Is your DP a feminist?

[TurquoiseChevrotain]

I worry that my only choices in life are:

• be with someone who expects you to be better at household duties, so leaves you to it (that's just 1 example)...
• be alone forever.

Tell me there's hope

Is your DP a feminist?

Sorry, double post.

For me feminism has nothing to do with housework

For me it's everything to do with it. Housework is the shit mundane unpaid work that women have done for centuries and have never been recognised for.

Capitalism relies on the unpaid labour of women.

It's the work that men don't often see.

FWIW, my DH has quite a few female friends, including one ex-girlfriend and I genuinely have no concerns about any of them. He even had an extra stag party before we got married where he went out with his ex-girlfriend and her group of friends that he knows really well, and I wasn't bothered in the slightest.

Yes, my dp is a feminist. I don't think she be with me if I wasn't one too!

Yes through and through in everything he does at home, at work and within his family.

He is the best person I have ever met

Yeah, I could have just written this!

God I love that man. I'd be alone rather than live with someone who was even slightly misogynistic. Because ultimately if you want to share your life with someone who you see as being a bit beneath you - the way many hetero men do - what does that say about you?

I'm not seeing the connection between the female friend thing to be honest.

My dh has loads of female friends, he just naturally gets on with women better. He loves women and feels much more of a connection with them, he says it's because women talk about more interesting things and they tend to be funnier (I couldn't possibly comment on such matters).
I'm not possessive of him at all and like the fact he has female friends it means he hears all about the shit they go through.

My dh is a feminist ally but its an ongoing negotiation about housework. It's not just up to him though, I find that I pick up tasks without even thinking about it and then I'm suddenly like, why is this down to me?

We are very open with each other about it and he also sees it as a feminist issue so we are working it out.

I know what you mean, Sentientcushion - I still struggle with the impulse to do everything myself. Yesterday DH wanted a family day trip together but we also had several other things that needed doing. Usually it's me pushing and organising to make sure we fit it all in, but I took a deep breath and thought to myself - let him manage us, if it's important to him. And he did and it was great!

He even listens to feminist podcasts and was part of a feminist forum but he got told off for mansplaining (he wasn't, but just by dint of being a man and voicing an opinion, that didn't go down too well) so he left again.

Crikey.

My DP definitely does his fair share of housework and treats me as an equal and a friend, as he does with his mum and sisters and female friends etc. I don't think it's as simple as someone being a feminist and therefore not a misogynist or vice versa, though. We all have internalised misogyny to some extent, and he's bound to say and think things that are misogynistic or have roots in misogyny sometimes- as am I. I think I'd be bound to recognise some things as misogynistic that he never would. But on the big ticket stuff (my career, housework etc) he'd take the feminist stance automatically, and he does talk without my prompting about what it must be like as a woman in his male dominated industry etc.

My dh claims to be a feminist but I don't truly believe he is. I'm a sahm which doesn't help. But there are just little things here and there that he does that make me wonder. Things like certain female celebs he claims to dislike but can't say why - it's always the sweaty, unladylike ones. Also him an his mates swear like dockers but if I ever do it I see him wince. He'd never call me out on it but he does it.

Funny, lots of people saying their DH does most of the cooking just because they are better at it, but if it was the other way round it would be "how convenient"! . Sorry just a light hearted observation.

I would say DH is, not because he's especially feminist, but because he's a decent person who believes in treating people equally and with respect.
He's also aware of issues which affect women more, such as fear of men (he's not scary, but is aware some women might be scared or wary of him).

I think the chores/housework issue is absolutely central to this discussion. Of course it's not all feminism is about, but men being prepared to overcome their social conditioning to play an equal role in parenting and running a house and family is, for me, one of the clearest indicators that they're not just talking the talk.

On the name issue, we're not married, but neither of us would change our names if we ever did marry. Our dc have his surname, but we discussed it beforehand and he was comfortable either way. Giving them his name was my choice in the end, as I felt people would assume they were my children either way, but may question whether they were his if they had my name. Not sure I'd make the same decision now, but I still feel OK about it.

Very much so. So is my 18 year old son, he is very passionate about it. They are both very gender critical as well. My son is gay and has a lot to say about the T in LGB.

Both are fantastic feminist allies.

DH was raised by a feminist so that helped. He does more housework than I do but I'm the breadwinner so it makes sense. The division of housework or child care has never been an issue. He is also very anti porn and strip clubs etc. Despite how some MNers have tried to convince me otherwise

I would say definitely, in as much as male can be. Obviously he will never truly understand what it means to be female or anything, but he is definitely not one of these dinosaurs who thinks that housework is womens work and such. Infact, he does MUCH more housework than me, and probably a lot more childcare too. I mean, he has to really given my health problems, but even before I became ill he did most stuff around the house.

He also fairly regularly speaks up about sexist language. Its somewhat of a running joke among his male friends 'don't objectify women around X, he will eat you alive' and so on.

When male friends of his have started hating on feminism as 'feminists should be worried about how theres not many male DV refuges etc' and such he will point out that the reason there is so much help for women with refuges is because 1. Male violence is such an epidemic and male on female DV tends to be much more serious than female on male. 2. Females fought for these services, so should males be inclined to think demand is even slightly similar, males should get off their arse and help other males.

He also totally gets the whole trans bollocks, and how it is anti-women. I genuinely believe this trans stuff to be the biggest threat to womens rights that there has been in a fairly long time, so having him understand without me having to drill it into him has been somewhat refreshing.

So yeah, I would say he is as much a feminist as a male can be. And I am so thankful for that.

Today I got up, went for a swim, went to work, came home and ate tea then did some housework. DH got up, did some housework, got the kids ready for school and took them to school, went to work, picked the kids up from school, took them all to the hospital because the eldest had a consultant appointment, came home, made tea, put the kids to bed. We both work PT so we can reduce childcare/spend more time with the kids.

I have to say I would not have had kids if I'd been married to anyone else (I only know 2 other men who do as much round the house and kids), and as parents we complement each other. If I was married to a normal man I would not have got as far in my career as I have. He absolutely believes in equality for women and recognises that means men have to give up the privileges of masculinity. There are good men out there but I do think they are few and far between.

Husband was going on tonight about something he'd read about an American criminologist talking about an amazing shared genetic factor in the prison population- 95% of them have a Y chromosome.

He was very taken with it as a way of really bringing home the problem of male violence.

Yes...although it occurs to me that putting it in those terms runs the risk of attributing it all to nature, not nurture, and of it being taken as an excuse by some less enlightened men.

To be fair - he followed it up by asking me and what are we doing about it? Nothing. The context of the quote was very much it is nuture not nature.

None of the men I've ever lived with or have been in a relationship with feminists even though they said they were in the early days of courtship. After a year or two they all seemed to revert to type.
So as an alternative to being Dobby the house slave I choose to live alone.
That isn't an easy choice but it's the right one for me, so much easier now I'm post menopausal, when I was younger I really wanted to share my life with someone but not now.
I have wonderful friends male and female so I'm far from lonely and of course my son who is a feminist.
I hope you have better luck than I did OP.

Yes, although he doesn't think he is. But he's absolutely behind women doing whatever they want and equality and is often quicker than me to spot implied sexism in things like tv shows etc.

As a white man, he has sometimes found it hard to really understand some things. Like, when we talk about how women's ideas are co-opted by men in meetings, he says things like, "But women just need to speak up." but he's really starting to think more and more about these issues and is starting to see it much more clearly. What I love about this is that his "feminist journey" is not that different to mine. I also used to think that sometimes women were just making a meal out of silly things. It's taken me years to see the systemic sexism in our society and I really admire him for being able to look clear-eyed at things that don't necessarily impact him and to consider truly how they impact women.

Female quotas are a good example. He really struggled with this because he thinks that everyone should have the opportunity to apply for a job or whatever and the best person will get the job. But we've had countless conversations about this and he's looked at articles and facts and he's starting to see that while that's the ideal, it simply doesn't work that way in real life. if it did, in politics for example, we'd see a much more equal split of male and female MPs. Or at the very least, in constituencies where there are both male and female candidates, the woman would win about 50% of the time. Realising that they don't, and that it can't be because they are consistently NOT the best candidate, has been a real eye opener for him. And these conversations have really helped me in my thinking too.

He also made me love him even more when he agreed to swap a childcare day with another family because the woman was struggling with work days. His comment to me was, "changing days isn't ideal for me, but I'm not going to get in the way of [friend's] career simply for my convenience. She has enough challenges as a woman in the workplace already." Or something similar.

Yes, and I'd never have married anyone who wasn't prepared to accept my principles (feminist, religious and political).
He's become more aware since having our DCs but he's always been quite aware. I think it comes from his family political background, though he could easily have become very conservative.

You are utterly wrong on all counts. But thanks for your thoughts!

IndianaBones

Sad. Terribly sad. What a waste of our time and resources to only be pushing for women's liberation when we could get women into construction jobs.

I suppose it's exactly like cancer research isn't it, so we need to cure cancer, so that just means curing it, doesn't it? Every life sciences graduate from the same course, in every lab, in every country, just carrying out the same task in order to "cure cancer".

Also, you could sponsor a table next year, there's still time: womeninconstructionawards.co.uk/

In the west it's gone way past equality way past equality. Most of the managers where I work won't have a coversation with a woman in their office unless there is a HR person as a witness.

Feminism should be fighting for the equal rights of women in Asia, Africa etc. They've done their job and some in the west.

We've gone way past equality! We'll be wanting an impartial adjudicator in the bedroom of married couples soon! These scheming, lying, nasty women!

What about the Yemen!