Feeling depressed after conversations with my young adult daughters regarding female value.

[BigButtons]

I was out for a drink with my 22 daughter a couple of nights ago. She showed me a list of her ‘bodies’ the men she had slept with. It turns out of the 9, 2 were indeed rapes. She shrugged it off and was more concerned about her tally. She says that young women now are deemed to have lower value if they sleep with a lot of people. That the men she meets often ask her how many ‘bodies’ she has had.
she believes that feminism driven by millennials has caused a huge back lash amongst men, given raise to people like Andrew Tate and devalued women.
I was so horrified.
The next day I asked my 20 year old daughter if she concurred with this and she did.
So we are going backwards. Young women are deemed higher value the purer they are.
I feel so bloody sad and angry.
I hoped for better for my daughters.

A family member in her late 80s told SIL and me that she had often been called names and judged socially having had ‘several boyfriends’ as an older teenager then became pregnant at 18. After several years a lot of trauma/events affecting them and the DC they married and stayed together, with some family members and people ‘in the village’ still openly insulting her, bringing it up etc. Awful.

in the same vein as this ‘modern’ crap.

This is exactly why she feels ‘millennial feminism’ is to blame for the culture. Her closest male influencers are the type that blame women for their own personal failings and unhappiness.

The type that are angry women might be getting closer to equality. They don’t like women who know their worth and so look for any reason to drag women down. These men have, probably, also contributed to the decision to not report the rapes and shrug them off. Because these are the sorts of men that also believe being raped is a woman’s fault.

That’s where you need to be focussing on. That she is internalising their misogyny and it’s actively harming her. You can challenge her POV that women are to blame for awful men. But I suggest it’s something that’s done slowly and gently.

@Itsonlymashadow you are absolutely right there. The misogyny in that household is horrific.

Of course not. I didn’t say to ‘rise above’ rape. I was talking about teaching girls to have a mind that rape is most definitely in the kitbox of some men. So ‘rising above’ cheap flattery and over familiarity with men they don’t know for example. Avoiding men who don’t behave entirely gentlemanly in public and in private. Spotting the signs of misogyny and disrespect.

Most rapes happen with men that the woman knows. Naivety about the way men operate can be as much risk to them as a spiked drink.

Being promiscuous and/or sleeping with any man you fancy has been sold to girls as a liberating activity, in the same way that only fans and prostitution has been scrubbed up as being 'sex positive' or 'sex work'. Personally, don't think any of it is especially good for women and girls and it certainly doesn't make them " equal" to men. There will always be double standards and different consequences.

I slept with quite a few men in my teenage years as I was living in and around 'alternative' and political activist scenes - but none of it was very edifying, or even enjoyable, beyond the moment. You live and learn.

Somehow you missed the fact that the OPs DD had been date raped twice. In fact, I don’t think she needed your judgemental victim blaming comment dressed up as a pretend joke.

@BigButtons I too have been hearing about this body count of ‘acceptable’ numbers of sexual partners for women from my DC. Funny how it never applies to men. It is alarming as mothers of young adult DDs and utterly depressing how fast we’re going backwards. Or maybe we never made the progress that we thought we had. There’s more pressure than ever for young women to engage in sex regardless. All so transactional and emotionless.

I agree RebelliousCow. It’s a difficult one because the second you suggest there’s anything possibly not great about promiscuity, you’re open to accusations of wanting to control women or being a prude blah blah and not being feminist. And it’s true that women should be able to have sex and sexual relationships without being judged and should be able to make their own choices about that.

But it’s also true that if there’s a pressure on women to be porno sex dolls and not be “prudes” and essentially have sex just because it serves men’s needs, it can be very demeaning and horrible for them and might not be making them happy at all. IME women (and to an extent men) who are very promiscuous are often unhappy, have trauma issues, or a background of sexual abuse. We also need to be helping young people - especially girls - that it’s ok to not have sex and you shouldn’t feel any pressure to do anything’s sexual you don’t like.

Exactly. Misogyny is to blame for the culture. It’s the misogyny that is informing her view. Not feminism.

I think many people are still waiting for the 'revolution'...for the day when everyone, men and women, are 'equal'. To my mind that flies in the face of human and social reality. We are not all equal in that our various human conditions will never be the same as each other. Waiting for the day that men will become more like women......and are in denial that there are some sex based differences. All differences are ascribed to 'the patriarchy' -especially the differences which are less sensitive to women and girls; their needs or feelings.

Male sexuality in general, is different to female sexuality...and you see this illustrated in the fact that men tend to be more visual and object oriented, and so more prone to fetishism, to voyeurism, looking at pornography. Even the 'nice guys' tend to be interested in sleeping with a variety of different 'type' of woman and if the opportunity ever came their way or presented itself to them on a plate they'd find it very difficult to resist.

Male sexuality, like the male organ is more extrovert and outer oriented, female sexuality more introvert and inner oriented. Women have an inherent greater need for safety and trust because their bodies are more easily violated and their boundaries breached.

RebelliousCow · Today 10:18

Being promiscuous and/or sleeping with any man you fancy has been sold to girls as a liberating activity, in the same way that only fans and prostitution has been scrubbed up as being 'sex positive' or 'sex work'. Personally, don't think any of it is especially good for women and girls and it certainly doesn't make them " equal" to men. There will always be double standards and different consequences.

I slept with quite a few men in my teenage years as I was living in and around 'alternative' and political activist scenes - but none of it was very edifying, or even enjoyable, beyond the moment. You live and learn.

having sex before you are officially fully grown up, not reporting rape and accepting it???, having abortions without the moral considerations what this really is??? - if this is what mumsnet considers being valued as a woman, please, delete me account again.

I think it is true that promiscuity does not work for many women. I had a fair few ONS as a young woman, simply because I thought that was what you were meant to do if you didn’t subscribe to sexist views, and honestly it was rubbish. Lots of shit rubbish sex. If you are a woman who doesn’t orgasm from PIV sex ( like me), then casual sex is just shit. You have much better sex in a relationship.

Bur I think most men find the same. I remember hearing a group of young men talk. I think they had forgotten I was in the room. Well, one very good looking young man was talking, who I imagine was very successful in attracting women, and he was telling his co-workers that he had decided to stop picking up women and find a girlfriend instead, because he said he wasn’t really enjoying these casual encounters, he wanted something more, and the sex wasn’t even good. This chimes with research I have read which found the same. When men were asked what they wanted from sex, they actually did want companionship and connection from the person they were having sex with. Like women do ( this research was prior the rise of internet porn).

I also disagree the women are less visual than men in their sexual arousal. Women might not enjoy mainstream porn which prioritizes men’s pleasure and in which they are dominated and degraded, but then, it’s not surprising women are less likely to enjoy such porn. I have read research that instead of showing men and women sexual images and asking them for their response, actually attached sensors to their genitals and measured the response. And guess what, women had very high visual sexual responses and to a wider variety of images than men. This makes sense to me. I hate porn but I love watching me and my partner having sex in a mirror. I enjoy it far more than he does.

i actually don’t think make and female sexuality is as different as is often made out.

I talked about this thread earlier today with a friend's 21-y-o daughter. She said that she knows this goes on — both men and women totting up bodies and rating them — but among the young women she's friendly with it doesn't happen. It was quite a long and rambling conversation but she wondered what your daughter is into on Insta etc, OP, and whether she needs to stop that and start something healthier/ get in with a healthier group. I asked her how she was surviving at university (she's in her second year) and she said that after trying to conform and go along with the in-crowd in the first year, and being very unhappy as result (she was turned on and bullied for having her own opinions), she decided to go it alone. She came off social media, adopted an aloof sort of attitude where she focussed on herself and her own well-being and refused to engage with people just because she wanted to seem social or popular. She said eventually she got to know a few women who weren't in thrall to toxic culture — women who were political and GC and feminist, from the sound of it, and things got better. I don't know if any of that's relevant to your daughter, OP. Would she be prepared to come off social media?

I'm not disputing much of what you say, but it remains a fact that it is males that are the fetishists, voyeurs, flashers etc - and you need only look at the gay male dating/clubbing scene to see what unrestrained male sexuality looks like.

"She says that young women now are deemed to have lower value if they sleep with a lot of people".

Sorry but your daughter is incredibly daft. Now? As if this is new, heck the old religions that used to dominate (and in some cases still do) societal values worship virginity. There is falling for social media brainwashing (as in, yes, some people think less of women with high body count, but so what, she doesn't have to play along, but I can see why one might succumb to these pressures) and then there is not knowing any history, and sorry but the latter is just completely on her.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that women posting here are suggesting that any of what you describe is 'valuable' or particularly edifying?

God it’s depressing. I’ve been listening to a run of podcasts about Tudor England, and specifically the wives of Henry VIII. Exactly the same social values and beliefs, that -to retain their value - women must be chaste and pure, while men who shag around are virile and manly.

im 51: when I was at school girls were either slags or frigid.

At uni, during peak lads mag / ladette era, I think it went too far the other way, with pressure on women to be as ‘up for it’ as all the lads were. I did shag around a bit, but was never happy with it.

but like the older posters here, I have never been asked to explain or justify how many men I’d slept with, by anyone.

I’m sorry your daughter is absorbing the misogyny dished out by her father.

@Abeona that’s a good question. I certainly need to follow this conversation up with her again. She is hard to pin down as she lives a nocturnal life style at her father’s. She is a manager at the uni bar so works night shifts a lot. Actually getting her to reply to texts/ pick up the phone / go out for a drink is tricky. I will keep trying though.

daft? She is daft? She was raped twice.
yes she can tell men to fuck off and mind their own busy - however these men like to brag and in her social circles not much is kept secret regarding the girls they have shagged( and badly or even raped).

Ah, so she's surrounded by students. That might explain things. I'm old and when I was growing up we had the same situation — if you didn't sleep with a guy you were frigid and uptight, and if you did you were a tart. But if you don't subscribe to that misogynistic nonsense it doesn't matter. Which was what my friend's daughter had worked out. If you're not on Insta or social media, and if you have enough confidence to be yourself and do your own thing, you tend to end up getting to know others who are independent thinkers.

I think it sounds as if you need to do some old-fashioned feminist consciousness-raising, OP.

however these men like to brag and in her social circles not much is kept secret regarding the girls they have shagged( and badly or even raped).

that's odd because according to many it's women that practice reputational destruction (while men are physically violent). societies focus on the physical violence of men while ignoring reputation destruction /bitchiness as less important has been presented to me as evidence of misandry. but it turns out men do this too. astonishing.

But on a serious note apart from porn, the internet gives the impression that you can see what everyone else is thinking. and will then filter what it shows . so there are actually loads and loads of positive/neutral portrayals of men in the media (and even if there was a dearth older stuff still exists ). but tiktok/youtube shorts will just show a stream of "angry feminist says men are useless, is OWNED by facts and logic". or literally just male commentators saying boys/men arent valued and if you repeat it enough times ...

Thats really unhealthy for boys and, even if their reality offline was constant support and affirmation it would skew their perceptions . especially combined with the "bleurgh women are whores" "counternarrative." its probably even more unhealthy for your daughter in those echo-chambers. she needs to spend less time online (and make better friends)

This is so sad to read. Yes I don't have dd's, but it affects my ds's.

Also I do think there is a huge issue generally with people feeling devalued/ valued only as economic units/consumers and this being normalised. it doesn't just affect boys/men but I think maybe some of this manosphere stuff is an (unhealthy) reaction to it

OP, re. @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision ’s question. I’ve told my DD to be really careful around men who try to ply her with shots, for example. Sadly we all know that there are some total shits around who will deliberately try to get a woman v. drunk, not to mention spiking her drinks.

I’m sure that you’ve had that conversation with her, but it might be worth reiterating it, especially if she’s around men like her Dad’s friends. 🙁

it really unfair to call someone daft and assume they don’t know any of the history of all this when what they probably meant was that we were supposed to have moved on from all this misogynistic rubbish. I think that view is fair enough given the comments on here from women of the generations above OP’s daughter whose experience as young women was of not being judged on so called purity. It does seem we’ve gone backwards which is really sad although it’s also sad that some women in the recent past have been judged for not having lots of partners.

Do any other MNers have recommendations for support resources for young women in the same situation as the OP's daughter? I was going to say rape counselling, but the she may not see herself as entitled to specific rape counselling.