Looking at men differently now I know too much?

[clingfilmed]

In recent years I've seen so much in the news and online about men's abuse and violence towards women. A man who looks totally normal and pleasant and is perhaps in many ways a good man might still be going home and creating fake AI nudes of women he knows or watching extreme porn or abusing his wife or kids or using prostitutes or cam girls or has a fetish that degrades and dehumanises women or is a complete misogynist.

There is a post on the relationships board now where a married man is hoping that just because a mum of his sons friend has been friendly towards him she might fancy him and be up for it.

Then looking at many of the men I know day to day how they talk to and interact with their wives and families is depressing to see, almost like they don't care at all.

I know its not every man, I know some men who I do think are good. I do look back to the rose tinted days of my teens when I would idealise boys and think they were so amazing and now knowing what I do about general trends and some men in particular its quite a disappointment.

So you're making it all up.

I don't know how you're drawing that conclusion. The common claim is that the women who give up their jobs are oppressed and the working husbands are privileged and dodging 'the real work'.

I challenged this idea by posting loads of contradictory quotes from this very website. Women saying how privileged they felt not to have to work due to their husband's hard work, one of which mentioned the husband working 80 hours a week.

But that's a kinda odd point to obsess over anyway. Even 50-60 hours with a boatload of managerial stress is a lot compared to not working any. And if the mental load of writing xmas cards and shopping lists is so extreme then what's the mental load of running a business like?

Arguing about whether work itself is a privilege or a burden obscures the underlying issue. Which is that we live in a money-based economy, and so whether you do or don't have direct access to money in your own right can make a hell of a difference. So being allowed to work for money is something that should be a right, but too often has been a selective privilege. ( I am old enough to have a mother who was forced by her employer to give up her job when she got married.)

Anyone who depends on a partner for their money is at the mercy of their grace and favour. If they're a decent sort ( as my father was), this won't be an issue. If they're not, you're in trouble. It happens; and financial coercive control is now recognised as a form of abuse.

And sure, both sexes could do it (and probably do; I don't have figures - are there any?), but if you have both the money and the punch power you're in a stronger position.

The common claim is that the women who give up their jobs are oppressed and the working husbands are privileged and dodging 'the real work'.

citation needed

But why do we see so many threads with posters saying they've decided they no longer want to go back to full time work after having children and how the husband isn't happy about it?

I suppose a cynical person would no doubt argue it's because the husband isn't pulling his weight with the housework etc rather than because said women prefer a better work/life balance. This will of course be true in some cases but it still doesn't explain all the women like the ones quoted above who feel lucky in not having to work once the kids are grown up/at school.

I think it's what I said earlier. Many women are happy to risk the trade of their financial security for an easy life where they either don't work or just work PT but still retain a great quality of life, often sharing a joint bank account.

Read the post above yours.

Are Sheila Cronin, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Mary Daly, Treena Shapiro, Linda Gordon, Catherine Comins, Susan Griffin all extremely well-known and influential feminists?

I've never heard of a single one, aside from Daly & Atkinson. Both Daly & Atkinson have received considerable criticism from within feminism.

If you look at most movements, not just feminism, you can find leaders who have said extreme & wrong things. Plenty of black activists in US. Plenty of socialist activists. Plenty of gay rights activists. And so on. Does that mean all those causes are wholly discredited?

May I ask where you got that list? Did you compile it yourself?

Googling, I see Catherine Comins is a Vassar Dean, not some well-known professional feminist.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.thecrimson.com/article/1994/10/8/in-many-different-voices-pbdburing-the/&ved=2ahUKEwidkamaqMmSAxVqVkEAHcQ-JF0QFnoECEsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2FWEEyez0KKBxYwrd5vo1Q

And Treena Shapiro...pull the other one! She's an obscure columnist for a Honolulu paper, not some famous feminist 🤣

https://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/03/il/FP601030304.html

It's also notable most of the women you quote are American. Feminism is far bigger than US feminism, and American culture in general tends more towards the overwrought than, for example, the UK does.

Aha, did you get your quotes from this article? Why not just link it? ...🤣

https://thoughtcatalog.com/jake-fillis/2014/05/23-quotes-from-feminists-that-will-make-you-rethink-feminism/

I agree with you about that woman's behaviour.

Otoh, are most women in Mumsnet doing that? Surely most work at least part time?

Moreover, most women in UK work at least part time. 78% of women in UK work, among women of prime working age (21-54). 71% of women overall in UK work.

Finally, one should remember that some posts about being a lazy wife of a high earner may be troll threads or wishful fantasies.

I'd already read them. They don't show that The common claim is that the women who give up their jobs are oppressed and the working husbands are privileged and dodging 'the real work'.

I don't see how those quotes are relevant to your claim but even if they were, cherry picking a few quotes does not demonstrate that it's a common claim.

I think I'm bowing out now. My longer posts earlier begged for some nuance, but I'm just not seeing it.

Gad, I don't think I like those extremist quotes from some "feminists" any more than you do (although I'm conscious I'd need to read the context to each to judge accurately, some come across as frighteningly nihilistic and understandably offensive to men!)

Similarly, the articles about mothers murdering children are intensely distressing and this requires attention and action.

The thing is, though, I do feel you're seeking out edge cases so as not to engage with the more nuanced and difficult arguments being presented on here. For example, you've been told multiple times that the "common claim" you describe above is over-simplistic, yet you keep returning to it as a safe windmill at which to tilt as opposed to engaging more meaningfully.

Some of your posts have been genuinely interesting and thought-provoking - thank you for that.

However, as long as 98% of sex crime and a not dissimilar proportion of violent crime is committed by males, there must be a space for women to condemn that, and discuss its implications.

And as long as this is dismissed as "whinging", with for example, an unrelated international list of recent maternal infanticides posted to prove a point...

...I'll regard that poster as having proved a very different point to the one they believe they were making, by exemplifying some of the challenges we face in addressing male violence as a society.

Incidentally, I've worked 80 hour weeks. I really thrived on it for a period, then burnt out - and got a new job.

Edited to put "feminists" in my second para. in inverted commas in response to Carla's helpful research.

I haven't read the whole thread but I think the op sums up how many people - not just women - feel about men based on recent stories in the news. It is easy to become overwhelmed by news like grooming gangs, Gisele Pelicot, the Chemsex child rape, what's happing to women and girls in Afghanistan, the rape, enslavery and massacres of Yazidi women in Iraq. Part of the issue is that abusive men have always existed but we get to hear about it far more than we used to. Even so, I am deeply concerned that pornography and the connectedness of the internet is creating abusers rather than just being a tool of abusers. I certainly never realised how deeply misogynistic our culture still is until realising that people would rather platform, reward and listen to men in dresses than actual women and those in authority would make moral judgements about abused girls and return them to their abusers rather than prosecute them. I think saying 'what about abusive women?' is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that 99% of sex offenders are male shows a clear difference between men and women that society needs to get to grips with. At the moment it seems to be going in the opposite direction.

Oh crikey this with bells on.
the punters with the gorgeous wives who don’t work/have no earning capacity as well as the ones with the gorgeous, educated, high earning, loveky mum to fabulous kids, wives, were equally using sex workers

As the feminist Camilla Paglia has pointed out - men are so weak that a lap dancer in a club with good tits and arse gyrating in front of your husband offering extras, potentially has the power to make the idiot destroy the whole life he has built over decades, and blow up that of his wife and children.

Re your sex work point : I get that ordinary family men were buying sex, but it still must be remembered that these are a self-selecting group, not a random sample. Most married men don't visit sex workers, though it's more than one wants to think.

If these men let on they were married and you were just doing it for extra cash nit economic necessity, why did you enable them to commit infidelity?

Do you think just as many rich men would happily marry a woman working at a low-paid intellectual job, provided she is equally 'stunning and personable' as the McDonald's worker?

Why or why not?

That said, I'm not sure whether a woman working in say an academic/research role would likely be from the same background as these types of guys as most of them are working class. Depending on what you'd define as a high earner, there are quite a few in the construction/plant sector.

It's not uncommon for machine operators to be on £24 p/h when doing contract work as many do. With them usually contracted to around 50 hours a week with a 1.5x overtime rate it's easy to get up to £65k with the odd bit of overtime or working the occasional Saturday.

'That said, I'm not sure whether a woman working in say an academic/research role would likely be from the same background as these types of guys as most of them are working class.'

• that's a good point. High earners in law, banking etc might be less likely to be working class though if course they might be

I mean, the reality is that if a woman wants children it's going to be a lot easier if her partner/husband earns well, in terms of maintaining a decent quality of life. So I kind of get the attraction of wanting a financially stable/successful guy. But I do also think women get judged much less for not ever returning to a proper career.

It's easy to see why the career might take back seat for a good few years but certainly quite a lot of women don't really bother pushing the career post children if their family income is high enough for them not to have to. This seems to be a conscious choice in most instances.

Couldn’t have cared less one iota back then. I was a not much more than selfish teen that wanted quick money to do my thing , and besides it wasn’t me cheating.!!!

I met 100s of men and so did my friends -the vast majority were married or in relationships. Very very few were incel loner types/ exceptionally physically unattractive / ‘too busy’ for a relationship high flyers.
Most were regular average Joe family men. They were by and large a likeable, seemingly ‘respectable’ bunch. Exactly like the men in my life now so every now and then I do wonder if do they /don’t they / would they etc

You make some good points but can we skip the racism please. Just because gippo is a common term does not make it less offensive.

Galadriel, when you meet a woman who hates men, how do you know she does? What gives it away?

Speech is not violence, no matter how hard trans rights activists try to tell us it is!

Well, 'male tears' mugs, using the phrase "the menz"....there are quite a few indicators. Whether she rabidly hates men or just likes to denigrate/slag them off is down to the individual, but you can usually tell whether they ascribe to that ideology.

It's a bit like people that support Tommy Robinson or use phrases that are synonymous with the alt right etc. You don't know exactly what their individual views are but you can probs make an intelligent guess.

I mean, men are the only demographic where you can get away with posting a thread titled 'All men are filthy losers'. My above post where I jokingly said my boss's ex "looked like a gippo" was met with outrage and deleted. Imagine if I'd said "all gippos are filthy losers", which is still less insulting than creating an entire thread to communicate it. And tbh it's a more defensible statement. Most men aren't filthy losers. We wouldn't marry them if they were.

But travellers do often dress in a particular way which can be seen in many documentaries/reality shows and the many bare knuckle fights on youtube. I don't think many people would call it high fashion.

I'm not surprised. There was an article which I think was by the BBC. They linked a study where 75% of the men and just below 70% of the women admitted to cheating at some point in their life.

I'm fact, I never really thought about it, but if those figures are anywhere close to being accurate (which they might not be) it makes me think that the dynamics are likely different between the sexes.

Women don't use prostitutes as much as men otherwise there'd be a lot more male prostitutes. So does this mean women are having affairs instead? It's an interesting comparison. Using sex workers seems more seedy/exploitative and perhaps carries a higher risk of passing on an STD, but an affair is often a more pronounced emotional betrayal.