Feminism. The Elephant in the Room.

[DJLippy]

I wondered what people think Feminism's Elephant in the Room was. What is the big taboo that we're not supposed to talk about?

A couple decides they want to have children... why is it that the woman's career is the one that ends up being balanced against finding time/flexibility for the children? Why that way round? I don't think it's a "nature" thing.

I'm not sure of the ultimate reason, but I know that each workmate of mine (mid level corporate sales team) that went on maternity leave was 110% into it and they definitely weren't stressing about their bids/workload from what I could see. It was all "Jane's bringing the baby in today" followed by much clucking and cooing.

In fact, I don't think their husbands would've stood a chance of swapping places even if they'd wanted to!

Jane is the elephant in the room ?

Yes, Jane the woman who would rather be on maternity leave than smashing the emperor's new ceiling.

In fact, I don't think their husbands would've stood a chance of swapping places even if they'd wanted to!

I would have defended my "right" to bring up my children with the last breath of my body!

I didn't give two hoots about career after I gave birth. All such ambition just vanished. Now, with my kids grown up and long flown the nest, and, being retired, having all the time in the world, I am indeed having a very wonderful second chance at the best career in the world. And since retirement, it's getting better and better. Plus, I'm enjoying my grandchildren...

So many salient points on this thread. I'm sorry the OP wasn't upfront in the opening post.

Whole threads get put on twitter and Facebook, daily and posts appear in newspapers regularly. Every MNer needs to be careful in what they divulge about themselves, but especially in FWR where there are beady eyes lurking.

I can’t think of an elephant in the room of feminism. Perhaps for me it’s how many men do actually loathe us. It’s hard to say that when discussing feminism without looking like a conspiracy theorist man hating harpy.

Nothing that has been posted here is being collected to be used as part of the event

Its already been used to advertise the event.

Its one thing to be upfront and say "what do you think about this event/its subject" its quite another to post "I'm just wondering" when its already been rapidly used to promote an event.

I have to say that the feeling compelled to be close to my babies didn’t feel like it brought me much joy at the time, particularly DS1 as I was trying to process just how much my life had changed and my freedom had been curtailed. I just felt panicked and unhappy if I wasn’t close to them rather than blissful when I was iyswim

Is looking for topics to debate at a feminist meeting the same as stealing ideas for promotion of an event?

I knew, through seeing something on fb, that this was what Lippy was getting at and perhaps it was clunkily done but I don't think she meant any malice or manipulation here. In fact the idea of it feeding into a meeting / IRL debate made it more interesting to me. However I did see that from the beginning, I understand why people may have felt duped / used.

We have these overlapping fields to navigate: face to face personal, face to face public, personal social media and anonymous forums. People often make mistakes in etiquette when shifting between these fields.

It's primarily women who are active in the fight to remove our own rights.

Well for any mumsnetters wondering what their status is, you will be pleased to know you are good enough to stir up a bit of interest but not good enough to speak.

Event now announced but as ever with the current trend for hierarchical platform events aimed at consumer feminism, a "panel" will present your ideas to you!!!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feminism-the-elephant-in-the-room-tickets-64496743496

There is another thread for those who do want to have an equal exchange www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3626677-Addressing-the-elephants

Dick move, DJ, dick move. I thought better of you than this.

I think you're being unfair. DJ Lippy isn't some corporate behemoth like the Daily Mail, who regularly profit off Mumsnetters personal lives.

She's a Mumsnetter who cares deeply about feminism and is putting on an event with the purpose of contributing to the feminist conversation. Her intentions are honourable.

Yes, it would have been better if she was upfront about the talk, so people didn't think she was taking the piss. But she really isn't IMO.

We should be supporting women like DJ Lippy. If she got the OP a bit wrong, let's let her know and and move on, please?

It takes a lot of blood sweat and tears to put on a feminist talk. This is the first talk that DJ Lippy has done, I think. Please, let's support her on this.

Agree Summer

I’m just pretty as to why she didn’t explain up front

I’m just pretty confused as to why she didn’t explain up front

I don't think it's a huge deal, maybe she just didn't think people would really care.

I've hed threads, in other places, where I was pretty quiet in the OP, because I really didn't want to lead the discussion in a certain direction. I can see that if someone said, I am organising a panel discussion on xyz, what do you think would be good points to touch on, you might get different answer than just asking a very open and undefined question.

Don't get me wrong, Summer,I like DJ and appreciate her work enormously. That's partly why I'm so disappointed by this stunt, especially since (if you scroll back to page one) something struck me as "off" about her OP so I explicitly asked her what she was up to. That was her opportunity to say what the game plan was; instead she chose to give a waffly, non-committal response, which in the light of subsequent revelations, turns out to have been deliberately disingenuous. That's what I'm pissed off about. How hard would it have been to say either what she was doing, or "this is for a project I'm working on but I don't want to bias responses by telling you upfront what I'm looking into."

I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, and I think this thread is outweighed by the good stuff DJ does, but I still think this thread was a dick move, and I'm not prepared to pretend otherwise.

Anyway, my thoughts on the question:

Like a few people have said, issues around motherhood, its value, and differences in women's behaviour and desires in terms of that role from men. Generally if you eve bring this up it is all "well, I didn't feel like I wanted to stay home" and "that's just socialisation that women feel that way." The idea that women might equally be socialised to feel like going back to paid employment is the only way to be authentic and independent doesn't seem to get a mention.

I'd add to this any discussion that we are mammals and the kinds of sexed behaviour differences seen in mammals might also be found in humans seems a bit taboo. It seems like we are required to assume those things never happen unless there is overwhelming evidence that they do, even though that is not a neutral assumption.

I continually find there is a contradiction feminism in talking about certain types of class analysis and the contextually relevant individual behaviour. It's ok to talk about sexualisation of women in the fashion industry or media, but at the same time when women choose to buy into this its not acceptable to notice, especially for men, or for organisations like schools to make dress codes. Of course liberal feminism is totally ok with it all but in radical feminism it's very strange that someone making an analysis of the industry is happy to be critical and blame men, but if a teenage boy notices the same thing in his personal life he's to blame and needs to be re-educated. Somehow there is a fear of really acting on the class analysis in a way that some women might find personally uncomfortable.

I think the third thing I'd suggest might be abortion, I think at some point feminism may have to come to terms with the fact that women are as likely, maybe more likely, than men to have some kinds of reservations about it, often because they see it as mothers as a child protection question. I don't expect feminism to actually ever move on this but it will always end up excluding a significant number of women from their discourse, and that is worthy of self-reflection along the lines of, to what extent can we really claim we speak for women as a class. Nothing alienates people in quite the same way as saying you speak for them when you really don't want to represent their view only claim their numbers.

Perhaps for me it’s how many men do actually loathe us. It’s hard to say that when discussing feminism without looking like a conspiracy theorist man hating harpy.

The more so, for me, when it's tied up with the Nice Guy Entitlement.

A family member has behaved, IMO, appallingly, with a full spectrum of lies, gaslighting, coercive control etc. People are dripping with sympathy for him and constantly come up with scenarios that 'explain' what he did as ultimately not wanting to disappoint people.

He's a nice guy - he can't possibly have been acting from malignant narcissism, egocentricity, and a complete inability to empathise with the chaos he's caused for so many people around him.

Despite evidence to the contrary, he can't be acting out misogyny and gaslighting others into supporting him. (Including, it seems, the psychologist he is now working with on his issues.) There seems to be an unwillingness to recognise or name misogyny when it's being conducted in plain sight.

Some really great and interesting thoughts on this thread.

For me, my biological emotional response to becoming a mother was overwhelming. Like Bernard some of it was a kind of panicked feeling when I wasn't near them (which wasn't particularly nice but probably quite evolutionarily adaptive for mammals such as us), but I also love being a Mum, watching them grow, teaching them things. I had quite a good and interesting job but being a SAHM to little toddlers and teaching them everything, watching their language develop etc has been infinitely more interesting and rewarding for me. Of course not everyone feels this way and to be honest it's only my own children I feel this way about so strongly - which does suggest perhaps a biological root to it.

However, I totally HATE housework. It is grim, and of course tiny humans create SO MUCH MORE housework than two adults. I get by on the absolute bare minimum so I can spend time reading, playing, exercising, growing vegetables and doing developmentally positive things with my little kids.

I can see why housework and childrearing are always mentioned together because children generate housework but I think feminism needs to separate them because in my experience I have a biological drive to do childcare whilst having no such drive to do housework. And in fact housework gets in the way of actually doing developmentally stimulating things with children. If we valued child rearing there would be debates about whether parents need extra help so they can focus on the child, surely? But it's often treated as if the two jobs are the same and can be done at the same time, but they're really, really not.

For me it is shame. When women are abused, taunted or made fun of they tend to go into deep shame and internalize it. Generalisation, I know.

Men go to anger and they attack, again generalisation. I don't know why but it would be interesting to find out.

I can tell you that talking about mothers rights is FAR more controversial than talking about trans rights. Women who want to talk about natural vs patriarchal law with regard to children have been driven deep deep underground on the internet.

I also think a massive elephant in the room is male violence against women and children and the amount of fathers who are granted custody/ visitation upon order of the family court against the mother's wishes, and who then go on to harm the children. I've been following this for years and it is rife.

I can see why housework and childrearing are always mentioned together because children generate housework but I think feminism needs to separate them because in my experience I have a biological drive to do childcare whilst having no such drive to do housework.

It's often quite practical, isn't it? I am in charge of housework because I am home with kids, my husband isn't because he is elsewhere working for pay. Even though he is better at a lot of it. He pulls his weight at home, more than that really, but he can't do two things at once. It would be nice if we could also have a maid (for me anyway maybe not the maid) but we can't afford that and me at home.

There was a time when many men, as well as women, worked in the home - maybe not the domestic work specifically, but there was less division between the domestic and "real" work. In some ways that puts a different spin on things. And I think often families from a working class background see it a bit differently as well, and I think its about a different attitude to work. Any job I am likely to do right now would be something like cashier work, office cleaning, or what I do which is in-home childcare. Housework can be tedious but not really any different from any other job I'd have.

I can tell you that talking about mothers rights is FAR more controversial than talking about trans rights.

Yes. Breastfeeding. Not seen a single thread not disintegrate into a bun fight.

Oh dear Neurotrash you’ve thrown the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons now.

(Slowly backs away)......