How should feminism respond to growing blame and backlash from men?

[TheywontletmehavethenameIwant]

Whilst we fight to regain the rights we've had taken off us, there are those, and I by that I mean men, who are saying that feminism is to blame for everything, will we soon be fight a rearguard action against this attitude.

It's from the USA, he's a Republican legislator, at the state level I think, but as we all know if it happens in the USA one week, it happens here the following week.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KAoPNNsjRSI

How do we answer this attack, not the Tate brothers specifically, but this 'blame the feminist' game is going to get worse I fear.

I've been listening to blokes whinging on about a backlash against feminism for at least 35 years. Even as a schoolkid I wondered how you could have a backlash against something that hadn't fully happened, and worked out it was just more of the same old shit, and we just ignore it and keep going.

I haven't watched the video (and can't be bothered tbh), but in a sense the demands that second wave feminists (like me) were making did have unintended consequences and have been distorted or contorted to justify lots of things that is making society not such a healthy place for any sex.
"The personal is political" has become a justification that any sort of social grievance affecting an individual must have some sort of systemic political cause. The bodily autonomy enshrined in "My body, my choice" has become the mantra justifying surrogacy, pornography, "sex work is work" and abortion up to birth. Intersectionality that once highlighted the solidarity and collective strength among women fighting patriarchal structures has morphed into a cartoon landscape of victimhood tickboxes of oppression. The rejection of traditional domestic roles and modes of presentation has given us the perverted ideology that people can be born in the wrong body and that surgery and drugs can make them into the "correct" gendered presentation.

This has been going on forever, there is a well know list of the Rules of Misogyny someone made

1. Women are responsible for what men do.
2. Women saying no to men is a hate crime.
3. Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.
4. Women’s opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified.
5. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.
6. Women who go around being female AT men by menstruating and breastfeeding babies deserve punishment.
7. Women should always be grateful to men for everything.
8. Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.
9. Men always know the “real reasons” for everything women do and say.

10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.

11. Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men.

12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry.

13. Angry women are crazy. Angry men have trouble expressing themselves.

14. Women have all the rights they need: The right to remain silent.

15. Men are the default human. Women are strange subhuman others.

16. Everyone owns and controls women’s bodies except the women themselves

Feminism grew largely as a result of war and then capitalism. They needed us to work to fuel production, growth and profit, and that meant women were becoming educated and independent. Many women worked hard to capitalise on these gains, and campaigned for things women need to become full members of society.

They want our physical, emotional and intellectual labour, but they want us to give those gladly with no rights nor giving men any additional work in the shape of “equality”.

yeah fuck that

Don't be fooled. The 'blame feminism for everything' school of propaganda is the same one that gave us the blame immigrants, black people, muslims, jews gays & trans people for everything. Culture wars are specifically designed by corporate/billionaire/power elites to distract us plebs from our class interests by fighting amongst ourselves while they raid our pockets & resources using their media ownership to clobber us over the head relentlessly with this con.

How do we fight it? Call it out for what it is & keep our eyes on the prize…our economic liberty.

There's been a backlash against feminism from the very moment a woman first said 'Excuse me, I'm not sure this is right...'.

I think the key to solving a lot of division in society is through reducing the gap between the rich and poor. When we arent in such dire competition for resources, we will have less anger and blame to misplace.

Those who try to engineer social division won't be as successful when the masses aren't in fear of meeting their basic needs. Rather than social leader or gurus, ordinary people like the Tates' will stand out as men in need of very specific resources to rehabilitate them.

I agree OP, I took myself off Substack because the backlash was slowly destroying my faith in humanity. What I think you are saying is that there is a loud and constant buzz of men who think that the old times were good because women "knew their place", and that any problems we are now facing are a result of women who have fought for "equality". I think their logic goes "well you wanted equality and now you've got it and you still aren't happy and look where is got us". It's really flawed thinking of course, because for every gain we made they extracted more from us. A couple of examples that come to mind is women wanting more sexual freedom, and the capitalist response was (long-story-short) pornography and rape-culture. Women wanting to work for their own money after marriage, and the capitalist response was, well do it yourself with shitty childcare and also refusing to adopt a cultural change where fathers take on more family responsibility. So, when we say"hang on a second, that's not what we were asking for", they say "yes you were and look how you've f*cked everything up, stupid feminists". I think for every change we fought for they gave us the minimal viable product, and extracted what they could for their own gain, and now they blame us for the failure to really understand that we were trying to create a better world for everyone. Is that kinda what you mean?

This is not new, OP ...

Revealingly, the vast majority of anti-suffrage propaganda was about how terrible life would be for men after women got a vote. Women would be swanning around Parliament or relaxing with women friends while the men had to put in long days until midnight, doing the laundry, cooking and cleaning, caring for kids. The images show the men worn out, distressed and chaotic.

They don't seem to have realised their anti-woman propaganda was actually making the case that their expectations of women were unreasonable! There were also lots of postcards showing (ugly) suffragettes passing laws to make men marry them. The poor lambs were terrified of having to marry an independent woman who'd make him pull his weight at home.

Plus ça change ...

I think for every change we fought for they gave us the minimal viable product, and extracted what they could for their own gain, and now they blame us for the failure to really understand that we were trying to create a better world for everyone. Is that kinda what you mean?

Yes, they won't budge up an inch, equality means women being the equal of men in all things, not the same as men in every way, they wouldn't accept that, which is why there's a problem. They won't even met us half way and now all the problems in the politically divisive world are all our doing.

NF in the video, is as close to the stereotype you can get, he's a male chauvinist, who thinks men should be men and women should be grateful for it. As a Christian he's anti-abortion and Pro guns, as an American he's all about duty, to God, Country and the American way of life.

His message will get a lot of traction, in certain circles, he has a large following, although not Joe Rogan large, he's also been over here recently. It was a family holiday, but I'm wondering if there was any other reason for the family picking the UK. I always get nervous when godbothering Americans come over here.

We had this in the 80's.

Just wow!! I've seen similar before but it never stops hurting tbh xx

How should feminism respond to growing blame and backlash from men?

With weariness and grim determination, I suggest.
If there's one thing I've learnt in the past decades, it's that linear progress does not exist for women. 'One step forward, two steps back' - maybe twenty-two steps back - some of the sexism on open display now is shocking.

There have been moments where women thought we were in the home stretch 'We've come a long way, baby', only to find misogyny staging a powerful comeback.

For instance, the massive commercial promotion of all things pink, glittery, Disney Princess-y and butterfly-y in the mid 2010s, which led to the re-emergence of heightened gender stereotyping.

Which feeds into if you're not a girly-girl, maybe you are actually a boy? and should avoid puberty, and transition? Ditty boys who like glittery things - maybe they aren't boys at all, but girls born in the wrong body?

I'm afraid we are never going to 'win' for once and for all, we are in an ongoing struggle on many fronts for rights and respect and even these days for our very right to the word 'woman'.

It's depressing, but true, I think.

100%. We can never stop. In Lerners "the creation of patriarchy", she says that women are the only oppressed group who are "distributed among our oppressors", which makes it very hard to organise, and also that it ensures we have an attachment to them (husbands, sons, brothers, fathers) which makes it hard to fight back. Sadly I think that this is going to have to break for the real revolution. But in the meantime we need to talk to each other and be single issue voters, and support female businesses, writers, artists, politicians (aligned to womens rights of course) and so on. I love MN for this.

Feminism is the future, whether men like it or not. It's ultimately the only way humanity will survive. It's one of the reasons the West has a falling birth rate – because women now have agency and choice. It's where the rest of the world needs to follow – and fast, to stop populations becoming too big, poverty increasing, the toll on natural resources becoming too unsustainable.

The USA feels like a bad influence on every front these days.

100% agree. I'm not a feminist (as I don't think patriarchy exists in most western countries anymore). But economic inequality is increasing and is only going to get worse unless we address it. I'm quite worried about the social consequences of letting this gap grow so wide.

I'm a feminist, and I hate that fertility is falling. I think a world without children (worse: which considers having children to be wrong) lacks love, lacks future, and is severely dysfunctional. And I say that as someone who's had trouble becoming a mother and who has never judged other women who choose not to become one.

I don't entirely agree. Patriarchy and misogyny cannot be neatly be wrapped up in all those other issues you raise because the subordination of women exists (I'm gonna say almost because historically some cultures were equal) in almost every culture and has existed since millennia - men have dominated and used women as resources across cultures denying them autonomy and equal rights. Ithink the intersectional feminism you are describing depletes the energy women need to fight for women, globally. I also believe that trans issues are in opposition to women rights for loss of reasons and do not accept that we are fighting the same fight as men who claim to be women and then claim to be "more oppressed". Like it's a fun competition or something...

Hey @PeachyDaisy , genuinely interested in why you think patriarchy doesn't exist in Western society anymore?

@Manyanamanyana Sadly I think that this is going to have to break for the real revolution. But in the meantime we need to talk to each other

What is going to have to break? Our attachment to the men in our lives?

Because in law men and women now have equal rights that are well established; unlike in many countries in which women do not have equal rights in law and in which there is still the official rule of the father and of males in general.

I don't think you can carry on referring to all perceptions of unfairness as 'patriarchy', nor the continuing differences between the sexes - at the level of the group, that still exist, either.

If feminism is just another ideology or an 'ism (with fixed category baddies) then it is no different to any other branch of identity politics, in my view.

Part of 'women's rights' lies in recognising the differences between the sexes and giving value to each; and also in acccommodating those differences when necessary.

We have imported huge numbers of families from cultures where women are completely subjugated to men - hardly surprising that women are being forced back to the dark agrs.

Yes - some of the commentary I've seen on the Lindsay Clancy case has been disturbing, to say the least. Some men really hate women.

OK so I watched it, he’s pointing out that the Tate brothers are not operating from a traditionally conservative framework. i think he’s criticising the christian right who support the Tate brothers and the left who prioritise personal freedoms over what he would probably think of as Christian behaviour (in this case he doesn’t seem to be denigrating women he seems to be pointing out that the Tate brothers can exploit it).

I’m not actually sure this is an attack on women as such tbh and I have to say I have sympathy with the criticism of “sex work is work” position.

Would also point out that in the Uk they had a higher approval rating amongst ethnic minority men than amongst white men which is interesting. I think this anti-feminist thing is a particularly american thing because of religiosity more than anything else.