Fathers with daughters less sexist

[Neurotrash]

I thought I'd heard of this years ago to be honest.

Personally after marrying a man who was one of 3 boys and now having two boys myself I had to get up to speed with this and do a bit of active tweaking campaigning here and there. Fil not too bad but definitely not as with it on sexism as my own father, who has two daughters.

bbc.in/2Ck4bkB

I’m not so sure. Anecdote rather than evidence but I’m one of 3 daughters and my father is horribly sexist. The misogyny that he comes out with makes me wince on a very regular basis.

I wonder whether some fathers of daughters see women and girls as their property, at least until they pass on that property to other men via marriage, and have their sexist beliefs reinforced.

I wish someone had told my Dad that.....4 daughters....... misogynist (but that was the norm with his generation).

I have two daughters and watching them grow up and listening to them and their friends has shown me how much sexism exists in our society. I won't pretend that I am completely blameless now ... I am WMAM ... but I am more aware than I was.

Only another anecdotal story my dad was the only male in his extended family until my sister and I had sons. Never did our father ever tell us we couldn’t do or be who we wanted to be. Because my mother was ill he did a lot of housework, he did things like brush our hair and plait it, my dh has no interest in that. Although my dh never had long hair where as dad was a bit of a hippy and had really long hair himself.

I grew up knowing what society should be like, but got an eye opener in early relationships.

My father was brought up by his mother and grandmother. His father died early in the war. So despite being 80 now he's very much in support of women's rights, he also never expected women to do housework (he was married twice). Still cooks, always ironed his own shirts etc and been a great father.

Dhs family is odd. None of the women drive, I'm seen as odd because I do, women are expected to cook, even give their husbands a bigger portion of food and the men don't look after the children unless the wife is ill. Now this is on his maternal side, his grandparents had 2 girls and a boy but his grandfather firmly believes all the above and can't even make himself a sandwich. He's 85 so almost of the same time as my own dad.
DH has five cousins from that side, all are males.
DH and his brother have lost their views that they shared with the family since having their own daughters thankfully.

Study is here: academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep/gpy063/5237459

I really want the BBC conclusion to be true (fathers of daughters are less sexist) but I am not sure this study captures everything i’d want to ask to feel confident to demonstrate that. I’d like to know what academics on FWR think of it?

I would agree that life experience of inequality would generally, hopefully tend to make someone more aware of that inequality... though it doesn’t always change attitudes from ‘traditional’ just by having that exposure. Think of attitudes to poverty, disability, race and sex inequality for example- some people know full well the disadvantage inflicted needlessly as an additional moral judgement by society on people already dealing with these disadvantages yet they personally continue to judge away and contribute to it and reinforce the discrimination..

The focus on this particular study was around attitudes to men as ‘main breadwinners’ which doesn’t seem to me to capture all of sexism in one question: of course men’s response to that question might change for practical reasons around their literal experience of male employment vs female employment being recognised as a fact, as much as respondent men’s attitudes changing to recognise in-principle female capability and discrimination against women who work because of the male experience of raising daughters (and presumably in some cases having a female partner/wife who works)

My main point though is the language used in the write up in the academic report - Sheeeeesh we have a long way to go. ‘Gender’ is used consistently throughout to mean ‘sex’. ‘Sex discrimination’, ‘sexism’ ‘patriarchal views’ and other relevant and useful terms are omitted. What’s going on here??!!

Would poverty, disability, race be described in the same ambiguous meaningless way as ‘gender’ is used here to mean ‘sex’ a lot of the time. OF COURSE FUCKING NOT.

Why is it OK to misuse the term ‘sex’ (...with effects that are against the interests of women?)

This really really shows that everyone urgently needs to have the understanding and the confidence to be able to name the problem clearly and articulate ‘sex’ vs ‘gender’. We must be able to campaign and push back on this.

It is essential to be able to see womens problems clearly to tackle them. Women’s cause instantly begins to suffer when everything is wrongly described in this woolly way as ‘gender’..

It needs to become unacceptable to use ‘gender’ as a waffly blanket term ^unless people are deliberately meaning to be sexist*.

It needs to be recognised that doing that gender waffle is an instantly sexist act in and of itself.

It’s not ‘more polite’ than using ‘sex’, it’s not ‘less offensive’ than using sex to anyone’s feelz- (.. any affected people need help to to get over their feelz in that case, and to stop wanting to police others’ language..) it need to be recognised that this ‘gender’ obfuscation is actively harmful to women.

In my anecdotal experience, I don't recognise that conclusion. My father is pretty sexist and has said many openly sexist things directly to me.

However, I have noticed that in the men I know well enough to know about their siblings, men with at least one sister are considerably less sexist than men with only brothers. It's just anecdata, of course, and I couldn't possibly say whether it bears out on a bigger scale.

I think it depends on the individual, there is a sexist culture in my family, and the men who are not sexist are treated with open derision by the others.
My uncle was guilty of such severe violence that my aunt had frequent spells in hospital and ended up divorcing him. His second marriage has worked because he had a near fatal illness, spent a long time in hospital and that changed his attitude.
It seems to me that a lot of men have to have a direct example happen to them or someone they care about before they can see it. I would like to know what it is about that direct example that differs from all the examples that don't touch them.

Just showed DH the article. We have 2 DD's. He said he's never agreed with the idea he should go to work and I stay home, he has always wanted to be the one to stay home. That hasn't changed since DD was born.
However, he is one of 2 boys. I am female with a brother. FIL (and MIL) are way more sexist than my parents and are all roughly same age.

Yes I imagine this is far too individual to really measure.

The research I once heard of was that fathers of daughters tended to vote more liberal/ left wing - however I think that would be somewhat skewed these days!

The only thing I've personally noticed as mum of two boys but from a female heavy family is that I've become very aware of how certain things are very important for young boys to support or offer an antidote to the ott masculinity in society. However if wasn't bothered or interested or aware of patriarchal and sexist structures myself, I might not be aware of these things. If I'd had girls I wouldn't be aware of a few certain subtle things about boy hood dom.

Again, only anecdotal, but this doesn’t ring true to me. I think that misogynistic men compartmentalise, their daughters are the pure Madonna’s, all other women are the whores.

This rings very true in my experience. I have found parents of only boys basically not aware of and not interested in the whole trans ideology thing, even when I talk about how this impacted schools and education, the attitude is like 'it does not affect them so they don't really care'. I see a different response when the parents have girls.

My Dad definitely encouraged me to focus on academia and raised me to be a leader and very independent.

However, he is extremely patriarchal, overprotective to the point of madness of women and judgemental of their looks so, in many ways, he is quite misogynistic.

Eg, I was sexually assaulted in a public place in broad daylight aged 12. He never got angry at the anonymous stranger who grabbed me and felt me up down there. He got angry at me and said I shouldn’t have went out without a male family member and that I was banned from going into town with my friends and was only allowed to wear shapeless full length dresses which covered my arms and down to my ankles when out in future. Made it seem entirely my fault.