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

Actually, though I do feel that xenophobia is on the rise again, and so is woman-hating superstition, things are still getting steadily better. Because I very much doubt that anyone can point out a time or indeed a place with more offered in the way of human rights to women (and gay men, and ethnic and religious minorities) than the present-day developed world. All these 'golden ages' always depended on having a slave class who accepted slave status (usually women).

[SkinittingFluffyBunnyBonnets]

Thanks for the links Prunnhilda and garlic.....

[SkinittingFluffyBunnyBonnets]

dttanyI don't know....as said in the OP I am a bit of an inellectual vampire...I come here because I learn tonnes....if there was anything to learn about social change I wanted hear it from Feminists. I sppose a better title may have been "Social Breakdown: A Feminist's Point of Veiw"

Or something.

[garlicbutter]

(Promise I'll shut up after this one!) Did you know that physically handicapped children and deprived children were still being classed as "educationally subnormal" in the late 1970s? Warnock Report, 1978.

[Prunnhilda]

Oh I know. There never was a golden age.

[garlicbutter]

Prunnhilda, you've perfectly summed up the aspects of social change that I regret. However, 'the community' viciously punished those who couldn't/wouldn't/didn't fit in or contribute as the community demanded.

[Prunnhilda]

I think the promotion of the individual as having more value than the community is to blame, and that's been a conscious effort to make us into consumers.
I found this series fascinating and thought provoking:
The Century of the Self

[garlicbutter]

For an entertaining insight into "how women's position in society has been affected by the gradual decline of the traditional community" you could always get hold of some of the most popular TV shows of my youth:

On The Buses
Till Death Us Do Part
The Benny Hill Show
The Black & White Minstrels
The Liver Birds (this was a feminist breakthrough!)

and

[garlicbutter]

What others have said. It's not breaking down, it's changing. I'm the older generation and I miss several aspects of the Britain I grew up in, but it was a Britain that could be ruthlessly cruel to non-conformists especially if they were women.

What about the Magdalen Laundries and the 'caring' society that fed them? What about "No Dogs Or Blacks"? How about the innumerable care homes which are still, to this day, being revealed to have been child abuse factories? I, too, have plenty of tales about horrible things that happened to neighbours and were brushed firmly under the (non-fitted) carpet.

If British society is broken now, it was more broken then.

[HerBEggs]

See I don't think there has been a rise in xenophobia. I think we are more tolerant that we used to be.

And the economy has always and will always been an issue...

Whereas the hijacking of the sexuality of the next generation and the constant message to girls and women that only their sexiness and up for it-ness matters, is a big issue which will affect the relationships between the next generation of citizens and affects the safety of women.

And drugs are implicated in so many crimes and lack of productivity and illness and relationship breakdown etc. (I'm talking about mostly legal drugs btw)

But we could choose any number of issues and say these are the ones which matter. I plucked those two out because dealing with them would solve a whole load of stuff short term. But they are symptoms of problems ratehr than causes. Pornification wouldn't happen if we had equality . Drug use wouldn't matter if resources were shared out fairly and people were happy enough not to let their drug use control their lives.

Am being simplistic here ...

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

HerBEggs, I would have thought that the economy and the rise in general xenophobia are bigger problems than drugs and porn.