Not feminist enough if you're heterosexual.

[TheRealPosieParker]

This is something I've found repeatedly lately. Frankly I'm fucked off with it. In last few weeks I've been called a breeder, that I have shitty kids, that I spewed my kids from my arse, that I'm a handmaiden.

FFS. I may as well just abandon feminism as actually men so treat me better, on a personal level, than many feminists.

What sort of feminism decides that heterosexual women are deserving of this vitriol? That mothers are all a bunch of handmaidens? That wearing make up is more anti feminist than telling a mother her kids are shitty?

Every time it happens I am genuinely shocked.

Whilst Bindel said some awful things to me her work in many aspects of feminism is to be admired and often she's a lone voice.

Extremists are often alarming and myopic in their views. No reason to think that women would be immune to that.

Most of my friends identify as feminists (probably not as rad fems) but are happily married to men (or divorced from men) and have kids. Raising children to believe in equality and raising sons that value women is an incredibly feminist act IMO.

I do however see fantastic feminist women still being treated as less than equal by their partners - subtle stuff often, and women do enormous amounts of emotional pandering to adult men.

As another poster said, for most women if you want to have kids and have a partner then you have to be prepared to compromise your expectations.

emotional pandering to adult men How do you mean. Are these men 'they're pandering to' their partners, work colleagues?

I'd identity myself as a feminist. But I don't agree with much radfem ideology. Surely it's a broad church and we should respect each other's views without dismissing them.

Otherwise it's becomes a cult/:religion with one leader who's utterings shouldnt be challenged. Calling someone a hand maiden or ant feminist is like one Muslim saying to the other that they're un Islamic.

Feminism's raison d'etre is that women are treated as less than equal. For feminists to treat other women as less than equal is counter productive to the cause.

Yet it happens with alarming frequency, putting women off feminism and disheartening existing feminists.

emotional pandering probably isn't quite the right description, but letting them get away with sulky behaviour, being the one to remember his mother's birthday, throwing a ticker tape parade if he irons his shirt, that kind of man child behaviour

I've seen this recently. I haven't engaged because I think it is ludicrous and akin to the "too pretty to be a feminist" attitude Germaine Greer once spouted about Cheryl Cole. Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of reasons why Cheryl Cole could be said to not be a feminist/role model...but her looks shouldn't be one of them.

I wonder if we all saw it in the same place...?

Op - they are probably just winding you up. Your delivery style is often very vocal and very aggressive yourself.

I've seen it on Twitter, look hard enough and you find all sorts of idiocy on there.

Ah, I saw it in a radfem Facebook group. I'd join in on Twitter

HermioneWeasley That sounds very judgemental of you, I have to say. How people in relationships treat each other is their own business. Is it impossible to imagine a woman could be pampered a bit too by her other half? I think if we go around in a state of hyper-vigilance, making judgements and drawing conclusions about what other people do, then we'll always find things to get our own backs up.

super I'm astonished you've not come across this phenomenon before - men who have difficult and serious jobs finding it impossible to cook the kids their tea, Iron a shirt, remember their mother's birthday, buy things for th kids stocking at Christmas etc.

Of all the couples I know I'd say there are probably one or two where th men take equal responsibility for home and family. That applies where they both work full time in demanding jobs too - IME it's still the woman who organises the nanny, sorts out who is doing which school runs, reminds about what day the nativity is etc.

You don't have to look far on MN to see posters reporting this as well

I'd like to know where you are that equality is the norm?

Is DP getting a ticker tape parade for ironing a shirt any different to me getting a ticker tape parade for putting the bins out?

super - I assumed you didn't mean that the "phenomenon" doesn't exist, more that it's nobody else's business if it exists within a successful and happy relationship.

Hermione - if a relationship is happy despite elements of what you call "emotional pandering", why do you think you have a right to talk down to those women and mock their choices?

Where was Hermione mocking?

I think she's saying that many, if not most women in relationships with men do this (I know I do, I know that women of my acquaintance do, hell, I know that my nanny and MIL pander to my DP - offering to make him dinners when I go away for work etc)

Just imagine what women could achieve if we didn't have to spend all that extra time doing things for the men in our lives that they could be doing for themselves. Just imagine what we could achieve if they did for us what we do for them.

My MIL, still working, continued to iron FIL's shirts once he was retired. If she didn't have time, he would complain. My father comments about me delegating my children to a nanny so I can work - even though he worked throughout my childhood, delegating his children to my mother. I love the men in my life, but there's no two ways about it, they take a lot more energy to maintain than they give back, and I don't think mine's even that bad, and I don't think I'm even slightly unusual

Bambambini Sun 10-Jul-16 22:31:50
Op - they are probably just winding you up. Your delivery style is often very vocal and very aggressive yourself.

No, they weren't winding me up. I've encountered it a fair few times.

ChocChoc - it was the "letting them get away with" that sounded like a put down. People are who they are, it's not my role in life to control or change who they are. True, you don't stay with someone who pisses you off or treats you like shit, but not doing the ironing (or never putting the bins out) doesn't have to fall in to that category. Even "sulky behaviour" - women aren't "letting them get away with it". They may be choosing to accept it that aspect of the man's personality, that's not the same thing.

Can someone link to the online feminist spaces where people are saying things like that women "spew kids from their arses"?

Re winding posie up, I've seen it a few times as an OP. If posie responded to that and was personally attacked, I don't think that is them winding her up

I think that we have lost the ability to debate and discuss and disagree. Any dissent seems to be classifies as belittling, silencing, minimizing or bullying.

Yes, of course, sometime it is all of those things- but it must remain possible to disagree with each other, and disagree robustly.

Can someone link to the online feminist spaces where people are saying things like that women "spew kids from their arses"?

That phrase sounds more like something you would see on a forum where people discuss fanfiction. There's this thing in fanfic where male characters get pregnant. Which doesn't make any sense at all, and of course, they'd have to give birth through their arses ... not that the pregnancy itself is explained, anyway.

Women give birth through the vagina, that's an obvious fact.

Even "sulky behaviour" - women aren't "letting them get away with it". They may be choosing to accept it that aspect of the man's personality, that's not the same thing.

Those women will still have to accept that lesbians may not want anything to do with them for that exact reason:

I remember one of these separatists explaining how fed up she was of supporting straight women because ultimately that was putting energy into men

You make your choices, and then you live with the consequences. And if you put more energy into a man than he gives back, that extra energy has to come from somewhere.
Lesbian separatists prefer that it not come from them. That's their right.

Hmm - 'letting them get away with sulky behaviour' - I don't know, sure, it's not your role to control or change people, but I can see the argument that if you don't at least protest something, if you tolerate it, then you are, to a certain extent, making your own bed. I still don't think it's mocking, or really a put-down - although it is a judgement. We all have different things that really annoy us, and yes, it's up to each couple to determine what those things are, but, (and I could be biased, what with being a woman) - I see a lot more men being pandered to than women, when it comes to the daily grind.

Vestal - the sulkiest person I know is a lesbian! One her main sulks is that other women don't always agree with her and don't consider every minor misdemeanour to be a reason for divorce and "becoming a lesbian".

She's far sulkier than any man I've ever met!

If I came across as mocking my friends or looking down on them, that isn't my intent. I understand their choices, even though it isn't what I'd choose for myself.

I think many of the men in question are wankers though.

"I remember one of these separatists explaining how fed up she was of supporting straight women because ultimately that was putting energy into men"

I'm not a lesbian separatist, but I actually can identify with this point of view some extent. Surely we all have friends in real life and have contributed to threads on here where women are in relationships with men who constantly put them down, or abuse them physically, emotionally and financially, or who use them as nannies and housekeepers and are determined to stick with him despite the damage being done to herself and her children? It can be very exhausting, and sometimes you have to decide on your priorities.