I'm starting to hate men

[Mamaka]

I posted this on relationships but didn't get any response:

I've noticed recently that I've become more and more anti men - I think since having my first child. So many factors that I could mention and probably many deep rooted issues contributing to this but the long and short of it is why do women have to suffer and sacrifice at every turn?!

I don't really want to feel like this. I have a son who I want to bring up/am bringing up to be a feminist but I'm worried about how my hateful feelings towards men are going to rub off on my dc.

I suppose I am asking if there is a way I can combat these feelings and start to feel more positively towards them.

Mamaka, I'm glad you've stuck around and are able to think through all the changes you're going through.

I don't think that is what relativistic means.

You're just describing different groups of people having different moral codes.

Hmm, my point is that they don't really have moral codes at all.

Relativistic is a physics term. It has nothing to do with morality.

But liberal feminism does have a set of moral principles. It is similar to other ideologies in that there are different factions within it with different beliefs, but that doesn't mean they believe in moral relativism.

Otherwise we would have to say Christians were moral relativists, because there are different factions within it.

Okay. Can you elaborate? It depends what you mean by liberalism. I didn't mean progressivism, more liberal individualism. Basically the whole idea that all legal self-interest without appeal to moral absolutes is all societies should be about. If you want a career ripping people off and endangering the economy in corporate finance: fine. If you want to work in a business that pumps toxic shit into the atmosphere: fine. If you want to employ a Mexican maid for a pittance: fine. If you want to watch barely legal porn: fine. If you want to screw around without giving any thought to people's deeper feelings: fine. This ideology holds that societies are made up of individuals all engaged in free, mutually beneficial exchanges and that the state should withdraw so as no to interfere in their private, legal business. It is that I object to.

Can we come back to our onions please?

OP, I'm sure it's normal for your DH to be a bit . Maybe he associates feminism with manhating because that is the Daily Mail / youtube / popular perception of it. But he will soon see from your example that it's just about being fair and giving everyone the same opportunities.

You could also show him the ways PHMT (patriarchy hurts men too) by looking up blogs about macho culture and the harmful effect it has on men and the better relationships men now enjoy with their DC.

Oh, and can someone tell me what "tumblr feminism" means?

But people do not make choices in a sociocultural vacuum. Furthermore, people need ideological criteria by which they can judge choices to be moral or otherwise. Liberalism, as I have described it, offers no such thing. That is not to say freedom and choice don't have value (they absolutely do) but only within a moral framework.

Yahoo CEO Marisa Meyer abolished flex-time for her lowest paid, predominantly female, employees. As a woman she was exercising her free choice. But it arguably wasn't a good choice was it? You could then say that it was a bad choice because it was limiting the choice of other women. But a liberal would then say: 'hey , this is a free-market, they can go and work somewhere else'. Furthermore, in a different scenarios it may be completely appropriate to limit people's choice. Choice as a governing metric turns every debate about ethics into a total mess.

Tumblr feminism is an informal term used by people (both left and right) to describe a kind of liberal feminism that has become very popular on the Internet, especially among younger people that is heavily based on identity and has a reputation for bullying, language policing and creating in groups based on ideological purity. The stereotype would be a young women saying, 'I bathe in your cishet white male tears.'

Tumblr is a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook, but is very image based. It's functionality (accidentally) actually reduces the ability for users to hold conversations, which probably influences how ideas spread there.

John, you're just making a very complex, embellished but untrue version of ideologies.

You're like the RuPaul of Strawmen.

I guess I'm just talking about what I think - like we all are. I'm not so much attacking feminism (in fact underneath it all I believe feminism the last bastion of moral thought), more free-market liberalism. It just seems like anyone who suggest that we need something other than 'personal choice' to solve our problems (or, heaven forbid that moral restraints hould be placed on personal choice) is accused of being a moral conservative or a communist. Therefore debates don't really get anywhere.

Sorry if I have made your face sad! Want us to be friends.

Look at it this way: imagine two people - a prostitute and a punter. The prostitute is an independent escort who insists that what she does is entirely her free personal choice. And then there is a punter claiming he is engaging in a free consensual transaction. Both people are ostensibly exercising a free choice. The Belle de Jour style escort has enough money that she could go and do something else if she wanted. No one is being forced or coerced into doing anything.

But should the discussion - the moral and political discussion - about that scenario stop with the invitation of free choice? Would you, as a feminist, say: 'well, both parties are making a free choice and therefore there is nothing else to be said about the matter'?

Sorry: invocation of free choice

No, I was just illustrating a logical problem with liberal discourse. Free choice is not necessarily a good thing. Unless it is understood in some sort of moral or political context it makes no sense to countenance an act on the basis that it was freely chosen. Some choice is good: the fact that if my sexuality were different I can marry a man if I wanted to is great. My free choice to set up my own online porn business or stash away my wealth in the Cayman Islands is not good. I should be stopped from making those choices or there should be a moral consensus that they are bad choices and I should be discouraged from making them. Free choice on its own as a moral qualifier is useless and meaningless.

Don't you think that liberals have though of all this themselves, and had long debates about it, and developed different forms of liberalism, and created a variety of categories around positive and negative liberties?

I feel like this thread is the most derailed I have ever seen and also like an A level module.

Er, I don't know in any exact sense. Why are any of us offering up our opinions online? Why do people write books? It's just good to engage in public debate and put across your view of things.

Maybe you should start your own thread about liberalism somewhere, and then people interested in having an I depth discussion of liberalism could debate it with you.