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.

slugs I think that is part of the problem. There are far too many jobs that are just not compatible with having a balanced family life. I've been seeing someone recently who is in a pressured job. It is very well paid, but he simply could not do his job as it is AND be an equal parent.

I think that there needs to be a recognition that in our current society it isn't possible to have it all. If you want to be a proper parent, or have caring responsibilities, or value work-life balance then in many industries your career will suffer. This is something that women (for the most part I think) have recognised and battled against for generations. But I really think that my peers are possibly the first generation of men to even name the problem.

Fortunately I think things are starting to change in some industries. For instance, I have a telephone interview for accountancy and the manager who interviewed me was part time. He didn't work Fridays because he wanted to take care of his son. He felt that his company (big4) recognised that staff were more effective in work if they were happy at home and so generally allowed flexible working for anyone who wanted it.

Why is The Patriarchy less influential in more enlightened countries (the usual suspects - Iceland, the Scandies etc etc)? Are their feminists better at pushing through change? Or are their Patriarchal lizard lords just weaker and less effective than those in the UK and US?

Yeah, believing in the patriarchy is totally like something David Icke would make up. Same exact thing. Aren't you totes hilair?

Feeble humour, but I like the concept.

When and why during history did UK societal structure diverge from the path that those nations took? Is it because of our imperial past? If you look at the women's suffrage timeline across Europe, the UK was 11 years behind Norway, but both have been in place for over a century. What happened in the UK?

In Iceland, the women went on strike - something that people here have repeatedly said is impossible. Dunno about Norway & Sweden.

Iceland has a far smaller population. I've got no idea whether that's relevant.

Hmm, okay, maybe it's not such an interesting question as I thought. It's just that I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. If other countries have been able to implement more equitable systems, I wondered why the UK cannot just copy. Is there any sort of international feminist community that pools resources and ideas?

I know some countries have feminist political parties. The UK Women's Equality Party launched with some fanfare last year, but immediately seemed to attract the ire of this Fwr board. Is UK feminism more fragmented than other countries? Or is it just that women's rights in the UK are lagging too far behind other countries for ideas and methods to be adopted?

My dear Grimarse, you can't just copy some country's solution! People and societies are not all the same. Even women are not all the same! I doubt if there's a simple answer to why things progress differently in different countries and cultures.

What I find more interesting is your question "What happened in the UK?" Are you thinking that UK women are more feeble or that UK men hang on to their privileges more tenaciously?

Never - I don't know which it is. Maybe it's neither. That is why I am asking, rather than telling you what to do. But I'd have thought that suffrage was a universal cornerstone to establishing women's rights, and that countries should progress at roughly the same rates once it is established.

I wondered if there was any feminist analysis of why the UK lags so far behind.

I agree with Buffy's above post, but I also think Iceland has a culture where family life is highly valued, and it is expected that working life must fit with family life. Also people have kids younger. It's not unusual to have kids at university. There isn't that workplace experience of there being massive numbers of adults working in their twenties and thirties with no caring responsibilities whatsoever as the norm.

I think perhaps that is a big change here. Anyone having kids now isn't at work with men with a wife taking on most of the childcare as the norm. They're working with huge numbers of men and women who have no kids at all, and those people being in their twenties and early thirties, usually don't have elderly family members to care for either.

I think that is broadly the case, but within developed countries I suspect some issues are due to economic conditions.

Poland is a very religious Catholic country (current debate over abortion laws) but there gender wage gap is tiny compared to theirs. Ours is more than triple theirs- 19.7 and 6.4%.

I wonder if the housing crisis is contributing. Having to pay huge housing costs and childcare costs pushes women into jobs where the childcare costs will be lower.

I was listening to a talk given by a woman in her eighties. She was talking about what she'd achieved in her career. She started in her career when her three children went to university. That was really common. Now people are expected to have their career in their twenties and thirties and they're looking to make people redundant in their late 40s. That has to change with the growing elderly population, and I wonder if that will change women's success in the workplace - everyone working longer. We have to tackle ageism in the workplace for older women.

Agreed.

I agree that feminism needs to look at itself. Every time I join an online feminist group (mainly on Facebook but also other sites) I end up being ejected for not toeing the feminist line (in some cases extreme manhating; in other cases my particular personal lifestyle choices, which, I hasten to add, I am not imposing on anyone else!) They have managed to alienate me - a hard-nosed, 57-year-old radical feminist with 40 solid years of feminism (including years of active campaigning) behind her. What chance for women new to feminism, just putting one toe in the water? They'd run a mile.

My experience of baby/toddler groups as a man has not been negative. I was rarely the only man there, and often several of the mums were incredibly friendly and welcoming.

There was also in my area a specific father baby/toddler group which had a fairly high attendance.

Why is The Patriarchy less influential in more enlightened countries (the usual suspects - Iceland, the Scandies etc etc)? Are their feminists better at pushing through change? Or are their Patriarchal lizard lords just weaker and less effective than those in the UK and US?

I wonder whether it might have something to do with ancient history?

Germany and the British Islands were conquered by the Romans and made into colonies, and I do think the Romans enouraged patriarchy wherever they met it. (Like, they offered land and powerful positions to men who supported them, but did they do the same with the Celtic warrior queens?)

Or it could be Christianity, and how much success the missionaries had in forcing it onto people - the original cultures did oppress women to varying extents, but I don't think this was ever justified with religion.

Just wild guessing here - it is a very interesting question.

I agree that feminism needs to look at itself. Every time I join an online feminist group (mainly on Facebook but also other sites) I end up being ejected for not toeing the feminist line (in some cases extreme manhating; in other cases my particular personal lifestyle choices, which, I hasten to add, I am not imposing on anyone else!)

Wait, if I understand that correctly, you were kicked out for not being manhating enough?

Where can I find those groups?

I will soon be kicked out of my local feminist group for not being a genderist, and I would probably have dropped out long ago if I had not known about this gendernonsense before, and decided to tolerate it for the sake of having someone to talk to.

Groups that require me to hate men, but allow me to state that people with penises are male and cannot change that, would be a step up from that.

Yes, feminism needs to look at itself, but the feminism that needs to look at itself is the liberal, anything-goes, choosey-choice genderist brand of feminism. (Does radical feminism even exist anymore, outside of the internet?)

Re the parent & baby groups - I've sometimes wondered how much of the perceived negativity towards men is really to do with a muted response to "Behold! A Man Has Arrived!"

There's a nice HuffPo article somewhere, from a British man who was transitioning gender (bear with me.) He reported feeling shocked and put out when he first went to a coffee shop in full 'female' get-up. Upon examining his angry mood, he realised that the other women in the cafe hadn't stopped talking or spent time looking at him.

Fathers taking their children to Rhyme Time wouldn't be treated "as women" by the other parents in attendance - so I imagine there is some muting and staring going on. But probably far less than the blokes might be used to, given the women are there for their children and only interested in newcomers as fellow parents.

(Does radical feminism even exist anymore, outside of the internet?)

It does when the usual blustering blokes are standing next to me in my local