Why are so many women facilitating the patriarchy?

[readysetcake]

As I sit here trapped under a sleeping baby perusing the internet, it eems to me that so many women online are ready to tear other women down for every little thing. Particularly when it comes to to parenting, but not exclusively.

I’m not one for the sisterhood supporting women regardless of their behaviour. If your behaviour is disckish I believe you should be called on it, regardless of sex or gender. Yet it seems to me that unless women are the “perfect” parent, daughter, wife, worker then they are vilified online by many.

Im sure this has been discussed before but it just seems to me to be getting worse. I feel that while women are tearing other women down for not living up to a perfect ideal the progress of women is hampered and women are kept down. Do people agree?

Women are criticised by other women for bringing children into low income families, critised for bringing up entitled children in well off families, criticised for not having independent wealth when they are stay at home mums, criticised for not spending enough time with their children when they work, criticised for letting themselves go, criticised for spending too much effort and money on their appearance. I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Is this negative narrative an accidental byproduct of social media? Is it women putting other women down in a bid to make them look good to men or just make themselves feel better about their own life choices? Or is it men perpetuating it and women are for some reason falling into line with it as women have done for centuries?

Or am I talking out of my arse and it’s all in my head?!

“Men’s competitive nature never seems to inhibit the progress of other men though.”

Pure bullshit, men who do not succeed in competence hierarchies (which for everyone requires some amount of competition!) are absolutely invisible to societies general radar, and what’s worse it is always the fault/responsibility of the individual man.

In addition many men compete physically and when that turns violent the loser can end up dead! As big of a problem as gender based violence is men are far more likely to be violent and murder other men than they are women. So a great many men’s failure to assert themselves finds their “progress” impeded by being in the dirt.

We are also guilty of in-group preferences (both men and women), so we tend to gravitate towards people we feel are like us. The solution is to build social groups where the liklihood of any given person being a member of the opposite sex, or in this particular case stay at home mothers vs working mothers.

A lot of people seek out similar to them as it validates their own choices, especially where their is anxiety about their own choice. This Is also where general misogyny can thrive too as men with certain negative views about women will congregate (as in the infamous locker room talk although also look at men who use prostitutes for worse examples).

I don’t know how much this will help but I am trying to encourage my primary school age son as much in his friendships with his female peers as his boy ones, as hopefully he’ll identify like minded girls as being the same as him, and that needs to be done early.

We need to stop just talking about diversity and especially trying to enforce it legally, and actually try to live it at a cultural level. Perhaps most importantly we need to be genuinely curious about the people who hold different idealologies than us as I think that’s where the real cultural blockage lies at the present moment. Wether it be the right/left political divide or even MRAs/Feminists.