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.

Which ones?

I might not it articulate it very well, but in the sense that when raising my son (now entering adult life), I never really had any focus on ridding him of some set of supposedly masculine traits of aggression, violence, competition and so on. It was much more of an organic process of this is who our family are as human beings. We value compassion, certain ideas, political histories, our community, music, landscape and so on. We were too busy participating on who we wanted to collectively be to fret over the things to avoid.

I read a couple of studies recently claiming that globally, the more opposite the sex roles the more similar were men and women's personalities.

I find this also anecdotally with my own elderly male family members when worked in heavy industry. They are just people. They don't have masculine personalities.

So while I think that there is a problem for some men with issues of work role under neoliberalism (and of course for many women), I see that as separate to the kind of masculine character traits which are largely acted out/fabricated by males who would never work in traditionally masculine roles in industry should we rebuild some of our industrialised/manufacturing sector.

For example - where are your facts on the predatory women who date younger men and feminists who pat them on the back?

Why do your discussions keep coming back to porn, do you think that's all feminism is? Stopping men from watching while we all sit at home wanking to porn and swiping right because that's empowerment?

It's obvious you've read a lot and I'm sure you know a considerable amount more than me on various viewpoints of feminists. That doesn't make mine/any of our opinions less valid, just so you know.

Use your views to help, support and listen, not to criticise and I'm sure your audience will be more engaged.

How about looking at the other reasons for disliking men, abuse, domestic drudgery, the invisible women....

....you know, the less sexy stuff?

You articulate very well.

I like your emphasis on positive, collective values transcending gender differences. It is precisely those collective values that will cultivate equality and empathy.

Just rethinking what I meant by gender identity. I guess in a way I was thinking more about how concepts of gender identity inform heterosexual relations. It's almost like...now the sexes don't NEED one another in the way they once did, we don't really know what heterosexual relationships should be about. Should they be about love and commitment? But those things limit individual agency and therefore have been rejected by liberal feminists. And that just leaves a neoliberal sexual culture of mutually beneficial transactions. Of course they will involve objectification - principally of women. It's like many young women reject traditional femininity only to seek self I empowerment through their sexuality; but that can easily lead to them becomingg mired in objecficatory processes; and then they are maybe back to simply wanting to be loved unconditionally by men? And men get confused by this: what is it that is being asked of them? All these debates about whether all men are bad, or whether a feminist can look at porn - or objectify men, or be a slut rage away. And none if them get resolved. It's a big mess. Now the private sphere has gone, sexual identity is inseparable from consumer-capitalism. That's an issue for feminism.

I realise I'm presuming to understand female experience and talking in massive generalities. It's just how I see it.

Strawberry: I did not mean to tar all feminism with the same brush. I was specifically referring to the liberal, post-feminism that is very prominent in the mainstream media at the moment. I mention porn because a lot of feminist debate surrounds it. Personally, I am with anti-orn feminists. All porn is wrong as is all objectification. Human beings are not things.

I do try to offer support to people when they are feeling upset - indeed, I did so to the OP.

I have not suggested your views are invalid.

There are many feminists who argue that boys need to be brought up to be better fathers who take on an equal parenting role in a relationship.

I've always argued against that on the basis that one outcome of Western feminism has been that many women simply do not want to enter long term heterosexual relationships and raise children. There are going to be a lot of angry and bitter men out there if they're brought up believing they'll get a wife and kids.

Of course many people will still build loving, committed heterosexual lifelong commitments in a nuclear family, but we need to build alternative ways of single people forming other kinds of meaningful relationships as alternatives to the nuclear family.

I see there being a huge drop in the amount of sex people have, rather than a replacement of commitment with objectification.

You make my point better than I do. When you say: 'we need to find alternative ways of single people forming other kinds of meaningful relationships as alternatives to the nuclear family.' that is the issue EXACTLY. But what are those alternatives? No one, feminists included, have any idea.

A drop in the amount of sex people having and a rise in objectification are perfectly consistent. My theory is that sex is being technologized: to put it bluntly a lot of people (mainly men) are wanking rather than bothering with the risk and responsibility of loving another person. So when (some) feminists say: 'we can be part of this too and use techno capitalism to take back control of our sexuality' then they are making a mistake. Feminist porn or feminist oriented versions of Tinder only increase the priorotization of women's sexual characteristics over inner identity. Indeed, if you think about, if you are not going to commit to someone lovingly then what interest does their personality hold? Why even bother looking beneath the surface? If they are foremostly a utility then engaging with them as a subject doesn't make sense.

Porn culture is the most destructive thing: it dehumanises and infantalises. It breeds sexual sociopathy. I've seen it in children I've worked with.

Yes, I agree it is a huge mistake for women to participate in it. Which perhaps those particular feminists will realise with time.

I don't know what kind of social groups will replace heterosexual relationships. In my experience I see people building up friendship groups much more.

I'm sorry John I read a few of your posts and after awhile I think the point just sailed over my head.

However in your first post you talked about masculinity in crisis, and I have a solution for that: fatherhood. As men we have advanced ourselves to an adolescent level and have refused to grow up.

Consider a society where we take our parenting and nurturing role seriously.

almond sorry, I'm confused. Do you mean you think less women will choose to have children, that women who have children won't necessarily encourage the biological father to take an active/equal role, or something else? not sure I understood your point

Good question, Buffy.

John's got something to say, and dammit, he's going to say it.

At length.

Buffy: the conversation turned to the nature of gender identity: about whether all men are bad. My point is that popular feminism, AT PRESENT, lacks a coherent position from which to answer this question. You could just say men are inherently bad or they're inherently good but corrupted by the patriarchy; but IMO the truth is more complicated.

Dervel: the only problem there is that some sort of family unit is necessary in which men can take an active role. While, the traditional nuclear family might not be appropriate anymore, we surely still need one in which two people have some kind of fealty to one another. Perhaps the answer is some sort of polygamy - but in our unstable socioeconomic conditions will that really work?

So if we are not to value monogamy, then what do we value?

In the future some sort of bio-tec form of fertilisation will become widely available and loving, monogamous relationships will slowly disappear. Whether that will mean gender equality is uncertain. In fact, I can see the sex industry becoming more and more normalised. In a hundred years a career earning bitcoins performing sexual acts on webcams will be the norm.

Batteries, yes I think more women are choosing to not ever have children.

But also there's an increase in the number of women who raise children with different kinds of support networks, and don't intend to raise them in heterosexual long term relationships. There are also men happy to get women pregnant (either by sperm donation or sex) and not have an active role as a father or live with the child.

Buffy, maybe that is the issue. The OP said she did want to know men well, which requires intimacy.

With respect John that's bullshit. Children need love, time and resources. The precise shape of how they get those is beside the point. My point and it's not controversial: men aren't giving as much to children as are women. Redress this imbalance and a lot of the rest takes care of itself.

I think to look for, seek out the positives. If you have been in a shitty situation, you tend to notice and see the same sort of thing everywhere, it just reinforces your knowledge that, in this instance, men are rotten.

I keep trying to notice people who are having a different experience, people who look happy on dates, families interacting together etc. It help me.

Saying that, totally get your point of view. I am just trying not to give up hope yet.

'I think our culture leads men to anticipate that there will be a woman who is available to him for sex, companionship and children. And not to anticipate having to take on anything like an equal amount of the emotional and physical labour involved with it. '

Yes, absolutely to this.

Dervel: I agree that men do not take enough responsibility for childcare. I used to work ith children with learning disabilities and was struck by how many had mothers abandoned to care for them alone.

But what are we to do about that? However bad the pre-60's were, at least more children had fathers - even if they did fuck all to help their wives with their life of domestic drudgery. Now lots of children don't have father's at home and the women have to do all the chores/childcare AND earn a living.

If monogamy has had its day and families become single parent ones then childcare should be equitably shared. Of course. But if, as the other poster suggested, fathers become more or less anonymous doners then the whole concept of fatherhood goes out the window.

Moreover, if growing single parent families are to work then the whole economy will have to be restructured. Don't know about you, but I can barely afford to feed and house myself.