Caitlin Moran's new book - feminism is for women and men.

[irishfeminist]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caitlin-morans-more-than-a-woman-from-life-lessons-to-sex-advice-2pmn3d2kf

Bet you can't wait for this.

"But life for men, in the past 120 years, has remained almost exactly the same – save for the fact that men now don’t, generally, wear top hats. Or cummerbunds. Modern men have problems, too – suicide is the largest cause of death for men under 50; divorcing men tend not to get primary custody of their children; and I’ve lost count of the number of men who have said, if a child needed help in a playground, they would have to find a woman to offer aid: “People just presume you’re a paedophile.” There is something impossibly sad about this. Humans are programmed to want to help others. To make half our population feel that they can’t – that they are, just because of who they are, a threat – is a terrible position to put boys and men in.

I gradually realised that if feminism is “the belief in the social, political, economic and personal equality of the sexes”, then that meant it is for women and men. All of us. In 2020, my feminism has become unisex, and the chapters about men are some of the ones I’m most excited about."

As for the gripe about fathers 'never' getting custody, how many divorces happen because women struggle to manage work and childcare and a husband who behaved like an extra child, making work instead of sharing the load? Most divorced women I know decided that single motherhood was frankly easier than servicing the needs of their child's disinclined father and bearing the repeated disappointment that he never stepped up for them.

Those fathers would run a mile if offered full custody!

Note, not all fathers, of course... 🙄

I wear a bra 24/7. To not do so quickly becomes uncomfortable and even painful. I have night bras, shower bras, the lot! A well fitted bra is a godsend for me.

@NearlyGranny

As for the gripe about fathers 'never' getting custody, how many divorces happen because women struggle to manage work and childcare and a husband who behaved like an extra child, making work instead of sharing the load? Most divorced women I know decided that single motherhood was frankly easier than servicing the needs of their child's disinclined father and bearing the repeated disappointment that he never stepped up for them.

Those fathers would run a mile if offered full custody!

Note, not all fathers, of course... 🙄

Not rtt but fathers do get custody I was the first woman in my family to get custody

It seems like she is over-attached to the word feminism in a way

I agree!

I've come to the conclusion that i no longer identify as a feminist because it implies a very particular political framework & set of beliefs about men and about women, and about the relationship between them.

I think the point about men and custody was that until a certain point (not sure when, will google) was that children were the PROPERTY of the father and so children of divorced parents and so any divorced women had no option for custody.
This carried on with the aristocracy until fairly recently, hence Princess Diana as a child had to remain with her father and her mother didn’t get any option in this.
And yes that many modern men would run a mile than have 100% custody... yes, partly due to modern working practices but still...

Anecdotally I see a hint of wistfulness from men sometimes, at the way it used to be. A male relative of mine (40s) was joking about looking at his own life (dual income, both pitching in with childcare and housework, strong independent wife with her own hobbies) versus his dad's (company man, wife did absolutely everything round the house and with the kids, he played golf every weekend) and how cushy his dad's life was compared to his.

Our parents' generation could live a happy, comfortable life with one average-salaried job per household. That's just not possible any more so we have both parents juggling insecure jobs and a hectic home life. But if men think that this is caused by women getting more rights then they're mistaken. This is driven by economics and, in fact, there's every incentive for capitalist governments to get women out of the home and generating income. We see women in full and part time work even in the most sexist and gendered countries.

Too often the plight of men is blamed on women's "demands" when the enemy of men is far more likely to be an increasingly unequal and capitalist society.

• Oh and the men in my current and last job worked flexibly and went to school plays etc. It was fine. I imagine the employers who are inflexible, are inflexible with the women too.

My perception is that good employers nowadays try to be equalists. Bad ones may be less tolerant of men vs women balancing their work and family commitments but they will have much more of a tendency to not promote (or hire) women.

I wonder if Moran’s cowardice on speaking out about the trans threat to women’s rights is precisely because of her deprived upbringing and current wealth?
She is probably terrified of cancel culture and losing her hard won goodies. When you come from poverty, you dread being thrown back there.
Personally, I wish her fellow Times columnist Janice Turner had written this book. She is unapologetically gender critical and would have had no truck with appeasement of TRAs or MRAs.
Caitlin, listen - if you are on MN - for all our sakes, go and have a pep talk from Janice and find the courage to be a proper radfem, not a bloody male apologist and approval seeker!

This is driven by economics and, in fact, there's every incentive for capitalist governments to get women out of the home and generating income. We see women in full and part time work even in the most sexist and gendered countries.

And also in communist/socialist ones ... pretty sure the USSR and China were pushing women to be 'workers' earlier and more comprehensively than in the west.

The shift of work from the home is much more to do with industrialisation (particularly of farming and textile manufacture) than the particular political system.

I wonder if Moran’s cowardice on speaking out about the trans threat to women’s rights is precisely because of her deprived upbringing and current wealth?

I think there may be something in this, but I think she's also caught up on the just 'be kind' movement, particularly prevalent on sites like Instagram. She's written about the need to 'be kind' several times. I think she struggles to square what she probably knows deep down to be true, with what acknowledging the truth might do to people's feelings.

I do think that there is a place for men in feminism and that it can massively improve the lives of men. Before I ever had a child I used to have so many plans for how I would raise a daughter in a feminist way. It was a constant background plan, I'd see how a young cousin or friend's daughter was being raised or see something on tv and make a mental note to either do it like that, or more often, never ever raise my daughter that way. Then I had a son. And the reality of feminist parenting a boy hit me.

I'd genuinely never thought about how to raise a boy as a feminist. How to teach a boy to respect women as absolute equals. How to look up to women, to have female role models. How to grow into a man who (assuming he is straight) will look for a woman who he sees as a partner and who is able to be a full partner in his future relationships. There are so many ways that our society pigeon holes boys and girls from an early age and it's just as important that we make an effort to stop boys from falling into that trap as it is for girls.

And while initially my focus was on trying to ensure DS grew up to see women properly. I have also realised how utterly, utterly freeing it is for him. He gets to like whatever he wants. When he was really into Barbie and My Little Pony, he was able to just indulge in that. When he meets girls, he views them as absolute equal friends. His extra curricular activities are a broad mix but lean to a large degree towards those aimed at girls. When I signed him up for one class the teacher let me know that there were no other boys in his age group. I mentioned this to DS and his only concern was if that meant boys weren't allowed being the only boy in a class of girls was in no way an issue for him because he sees girls as his equal.

I have a niece and nephew the same age and I see how gendered they are compared to him. They almost exclusively play with friends of their own sex and they both talk disparagingly about the opposite sex. They only want to dress and wear their hair and play with toys and consume media aimed at their 'gender.' They each have talents in activities aimed more at the opposite gender but they refuse to do them because they are mostly for the other. And it seems to bloody confining.

So that was all a really long, long way to say that feminism actually does have a huge amount to offer men and boys as well as women and girls. I raise my son to know that there are biological differences between women and men. (He was absolutely gutted to learn he could never grow a baby and breastfeed.) He knows that women and men have different abilities and that men are stronger and faster. But he also knows that as a child the main difference between boys and girls are that boys have a penis and girls have a vulva/vagina and that those body parts make absolutely no difference to what children are allowed to enjoy. I think it's made him a happier child and I really, really hope that it will make him a happier, freer man who is capable of a real partnership as an adult.

feminism actually does have a huge amount to offer men and boys as well as women and girls.

Absolutely, but it's more of a by-product rather than the main aim.

I think it's both - men do have a lot to gain from feminism achieving its goals, but also a lot to lose - and how it affects an individual man will depend on what he's like, his job, domestic situation etc.

For men who don't fit into a masculine gender stereotype easily, a feminist challenge to gender should help them too. For men who don't want to be seen as carrying the burden of being the breadwinner and not seeing much of their kids, and who genuinely want more equality. For men who don't have a vested interest in clinging onto money and power in their relationships, and have a sense of fairness

But many men don't like the idea of women being their equal, and that's why you see so many descriptions on here of lazy, controlling, or selfish men, and relationships with hugely unfair finances and divisions of labour. Even a nice man who think's he's a feminist may baulk when he's faced with the reality of equality, hence me raising with my ex the possibility of us both working part-time and sharing childcare combined with some nursery days. he could still have done a 4-day week. The answer was no way, not possible. Even though, oddly enough, it seems to be possible for women in the exact same job as him at his workplace. Because essentially he was hugely invested in the status and pay associated with achieving a promotion, and he saw it as much more important than my career and I could just lump it. His deep embedded belief that women are secondary and pick up the domestic slack so that men can shine, was unaffected by his surface wokeness.

I remember once me getting upset that he wanted to disappear off on yet another weekend doing a hobby and leaving me with two small kids and he moaned "but gets to!" Yes because colleague has a traditional domestic set-up where his wife sacrifices everything and has no career or time for herself at all. And you want that for me?

(I should add he's an ex now, but all this was when we were together)

@ValancyRedfern

I wear a bra 24/7. To not do so quickly becomes uncomfortable and even painful. I have night bras, shower bras, the lot! A well fitted bra is a godsend for me.

Same here. It's got absolutely nothing to do with what men or anyone else might think of my 'unshackled' boobs. They're bloody agony without one.

Inadequately supported norks can be a 'shackle'! I can't run or jump without a good bra on.

Fair point re bras.

I suppose what I mean is that we don't really have a choice because of the points I made upthread. I'd be perfectly happy to go without one, but it would not be socially acceptable to do so.

I'd be perfectly happy to go without one, but it would not be socially acceptable to do so

We need to stop caring about 'socially acceptable' otherwise we'll always be bound by it. When I was younger I used to panic about the idea of going out in summer without shaving my legs. After I hit 40 I thought 'fuck it' and stopped shaving them. Nothing terrible happens when I go out with bare, unshaven legs.

CM: “divorcing men tend not to get primary custody of their children”
CM needs to educate herself.
If there was a brief moment in time when custody was assumed to go to the mother (sandwiched sometime between women and children being deemed the husband’s property and now) that moment ended a good decade or more ago with MRAs scaling buildings and screaming Families Need Fathers while quietly ignoring the ongoing pandemic of domestic violence against women and children.
These days, a mother going into a “custody” battle against a father named on the birth certificate (note: marriage makes no difference) will be advised by a lawyer (IF she can afford one – legal aid is now non-existent, even for proven victims of domestic violence: the financial test means anyone who owns their own home can forget it) the court will need to be given evidenced reasons why custody (“residency” these days) is “not 50/50”. That is the assumption: If a father wants 50/50 residency he will get it, unless there is overwhelming – and believe me it must be OVERWHELMING – evidence that such an arrangement will cause severe harm to the children.
What would be overwhelming evidence? You can forget being able to prove the children will simply be better off living the majority of their time with their mother; that she has sacrificed a full time salary to be at home with them, or that she is more attentive to their physical and emotional needs.
Being the better or more available parent counts for nothing under the CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory Service) doctrine of “good enough” parenting (the benchmark a father must meet to be deemed fit enough to “win” (as so many of them see it) 50% of residence. Of course, for a mother, the benchmark is implicitly somewhat higher, as MRAs have instilled the notion that protective mothers systematically use “parental alienation” to turn children against abusive fathers. And as parental alienation is emotional abuse, a woman who struggles to prove in court that the father has been abusive – has raped her for example (so easy to prove!) or subjected her to years of coercive control – risks losing residency of her children when the tables are turned and allegations are not just unproven but the mere fact of her making them (the witch) deems the mother herself “abusive” and therefore unfit to parent.
But CM doesn’t need to take my word for it, she can read the review published this summer by the Ministry of Justice about how courts deal with child arrangement (AKA custody) orders in cases involving domestic abuse.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895173/assessing-risk-harm-children-parents-pl-childrens-cases-report_.pdf
Its review of thousands of private family law cases (which are almost always conducted in private and by law cannot be discussed or reported on – a recipe for zero judicial accountability) found fathers are routinely awarded substantial unsupervised contact and/or residence with their children even after serious abuse had been proven.
It compared cases were domestic abuse was either not raised at all (ie run-of-the-mill divorces) or was alleged but unproven to those were it was proven. The result? LITTLE OR NO DIFFERENCE in the levels of contact and residency awarded to fathers between the cases. In case that’s not clear, let me spell that out: A father who has been found to have abused his partner and/or children is likely to get the same amount of residency and contact with his children as a father who hasn’t even been alleged to have committed any abuse.
Why is that? As the report shows, the root of it seems to be how the courts and particularly CAFCASS put the child’s “right” to have both parents involved in her or his life (the so called “presumption of parental involvement”) above their right to be protected from the risk of all but the severest harm. By “severest harm” I here mean sexual abuse. The line is often (not always) drawn at sexual abuse. But a child’s “right” to have both their parents involved in their life - a right that is often cast more as a “father’s right”, not without reason - trumps their right to be protected from physical and emotional abuse.
Equality feminists like CM cant see family law as a feminist issue as they see the assumption of 50/50 residency after a relationship breakdown as good for women – what better way to enable the mother to get on in this man’s world? Get to those breakfast meetings and after work drinks; work and play like a man. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy for those mothers and kids for whom a 50/50 scenario works. But that’s not all women and children by a long shot, and CM has just made our lives a lot harder by given further oxygen to this MRA bullshit.
TLDR: I'm sorry. I know this is long. The MOJ report was barely reported on. Covid, sexism, the gov pretending it had all been fixed by the DV law (it totally hasnt: that's about criminal law not family law). If you cant read my post, please try and find time to read the MOJ report. It's horrendous and the life of so many women right now

found fathers are routinely awarded substantial unsupervised contact and/or residence with their children even after serious abuse had been proven

I can attest to this. It happened to a woman I know and it took years (and tens of thousands) in legal fees to challenge it and make it so that no unsupervised contact can be allowed. We're talking about a man who has been in prison for domestic violence.

@NiceGerbil

Fair point re bras.

I suppose what I mean is that we don't really have a choice because of the points I made upthread. I'd be perfectly happy to go without one, but it would not be socially acceptable to do so.

I think some feminists are far too fixated on the idea that everyone is looking at them and judging them for failing to meet the highest standards set in magazines, red carpet.

Honestly as long as you are covered I really don't think any one cares.

@Pelleas

I'd be perfectly happy to go without one, but it would not be socially acceptable to do so

We need to stop caring about 'socially acceptable' otherwise we'll always be bound by it. When I was younger I used to panic about the idea of going out in summer without shaving my legs. After I hit 40 I thought 'fuck it' and stopped shaving them. Nothing terrible happens when I go out with bare, unshaven legs.

Exactly- no one notices or cares.

I fully appreciate that the beauty industry is a multi-billion one but on the other hand a quick look around any public place will show there are women happily ignoring it.

This insistence that women and girls with big breasts could go about their lives with no bra on and no one would bat an eyelid is rubbish.

Girls and young women in particular would get a lot of staring and comments. They do enough when they have a bra on.

I can't imagine it going down well in jobs where you have to look 'smart' either.

I went out for a cigarette the other day without one on and bumped into my next door neighbour and she kept glancing down

This is an aside though.

And it's not just feminists who would blanche at the idea of going braless either! Funny idea, that one.

This is probably a derail now, sorry my fault.