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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

I'm starting to hate men

580 replies

Mamaka · 14/07/2016 22:43

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.

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Mamaka · 19/07/2016 19:06

Notquite - I'm sorry I abandoned you over there! I kept reading and cheering but I gave up trying to talk to people who are looking at a completely different view and talking about that instead. And the man (of course) absolutely insisted I had 3 threads not 2 and that just sent me west.

I enjoyed your points though you were articulate and made total sense. I'm sure many others will benefit from reading them too.

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ChocChocPorridge · 19/07/2016 19:12

Jacquetta: no doubt some posters have objected vehemently objected to prostitution. But at the same time some of them assert that personal choice is the foundational value of feminism and moral value judgements about people's sexual behaviour should be eschewed. That is a contradiction

Not really - you see, I'm not judging the women who are apparently exercising their personal choice (or, you know trafficked, or desperately trying to keep a roof over their heads any way they can - same thing right?). I'm judging the men who think it's OK to buy a woman's consent to have sex with him. Not just OK, but actually think they have a right to be able to pay women to rape them. That's who I'm judging, that's who's not feminist.

amarmai · 19/07/2016 19:24

"Dotty"Andrea is very positive !

JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 19:44

"But at the same time some of them assert that personal choice is the foundational value of feminism and moral value judgements about people's sexual behaviour should be eschewed. "

Bollocks do they.

Or, y'know, whatever Buffy said once more, with erudition

JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 20:00

Ooh, looky here, something a bit more nuanced than choosy choosy choice choice, on this very board, including posters from this very thread...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2659205-Where-do-you-stand-on-banning-the-sex-trade

JohnJ80 · 19/07/2016 20:10

ChocChoc porridge I agree. Those men should be morally condemned, as should the minority of women who pay for sex. Paying for sex is immoral.

Buffy: you did say that the governing principle of feminism is one of free choice. It was this statement that I was taking issue with.

Everyone else: please stop defensively thinking that I am attributing all the views I critique to you personally - or that I am disparaging every branch of feminism. I am doing neither.

JohnJ80 · 19/07/2016 20:29

Amarami.I do have mixed feelings about Dworkin. Her critique of pornography was incisive and had great moral force. And 'Intercourse' made a strong argument that sex is only of value when stripped of a gendered power differential. I don't think she ever even suggested that all heterosexual sex is rape, but she did suggest that sex as conceptualised within patriarchal culture was continuous with it. She actually had an almost mystical view of powerless love making. I think she believed that if we could rid the world of gendered identity and all its patriarchal trappings then sexual violence would just dissapear from the earth. This is where she comes undone a bit I think. She was a funny mix: morally quite conservative but at the same time a child of the sixties and very utopian. Like a lot of people of that generation she thought we could create a world without power. But power always exists in some form. Sexual oppression was to her a synedoche for power in every manifestation: even fascism. When she strayed into areas like the Jewish/Arab conflict she did say some potty things. And all that Reichean stuff was pretty cranky too.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 19/07/2016 20:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Mamaka · 19/07/2016 20:46

Scallops - thanks for that post, especially pointing out that women are the only oppressed group expected to live with and love their oppressors. No wonder I'm finding it so bloody hard.

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JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 20:48

Damn you Buffy, with your accurate use of words in accordance with their actual meanings!

JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 20:49

Mamaka - absolutely. It's a headfuck sometimes.

scallopsrgreat · 19/07/2016 20:50

If you think Dworkin was conservative you do not understand her.

I suspect your meaning of "moral force" and Dworkin's would not be the same.

scallopsrgreat · 19/07/2016 21:05

And YY to it being a head fuck!

JohnJ80 · 19/07/2016 21:33

There are 'vastly differing interpretations of where that point lies' - so vastly different as to render utilitarian liberalism unintelligible. It doesn't work. For one thing, it may be quite morally defensible to cause harm in certain circumstances (putting someone in prison or shooting a crazed guman). You may then claim (as utilitarians do) that it is only okay to cause harm to other people that are causing harm. But what do you mean by harm? Physical harm? Mental harm? Emotional harm? It is nigh on impossible to form intelligible value judgements on this basis alone. Is an oligarch evading tax doing anyone any direct harm? No, but he is doing is still socially unjust. Is the man seeing the prostitute necessarily doing direct harm? No, but he is seeing women as utilities to be bought and used.

Think of how you would raise a child: you would not simply say to them: 'you should just do what you want as long as you don't do harm'. You would instil them with moral values that informed the complex interactions that they would have with others throughout their lifetime.

And really all these ultra-libertarians who rail against socialists and moral conservatives alike: they fail to see the dark side of the world they have created; that the sexual revolution has led to a demotion of people from human subjects to commodified objects. Anyone who objects to their belief that subjective pleasure and self-interest should be the driving force of society is blasted as an 'authoritarian' or a 'moralist'.

And the internet: no one is allowed to suggest that those Silicon Valley hippies got it wrong; that the cyber-utopia is a cyber-dystopia. The internet has overturned the generational divisions and the distinctions between public and private that underpinned organised civic society. It has resulted in ubiquitous commercialism; the sexualisation of children and criminal networks beyond the reach of any law enforcement institution.

This is what I reckon feminists should do: rather than go on about Page 3 and song lyrics, they should campaign for ISP's to filter out all URLs containing extreme and violent pornography. That would hit the gangsters trafficking thousands of women and children and make it more difficult for children to access this corrupting filth. A few feminist women and men are campaigning for this, but mostly they don't because it would restrict people's 'free choice' - the sacref shibboleth of the age. Love the way the freedom of expression now includes the freedom for some Mafioso to peddle videos of refugees being sexually degraded for entertainment. Crazy world.

There really aren't anything per se wrong with moral values. Without them we are just animals. If you think society should repudiate all moral values, then you will not have some sort of equalitarian, egalitarian utopia; you will have 'Lord of the Flies'. Already all moral and epistemic authority has been undermined. Everything is predicated on emotion, sensation, base instincts. And what has that led to? Trump, Garage, Le Pen, Brexit - just populist demagoguery and propaganda. Everyone banging on about their right to choose and their rights.

JohnJ80 · 19/07/2016 21:40

Garage? Farage

scallopsrgreat · 19/07/2016 21:40

NotQuite I thought you did really well in the face of onslaught on the other thread. Sorry I abandoned it. I just couldn't find the energy to deal with the wilful obtuseness and goadiness going on.

I too was mystified by the man who was insistent that you had three threads. I know it requires being able to count, making it to two and all, so maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt?

erinaceus · 19/07/2016 21:50

JohnJ80

What is an argument? Define an argument.

Mamaka · 19/07/2016 21:54

I've just read "feminism is for everybody" by bell hooks in its entirety. Very pleased to now be able to put words to my feelings! It was like reading everything that has gone through my mind over the last 6 months.
Myownperson - if you're on this thread give it a read. I found the pdf online.

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NotQuiteSoOnEdge · 19/07/2016 22:30

I have now abandoned it too, Scallops. I couldn't bear the childish 'but you said!' any longer. It's what my daughter says. She's 6. I might have gone on longer, but the responses were getting so out of proportion and bore very little relation to what I was actually saying, so it seemed a bit pointless.

And I was getting too invested, so time to abort.

NotQuiteSoOnEdge · 19/07/2016 22:31

I think I shall go read that too, Mamaka.

Polidori · 19/07/2016 22:45

"This is what I reckon feminists should do: rather than go on about Page 3 and song lyrics, they should campaign for ISP's to filter out all URLs containing extreme and violent pornography"

a: Are you doing this yourself, JohnJ80? I reckon you ought to, seeing as we're telling each other what we should do.
b: Are you presenting a false dichotomy? Why can't (sorry "shouldn't") feminists do both?
c: What if some feminists engage in one campaign and some engage in another? Is that not ok? Is it simpler for you if they all do one thing at a time, collectively?
d: Don't you think campaigning to end Page 3 represents a worthwhile use of time and energy?
e: What in God's name made you think it would be appropriate to tell feminists what they "should do"? I imagine a few posters have some ideas about what you should do.

Batteriesallgone · 19/07/2016 22:49

You seem to have a huge issue with pornography John. Why not direct that energy towards the people - usually men - making and profiting from pornography? Why come on here and rant at us about how bad porn is, on a thread that isn't even about sex?

I hope you see the irony in you, as a man, telling a group of women what they ought to do, on a thread about women being oppressed by men and struggling to respect / like them because of that.

inarmsofanangel · 19/07/2016 22:57

I don't 'hate' men at all. However I am quite happy in my life without one !. Separated a year ago and not even crossed my mind to start anything again. Partly because I've made myself too busy and started new things and grown to 'know' myself more, partly because I have 3 young kids and partly because I'm scared of losing what I've rebuilt on my own without one.
However, through my experiences probably more bad than good, it takes me a long time to see through my 'perceptions' of men which have been pretty skewed.

JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 23:03

I had to hide the relationships board version of your thread, Mamaka, after one poster wilfully and repeatedly misrepresented your post

JacquettaWoodville · 19/07/2016 23:09

"This is what I reckon feminists should do: rather than go on about Page 3 and song lyrics, they should campaign for ISP's to filter out all URLs containing extreme and violent pornography"

a: Are you doing this yourself, JohnJ80? I reckon you ought to, seeing as we're telling each other what we should do.

^^this.

If you are concerned about certain issues, John, campaign on them yourself before you tell others what they should do.

Oh, and FYI? A number of posters on here and on everyday sexism reported men on buses using p3 to harass them as teenagers.

Women on the front pages are primarily royal or victims of violence. There's an excellent study on it, but I'm done googling stuff for you.

If you think displaying a half naked young woman daily in a newspaper wasn't a feminist issue, then you are very wrong.

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