At the centre of the attack on women's rights ...

[Dolorabelle]

by MRAs and TRAs is the assumption that women are now "equal" and that they are no longer oppressed and a "minority."

I'm finding this attitutude more and more. Amongst social media, but also in real life - my undergrads generally have swallowed the kool-aid about women having all the rights now.

We are so completely inured to not seeing abuse, misogyny and sexism as "natural" and "normal" that we don't call it out. Because it's the daily reality most women live with.

It's depressing.

not

I agree. Coupled with an increasingly individualist attitude. Hence why so many women are able to assert that because they, personally, are OK with losing single sex provisions, other women should be too.

What's the gender divide in your under grads?

Men can no more claim that women are no longer oppressed than white people can state racism has ceased to exist.

Part of the problem was instead of pushing the different but equal message, lib fems pushed the equal and the same narrative.

Men and women are not the same. We don't get treated the same. Our outcomes in dv, the workplace, legal cases, being sexually abused/ers are not the same as men.

It's depressing that the adults are being held hostage to fashionable intellectualized whims of privileged children.

Men and women are not the same. We don't get treated the same. Our outcomes in dv, the workplace, legal cases, being sexually abused/ers are not the same as men

Spot on!

At the time of getting all the necessary legislation through (Equal Pay, maternity leave, etc) I think that feminist activists underplayed the "difference" thing, because for sooooo long (like centuries) the idea of sexual difference has been used against women.

So the "different but equal" tactic of libfems working through legislation (really really necessary legislation) tried to shoehorn women's biological life patterns into a workplace and world organised around men's biological life patterns.

We now need to make the next step, which is to imagine - and then work towards - what a world (both public sphere and the domestic sphere) which fully accommodated women's biology would look like.

And @Childrenofthestones my undergrads are predominantly female. And they're mostly conditioned & socialised to be "nice" girls who always do the #notallmen

They've not really encountered radical feminist thinking - "radical" in that I talk the through structural oppression and patriarchy as a system and ideology, not simply about individuals and individual interactions. THat we are all socialised in ways that are directed by ideology (kind of Gramsci/Althusser-lite) It's my job to expose them to this dangerous knowledge

I am not sure this has changed a lot in the last twenty years..... my experience is it's more of a generational thing.

When I was an undergraduate, twenty years ago, I had no time for women's rights and I definitely thought the battles had been won in the Western world. I had never consciously experienced any limits to my freedoms or mistreatment for being a girl/ woman, and I'm ashamed to say my image of feminists were hairy legged, bitter, whining bra burners!

Two things woke me up.... some of my graduate seminars and professors, where I studied feminist theory. And experiencing being in the workforce.... losing out on promotions, seeing my 'assertiveness' punished, while men's assertiveness was rewarded..... etc.

I don't think it is easy waking up the younger generation.... providing the right information helps... then, sadly, experiencing it does the rest.

Delorabelle, have you ever seen this? I find it really helpful as a starting point for discussions. It's depressing as hell though, isn't it.

Delorabelle,

Good luck dragging the baby wokesters into the reality that is lived by most women in this world.

I pity them. Once you see it, it's unavoidable and very upsetting.

I wonder if exposing them to the reality of the consequences of the loss of women's spaces amongst the most vulnerable might help swing the balance back?

BraveGoldie - perhaps we are similar ages (early 40’s) because that was my experience too.

As much as libfems push that male and female physiology have little differences, they MUST (as all trans supporters) believe that there is a difference between the female brain and the male brain, else how could they accept the “wrong body” narrative?

I think that deep down, a great swath of the population has never accepted that female brains are no different from male brains when it comes to function and that those differences are in part responsible for women’s status wrt men.

It’s a sexism so deeply embedded and thousands of years old.

Without that, what basis could there be for the “wrong body” narrative, the idea that a male could have a female brain?

I agree that this is not a new thing. I've experienced female students saying this kind of thing for at least fifteen years. I put it down to a combination of age (inexperience) and the kind of privileged naivety that comes of being a middle-class student in a (Russell Group) university bubble. I have to bite my tongue not to say "just you wait until you're in your 30s, and are looking for that mid-career promotion or have a baby. Then it will bloody hit you like a bus".

BraveGoldie - perhaps we are similar ages (early 40’s) because that was my experience too.

I'm mid-40s, and there was definitely a tendency towards second-wave feminist thinking when I was a student in the mid 90s, and a great deal of student interest in related modules. It seems that things must have changed quite quickly around the turn of the century, because once I started teaching a few years later, the shift was very apparent to me.

I’m mid 40s too and I was oblivious to sexism in my 20s. And it happened-a lot. I experienced groping and lewd comments in the workplace as well as on nights out. I just saw it as normal. For me it was having kids-having a daughter-that brought it sharply into focus. Im afraid I’m quite cynical about men now.

Yeah, I have been annoyed by this too recently.

Just picture for a moment that it's true: women and men are equal, there are no problems any more, you don't have to endanger your love life by noticing sexism, everything's fine.

It has a pull like a black hole if you let yourself get too close.

Of course people (men, too, I do mean people) are desperate not to see reality. This isn't a problem happening across town with whites or black or Jews or gays or straights or trans. It's every single person's own life, love, family, house, work. It's too painful.

Until you get smacked upside the head that it's there. No escape. Reality doesn't care whether you see it or not.

This isn't a problem happening across town with whites or black or Jews or gays or straights or trans. It's every single person's own life, love, family, house, work. It's too painful

Yes, absolutely. THat's why I call it "dangerous knowledge"

When my undergrads say something about - Well, we're better off than 100 years ago, I say yeeees, up to a point Lord Copper - come back in 15 years' time when you've had a baby & gone back to work and the men you started with are leaps ahead ...

MRAs think that men are oppressed by women, don't they? They think women control the world, Matrix style.

When it is what your day-to-day, it is hard to see it for what it is.

After living in Mexico for a few years, I went to visit some friends in Toronto and they kept on asking me about how I could put up with the machismo there. The fact was I saw way more machismo among men in Toronto than I'd experienced with my friends in Mexico, but it all seemed normal to my Canadian friends.