'Man-hating feminism'

[MisterDarsey]

There's an article about this in the Times today by Libby Purves, provoked by Lionel Shriver's portrayal of the boy in 'We need to talk about Kevin'

Just thought you'd like to know

" It's the conditioning of boys into the slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails and girls into sugar and spice and all things nice that is damaging from the beginning. It would surely have a positive impact on feminism to recognise that this happens and to try and educate people, particularly parents, against it."

It isn't feminists who do this though. It's everybody else. Feminists go to great pains not to raise their children to conform to stereotype.

Exactly sardine! And personally I think that girls suffer more from that ridiculous sterotyping than girls. At least boys are encouraged to use their bodies and run/climb/get muddy etc not sit and be passive.

True SQ, but I think many parents are unaware that they are reinforcing dangerous stereotypes. It's ignorance more than anything else.

But what has this book to do with man-hating feminism? Or indeed the article for that matter?

basically teh person who wrote the article doesn't like feminists and has written the title and then just scrawled down any old rubbish which she thinks relates to it.

It's gobbledegook.

Mostly the article is rubbish. However, I agree with SardineQueen, all hatred is wrong. I worry as much about all the "little monster"/ smelly / lazy / useless stereotypes that get fed to boys as I do about all the revolting pink princess crap. The way we bring up boys and the way society sees them will have a direct impact on how they go onto relate to women / the world when they are men.

FC so then the article should be titled "We need to talk about man-hating in society, and why because of this everyone should be a feminist".

Although I don't think there is man-hating in society, by a long chalk. People who bring their sons up in the macho mould don't do it because they hate them.

I remember watching 'Terms of endearment'. When the mother dies all her friends turn up and coo over her little girl and want to adopt her but don't want the boy. I don't know anyone in real life who thinks like that but maybe they exist. Do they?

but it's always 'some men, some men, not all' as if that somehow exculpates the rest from doing anything about any of it

oh, ffs @ that article.
blaming feminists for exactly the kind of stereotyping that we are trying our hardest to combat.

I'm sure they do orm but so do many people have a preference for male children.

And of course in many countries being a female child is a total disaster, if you actually manage to get born and make it through the first few weeks/months without being killed / starved / raped to death etc.

Sorry about that last post it's a bit graphic should I ask to get it deleted?

Sorry if I sounded uppity :)

But they definitely do exist. Am I allowed to quote The Beauty Myth on here? I think there's a nice chunk in there about it.
Better not, and anyway I can't find the page ref. But she makes a very good point about not focusing on grievances more than necessary, but moving forward (and realising that repression and hate and hunger for power are not just male characteristics, which is more common a school of thought than you might think). We don't always need to give in to our instincts- an eye for an eye etc.

The dangerous thing about dwelling on past grievances is that it is easy to cross over the line between genuine recognisable need for closure etc and people getting the wrong (or right) idea, thinking all feminists are all about this rather than equality, aggressive rather than eirenic.
Of course we need aggression, but maybe not when trying to recruit :o

I came across these people on the Internet and otherwise they are so intelligent that I can't believe they produce this sort of rubbish. I doubt that it's tongue in cheek.
I don't think the use of the word 'strident' should be particularly contentious when it comes to certain feminists. It is controversial by nature and many do appear unpleasant and uncontrollable when it comes to shaking (conservative) people up. The fact that there is a stereotype means it does exist, even if it's a watery weak minority.

• uncontrollable- bad choice of word! scratch that that's kind of what we want :o

Well that article is a load of rubbish so I can't be bothered to comment on it.

I just want to say that I would LOVE an 'UPPITY WOMEN UNITE' badge like Proleworth's mum.

Sorry proley - Prolesworth's.

quirrel I haven't come across what you are talking about so some examples would be good.

When you talk about feminists dwelling on past grievances, can you give some examples of the grievances?

When you talk about feminists being strident and unpleasant and uncontrollable to shake people up, who are you talking about? You say they do it to shake up conservatives so I guess they must be in the mainstream as otherwise how would the conservatives come across what they are saying. So in the papers / mainstream websites etc - which ones? Who?

show us some links then Quirrelquarrel.

you can explain at great length why hatred it bad and how aggression puts people off being feminists but it's all a bit pointless if you're not talking to the actual people you're accusing of hatred and indeed most of us have never even come across those people.

if you want to have a serious conversation about this then you will need to put your claims into more of a context so we can actually respond to something concrete rather than the usual Straw Feminist.

Many women identifying with Bridget Jones but apparently no men identifying with male characters is linked to the marketing of the books and films.

The "writer" of the article criticises Jill Tweedie for daring to state the fact that most crime is committed by men. Should Jill Tweedie have lied instead?

Why does the article criticise Jenni Murray in such an indirect way? Someone of undisclosed sex and undisclosed political persuasion (perhaps an anti-feminist, who knows?) comments to Murray that boys are the enemy, but it is Murray who is criticised. How much responsibility should a feminist take for the words people say to her? My suggestion is "not much".

These comments are used as supposed evidence that feminism is daft.
They fail to persuade me that feminism is "daft".

Feminism isn't trying to turn boys into "sissies". Feminism is demanding that boys and men don't use violence against women and that men do their fair share of work. There is a huge difference.

Well I love Jill Tweedie, and most crime is committed by men. Apparently we're not allowed to point that out?

I also agree that the "point" of WNTTAK (did not read but heard on radio) was that the narrator was horribly flawed and had helped to create Kevin and what he did.

I don't know any feminists who hate men, all the feminists I know live with men, actually, either in the form of husbands or boyfriends or friends or sons.

The other people who disparage men as a whole are the ones making excuses for something - e.g. "ah well he forgot my birthday and leaves the baby in wet nappies, but men aren't very good at this stuff are they eh?"

OK, I read the book very quickly, ages ago, but the mother has a total lack of connection with her son and views him as something alien, 'other'. There is a sense throughout the book that the eventual outcome is inevitable. At the end, the mother feels that she is as much the cause of the tragedy as anything in him, because the more she held him at a distance the harder he had to push to get her attention. It's easy to feel that the other characters were mere distractions and the whole book is their relationship and in a way her surrendering to the fact that he is very much 'of her', and now he has gotten rid of the distractions, he has her full attention. The book doesn't hold up the mother as a heroine, and it doesn't lend itself to the positive self-identification she mentions with Bridget Jones. Unless you're really into archery. I think that it was Kevin rather than Kelly because it adds another layer to the difference, but it would still have worked if the child were female.

I also think that people seeing boys as harder work than girls and sympathising with mothers of boys goes hand in hand with the 'pinkification' of girls. It's pure gender stereotyping. There are boys who are quiet and sensitive and always have their noses in a book, but as girls are herded towards pink, the flipside is boys having dolls pulled away from them as toddlers and mothers buying a new highchair because their DS can't use pink. Just as it's gotten harder to but non pink for girls, it's gotten harder to buy brightly coloured clothes for boys, and avoid t-shirts with 'little terror' on them.

Here's a good quote.

'The truth is that women create the human race and it's women who have kept it going. Men have basically acted like parasites.'