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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Do you ever think we should just embrace the patriarchy?

94 replies

TERFCat · 04/12/2024 22:25

The videos of the medical students being told they can't continue their studies because they're women has broken my heart. Hundreds of innocent women having their dreams shattered, and for what? So that men can control us?!?

What I've taken from this, and the events of the past decade, is that our rights are fragile. Men will take every opportunity to claw them back. If there was a referendum in the Uk tomorrow to remove our freedoms, I'm sure over half of men would vote yes.

With this in mind, would it not be better for us to just embrace the patriarchy? It doesn't feel like we'll ever win the fight against it, so why don't we try to work with it?

Looking for a discussion on this.

OP posts:
Jaxhog · 05/12/2024 13:38

And watch time roll back to the1970s (or further)? No.

I'm old enough to remember back then, when I couldn't open a bank account without a 'man's permission', or fill in my own tax return, or got turned down for a job 'because the men wouldn't like it'. No thankyou.

Brefugee · 05/12/2024 13:39

oh god the tone police have arrived.

Have fun. Enjoy all the rights the women went before you worked so hard to get.

But i highlighted that ridiculous paragraph because we don't even have that now. There are zero single sex spaces. That paragraph alone means i don't need to pay attention to the rest of the words.

blackwithlight · 05/12/2024 13:43

Brefugee · 05/12/2024 13:39

oh god the tone police have arrived.

Have fun. Enjoy all the rights the women went before you worked so hard to get.

But i highlighted that ridiculous paragraph because we don't even have that now. There are zero single sex spaces. That paragraph alone means i don't need to pay attention to the rest of the words.

I'm sorry but that is such a misinterpretation of what that poster said that it seems deliberate.

blackwithlight · 05/12/2024 13:45

Shortshriftandlethal · 05/12/2024 13:22

Personally find the concept of 'patriarchy', when applied to liberal western societies, pretty defunct and also problematical. I used to use it when younger, but I reject it now.

Patriarchy, strictly speaking, is the rule of the father, or by men more generally - in which women and girls are seen as the property of their father, and where women and girls do not have equal rights in law. There are certainly many societies in which patriarchy is most definitely still a thing. Afghanistan is probably one of the most extreme versions of the patriarchy.

I personally don't think that 'patriarchy' applies to us in the West anymore....... what we are left with is general differences between the sexes. Physical and biological differences and all that stems from those differences. I think raging against these differnces is pretty pointless and ultimately doesn't change them, either.

Unless we envisage a future in which babies are gestated outside of the body and brought up in state run establishments ( communism has come pretty close to this vision in certain ways - in which the state takes on a totalitarian character) then women ( in general) will always tend to carry the biggest share of childcare and domestic responsibility. Obviously, some families, happily and easily, make other arrangements along more equitable lines......but for many these issues tend to be one of the prime reasons for marital or relationship breakdown.

Women are increasingly having to do everything......have children and the related domestic responsibilities, but also a full time career, and lifestyles have become predicated on two full time incomes. so even if a woman wants to take a few years off, or go down to P/T she is unable to. Some women are putting off, or not having children at all. I'm not sure this is becauase of 'patriarchy' though - it is far more practical than that.

After all these years of feminism we still see male violence and sexual assaults - and i don't think that will ever change. Males are simply more predisposed to violent and sexual crime.....although, of course, not all men are violent or are rapists. Holding all men responsible for the behaviour of some men is not a winning game in my view, and doing this just makes women feel permanently angry.

Gregg Wallace is an example of a sex obsessed, probably porn addicted, man and he's definitely not the only one. But I don't see his behaviour as being down to 'patriarchy'. I think his behaviour is a result of his own male role models, his own character and his own life experiences - combined with natural heterosexual male tendencies. He alone has to take responsibility for his behaviour. John Torode managed to conduct himslef in a respectful way towards his female colleagues.

I recall when Reading Andrea Dworkin - who most certainly suffered terribly at the hands of men - I'd come away feeling absolute rage and hatred towards men......though I'm also sure that is not a healthy state to be in. Her experiences were extreme, and there are definitely some women who have suffered similarly...but not most of us.

In short, I'm more accepting of sex based differences now and have reconciled myself with them. And as such, i don't recognise British society as a patriarchal one. The reason we have singles sex spaces, services and sports, for example....is in recognition of some of the differences between the sexes - not because women as a group are oppressed. We have such safeguarding rules and they are based both on predictable risks and out of a sense of female dignity and worth.

Mary Harrington is a thinker who I have a lot of time for on this area of thought...though at times she can be a little too esoteric, with her own self created vocabulary and concepts.....but interesting nonetheless, and willing to psuh the boundaries of thinking when it comes to contemporary society and the positions of men and women in it.

I think this is a thoughtful and interesting post.

SharpOpalNewt · 05/12/2024 13:48

If there was a referendum in the Uk tomorrow to remove our freedoms, I'm sure over half of men would vote yes.

I don't think they would, I think the support would be very small indeed.

SharpOpalNewt · 05/12/2024 13:51

Jaxhog · 05/12/2024 13:38

And watch time roll back to the1970s (or further)? No.

I'm old enough to remember back then, when I couldn't open a bank account without a 'man's permission', or fill in my own tax return, or got turned down for a job 'because the men wouldn't like it'. No thankyou.

Indeed. I think we have come a long way but there is also a long way to go - clearly much further in other places too. The US particularly. And I will personally continue to fight anyone who doesn't get it.

ACynicalDad · 05/12/2024 13:55

As a man - no thanks. I find it really odd that people can be treated differently due to their biological sex. I get that more women are primary school teachers and nurses and more men are soldiers, but that's their choice and should always be.

EvelynBeatrice · 05/12/2024 13:56

No. A human being should not ever accept being treated as lesser with no rights, to be barred from education, earning their bread, barred from medical care, from feeling the sun on their head and face and to be sold, branded, raped and tortured at will.

WitchyWitcherson · 05/12/2024 14:19

I haven't read all the posts, but I kind of understand where you're coming from. I can see some sort of "tranquility" in behaving like some kind of Stepford wife , walking around smiling dumbly and serving pies to the menz and laughing glibly at their jokes.

However, the reality is that by doing that, you're letting the rest of us down. People say "women's rights are hard won" for a reason. It's taken decades of women pushing, pushing, pushing for us to have rights such as to not be raped in the marital bed for instance. The more women that drop the rope on this, the harder the rest of us have to fight, and the smaller the 'wins' of all the previous generations.

In Afghanistan, SO many women are trying to fight back in their own ways, I understand there are HUMONGOUS risks they're going through to do that, and they could potentially even be putting their children in danger for it too. However, the less women pushing back on the Taliban's rule, the more the other women will be in danger, and the worse it will get for women there in general. I don't know the solution, but embracing the patriarchy is certainly not it.

OriginalUsername2 · 05/12/2024 14:24

I feel like western women have only had rights for about a hundred years and people forget that all the time. We’re in a teeny tiny segment of time where it’s new and society is still figuring it out.

UmbrellaEllaEllaElla · 05/12/2024 14:28

Absolutely not. Erosion of rights simply leads to more and more.

UmbrellaEllaEllaElla · 05/12/2024 14:30

OriginalUsername2 · 05/12/2024 14:24

I feel like western women have only had rights for about a hundred years and people forget that all the time. We’re in a teeny tiny segment of time where it’s new and society is still figuring it out.

Absolutely! We've not had rights far longer than we've had them. It's easy to take away and we must protect them for the sake of ourselves and the women and girls we care about...our daughters, granddaughters, mothers, grandmother's, aunties. Why should women have less rights because they are women?

JazzyJelly · 05/12/2024 14:31

Excellent suggestion, let's just lie down and die shall we?

TERFCat · 05/12/2024 14:34

I'm still reading, but to be clear, my take isn't a troll post or bad joke. Why would it be? Most women aren't involved with women's rights, so it is really so hard to believe that I've almost given up on the pushback too?

Look at what's going on around us. Men are being cheered on for going into the safe spaces of women and children! Poor women are being coerced, if not forced, into carrying and giving birth to the babies of richer women! The women in the Sudan are committing mass suicide rather than be assaulted again! It's never ending and overwhelming! It's like whack-a-mole. You solve one issue and another pops up elsewhere to take its place.

OP posts:
Arran2024 · 05/12/2024 14:35

Trouble is that many of us HAVE embraced the patriarchy, in that we benefit from it without even thinking - husbands and partners with good jobs for example because they are men so get the best opportunities.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 05/12/2024 14:39

I think it's one of those, "Give an inch, they take a mile" type situations.

If we let old fashioned sexism go unchallenged, this influences society's attitudes, which means politicians are less likely to put women's rights front and centre and more likely to vote for measures removing rights and protections from women.

If we let everyone go round saying that women are silly inferior creatures and men should control everything, as soon as that narrative is accepted it won't be enough for your common or garden misogynist anymore. They'll want to abolish equal pay legislation, or bring back women not being able to have their own credit card or mortgage without their husband's permission, or make marital rape legal again.

These men will always be pushing boundaries so we need to keep the boundaries as high and strong as possible. Otherwise we'll end up like those women in Afghanistan.

It is exhausting though.

turbonerd · 05/12/2024 14:54

I agere that the veneer of civilisation is very thin indeed, and that in Europe women’s rights are not set in Stone. They are chipped away at, so it is important to keep the focus up. Looking at what is happening in Afghanistan might give the impetus to keep on keeping on, rather than just give up. I really, really don’t want to live in anything less than the freedoms I have now, Thank you very much!

In Norway we just extended the time for abortion to 18 weeks. It was cross-political co-operation to pass that Motion in parliament.
All the usual noises were made about the sanctity of life from conception to how awful that now women might abort featuses with disabilities. Point completely missed by some that it is a matter of choice!
But the discussions were had, and that is important, and then the law was passed which is brilliant imo.

Bit rambling, due to lack of sleep, but there are definitely matriarch societies in the world, and they seem to have much better conditions for both men and women than what patriarch societies manage to stump up.
When men rely on subjugation and inane powerplay - be it through religion or otherwise - that’s when things go to shit proper.
I call out what I can of badbehaviour whenever I can, and I keep teaching women that we have to keep protecting our rights, that is my small contribution.

TheywontletmehavethenameIwant · 05/12/2024 15:19

No

aylis · 26/04/2025 13:30

No. I've thrown my hands up at times and been like 'what's the point' but I don't mean it. It's because our rights are so fragile that we should never stop. It's not worth it to stop.

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