Some young women have no idea of the battles we fought?

[MrsSnippyPants]

I was pondering on this recently, because many of us fighting to stop self ID and the rolling back of women's rights seem to be of a 'certain age', much like the middle-aged nurses who were reported to have stopped Saville having access to patients.

Tonight I was watching 'Madam Secretary' (I do love an American political drama) and in the programme this quote from Susan B Anthony really chimed with me;

"We shall someday be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people think that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past."

My daughter, the mother of my granddaughter, gets it, yet my DiL (as yet child free) thinks I am just a dreadful bigot. They are the same age.

What opened your eyes, and what do you think works best to open the eyes of younger women?

I am more than capably thank you of supporting and working for more one thing at a time. I'm there with protecting the environment

This. As a 68 year old ex hippie who lived in communes and went back to nature, the whole hog, includung living without electricity and running water - before that poster upthread was even born - I can only roll my eyes at the condescension. I have always lived this way. And guess what: I still also care about women's rights.

I am shocked by some women’s belief that they are treated equality now so it’s all ok and let’s move onto other things. My own teenage daughter started to tell me this so I started telling her that just 14 years ago I was told as my last day of probation for my new job was officially finishing (ie 5 pm) that I was no longer employed. I was 19 weeks pregnant and there was nothing I could do, it was s small to medium business. And all the sexist crap I fought in previous roles. The jobs I did not get all through my younger life because I was a young woman and might have children one day and take maternity leave.

Then I told her about my own mother who had to leave school at 13 and forever felt inferior despite being politically active and working a coupe of small businesses. And her other Grandmother who did get to go to college but at a time when women were expected to leave employment when they got married.

I tell her this to show her where women in her life have suffered and that even 14 years ago, women in her life were not being treated equally. We, as a society, have come a long way but we were certainly not ‘there’ yet. And with sex discrimination being lose clarity, women will soon lose that protective cover.

It is wonderful that these young women have not experienced events that they think impacts on their right to equal treatment and opportunity. But I feel that they just haven’t opened their eyes to the fact that discrimination still happens, it always was underreported and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. .... or maybe it is only about what they themselves experience and they don’t see that other women are suffering.

I think one of the things which has happened is the #no debate paradigm. This idea that there is a hierarchy of oppression and its 'victims' require a political agenda which cannot be questioned. Questioning it is proof of bigotry. It seems like your daughter in law from your quote reflects that thinking. It is a consequence of the dominance in education of one political viewpoint and it is an existential threat to freedom of speech and critical thinking.

I heartily agree with this. I was talking to 20-something dn and she was fixing me with a Midwitch Cuckoo expression when I was trying to explain why I didn't want self-ID-ing men in the toilets, nor competing in women's sports. There is some Big Indoctrination taking place, and to take issue with this provokes the new "you know nothing you old dinosaur" response of, "Be kind". Immediately the other party is cast as un kind and it's difficult to argue back from that position.

Being discriminated against in my first pregnancy in my work place. I was in a state of shock for it because I absolutely didn't believe it still happened.

I didn't get it in my 20s at all.

I don't think it's anything new to be honest. I was a dick to my mother and aunts and then got my own comeuppance from the ladette generation.
I'm pretty sure the latest crop will grow up too. Biology's a bastard like that.

If the pp who said they don’t mind mixed changing room is still reading-

You say that if it goes wrong then deal with it then.

But it is too late by then, the awful thing has happened and really it is almost never actually dealt with.

Rape convictions are unbelievably low, women are not believed, they are harassed and mocked.

In my case- maternity discrimination, once it had happened there was absolutely nothing to be done about it and nobody cared. There was no dealing with it afterwards and to think there would be is so naive it’s embarrassing.

I was at a conference for work about supporting LGBTQ+ young people a couple of weeks ago, where three young trans people did a Q&A on the stage (between themselves, not taking answers from the floor).

I was horrified by the sneery, condescending way they spoke about heterosexual, married, older people and how they believe, for example, that anyone who was around at the time of Section 28 did nothing to oppose it.

The tunnel vision took my breath away.

Should be “questions from the floor”, not answers.

I am 60 and I was aware of being 'of the lesser sex' from around 12. The difference in treatment of girls / boys and attitude to their rights in a semi-rural area was all-pervasive.
I'm delighted most of you managed to be oblivious until you had children but I'm still bitter!

By the time I had children I was a householder and breadwinner in a very equal marriage and things were much better.

Yes WitsEnd I am nearly 50 and felt my only options were to be a hairdresser or a teacher or in an administrative position.

I agree many younger women seem oblivious in general to the battles fought by previous generations. It's like how many women also forget the sacrifices that men made in the world wars.

I'm 28 and fully understood before I had children at 22.

I wasn't taught by my own parents but as a teen I used to read a lot of war-time biographies and about the lives of young girls and what it was to grow into womanhood.

Not everything is all flowers now and it never will be, but I am grateful for the life I am able to live.

It's like how many women and men also forget the sacrifices that men made in the world wars.

I look at the broad arguments and I have sympathy for both sides - but the truth is this has no impact on my life. I am not worried about changing rooms etc for example, I figure if things don’t work out we will have to rethink then.

If 'things don't work out' means basically means women will have lost the right to be recognised as a political and ontological class in policy and law separate from males. Future generations of women will have an impossibly herculean task of trying get that legal recognition back.

Prevention is easier than cure.

It's not just about women's rights - it was news to a male colleague in his 40s recently that if people go on strike, they don't get paid. There are lots of people who are ignorant about all sorts of things. Yes, it's really easy to look stuff up these days, but if you don't know what you don't know, you won't look it up until you need to. (And sometimes, not even then, remembering supporting a colleague in a disciplinary.)

Honestly, we know its not just about women's rights. Its an attitude some people have; they think that what they see is all there is to see, and what they know is all there is to know.
The problems start when they are closed minded and dismissive of other peoples knowledge or experience.

Was your colleague just uniformed? Or was he lecturing you about strikes, how they are soooo last year, and being derisive about strike action because he has never needed to strike so can't see what all the fuss is about?
Because when people do that, I think its OK to explain the issue.

I think that there's at least a good portion of the general public who would say that women have equality because we're allowed to vote now.

If you start from that position, and ignore the history, then I can understand why people say things like "it's not about whether they are a man or a woman, it's what's inside that counts". Because, yes, that's true... but it's not the whole story, is it?

It's like saying that slavery was a long time ago so it's irrelevant now - black people are able to vote so there's no need for groups such as Black Lives Matter because it's not about the colour of your skin, it's what's inside that counts. And whilst there are people who think that, I believe there are others who would scoff at that whilst believing that men and women are equal and feminism should be about 'all genders'.

I do agree that there's ignorance in society generally, which of course just adds to it all - but it goes alongside arrogance as well I find, like ok boomer.

It's like how many women also forget the sacrifices that men made in the world wars.

Lolzer. We remember it every year. What people like you forget that a) women weren’t allowed to fight in wars and b) they’re mostly started by men anyway.

But yes we should be grateful that men step up and solve a problem that other men created.

I think life experiences are important. As is motherhood. Not necessarily because motherhood changed me, but because I was suddenly aware of how society regarded mothers differently, and because it meant new negotiations with my partner (who would work part-time, who was doing their fair share of domestic stuff etc).

Age is also important because it's easy to imagine, when you are younger, that things are all pretty equal. Now I am in my late 40s, and heading into the invisible years. In some ways this is very liberating, but it also makes me think that much of the power that younger women think they have is derived primarily from being sexually desirable, rather than from being smart/funny/talented etc, whether they realise this or not.

Having said that, I feel deeply grateful that I am not a teenager now - I think young women have it really hard now, for all sorts of reasons, even if they don't have to put up with Benny Hill.

My feminist perspective has changed over my life, I suspect I was a more liberal feminist when younger and more radical now. I guess this is true of many other middle aged women and will be true for some younger women over time too.
I also suspect every older generation feels a degree of exasperation at the younger, not everyone obviously, but many. The blindness to see beyond the stereotype imposed by the viewer leads to the dismissal of what they are saying.
There is a wholesale grooming of opinion going on. I had an interesting conversation with my DD earlier this week. She's a fantastic young woman, very smart and thoughtful. We were talking about comedy of all things and if there were limits to what you can joke about.
She'd read somewhere that it was only acceptable to joke if you were 'punching upwards'. This seems reasonable until you think about it a bit harder.
I replied that as long as it wasn't actually illegal, nothing was off the table. Even if I didn't like the humour myself, I thought free speech was more important than the risk of offending someone.
Once she also looked at is as free speech, not oppression hierarchy, the penny dropped.