Why do I get so irrationally angry at all these "poor men" threads?

[ImSoNotTelling]

In the last couple of days there have been a few threads about how difficult life is for boys, how our whole society is weighted against them, how they are set up to fail academically by a system weighted against them, how they are victims of violence, how no-one takes them seriously.

I understand that a lot of the protagonists on these threads have sons and are naturally worried about how things will play out for them in their lives, That is a given when you have children I think. You also want the best for them, for them to have all the advantages in life.

However this business about men being done down all the time, I just don;t see it.

For every one ad on teh telly with a man being incompetent at cleaning, I see 10 with a man in a sharp suit being successful, with loads of adoring women gazing at him.

I see images of men doing exciting physical activities, being powerful, swishing out of expensive cars, glanching at their expensive watches, exuding authority as they sweep down the road.

Most of our politicians are men, in the papers the vast majority of "experts" consulted are men.

Men will on average earn a lot more money than women over the course of their lifetime, even if the fact that many women go part time is factored out (sorry I've got no links). In fact women on average are earning less than men, in the same jobs, before they have even started their families. In my old industry the women earned 40% less than men.

So are boys and men in our society really having a terrible time, and we need to redress the balance? If we redress the balance, what does that actually mean? What do people who call for this want? For men to earn even more money than women in the same job? For more men to be decision makers?

I just get when I think about just how shit it is for women and girls, still, here and around the world, and yet we are all supposed to ignore that and accept that yes, men have it worse, let's forget abotu the girls (again) and concentrate on making everything even better for men.

Dittany, I've no intention of picking your argument to pieces if that's what I seemed to be doing; genuinely I just wanted to better understand where you're coming from. I don't have some 'iron belief' in poststructuralist accounts of gender and power although I do find them plausible in many ways. But there's so much to be angry about, and I think we could all do with cultivating a bit more righteous anger about what's happening to women in this world, something that comes across powerfully in your posts. I do think theorizing is worthwhile, absolutely, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't just so much fiddling while Rome burns.

"Let's go back to MrsBean's husband who, despite his declared feminism is 'uncomfortable' with being the main caregiver. In this recession, plenty of men who think they are feminists, some who have given lip service to feminism and others who disagree with it wildly will be put in a position where they have to be the main caregiver in a household where the single income is being brought in by the woman. "

My husband doesn't know the first thing about feminism as an academic or cultural 'thing' and if you threw him into a discussion like this one, he would be lost, at least at first! I've been sitting here trying to think of how to explain why I would describe him, broadly, as more 'feminist' than not, but losing the battle. I guess because I feel there is nothing in our lives where I am supposed to follow a proscribed role as 'the woman' or, actually, that he has a sense that women should follow a particular path or comply to particular expectations.

I do see why he would feel uncomfortable with the idea of being the full-time caregiver. Truthfully, I'm not comfortable with the idea of being a caregiver full-time either. I think in both our mental reckonings, if one of us has to stay home full-time, the other one will do it. So in that way, maybe we are both guilty of believing that the wage earner's role is the one to have..which means we are buying into a patriarchal value system, whether we intend to or not. Yet I don't know if that's truthful, either.. I think that, ideally, we would both live in a location where we could both work three days a week each and have two at home, with the baby in childcare for just one day a week. Yet there are so many forces that combine to make this an impossibility - the thorny issue of real life, which is bound by patriarchal values, whether we want it to be, or not.

In real life, for example, I think it would be easier for me to re-enter, as there are several women in my department who took 5-10 years 'out' for children who re-entered at the same level and are now in managerial positions. Realistically, that's not the way my husband's industry (engineering) works. (I extrapolate this given that a request for a measly week's parental leave in low season was denied).

And yet, with a heavy heart, I have to say I know that the reason my work is so flexible is because of its relative lack of value in the marketplace; because it is viewed as being distinctly 'feminine' in the 'real world'. In all truthfulness, if you're going to do my job well, you need to be a flexible thinker capable of drawing on a wide body of knowledge and applying it to real-world situations, but hey, you're only doing it for marginalised, disabled kids and adults.. so what if you opt out for a few years and these people no longer access a service because of your absence?

So it's tricky. And I'm not sure what I think about it: there are so many levels to negotiate between the personal and the social it makes my head spin. So I will end my waffling there.. (before this becomes too epic, again). And hope what I said makes sense.

"Just as a small point, I don't necessarily equate academia with theorising if that's what is coming across." - dittany, I think this is quite a big part of what's happening, actually. Because you have had lots of discussion about feminism in the past, you're using a lot of words or phrases in what are actually quite specialised and even jargony ways - like "the academy", or even "masculinity". I don't think that the way that you understand these words and phrases are the same as the way that people who haven't been steeped in this sort of discussion do. (I know that the only reason I know what "the academy" means is because of reading stuff like Alison Bechdel's fab "Dykes to Watch Out For", and other US writing that uses phrases like "the canon" and suchlike.) And I think that because of that, people read your posts as if you are yourself an academic. Which by the sound of it is not something you'd want!

The links earlier on in this thread to Feminism 101 was so great to see for just this sort of reason - I don't think it covers my precise examples above but we do need a lot of 101 over here, and probably will do for a while yet.

@dittany, I've never refused to consider other views, in life or on this thread. I just said that I find aspects of poststructuralist thought on gender and power plausible. If that means that in your book I'm not a proper feminist, so be it.

Masculinity has a pretty commonly-used social and historical meaning but it's not ubiquitous: that's not what I mean when I say it, certainly. I don't think masculinity is or has to be that stereotype of domination and manly-man-ness. I'm also not convinced that if I talk about masculinity with my friends down the pub (many of whom are bi) that they necessarily use the word masculinity in that stereotyped way either. That's why I don't really see why the idea of "masculinities" plural is more obscure than the idea of a singular masculinity - it seems at this point like a natural fact of life to me to think that there are quite a few different ways of being male. (I know that to say something like this is a 'natural fact of life' is to beg a whole lot of questions too!)

Slightly more on topic, I also don't understand why the project of feminism is to get rid of gender? I mean you define gender as "sex hierarchy with men at the top and women submitting, and all the behaviours and attitudes that are supposed to go along with it" but that also seems like an unusual way of defining gender to me. I understand gender to be about the social and cultural ways of defining the differences between the sexes, but precisely because they are social and cultural, they are amenable to change. We don't need to get rid of gender, we need to see its malleability and flexibility. We need to allow for genderqueer individuals, transitioning individuals, people constructing their own identities in many different ways including neuter. Hmm. Maybe not so on topic after all!

But I don't want to harp on more about these specific examples - gender, masculinity, "the academy" - so much as to say that I do think we're using even words that seem fairly straightforward in different ways - and our understandings of even those fairly straightforward words change too, as we go along.

"queer politics sees it an individual issue where the individual must change themselves and everybody else must accept that" - or that in the individual changing themselves, they change society so that it is no longer the system that created the traditional gender roles.

Are you also using the words feminist/feminism here to mean something specific - second-wave feminist/feminism, perhaps? Yes, I am involved in queer politics but I don't see it as inimical to feminism-as-I-understand-it - quite the opposite! I do agree that some stuff that is the basis of queer politics comes out of reactions to some parts of (particularly second-wave) feminism.

I very much see queer politics arguing that we should examine and resist this oppressive system we are in! And I don't see it saying we should embrace the system of gender - surely part of the point is to break out of the straitjacket of 50s style gender where you're born a girl or born a boy and that's that matey.

And as for not bothering trying to deal with wider problems - I don't at all see that it's not trying to do that as well.

But I realise that we've drifted from my original point, which is that even when we're using what one would think are straightforward words like masculinity, gender, and even feminism or feminist we are still potentially meaning different things by them, and we have to take account of that.

"What I see is queer politics arguing that rather than examining and resisting this oppressive system we are in, we should embrace the system of gender and not bother trying to deal with wider problems."

Again, not something I recognise at all! What brand of queer politics advocates embracing the existing system of gender? My understanding of queer politics is that it involves strategies to undermine and subvert the existing system of gender.

You're repeating your question, dittany, but you must already have a view on the answer as you originally said that "queer politics was part of the backlash to feminism" - I think that "backlash" is rather a loaded term, mind you. I think that answering it will take us further off the point here - and again you were the one who originally said this was pretty obscure stuff to be discussing here. (Not that I was massively chuffed with your linking of it to "arguments that do attempt to undermine feminism and women's liberation" either.)

Let's leave this here I'd say.

You have indeed answered various other questions on this thread but you didn't actually answer my question to you, on whether you are also using the words feminist/feminism here to mean something specific, such as second-wave feminist/feminism.

If you don't think this discussion is too abstruse for this general forum - then a) I think queer politics probably reacts to separatism and (what I perceive as) essentialism in second-wave feminism. I think this ties into the stuff we're talking about with respect to gender - you want to dismantle it, I want to redefine it (or you could somewhat crudely put it like that). b) I don't see why latecomers can't get to set their own terms for their own debates. Surely each wave will re-set terms to some extent or another, in reaction to what they think doesn't work for them.

You can call yourself or not call yourself what you like, it's nothing to do with me. I should however like to know what you mean by it, rather than us all using the word feminism or feminist and meaning different things by it behind the scenes, without being clear about it. That doesn't mean that in general discussion we all need to come up with special words for the sort of feminist we are, but here where we are talking definitions and theory I still haven't heard what your definition is.

And I still don't appreciate you linking queer politics to backlashes, sexism, and people 'laying claim to feminism'. Do you actually think a queer feminist is a contradiction in terms and/or someone talking in bad faith?

Still following this discussion with interest, even if it is increasingly abstruse

I am disappointed that certain strands of thought/thinkers are being misrepresented and/or attacked on spurious grounds (being into BDSM, for example). Surely criticism should be offered in the form of a reasoned argument based on an engagement with their ideas?

But what Leader does in that article is what I'd do with those ads in my class anyway. I'm not trying to give young men a pass to 'move the furniture' of patriarchy.

Blinder and wubblybubbly both suggested that we should be able to use the category of 'humanity' as a kind of neutral ground and we often can in a strategic kind of way. But that too is a category that gets filled up with ideas relating to the patriarchy as Leader shows.

Ideas of equality and neutrality always get nicked ... For example, sometimes women come on to mumsnet to say that their dps or dhs are getting stroppy about the woman's wish to bottle-feed or to use pain relief in labour. In the name of equality and 'shared parenting' they feel they can dictate how these women use their bodies (I know one woman on here off the top of my head who has been in this situation but I can't find a link).

Did anyone read the 'why is it called mumsnet and not parentsnet' or some such thread a few weeks ago in this vein?

Radical movements get pulled back towards the norms they seek to question as Leader shows, and I think third-wave feminists are actually more alive to that fact (though I know we won't agree on that).

Leader's article is much more coherent than Nussbaum's, but both challenge third-wave feminism with the spectre of women in South-East Asia. These women become the ?poor neglected group needy but unaware of all your high-faluting debates? whose ?reality? (known apparently to Leader and Nussbaum) gets deployed reduced to a rhetorical device. Leader?s case using the offensive phrase ?third world?. Which is why Spivak tells Nussbaum where to take her kindly concern.

These critics reassert other kinds of hierarchy and reduce other women to a group who are ?spoken for? rather than speaking. It is almost impossible not to fall into kinds of thinking that reassert one or other kind of stereotype.

That?s where Butler picks up McKinnon, not to say ?cease and desist your awful work? but to say ?isn?t there a danger that by asking the state to enforce your goals you are helping to make the state?s power seems more efficient than it is, and therefore helping it to use that imagined power elsewhere.? We can agree on the rights and wrongs of this or take it up another day.

I don?t own feminism just because I?m an academic. Nor is feminism owned by activists ? Being critical of each other can be constructive. I hate relativism with a mortal passion, but I do really love to have my views forced into a new shape.

I have a work deadline now, so sorry if I disappear a bit. You have really made me think, and ?act up? a bit this week Dittany so thanks for that.

Hi there Molesworth .

Glad you're (someone's) still with us Molesworth!

Was the BDSM bit to do with Foucault or something? I got into this a bit later on than that and skimmed some of those parts of the discussion.

I should probably also say that I'm not a theorist myself and have read little theory of feminist or queer thought - what I have done is talked and thought things through with a lot of queer and queer-friendly folks, and read things like the magnificent Dykes to Watch Out For, which engages with a lot of theory and concerns of feminism, gay, bi, lesbian, and transsexual issues; and (whisper) isn't above parodying them a bit too sometimes. Queer thinking has shaped a lot of my own thoughts about feminism and about gender, and one of those thoughts is precisely that feminism is more like feminisms - it seems to be something that means different things to different people. It's not a monolith - and why should it be, indeed?