I'm giving up.

[GarlicShake]

This is more of a despairing rant than an invitation to reply. Sorry! I feel like I've nowhere else to put it.

I am 61 years old. I'm facing ageism & ableism as well as sexism. I have a corner to fight.

I went on strike for maternity rights, for equal pay, even for the factory to have a women's toilet. I forged a career in a world that was predominantly male, argued for my pay rises and trained younger people up to be non-sexist. I've been blamed and misconstrued, beaten up, raped, and carefully answered the gamut of sexist assumptions. I battled for my pension rights and I threatened the bank with legal action when they refused to take my salary into account on my first mortgage. I am still fighting.

But I just can't hack fighting for younger women any more. They're throwing away all that we, and the two generations before and the one after mine, won for them. I can't even tell whether they don't give a shit or they think all their rights are safe so they needn't bother.

I'm not going to argue the transgender thing any more. I'll stick to supporting the handful of FB friends who get it, but I'm not arguing in my own voice from now. I'm giving up on explaining why "Ms" matters - it's been around for 50 years, for crying out loud! People can figure out why the Nordic model's a better idea for themselves - or, most likely, not. Women can congratulate themselves on being financially dependent on husbands, and figure that out for themselves too.

And I think this country's going to vote itself out of Europe. That'll wake a few people up in short order, I fear, but I shall be needed to stick up for older & disabled people like me as our rights will get shredded. I am tired.

I am very tired and disappointed. Thank you for all the brilliant discussions, MN feminists! Good luck.

Stats: A Yougov poll I read in 2015 – are you a feminist? only 23% of women identified as such. With ethnic minority and working class women are almost not there at all. Net mums did a survey in 2012, it found - 1 in 7 women call themselves a feminist and most recently, in the U.S ( U.S -UK stats tend to be roughly similar) a Time/CNN poll which showed that although 57 percent of the women felt there was a need for a strong women's movement, but 63% didn't consider themselves feminists.

I could go on, the evidence for decline is obvious and overwhelming. Don't take my word go and look for yourselves.

It 's probably going to far to say feminism is dying. IMO It will always exist in some form. But if it doesn't reform it will continue to spiral towards irrelevancy and that saddens me.

(Off the top of my head, day to day things like: little or no pressure or judgement concerning our appearance? Weight automatically given to our opinions? The kind of things that we all know are unequal, but of which only men will generally have felt the benefit. IYSWIM?)

i like to pull out that french short film where the male/female roles are flipped and the man is subject to harassment.

Of course thats only one small aspect. no we cannot experience life as the other sex unless we transition, and then as much as we might experience it, we're still coming to it from being raised in the 'norms' of our supposed gender.

However, this is where empathy comes in.. and i find very few men empathetic about how it is to experience life as a woman, to be seen as less capable, less strong, less intelligent, just... lesser, because we dimple instead of dangle.

Men have not grown up being told to dress sensibly so they don't get raped.
Men have not grown up being told they're cunts for refusing the offer of dick
Men do not get abused for choosing a career over their children
Men do not get paid less simply because of their sex
Men do not have to travel in groups for safety
Men are less likely to suffer domestic abuse
Men are less likely to die at the hands of a spouse

(Of course these things are not 100% correct, there will always be cases where those things have happened.. i am the sister of a man who was domestically abused by a controlling wife who still makes his life hell 3 years post divorce.)

But none of those lessen that feminism is STILL necessary, because we do NOT have equality... and until then, there are battles still to be fought.

"A Yougov poll I read in 2015 – are you a feminist? only 23% of women identified as such. Net mums did a survey in 2012, it found - 1 in 7 women call themselves a feminist. I could go on, the evidence for decline is obvious and overwhelming."

You don't seem to know that 1/7 = 14%

Or that 23% in 2015 after 14% in 2012 shows an increase.

Anyway re "feminism isn't popular so ner" as an argument":

(1) It is not a popularity contest.

(2) Women might not call themselves "feminist" because they don't understand what it means or haven't thought much about it before, but if you ask them whether they believe females should have the same rights and opportunities as males, they will overwhelmingly answer "YES". Which means they are feminists.

So it doesn't bother you in any way that women have been distancing themselves more and more from the feminist movement. That a growing number of them associate feminism with anger and hostile rhetoric and don't want to be associated with it? It bothers me. . I'm actually concerned greatly by the divisive, gynocentric, paranoid turn feminsim has taken and that's why I and most women I know, of my age (50 ish), as well as the young un's have turned away. This needs addressing and if anything the young women (the future of feminism) need to reclaim it.

Maybe I put those stat's in the wrong order. They move around a bit it's true but generally speaking across all the polls taken in the past decade in the UK, a microscopic 7% of women describe themselves as feminists. The decline is clear and obvious however much you insult me for bringing it to light.

They dont understand, dont know what it means and haven't thought about it? Thats a bit condescending isn't it?

Shouldn't feminism be gynocentric? Isn't that the point of it?

"Maybe I put those stat's in the wrong order."

It doesn't matter which "order" you put them in. Time flows in only one direction. If 14% of women said they are feminists in 2012 and 23% said so in 2015, that is a huge increase in just three years.

"They dont understand, dont know what it means and haven't thought about it? Thats a bit condescending isn't it?"

No it isn't "condescending", at all. I would have said that I am not a feminist up until several years ago. I just had not thought about the greater struggles of women (because I was alright Jack) until that point. These threads on MN have opened my eyes and made me think about feminism. So now I say I am a feminist, although my opinions differ in some respects from most others.

"Condescending" would be telling you that you need to learn to convert fractions to percentages properly if you want to use numbers in a debate, or that there is no apostrophe in the word "stats" (plural).

Shouldn't feminism be gynocentric? Isn't that the point of it?

It is.
I wonder why olivia would be "bothered" by the fact that so many women don't call themselves feminists. It's not like she is interested in the goals of feminism, they are all too gynocentric for her tastes, so ... why worry?

I'm not sure there has ever been a time when a significant majority of women have identified as feminists, has there?

It would be interesting to see a robust analysis of women's views of feminism going back 50 years with comparable demographics, methodology etc. Does anyone know if this data is out there? I suspect probably not.

GarlicShake

I see it all the time with my undergrads. But have heart! In the lat couple of years they seem to have suddenly become political again. They are seeking ways to explain & counteract the creeping horrible misogyny they encounter all the time. It's a shock to them, as they've been told that women now "have it all" and we're post-feminist now.

It's bollocks, as you & I know.

I do my tint bit by teaching feminist courses for the handful of students who seek the knowledge. But what depresses me (and the Green Party "non-male" debacle did depress me a lot), is that a lot of these young women, seeking to be politically active, don't read & learn from the wisdom of earlier feminists, going back to Wollstonecraft in 1792. So they have no systematic understanding nor analytical tools to pull apart patriarchy.

I just feel sorry for them, really. They've been sold a pig in a poke - neoliberal identity politics.

I think it's unfair to say the younger generation is apathetic towards feminism. I'm early twenties and a hell of a lot of my friends and peers, especially those from uni, are really tuned in. I think there's some weight to the argument that although radical feminism is apparently dying a death, this period of "post-feminism" really matters. Our generation may not have had to contend with the vote etc but I think other issues are emerging which still need feminism to solve them, for example the beauty industry and Naomi Wolf's argument that we may be more constrained than previous generations because of it. Please don't quit and assume noone cares - fight the good fight

On the point of the OP - I think that part of the problem is that women in particular are subject to a dreadful amount of ageism in a way that men aren't. Women with vast amounts of knowledge and experience are silenced so that younger generations have to learn everything for themselves and we get the situation described above where women reach their 30s and 40s and only then realise that feminism is important.

It cuts feminism off at the knees and I think we need to challenge the implicit ageism that does this which is difficult in a society that glorifies youth, particularly in women. One way to start would be to build networks that have a variety of ages and lifestyles so people don't just see the world through one lens but of course the main thing is to fight against the belief that women lose their value as they age. And, of course, for all the wonderful women on these boards to keep speaking up and refuse to go away which isn't always easy.

Unfortunately the situation of women in society has improved and then deteriorated again over history, or at least over the twentieth century.

I did some historical research into Irish women leaders in the 20th century and in 1916, for example, the Declaration of Independence treated men and women equally. Then when the vote came, the Irish elected the first woman member of parliament and then, shortly afterwards, a female Minister of Labour. However the 1935 Irish Constitution radically discriminated against women and by the 1950s, (the lowest point) women were being referred to as airheads in the media.

Unfortunately many people were taken in with the advances made since the 60s and thought they were set in stone. So it has been easy to denigrade feminism, while enjoying its achievements. However none of its achievements will be here to stay if we take our eyes off the ball.

A wise old tutor of mine (I had wonderful academic mothers!) said to us one in a lecture that "You only have the rights you can fight for" - the corollary seems to be that we have to keep fighting for them.

I would assume ageism is one of the reasons why young women don't learn from earlier feminists.
Many young women want to distance themselves from older women, and only interact with their peer group.

I loved visiting my grandma and playing card games with her old friends, and I also read Germaine Greer as teenager. I didn't really manage to socialize with kids my own age.
This may not be a coincidence.

I've always been the sort of person who prefers to learn from other people's mistakes. It's a very rare way of thinking - most people seem to want to make their own mistakes.

Delurking to say that I agree that need for feminism becomes more obvious as you get older.

When I had my child, I came under pressure to return early from maternity leave at the 6 month mark. In the end I came back at 8 months as I was breastfeeding and couldn't come in earlier because it would have been difficult. I was then made to feel awkward for asking for part time hours and now that my daughter is older, I'm under pressure to go back to full time hours. The world of work is most definitely set up to suit people with no family responsibilities. I'm very close to handing in my notice and becoming self-employed even though that has financial implications. My husband is trying to be an equal partner in it all but is also under pressure to work long hours.

I'm very aware of how much better many of my opportunities were compared to my mum and grandmothers and I'm hugely grateful to earlier feminists.

Do you think part of the reason for the current disinterest in feminism is that while women roles have changed, mens haven't?

So look at what feminism gets young people. The right to be educated, have choices, be treated as equals. All good.

In reality, for a lot of women, this means they get to hold down careers, while also being expected to look after home and children.

As I said upthread- many mens jobs, especially those in traditional sectors like manual labour, haven't really progressed. DH would like work family friendly hours, so we can both have equal roles in and out of the home. But his job doesn't allow it, so it falls to me, in a less male working environment which is more open to such things.

Dh tried to be RP for his children from his first marriage, but the mother is the default. Unless she's unfit or relinquishes care, a man will always be NRP in a split.

So perhaps feminism needs to look at mens equality in traditionally female roles, in addition to fighting for women's rights for equality in male roles.

Which makes another point wrt to the young women of today. Many relationships break down, and mothers keep responsibility of the children. If the sexes were truly equal, and as many men kept responsibility as women, or we had true 50/50, there's probably many women don't want that. So perhaps they're going back to the idea of mens/womens roles being different as equality would mean fewer women getting sole or main responsibility for children..

I was one of those young people (when I was young!) who were fortunate enough to have benefited from the fight of the older generation, so much so that I never even have to think about it!

But as you get older and, dare I say, wiser, you realise that the fight is not over.

And it's thanks to OP and all the wise posters on these boards that I have more understanding of the challenges faced by women (even by those who don't think they need feminism - patriarchy don't give a shit about that!)

And especially to OP.

In reality, for a lot of women, this means they get to hold down careers, while also being expected to look after home and children.

But it is a choice now. While before, women had hardly any choice but to prostitute themselves for a living (remember that marital rape was legal), you can choose to be a single woman. Living in her own space instead of helping her sister-in-law look after the nieces and nephews.

You can also choose to be a stay at home mom, if you so desire. You will then be almost in the exact same positions as our ancestors were, but you can do it. So I don't get why young women blame feminism.

Also, isn't the family unfriendliness of traditional male job sectors exactly a reason why we need feminism?

Let's not kid ourselves, most men don't want an equal right to stay at home and earn less money. If they wanted, they'd have fought for it. But they are pretty comfy with their housewives who also bring home money. Not all of them, but, apparently, most.
Women are not the only adults capable of looking at the situation and making decisions to change it - or not to change it. Men could do that, too.

This is not about men's equality, this is about forcing employers to treat female and male employees the same, and also about forcing employers in traditional male fields to not discriminate against women (which is what they do by keeping their family unfriendly work hours.)

If some men benefit because they actually want to share childcare, then that's nice, but that's not actually the point. I don't care if every single man in traditionally male-dominated jobs hates the fact that his female colleagues can work shorter hours without being totally screwed over. Or if he hates that he has to go home so early because everyone does. It is still something worth fighting for.

Maybe roll on universal basic income, then people are free to put as much or as little effort into careers as they wish. It also changes the landscape couples make around childcare.