Hello all, man here! am i welcome to talk and learn a bit about stuff ?

[PleaseCustomizeCharacter]

Ive done a little browsing in the feminism section and i admit its intriguing, please forgive my ignorance as i dont know alot about this all.

I just want to start by saying i was raised to respect everyone and i truly do, my view on equality is simply if some one, man or woman is good enough to do the specific job they aspire for then they have every right to get said job/goal, again if this is slight ignorance forgive me, i post this topic because i would like to learn and be less ignorant, love me some knowledge.. :)

So i suppose my question is broad and depends on the individual person's view, but what is the over reaching/ultimate goal of feminism ? or what does it mean to you personally ? and please, dont think im trolling or anything i genuinely want to learn a thing or two, thanks :)

Jurgen - not all of the comments about husbands in my post were about him per se, just the sort of attitudes women encounter even from men who are deemed decent and “hands on”. He did get an unbroken night’s sleep last night, which was galling, but if I wake up first it’s just pointless waking him up too so I just let him sleep and hope that one rested parent means a rest for me the next day!

To be honest, until our children were born, I didn’t realise that he wasn’t very pragmatic in terms of household stuff - we were both pretty slack to be honest. When they were born I discovered that he was bizarrely capable of waking past things that obviously needed doing with some urgency (eg laundry, sink full of empty bottles, etc). I pointed this out very early on - I told him not to ask if I needed help, but to just bloody do something that he could see needed doing. I did have to remind him that I wasn’t magically more knowledgable about caring for babies and running a home, I had to make the effort to learn and so did he. He got it very quickly and we haven’t had to have that discussion again. It irked me that my mode was to pick up any slack and his was to ignore, but I know that’s a common issue.

In terms of sharing the load of actual parenting, he has always been great, but I’m not going to give him a medal for it - he’s just doing his job as far as I’m concerned. At one point he was home alone with one baby for a couple of weeks while I was in hospital with the other, and the way people acted you’d think he cured cancer or something - as if women don’t look after babies alone all the bloody time.

Italian, you know exactly what I was getting at - see, two can play this game :-)

For a woman who can write a post like Death did and yet still seem to put up with the circumstances she wrote about is either an exaggeration (seems it was), or huge cognitive dissonance. What is the point of being an FWR style feminist if you aren't going to iron out this shitty behaviour in a potential partner as soon as it occurs to you? Men as a class may indulge in this bollocks, but individual men are perfectly capable of change and adaptation.

Anyway, she answered my question, so let's leave it at that for the sake of the thread.

I was the same Deathgrip, enjoyed the post, nodding along, then disappointed at the end. Glad you explained it but now you need to take a leisurely shower and dh care for kiddies. (Take at least 1 hour)

MissReginaPhilange, hope you're still watching. Just wanted to say hope all is well with your cancer scan tomorrow.

Thanks for your replies Brokendoll, Lang, Angry, Spare.

You were disappointed because I understand all this and simultaneously have a DH who takes too long in the shower? It might be bloody annoying when managing toddler twins but if it were a divorcable offence I doubt there’d be too many married men out there.

I wasn’t exaggerating, I merely referenced a couple of annoying things. Why that’s extrapolated into being married to a useless tosser, I have no idea.

@leggere bless your heart thankyou x

What is the point of being an FWR style feminist if you aren't going to iron out this shitty behaviour in a potential partner as soon as it occurs to you? Men as a class may indulge in this bollocks, but individual men are perfectly capable of change and adaptation.

Surely if you'd spent any time in Relationships you'd know that such behaviour often develops at times when the woman simply does not have the resources to nip it in the bud or move on (during pregnancy, after the birth of a child). And women are still disadvantaged enough by such things to make upping and leaving a hell of an inconvenience, to be weighed up against realistic chances of either finding anyone better or it actually being easier and preferable to be alone.

In other words, women do not necessarily have it in their power to either predict or control shitty behaviour from a male partner, and society is stacked against women extricating themselves if it takes time for such behaviour to manifest - and the sheer number of seemingly decent men who indulge in such behaviour (or worse) at some point or other often makes the idea of throwing it away and finding an actual 'good egg' seem like a pipe dream.

Deathgrip Well said.

The mere thought exercise of twins is exhausting!

i wont ever bleed monthly or have the pain of child birth, i use hard-on simply because women, wont get a hard-on lol.

in some ways i think were doing ok sex education/sex wise, women dont have to "lie back and think of england" they can enjoy the act without guilt now and i think its good, if a woman wants to do more than missionary and simply just reproduce, cool in a good relationship i think its good to experiment and try things youve not done.

If this is where we're starting from with the "good, open-minded guys, who just want to genuinely learn more".... .

@JurgenKloppsCat
Italian, you know exactly what I was getting at - see, two can play this game :-)

I didn't, honestly, I am not good at reading between the lines at all! I do now! But only because you spelled it out. I thought you were being mean!

OK, leaving it there for the sake of the thread but (just quickly) "What is the point of being an FWR style feminist if you aren't going to iron out this shitty behaviour in a potential partner as soon as it occurs to you?" It's not so simple, my dh is amazing but he still makes mistakes and he doesn't get why I am a feminist, and I have told him. He only sees his own horizon and, for me, part of being a feminist is seeing the horizon of other women.

feminists are not responsible for educating men.

Oooh dunno - we could womansplain things!

@JurgenKloppsCat . I am really unimpressed that after @Deathgrips amazing post in sleep deprived circumstances you asked such a disingenuous question. You might as well have said "well if the world is that bad why don't you ask them to stop it so you can get off" It isn't only Deathgrip's husband who has contributed to the patriarchy. Many of us have ourselves, both before we were enlightened and probably unconsciously still from time to time. Calling a new Mother out on her love for her husband as if it is incompatible with what is a very mainstream feminist view of the world is unreasonable.

I was hoping that someone else might ask this question, but why did you have kids with such a selfish twat? After that post, I am totally confused.

‘Why do so many men reveal themselves to be selfish twats when they become fathers?’

Fixed it for you....

Where’s @thebewilderness with the rules?

Because of course when men are selfish twats it’s women’s fault... women are meant to have seen the selfish twattery and then taken responsibility for making men into better people, better fathers, better husbands and if they haven’t been successful at it (while running their own lives and taking up the slack for communities, families etc) then they are to blame for their own situation....

I cannot roll my own eyes enough at this....

Do you know who is responsible for men? Is it too radical to suggest on this fecking board that it might be men?

@JurgenKloppsCat read Evan Stark on coercive control for a background on why no-one asked that question on FWR.

(And why the further point about ‘ironing out’ problematic men’s problems is wrongheaded)

You put it much better than me Offred

Our roles regresssd a bit when we had dc, on reflection I probably changed as much as dh, the internal forces telling me “a good mother does this”, “people will judge me if I don’t” - this doesn’t mean i was a paid up non-feminist just I was conditioned a certain way and found it hard to resist while in the shell shocked state of new motherhood.

I am a bloke too!!

I feel the collective groans!

I confess to being a lurker on this site for a while. I got here because I wanted to read about the other side of the gender debate. I was quite fascinated and educated by the "facilitated man" threads, and have been trying to read more stuff on here ever since. I have tried to find other sources, sites where women share their views on the subject but this is by far the best I have found so far. Does anyone have any links?

Anyway. I feel I have always supported the idea of feminism, right from being brought up by a single mother. But as a bloke I realise I have been socialized into a world that contains advantages that is quite hard (for me anyway) to know are there, until you really start to read a lot about the other perspective. From reading many posts in this thread I am very taken with the one saying "I don't want to feel like a walk on part of a man show". That for me is quite hard hitting to hear as a chap. I think many men don't understand that that is how women can feel.

My overriding question from reading all the stuff I have read, which includes a few feminist sources is: Is there a manifesto anywhere that people feel at least to starts to represent the changes that need to be made in society to at least start to make the improvements necessary?

Btw I also started a separate thread with this post. I don't know if that would be better? I don't want to hijack someone else's thread and conversations. Let me know if I am doing something wrong here.

*almost started a separate thread...

Millicent's List for men with questions

1. Stop using porn
2. Stop using prostitutes

3.Take full and equal responsibility for domestic work and child care

1. Always challenge misogynist attitudes and behaviour in their workplaces
2. Always challenge misogynist attitudes, speech and behaviors in their social lives.
3. Stop hitting people
4. Stop killing people
5. Stop raping people.