Want to talk

[UpForDiscussi0n]

Full transparacy, I am not a mother nor a woman. English is not my first language so exuse any misshap. I only made this account to be able to talk to a feminist first-hand to be able to see their view-points. I am myself not a feminist as i don't belive that the feminism in today's society promotes equality on some levels. I have also read several news outlets such as bussfeed and the huffington post but find them to be (as i said, bad english so don't really know how to put it) downlooking towards myself as a man. Would love to hear people out and debate or discuss feministic issues, have a good day.

Spaghetti, I can't speak for anyone else but I hate my job. It's fucking horrible. If someone said 'you can stay at home with the kids and I'll sit under strip lights for eight hour shifts doing a spirit crushingly monotonous task' then I would welcome that swap with open arms.

I like my job - but there's no doubt that being on the go from the moment I wake up, until the moment the kids go to sleep (and a bit after - clearing up what they did) is bloody draining - I'm freelance, so perhaps I feel it more because my workspace is also my home space, so I can't miss the breakfast bowls, or the crumbs on the floor all day (although I do forcefully ignore them, or I'd never get any work done).

DP also works, looking after the kids would be very hard for him. He hasn't developed the ability to simultaneously ignore the sounds they are making (TV, games, continuous talking) but still be able to monitor what they're doing for when it gets too dangerous/messy/disallowed. He can't cope with their continuous demands to chat.

If you think that staying home with kids doesn't have a healthy dose of spirit crushing monotony, then you must have a very different family life to me.

I'm sure it does have a 'healthy dose of monotony' but it can't be worse than this. Have you ever worked in a warehouse? I'm penalised if I take too long to piss.

If you're freelance then it sounds like you have some sort of professional career doing something that you at lease partly find fulfilling. I bet you have a house too. In that case you're very privileged.

Lots of people do not have houses and careers; they do horrible,, badly paid jobs where they're mistreated and exploited and will never have a home of their own.

Lots of them are men.

You sound sad and angry user. Is there something stopping you finding an alternative job/training for something you would find fulfilling?

Perhaps the Back to Work forum would be a more useful place for you to spend time on to find a way out of your current situation?

Since being made redundant from my old job just over six months ago, I've applied for 279 jobs and attended 39 interviews. I've applied for jobs as waiters, cleaners, everything. All I can get is a job in a warehouse and 16 hours in a supermarket.

I would do a teaching qualification but I cannot afford to fund it.

I don't know what world you people live in where you can just find a nice job.

I've worked on the tills at Asda. I didn't get to piss outside of my 4 hourly breaks. I broke my arm, and rather than let me even have unpaid time off work, I was put on the food tills.

Lets not get into oppression olympics, but it sounds like you've never been trapped at home looking after kids. Imagine this - I go shopping on a Saturday morning as a break - because any time alone, any time without a child yelling mamamaamamamamaaa. Is relief. I understand work is hard too, of course I do, but you do get to go home at the end of a shift, that walk home at the end of the working day was always my saviour, now, I don't even get to pee in peace.

I am privileged now, but that hasn't been given to me - my parents struggled (as in, we lived on tinned food, dad bicycled 5 miles each way to work) - my grandparents were even more working class. I got that privilege by working through school, through Uni, by sleeping in the car (bought on a loan given to me because I'd graduated - even though I already had plenty of debt getting to that point) before my first pay, by moving wherever the job was, by living with my MIL for over a year when there wasn't any work for DP or I (who was raised similarly).

Because of the constant moving, I rent. Because of the constant moving, I'm currently living somewhere with no childcare, so I have to combine trying to bring money in with looking after 2 kids. No-one's life is great, but in the grand scheme, on average, if your life is shit, it's a safe bet your wife's is worse.

Spaghetti I am not doing this kind of job on route to something better, I will likely never have a good job, or a house, or a family, or anything. My life has not gone well and it will probably end badly. That's just the way the cookie has crumbled.

Not your personal careers advice board user BUT if you did even a tiny bit of research you would know that there is a salaried Schools Direct programme if you really want to be a teacher (but don't plan on being able to pee when you want!).

My life is constant fear and pain. I can't imagine anything worse.

OK User, that sounds really tough. Why does that mean class analysis isn't useful, or feminists have to fix these problems.

BTW - Jelly has it correct. My mum, after having been SAHM with no prospect of even a job (in the country, not a town - they just don't exist) got a bursary for teacher training that allowed her to get her first (well, apart from pre-kids) job at 40+ - there are opportunities out there.

I suffer with mental health problems and fibromyalgia. Since the age of ten I have had a permanent headache. It is so bad I vomit regularly into a bowl by my bed. I also suffer with psoriasis. I live in a bedsit with a bad damp problem. Because of my mental health problems my employment history has been limited and no one will employ me, and as I get older that will only get worse. I don't think I'm up to teaching in a school. The children around here are frightening.

This isn't me feeling sorry for myself. It is just how it is. It could be worse, I could be in Syria.

And none of it invalidates feminism. Just saying I have no privileges or power and few choices.

And that's still got nothing to do with class analysis. Class analysis is on average not every

Well, when you conduct your class analysis make sure you take people like me out of it.

OK - but here's the thing.

Be a woman with mental health problems and fibromyalgia - have you seen the studies on how seriously doctors take women's pain vs. mens?, be a girl with permanent headaches (like my sister, who finally was diagnosed with a severe allergy, after years of being told it was all in her head and she was just trying to get out of school - even though she couldn't move her head without nausea).

Contrast being a 30 year old woman without kids, judged because she might, or a 30 year old woman with kids, judged because they know her partner will let her take the days off if the kids were sick.

We all have our crosses to bear. If we exclude you, then men just have it even better.

However hard your life is, arguing the toss with feminists isn't making it better. The more energy you put into that, the less energy you have for making improvements to your life.

Not to be insensitive but this thread has swung from one man seeking attention from women to, erm, another man seeking attention from women.

I Want To Talk indeed.

Look, all I'm saying that my life (along with the lives of lots of other men and women) is hell. I don't know what women with mental health problems go through, but my experience as an outpatient has been horrendous. I'm finding it hard to imagine how much worse it could be. We could go on all day like this though..

I don't want anyone's sympathy, I'm just saying I do not fit in to your class analysis and don't want to be part of it. I'm an individual human being, not a member of a class.

You do fit into the class analysis though. You don't want to think that you do, but stats show, that a woman with the same problems as you, will have it worse. Doctors will believe her less. She is smaller, susceptible to pregnancy, and thus more open to victimisation.

You may want identity politics, to feel like you're a special case, but I don't, you aren't, you're the same as everyone else - you have bad things and good things in your life, and they often don't balance out. As a man, you do (whether you realise or not, whether you feel you benefit or not) have a number of things going in your favour. That is what class analysis is. It cares not a jot for your individual circumstances, but averages out over a population.

Men have had 2,000 of patriarchal Church, State and Capitalism and it has led us to this point. Feminists arent waiting for a socialist revolution. They are doing what they can here and now. Feeling resentful about improvements we make is counter productive; there is nothing we want that is actively harmful to men.

In countries where women do not have a voice they cannot vote, drive, own property, wear trousers or shorts, access abortion, access a shelter for DV victims, go to school or University, report a rape, have a job or bank account.

We fought for these rights, we did not get given them by asking nicely. The second we shut up the boundaries are moved back.

See I look at Racebaiter and listen to Jesse Williams and try to find out about Black Lives Matter and learn about the issues. Even at 17 I would have known a fuck of a lot better than to do to one of those resources and say, "I'm a bit ignorant and know almost nothing about this. Please educate me. BTW I think All Lives Matter and I don't really believe there's an equality problem." But then I'm not an arsehole.

I don't want to belong to an identitarian group, or a class, or anything. I'm a person. An individual. My identity cannot be communicated in language. I'm not a political cypher, or statistic. I've been treated appallingly - repeatedly disbelieved, sexually violated, force fed drugs that turned me into a zombie. Ideologues have no business slotting me into their narrative.

What do I have going for me in my favour? You know nothing of me.

I am not complaining. I have been unlucky. Human societies are unfortunately, in part, arrangements predicated on violence - on the strong's subjection of the weak to humiliation, degradation and sadism. I was unfortunate enough to be a victim. Others are even more unlucky. They are murdered, tortured, dismembered. So it goes.

But I am not a member of a class, and I do not like myself or my experience being ideologised in this way. It is a denial of my humanity - of the irreducible uniqueness of my experience. It is an attempt to deny me my story. My voice.

"I'm an individual human being, not a member of a class."

You are both. We all are.

Oh dear
I'm not sure what you want us to say? It sounds shit but really has nothing to do with feminism. How crap your life is has nothing to do with the fact that 1 in 4 women will be raped by a man. Or that 2 women a week will be killed by a man.

How crap your life is has nothing to do with the fact that 1 in 4 women will be raped by a man. Or that 2 women a week will be killed by a man.

Indeed it doesn't. I have nothing to do with any of that.

We are all statistics.

OK, well I'm personally in charge of the list of people included in feminist class analysis and I'll take you off it if you can explain what that will achieve.

The thing is Bertrand the moment you classify someone you de-individuate them. You're perception of them is limited by the boundaries of your classification. They become a man, a woman, a Jew, a Muslim first and a unique, contingent individual second. I'm not sure about that.