Its all one big conspiracy

[yazz21]

Its only after all the transgender threads on here recently, that I've thought about feminism, and started looking into things. The more I read, the more I learn, the more shocked I am.

Its just like one massive conspiracy that I never saw. Now my eyes have been opened to it, I can't stop seeing it. (Not that I'd want to.) I see everything around me so differently. Just little things that all add up to keeping women subordinate.I never realised how much my behaviour, thoughts and actions is not innate, but things I've learned through socialisation.

I really wish I'd seen it all earlier, but for some reason I had this notion that feminism was just men hating women who were probably hairy and/or lesbians I wonder who benefitted from me thinking that.

I'm not sure what my point is really, but I feel really angry on behalf of women and really want to do something about it. However there are no feminist groups/meetings in my area, and I'm not well read enough to start one. Any other angry womenn here? Also if anyone could reccomend some books, so I can further my understanding. I would be really grateful.

Yops has an interesting question. I don't know, I'd have to think about it!

(oh dear 'tis me again) Functionalist change as one of the tools of conflict-driven change? And then possible elite use of that functionalist change as a driver for conflict? Feedback mechanisms?

The powerful can have conflicts of interest among themselves, Yops (e.g. the fossil fuel industry have a vested interest in downplaying the effects of anthropogenic climate change, the reinsurance industry have a vested interest in taking it seriously).

If I was selling deoderants, I guess because they're low ticket-price items, I wouldn't be that worried about the effect of the gender pay gap on my customer base, but I might be worried about the effect on my bottom line that fixing it (and thus forcing me to pay my staff properly) might have. Conversely, if I was selling big-ticket items like cars, it might be in my interests to fix the gender pay gap for my customers, and that might benefit me to a greater extent than the costs incurred by paying all my staff the same rate for the job.

If I want to sell more perfume or deodorant to women, I don't benefit from there being a gender pay gap.
You benefit if you employ women to manufacture and sell your deodorant and perfumes as they are cheaper. Add that to the social anxiety of possibly smelling, or having white marks on your black clothes, or yellow marks on your white clothes, or not being suitably fragrant, I would say the gender pay gap is irrelevant when it comes to this type or purchase.

Buying a home - now that is a different kettle of fish, and then the "power" play comes back into it.

Cross post, Lovely - clearly we are thinking along very similar lines

You are all much more eloquent than I.

Can I just say one of the things that annoys me very much is the "I deserve to have all this stuff because I work hard". With these people privilege, luck, private schooling etc has nothing to do with their success, it was all down to hard work. You hear variations of this shit all the time.

And I can't help but think that people working on minimum wage, cleaning, or in shops or factories or perhaps picking vegetables and fruit etc do they not work hard? They probably work harder than most for less than most.

And then I want to punch the "I deserve this because i work hard" person in the face, because their supreme will to maintain their ignorance in the face of all that education takes some doing. but I sit on my hands instead They do it because it suits their belief that they are better than the rest and therefore deserve more pie than the rest.

I hate to be in conflict with anyone here, but I think we're in a thoroughly functionalist (if that's the terminology we're using) society. Basically the vast majority of people are satisfied with their standard of living, the amount of freedom they have, their jobs, just about everything. This is not a time when people are demanding change, and the last election proved it. Sure, we all have complaints and I'm not claiming our society is entirely fair, but do we let our complaints dominate our outlook? I don't think so. As for "the one percent", that's a very narrow view. Compared with everyone who's ever lived or who's in the world now, we (middle class British people for the most part) are the 1%, richer than almost anyone. Maybe some of us aren't just rich but fabulously rich, but I don't see that as very important compared with, say, seeing your children hungry every single day.

Scallops said "violence is gendered". Oh yes it is; the vast majority of it takes place when one man harms another. Look in any newspaper. In fact one might wonder, if men stopped hurting each other, maybe they'd hurt women less too.

Uh, Tei, the Conservatives won with 36.9% of the vote. There's a lot of people out there who are screwed and in desperate straits as a result of this government - but as Buffy explained a few posts back, they are precisely the people whose voices never get heard because the system is set up such that only the voices of the comfortably off ever get heard. And it's no good saying "well they get one vote per person just like the rest of us", because our first-past-the-post constituency system means there are large swathes of the country where a lot of individuals' votes are meaningless pieces of paper.

Actually Tei, there seems to be more data coming through that women are just as much victims of violence as men. But that's not what I meant. Violence is gendered because men are more likely to perpetrate it and women are more likely to be victims of it.

I'm not sure the details of the last political campaign bear out the idea that we're in a functionalist consensual situation where people don't want change. Surely even the government campaigned on 'this is a total shitstorm and we've been managing to keep the wolf from your door, but if you let the other party in you'll be faced with a wolf caked in shit' (metaphor got a bit mixed there). Indeed the continual rhetorical strategy I hear from both politicians and people in everyday life is 'austerity has to happen because we're living in a serious crisis'. When even the people who want the status to quo to continue are arguing that it must continue because we're in a crisis, I don't see how this looks gradual and functionalist. (Leaving aside how useful crisis rhetoric is to keep people from demanding change.)

OMG Buffy that is almost my life in a cartoon!

One hell of a lot of people don't like living in the most unequal country in Europe and want serious change. Try looking at the recent thread on mumsnet which generated nearly 40 pages on Osbourne's tax credit cuts, most people agreeing they were shit. Try the blogosphere, Vox political perhaps or Johnny Void johnnyvoid.wordpress.com (you'll have to google the other 'cos mumsnet is logging me off if I try and do too much in one post). Johnny void has a lot of links into other people talking about life on the lower side of Britain and how shit it can get.

We're not all from the middle classes on mumsnet, and certainly not in the rest of the country. Why the turnout in the last election was only 66% we have to guess at, but I think it's due to Tony Blair and his betrayal of the left which has confused matters and left the people who want change with no voice at top level.

People are watching their children go hungry, and people are dying as a result of benefit sanctions! School teachers are complaining about having to feed their pupils! Sorry to sound rude, but good god, where have you been? Seriously, do some reading and find out how the other half are living right now!

('right now' as in at this current point in time. It was not an order. But I will beg you to get your head out of the clouds).

Buddy- I like the who washes the pants thesis.

I am prepared to bet that a number very close to none of women have ever said to a man "Do I have any clean pants?"

I think you've described exactly how these epiphanies happen, Buffy.

Regarding our general political & economic climate: my Facebook's currently exploding with indignant tax-credit receiving social-housing dwellers, reluctantly facing the fact that "always working hard" and paying their way, etc, was not a magic charm against Tory capital liberalism. They're still raging against us dependent shirkers, but finally starting to see that we weren't actually scaremongering when we told them they'd be next. They haven't yet cottoned on that the minimum wage increase is another trick against them - but they will, once they realise the magic charm "We live in a fair meritocracy" doesn't work.

The same thing happens when you 'get' feminism, doesn't it? You've pootled along quite happily with your equal education, decent job with decent pay, and your freedom to do what you choose with your life. The magic charm for this is "We have functional equality now." Then some things happen too often, or too cataclysmically, which force you to realise they are not random instances of fuckwittery but actually systematic: that violence (of some sort) is being done to you for no better reason than your sex - and is being done to all women.

On a totally fundamental level, I had one of these when I lost my health. It happens to everyone who goes through it: the magic charm goes something like "We are masters of our own destiny." Then you find out you're not!

Perhaps we don't see through the functionalist smokescreen until we become part of the conflict.

Aha - I see what you mean about functionalist rhetoric. Many thanks for explaining it.

It never fails to disappoint me that things could be all functional, relatively calm and successful, if the 'haves' would be just a bit less greedy. The 50% don't really mind the 0.1% having a billion times as much wealth as them: things go out of whack when they want a billion and one, taking away the livelihoods of the poor. Anti-feminists seem unable to realise the advantages gender equality brings to men, leaving plenty of scope for trade-offs between the sexes. And those of us with disabilities just want to be facilitated, not pampered or punished.
This works on a global scale, too. The organisations whose job it is to analyse this stuff are always saying so but nobody wants to listen.

So I think you're right. We can't do without conflict, at least not on a large & lasting basis. There are too many predators. Kill all the predators.