what feminism fights are still relevant to you?

[garden4569]

just curious. i have a female family member who is a 1970's quite strident feminist.
to be honest sometimes it's a bit draining. as in my (female) experience, i personally do not think things in this country, in 2020 are that bad for women. i have worked in what would have been percieved as male industries and personally feel that women in this year, have the freedom to choose what industry they want to work within without barriers.
i think as a mum to 3 boys, that boys have a tough time too and that i wish, we were all humanists, rather than feminists (if you see what i mean)
what battles do you feel still need fighting in this country in the name of feminism?

I’m from Northern Ireland.

Mumsnet actually have a campaign about lack of legal abortion despite the recent law change.

Northern Ireland is part of the uk, so we ARE this country.

I think the role of caring needs to be changed in order for women to to gain true equality. Mothers spend more time out of the work environment than fathers. This has a direct impact on how much they earn and how likely they are to be promoted. You can, of course, shout about preferences etc but surely if fathers taking time out of work to care for their children becomes normalised (i.e. incentivised through generous parental leave policies) it will mean that a. Mothers will not be disadvantaged at work b. Children will have more male input in their lives, and c. Fathers will get to know their children better. Why should men be able to have children and it have no impact on their earning ability while women almost have to choose and frequently sacrifice?

Agree that there's no reason not to put your efforts and resources where your interests lie/ where you feel there are most problems.

I hope the charity links I've posted are useful- the first two are for men. St mungos is for both but as most rough sleepers are men will be assisting them more.

Are there any other areas you feel particular concern about? Loads of posters on here have experience in/ knowledge of a load of services etc that support men and women/ focus on men.

Movember is on at the moment for example are any of your sons old enough to get involved in that?! It's popular at my work so if they want to experiment with a lockdown tache it feels like an ideal opportunity! (Of course they may be young in which case that won't work lol).

I'd like to see an increase the value of traditionally female roles. (Cleaning, care and catering to name a few) industries dominated by women are paid less than those dominated by men of a similar skill.

I'm also keen of recognising the value of all the unpaid care work primarily done by women. Carees allowance is the lowest benefit of them all. Minmium of 35 hours a weeks care work for about £67

@midgebabe

Slight derail perhaps, but how many of the feminsits on this board ever go to boards associated with other groups and ask them to justify why they see a need for the group?

i am not asking to you to justify your board. jeez. jsut asking some questions and interested to see how you see things.

Well as a parallel example as a country we've stopped shoving children up chimneys and shipping them off to Canada, which is great and enormous progress, but that doesn't mean I think it's a waste of time for any child centred causes to continue.

Why are you asking feminists to justify to you not switching their energies and attention to male centred causes as you seem to think they ought to? Support what you want and what's important to you OP, I'll do the same. Women who focus on woman centred causes doesn't equate to male people losing out, in the same way that people donating to cancer charities isn't a threat to the British Legion.

Any chance you could reply to me?

Thanks.

jsut asking some questions and interested to see how you see things.

It isn't coming across as interested so much as critical and dismissive, which is possibly why you're getting the reactions you're getting.

Men are killing women and girls and defending themselves by saying "she asked for it"
wecantconsenttothis.uk/

Our planet is missing over 100 million women because of boy preference
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women

Online Porn is shaping boy's sexualities to the detriment of women's sexualities.

Eg, if you type "say no to porn" into Google, two of the first three top results are porn results of "she says no" on pornhub.

Please note "she says no" is top result. Not "he says no" or indeed "saying no to porn improved my life" etc.

You don't need to look far to find blatant misogyny running rampant through our society. Feminist's job is to point it out.

If you don’t want to be educated, or learn, then why bother starting a thread?
Is this what 4th/5th Wave Woke feminism looks like?

Ok, so what about the gender pay gap? Surely that is hard evidence of sexism in the UK?

that pay gap exists even if you only consider women who have never had children

I mean , you can decide that the issue isn't as important as other issues for you ( and there is not shortage of problems in the world) but denying its existence seems a little strange

@NiceGerbil

Agree that there's no reason not to put your efforts and resources where your interests lie/ where you feel there are most problems.

I hope the charity links I've posted are useful- the first two are for men. St mungos is for both but as most rough sleepers are men will be assisting them more.

Are there any other areas you feel particular concern about? Loads of posters on here have experience in/ knowledge of a load of services etc that support men and women/ focus on men.

Movember is on at the moment for example are any of your sons old enough to get involved in that?! It's popular at my work so if they want to experiment with a lockdown tache it feels like an ideal opportunity! (Of course they may be young in which case that won't work lol).

thanks for your links. i'm not specifically looking to support any specific charities. i work and volunteer with vulnerable people (covid based) and at a school. but thanks :)

also, to another poster earlier, no i'm not on glue!!

as a women, of course i want equality - i want my kids to treat women and talk to women as equals. i do feel that there are still battles to be fought, but i find the drum that my female realative beats - exhausting and dismissive of difficulties men face.

i have ordered the invisible woman, on others recommendations.

but i came here, looking to see what your thoughts were. just because i'm asking and not passively agreeing does not mean i don't care about women abroad/that i'm on glue/should only focus on mens issues/or be dismissive of this board.

just looking/just asking.

thanks :)

You may or may not be aware too depending on how often you read around here, that feminism is currently fighting for the right to still centre female people instead of being modernised to centre the needs of males. Which is in itself a significant feminist issue as it says a great deal about what the role of women is perceived as being, the right of women to do something or work for something not seen as useful to men, that women have a traditional expectation to take responsibility for meeting the wider needs of everyone else before considering themselves, and so on and so on.

Honestly, donkey sanctuaries don't get constantly harassed with people reproachfully pointing out that orcas are obviously much more threatened and what are they doing fussing about donkeys yada yada yada.... which again says a lot about how society views females who care about and centre females.

Hence why posts like this tend to garner a slightly weary here we go again response.

Perhaps your friend also feels you are dismissive of her concerns?

The fact that effectively men can still give or withold women's rights. No one ever takes away straight, white men's rights (the only 'rights' they've had removed are those of owning other human beings or being able to assault their wife, which they should never have had in the first place).

It's totally possible in most countries for a government to come in that wants to force women to give birth and remove women's right to birth control.

Patriarchy is still in enough control to allow women's right to be stripped away if enough people support it, and plenty of people still do.

And laws are one thing but actually treating women as equals is another.

So OP, you think there is no need for feminism any more on the grounds that you personally got a job in a male industry? That's your sole reason in your OP. And you dismiss everyone else's points by saying "Oh the poor menz have it hard too"? 1/10 could do better.

@Sleazeyjet

I’m from Northern Ireland.

Mumsnet actually have a campaign about lack of legal abortion despite the recent law change.

Northern Ireland is part of the uk, so we ARE this country.

sorry sleazeyjet, i didn't mean to ignore your post.

I must apologise as I didn't know that the law change last oct wasn't being action-ed. i am sorry to say, i don't know how your laws in N.I differ to the UK. I had assumed they were the same.

i suppose that i find that some of my relatives comments have tones of all men are rapists

Ok, so you basically admit you cannot compute the fact that all rapists are men without thinking it means all men are rapists.
Not our problem hun!

@lazylinguist

So OP, you think there is no need for feminism any more on the grounds that you personally got a job in a male industry? That's your sole reason in your OP. And you dismiss everyone else's points by saying "Oh the poor menz have it hard too"? 1/10 could do better.

urh, no, clearly there is more in my head than this. but i am sure you don't want to read a massive post... i just wanted to find out others points of view, and others have put some really interesting points that i'll go and have a google of.

Interesting first post, garden4569. I find your motivation intriguing. This board is called Feminism Chat. We don't tend to waste our time debating whether feminism is relevant/important. To most of us it self evidently is. NAMALTing is tedious and a waste of time. You surely don't think you're the first male rights apologist to tip up here?

Feel free to set up or join a MRA group. I will feel free to continue interesting myself in feminism.

@garden4569 No our laws don’t differ from the UK.

WE ARE PART OF THE UK.

our laws differ from England. So do the laws in Scotland and Wales.

So take a different angle.
Raise your three sons to be decent human beings,
to respect girls in their classes and activities,
to allow them to speak equally,
to make sure consent is enthusiastic,
to not make crude sexual demeaning jokes,
to look a girl in the eyes instead of the tits when talking to her,
to accept no for an answer,
to channel their anger in ways other than violence
to be honest about their feelings
to avoid all the elements of toxic masculinity that harm them
to ask for help when they can’t cope instead of feeling it’s not manly

And the rest.

How would you say the humanist position differed from feminism?
( just curious ...in my mind the humanist position is idealised and feminism is grounded in the world as it is, warts and all )

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_campaigns/4063071-Abortion-provision-in-Northern-Ireland-news-update-and-some-action-to-take-if-youd-like

@garden4569

I don't think I could pick one feminist fight that's most important to me.

The bit that's important is that the fights keep happening.

Otherwise the humanist aim PP mentions will turn out meninist by default.

On a personal level I'd put the reduction of sexual violence and simultaneously the provision of effective services for those who've suffered it as the top priority.