Men, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

[curlew]

Fantastic article by Laurie Penny

"I too am curious to know what you mean Sigmund. Why not preface your explanation with the caveat that you aren't sure you will explain it well, and then we can ask questions, which you can try and answer in good faith.

I'm game"

Me too. Happy to debate and not 'shred" (to quote you)

Ok, I'll give it a go shortly, must put DS's to bed first.

Sorry to skip over the majority of the discussion, I just wanted to add, in reference to boys being vaccinated against HPV, that this is now being done in Australia. Both of my sons received their first dose of the vaccine this year as part of the schools based programme.

And that I've read the rest of the thread with interest, but now have to tear myself away to hustle said boys, and my daughter, through the getting ready for school routine, so don't have time to post on the rest of it now.

Yes, it used tobe that a woman who wanted a divorce was seen as unfit to care for a child, so mothers had to slope off to some dim unknown where they were expected to purge their sins through suffering and torment.

In fact, it used to be that women who had affairs were vulnerable to being locked up in a mental asylum, on the strength of evidence from their husband.

Still, the primary carer being given custody of the children, and the main earner giving a relatively low amount of money and time to support the child just shows how easy women have it doesn't it?

Firstly, I feel that the 'objectification'/'empowerment' issue will be bewildering for my sons. Firstly, they will be told that they are misogynists for looking at lads mags/page 3, yet they will be confronted by girls/women 'objectifying' themselves daily. I saw a group of girls (approx 15/16, hard to tell) at our local park wearing virtually nothing, one of them screaming at a youngish boy 'Are you looking at my arse' (this is true). Well frankly, you couldn't miss her arse, as both cheeks were hanging out of her 'shorts', and her top was an inch of fabric away from page 3. So my sons will be perverts for looking at material printed for them to look at, and they will be perverts for looking at arses designed to be unmissable. Just misogynistic perverts, basically. The girls in the park we're in no way to blame for the boy staring at them, naturally, they are empowering themselves by wearing whatever they want.

Feminists wish men to stop looking at and admiring the female form, but this is part and parcel of male (and female) sexuality. Porn is a different matter.

Oh, I really want to discuss this objectification thing but I am so tired. In my mind I have thoughts about how objectification of women is so much more than looking at exposed arses in the park. Women are objectified and assaulted (verbally and physically) whatever they wear. Not that I think that the more covered up you are the less you deserve it but I'm sure it's so much more complex than this.

Most feminists want to get rid of page 3/fhm I thnk, no? At the same time most feminists would support a woman's right to have her arse out in the park without being subjected to abuse or blame.

I hope my own son can grow up understanding that page three is ridiculous objectification of women and that he should not feel judgement/anger or disgust at teenagers with their arses out in the park.

Tired. Bed. Maybe will make more sense in the morning.

And there is a big difference between looking at/admiring and abusing someone.

Dreaming - 9 times out of 10, whenever people talk about women in "those countries" what occurs can exactly be described as "sympathetic clucking" and nothing more.

Aside from the fact that just saying "the Middle East and parts of Asia" is an incredibly sweeping statement, covering an area which is both vast geographically and vastly diverse too, and just referring to "culture"is completely inadequate when actually analysing what issues women are facing and why.

There is frequently no attempt to include in these discussions what women from these countries have to say about their lives and their problems. You may have personal experience, but many don't, yet they still feel they can opine without looking into what women on the ground have to say.

Then there is the issue of which countries get focused on and which don't and this influences wider discourse. Do you honestly think there is no underlying agenda behind women in Afghanistan being under discussion so often, with nary a peep about the El Salvador - which has the highest rate of femicide in the world?

So no, I don't think talking about women "over there" as some homogeneous mass of suffering is helpful. We see ourselves and our problems as complex and multifaceted. To not afford that to women elsewhere is patronising and unhelpful.

Let me give you an example. I once read an in depth article about women in Palestine, talking mainly about the economic issues they faced due to sanctions. The comments to the article focused almost entirely on the hijabs worn by the women in the picture accompanying the article and how oppressive they were, something the women had not mentioned themselves. Do you see the issue here?

What has mentioning women in "the Middle East and parts of Asia" brought to this discussion? Has any actual information in a useful level of detail about women in these countries been brought to the discussion? No.

Scallopsrgreat: ?The other question to ask with Sigmund's assertions is why aren't men wanting to prioritise children? They are their children too? Could socialisation have something to do with it? Just maybe? The off chance perhaps? As kim said several times up thread. Cultural and socialisation changes take a lot longer to overcome.?

I prioritised my children and in doing so it did away with any possibility of advancement in my profession. Brick wall. You could make a hit list of professions that would have that effect, some more extreme than mine. Politics.. hands on male parenting would be a huge hit against it. Teaching.. that would probably be the easiest to streamline.

Sadly many men are decent fathers but they are not dads. They provide but they do not nurture. They may change nappies but they don't enjoy it. In primitive times that was the way the role had to be to survive, it still is in many places in the world. Engaged mums are still far more common than engaged dads. As to culture and socialisation, you are right, but I fear it may go down as deep as a DNA level.

Bottom line more related to feminism is that I don't feel parental leave from the workforce will ever allow women to be... hmm.. unstigmatised in taking it... until at least 40% of the leave takers are men, 30% at bare minimum.

WhentheRed 07:25:05 ?However, the key difference between the article she wrote and the Jezebel article are in what the writers want from men. All the Jezebel article asks of men is to believe that feminists don't hate men. Laurie Penny wants men not to stand on the sidelines but to get involved.?

Precisely. Apparently we find ourselves in agreement once again. One asks less, yet will achieve what the other wants but cannot. Irony. Support is what happens when you effectively convince people you don?t hate them, oddly enough. Wasting a paragraph of space on the wonders of the human brain just to deliver a one-line put-down to the people you want something from is not an effective pitch.

MRA? (google). No, I am not a MRA. I recognise women are behind the eight ball in society in many ways. Much of what passes for a need of male rights really just needs men to turn around and have a good hard look at themselves and how they want to live their lives, nothing at all to do with women. That said I will never extend respect to anyone simply because they identify as a feminist, any more than I would extend automatic respect to a minister of a religion. It was nonsense like that that allowed evil in the Catholic church to fester untroubled for decades.

In regards to MRA..hmm. I can only think of two issues that bug me. I really wish people could get over the idea of men being in infant childcare and to a much lesser extent primary school teaching. Thank god that gender effect is gone by high school otherwise all kids would exit school gender twisted. Too many men see a male taking on that role as unmanly and suspicious the younger the children and too many women see it as suspect and potentially hazardous. Thank the gods attitudes are slowly changing in society.

The other thing that bugs me is paternity testing, it should be mandatory for all couples. As it stands now hospitals protect themselves to make absolutely sure the baby leaves to go home with the right mother. Reality is between 1 and 2 percent of children conceived in marriage were not sired by the wife?s spouse and those men have a right to know that. Of course, once again, the problem goes back to male thinking, because men are already so sure of what they know they don?t want to question the possibility of anything different to what they believe to be true.

DadWasHere, paternity testing for all babies because 1-2% are not their supposed fathers' is, to my mind, ludicrous and vastly insulting. I would not consent to being screened for fidelity because a tiny percentage of mothers are deceitful. Consider how you might feel if all men were required to bank a DNA sample because a percentage of men rape women. Women who have been raped deserve justice and men who rape deserve to be caught, so lets screen all men, just in case.

DadWasHere, did you have your children DNA tested to confirm paternity?

Gosh it doesn't matter what happens 9 times out of 10, I don't think it was happening on this thread. We were talking about whether culture hates women and I think it's fair enough to discuss variations in culture. Do you really want to live in a little Western-centric bubble, where Western culture is the only one worth discussing in depth? You say it didn't add anything, well it might have if people had been willing to discuss it more. I could certainly share a lot of the on-the-ground perspectives about how women in other countries feel they are oppressed, that go way beyond the burqa.

I don't think it's patronising to speak of other women's lives when those women are not allowed or are unable to share their experiences with the wider world. That's the whole point isn't it? As long as you approach it ethically and respectfully, then it's actually important to try to tell people about what's going on.

So by all means go after people who are being idiots, but I don't agree with sweeping statements like, I wish people wouldn't bring other countries into these discussions. Why not actually wait and see if people know what they're talking about?

Btw I talk about Afghanistan because it's one of the countries I have experience with and that everyone has heard of. My actual country of focus, people say things like, oh isn't that that made-up country that Borat is from.

"Do you really want to live in a little Western-centric bubble, where Western culture is the only one worth discussing in depth?"

Of course not. But one of the issues that feminists in this country have is that somebody will say "what on earth have you got to complain about, in X country women aren't even allowed to do Y" I'm sure you weren't intending to do that, but that is the effect of broadening out this particular UK centred discussion to include other countries. I think we are all aware that, compared to women in many other countries, we "have it easy". That is no reason not to fight the battles still to be won in this country.

DadWasHere:

"I prioritised my children and in doing so it did away with any possibility of advancement in my profession. Brick wall." Precisely. Yet it seems to be OK to expect women to do this. And this is why the workplace needs to change so that man with no childcare responsibilities is not the default.

"They may change nappies but they don't enjoy it." And women do? I am 99.9999% certain it isn't in anyone's DNA to enjoy nappy changing. And it is pretty insulting that you have an expectation that women do boring, drudgy type jobs because we enjoy them. We do it because it has to be done and we care about our children. Why men just don't do it for those reasons, I can only surmise.

"The other thing that bugs me is paternity testing, it should be mandatory for all couples." WTAF??? So what if you aren't the biological father? Would you love a child less because of that? Because that is a bit creepy, controlling and treating children like possessions.

CiskoKid

"Those that pose are the ones being harmed. So, why have they not responded to the arguments that their actions are harmful to women as a group? From a point of self-preservation, and for the good of their fellow women, why have they not responded to 40 years of evidence and debate?...." Why indeed have men not responded? Women aren't harming themselves when they pose. Women aren't harming themselves when they dress in mini-skirts, tight shorts etc. It is men's attitudes and more that harms them. In our society the onus is usually on the person who perpetuates harm to change, not the other way round. Except of course when it is harm to women. Then the women are expected to change and that isn't just confined to objectification issues.

I personally did not see our posts as whataboutery (great word btw!) I even explicitly said I was not saying that.

I understand it's very annoying to get the 'what about' comments but I feel like there is this sort of kneejerk reaction anytime anyone even mentions other countries. I know I can start threads just about those issues but isn't that kind of ghetto-izing them?

By shutting down conversations about other countries just because some people misuse them -- well, that's just letting the twats win, isn't it? And they'll just go off and think they're right. Whereas actually discussing things might educate some people and change some minds.

I mean, you can't ignore the fact that women (as a group) are better off in the UK than in Afghanistan. I think not talking about it encourages a 'stop complaining' attitude, it's only through more and more discussion that we can show people that there is still a battle to fight at home.

kim I find I agree with using the term more when I think of it as structural oppression -- that society is structured to benefit men (as a group) and women (as a group) suffer because of this.

This is also why I brought up the issue of other countries, because if you want to convince people that women are oppressed in the UK, you have to deal with the problem that most people's idea of oppression is what's happening in places like Afghanistan. The differences are so stark that simply saying 'well they're more oppressed^ is not going to convince everyone.