Feminism, whats the goal?

[UglyGlassVase]

How can we ever be in a place were we aren't reliant on men?

We have the babies.

We are physically weaker.

How do we get around that? What's the goal?

I'm feeling very despondent, the more I think about it the more bleak it seems.

It is true that all gender roles are social constructs, but that it doesn’t follow that we’d be banging our heads against immovable objects because many millions of women are and live entire lives not conforming to gender roles. That freedom already exists in western society

I don't think the intense rush and urge most women feel upon having children..that leads many of them to want to be with their baby and small child, rather than return to work, results from a social construct.

The social construct is having to go out of the home environment to earn a living in the first place. And even that arose because of the natural needs for food, shelter, clothing and so on.

It is clear that some feminists cannot tolerate dissent, or any degree of 'wrong think'..no matter how the individual has arrived there; or why they may be interested in looking at life through a range of different lenses.This then leads to aggression, hostility and contempt towards others - every bit as bad as any other fixed ideological position or 'ism' .

That is my observation from having spent the last two years on this particular board. There are, however, a good few more open minded, enquiring and tolerant posters, though...which makes it worthwhile.

@Justhadathought

Just because male violence may be innate, it doesn’t mean we have to accept it (bonobo females have structures that control it, as do humans), or that it can’t change

Violence is an innate possibility in all of us, and to a greater extent in males, but that does not mean we cannot temper or control that. Most of us manage to, and many men manage to as well, but it does remove the inherent possibility or capacity for it.

Some people can channel their aggression in less destructive ways than others. Aggression itself is natural, instinctive response.

It’s not just to a greater extent in males, it’s significant and quite probably innate, since similar (destructive, antisocial) violence is seen in other great apes. There is real science on this, not just wishy washy opinions.

The point is that controlling male violence and diminishing its power over time takes collective political action and massive social change. It’s not something that can be achieved by individual women working in isolation.

Women must be in positions of power to achieve this, men as a class will never work against their own interests, consciously or unconsciously.

@Justhadathought

It is true that all gender roles are social constructs, but that it doesn’t follow that we’d be banging our heads against immovable objects because many millions of women are and live entire lives not conforming to gender roles. That freedom already exists in western society

I don't think the intense rush and urge most women feel upon having children..that leads many of them to want to be with their baby and small child, rather than return to work, results from a social construct.

The social construct is having to go out of the home environment to earn a living in the first place. And even that arose because of the natural needs for food, shelter, clothing and so on.

But the home environment as we know it is also a construct. Nuclear families living in a home together is not how humans evolved. It’s a domestic set up that massively benefits men and traps many women in domestic drudgery and financial powerlessness.

I have a different POV.
I believe humans are a creche species, that in the past women of different ages gathered in groups to support each other when they were raising children, and the kids played together.

So for me the question 'how can we free women from being dependent on men' is a red herring; instead we can design a more natural style of economy where we pay in when we can, and are supported when we can't.

@YetAnotherSpartacus, in fairness, women can never get it right. If you decide to have children and be home with them, you're stupid and worthless and probably a rotten feminist to boot.

Not on this board though. Fwiw, I have found it v supportive of SAHMs though I know others will disagree.

It’s not just to a greater extent in males, it’s significant and quite probably innate, since similar (destructive, antisocial) violence is seen in other great apes. There is real science on this, not just wishy washy opinions.

The point is that controlling male violence and diminishing its power over time takes collective political action and massive social change. It’s not something that can be achieved by individual women working in isolation. Women must be in positions of power to achieve this, men as a class will never work against their own interests, consciously or unconsciously

I agree there are some innate programmes that arise as a result of biological imperatives. There is nothing wishy washy about that. They need not be totally deterministic, though - after all, we as human beings have the potential for the transmutation & channeling of our drives. Aggression, for example, when channeled, can be a motivating force for change.

It seems, though, that some feminists want to assert that there are no innate or natural differences at all -apart from superficial secondary sexual characteristics. That all is socially constructed.

And yet still, there still seems to be a contradictory desire to position men as innately more aggressive/violent/predatory etc. This is supposedly a product of 'patriarchy'. Patriarchy is rule by and for men in the interests of men. And yet at the same time there supposedly are no innate differences between men and women, or between male and female interests. If there are not any innate differences,, how and why did these social constructs arrive? Why did they come into being in the first place; and why did they divide along lines of sex.

I no longer find it particularly helpful to have this archetypal item called 'Male Violence', rather than recognising that violence, particularly of certain types, is most often carried out by males.

Women are violent too; and aggressive; and controlling. It can be deeply unpleasant to witness a woman being violent, abusive or excessively controlling towards her children, for example, and yet it is something I not infrequently see on the streets and in public places where I live

But the home environment as we know it is also a construct. Nuclear families living in a home together is not how humans evolved. It’s a domestic set up that massively benefits men and traps many women in domestic drudgery and financial powerlessness

i agree. the home environment has changed over time, through history.....according to the dominant means and methods of subsistence and survival. In some cultures still, all work is carried out within the environment of a tribal community...and women share childcare and over-see each other's children in the context of the 'village' or the community. this still has resonances in working class communities in Britain.

Once families became mobile - in search of work or opportunity, community and family bonds break down or become more distant, at least...and we are left with the nuclear family. And in contemporary society we have many single parent families, which inevitably places a great strain on women - as they are the ones that are left with primary responsibility ( & many want that primary responsibility, even if it does represent a life of hardship and struggle. I was a single parent myself at 19 years old. There is no way I'd have willingly given over custody of my daughter to her father. Not that he sought it, anyhow)

So for me the question 'how can we free women from being dependent on men' is a red herring; instead we can design a more natural style of economy where we pay in when we can, and are supported when we can'

Agreed! But so much of contemporary life removes us from 'the village/the tribe, and the close connections of family. They tend to be seen as inhibiting and restrictive to personal freedom. We've gone from being creatures of the community to an individualistic, free choice society.

@Justhadathought

You’re completely ignoring what I’m arguing about violence.

I’m not talking about aggression, or anger. I’m not arguing that male violence is a product of the patriarchy.

I’m talking about anthropological studies in great ape populations that have observed gratuitous violence, serving no imperative or purpose. Violence that is dangerous to the females of the group.

There is evidence - not just in humans - that destructive, pointless male violence is a real thing. Collective action by females in humans and bonobos has controlled it to an extent.

And re: child rearing and women. I said above that I think whether or not a desire to nurture children is innate in women is irrelevant. That isn’t the problem. The problem is how women being the ones who are biologically tied to childbirth has led to their labour being exploited to do all kinds of other drudgery, and being trapped financially.

There’s nothing about child rearing that necessitates women doing all the housework, caring of older people etc etc.

Women’s labour being exploited and undervalued is consistent throughout all human history, including hunter gatherer groups. That has nothing to do with whether or not they might be best suited to raising children.

There is evidence - not just in humans - that destructive, pointless male violence is a real thing. Collective action by females in humans and bonobos has controlled it to an extent

I'm not denying that. Though I think we have pretty much managed to control it too..... certainly in contemporary western civilisation. It is certainly not societally condoned, even as it may be channeled through sport & warfare.

It will most likely never be totally eradicated because it is forms part of human nature, and male nature in particular ( although females can be violent too - often killing their own young, or being aggressive & violent towards them). And women can be hostile, and even aggressive towards other women ( & men).

There will always be some who act in primitive and instinctual ways; we all do in certain circumstances; but most men do not launch physical attacks on other males, or on females, and they manage to temper their responses in most situations.

I have a different POV....I believe humans are a creche species, that in the past women of different ages gathered in groups to support each other when they were raising children, and the kids played together.
Agree...and this is supported by the recent study into time spent by different sexes on different activities.
Women spend more time on parenting now that in the 70s...all I can think is that reflects more child-centric parenting and less "creche-care"
Personally I don't think that's healthy for kids either.

@Justhadathought

Why are you so determined to minimise the issue of male violence (with no evidence except your own opinion it seems) and pretend there are no structural inequalities to overcome?

Why are you ignoring the points about exploitation of female labour in this thread?

Link here
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-time-of-your-life/

I agree with pp about creche care. The nuclear family does not benefit women as a class, it traps them.

Solutions like the scandi shared parental leave work within existing structures, but long term it would be better for women if many of those structures were dismantled.

This creche care though. When I've seen it in other countries it only works because there's this massive class of poor women who work as domestic staff on low salaries. Their lives aren't great, and it's common for them to leave their own children somewhere else so they can take care of richer women's children. Or, the other women are relatives of the family who don't have work to go to who come and live in to care for children.

None of that is a demonstration of women's liberation. It's the opposite. It only works because women are poor or without opportunities. So when you say creche care, what do you mean?

Also, this idea that men "should" do more domestic work. Sure. But who's going to make them? That idea about picking a man who will before you procreate requires women to have supernatural powers of seeing into the future, and anyway its no help at all to women whose baby daddies don't help out. They can't go back in time and change them.

@UglyGlassVase

How can we ever be in a place were we aren't reliant on men?

We have the babies.

We are physically weaker.

How do we get around that? What's the goal?

I'm feeling very despondent, the more I think about it the more bleak it seems.

I've not RTFT, but I don't really think the goal is to change our reproductive role.

In fact I don't think the idea that we should change it through drugs, or making sure society doesn't require strong people, or somehow making infant care for men easier through artificial baby formula, should be integral to it.

I see all that as an aside. A really radical women's movement would be valid in every time and place, under any technological conditions. Because it would be about a society that treated men and women with equal dignity, and acknowledged their fundamental personhood. And that would also mean understanding that men and women, and also children, have different calls on their bodies, and time and attention, and that needs to be accommodated.

What that will look like concretely would be different depending on where you live - there isn't going to be one right answer. If you are in London working in an office it might not be the same as rural Mongolia, or even the same as something like the fishing industry in a modern industrialised country.

The most important element to me is probably political representation. So voting, and also potentially going pretty far to make politics something women can enter - though I think part of that in our society might be acknowledging that some, or many, may do so a bit later in life after having kids. (In fact I think something we would do well to think about is to make it more acceptable for women to have kids on the earlier side and start a career afterward, rather than having kids after establishing a career. Which would require some changes possibly to education and funding of it, and some changes in attitudes.)

Also, this idea that men "should" do more domestic work. Sure. But who's going to make them?

There are actually two things here --- how do you get your individual chap to do more (assuming you're heterosexual), versus how do we get males in society as a whole to do more? Well, laws aren't going to do the whole job, although altering the parental leave situation might. It needs changes in society, as well as possibly a change and a different structure of society, perhaps. But you can't get started unless you realise that it is an enormous advantage for men individually and men as a whole that women do this stuff. It's not just your individual nuclear family, or your extended family, it's your work situation that expects women to be there so chaps can do as required at work. A 'solution' that means working women pay for the labour of poorer women isn't a solution. it's just shifting things around between women. Just as surrogacy does. I'm rich, do you can do my female labour for me.

Which akes perhaps lesbian couples an interesting case study (or at least lesbian couples that were around when I was a few years younger). How to you arrange things when potentially both of you can bear children?

It would be interesting to hear other women's perspectives, especially mothers, as I've read posts here before from some about how much they preferred to be at home with their baby rather than rush back to work (which seems like a perfectly unsurprising and natural response to me). But maybe that's best left for a different thread rather than derailing the conversations in this one. Anyway just felt like I had to comment on that point as I thought the cultural differences in the role of motherhood were interesting.

FWIW, I have four kids, from 3 to 15, and I agree with you. I don't think trying to socially engineer mothers and fathers into identical roles, in search of some abstract ideal of equality, is particularly desirable or even possible. As soon as you consider breastfeeding as being an ideal from a health and resource perspective it becomes patently crazy - even if the mother pumps that is a lot of work that can't be turned over to the father. Recommendations to breastfeed are typically about two years though it becomes much less intense a job over time.

The idea of requiring shared parental leave kind of gives me the rage, to me what it says ultimately is that infant-care isn't considered real work that's worthy of respect, because it often has something to do with women.

A lot of this comes out of a way of thinking that sees widespread employment for wages of the able-bodies as the assumed norm, and doesn't consider a more holistic view of economy might be a better answer. Nor that trapping women into the proletariat just like men might have more to do with benefiting capital than benefiting either women or workers more generally.

@Thelnebriati

I have a different POV. I believe humans are a creche species, that in the past women of different ages gathered in groups to support each other when they were raising children, and the kids played together.

So for me the question 'how can we free women from being dependent on men' is a red herring; instead we can design a more natural style of economy where we pay in when we can, and are supported when we can't.

But the home environment as we know it is also a construct. Nuclear families living in a home together is not how humans evolved. It’s a domestic set up that massively benefits men and traps many women in domestic drudgery and financial powerlessness.

Only to a point. Mother-father-child is not a construct, it's the foundational triad of human existence. Even in the few examples where children depended more on uncles than fathers, it still bound men and women together to care for children. Historically that's been far more embedded, most of the time, in larger structures of extended family and community. That it isn't now is in part down to increased wealth, and largely down to the requirements of the movable labour force, it's quite interesting to see how that is reflected within different types of communities and social classes in the west.

But this idea that you can just mandate men to take on half of the childcare and, presumably, women to take up the paid work? Even if many women didn't want to care for their babies, or weren;t tied down by feeding, it has so many limits. Some jobs are dangerous, some jobs are physically demanding, some jobs require weird hours or travel. Women who are heavily pregnant are not working on a fishing boat, women who are pregnant at all, are not going overseas as soldiers to fight in wars, many mums with small kids are not usually going to want to be away half the year in their job, many women find the after-effects of pregnancy impact them physically in ways that make a difference in their work if it is physically demanding.

If a family is a fishing family, and we are having several children, are we really expecting the pregnant mother is the one going to be on the boats while the father watches the toddler at home? Probably not.

These kinds of physical differences will always result in imbalances in the workforce, and different choices about who will have the main career, and who won't, in some families.

[quote WinterAndRoughWeather]@Justhadathought

You’re completely ignoring what I’m arguing about violence.

I’m not talking about aggression, or anger. I’m not arguing that male violence is a product of the patriarchy.

I’m talking about anthropological studies in great ape populations that have observed gratuitous violence, serving no imperative or purpose. Violence that is dangerous to the females of the group.

There is evidence - not just in humans - that destructive, pointless male violence is a real thing. Collective action by females in humans and bonobos has controlled it to an extent.[/quote]
I don't know that anyone has missed what you are saying, but it's not clear what your point really is.

No one has suggested saying that it is just ok for men (or anyone else) to be violent. No one things it should be made legal, or socially acceptable.

I would wager too that everyone thinks that social structures and beliefs that minimise that behaviour are a good idea.

I don't know what it is you are saying people are supposed to be ok with.

So when you say creche care, what do you mean?
I mean, children playing and spending more time together in multi family groups, supervised by one of their parents or by an older sibling.
As opposed to this quite intense at home in one family construct in place today.
I know the busy roads don't help, but I don't think children have enough freedom to grow and develop social relations today

Why are you so determined to minimise the issue of male violence (with no evidence except your own opinion it seems) and pretend there are no structural inequalities to overcome

I have come to have an issue with blanket terms as 'Male Violence' or 'White Privilege' . I don't deny violence exists at all, or that males carry out most/much of it.

The use of such blanket terminology just shores up division and polarisation and is not particularly helpful.