I have joy and sex in my life, i just don't talk about it on here...

[msrisotto]

Just wanted to clear that up really.
I'm married, to a man, I get on with my (male) colleagues and I love my dad, therefore I don't hate all men.

Now can we stop the bitchy insulting bullshit?

I'm sorry, I don't understand - I don't think that MPs were the only people who thought - and insisted, and campaigned for the idea - that women didn't deserve the vote.

In exactly the same way today, misogyny can drag women down no matter what the source. Yes, sometimes it's easier to disregard - but it's all misogyny, don't mistake that.

Of course it's all misogyny - and I don't claim certain knowledge of how individual suffragettes felt about being ridiculed by people they would have always known had little respect for them.

I don't think misogyny-lite is acceptable. But I do think misogyny-lite feeds off the anger and hurt it causes women. I also find so much of it sooo downright fucking stupid that I really can't see why intelligent women are bothering to engage with it at all. And sometimes I when I see some of the outraged responses to pathetic trivialities (like the rather challenged poster on AIBU who though FWR boards were 'joyless' and 'anti-sex') on these boards it makes me feel as if I'm watching people scratching mossie bites or picking scabs. YKWIM?

And FWIW, no, I don't believe that suffragettes would have allowed themselves to get vexed about every single creepy, pathetic little scribbling 'of' or 'about' aspects of their lives which were absolutely nothing to do with their campaign and about which the 'scribblers' could have known fuck all.

good night!

Thanks for this, msrisotto

I don't feel the need to go into graphic detail about my sexual past and present to prove my "credentials" as a Feminist, or even as a woman, either

"But I do think misogyny-lite feeds off the anger and hurt it causes women. I also find so much of it sooo downright fucking stupid that I really can't see why intelligent women are bothering to engage with it at all."

I know why I engage with arseholes; because I have a naive glimmer of hope that they give a shit, when really they are just laughing at me.

Also I think that even the most confident feminist must have internalized some of the hurtful stuff that patriarchy/society puts out re. feminism. I like your "go fuck yourself" attitude though, I need to practise that!

I am never bothered by 'joyless' 'sexless' insults, at least partly because I've probably had more sex than the entire membership of F4J anyway. And it will have been better sex because I am not an arsehole.

even I have had more sex than the entire membership of F4J

and I am an old married person

I bet whatever sex they do have is pretty joyless though

I imagine it wholly consists of them playing with the joystick of the PS3

I have large breasts and blonde hair which make me fairly attractive by pornified standards and I'm also a feminist. Mind blowing, isn't it. How very dare I! I am both a slut and a man-hating lesbian. The logistics...

must be hard to manage Fluffy, I can't think how you find the time to be so many terrible things at once.

I like to point out that I am pro-good sex. And it isn't any good without enthusiastic consent. So people who are calling me anti-sex are just pro-terrible sex with and for miserable people.

I'd pity them if they weren't so pernicious.

See I don't think the 'not being able to get a husband' thing was trivial at all in the era of the Suffragettes.

Not at all. We are talking end of 19th and beginning of 20th century here. It would be a massive insult and a very effective attempt to silence a woman.

I can totally see why the Suffragettes would present themselves as normal conventionally attractive women - it was a perfectly sensible response to the idea that these women only wanted certain things, in their own right, as a right, because they couldn't get a man. The things these women wanted were accorded to 'husbands' and that was considered to be enough for women in those days - their husbands voted because the husbands were able to understand politics and the wives weren't.

A lot of men would be able to rationalise away the Suffragette movement on the basis that they just weren't able to catch a husband - a woman without a husband had much lower status in society than a married woman.

If you look at a timeline of women's history most of the rights accorded to women were accorded to married women.

Being married was a massive deal in women's rights terms. The Suffragettes fought for women to have their own right to all these things, regardless of their marital status.

Exactly beachcomber. In the suffragettes' time it was a huge deal to not get married, both financially and socially. Hence the negative connotations attached to the word "spinster" but not to "bachelor".

I think part of the vitriol aimed towards feminism today is that the misogynists resent the fact that women are no longer quite so reliant on them for their livelihood or happiness.

to bring it back down to simple terms, aren't the regular posters on the FWR board told regularly to just be nicer or else they risk alienating people

it's the exact same thing

there was yet another thread about it just a couple of days ago...and a few days before that too, blah blah blah

I think it might be one of those boxes to tick on your feminist scorecard - the first time you get told you 'should be nicer' is like moving up to Level 2 in Zombie Lane or something.

I also agree with Beachcomber about how important it used to be for a woman to be married (have posted about this before). Society was set up to make marriage a necessity for women, otherwise women wouldn't want to do it. One of feminism's greatest achievements has been to make marriage unnecessary for women.

Which doesn't mean that women shouldn't want to marry, or should avoid marriage. It means that they can approach marriage as a matter of choice, and only marry if they think the man they wish to marry is worth having.

One of the major arguments against giving women the vote was that they didn't need it because they had men (ie their husbands) to vote for them. An unmarried woman's options were very limited in many respects. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see that arguing that suffragettes only wanted the vote because they couldn't get a husband was very powerful at the time.

And women needed husbands to think for them. Because apparently if you were a woman and you did something like thinking, or especially like trying to educate yourself as a doctor or at university or something, well, naturally your womb would dry up and you'd never be able to have babies.

Men really did go around saying that women who worried themselves about too much hard thinking above their station were using up their tiny stocks of energy and risking their childbearing capacity.

It's another argument I think you can still see the traces of with all those idiots who reckon because this site is called Mumsnet, it must be full of women who can't think about anything much beyond babies and nappies.

It was the 1882 married Women's Property Act which gave women who were married rights in their own right, such as to sue and be sued and own buy and sell property. Which is still not something all women can do around the world.

I haven't seen the other threads but one issue is do women always have to be nice. Do they have to have a personality which says to their friends - gosh you look lovely in that dress, a constant sort of simpering smiling support? We aren't all like that and nor need we be so, although I hope most people avoid being deliberately offensive to others.

The activities of the suffragettes (WSPU) also often demonstrated to their opponents exactly why women needed to be under the control of men -hysterical behaviour, violence, criminal damage, insane suicidal acts (I don't think this way but I am putting it from their perspective), damaging their bodies and refusing to obey authority. Women were the weaker sex and needed protecting by a big strong man - see what happens when the leash is relaxed a little See list of anti-suffrage arguments here. They also turned off a lot of women who bought into the whole virtuous woman, wife and mother rubbish.

The First World War and the evidence that women could literally do a man's job well - factory work, bus conducting, driving an ambulance in a war zone, dealing with the horrific injuries of war under horrendous conditions - not just one lone woman or a small group but thousands of women from all different areas of society. Add in the efforts of the suffragists (NUWSS) who were more moderate and included like-minded men, lobbied parliament and submitted their own candidates for elections and we all got the vote.

Incidentally I was fascinated recently by the story of Harry Burn, a 22 year old congressman who was the key vote in the Nineteenth Amendment in the USA (which gave women the right to vote). He was originally going to vote against it and when the votes came out as 48 for and 48 against, there was a great deal of shock when he voted yes and the ammendment was passed. He revealed a letter from his mother which encouraged him to vote for women's suffrage and ended 'Hooray for Suffrage'. He told people later that a good boy should all ways do what his mother tells him to do.

Difference between suffragettes and suffragists

R2, have you seen the Bad Romance music video I linked here? It includes a scene of a man being about to vote and reading a note from his mother, which must be the story of Harry Burn that you mentioned.

Tunip Yup. Thanks to DD wanting to watch it fifteen million times a day my curiosity was piqued and I googled to find out about him (and his mother).

Wikipedia here

Photo of him, his mother and the text of the actual letter-PDF file

that's good, it explains about the red rose in his lapel too.
I love the way the letter includes a bad pun about putting the rat in ratification....

That bit of the video makes me cry

Me too blush

But not as much as

Son came out to tough traditional Italian father as bisexual. Terrified. Comes home on vacation to find his father has tattooed born this way on his wrist. Much sobbing ensues.

Ha. Too many square brackets

I would very much like some joy if anyone has any spare.

Not fussed about the sex.

I can tell you the route to joy. Some people have even paid me to life coach them.

Get somie exercise. Ideally some sex. Give up all junk food and alcohol and artificial stimulants. Eat regular meals, not graze all day. Balance the seratonin levels in your brain, in effect. Get out in the open air and sunshine when there is any around. Get loads and loads of sleep every night (very hard for anyone with babies of course).

I do all that Xenia, apart from the alcohol and the loads of sleep (tho not for want of trying).

Where's my joy?