The Feminist Pub - come in and chat.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

This is something like the fourth pub chat thread - please pull up a chair at the bar. Everyone welcome.

Old thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1920422-The-Feminist-Pub-continued?

But it's pretty much full so welcome in.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I felt flooded with relief when I heard the message from feminism that "you are a good enough girl how you are." I don't want that message to change into "girls don't exactly really exist" because it turns into "girls don't matter"

Perfect.

[SauceForTheGander]

Yes Dusk - exactly.

No more apologies for being female.

[TheSmallClanger]

This is all very thought-provoking. I'm in two minds about linking to the articles in question, as I don't want to start a flame war and have this discussion completely derailed.

The gist of the stuff I read was "not all mothers are women, motherhood is therefore not a feminist issue, anyone who claims otherwise is being cissexist, inadvertently or otherwise, and needs to check their privilege". There was some similar stuff about access to abortions, referring to transmen occasionally needing them.

Dusk, you have articulated some of my fears perfectly with your summing-up. I might even show my DD that.

[DuskAndShiver]

Under what circumstances would a transman be denied an abortion in a society which offers women access to them? There is no practical difference in the rights we would have as people, why make this a thing?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Forgive me, I'm speaking out of turn and it's not 'my' issue - but I think for some people, they've already had children, so I don't think it is simple to say 'oh well then, you're suddenly 'the mother' of this child, you're only allowed to see it that way'.

To me, that gets straight back to the issue that if we didn't have to faff around worrying about 'gender' as a real thing, we could stop acting as if mothers and fathers have radically different social roles.

[TheSmallClanger]

No, I don't understand about the abortion thing either, Dusk. I can understand how a transman would find it difficult and probably humiliating to access one, but I do not know of anyone, or any organisation, who would say no.

I don't know about the trans/motherhood thing either, but this creeping doubt about motherhood as a feminist issue being pushed aside keeps bugging me.

[AnnieLobeseder]

Hello! I'd forgotten about the pub.

Did anyone else watch that very short and disappointing Newsnight piece that Laura Bates was in? Has it been discussed? Sorry if I'm bringing up old news but I only watched it yesterday.

And it made me Very Angry Indeed.

[DuskAndShiver]

Sorry, LRD... are you talking about a transwoman, who fathered a child in the past...? So are you saying that she should or should not be called the child's mother now she is a woman? just a parent? has the child two mothers now?

I have a transwoman relative and I don't know what to tell my children to call her. I call her by her first name. But I have introduced other equivalents as "great aunt a" or "great uncle b".

She is still married to my aunt x. Should I introduce them as "great aunt x and great aunt y"?

You see this is where something weird comes into play. My aunt is my mother's sister and there is something so lovely about aunt-ship (in this case). She has me and my sister to stay when we were little and she was very young and had no children. We were her bridesmaids. She made things for us for every birthday. She has written me long lovely letters my whole life. She came a long way to see me when I had my first baby. To me, y is just the person in the house with her whom I was always shy of. At the time he was a man and he followed the pattern of uncles: sit around, women bring food, talk a lot, not show particular interest in the children, tease occasionally not necessarily nicely. I don't feel she (y) is my aunt at all and I don't feel like introducing her as my dd's great aunt. I am being cis-sexist I guess but this kinds of goes a bit deeper to me than just this particular relationship. I grew up with lots of aunts and uncles and loved some of them more than others, but there is a big difference in my head between and aunt role and an uncle role. My aunts stood with my mother, sometimes her literal and always her metaphorical sisters.

I should be ashamed of this gross prejudice, but I am not. This person hasn't earnt aunt-hood. Is this to say she hasn't earned woman hood? Very very dodgy. But maybe. She is a different kind of woman to me.

[HollyMiamiFLA]

It's a bit of a nightmare, isn't it?

Father's day, Mother's day. Respecting the "mum" who actually gave birth.
But then you have step mums / step Dads who get called mum and dad as well.

What to call a relative who's transitioned?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Is MNHQ turning this thread into two pages frustrating anyone else?!

Hi annie. I didn't see the piece, I'm afraid.

dusk - yes, I was talking about transwomen who'd fathered children (though I think the same would apply to transmen who'd mothered them); no, I wasn't saying they 'should' be called anything. I was objecting to the idea I've seen thrown around, that either social parental role needs to be seen as correlated with one sex or the other.

I think lived experience is hugely important. I don't think it is cissexist to say that? If gender roles were less restrictive, you would not have ascribed your two relatives' differing behaviour along gender lines (and someone would have said 'who's the lazy arse who never gets up to interact with the children or bring the food). Or that's how I'd see it.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Yes. But putting people into neat little labelled boxes is a very good way to keep them in their place.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I think all of this relates a lot to those debates that devolve into some hand-wringing type saying 'oh, but it's sad for a child not to have a mother/father'. There were studies on lesbian parents that were given up after, IIRC, decades, because try as they might, they could find no evidence that a child 'needed' anything a female parent couldn't provide. The same will be true for gay men.

[PenguinsDontEatKale]

Dusk - Interestingly I feel similar about a number of my relatives in terms of labelling. However in my case there is less division along gender lines. I am far closer, for example, to my mother's sister's husband (my 'uncle', but only by marriage) than to my mother's other sister (my 'aunt') or my father's brother's wife (also my 'aunt'). I have often felt that the labelling there is odd. Similarly with brother in law. One is my husband's brother, the other the husband of his sister and therefore no direct relation of either of us.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I'm not sure its being cis-sexist, and it may not even be related to sex/gender. It may be that the equivalence of label for very different relationships would feel wrong in any scenario.

The 'not all mothers are women' thing really annoys me. Of bloody course motherhood is a feminist issue and a woman's issue. Almost everyone who wants to identify as a mother will also identify as a woman (whether by birth or reassignment). Ok, there will be a few female-male transsexuals who may now identify as male but still want to be seen as their child's mother (rather than father). I respect that right. But I don't really see that that group of people and supporting them with the very specific challenges that they face can't co-exist with the idea that motherhood is a feminist issue. It feels like rather trying to derail the whole thing by distraction.

I wish the issue could become 'parenthood' and rant on about that frequently in relation to working patterns and children, but we are so, so far from that at the moment.

[PenguinsDontEatKale]

I would agree re lesbian parents LRD. Save that, whilst I don't think a child needs two opposite sex parents, I do think that it is good, if possible, for all children to have access to close family/friends of both sexes. A couple I am friends with, for example, are very conscious of finding some 'uncle' figures for their son, just from the point of view of him potentially finding it easier to talk about bodily changes at puberty, sex, etc with someone of the same sex.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

YY, I should imagine all children do better with a community, agreed.

[PenguinsDontEatKale]

Absolutely.

ps. You can turn off the page thing now. You need to go into your preferences and turn it back to 1,000. They improved the server or something.

[HollyMiamiFLA]

A male role model for a boy.

What should a male role model be like?

[TheSmallClanger]

I do think there is a social benefit from having positive contact with people of both sexes, for children of both sexes. It isn't just a matter of role models for boys and girls.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Nope, I don't have an option to go over 500. It was fine yesterday.

holly - sorry, who mentioned role models?

[PenguinsDontEatKale]

Holly - I think my friends are just after someone who can answer awkward body questions, etc at this stage. They feel (fairly reasonably I think) that it might be harder for their son to talk about involuntary erections, etc with one of his mums and neither of them have brothers so he has no blood uncles. He's only little at the moment.

Good question in the broader context though. I shall think. Of course, in an ideal world the answer would be 'nothing a female role model can't do'. I suspect that in our patriarchal society there are some behaviours I would like my children to see demonstrated on a regular basis though.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

I wondered about role models too. What are role models for? To show you what can be done? Or what should be done?

Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys said boys should have male role models 'cos mums don't know fuck-all about penises, what with being women and all that. (Sorry, a bit biased against his book. Chucked it.)