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.

Does not does not (sorry)

I used to feel sorry for fathers. Then I became a feminist and discovered that women are human too. Then I stopped feeling sorry for fathers and felt compared to what they were putting women through they were just crying man tears. I think women risk their lives to give birth, and men don't. Women carry the baby in them for 9 months and push it out in abominable pain, and men don't. How is it ever possible that it is equal?

YY @dodgeballchamp But ive seen many threads on here now where the woman has done all the saving AND had those savings depleted while on maternity leave because the father hasnt contributed.

Saving it together though................i agree perfectly reasonable.

I just don't think feeling sorry for men is a feminist prerogative. I know that makes me a big meanie misandrist. So be it

Women carry the baby in them for 9 months and push it out in abominable pain, and men don't. How is it ever possible that it is equal?

Very true. How can you consider yourself a feminist then? we are not equal!

Because I don't think feminism can be or should be about equality. I'm not the first woman to notice this, others have written about it before me. Feminism is about something else, not about equality .
Men and women are too different

sakura men are individuals as much as women though. You can recognise the bad things men as a class have done do oppress women, and that many individual men are also misogynist in some way or another while still also feeling sorry for individual men when the situation calls for it. Similarly I wholly support women as a class, but I do like/support/agree with every individual woman? No!

In sum, we don't need men to express tears and take on the childcare.

We need men to stop killing us, stop war mongering, and give us back our land so we're not dependent on their food system

If it’s not about equality then how do you think it should manifest in practice? Men and women living entirely separate lives and never encountering one another? I think this is half the problem, feminism means different things to different people. For me it absolutely is about equality and reaching a point where sex and gender are immaterial and every human is treated the same. I don’t want to be defined by whatever differences I have from men. That brand of feminism makes me deeply resent the fact I have a womb because it is not in any way part of my identity

@sakura184

In sum, we don't need men to express tears and take on the childcare.

We need men to stop killing us, stop war mongering, and give us back our land so we're not dependent on their food system

I agree with your statement, but your ideas are verging on being a radical feminist. Seems extreme.

Male suicide is a genuine problem though. Men suffer at the hands of the patriarchy they created too - the patriarchy that says they should be the alphas, never showing emotion, not doing ‘womanly’ tasks or being soft. It’s incredibly reductive to say you don’t give a shit about men, presumably as you want to advocate for mothers, I assume you still want to procreate with men? Not all women (including mothers) want to do 100% of the childcare! It would be lovely to remove men and the problems they create from society entirely but given genocide of an entire sex class is unrealistic to say the least isn’t it more productive to work towards a society that actively wants to move on from damaging ideas of what men and women are? Male violence is a huge problem that we still haven’t solved, but denying men any kind of rights would imo only lead to even more violence.

It isn’t women’s duty to solve the problems men created for themselves but certainly destroying patriarchal structures would be beneficial for everyone. Instead of wanting to flip things and make men the underclass I’d rather we just reassess societal expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman. In my mind the problem is, as long as the heterosexual relationship is held up as the pinnacle of society, nothing will ever change

I am a radical feminist, yes.

dodgeballchamp

Don't worry it's not like you won't get to see men in the utopia.

Mind you, bear in mind they'll be raping and killing each other with abandon if they no longer have women to rape and kill. I mean they already do kill each other quite a lot, especially in wars, but they kill an awful lot of women as a sort of buffer: take the women away from them and they'll have no choice but to all turn on each other

but denying men any kind of rights would imo only lead to even more violence.

That's a bit like the argument that men need prostitutes to stop them raping randoms.

You're totally right of course. Men do become incredibly violent when told no. If women tried to live separately they'd probably annihilate us, like they tried to during the witchcraze. Got rid of all the strong clever women: they killed our best and brightest

@sakura184 May I ask what your personal situation is? Do you have a son?

Sakura i would actually love to live completely free of men. I’m doing my best to make this happen (apart from using them for sex when I fancy, because as I’ve already stated that’s my choice and my prerogative). But I don’t want to be in a relationship with one or breed with one.

However your desire to advocate for mothers is a bit at odds with your feelings on men, as women cant become mothers without men! Or are you saying they should all just wank into jars and women pick the sperm as and when they want to birth children?

In the movie 'Before Sunrise' Celine says something along the lines of 'I think feminism was created by men'.

She then goes on to talk about how men benefit from feminism (more sex available without commitment, etc). Add having many children with different partners and shirking fatherhood responsibilites, women being left financially vulnerable or being screwed over and it does make you think (not saying I agree or disagree).

Whilst we can now work, be independent, vote, choose whether or not to have children or get married and choose who to be with (very important things to have agency over), it's definitely an interesting concept to explore.

When the conversation gets into the realms of a world without men, people are losing the plot.

These psuedo-utopias are madness.

I'm sorry about the people who have suffered at the hands of men and I'm particularly sorry if the trauma has been so great that they never want to see any man ever again.

So many feminists have sons, how do you think they feel when you talk like that? Women and men are inextricably mixed in this world.

I agree with your statement, but your ideas are verging on being a radical feminist.

And what’s wrong with radical feminism? Are you confusing radical feminism with “extremism”?

Definition of radical feminism: Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts. Radical feminists view society as fundamentally a patriarchy in which men dominate and oppress women.

Radical feminism was born out of second wave feminism and unlike the liberal/third wave feminism is critical of “choicey-choice” feminism, pornography, or “sex work can be liberating” ideas.

It does not mean you have to hate all men. It doesn’t mean you can’t in fact love certain men.

Yes, radical does not mean extreme or exclusionary.

I "married down". My husband was the one who took most of the parental leave. He's the one who works part time whilst the children are young. He's the one with the lower paid job that fits around school pick up times. He does all the shopping, most of the cooking, laundry, etc. His career has taken the hit whilst mine has flourished.

Why should he not have rights and protections?

Men and women are different. Women are more likely to want to give up work and stay at home with our kids. So I think the way forward is not to discourage this, in the hope of making women fully financially independent because it's never going to work. Women will risk the loss of future money in order to stay home now. The solution is to value the childcare and general family support that many women are providing as much as the money earned by the man. Upon divorce he should have to share it equally, since this was their decision as a couple and the women should not suffer more consequences from divorce than the man.
At the same time we should be promoting equality of opportunity on the workplace for those women who don't want to say with children.
But generally, full access to 50% of the money is what gives women try freedom in a capitalist society.

I really disagree that the pill/legalised abortion have benefited men more than women. I remember my gran telling me about backstreet abortion. All that happened in the past is that women risked their lives to end pg. Yes, men now have access to women's bodies without being forced to pay for them via marriage but that's a good thing. Women like sex too and we want to marry men who want to marry us, not marry men who are just horny and can't get laid without marriage first.

“Women are more likely to want to give up work and stay at home with our kids.”
What’s your evidence for that statement?

Anecdotally, I wanted to sah, my sil would like to but cannot afford to, my mum wanted to but couldn't afford to. Lots of women on MN have said that they could only afford to take mat leave and no extra time. It's not true of everyone but I do believe that when you have just had a baby you are more likely to not want to rush back to work and for the decision to be your genuine choice and not something forced on you by lack of money.
Obviously not true of everyone and it rather depends on how much personal satisfaction you derive from your employment. My point was mainly that in making such a choice, women shouldn't be financially disadvantaged if their relationship doesn't work out.

There’s a whole lot of hormonal reasons why women are more likely to stay with young children. It’s biological to a certain extent.

Women have been marginalised in all sorts of ways because hormones. That’s a really dangerous route to go down.