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 always get slated on here for saying feminists argued that marriage is prostitution. I always thought it was, and got married anyway, regarding myself as a bit of a sell out whilst also knowing that it would make for a better outcome for the children in a patriarchal society.
So I think this is why it became more acceptable not to get married, because of feminists: i think the idea that you were a whore with a bastard child if you had a kid out of wedlock was so disgraceful and I'm glad we're not still there. But essentially this was why women got married, so their child wouldn't be the local bastard kid

I think it's fine for anyone(male or female) to choose not to make that commitment so long as they aren't stringing their partner along on the idea that they'll get married eventually. What I would like is for more women to find their backbone and discuss what they want with their partners from the beginning and make it clear that marriage is important to them(if it is) and take action if it isn't happening either raise the subject/propose or walk away and yes that might mean delaying children if it's so important to you to get married.

I appreciate that the patriarchy means that things are still unequal but it'd help if women could throw off these ridiculous sexist notions that have been imposed upon us such as that a woman has to wait until a man asks her before she can marry, and I think it's vital for women to realise that if they want to become a SAHM then they are putting themselves at some risk and should take measures to protect themselves instead of assuming that all will be well. Too many women behave as though they have no autonomy.

It's sometimes easy to forget small positive changes. I'm 40, but when I was growing up, there was no help for girls like me who ended up in arranged/forced marriages, now there is the Forced Marriage Act. There was no such legal concept as rape within marriage either (if I remember correctly). Nor had law on FGM been passed yet.

Not that that any of that affects anything in the OP, but things can change.

Gosh sorry to hear you were forced into marriage. I mean I knew this happened all over the world but didn't know it happened in the UK, unless you were in some religious community I suppose. you're roughly my age, I'm 38.
That's another reason why I felt like such a sell out getting married, because I knew I was going along with something many women are forced into. But I ultimately wanted children and I just felt that purposely becoming a single mother leaves you vulnerable in patriarchy. I don't even know if this is true because there are so many cases of DV and wife murder that now I'm wondering it aiming to be a single mother is safer. But materially it's better for the kids if there are two parents involved

Rape within marriage was legal to 1992.

When was it we were allowed to get mortgages? 70s or something?

OP you are missing the good stuff of which there is a lot.

Things like grooming being a thing, child sexual exploitation. Yes there are huge issues still but at least now there is some recognitian that it's a thing and bad.

I could go on.

On your specific points, men as a group seem to turn all our gains against us to some extent. The pill, being allowed to work etc. So we keep fighting, not wish to be placed back as chattel.

It's unfair to dismiss feminism as a force for good just because it hasn't delivered utopia. It's the weakness of feminism that's the problem. Capitalism is the major problem it took the notion of sexual liberation and turned sex into another commodity it could sell, likewise the idea of freedom which has been stripped of any dignity by shedding any restraint of ethical responsible behaviour.

What are you doing to change things OP, or are you just sitting back and waiting for feminists to make change whilst you judge if they’ve done a good enough job for you or not?

That's why as crazy as it seems the only possible workable option i see for women is separatism, specifically the withdrawing of energy from men. Men love nothing better than a good fight, it excites them for sure and maybe even makes patriarchy stronger with each generation.
So women withdrawing from the fight is the only workeable option that I can see.
So I think consciousness raising is hugely important, I think it's the biggest battle. Also, only giving energy and money to women-led activism, maybe supporting individual women's patreons, that sort of thing. Believing women-- that's a biggie.

It's unfair to dismiss feminism as a force for good just because it hasn't delivered utopia.

Sums up my feelings too.
It seems like a lot of women have very short memories coupled with a rose tinted version of the past.

I'm not sure it's wanting to be asked to marry that is holding these women back, really, at least not usually. Once they have committed to the relationship, they are just not going to break it up over what seems like a technicality. Then they will soon enough probably be invested in other ways, it will be harder to find a place to live alone, it can be harder to get by on one salary, there is a good chance they will have a baby at some point.

And a lot of the women and men don't really think about it much, it's not that they are trying to take advantage. They just do what is normal in their social circle. Where I live, it's fairly uncommon for working class couples to marry at first, usually it is 5 to 10 years in when they have saved up for a big wedding.

Marriage developed in social culture and law because human relationships are complicated and create a lot of baggage that impacts beyond the couple, and there needed to be some way to try and control some of those elements. Sometimes more successfully than others. Once people started seeing it as just a bit of unless paper, it's not like the baggage just went away, and society still needed a way to deal with the problems.

It's nice to think we could just tell people not to be stupid about things, but that doesn't work with many other human foibles.

I don't think seeing limits or mis-steps is dismissing. It's very useful to think about what has not worked as expected.

This is a women are to blame for everything thing isn't it?

Men as a group are obviously keen to persuade us that having more rights and autonomy disadvantage us, so that we go back where they want us.

It goes, you wanted equality, now I can punch you in the face! How'd you like that, huh? As seen by mras all over the internet.

'Marriage developed in social culture and law because human relationships are complicated and create a lot of baggage that impacts beyond the couple'

Did it?

That's not the story I heard 😁

Great Post sakura

This is a women are to blame for everything thing isn't it?

Pretty much. There seem to be a lot of posters attempting to kick women at the moment.

I'm referring to post 1960s feminism. You mean you are referring to the bedrock of feminism in the UK. Post suffragism, the very beginning of women's liberation from patriarchal hegemony and al that has followed. The changes, reactions and reformation of 40 years of owmen working toward a more egalitarian world wothout sex based restrictions.

Look, my grandmother did her bit, my mother too. I was at Greenham as a teen, have stood up and been counted. We, those 'old school femninist' you are berating, reacted and pushed back at what was most pressing in our times. We made the changes we did and made incremental changes for the good of all women, paving tgthe way fo rthe next generation and whatver was thrown at them.

BE FUCKING THANKFUL instead of being sulky about it. Unintended consequences - that's what every bloody era of feminism has to add to the list of things to overcome. What makes you / this generation so special? Why can't you recognise the efforts made that allow you to live as you live - far more egalitarian than in the 60s - and build on it instead of whimpering that it wasn't fucking perfect?

Feminist better yourself! Blaming women for their efforts is NOT feminism. It is childish and ill informed.

I think this is a really interesting post with understandably hugely varied replies. I think that feminism has definitely helped women of our generation a lot, but because men don't actually want us to be fully liberated, they have both covertly and overtly worked to attack and undermine the progress we have made. So our lives are, say 50% better rather than 100% better than women 100 years ago.

For example:

• Feminists campaigned for us to be able to work and keep our wages
• Men said 'ok then' but paid us less than men whilst keeping it a secret

• Feminists campaigned for us to be able to work
• Men said 'ok then' but then made mortgages and rent so expensive forcing women to work full time despite often being mothers responsible for childcare. On top of this childcare is super expensive, and despite us working now, men still expect us to do most of the housework and childcare. So it's just lose lose lose for women and men yet again make gains at our expense.

• Feminists campaigned to get women only spaces, funding, shortlists, refuges, toilets etc due to our biology and how it puts us at a disadvantage and also due to male violence
• Men said 'ok then' but then turned around, confused the words sex and gender, started wearing dresses, forcing us by law to call them women which then meant they had access to all of the above, basically destroying them since women-only spaces that include men are no longer women-only.

They always seem to find a way to undermine, attack and destroy or at least damage the progress we make. It usually seems to be 2 steps forward and 1 step back for us.

I feel this can also be applied to dating. Men on dating sites often behave atrociously, turn up dirty and unkempt, already married, behave rudely (in my experience) whereas in the past they used to at least turn up clean, showered and shaved. They used to value a date with a woman much more before dating sites became available. I see this part of the same pattern - it's a sulky backlash to women being given more choice and being less desperate to settle down. They say 'fine then' but then go and try to ruin it by being disrespectful. I think ultimately, most men don't want women to be liberated or have equal rights to men, so they will always do everything they can to hold us back.

Wtf? The women it should have?

Feminism is about the liberation of all women. Not some, all. It’s ongoing and yes, it’s frustrating we still have to fight. But blaming feminism is utterly ridiculous. Don’t forget what all the women before you have done. Don’t like where we are? Then roll up your damn sleeves and stop blaming our grandmothers and mothers for doing the best they could. And it isn’t just men standing in our way FYI, there’s a lot of misogynistic women out there and I find them just as difficult and just as much of an obstacle.

Oh and I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not fighting for ‘equality’. Equal value, equal opportunity to thrive. Sure. But I have no interest in using men and what they’ve created as the benchmark for me. Equal to what? Men? Nah.

CuriousaboutSamphire

100% agree. How easy it isn’t to sit around and whine about how hard your life is whilst doing nothing to bring change. Easier to just moan about feminists from previous generations got it wrong because they didn’t have a crystal ball to predict how men would find further ways to screw us.

I’m very old- and with the gift of hindsight there are things I wish us 70s feminists had given more thought and attention to. But I think we did a pretty good job in lots of ways. And fuck me, it was hard going. It’s tough to see the new generation potentially throwing a lot of it away too.

Those of us in the 80s got a lot of it right too...we managed to be women being strong, being self determinde despite all the male hegemony that had not been dismantled. Teen culture, young people ignored cultural and sex norms, gender bending, working and playing hard without being Ladettes (what the fuck were they?).

We lived together, in sin Mixed finances, bought a flat. THEN got married, I took DHs name, choice! My choice (you'd have know DF to know why). We live utterly equal lives - when we fuck it up we talk it out. His mine his mine.. OURS.

Then came the 90s and gender stereotypes crept back in.. and it has got worse and worse since, as Bertrand said, watching the next generations taking it all for granted, actually berating old school feminists, letting the idea of feminism become much derided, literally sitting 'pretty and pink' and chucking it all away - it is tough. I wonder what it was that slipped away and lost importance?

Now it is us old birds doing all the shouting and pointing, not waving fucking drowning! And all the pretty things can do is tell us we are being mean! STOP IT! WAKE UP! We're all still here, waiting to fight the good fight. Just stop thinking we are in any way the enemy!

Please?!?!

Jeez Louise.

No we didn't get everything done, whatever made you think we had?.
I guess we were kind of hoping the generations coming after us would pick up the baton.

It's interesting that you keep saying you don't want to sacrifice your assets in order to have a live-in relationship. That is what men who are in a better financial position than their partners are inclined to say, why they would choose in some cases not to marry if they could, and why laws like these were developed to protect their partners.

No woman or man HAS to marry someone else.
No woman or man HAS to stay in a relationship if marriage is their line in the sand.
No woman or man HAS to make themselves financially dependent on someone else by opting to have children and leave their jobs because their DP earns more.
The law shouldn't be changed because people choose to bury their heads in the sand and not inform themselves of their rights. I'm not happy for other women's freedoms to be eroded in that way.

There are many reasons why someone may not want to enter into a legal contract such as marriage but still want to cohabit. Some will be because they know they are in the stronger position and they want to walk away with their assets protected in the unfortunate event of a split. Some may have assets they want to pass to their children and marrying a new spouse could see their own children disinherited. There is nothing wrong in either of those situations.

What is wrong is the guilt tripping and manipulation done by some men, who one the important legal status of marriage and the protections it affords their wives, as they convince their partners to have children with them, move into their house (but never put name on deeds), point out how it "makes sense" for their partner to give up work or go very part time for the children but won't get married because "marriage is just a piece of paper... I don't need a big day to prove to other people how much I love you... we have children together and that's a much bigger commitment than marriage".

Then with that we get from the women "I don't need a piece of paper to validate my relationship... Some people spend thousands on one party but I've invested my money in our house (which is only in DP's name conveniently) by funding extensions etc... We aren't living in the Victorian era so women have much more equality anyway if we split up... I dont need my name on the deeds because if we split DP has already said I can stay in the family home because it's best for the children... When we have children together a shiny ring means nothing as a sign of our love"

Men know the deal here with marriage and protections and assets. Some women know the deal with marriage and assets. Feminists cannot be held responsible for the actions of women who put their head in the sand and claim their DP would give them a fair share if they split.

I think that several things have happened in the last 20+ years:

Things have got worse for many men - the decline of traditional industries, competition from overseas, perceived competition from immigrants...

NRP are being held more to account. Before the CSA there was almost nothing to make an absent father pay for their child. The myth of the 'wife who gets everything' is endemic.

Negative media portrayal of women. Does anyone remember the Full Monty? I thought it was hilarious at the time, but that film really hates women doesn't it?

Sexually-explicit culture and porn. There is a really dark underbelly to what men might have access to.

I feel that, despite women still barely scratching the surface at senior levels in many professions, women are suddenly having to tie themselves into knots to prove that they are 'not' a myriad of things in order to still have a relationship and family life.

I'm not ungrateful to the women who came before me. I love and admire them especially the writers. I'm just saying that maybe ultimately the whole thing is futile. I studied the international food supply chain for my masters degree-
men have control over food in 2019 in a way they never had ever in all the history of mankind . If men control all the food and water, which they do, we are totally fucked.

Like that scene in Total Recall where the dictator turns off the oxygen and they all nearly die. That's where women are at currently.