Feminist end game

[MIdgebabe]

Inspired by various threads, not expecting consensus but trying to understand what we think the world would look like if feminsit equality was reached. A world where physical differences were respected and understood but did not lead to assumptions on cognitive capability.

So some specific questions>
Would we still have boys names and girls names?

Would sex differences remain in clothing and make up?
Would hormones ( testosterone and pregnancy hormones) mean that men ( on average) still tended towards hazardous roles and women towards caring roles?
Would period pain be a thing of the past?
Would senior management still be dominated by aggressive risk takers?
What changes ensure that women don’t lose careers if they lose a couple of months having babies?

Not sure about feminist end game, but I live in reality so I’ll leave you to work out the plot of your book.

Book? I don’t think so.

So making it real for you, how would you respond to being told that feminism was complete and all remaining differences are just down to biology?

Why don’t you tell us how you’d respond first?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Ok then. I don’t know how much biology will mean that we advertise our sex through our names and clothing.

I do think that period pain and other female health issues would be better resolved.

I do think that men will dominate the top of business and society because I do think they seem more likely to have the mental abnormalities that make them successful, but it might be that they okay we just socialise those out of girls

SO I asked because I don’t know

What changes ensure that women don’t lose careers if they lose a couple of months having babies?

You're a man, aren't you? Surely only a man could reduce the totally life-changing physical and emotional impact of having and raising a child to losing a couple of months off work.

SO I asked because I don’t know

Why not pop off and do your own research, come up with your own conclusions and then repost?

Women - doing all your research for you - yet again - NO!

You're a man, aren't you? Surely only a man could reduce the totally life-changing physical and emotional impact of having and raising a child to losing a couple of months off work.

I know, right!

I mean 'couple of months off work'. Cheesus.

Sounds like a college or uni project to me.

Misgendered again. Thanks. I won’t sue.

couple of month off work is the minimum I would think necessary for a woman with child. To just physically recover. On a population average , those months would disadvantage women over men financially if only slightly, which would lead to women being more likely to take a career break or work part time as part of raising the child. I missed a promotion opportunity during that time for example,

SO equality could be considered to be attained when men and women earn the same provided we only consider childless people, and any woman who has children would be doing so in the knowledge that they are more likely to be trading career for child.

Would that be acceptable feminist outcome to others?

An alternative is socialisation of children to consider child raising as a priveldge worth more than salary or career, which is a bit how girls are raised today. Then men would fight for the priveldeg to also be involved, taking time out whilst children’s are young.

I would prefer this outcome, but find it much more unlikely to happen. Especially because it requires all people to earn enough to make salary sacrifice tolerable.

Or it could be normal for men could take as much time off as women when they have a new baby, and so women are not automatically disadvantaged compared to men. Rather than expecting women to behave as men (only taking a short time off work) in order to avoid being disadvantaged.

No, really. Unless you are very young.

The end game would involve no assumptions about who is doing the emotional labour of any relationship, no assumptions about who is cleaning the toilets, who is the CEO, who gets to be a senior judge or an MP, whose bodies get used as norms for drug testing or crash test dummies; all employers would treat both sexes equally because there'd be no assumptions about who is doing the childcare. There'd be no sexual predator and no sexual prey.

Jog on.

Menopausal perhaps

And what this shows to me is that people make assumptions all the time yet somehow imagine we can get to an assumption free world

As far as I am aware, you are the only one here making assumptions that we imagine we can get to an ‘assumption free world’. zzz.

I think women's health problems (not just period pain but a whole slew of female related problems) would be given much more serious research and study and more prompt atention by doctors instead of having to find just the right way to approach your doctor, assertive but not aggressive, and repeatedly so, in order to avoid being told "it's nothing/all in your head/having pain is normal dear/it's just part of being a woman" only to find out too late you've been made in fertile or have cancer. This happens to women daily. Debilitating pain is bad enough and should be taken seriously even if it is "just" pain, but all too often it is a sign of a serious disorder for which, very often in "female" conditions, there is no cure. Why is there no cure for "female conditions"? "Oh they are so mysterious and difficult". Why is that? Is it because they haven't bothered with them?

I think this is a valid question.

I think queues for theatre toilets would be equal.
I think that whoever redesigned our local Waitrose wouldn't have made the top shelf so high (I was on tiptoes today and I am above average height for a female).
I think that female politicians would be commented on for their policies, not for their clothes or whether they have had children.
I think businesses would value collaborative working higher than at present.
I think I wouldn't be faced with Blue and Pink GCSE calculators in Smiths(!)

I do not think there is an end game, history has taught that what can be won can be taken away. Equality will always be needed to be championed.

JD Robb's futuristic novels have the profession of parent so her version of the future is a time when you get a salary for being a parent and it's just as much a career choice as any other as you are raising the future generation.

So it would be wonderful if any career choice was valued as much as any other and everybody was paid a really good wage no matter what profession they went into.

Read Marge Piercy's novel "Woman on the Edge of Time."

It's from the 70s and probably contains elements that read as dated, but it might help you picture a different world.

I guess it breaks down to four main areas (and how they interrelate): Biology, Culture, Economics & Politics. Without some serious science fictional intervention there will always be different biological pressures.

Until 50% of cultural space is taken up and influenced by women, 50% of resources are both generated and female owned and finally 50% of the executive, administrative and judicial posts are held by women there is always going to voices present to make the case in that direction.

A nuance and complexity comes in when we consider how biological factors influence the others. Just because there are biological differences does not mean we cannot innovate around them. We are after all the human race and innovation is kind of in our wheelhouse.

I recently read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Which chiefly (although not exclusively) concerns itself with making the case for women having equal access to education.

What was interesting about your question is that it made me ponder what the quantum leaps were for women throughout History, that we can see from the benefit of hindsight. They are all pretty clear, education, the right to own property, enfranchisement to name a few.

I further pondered what the “next” most important leap could be? What would the more (hopefully!) enlightened human society look back on and point at the 21st century and say “That right there is the biggest leap forward for women that century?”

As a pp said, an end game assumes a point at which the fight will be over. Now, personally, I'd like to hope, as a religious person, in a moment when everything is put right. But that's a metaphysical belief, not a plan.
While humans are the dominant species on the planet, and while the difference between the two sexes remains, I think it will always be necessary to keep pushing back against a tendency towards a society structure dominated by and advantageous to men primarily.

1. the end of male violence against women and girls so that women and girls are as free to move about in public space anywhere in the world as men are.

2. universal and affordable access to birth control and abortion because a woman who cannot control her fertility is not free in any meaningful sense of the world.

3. the end of male trafficking, trade, or purchase of female bodies because women are not commodities but are human beings and the trafficking, trade, and purchase of human beings is something we've regarded as odious since the early 19th century.

4. an end to men and the state relying on the unpaid labour of women, and the recognition of and accounting for female unpaid labour in national economics.

5. universal affordable 24/7/365 childcare as needed, whether to cover working hours or for other reasons.

None of these things can come about unless and until the men who control governments, media, finance capital, and damn near everything else regard female as humans in the same way they regard the humanity of men.

So when these things come about, it will mean something revolutionary has occurred.

Well.... this wouldn't be a bad place to start...

blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/consent-or-the-legalization-of-womens-humanity/

5) universal affordable 24/7/365 childcare as needed, whether to cover working hours or for other reasons.

I wonder who (what sex) will be working in those childcare provisions?

Good question!

I don’t think a really feminist society can exist within capitalism. I also agree that the opppsite of patriarchy isn’t matriarchy but fraternity.