Not My Nigel!

[charis]

Can we have a balancing thread to celebrate our beloved sons and partners? I'm absolutely sick of the whataboutery and the cries of misandry 😒

It's a fucking miracle we ever go near them but we do.

Anyway. Mine got the fire lit on my birthday and gave me really thoughtful presents. What does yours do? Cos we hate men obviously.

My DS' are Nigels, despite having a very not-Nigel as a father (ex-h) DS1 organised their pocket-money so my mothers day present last year was a donation to a feminist charity and DS2 is very GC and gets angsty about the KWs in our jails amongst other things. They give me hope for the future.

Although DS1 is at uni he finds my 'are you woke yet' line of questioning hilarious yet disrespectful, "as if" apparently.

When I first met dh friends half of them were women - proper women friends not just girlfriends of male friends. The sort of women I would be friends with had I been at his university. They all adored him. Decided to marry him there and then.

Awww at all your Nigels. And a huge shout-out to Mr BoF and yer man who crosses the road to avoid scaring women. Now that's really "woke" in the true sense.

My not so stealth boast is that I told DS (11) the "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son" thing and he got it immediately where so many Nigels failed.

Ah, that's brilliant- gives you hope, doesn't it?

I’ve had to name change for this

Do you know, I started off writing a completely different post and then changed my mind. I used to be the career high earner amazeballs person and I think probably I couldn’t let go of anything so just took all the organising and the mental load in my stride. I positively encouraged him not to think. I just did everything and he, being a naturally passive sort, just went along with it. He’s perfectly capable and was a SAHD for almost a year, but then I had a really bad shock to the system with an illness which has left me disabled. I’m mobile ish but need to rest a lot and we have a toddler and a house and I’m basically on my arse mentally trying to adjust from being someone who raced around to someone who can barely walk.

He has never once wavered. He just mucked in, took on what he knew (cleaning) and tried to do what he didn’t know (laundry and cooking). We’re still working it out but have definitely decided that whatever is needed to enable me to cook is a worthwhile measure for the benefit of the family

He just is there. He will never, ever cheat on me or fuck me about. He might need a nudge now and then on getting on with stuff but he loves the bones of me and I love him, and we go to bed most nights and have a cuddle and a smooch and talk about what made us happy that day. He has held me crying I don’t know how many times, he comes with me to appointments and takes notes and advocates for me when I’m too unwell. I know he has my back and I know he has it unwaveringly.

I know the only time he is capable of being fierce is if me or DS is in any way unsafe. I know he would bring me the moon to make me happy and I know he’s a daft sod who cracks stupid niche jokes to make me laugh. I love him to bits and I’m so glad DS has a brilliant role model.

I’m a soppy old mare apparently so I’ll stop now. But some Nigels are nice. I’m definitely intending to bring DS up as a nice Nigel as well. Hurrah for the Nice Nigels!!

What a fucking lovely bloke- hurrah for him, and let's try to bring up a generation in that vein: compassionate and thoughtful human beings who aren't poleaxed by toxic masculinity. It certainly IS sad that we don't hear these things more often, but I hope we can keep up the fight to smash the patriarchy and release the potential of both sexes.

I'm guessing this is meant to be lighthearted but I'm not really sure it's necessary to have a thread on a feminist section devoted to talking about how lovely the men we know are. No one really thinks feminists hate men, and if they do, you won't convince them with this thread. I'm also finding it depressing to see post after post basically applauding men for literally doing basic parenting and humaning. Nothing so far has struck me as special. They all seem like normal people, don't get me wrong, but certainly no more than what the average woman does. Probably less in fact. The more I know about my friends "fantastic" husbands, the more I realise that straight women are really forced to have very low standards with regards to men or just not have relationships. Dh is nice and I love him, and I think if anything he probably is better than all (bar one) of my friends' husbands, but he still can't compete with even the least interested wife.

Agree Princess. Feminists don’t hate men- we hate the structures that privilege men. And here it is in action with a bunch of women fawning over the fact that their DH cleans the shower.

Well, I think it's a good idea. There's a lazy, kneejerk response to anything vaguely feminist from some people, sadly some women as well as some men, that it must be because all feminists are man-haters, and this is patent nonsense. This thread is useful as a way of documenting that.

I find male violence and the lazy, selfish, entitled behaviour we observe all around us particularly shocking because I haven't experienced it directly either when I was growing up or in my marriage. My Dad is a thoroughly decent man who would do anything for anybody, especially my Mum. My husband, my brother and my son are all cut from the same cloth.

Surely nobody's Nigel has to be superhuman to be worth praise? I'm not superhuman and I certainly get praise from my family for doing perfectly normal things like making the Christmas dinner. So I have no qualms about praising my husband for unblocking the loo every single time it blocks (quite often) with no delay and no grumbling. He tackles all the routine DIY around the house, does an excellent job, never procrastinates. Makes us both a cup of tea first thing every morning and brings it back up to bed. Took on a lot of domestic stuff when he got early retirement and I was still working, his initiative, no fuss, no moaning. He's an excellent father and was very hands on when the children were little. Still a great support to them both now they're in their 20s, when they need it.

Surely nobody's Nigel has to be superhuman to be worth praise? I'm not superhuman and I certainly get praise from my family for doing perfectly normal things like making the Christmas dinner. So I have no qualms about praising my husband for unblocking the loo every single time it blocks (quite often) with no delay and no grumbling. He tackles all the routine DIY around the house, does an excellent job, never procrastinates. Makes us both a cup of tea first thing every morning and brings it back up to bed. Took on a lot of domestic stuff when he got early retirement and I was still working, his initiative, no fuss, no moaning. He's an excellent father and was very hands on when the children were little. Still a great support to them both now they're in their 20s, when they need it.

Most women clean the loo daily with no fuss or complaint or procrastination, that's every day work. I don't think they expect praise for it. How is that rated differently to DIY or unblocking a toilet which is a rather easy task?

Being a hand on parent? Same.

Doing housework without complaint while their husband works and while there are no young children at home? Of course. That's bare minimum surely?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to seem like I'm picking on you or being unkind about your partner, I just don't see why pretty basic tasks are praise worthy. I assure you there is no similar thread going on Dadsnet praising their wives for doing the wife work.

Dh made Christmas dinner this year and of course, I said thank you because he'd spent the day cooking and it's unusual to spend a day preparing a meal. It's a special Christmas meal that warrants praise. Why do you see that as not out of the ordinary but basic DIy as special?

Say what? You think this thread is useful to show society that we don’t hate men? Do you think Black Lives Matters meetings consist of documenting all the white people who have done something nice for the members? It’s not about individual men- that is the whole point of feminism. This thread is majorly saying that it is. It’s actually playing into the hands of those who peddle the man-hater mantra because you’re suggesting that these very few men are okay. Frankly nobody gives a toss if your husband takes the bins out or looks after the children. It’s about the wider social structures that designate all the shit jobs as women’s work and which makes people act as if it’s a miracle if a man does even a fraction of them. Fine if you want to sing the praises of partners and sons but as a topic it seems more fitted to chat or something, not feminism.

I don't see it as special, that's my point. I see it as ordinary and routine but essential and I think everybody just getting on with things without complaint deserves a pat on the back from time to time. I certainly don't think men doing these things deserve more praise than women and I acknowledge that far too few women get the appreciation they deserve for the enormous amount of unpaid work they do in the home and looking after family members. But this thread happens to be about men who do their share, so that's where the focus is.

By "special" I mean on par with spending hours of your Christmas day preparing a special meal for your family?

You didn't compare unblocking the loo with cleaning the loo. A task of equal value that most women have to do daily (unlike loo unblocking)

Lovely! Mine is a partner in every sense of the word. All outgoings are split 50/50, he does half the housework, knows when I'm not in a banter mood (rare) and shows me every single day that he appreciates me. Even more now I'm pregnant. In turn, it makes me focus on doing the same.

Agree with funkyfunky beat I am afraid. If someone really thinks feminists are misandrists this won't help as it's the equivalent of "I'm not sexist I love my wife". Sexists most certainly can love individual women but on the whole have issues with the female sex.

Feminist can obviously love individual men but have issues with the patriarchy and the men in it profiting from it.

The man-hater trope is just a lazy misogynistic way to silence feminists though. We don’t need ‘evidence’ that we like men just in the same way that we don’t need a thread talking about how conventionally beautiful we are as a means of challenging the other myth that all feminists are ugly.

The one good thing about this thread is that it shows even women who are aware of the issues are still impressed with 50/50 work load. SO basically a man doing the same as them warrants praise.

I wonder also with the 50/50 people if the husband is actually doing that much. I'm sure there have been studies with regards to men and housework and how much they are perceived as doing if they do anything.

People telling their truth on the internet is not ''misandry''. What a stupid thread.

By "special" I mean on par with spending hours of your Christmas day preparing a special meal for your family?

You didn't compare unblocking the loo with cleaning the loo. A task of equal value that most women have to do daily (unlike loo unblocking)

I don't think there's anything I could say to change your mind here. I know my husband does at least as much of our household work as I do, probably more - as it happens, he cleans the loo more often than I do. But you're right, feminism is not about individual anecdotes, it's about the fact that our society is still deeply sexist.

Anyway, enough for now.

Apologies. Perhaps this wasn't the best place for the thread. In my defense, I'd had too much to drink and probably thought the board needed cheering up

Well I think that even a man who only gets to roughly 50-50 and has made an effort to throw off the expectation and training from childhood is worthy of praise. As is any decent human. It shows that household incompetence or caring is not innate . Think fem8nism lose if we replace one set of sterotypes with another. I think feminism loses if we can’t distinguish between the class problem and the individual.