Women who aren't feminists

[HumourlessFeminist]

I've been thinking about this for a while.

I was blissfully unaware of feminism for far too long 😳, probably until a few years after DS was born (and after a few years of MNing). Is this a relatively common experience for women? Are women more likely to become feminists as they experience more of what the patriarchy pushes upon them throughout their lives? And why do some women never become feminists?

Thinking about my older female relatives (some now passed away) who do not or would not have embraced the term feminism, some of the following apply:

They were married to good men
They were conditioned to traditional roles through their upbringing and education

Or
The possibility of living a more fulfilled life was so out-of-the-question that it was better to embrace the status quo

I also think some younger women say ‘I don’t believe in feminism’ when they actually mean ‘I want to have a white wedding and be a SAHM when I have my babies’, rather than ‘I want unequal pay, male violence and no sexual rights’.

For me too, feminism didn’t hit me until I was a mother and, for one reason and another, I suddenly found myself out of a job, with a baby to care for and into a full-blown marital crisis. Breastfeeding and the way breastfeeding (free, female-controlled and natural) has been commercially undermined by the food industry (male-controlled big business) for decades, was also a massive wake-up call for me.

There is then what I think the most reasonable position of anti-feminism, which is anti third wave, which thinks obsession over policing language has gone too far, that such petty grievances just make women look weak - I do understand where those women are coming from and it's sad that this is what a lot of people think feminism now consists of, grievance Olympics

That is very accurate. I find feminism, or certainly as generally promulgated on here an odd mixture of superiority and victimhood.

The superiority element is from posters who proclaim how much they hate femininity, dresses, make- up etc and will preach to feminine women like me that I'm deluding myself by thinking I choose to dress and present myself in a way that suits me - I'm only doing this because I buy into cultural conditioning (and presumably they don't)

On the other hand - I'm told that I'm just lucky because I don't accept wife work. I'm accused of victim shaming by suggesting the key to sorting that out is for women and their partners to sort out their domestic arrangements rather than waiting for the patriarchy to crumble.

It wasn't luck that made me dump an alcoholic boyfriend at 22. It wasn't luck that made me select my husband, ultra dependable, devoted to his son husband at age 25. It wasn't luck that made me think this man had over a decade of living on his own before he met me, he does his own laundry, ironing and buys birthday and Christmas presents for his mother - so why on earth would I start doing this for him? It wasn't luck that ensured everything to do with bringing up our son was shared equally.

Feminism on here seems terribly good at identifying problems but not much good at solving them. For example the thread about shaving legs and bikini line before going swimming. No- one notices or cares. So what if 20 years girls at your school laughed? Looking around any public swimming pool will quickly show the vast majority of people fail by a considerable standard to meet any stereotypical ideal of beauty.

I think feminism obsesses with things other women just ignore. For example the "beach body ready " adverts again look at any beach to see 1000s of women who clearly ignored them. Or the "women are always expected to make the effort to be attractive"- again look around any office, shop, street- most people are just ordinary.

Or on another thread a poster was talking about the constant male gaze on her after her return from maternity leave. Really? I doubt colleagues think anything more than thank goodness you're back and I don't have to cover your work. Or another poster who thinks other women complimenting her is veiled criticism.

The other thing that strikes me is the sheer negativity. The idea that all women are in a constant state of fear. That and the self- loathing. I had never come across the sort of self- loathing of one's body which is described on here, to the extent that not only is it considered normal for teenage girls to feel that way, but almost healthy as they are recognising the oppression of the patriarchy. I've seen comment after comment saying that it's quite understandable that teenage girls would prefer to be trans. I actually think that is negativity to the point of being dangerous.

Empowerment is not achieved by stripping or being a high class happy hooker. On those themes, there are plenty of arguments against pornography and prostitution based simply on common decency and the good of society. Those arguments will overlap with radical feminism but they do not need radical feminism to support them.

Equally women are not empowered by feminism if all it does is provide a way of looking at the world, identify problems (and I do think magnify small or non-existent problems) but offers no solution other than smash the patriarchy.

Great post lass.

I don't think that the idea of 'The Patriarchy' implies a deliberate conspiracy, BadMoon. I think it's a shorthand term for what has arisen, as you say, out of certain natural advantages and therefore is going to be staunchly defended by those served well by it.

My mum (now in her mid-fifties) isn’t one. I think if it boils down to it, that in her mind, she considers it to be for “weak” people. She always says: “if you put your mind on something you can do anything”.

She didn’t enjoy a privileged upbringing, far from it. I won’t go into details, but there are a lot of valid and painful reasons why we haven’t been in contact with her family since I was around 10. She’s very talented. Her first job was in banking, at the same time she was studying for a university degree (after hours, completed with brilliant results)- she wasn’t allowed to study. Then she had me, a short while after she discovered that she didn’t enjoy putting me in nursery (or similar arrangements), so she decided to become self-employed (in a male dominated sector). That was fun. I accompanied her practically everywhere. I vividly remember expos in Frankfurt etc, together with my sister later on… When I was around 12, the whole enterprise boomed. She’s now an important player in her sector, very proud of her. When she speaks everybody listens, regardless of gender/sex/whatever. That’s quite a talent because a lot of people (that often have valid points), speak with a passion that goes unheard- rendering their efforts useless.

I studied feminist theory in a module at uni and thought it was interesting, I always voted because of sacrifices the suffragettes had made etc. but generally I thought all the big battles had been won by previous generations so would never have classed myself as a feminist. I had a vision of them being the sorts of people who had nothing better to do than get upset about words like chairman and mankind and cast scorn on any woman who wore makeup and high heels. In my late 20s however, I got a temping admin job at an engineering company after being made redundant and was working in an office with a lot of men, many of whom were the same age as my parents at the time (late 50s). They would have been in their 20s when the equal pay act was brought in and would have lived through the era of women burning their bras etc but seemingly they hadn’t noticed. It was like stepping back in time to another era. A possibility of a permanent job came up and I enquired about the pay and my boss said, completely without any awareness of the implications of what he was saying, “obviously you wouldn’t be paid any more than any of the other women who work here.” By that he meant it was an admin job and it would be on the same pay scale as the other admin jobs in the company, but it was the fact that he saw admin jobs as women’s jobs (and to be fair they were all done by women) and he genuinely didn’t recognise that as sexist that left me speechless. He regularly used to say things like “I’m not sexist like the other men who work here. I fully support women in the workplace.” He didn’t think he was sexist because he wasn’t misogynistic and didn’t make lewd jokes at the expense of women, but he could not recognise that his assumptions about the types of work women were supposed to do was still sexist. I wasn’t really clued up on employment law and equality in the workplace before then, but just started reading about it spurred on by comments I’d hear on a daily basis and became quite militant about it in the few months I worked there. It really opened my eyes as well as to how these stereotypes were perpetuated. I once got in a bit later than usual as I’d visited the dentist first thing and mentioned in passing that my gums were sore as she’d been prodding about with various instruments of torture. One of the young apprentices happened to be standing by my desk at the time doing some photocopying (obviously all the general admin and stationery equipment was kept near the admin ladies’ desks) and he expressed shock at the fact that my dentist was a woman, saying “I’ve never heard of a woman dentist before.” He was about 18 yrs old in 2007 and he had never heard of a woman becoming a dentist. It was quite an eye opener. I became very interested in reading up about things like the causes of the gender pay gap and started to become very aware of how our choices are shaped by strict parameters around the roles we’re expected to take regarding childcare. My boyfriend, now husband, had been earning less than me when we first met in our 20s but within 10 years as a result of the fact that shared parental leave was not available until 2015, the career choices we made resulted in him earning more than double my salary and now I’m a SAHM and earn a big fat zero as the cost of childcare v the amount we would have made on 2 salaries was negligible and as I was the lower earner by that point, I’m the one who sacrificed my career and he’s the breadwinner who doesn’t get to spend as much time as he would like with his children.

On top of all of that, the introduction that I had to the overt nature of gendered marketing aimed at children once I became a parent tipped me over the edge. Even considering I worked in marketing previously, the effects of it on young brains hungry for information, never occurred to me before and it is one of the things that makes me angry on a regular basis. My peak moment was looking for a pair of shorts in Sainsbury’s for my daughter and finding only hotpants (actual hotpants with a crotch lower than the shorts - like knickers) and these being available to buy for a three year old. I have to confess that I do get a little irritated by women who claim not to be feminists (even though that was me for a long time) because although we might have it better legally than a lot of women in a lot of other places in the world, particularly in the workplace, we still have so far to go on a day to day basis because gender stereotypes are presented as the norm from the second we’re out of the womb and these reinforce the idea that masculinity is the norm and femininity is “less than”.
I personally enjoy getting dressed up in make up and high heels, I actually prefer being a SAHM to my job (although I think that has more to do with the actual job I had than anything else) and don’t believe enjoying those things makes me any less of a feminist. I do, however, feel annoyed at the fact that in some ways my life was preordained to an extent (choice of subjects at school, things I do in my spare time, career) and that many of the life choices I have made were still within certain boundaries of a society that is structured around stereotypical gender roles and I didn’t even realise at the time how much I was being influenced by them.

It's really interesting that different posters are talking about having such different experiences of being a feminist.

As a feminist, I feel:
Strong - I can see inequalities, and I can often do something about them
Radical - probably because so few other people seem to think there's a problem
Frustrated - see above
Alone - apart from on MN 🙂, I need to find my (local) feminist tribe

I love these boards, and how much I'm learning from them. I feel like I want to understand my feminism, to have thought about lots of different issues, and to have considered my position in relation to them.

I am happily lone these days after a successful marriage that ended amiably. I tried dating but tbh did not feel like compromising life and interests to form another couple. I've sailed for decades which when I started in the 80s was very male dominated and still is a bit. I sail now with a women only sailing group all of whom are into this very physical and potentially dangerous but highly skilled sport. I read that as being a feminist mindset. The stereotypes are ignored by us all. I've just taken the next step to buying a boat share so I can skipper more. I've met more women skippers in the last few years than in my whole life!

These are women that are natural feminista. We don't make a fuss, we just sail without men.

We do get stared at by passing yachts searching for the man in charge, or maybe that's just our inner feminist chuckle we have to ourselves. Conversation is great. We don't really talk about men or the absence of men, we talk about navigation, and sailing and politics and careers.

Women didn't get together and sail like this when I was a teenager. I think we've liberated ourselves as sailors.

That is very accurate. I find feminism, or certainly as generally promulgated on here an odd mixture of superiority and victimhood.

The superiority element is from posters who proclaim how much they hate femininity, dresses, make-up etc and will preach to feminine women like me that I'm deluding myself by thinking I choose to dress and present myself in a way that suits me - I'm only doing this because I buy into cultural conditioning (and presumably they don't).

On the other hand - I'm told that I'm just lucky because I don't accept wife work. I'm accused of victim shaming by suggesting the key to sorting that out is for women and their partners to sort out their domestic arrangements rather than waiting for the patriarchy to crumble.

It wasn't luck that made me dump an alcoholic boyfriend at 22. It wasn't luck that made me select my husband, ultra dependable, devoted to his son husband at age 25. It wasn't luck that made me think this man had over a decade of living on his own before he met me, he does his own laundry, ironing and buys birthday and Christmas presents for his mother - so why on earth would I start doing this for him? It wasn't luck that ensured everything to do with bringing up our son was shared equally.

Feminism on here seems terribly good at identifying problems but not much good at solving them. For example the thread about shaving legs and bikini line before going swimming. No-one notices or cares. So what if 20 years girls at your school laughed? Looking around any public swimming pool will quickly show the vast majority of people fail by a considerable standard to meet any stereotypical ideal of beauty.

I think feminism obsesses with things other women just ignore. For example the "beach body ready " adverts again look at any beach to see 1000s of women who clearly ignored them. Or the "women are always expected to make the effort to be attractive"- again look around any office, shop, street- most people are just ordinary.

Or on another thread a poster was talking about the constant male gaze on her after her return from maternity leave. Really? I doubt colleagues think anything more than thank goodness you're back and I don't have to cover your work. Or another poster who thinks other women complimenting her is veiled criticism.

The other thing that strikes me is the sheer negativity. The idea that all women are in a constant state of fear. That and the self- loathing. I had never come across the sort of self- loathing of one's body which is described on here, to the extent that not only is it considered normal for teenage girls to feel that way, but almost healthy as they are recognising the oppression of the patriarchy. I've seen comment after comment saying that it's quite understandable that teenage girls would prefer to be trans. I actually think that is negativity to the point of being dangerous.

Empowerment is not achieved by stripping or being a high class happy hooker. On those themes, there are plenty of arguments against pornography and prostitution based simply on common decency and the good of society. Those arguments will overlap with radical feminism but they do not need radical feminism to support them.

Equally women are not empowered by feminism if all it does is provide a way of looking at the world, identify problems (and I do think magnify small or non-existent problems) but offers no solution other than smash the patriarchy.

I agree wholeheartedly with most of this post. I know this may be heresy to say on here, but I think many of the tactics third wave feminists are infamous for employing are often those very same tactics employed by the trans lobby, just with different objectives.

In terms of the eschewal of feminism by many young women, I speculate that this may often be down to the fact that most people view the world as a collection of individuals rather than the amorphous blob of 'men' as many feminists seem to.

Despite class analysis undoubtedly having it's uses, most people will in my experience be able to influence their life much more effectively by focusing on individual relationships - the individual in charge of promoting you, the individual you've committed to spending the rest of your life with, etc.

....and before I get the accusation of mansplaining thrown at me like usual, I'd like to point out that I'm simply 'mansploring' the subject.

Mostly, the younger women I know don't call themselves feminists because they've been convinced that feminists are a bunch of bitter old hags who don't want them to have any fun which isn't my experience of feminism or feminists at all. They also seem to think 'empowerment' has anything to do with it, when it doesn't.

I thought the empowerment of women was a large part of feminism?

Well, you were wrong.

I'm not really sure what a feminist is other than a woman who articulates her experience, and then challenges the aspects of it that she feels are unjust or oppressive. Isn't that it?

Of course you can also be well versed in the more academic theoretical side.....but it is not absolutely necessary.

For me a lot my feminism began with being centred in my body - not denying it; not denying my biology. Paying attention to the menstrual cycle; celebrating fertility and sexuality; all of the uniquely female bodily experiences: the goddess.

Much of the feminist movement has been focussed on equal rights - which is entirely correct, but also too much, for me, on repressing the biology: " Women are just like men". And that has occurred because women have been oppressed because of their body; their biology. Women and their bodily functions have been devalued. And women have also been entirely reduced to their biological functions.

We now seem to have come full circle - as a result of the trans ideology - in reclaiming, once more, our biological difference.

Lasswiadelicateair:

Cannot say I have inhabited the type of feminist world you speak of, myself. It all seems very negative and superficial. For me, being a woman means inhabiting, deeply & fully, my body. Being a woman is in the body, not in the head. But also in the absolute recognition, at the end of the day, of my humanity. My individuality.

Cannot say I have inhabited the type of feminist world you speak of, myself. It all seems very negative and superficial

I have not inhabited it in real life. It is the impression I have formed from the online version on here.

zzzz:

Do we really need such descriptors, though?

I am a woman. this is an inescapable fact. Not that I want to escape it.

Apart from that I am simply a human being.

I’m only in my early twenties and I’ve been a feminist since my early teens. My parents or family never really spoke about it. I’ve always been, how should I put this... unfortunate looking? and I was bullied a lot by boys throughout school. I think because of this I saw just how sexist and misogynist men can be, especially if they’re not attracted to you. Whereas, a lot of my female peers still don’t see this because guys will behave very differently to them when they’re attractive

I can honestly say that I'm not a feminist. The word scares me, admittedly I know very little about it. Any mention of feminism and I run a mile- I always assume it's far too radical for me to be part of. In fact, I never even read feminism posts on MN.

Lasswiadelicateair

I've only come to Mumsnet as a result of the trans ideology. Never posted or even read it before. Just the last two months or so. i have certainly found a sisterhood - and yet still feel individual differences with certain people and posts. That's O.k though!

😄 Pinkyyy, and yet you've read this thread.

Isn't feminism just about recognising sisterhood with other women, in spite of individual differences. I've never used the feminist label - even though I've been labelled with it by others, simply because I've been vocal about injustice and speak as I find it.

HumourlessFeminist I was intrigued, I thought perhaps maybe I was a feminist already and I just didn't know it yet, still not sure to be honest