How do you cope with very unfeminist views in your proximity?

[Justrunwithit]

I have always been very live and let live in my views since I come from an area where conflict has been rife and so have always tried to be tolerant. But now I have an au pair (not because we are posh, or because we are exploitative, it’s a very good gig!) who is from a very narrow, patriarchal religious background and I’m finding it hard to cope. Much harder than I thought!!! E.g. her church thinks that we should all be in mourning, as they are, for the repeal of the eighth amendment in Ireland. Women are child-havers and homeschoolers, men are the head of the church and family etc. No secular education or college or anything. Against gay marriage. Basically critical thought against what the menz tell you is bad.

What gentle reading would you suggest to challenge and provoke thought? Have also asked this on the reading thread? I guess I feel like it’s not my place to say her beliefs are wrong, just as I’d be outraged if she told me mine were, but we are discussing reading quite a lot and I’d like some good but introductory books that suggest that equality and bodily autonomy can be a thing?

NB I have done a lot of Christian reading in my time and attended a heavily Christian school and have signed up to read some Christian novels so it’s not that I am just like ‘you are wrong. Here’s why.’ Although I’m sure that’s what we both secretly think!

Although she is very sweet and didn’t challenge at all my diatribe re the repeal the 8th campaign when she asked me what I thought. I only know HOW against it her church is because I looked at their website and was like #gilead

I think the power dynamic is so difficult from you to her that you should be extra tolerant. Living with someone who is your employer... really hard. She knows what you think. That's enough.

I was going to post similar (about dealing with people in your own life and social circle with really off putting antifeminist views) after I ruined my Saturday talking to my partners friend, who I had really got on with and had a lot of shared interests, but it turned out he is (though he adamantly denies it) a fully fledged MRA.

It’s really really hard, I’ve learned, to change peoples’ views by just debating their actual views. It’s more important to address the deeper reasons and in general to try and educate people with reputable information and real life counter parts to your theories. And then still all you can do is hope that they come to the conclusions that are evident by themselves.

I understand what you are going through. It’s really hard when you meet normal kind people who you get along with and then find out they hold some opinions that you find truly troubling, and not just opinions you don’t agree with.

The guy I was talking to kept saying he didn’t label himself an MRA and getting cross with me for saying he “aligned with their views” even though he absolutely did. And that is scary to learn of someone frankly.

I’m

You can’t as you are her employer.

Given the employer/employee dynamic, I think you should leave this alone. I'm surprised you're having chats to the extent you feel the need to seek out reading material for her.

What are you going to do once sourced and given to her? Check she's read them? Invest in continual debate with a view to her turning her back on her church?

What if she doesn't change her views and doesn't want to leave her church, but feels she may lose her job if she doesn't speak and think in the way you want her to?

Her views are very rigid. I'm not sure you're going about all this in the right way tho. If there is even a right way. She's your employee.

Sorry, I wrote all the post below then reread my OP and realised the obvious omission I made! I come from a book-heavy background and she’s ASKING me for reading recommendations.

Yeah, I totally see all your points, and I haven’t really shared ANY of my views with her, apart from the repeal one before I knew her church’s view. But she explicitly asked me, so I said that I very much supported repeal because xyz.

BUT, she is a very questioning young woman, and I really admire her for upping sticks and putting herself in a situation where she is outside of that background... I guess because on some level she is interested in other points of view (not necessarily because she wants to, or ever will change hers). For whatever reason my background has A LOT of reading and books in it, and as I was saying on he reading thread I just started, I’ve gjven her completely inoffensive things so far, things I thought she’d like such as I capture the castle, Rebecca and the pursuit of love, and was telling her that while I don’t normally read a lot of what is in the USA explicitly promoted as ‘christian fiction’, I thought she’d love Jane Eyre as it has a very interesting and passionate Christian theme.

I have always identified as a feminist without doing a great deal of formal feminist reading. I guess where my hand was hovering was over Fingersmith, one of my favourite books which I think she would love but am I being deliberately provocative given its gay themes?! And also the Handmaid’s tale, which I think I WILL suggest but with a disclaimer that she might find it a bit too controversial.

It’s interesting and I guess it massively lets me off the hook that you feel it’s my duty as employer NOT to be trying to be too educational. Even if she’s asking. I have always surfed the safe and non-committal line but was suddenly like, am
I being a massive hypocrite, not saying ‘no, sorry I don’t really believe that having twelve children is woman’s highest honour etc’. So now I feel much happier that I have been reticent and you have talked me down off a kind of ledge.

(I hasten to add I haven’t been sitting her down with an annotated de Beauvoir and then testing her on it. I’ve never actually read de Beauvoir).

So if she’s asking me for recommendations, should I just stick to the safe course then? E.g. the other day I had Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult which is a nice safe commmercial read but interesting (Amish girl has baby and baby disappears) and the aforesaid Fingersmith both at my fingertips and she has asked for another rec - which would you choose?!

This all makes me think that I might start a new thread for myself about great feminist reads. Or is there already one that anyone could link to?

Thanks all!

"Take My Hands" about Dr Mary Verghese might interest her.

Okay, that was soooo waffly. Let me rephrase:

Sheltered young woman in your employ says, ‘right, Mary, what’s next on the reading list?!’

Do you say a) ‘... What Katy Did?’

b) The Power

Powershower we may beckon from the same hood. Keep ‘er lit.

Basically critical thought against what the menz tell you is bad

You lost me with the "menz" comment. Critical thinking and the use of "menz" are a contradiction.

You come across as quite patronising and condescending.

Okay, I’m sorry it came across that way. Something I read today I found very upsetting in the way that it pertained to women and I reacted to that.

Thanks for sharing your view.

I think Jane Eyre is a genius call. Maybe the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, South Riding, the Bluest Eye, the Color Purple?

I would have thought the most subversive thing you could do (in a good way) is to ask her opinion on these books and encourage her to argue her case, whether you agree with it or not. Teach her that debating is something you are really open to and that her opinion is worth hearing.

Reckon so, OP. I am friends with the women from the baby group I attended when my daughter was tiny. It was in a church hall and I think all the other mums are regular churchgoers. I'm the only heathen (brought up Presbyterian though and went to Sunday school every week till I was about 14). At least two of them changed their FB profiles to include the "Love Both" overlay a few weeks back...I'm definitely more a "Together For Yes" type of gal. (I have a sneaking suspicion that one or two of the others may be as well, church and all). We don't talk about it. They liked my Processions 2018 photos. Perhaps a suffragettes vs suffragists discussion is in order. I think I would have been a suffragist.

I don't think of The Power as a feminist book.

How about a novel such as The Women's Room by Marilyn French?
The Red Tent.
Or Mary Beard - Women and Power.

Agree with The Color Purple as a recommendation, which could be eye opening in all kinds of ways while still being clearly rooted in a viewpoint that won't come across as being opposed to Christianity. Jane Eyre is a good one too.

1 Timothy 2:11-12
then the Mary Beard book (or online lecture, it may be a TED talk) about women and muthos
proves that point from Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing new under the sun".
Actually the book of Ecclesiastes itself is worth a read. It's the best bit of the whole lot IMO.

annandale those are great suggestions, thank you, a couple of them I haven’t read.

Going to reread The Color Purple now, it’s 20 years since I read it and I remember reading it in one sitting. But it goes back to what I was trying to say kind of badly at the beginning - given it has gay themes etc, is it too confrontational to suggest that when I know that those are themes that her religion is explicitly and openly against? When really I am perfectly able to put together a list of very good reads that don’t contain anything challenging?

Repeal the 8th is the first time I broke my lifelong policy of never commenting on political issues in public. I was very upset by attitudes flushed out by the Ulster rape case and felt I had to stand up and be counted, which felt very uncomfortable. I suppose what I am debating is do I go back to my safe space of being neutral and non-committal, or do I say, these are books that were very eye-opening and thought-provoking for me at your stage, or this is something that was recommended to me about women, take it/don’t take it as you feel fit.

Do you think that’s the answer, the next time she asks just say, ‘what kind of read are you looking for, something fun and nice or something that might be more challenging?’

upstart, thanks to you too, I have never read either The Women’s Room or The Red Tent, OR Women and Power although I have had the last one on my list for a while so all these suggestions are good for me at least!

Have just googled ‘difference between suffragette and suffragist’.

Off to google Timothy.

No need to apologize, OP. You're patronage is what was requested, and so you can hardly help but but sound like what you are providing.

I suggest you give her the Hunger Games novels to start.

Timothy was that for my education?! Although I note we both wear pearls so it’s game over, clearly.

bewilderness thank you, that is nice of you. I think I wrote badly and sounded like I was trying to foist it onto her. Plus I did say something disrespectful about her religion, so fair enough to be called out.

Hunger games is a brilliant suggestion!

The whole situation has made me wonder about tolerance and how it works.

How about "Fatal Decision: Edith Cavell WWI nurse". V religious and stonkingly brave woman.

Personally I would offer her a pile of books for her room or tell her to help herself to x bookshelf & make sure that pile/shelf is a good mix.
I think watching your life/choices you make is likely to have a far greater impact than you trying to push her towards particular books. Be the change you want to see etc

Those verses out of Timothy used to make me very indignant as a child! They are probably my earliest memories of sexism (been reading that thread).

Actually waddle has the best idea. Just let her help herself to all sorts. That's what I did as a child/young teenager.

waddle good idea.

Yes I have thought of that angle! I hope that I would (be the change etc). However it is really hard clinging to this pedestal I tell you .

She'd hate the power! I'm feminist and I wanted to like it but when the gang of marauding women rape a man I got turned off. I wanted to read a book where the balance of power is in favour of women instead. I didn't want to read a book where women abuse men instaed of the other way around. It was a good book but ........... maybe it would turn her off feminism and it's important not to do that.

I wouldn't be able to resist asking her questions like 'do you think people who are anti-abortion do enough to make society an easy place to bring an unplanned baby in to' and do you think it is women or men who bear the shame / blame of pregnancy? what could religious people do, do you think, to make an unplanned pregnancy easier? do they do that do you think? do you think the financial sacrifices of parenthood are shared equally by mothers and fathers?

I wouldnt' be able to resist asking her these questions. Maybe not all at once though.