'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

thanks for that quote Beachcomber - that put into words for me somethings I've been pondering about what role (if any) men can/should play in feminist spaces and discussions...

(I'm not Oppenheim btw - I've never name changed)

Whenever a post I have made here has been met with a less than positive response, or my choice of wording has been questioned, or inflections/sub-texts read into them that I had no intention of expressing, etc, etc I have never taken it as evidence of man-hating. Nor have I seen them as personal attacks.

Quite apart from anything else the idea of taking posts by two or three individuals and coming to the conclusion that they, and therefore feminists, are man-haters is absurd.

You're welcome MrIC. When I first read that post it struck a chord with me as how I can feel as a white person of white privilege when talking to my black friends from Martinique.

No cookies for me is a great blog (good name too).

I can appreciate that as a man it may sometimes be frustrating the reaction one gets in feminist spaces. I can appreciate this because, as a woman, the reaction I sometimes get in every part of my life apart from feminist spaces is frustrating.

I think as well, women spend most of there lives deferring to men in some way - a feminist space is one where we allow ourselves not to do that (although it is very hard not to do it in reality). Men are used to having their voices listened to over the voices of women, and they are conditioned to find this a normal state of affairs - anything else probably seems hostile whether it actually is or not.

"I can appreciate that as a man it may sometimes be frustrating the reaction one gets in feminist spaces. I can appreciate this because, as a woman, the reaction I sometimes get in every part of my life apart from feminist spaces is frustrating."

Well yes exactly! It would be churlish for a male poster to complain about being misunderstood/misinterpreted/ignored/disagreed with on here - it's one of the few places women can do so with impunity so far be it for us to begrudge you!

Yes, churlish is the word for it alright.

I'm quite interested in why men want to participate in feminist discussions (apart from the sort of men who want to tell us we are doing feminism wrong, I mean).

Because they have wives,partners or daughters?

MrIC

"Whenever a post I have made here has been met with a less than positive response, or my choice of wording has been questioned, or inflections/sub-texts read into them that I had no intention of expressing, etc, etc I have never taken it as evidence of man-hating. Nor have I seen them as personal attacks.

Quite apart from anything else the idea of taking posts by two or three individuals and coming to the conclusion that they, and therefore feminists, are man-haters is absurd."

Just came back to this thread after the weekend, and I agree with this.

That's a good insight PrinceHumperdink.

I don't mean to imply that I don't see how men could be interested in feminist spaces BTW. I just mean I'm interested in the different (positive) reasons men have for participating.

Beachcomber - I post in feminism occassionally because I find the topics interesting and thought provoking. After all, I do have a mother, sisters and a wife. My sons are more likely to date and get married to a woman and perhaps have children who are daughters. I invest in businesses that employ women and may soon have my own female employees.

If women want men to stop doing things that harm women then more men need to understand the issues they face.

I dont generally feel feminists are man haters but every political movement has a few extremists that are best ignored.

It seems counterproductive to exclude men from joining the debate as long as the are constructive.

I agree that there are times that a women only space is very desirable. PH just mentioned that in her feminist group some of the realities of life for women are not discussed as not to offend the male members (ok, she didn't say that exactly, but it is sort of what it comes down to, isn't it?).

An arena where women feel free to discuss and debate these issues is surely something to foster and protect?

If women want men to stop doing things that harm women then more men need to understand the issues they face.

Good point, I expect most men (and actually a good number of women too) are happily pootling about their lives thinking that everything is reasonably fair and nice and that women by and large have a lovely time. If you don't pay attention then on the surface everything seems fine.

Most men (and women) aren't actively seeking to put women down, they are just getting on with things as best as they can.

Thanks for the insight MoreBeta.

I agree that we need men to understand and care about the issues if we want to get results. Men are more able and more likely to influence other men than women are. Robert Jensen in the area of porn is a good example.

Trillian - yes I think that does explain how in RL feminist issues are seen.

Mostly people are pootling along either not really thinking at all or just kind of assuming that because, for example, we have equality laws that women don't get discriminated against in the workplace. In fact, I think most employers genuinely believe they don't discriminate - yet if they stopped to think for a moment it is staring them in the face that there are almost no women in senior positions in either their business or many other businesses.

Beaccomber - in light of what I said above could I also draw everyones attention to Roger Carr. He is the next president of the CBI employers group, taking over from Helen Alexander in June. He is Chaiman of Centrica that has women making up 36% of its Board and a member of The 30% Club that aims to increase the number of women on Boards. He speaks knowledgably and sincerely on the issue of women in business and sometimes talks about the experience of his own daughter who works as a senior corporate lawyer.

Handy link, morebeta thanks. My own DH lurks here sometimes (often because I am spitting teeth over something and say "have you read this thread?" so I can rant about it ) but he's always kept a bit of a distance because he thinks that a feminist man's place is, y'know, a listening place not a mansplaining* place. He's posted once or twice I think, but mainly, it's "my thing" - similarly, he reads some feminist-men's stuff that I only tend to read when he brings it to my attention. This dad's blog for example is pretty feminist-minded, though not always explicitly so.

*heh. we have a running joke about how when he interrupts me (though I'm a bit more of an interrupter) or explains things I already know about, the first one to say "sorry did your penis get in the way there?" wins a prize. Gets us some funny looks, I can tell you - two grown adults muttering "penis" and giggling . . .

Various comments on this page illustrate the benefits of all-women space, like the mixed group that talks about abstract issues like S&M empowering women instead of debating male violence against women; how we need to educate men to stop raping/dominating/ignoring/battering us; how man hating extremists should be ignored as they're counter productive. There are lots of books for men to educate themselves with. Who said S&M was easier to debate than VAW? Let me guess...Who defines 'man hating extremist'? If we habitually debate feminism with men, guess what's going to happen? Slutwalk, anyone?

I came late to the thread so I hope you people won't mind me going back a bit and addressing tangentially the issue of 'killing off 95% of the men to see what happens'.

It IS a horrible concept and I hope it was a joke but actually we did sort of get half way there in WWI. My mother told me once about the common phenomena she saw as a child just after WWII of seeing quite elderly women 'maiden aunts' who had never married or had children simply because so many men were killed in WWI. I think it happened more often in times past, when mass slaughter of large numbers of men was common in wars.

I also read somewhere that during WWII young unmarried women often deliberatley avoided forming relationships with men who had a high risk of dying (eg aircrew). It seems that at least in past times, men who survived or had a better chance of surviving were highly prized and competed over by women. Sort of what you would expect with a scarce resource but maybe shows men were not entirely viewed as a bad thing by women in the past.

I'm not sure what that proves and the fact that men caused the wars (OK I'll let that Helen of Troy off just this once ) probably undermines it but anyway just threw it in the pot.

MoreBeta wrote "actually we did sort of get half way there in WWI. ... elderly women 'maiden aunts' who had never married or had children simply because so many men were killed in WWI."

World War I was indeed an awful killing spree. Most of the estimates I've seen for the number of British men killed in World War I put the death toll at about 5 percent of the British male population, but as so many of those men would have been young and single, many women would have never married, as you describe.

Going back to OP, I thought it was an excellent article-I usually think that Libby Purves sticks to common sense and I could agree with her assessment of 'We need to talk about Kevin'-a book you can look at from many different perspectives.-

Women (over 30) got the vote 1919, women 21 1926. Labour govt 1924. Russian revolution 1917. 'Great Unrest' (loads of strikes etc) same era. The men who survived WW1 had armed training and the eg of Russia. What does this show? (Probably not culling was beneficial)