What are the top three issues that feminists should unite to conquer?

[ControversialFerret]

Asking for genuine thoughts and feedback. Disclaimer - not a journo but this is linked to some work I'm doing in the background on a voluntary basis. I'm not sharing further details (for obvious reasons!) but if anyone has concerns or questions, please PM me.

Feminism is so fragmented in terms of grass roots organisation - group A disagrees with group B and so on. However we know there will always be differences of opinion in activism and causes.

But if you had the chance to unify every feminist (and ally) in the UK behind three key causes/topics, what would they be and why?

Like other posters, I'd have a different UK/international list. In the UK, I'd go for women's mental health, better support for family carers (which would largely but not exclusively benefit women), and cheaper child care like in Scandinavia.

Internationally, education for girls, micro financing (benefits women more) and more efforts to reform criminal justice system to increase investigations into crimes against women and harsher sentencing for crimes against women

1. biological fact and reality. Just because you feel like a woman doesn't equate you in anyway shape or form (and if a tw declares they have periods and can get pregnant (as has happened), women should be legally allowed to laugh in their faces for 6ontha straight)

2. men are not feminists and anyone who centers men in their feminism, cannot be a feminism. Feminism cannot have male "leaders"

3),compulsory wage and health insurance for sahm and fines (wage x years working for the business x years expected to work before pension) for any firm which sack women because they are pregnant or have kids to be given tax free to the woman

They are many issues but the core issues IMHO centre around sex ased discrimination

@Amalfimamma
Ugh "male feminists". Somebody asked me earlier if I thought all men had sinister designs on women's spaces, and if all men were steely misogynists.
I said no, but what I've come to learn is that transwomen and male feminists tend to be more misogynistic than your average bloke. In other words, misogynists gravitate towards trans activism or set themselves up as feminist icons

Internationally :
Ending female genital mutilation
Access to education for all girls
Free contraception, maternity medical care and access to abortions

In Britain :
Rape conviction rate
Improved post natal care including long term medical care for related problems, birth injuries etc.
Porn / prostitution - men not seeing women as objects to please them.

Lastly reducing male violence everywhere.

Barracker - do you mind if I paraphrase what you've said? I have a meeting this week with an amazing feminist warrior lady and I think this argument articulates everything that we're currently struggling with!

You go right ahead. I'm 1.5 glasses of red wine down and not getting more articulate.

"If you treasure it, measure it"

We currently have no un-corrupted way of measuring sex inequality, because we stopped capturing sex in 2004, and started assuming women's 'gender' instead.

If it's mutable administratively upon request, and without empirical corroboration?
It's gender, not sex.
No matter what label it wears.

How do you measure inequality between females and males?
You have to have data.
What does the data currently capture?
Not Sex.
Passport? Gender
Driving licence? Gender
Public toilets? Gender
Sports? Gender
BIRTH CERTIFICATES? Can you change them from M2F or F2M upon meeting arbitrary conditions, whilst still remaining the sex you were born?
Yup.
Gender.

What we did, in 2004, is we said, legally, female and male are genders now, not sexes, because you can choose which one you want to be recorded as officially, despite empirical evidence showing you are the other sex. Criteria may apply, blah blah.

And in order to facilitate the lie of the century, we had to ASSUME that 49% of the population had a 'gender' of male (that matched their sex) and 51% of the population had a 'gender' of female (to match their sex) so that less than 1% of the population could claim to have a 'gender' that didn't match their sex, and which was going to supercede their sex, legally and officially.

So yeah.

Even if we think we are capturing sex based data at a population level, we categorically aren't.
We've been capturing 'gender' from that day forward, as if it was a real thing.

Without definitions, everything is smoke and mirrors, and obfuscation and misdirection.
Without recognising reality in law, we are deliberately ignoring reality.

You show me a right that women currently have.
I'll show you how it's no longer a woman's right, and how it can't be effectively enforced.

(I'm now two glasses in, and I told you I wouldn't get more articulate. or concise)

TLDR:

1. Recognise it
2. Define it
3. Measure it
4. Fight for it.

1: Everything Barracker has said.

1. Better sex education in school, that teaches children that they have the right to say NO to sex and pornified sex. Boys educated to respect females and allow them body autonomy.

1. Campaign for women in NI to have the same rights to abortion services as those in the rest of the UK.

Men cannot be feminists. They can be allies, but you can't be a member of a collective fighting against oppression, when you are also a member of that oppressing class. Feminism is the recognition that women and girls are treated differently because of their sex - and to truly know that, you need to be female to be a feminist.

Ooohhh the arguments I've had about that!

Thank you to everyone for their input so far. I'm going to be fairly quiet today as I have loads of stuff to do, but will hopefully be back on this evening.

For me :

1. A universal declaration of women and girls' sex based rights
2. An end to the sexual and child-bearing exploitation of women (porn, prostitution, surrogacy)
3. Poverty.

What would you say the key is to addressing poverty which affects women and girls @WhatTheWatersShowedMe?

While I think Barracker hit the nail on the head earlier, I'd like to add one additional item to this great thread, namely 'Risk of Future Harm' being used, normally against women, very often against women who have experienced previous abuse, to take their kids away.

It's awful and often shrouded in secrecy, meaning that the women accused of this often have little resources to fight it.

Of course this is quite specific, but thought it warranted a mention along side the misdiagnosis of various mental health conditions mentioned here.

Violence and sexual violence against women and children

Equal representation in Government, institutions and business (because this would naturally solve a lot of other problems)

Payment of child maintenance should be properly enforced in the courts.

Look how aggressively the payment of council parking fines is enforced and compare that to child maintenance

Imagine if we ended poverty for women. No more prostitution or porn. No commercial surrogacy. No having to stay in abusive marriages. It would change everything

Everything Barracker said, plus the adoption of the declaration of womens rights - that would mean an end to male authoritarianism, supremacy, abuse and violence
womensdeclaration.com/declaration-womens-sex-based-rights-full-text/

Bumping for the evening crowd

No matter what else is on this thread, none of the women-centred causes will be possible to invoke, without a recognition of female to base them upon.

Absolutely agree with Barracker. This is fundamental.

Universal highly subsidised childcare that is not just available Mon-Fri, 9-5.
Child maintenance to be treated as any other govt debt (unpaid taxes etc).
Quotas for boards

Men cannot be feminists. They can be allies, but you can't be a member of a collective fighting against oppression, when you are also a member of that oppressing class.

Tell that to the men claiming to be "feminist leaders" and sticking drawings of themselves as white knights with thhw feminist symbol in their shield......

Tell that to the women who center men and what men say over what women say. There is a thread here on the board all about "allies" and their boundaries

Amalfimamma yes, it doesn't tend to be well received. But then woke dudebros and their enablers are more than happy to be on the 'right side of history' as long as it doesn't mean asking awkward questions of themselves, or holding unpopular opinions that run contrary to the fashionable cause du jour.

I find an increasing number of people who think that being an ally means nothing more than sticking a rainbow lanyard on, or wearing a t-shirt that says 'this is what a feminist looks like', or dishing out some abuse on twitter.

I had a particularly enlightening debate with a woman in her early 20s who told me I was a fat old bigot. I pointed out that I'd been marching at pride, campaigning for age of consent equality and the repeal of section 28 when she was still in primary school. And asked her to think about why someone almost twice her age who has years of campaigning and activism behind them, feels this way. No response - she looked genuinely baffled.

I left her after asking her to have a really good think about what was being said, and to go and do her own independent research before coming to a conclusion. Plus a little pointer that ageism is rather unpleasant - she had the good grace to blush.

ControversialFerret

I 100% agree.

The problem I'm highlighting (very badly obviously 😂) is supposed gender critical women centering men who claim to be feminist leaders. The same man who ignores women and tells us to be nice to tw

First of all worth remembering that feminist is the middle of the road equality objective of patriarchal society. ie it is about encouraging women to aspire to be like men. This is why the media promotes feminism.

That is why women's grass roots activism of 1970's was called women's liberation. It was not only about "equality" but challenging the norms and supposed standards that men have set.

Just as a point of reference, here are the demands of what was the women's liberation movement.

The women's liberation movement asserts a woman's right to define her own sexuality, and demands:

Equal pay for equal work
Equal education and job oportunities
Free contraception
Free 24-hour community-controlled childcare
Legal and financial independence for women
An end to discrimination against lesbians
Freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of male violence. An end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men's agression towards women

oh dear I just copied these from a web site and now see there is a major error (and this is meant to be an historical reference site!!!).

The women's liberation movement asserts a woman's right to define her own sexuality, and demands:

Equal pay for equal work
Equal education and job oportunities
Free contraception and abortion on demand
Free 24-hour community-controlled childcare
Legal and financial independence for women
An end to discrimination against lesbians
Freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of male violence. An end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men's agression towards women

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I'd say that attempting to fix the image problem that puts off over 90% of UK females is key.

I'm not sure how this could realistically be done but I've seen so many 'feminists' whose mission objective seems to be nothing more than moaning about men, which sabotages the hard work of others and turns off the vast majority of women who actually like men.

i'd go with bodily autonomy; valuing traditional female roles properly and something around changing workplace norms to be more family friendly

Free childcare, if not from birth, from a very young age

End of pornography (this is never gonna happen)

Unbiased health care for women I. E. You need to take my 4th degree tear seriously please. If I was a bloke and my cock was dropping off I'd have surgery within a week