“Women basically already have equal rights in the West”

[Ethelfleda]

I’ve heard this statement from a few people over the past year or so, always from men.
I know they’re wrong but I so rarely know how to tell them they’re wrong.
I want to tell them they’re wrong without patronising them because it is my belief that once you do this, you alienate your audience and they won’t ever come around to your way of thinking.

What do you say to this statement??

That socialisation telling you that you need to oversee all child related things is also what makes you feel responsible for it

When you've been a single parent for many years, like many of us have, and I certainly have ( from a very young age)........Or when you are quite a strong person who is also staying home with the children....through either choice or circumstance..then that tends to be the way it goes. You are the one that takes on certain kind of responsibilities.

That's not to say if there is a father around he does nothing. Of course that's not the case......and depending on the man, he may actually take over child care responsibilities once home, or certainly do lots of play activities with the children.....may have more patience for long, detailed games, constructing lego..... do the bath time routine, read the bed time stories; and may also do household maintenance of the exterior kind ( clearing out gutters, maintaining cars, heavy lifting type stuff, washing dishes).

Personally, I've always made the decisions about home furnishings, style, decoration, where to go on holiday etc - because I have strong likes and preferences, and these sorts of things matter to me. Of course I pass them by my partner, and we discuss........but really that is all I'm doing. Getting my decisions rubber stamped.

I'm a strong minded person with strong likes and needs, and I always make sure I have time and space to myself, and to do what I want to do. Having creative control of my own life and over the things that I value and find important is key. Some things I'm more flexible about, and I've been really quite happy with doing the cooking, present buying, making social arrangements, play dates, clothes buying......

Some women aren't......but some women are, and are by nature quite comfortable with domesticity. Like being busy all day, like shopping, like cooking.....

We're all different, and different relationships, and the people within those relationships, have different patterns and preferences.
I don't think it is necessarily liberating or personally empowering to have to go out to work full time, if you'd rather not, and/or are in a position not to have to.

I do think it is inevitable that women are more directly impacted by having children. For example if a relationship breaks down and it involves small children...then I imagine very few women who would be happy for the father to have full custody; even though they might be happier with shared arrangements when the children are older.

I don't think any of our choices are always completely free...whatever our circumstances. Life, and events, often makes decisions for you - to a greater or lesser extent

Some women who have had children very young ( in their teens) and have been single parents are very ambitious and driven; very goal focused.......and as a result they make very different decisions.

Look at women such as Angela Raynor, Michelle Mone, Karen Brady...whose sheer drive and determination has got then were they are... I've personally known lots of similar, driven women who have taken on huge amounts of responsibility in their life......both at home and at work, even if they are not quite so wealthy or well known.

I'm absolutely sure all of them encountered sexism and prejudice on their way to their current positions. Karen Brady, for example, was a woman in the man's world of football...she had to be tough. And she is.

... I want to tell them they’re wrong without patronising them..

Then tell them they are wrong and while you are doing that try your best not to patronise them.

I've been watching The Bridge during the lock-down..didn't see it first time around. A Danish/Swedish detective drama. Very good.

Obviously it's a work of drama & fiction but nonetheless interesting to see the cultural images and stereotypes at play. Virtually all of the couples are divorced, or going through a divorce.....and the children are living primarily with the mother. Lots of strong female roles, women in high flying careers, but still.......

Denmark's divorce rate is apparently among the highest – above 50 percent in some recent years. But more than 50 percent of children are born outside of marriage – to cohabiting couples or single women

This need/desire for control, I would argue is not instinct, but cultural socialisation. When I lived in the UK this actually shocked me in my friendships with U.K. mothers

Out of interest, what is your nationality/where is it that you are comparing the U.k to?

Didn't realise that men were also affected by the cap on child tax credits. I missed that bit.

I do think it is inevitable that women are more directly impacted by having children.

At a very basic level, the only thing a man needs to avoid the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy is feet.

Have you read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez? It's all about the "data gap" - how women are disregarded in all aspects of policy, health, safety etc. It makes you realise how far from equality we are even though we have equal rights. For example crash test dummies are sized for the average male, meaning cars are more dangerous for women. Women are more likely to die from heart attacks because female symptoms are "atypical". Medicines don't get trialed on women because hormonal cycles are too complicated. Medicine dosages are pro-rata'd for weight but don't take into account body fat percentage for example which is an important factor in absorption of drugs. Lots of examples of where money has been saved by government policies which take women into account etc. Everything in our world is designed for men!

Everything in our world is designed for men!

and right handed ones at that ...

Yes, I think the west has legal equality for women. Though there is the threat or gender transition legislation that is real, but it's difficult to know if that will turn out to be an ill-concived blip in the pan.

Actual equality in each thing is a totally different story and IMO is impossible, unless one actually erases the differences between men and women. Like we gestate babies in bags in warehouses or some such thing, transhumanism. Removing socialisation - it can be changed to some extent, but will never be removed because we are a social-cultural species. I expect we will always see some differences between men and women, some may be substantial. I think the desire to erase sex and sex differences is actually profoundly anti-woman, at least as much as a lot of garden-variety sexism.

Sexism itself, the sense that one sex is superior - I think that is very negative, but it can come from women (about men) as well as men. Both are often a reaction to negative experiences of some kind.

This idea that it's all about choice IMO is wrong and maybe ultimately disempowering. Most things in life aren't a choice. And none of our choices are free. Reconciling ourselves to this is a large project in our lives. Thinking we can be free of it is a trap.

I would say in western culture the number one thing that needs to change for the benefit of women is sexualisation through the media, advertising, porn, etc. These things are bad for women directly and indirectly. However I think this will require a fairly wholesale change around how we treat sex and I don't see that as happening.

I love The Bridge and I love Saga Noren.

And agree with everything just said by Just about the show.

I think the desire to erase sex and sex differences is actually profoundly anti-woman, at least as much as a lot of garden-variety sexism

I think you may well be right about that. Particularly as the bits that are up for erasure tend to be the bits which correlate with traditional female roles - with women seen to be moving towards assimilation into mainstream or more traditional masculinity/masculine roles/behaviours etc.....

Also denying that are any differences between men and women makes it easier for radical transgenderism to claim that differences don't exist; that gender is something innate to a person, and nothing to do with their biology or their natal sex at all.

In a way the transgender project is almost a form of trans-humanism itself.....even as it, inversely, seeks to cement gendered ideas around men and women, male & female.

I would say in western culture the number one thing that needs to change for the benefit of women is sexualisation through the media, advertising, porn, etc

Absolutely! Pornography, and the idea that sex work is somehow empowering for women has to be the biggest, most damaging lie.

Women are not legally equal in the UK. Ask your male friends to name one routine medical procedure performed only on the male body that requires the permission of two doctors. Why are women not thought of as adult enough to make decisions about threi own bodies?

Ask your male friends to name one routine medical procedure performed only on the male body that requires the permission of two doctors.

Aren't most elective procedures only carried out after GP referral and a preoperative assessment with either the surgeon or another consultant? That was definitely the case when I had back trouble. Would men be less aware of this?

I usually phrase it as 'Yes, on paper we have equal rights, which is great, but there is a pervasive way women are still treated that disadvantages them' and there's a lot of behaviours and attitudes that cannot be legislated away.

Eg, men talking over women; men discussing women in terms of fuckability after she does something totally non-sexual, like standing up to speak at a meeting; men promoting other men because they always manage to find reasons that women aren't ready yet, even when there's a candidate that's way better than the nearest available man; men coming home from work after the woman who's come home from work already and has been running after the kids for an hour and saying 'Phew I'm cream crackered I just want to collapse and do nothing tonight' and doesn't seem to notice his wife hasn't sat down after he's been on the sofa for an hour. And so on.

Aren't most elective procedures only carried out after GP referral and a preoperative assessment with either the surgeon or another consultant? That was definitely the case when I had back trouble. Would men be less aware of this?

In any case, you can't necessarily compare two disparate procedures.

Ask your male friends to name one routine medical procedure performed only on the male body that requires the permission of two doctors.

Aren't most elective procedures only carried out after GP referral and a preoperative assessment with either the surgeon or another consultant? That was definitely the case when I had back trouble. Would men be less aware of this?

I'll clarify that PP's statement: "Ask your male friends to name one routine medical procedure performed only on the male body that, by law, requires the permission of two doctors."

Also, "Ask your male friends to name one type of medicine required only by males that, by law, requires the permission of two doctors for the patient to take it, and under normal (non-coronavirus) circumstances may not be taken by the patient at home but all doses must be taken in a clinical setting with a HCP as witness."

The GP referral does not count as consent of one doctor for abortion. The abortion must be signed off by two doctors concurrently and it is illegal to pre-fill the forms.

No medical procedure required only by men is regulated in this way.

In any case, you can't necessarily compare two disparate procedures

You can't compare them and bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg does not make, in my opinion, a valid comparison.

I'm happy with the UK position, particularly as the UK actually has one of the longest cut off periods.

I'm pro- choice but I don't agree that an abortion is just like any other medical procedure.

bd67 that does seem awfully like moving the goalposts. Why is the existence of a specific law more oppressive than the practical implementation, especially given that we both enjoy and are subject to a nationalised health service? I also find the requirement for a procedure to be exclusive to men bizarre; equality isn't measured in the number of perceived blows struck against respective groups.

What would be a better comparison would be the disparity in some PCTs on how male and female sterilisation is handled.