"Women against feminism" WTF?!!

[Desperate2012]

Really. Just heard about this as a "thing". Honestly, like there aren't enough important issues out there some women feel their biggest battle is AGAINST feminism. Lets just shoot ourselves in the foot then. Gaaaah!!! Had to get that off my chest

Words can be powerful though - the Mumsnet We Believe You campaign for one.

I do think we can beat ourselves up too much about choices, though. I'm having a tiring day, and in a bit I'm going to have a bath and then sit painting my nails red while I watch the West Wing.

I am perfectly well aware that painting my nails red is not a feminist choice. Sure, I'm very glad I don't live in a society where some male relative would call me a whore for wearing makeup, or whatever, but I generally don't think about it much. And I know perfectly well that painting my nails red will cheer me up in large part because I've spent nearly three decades seeing lovely, glamorous adverts about women with shiny red nails and I think they look pretty. It's conditioning.

But as a choice it is tiny and it really, really, really does not matter very much. I am not going to feel guilty or a bad feminist for doing it.

I think it's a lot easier to dress girls in boys clothing or non pink than the other way round, Moomin. Feminism explores why that is more than often the case.

Ahh I get you now Hakluyt

Anyone who thinks feminism has done nothing for working class women isn't working class. I can remember when single mothers did not get housing benefit and fathers only contributed financially if they wanted to. Single mothers could expect men to bang on their doors on the way home from the pub to see if they were up for it. There was nowhere for battered women to escape to and their own mothers often told then to go back to their abusive husbands and put up with it. Society did not just change on its own, feminists and left wingers changed it.

Class oppression has been largely swept under the carpet though and it's getting worse. Absence of class analysis from politics and a focus on individual rights and choices has done no favours for women or other oppressed groups. I don't believe feminism is about choice because choice is highly loaded and almost always constrained, whether by societal expectations or lack of other choices. I prefer to think that feminism and left wing politics generally should be about liberation, not choice. Choice is fetishised in our society as it casts an appearance of fairness over any inequality without any examination of the structural issues that constrain choice. The same applies to the concept of meritocracy - that we can all choose / work / educate ourselves out of poverty. Although I have educated and worked myself out of poverty, it's clear to me that most or many people cannot.

I agree, scallops, and that's one of the main reasons I consider myself feminist - girls being dressed in 'boys' clothing is fine, but if a boy dresses in pink or dresses, he's called 'girly' - like it's a bad thing (like it's even a thing, no such thing as conforming to gender stereotypes in this house )

Yes LRD, I agree. Not that I paint my nails because I'd need to put my glasses on and quite frankly I'm so bad at it, it wouldn't be worth it. Recognising the choice fir what it is half the battle. Plus if we challenged every single aspect of gender stereotypes and misogyny we'd be exhausted! I think whingeing helps recharge the batteries in that respect too!

That sounds brilliant Moomin

and their own mothers often told then to go back to their abusive husbands and put up with it

This still happens in a lot of cases.

Because god forbid you were a single mother with strength enough to chuck your loser husband out.

I know darkest but it used to happen almost all the time. My Mum co-founded our local WA and was profoundly shocked by the pressure put on women by their families to stay in an abusive marriage. For a while, we were the only family I knew whose parents had split up. My Mum's friends and family couldn't understand why she would leave a man who hadn't even beat her up.

YY. It is really only on MN that I've come across large groups of women agreeing that leaving a marriage could be entirely positive. I mean, I know people who wouldn't (thank goodness) have to think for a split second about supporting a friend or daughter to leave abusive marriage - but you need more than that, I think. You need a context where people are actively cheering on women to feel they're worth so much more than that.

Flora I believe the poster your interesting post was answering doesn't believe in a working class, she believes she is an underclass and that none of us know anything about that.

Sounds familiar to me.

i think LTB should be on the table more often than it is. because frankly "working on the relationship" and "compromising" often just means a woman subsuming her own needs and bending over backwards to please a man who isn't prepared to reciprocate

Well, and we need variation on LTB.

I find it sad that quite a lot of women post saying they've had a date with a man, and he seems nice but for [insert trivial reason here] they just don't really want to go any further, and is that ok? We need to be better at saying hell yes, of course it's ok! Because at that early stage, it really shouldn't matter. You shouldn't feel guilty that you happened not to find Perfectly Nice Guy's sense of humour that funny, or that the way he cracks his knuckles bugs you.

oh yes definitely!

Capt yes I think you're right. That poster is giving me a sense of deja vu.

I agree LRD I used to be a bit about LTB but I think I hadn't realised how many women are still trapped by the expectations placed on them.

To add to my earlier post, it would be impossible for me to be educated if I was growing up now with tuition fees and no student grant. I am / was the wrong sex, wrong class and wrong religion where I grew up. Feminism can't deal with all those problems, only the wrong sex part. That doesn't mean it is not an essential part of changing society or that it hasn't helped working class women.

Women subsuming their own needs in relationships also translates into the "ownership" of womens sexuality.

When a woman posts about the pain of being in a sexless/affectionless relationship....these boards are largely incredibly supportive.

However you sometimes get the odd poster (this one does happen to be male) who will choose to blame the woman in the situation whether it is she with no libido or her male partner.

There is a really good example of it in this linked thread and the linked thread within it.
The sinister implication is that women couldn't/shouldn't like sex. I was aghast when I noticed the same poster taking a different attitude to similar situations purely based on the OPs gender.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2144584-Is-my-husband-fit-healthy-no-sex

Come back off a short break and find this. And my gut reaction is that many young women (including DD) are reacting against the brand of feminism that is busy telling them their choices are invalid if they do not coincide with certain opinions. And telling them their wrong and being condescending towards their views is not going to help.

From the mockery with the cats in another thread to the attitude of how dare they on some feminist boards (not just this one) we are seeing more to alienate young women than ever before from feminism. The problem being is that the agenda that is highly visible on the web does seem to be a very polarised view. So if that is the message that they are seeing then surely no one should be surprised when some young ladies decide what they see as feminism is not what they want.

And the comments about hand maidens etc wtg on pushing those women further away from the cause. Because they will be less likely to get involved in things like the fight against FGM. Still if more young women decide that radical feminism isn't for them that is their choice but hey don't let women making choices be a valid option if it doesn't fit the more radical agenda.

Let me get this straight.

You are positing that, because RadFems now have a voice, and some women don't like what they're saying, it's going to make those women not fight against FGM? Do you really think that is true? Because it doesn't reflect well on those women if it is, does it?

If you want to look at lovely choosy liberal feminism, you could go and look at The F-Word, because they try to silence RadFems almost as much as MRAs do, it is a RadFem free feminist place.

I am from a sink estate. I no longer live there. It was always known as a sink estate and no-one cared (my parents had more important things to think about - but not abortion and contraception). We were working class back then. I am not now. I have never been a part of the underclass. Lucky me.

HTH.

I agree to some extent about LTB, but in my early pregnancy, I posted about some issues I was having with my boyfriend - namely that he was friends with a girl who wanted to be more than friends with him, and issues with my ILs surrounding my accidental pregnancy. I was hoping for advice on how to talk to my boyfriend about this girl - instead I was told to LTB. It can be an entirely positive thing - but in my case it would've left me homeless and pregnant over something very trivial, that we easily sorted out in the end. There are some posters who jump to LTB like it's the ultimate answer to every relationship niggle.

Flora, what you wrote about choice and its veil of fairness when in fact it has many, many constraints was brilliant. However, I would like to see the evidence which shows it was feminism that brought about Child Benefit and child support maintenance.

Perhaps rebelling against extreme feminism is as much a rite of passage as rebelling against parents.
My own introduction to feminism at university left me dumbfounded and unable to associate with it. The men hating unshaven leg feminist that taught sociology was so far removed from anything I had come across before that I couldn't understand her viewpoint or lectures.

It was only mumsnet and life experience that made me realise we do still need feminism. Being groped in clubs and pubs and refused promotions because I challenged my male boss on his ideas, became pregnant...and now I'm a target for extreme feminist because of my stay at home mum status. But now I'm confident in dealing with them. I'm a mum. I carried life inside me and I care for my children helping them be happy and confident people. Being 'just a mum' should be one of the highest status' around in my opinion. You are responsible for teaching them to be caring, confident enough to voice their opinions and use the word 'no', understanding enough to realise the earths resources are not infinite, and empathetic enough to understand that people shouldn't suffer or be hungry in this day and age.
But of course, the minute I chose to be a stay at home mum I lost all my brains and identity according to radical feminists.

"I lost all my brains and identity according to radical feminists."

Some people think this. Some of those people are women. Some of those women identify as rad fem.

This isn't a radical feminist position, though, any more than the fact that some Labour supporters smack their children means that Labour supports corporal punishment.

On FWR there are a number of SAHMs who identify as rad fem.