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.

There already are lots of single parent families and lots of families with involved fathers.

There doesn't have to be a single way that everyone does. There can be different kinds of families.

And the state supports most families.

Buffy and almond: absolutely agree. But that mentality of male entitlement is basically translatable as: you are a thing that serves MY needs. As I say, if you repudiate monogamy/love/commitment then a heartless, chauvinist utilitarianism is what you are left with. That's just a fact. If people are commodities then men will commodify women all the more.

I guess my point is this: feminism and sexual liberationism (very broadly speaking) rejected love and commitment as foundations of western civilisation. Of course the nuclear family was highly questionable and oppressed women; but it seems like one form of oppression has been replaced by another - one that is bad for women and men.

What feminism should perhaps have done is foster an evolution of monogamous love into something more equitable and progressive. Instead, it got rid of it all. Madonna and Cosmo and Sex & the City came along and they don't seem to have really empowered anyone bar a few very few privileged women. And now people have less long term relationships. They just have fuck buddies or wank to depictions of women as pieces of meat. It's a total sewer. Of course the right are responsible for this with their bullshit, Thatcherite, anything goes in a free market philosophy. But sections of the left, including SOME feminists bear some responsibility too: they rejected all moral values as oppressive and restricting individuals from doing as they please. Now we have the consequences: 11 year olds asking girls for anal.

I did volunteer work as well with children with special needs, not sure how that is particularity relevant.

Well as to what we can do? First of all something we don't need to do and that's going into feminist boards and tell them how they are doing it wrong. That's gonna be a long wait for a train that ain't coming...

In terms what CAN we do? Well the MRA movement pontificates about how important fathers play a significant role, we could raise awareness how important this is to men before they suffer relationship breakdown.

We need a re-framing of the narrative away from man vs woman and towards generally pro children.

You seem to be viewing everything through a lense of sexual relationships.

Yes, there are elements of online sexual behaviour that is very troubling.

But most people form the vast majority of their loving and committed relationships with people who they are not having sex with.

There is life outside of fucking.

Dervel: overall agree.

If we want a proper pro-child society then a complete restructuring of the economy is in order. That means remunerative, secure employment for all men and women AND enough free time for every one person to raise a child. Good luck with that one now global economic growth is slowing and it looks like the Tories will be in government forevermore.

Almond: absolutely - that is how it should be. I only mention sex because it is so central to our culture. We're unhealthily fixated on it. Many feminists are fixated by sexual politics. It is EVERYWHERE.

According to my father my grandparents never had a sexual relationship; but they loved one another dearly for sixty years. That sort of deep friendship is how a relationship should be IMO. People should not be utilities - to be used for sex or money or anything else. If as a culture we normalize that then we are on a dark and dangerous road. Life without love is death.

Ummm I hate to be the one to point this out but your grandparents definitely hopped on the good foot and did the bad thing, unless your father was adopted....

Ha ha. I meant a regular sex life. They were very asexual I think.

I think your grandparents are probably a poor example because they are still a heteroromantic relationship.

Very many women simply do not want to have long term relationships with men, sexual or romantic.

Very many women don't want to have recreational sex with many in any context.

That was inevitably going to be an outcome of feminism because heteronormativity was socially enforced.

Not only a woman available for xyz but entitled to a woman for xyz. Like a john who is certain he is entitled to take over a thread in a feminism forum and answers every pp as if he is the moderator and tells each pp whether she has expressed herself well ...or not ....and comes out with gems like" what feminists shd have done "!! And does not understand mansplaining. AT least we don't have to deal with him in real life.

Well, that's absolutely fine. If you don't want to have sex with men or don't want a relationship then there is no problem. But for women who do want those things then there is a problem. Go onto a dating site and you'll see hundreds of thousands of women desperate for love from a man who will treat her with the respect a human being deserves and not send her a picture of his cock. You kinda have to speak for them too.

Why?

Sorry why what?

Why do you have to speak for them? Well, you don't have to; but then you're limiting the debate to your own concerns and viewpoint. Personally I think that's not good.

I think you may be engaging in wishful thinking if you think there are hundreds of thousands of women who are desperate for the love of a man being disappointed on dating sites,

I'm also astonished about how you've managed to go from some incredibly complex argument about the whole of society to retreating to damsels in distress on Tinder.

And I've been in one relationship with a man since I was twenty two, so you need not worry about my lack of commitment to the heteronormative edifice.

Nobody has to speak for anyone. We can all speak for ourselves. "Championing" other people and speaking for them does not lend more significance or legitimacy to your voice.

Re the women only village
I have been saying I'd like that on the basis that I'd be allowed to leave the village and meet anyone not in the village, including my male friends, in our usual watering holes.

If the village has a "no leaving the village" rule then I wouldn't fancy it.
I would like it if the village included shops, bank, gym, so I didn't have to deal with random blokes so much. But if random blokes were less ready with either propositions or threats I'd feel different. Last night a group of us were walking back to our hotel, in about a ten minute walk I think we had five drunk guys yell out suggestive comments. Argh.

And I agree with Buffy.

"But sections of the left, including SOME feminists bear some responsibility too: they rejected all moral values as oppressive and restricting individuals from doing as they please. Now we have the consequences: 11 year olds asking girls for anal."

Oh my goddess. You just blamed feminism for this?

You utter trombone.

I'm not worried about your commitment to the hetronormative edifice. Why do you think I would have a problem with asexuality or whatever sexual identity you have? I was thinking of my sister who really wants someone to love her but instead just gets lots of horrible pervy comments from sleazebags.

And why this issue with women who are 'heteronormative'? Kind of goes against the proffessed credo that all women's lifestyle choices are to be respected doesn't it?

I was reading something a while back about a young woman who believed in abstinence. Shee received a barrage of BTL abuse to the effect of being a betrayer of the true cause. But really what business is it of anyone's? Tbh on some fetid college campus abstaining is probably the most radically nonconformist thing a woman can do. A purity ring is the modern equivalent of a safety pin through your nose.

And where did you get the idea that feminists are anti-relationships?

Feminists are anti-bad relationships, and pro structures that enable women to get out of bad relationships - child maintenance, refuges, the right to be instigators of divorce, the right to retain a job after marriage if we're going back 50 years or so.

Is that what you object to?

Buffy I have said repeatedly that I not referring to all feminism/gender theory. I am aware it is a very very broad church.

Dervel is a man. And far too self-aware to speak for women on dating sites, or indeed for women in general.

"Many feminists are fixated by sexual politics."

Funny, that. What with rape, porn, FGM, child marriage (aka state sanctioned abuse), prostitution all being issues related to sexual politics and all being feminist issues.