I'm not convinced that feminism has helped the women it should have?

[soapona]

I think on these discussion boards and on my Facebook I see women. They don't insist on marriage so they partner remains married to the ex for years and year, they live together and I wonder what will happen should the man die. I also see women with no security living with men with no intentions of marrying and having children. Women moving in with men too soon. In the days gone by women would and could have insisted on commitment. So now the position for women is worse hanging round waiting for a proposal.

I know they don't have to I'm fairly wealthy and a single parent so have choices and always have. I don't have a lot to gain from marriage.

I'm not sure things have got better for women we are expected to do a lot now two incomes are the usual for a mortgage instead of one in the olden days . So it's a given women work, do the most childcare do we honestly think these thing will change when the power imbalance is there from the beginning?

Also the women marrying "beneath themselves", that's not the correct term but a man earning less and not likely to come into a decent inheritance. What is the point in getting married there if you're a women? Perhaps if the woman is wealthy to avoid inheritance tax for her children but other than that I don't know?

So would woman not be happier marrying the same or above and insisting on marriage early on, like it was a given in days gone by?

Surely Women are now in very risky positions due to this living together in a man's property. I see much more domestic abuse these days. I believe the stats are much higher with non married couples. Surely living together unmarried has been caused by equality and feminism and the very people feminists has been trying to help they've hindered.

I don't think everyone does accept what Dworkin says, she's always been a very polarising figure, including among feminists. She's also done a lot to convince other women that feminism has nothing to say to them

She certainly has for me. I find her pretty much unreadable and impossible to relate to. I think her own life got far too much in the way of what she says being relevant to anyone else.

There have been other posters on here like Sakura and she's not the only poster who writes things which make my eyes roll , but Sakura does it more frequently than most.

I've said on other threads that with posters like Sakura around anyone wanting to rubbish the concept of women's rights gets a helping hand.

Although as someone who is not a feminist (because I think it is perfectly possible to care about things which affect women and women's role in society without adopting that label) I'm mildly amused, watching on the sidelines, the arguments about who is a feminist and who isn't.

@Valanice1989 I don’t think they would do a blood test. They would do a sperm test, found it no good for fertility and would suggest IVF.
Just like they do when couples don’t have sex often enough and there is no explanation for the infertility.

The issue of course is that the onus is on the woman.. she is the one who takes hormones regardless.
On the other side, men don’t like to be told they are infertile so that would be big déterrant.

I prefer women’s rights advocate.

Two years cohabiting is long enough to decide if you're committed or not. If it's not you're not committed!

Can I ask what is the purpose of these relationships? It's sound more like a glorified lodger, you're bidding your time. Fair enough if both agree you can sign to waive your rights to marriage like security after two years.

That's a really bizarre and assumptive take. My DH and I lived together for six years before marriage. He wanted to get married and I didn't - not because of him or us but because I was not interested in the institution of marriage (had zero to do with how I felt about him). Once I started to soften about the commitment of marriage we were both still very young and had a lot of growing to do. We (collectively) wanted to ensure that we would grow together as we matured. We are both the products of parents who got married before 21 then had children by 22ish and subsequently got divorced because they didn't get to know who they were as individuals or as couples prior to conceiving. Getting married before mid-20s is a terrible idea IMO, having children before mid-20s is a terrible idea IMO.

Get to know yourself, let your partner get to know themselves, get to know yourselves as a couple and what you can achieve together prior to considering marriage. 2 years is not enough time to really know someone especially when their brain isn't fully developed i.e. for women before the age of approximately 22/23 and men approximately age 24/25. I mean even once your brain is fully developed you don't fully know who you are and anyone that says they do has an immature and uneducated perspective on how we change, mature, and develop as humans.

First wave and second wave feminism have done me so many favors - my foremothers paved the way for me to have a career and see myself as an individual even within the patriarchy. My mother taught me that I didn't need a man or woman or any partner whatsoever to be a successful balanced and happy adult. I went at relationships with that perspective and to this day I am financially independent and don't need DH for anything... He is here because I want him here but I don't need anything from him. I enjoy his company and my life is enriched by his presence - he is very happy to support me and all of my professional as well as personal endeavors and I his.

He and I are a team that was built on a solid foundation by first giving ourselves time to develop into adults and consider who we wanted to be versus who we were and how we were going to get there. No one was biding their time or taking advantage - we were learning and growing and refused to repeat the mistakes of our parents.

re marriage being prostition, maybe in a world where owmen were always dependent on men and had no way to be funancially independent. A world where saying No to sex to your dh was impossible too.
Nowdays though, where quite a few women earn as much if not more than men. One where women can just move out and live their own life, not so much. Because they have that independence.

And ye smarriage is an association that gives you some safety. and it works both ways. Either the man or the woman can find themselves in a situation where they acnt be indepedant anymore and need support. Marriage (used to?) give that protection. Ive seen it happening many times around me me where one of the spouses become unable to work/need care. I have experienced it myself. Im not sure it has anything to do with prostitution.

Fwiw the risk associated with childbirth are, for me, a very female issue. And I believe that, if it had been men who gave birth, mre woud hve been done to try and protect the peron from the possible danger of childbirth.
The solution isnt to stop having sex or having children. This is, after all, a very biological need that may women (and men) experience. The solution is to put more effort into protecting women during chilbirth. there is plenty that can be done (starting with the environment in which women give birth) of you catually make it a priority.
The example of the US is actually an excellent one to show how not putting priority on protecting women puts them at risk even when there is the knowledge and the technology to protect them the way they are lets say in Europe.

Even when marriages were generally quite different than they are in the modern west, many of them were real partnerships between people who loved and appreciate each other and worked as a team.

Marriage is really a formalisation of something that people would do in any case. You could get rid of all the legal stuff, pensions that could be shared, inheritance rights, dowries, medical plans, and people would still live together and have and raise children. And it would not be a matter of nasty men forcing all the women into this.

On the other hand, if you want accountability within that, the ability to claim a deceased partners' pension, inheritance laws, rules for dividing debt or assets, access to a medical plan or the ability to make decisions for an incapacitated partner, you need some way or recording those relationships. That is to say, marriage.

Marriage for me is also the wish to create something TOGETHER, Its having a life plan and antinhg to do something. Not just having children but maybe also creating the life you want for yourself, one that you might not be able to do on your own.
A mortgage is the obvious one. But it might be taking the risk of starting a business and knowing someone will have your (financial) back for a while etc... Home educating, moving abroad etc etc

Just skim reading the many new posts since I logged off last night (I've got to go out in a mo).

I don't view misandry as necessarily being synonymous with feminism, but in afraid you have some warped ideas about men IMO, Sakura (not that you'll likely care about my opinion as I'm male).

Also, there are many studies linking high testosterone to violence (will dig out if I have time later as reading a very in depth thread on here previously. One study found that violent male offenders had higher levels. Another found it was linked to increased 'fight or flight' response. A third found that male robins became much more aggressive when it was administered.

The solution is to put more effort into protecting women during chilbirth. there is plenty that can be done (starting with the environment in which women give birth) if you actually make it a priority.

Yes! This, absolutely this. We don’t have to accept the system as it is now, to deny our biology because we are treated poorly based on it. We can keep insisting, as tough and exhausting as that fight is.

I fully agree that society should do more to ensure women’s biology doesn’t disadvantage them, whether that’s making childbirth safer, providing more accessible childcare options or flexibility in the workplace, or better state support for mothers during the early years. It is important to recognise the ways women’s biology has been held against us by societal structures and kept us down, absolutely.

But I don’t think it’s reasonable to say EVERY woman should make her biology the linchpin of her identity - in the same way I can say yes, society should be more accessible for disabled people without actually being disabled myself, I can recognise that more needs to be done to help women on their own terms (marriage is not the answer imo) without feeling connected to my own female biology.

I think large scale societal structures that protect women and other disadvantaged groups should be in place, but within that, people should be free to live as individuals. For me personally, having a womb is about as integral to my identity as having feet. It just is. It’s not something I value or treasure or feel negatively about, it’s just a part of my body that actually is less useful to me than feet. Feminism is respecting my freedom to feel that way about my own biology while recognising societal structures are the problem. Individuals don’t always have to connect directly in their ideology to macro-level structures.

I'd hope that biology isn't the only element in anyone's identity. But it's the lynchpin of one's identity as a woman because that's a biological category.

Sometimes I think we just spend far too much time with our heard up our arses thinking about our identity.

*Our head in our arses, obviously.

The question of why Dworkin married is an interesting one. First of all her husband was homosexual. Some women suggest she married because she was quite sick and at that time marriage would have provided her with the health insurance she needed.

I know she didn't have sex because when she accounted her rape she described herself as someone who didn't have sex.

When she was raped, her husband John, didn't believe her.

She was criticized greatly in the women's movement for having married a man. I've never been one to criticize her as I understand why women do the things they do.

But suffice it to say, the entire premise of her book Right Wing Women , is that marriage is prostitution.

Although if you say the wrong thing on here you might indeed find the herd up your ass! 😂

Sakura

Please just apply some common sense and put your bitterness in a box when you try to look at things that affect women as a group. When you're focusing on yourself it is 100% cool to pull that bitterness out wallow around in it and figure out how to turn it into something good for yourself. But using a platform like this to attempt to spread your bitterness under a very thin veil of "feminism" is a slap in the face to feminists and as a self-declared feminist I'm sure you would never intend to do that.

I don't want to make you sad or hurt your feelings - I just tend to call it how I see it. Please be more self-aware.

StopThePlanet

No the reason it gets personal is because rather than address my arguments , posters get personal. Like why would I be sad or upset by your post when I've been called so many other worse things on here by people who attack me as a person, attack my character. "Bitter" is just another new one to add to the list.
So I defend myself against the unnecessary personal attacks, like any right thinking person would.

Like you couldn't just have addressed my post about why Dworkin got married, or addressed my argument that marriage is prostitution?

I mean do you think this is a new thing, for women to deal with? Having their character targeted rather than having their argument addressed?

No one but Dworkin knows why she married. Saying marriage is prostitution is extremely hyperbolic. Each marriage is what it is, some may be based on an oppressive contract, some are 2 independent adults entering into a formal relationship giving mutual support. Some are based on a deep abiding love and respect, some are just a convenience. Some last a lifetime some run their course. Relationships between men and women or women and women are subtle and complex for the most part.
To make a blanket dismissal of marriage is like saying education is indoctrination, glib and superficial.

Do you think single sex marriages are prostitution?

A wise man once said to me that if you think the problem is everyone else it's probably you.

I have very little interest in why Dworkin married; from what you have said I would assume she needed and wanted emotional support and companionship. There are also usually fiscal advantages to marriage. I don't think the fact her husband was able to give her financial support, either from his own funds or via the fiscal structure makes what she did prostitution. Far from it- it sounds like an act of kindness.

She was criticized greatly in the women's movement for having married a man

Unlike you I would criticise and question the motives of the people attacking her- not her motives.

So far as her book, I have no intention of ploughing through her ranting and hyperbolic prose. She is speaking for herself- not me.

Your argument that marriage is prostitution has been addressed on other threads. All I'm going to say is - it isn't. Full stop.

....and I would also have agreed had it been a wise woman.

I LassOfFyvie, my argument was not addressed. I have endured almost incessant personal attacks of varying degrees so that I can't even get to first base on trying to discuss anything. I would love a decent discussion about why marriage is prostitution. "It isn't" isn't an argument. Right Wing Women is all about marriage as prostitution, and why women are willing to do it in this particular way, rather than do it in the way we normally associate with prostitution.

Going back to the OP, you might find Right Wing Women interesting because rejection of marriage was an important part of feminism. Women wanted to get rid of the Madonna/whore dichotomy and unite as a class. Not marrying was showing solidarity.

In Right Wing Women, Dworkin points out why certain women clung fiercely to the concept of marriage, as well as to anti abortion laws.

She reasons that it's the best deal for them. She reasons that they've looked at the women on the streets and they seem cold, tired and bruised.

But she also points out that Right Wing Women are aware they could end up on the street corner themselves, especially if they don't comply.

my argument was not addressed
See Imnobody4's post at 23.08.

Re Dworkin's book- I tried. I find it unreadable. Your précis is enough to tell me it is an extreme point of view with which I am never going to agree. I haven't read Das Kapital , The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf- doing so will not make me think either Marxism, Communism or Fascism are sound basis for society.

Re personal attacks, I am not aware of having made any, unless you think my comment along the lines that you are a gift to anyone looking for evidence to discredit the fight for women's rights.

I would share a public platform with many of the posters on here to support abortion or to fight porn or prostitution. I would not do so with you as you would do more harm than good.