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.

Yet another thread has been spectacularly derailed, and taken over, by a man.

Hi Jacquetta. Sorry, I really didn't mean to blame feminism for the sexual misbehaviour of boys. I think some feminists in the 70's bought into the while 'Me' decade thing and thought removing sexual prohibitions was the way forward. I remember Dworkin writing something to the effect that she opposed sexual liberationism on the basis that if all women are liberated then consent is negated. And in a funny way men thinking that all women are 'up for it' is maybe an example of that. I don't want you think about that as a woman. But I know guys in their twenties who think nothing of approaching strange women with a view to sex, while I don't remember that being such a norm twenty years. Of course there was sexual aggressive behaviour, but it seems to have gone mainstream now.

Do you see what I'm saying?

You seem to feel as though you're entitled to our time and responses, simply because you've met your own standard of what constitutes polite discourse. This is an example of the way that men expect to be able drain women's energy, without even being aware that this is what is happening

God I love you Buffy.

Are you really not going to explain the whole of the patriarchy Buffy?

I really enjoy it when you attempt to explain big concepts in three paragraphs or less.

I have fond memories of Gender Trouble, which I'm sure is not something that happens often.

Well I suppose I would say to the OP that all men are not bad of course. Unfortunately many are though.

My original point was that SOME feminism seems a bit confused about the nature of heterosexual relations - that we're still in the process of figuring out what relationships about men and women are supposed to be about now all the old certainties are gone. All the old certainties were very dubious, but we're all in this strange interregnum now where we are still figuring it out.

I can understand the OP hating men: they are responsible for most of the inhumanity in the world. And I do think in this post-love, post-humanist world where more and more human experience is being colonized by capitalism, men are becoming all the more dehumanised and cruel. Everything is about the self now that socialism and everything is gone - and I would say some feminists can't see a way to rehumanize relationships between the genders in this very unstabke, rapaciously capitalist. Sime feminists bought in to the illusory freedom romised by capitalism and it's kinda backfired. I really don't mean to blame women for the way men behave - or to suggest that feminism is wrong ...just that it seems to me, humbly, as a man, a bit...lost?

But then everything is. Look at the Labour Party! Nobody really knows what leftism should be about anymore.

Sorry about inumberable typos.

Once again: I'm not saying women should be the ones responsible for rehumanizing gender relations; more that there has to be the right context for that to women. We kinda need some new idea of what love and sex should be about. A new kind of society and economy even. This kind of nihilistic consumer culture is deadly for positive gender relations I think.

As I say though: it is unfair to single feminism out for being a bit incoherent. All social justice movements seem to be a bit all over the shop at the most don't you think?

Wasn't the wicker man based on a village of women

Count me in !

Feminists, hands up if you're confused!

Hands up if you're confused about feminism!

I'm sorry, I just can't take this seriously any more The Patriarchy did it.

All the old certainties gone? Have they? When did I miss that memo?

Only a male could think that!

Hi Buffy . Sorry that was a bit of a big ask!

Well, I think the internet has bred some sexual subcultures that have filtered up into mainstream liberal feminism. All that kinkster kind of stuff - pro-porn, pro-hook-up. Allied to that is a very individualist, materialistic sort of neoliberal feminism. It seems very much to be about the self, individualuzed material success, sex. And you hear some women who call themselves feminists saying some truly bizarre things. There was some feminist porn star on some BBC 3 thing saying that girls shouldn't worry about their appearance because the thing they hate most will be represented by some porn site. So you can feel okay about the part of you you hate most because some guy is wanking about it? Great. That isn't what I want for my daughter. And then there are people like Lucy Rhiannon Cosslet who said that teenage sexting is liberating for girls and anyone who disagreed is a slut shaming moral prude. I thought that that was downright shocking. Young girls listen to these women and they have a duty not to talk such irresponsible rot.

Of course if you take the time to search out credible feminist critiques then there is no end of fascinating stuff that has really helped me challenge my preconceptions about gender.

Look, I do appreciate that a man opining about feminism is REALLY problematic; but it is something that fascinates me and I read about all the time. Being hyper-analytical I tend to go overboard. Sorry.

Erm....no not necessarily. I think some feminists are very focussed on sexual identity though. In a way that's because it is one of the only forms of identity we have left. Hence all this demi, cis, trans, non-binary sort of stuff. That's all fine but the no-platforming thing has gone a bit crazy. Everyone is very defensive of their own sexual political identity like it's a form of capital.

But it depends on the kind of feminism I guess, don't you think? Marxist feminism would think more in terms of economic structures for example.

I kind of meant socioeconomic certainties. A job for life etc.

I am hoping along with many others that you are bowing out now since you have seem to have given a one word apology for taking over this thread with your problematic opinions. I am sorry for any female who has to listen to you in RL. COnsidering the frequency with which you dragged sex into each one of your problematic opinions, I am wondering if you are trying to use a feminist forum as a dating site . Perhaps your problematic opinions are your equivalent of a dicpic . Please do not respond.

Of course it doesn't represent all analyses and activism. As for sexual liberationism, it was obviously well-intended but Dworkin's analysis is that it got co-opted by a men as a means of sexualising women to the core. Of course she then found herself in some uncomfortable lliances with the moral conservative right.

I don't know. If I may, it just seems all the zipless fuck stuff doesn't hold politically. I'm speaking as a man I know, but it just seems odd the idea that you can reclaim sexual in that way.

Not sure I really believe in anyone having sexual power. Sex should be the absolute antithesis of power. Rather than women gaining it men should be encouraged to lose it.

Sorry, meant reclaim 'sexual POWER' in that way.

I was just about to ask that.

Tbh I don't really know, but feminists do allude to it a lot. For example:www.huffingtonpost.ca/krista-thompson/women-sexuality_b_5013099.html

She makes some perfectly bang on points about consent. But that isn't power, just a n expectation of baseline civilized behaviour. Telling your daughter or son that is somehow normal and right to do anything they feel sexually inclined to do without considering all the hugely complex emotional, psychological and political implications of doing the most intimate thing possible with another human being is downright bullshit. I'm confident on that one.

All the old certainties gone? Have they? When did I miss that memo?

I think John may be thinking of some golden age between 1945 and say Mrs Thatcher's 2nd election win. An era where the reforms brought in by the post war Labour government were the right things for the time; an era when heavy industry and manufacturing required a large skilled, semi-skilled and even unskilled workforce; an era where the pill was invented and attitudes towards sex and sexuality became more tolerant (but nice people still only really did it when they were married).

And capitalism is bad. Very bad.

During this period of course the concept of marital rape didn't exist, equal pay and maternity rights didn't exist or were paid lip service.