"ask what you think are silly Qs here and forkful will try to answer them in a polite helpful way by directing you to the resources she found useful and try to use persuasive arguments and

[forkful]

if anyone feels scared just shout" THREAD

Sparked from the 700+ post thread. Honestly where is that thread going now . The people who hate women will be loving that thread.

Lots of posters don't want to explain Feminist thinking all the time (fair enough - I don't always - but I try to provide useful links and book recommendations and write wordy posts trying to explain my point of view when I have the time/inclination).

So to all those who are scared/lurking - come and ask some questions!

separatist. Exoticfruits wondered what they do if they have dses.

It was explained to me this week Sybil and I then googled it.

I don't think Sakura is a seperatist, she's married afaik. But she doesn't dismiss the arguments for it.

She's got a son and a daughter, neither of them very old I think.

I can't look back but I was told she was-can't remember who by, but it did make feel guilty for thinking she had deep trauma and needed counselling. Did the person have it wrong then?

Thanks for links Catitainahatita - last one was v interesting. Stole words out of my mouth.

Exotic -There is feminism and there is female separatism. If you read a few female separatist blogs, you'll find views like Sakura's are ten a penny. It doesn't make them anymore palatable, realistic or benefical to women or society as a whole, but it does explain where such ideas come from.

That was it-it didn't say that she was-but that her views were. I then googledit because they were not 'ten a penny' to me-I had never heard them before.

Why is no one interested in my hairy toes. On a feminist thread of all places

whats a separatist?is it as literal as separate male and female children?a female only community
who goes where?how does it work

exotic I might not subscribe to every tenet of feminist seperatism, but a lot of the ideas behind it are very strong, very thought-provoking, and totally pro-woman rather than anti-men. And very practical, some of them - like women only spaces, a concept that many women's groups adopt.

Julie Bindel wrote an article describing how lesbian seperatism changed her life: www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/30/women-gayrights

I don't know what they do about sons though. I suspect that might be where the 'ideal' gets modified somewhat, in some cases. I'd love to hear from anyone who knows more about it.

Why isn't that a link? Hang on - Bindel article

I have stupid questions!

Rather than labelling myself as a feminist, I almost want to call myself an "equalisit", if there is such a thing. I get outraged at elements of society telling women that they can't do X, Y, Z because of their sex - such as unilaterally being banned from some frontline parts of the military, not being allowed to play proper rugby at school when boys can, being pressured into significantly more time consuming and expensive standards of personal appearance and so on. But I also get outraged at men being patronised in adverts for anything from cleaning products to supermarkets to women's magazines, boys being singled out for choosing GCSE options such as textiles or whatever they call home ec these days, and men often being labeled as likely child molestors if they want to work in childcare or are seen out and about with a child without having a woman by their side as well. Does spreading my outrage around between the two sides mean I'm not actually a feminist at all? But surely most feminists are probably outraged at some or all of the inequality shown to men, too? Is feminism the wrong word for that or is it a separate issue entirely?

mushy - I think for me, I don't like the idea of 'equalism' because it reinforces the misunderstanding (sometimes willful, judging by some pricks I've come across in pubs) that feminism is not about equality.

I'm comfortable with the label 'feminist' because it seems clear to me the balance of discrimination is against women. But I think you are absolutely right that when boys are mocked for choosing textiles GCSE (or men are mocked for being nurses, or whatever), that's part of the same problem as women being mocked for choosing woodwork GCSE or being engineers.

Erm ... I didn't answer the question realy, did I?

Ok here goes, just a general query really. I just don't seem to "get" a lot of feminist angles. I admit I am probably in complete ignorance about a lot of it but...could a lot of it be just down to (not sure how to phrase this) genetic dispositions? As in, natural urges, age old male/female differences?

For example, we know that, for want of a better example, cavemen were the ones to "work", find food, protect the female etc and the female stayed "home" bore the children, looked after them, kept "house" etc.

Does this mean that feminism is part of evolution as such?

A bit of me feels that men are being made to change a lot of their "genetic traits" (apologies, I know not how to word that any better).

I sincerely hope I'm not ridiculed for voicing this as I'm not very good at putting across what I think in a coherent manner sometimes!

Happy to be pointed in the right direction. I read the feminist threads with interest but find them hard to follow if I'm honest, as if I'm missing a massively important point, that things have moved far beyond my humble question. Also realise I may just not be a feminist at all but would feel perturbed if my view was dismissed out of hand.

Thanks in advance

last time i was on fem boards the mantra was if you wont say im feminist you were a collaborator,traitor who maintains and sustains inequality. when folk said they weren't entirely happy with global label they got roundly jumped upon.told other women had made scarifies and they should be grateful

all brands,labels ideologies have steadfast devotees and also agitators for change or rebrand

Hello givemushypeasachance:
I'm not an expert on this, but will explain to you what I understand and let more knowledge types correct/add stuff.

Equalism/Egalitarianism does exist. There is a wikipedia page and everything. As far as I am aware feminists regard it with a bit of the same bemusement that they reserve for the MRAs (Men's Right's Activists) see links I give below if you are interested.

The bemusement derives from the fact the egalitarians appear to want exactly the same thing as feminists, which is let's face it confusing. I think the difference lies in the fact that feminist would argue that to achieve equality for men and women you have to recognise that the society we live in is still (and despite feminists' best efforts) biased in favour of certain masculine gender roles. While society is like this, egalitarianism can not work because it will not be establishing equality on a level playing field. The best example I can think of is that you can't expect a law which garantees equality in the work place to be successful until the underlying social reasons for the inequalities are also addressed. This is why, despite equality laws, men dominate many areas of life.

I was quite happy with the idea of being an equalist, whilst understanding that in many scenarios the balance was still heavily tilted towards men.
I got sniggered at a bit, but I don't mind. I'm happy with the idea of trying to build a better society for all, including my teenage son.
So I'm an equalist and a feminist in my own mind.

thank goodness other people have taken up the challenge to try to answer Qs otherwise I'd be in for several hours work

I will have a look at the thread and see what I think I can add.

shakey - as I understand it, people do loads of research on this and it is a really complicated topic. I am not qualified but from what I understand, it's not thought to be true that as many things are genetic as was once suggested. If you don't mind a book rec (and she is an easy read, trust me, I hate book recs for long serious stuff too), then Cordeilia Fine's 'Delusions of Gender' is very interesitng.

Basically, she explains that a lot of experiments that people did that appeared to show men were predisposed to x and women to y, were actually biased. So, for example, she shows that when people doing an experiment on what male babies paid attention to most, they might actually have waved those things at male babies more animatedly, or for longer - they biased the tests without knowing it.

Btw, this bit 'For example, we know that, for want of a better example, cavemen were the ones to "work", find food, protect the female etc and the female stayed "home" bore the children, looked after them, kept "house" etc.'

I don't think that is right. I am not an archaeologist or an anthropologist, though, so may be wrong. But as I understand it, we don't 'know' anything for certain about these early cultures. And there is an increasing view that the gender separation wasn't so fixed. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

Most of the current research into early hunter-gatherer societies seems to suggest that the women were the ones who provided the bulk of food acquisition, roots, seeds, berries, nuts. Men hunted, but it was a less reliable food source.

MooMooFarm - looks like you've had lots of good answers which hopefully persuade you that you are a Feminist after all .

I struggle to work out my thinking in the area of beauty/fashion/self image etc but I know that lots of studies show that women have worse self esteem than men and this often comes from us comparing our bodies to media images etc.

Antidotes = give up glossy magazines and never ever click on anything on DM online other than the link that took you there (blush), look at Operation Beautiful and The Shape of a Mother and .

^ She said it better.

I think prehistory stuff is fascinating - I can only cope with the pop stuff (books by Francis Pryor off Time Team, that kind of thing), but I'm really struck by how often he seems to be struggling against old scholarship that took root in people's imagination and became 'truth' with fairly flimsy evidence. Like for example he says how people got totally the wrong idea about chronology before carbon dating came in - I know that is years ago but it does show how very difficult it is to be certain about anything prehistoric. Yet the Victorian/Edwardian writers can sound so certain they know exactly what they're talking about! I think it has a big hold on popular imagination.

Something I remember coming up on this section a while ago was that prehistoric burials sometimes have two men together, or men with women's things, or men buried in the orientation often associated with women - we can't tell why, or even what ideas they had about gender, but it may be they were quite different from ours. We tend to assume prehistoric people were more rigid than us about gender roles, but it may be they were actually less rigid. It's fascinating to think about.

Niecie - no Q is a silly Q here - it's just a thread for people to ask things and hopefully anyone posting here will answer nicely with info to explain their views.

ComradeJing "Firstly how do you balance feminist "perfect world" and RL?" - good Q!

I guess the more I learn about Feminism the more I notice inequalities/sexism etc and then call it when I see it.

I have a DS so don't have the DD issue re pink/are they pretty etc. I think that if I had a DD I would try to avoid compliments on how she looked - I sometimes say to DS - "oh you're so cute" but not often. I would also be keen to avoid books/programs where there is a lot of attention on looks - I am thinking of a princess magazine I saw with lots of mirrors and brushes etc.