Where did all the Feminists go?

[Portofino]

MN seems to have had a reorganisation of FWR when I was on holiday and me no-likey. Why do we now have a Rad fem section and Feminist light chat. So many of the dynamic, knowledgable and interesting posters have disappeared. I have to say that some of the more radical stuff posted really made me think about my views and re-align them. There doesn't seem to be much of that anymore. I am disappointed to be honest.

So. Babies are looked after by people who can't get any other sort of work. Finally a sort of answer. It's only taken 5 years!

Hmmm. Bet they don't have nice accents, though. How do you get round that one?

I do have an Estuary twang

I love this thread a bit.

It doesn't matter. Babies need cuddles and love and reliablity and consistency. From 1500s wet nurses in the UK to loving nannies in 1850 and 2012 babies of the rich often get a very good deal and happy parents who have balanced lives with work and some childcare. Children tend to speak as their parents do and those at school.

The baby needs someone who can smile, cuddle it, change the nappy, sing to it etc and of course all working fathers and mothers tend to maximise time with their babies too at weekends, before work, evenings and for many of us through the night so the baby gains from mother, father and nanny influence, a great package, rather than mother run ragged with absent father who is staying late at the office as an excuse to avoid the bath time routine because he's messed around on his computer at work all day and just got down to work at 5 but pretends he has late work.

See, boffy, I like cooking for my family, I also like cleaning. I was a great waitress, and loved it. Its low-paid and I may not have got much respect, but I refuse to be treated as inferior for it.

I think its the sneery tone that does me.

Who looks after the nanny's child?

As this country slides into increasing polarisation and the wages of the top dogs rise, the wages of the scum sink and the middle disappears, how do people afford nannies?

Or are we just to have topdoggers and scum nannies/shop assistants?

"who looks after the nanny's child?"

When she decides that looking after children is boring and she needs more money so effortlessly rises to the boardroom, you mean? It must be that easy, because that's what Xenia says whenever anyone has any worries about money on here!

Looks like it hully

Shouldn't we all be flattered that xenia holds us all in such high esteem. That we are all would be high flyers simply dragging our mops heels so that should we wish to be top wbankers we could just turn our hand to it. I just wonder where we can all find these dim baby watchers, any idea what rate of pay we should offer such a half wit?

Um, mini, summer didn't say that she would check it

But I agree - checking the job is not the way to go.>Obviously the main thing most of us do is never marry the sexist ones in the first place

vezzie,but that is a sort of acceptance of what has become the status quo in their lives.
I am talking about Xenia who does something,that whatever it is then becomes right,and therefore everybody else should be doing it like that as well.She does not ,for instance necessarily intrinsically believe say that housewives are wrong. But because she chooses to work hard and long hours,therefore that is right,so therefore housewives are wrong.

Mini,she has said before,that if we ran out of them in Britain,she would get people from abroad to do it.

Ah I understand now Summer!

a millionyears, I get you - it's the difference between saying "I do this so it is (has to be) ok for me" and "I do this so it is what everyone should do".

Even "don't marry sexist men" - well that is very good advice I would definitely give my daughters and anyone close to me, but actually the proportion of sexist men is so high and so many people overall marry, that a good many sexist men must be married to someone, and what good is it to those women to hear "don't marry sexist men"?

Yy vezzie

Yes vezzie.
And it is not just that "everyone should do",she also has a tendency to think everyone has the ability and circumstances to do the same as her.

the proportion of sexist men is so high and so many people overall marry, that a good many sexist men must be married to someone, and what good is it to those women to hear "don't marry sexist men"?

You can cry all you like at the fact some people are more successul or brighter or prettyier than others - that's a side issue. The main issue of a load of men exploit women at home and hardyl lift a finger and women really need to do all they can to point that out and lobby very hard at home, not pick up after lazy men and say - from now on you do 100% of the washing and I do all the cooking or vice versa and then just leave him to it. Don't just sigh an dmoan and gossip to friends about how bad he is but change things and ensure your chidlren do not see a picture at home that women serve and men earn.

... or leave the bastards.

LRD - "capitalism exists because the patriarchy makes it possible to sell/profit from the labour of others."

But it is a good thing to be able to sell and profit from the labour of others. Imagine your life if you were only able to use things produced by people who you directly traded or bartered with with no middle-men (and women) profiting from the labour of others, or adding value to the stuff produced by the labour of others.

Not just stuff but inventions. Seriously. Here we are profiting from the labour of Alexander Graham Bell and Tim Berners Lee and all those folks without ever having offered them some of the courgettes from our garden??

I do think you have hit a nail on the head though. Capitalism with all its good and bad points is built on the foundation of patriarchal society with all its inequities and injustices, which in turn emerged from the survival urges of a bunch of big brained primates. I don't think we can throw the baby out with the bathwater, because the baby is made out of bathwater (...or something ).

I don't think we can sit on the outside of it and overthrow it, because we are it, we have to change it from the inside.

"women really need to do all they can to point that out and lobby very hard at home, not pick up after lazy men and say - from now on you do 100% of the washing and I do all the cooking or vice versa and then just leave him to it."

Hmmmm, Xenia, if said lazy DH doesn't get up off the couch, would you recommend leaving him?

Yes to changing capitalism from inside. It started in a very unequal place but the good thing is that it gets more equal as time goes on. Takes a very long time. Without it where would we be?

yy Himalaya, capitalism is necessary to our evolution and the development of technology, what will come after it? it is just one stop gap surely. Serves a purpose until we reach a point where we realise that something else better meets our needs. Capitalism is only a few hundred years old and wasn't developed by a few big brained primates, it was man's development and a great thing too except we now know that it is unsustainable full of contradictions and left unregulated creates huge inequalities.

Well it definitely shouldn't be unregulated

Surely you don't propose regulating capitalism? That might smack of state socialism

Leaving him gives him a total cop-out and you are left with all the housework and childcare anyway.

Just make him do his share.