Proponents of 'equality feminism'- convince me that men will play fair!

[Sakura]

I've mentioned (rather a lot) on here about my choice to become a SAHM, but I've noticed that this decision seems to have been lumped into a chategory called "choice feminism" i.e the choice to wear high heels, cut up your body to look beautiful or work in the sex industry. Being a SAHM appears to be regarded as anti-feminist by women who believe that men and women are basically the same and therefore my choice is not really a choice after all, but a result of social conditioning.
So proponents of equality feminism envisage a world where men partake in 50% of the childcare and 50% of women are in the boardroom.

Now call me cynical, call me man-hater, but history has shown me that men do not play fair and in general they only agree to something if there's something in it for them. (Women were finally 'allowed' work simply because it flooded the market with a supply of cheaper labour, not because men suddenly though "OH yes, women are just as capable as us". So ultimately it benefited men. Rich men) I think that equality feminists are being very naive in thinking that once we get to a stage where men do half the childcare the world will all be peachy.

I think we should pay attention very closely to history. 10 years ago I read a very chilling message by Germaine Greer in The Whole Woman that I identified with completely: women are gradually losing their grip on motherhood.
And motherhood (child-bearing and rearing) is the only thing that sets us apart from men. We can do it better than men, and because men are stronger and wired differently there are other things that men can do better than us.
Because motherhood has been completely and systematically devalued by society, women see paid work as being the better option at this moment in time.
But I will not willingly give up my birthright as a woman to be a mother and be with my children when they are young until I see something better to replace it, and right now I do not.

Its happening already, where men are using the word 'equality' to advantage themselves. I think it was Leningrad who mentioned a woman she knew on maternity leave who was having to pay half the bills out of her maternity allowance in the name of equality.

The most shocking public example I see is of BRitney Spears. She had what seemed to be a nervous breakdown culminating in her shaving her head. Then when her relationship broke down her ex received custody of the children on the basis that she was mentally unstable. Then because she was the higher earner she had to pay him maintenance, so a law that was put in place to protect women was being used against a woman who was denied access to her children. Nobody thought to consider that she shaved her head in protest against being completely objectified (I think she was 17 when her first hit came out) and seen as being nothing more than a sex object. In shaving her head she was asserting her autonomous self.
Then (and this bit makes me sick), because she was "insane" her father took it upon himself to confiscate her assets. Her father and brother (a lawyer) fought for the right to wrest her assets from her until she was considered more 'sane'. Patriarchy at its worst. The courts thought this a perfectly reasonable request and her brother took over her money. Her father and told her that she could only have her money back once she'd got herself together i.e back into Barbie mode. She managed to do that, probably because she wanted to see her kids again.

Nowhere did anyone say: "But she's a mother, let's not separate her from her children when she at her worst. Get her some proper support so she can keep seeing then until she's back on her feet. She's going through at terrible patch at the moment, but lets offer her support and lets make sure she gets to stay with her kids. Nope, they wisked those children away, because "If you want equal rights, then equal rights you will get".

Rant over. Anyway, back on track. Please convince me that men will play fair and not just use the equality as another way to oppress and disadvantage mothers and motherhood.

Getting women on the bench, in parliament and, yes, in the boardroom is a necessary step towards fighting for all women. Who do you think makes the decisions that influence our lives?

Real change is never going to be effected if women are at home looking after babies while men write, interpret and enforce the laws.

I am deeply offended that you are characterising my argument as reducing women to a walking womb. I am passionately pro-choice, I have talked about reproductive rights before, and the fact that I don't believe the birth process to exalt my parenting over my husband's for the rest of my daughter's life is not the same thing as reducing myself, or other women, to 'walking wombs'. Indeed, it's the opposite; I'm taking the womb out of the equation instead of centralising it.

I agree with every word that tortoise has said in her last post.

Sakura, it's a very strange form of feminism that ensures men keep all the positions of power outside the home and women are confined to it, and that seems to be what you are proposing.

And nooka, the points about the best interests of the children are the ones that really disturbed me in the OP. Why should the children automatically stay with the mother whatever the circumstances? I don't like the Britney example as both parents had their issues, and I don't think it is black and white in that case, but is the OP seriously proposing that children should stay with a mother who has serious mental health issues rather than a father who is stable? (In the Britney example, I admit, it's all relative.)

and tortoise sneaks another post in! I agree with everything in tortoise's last two posts!

Sakura

So I think to be able to call yourself a feminist you have to value motherhood and the people who do this work, whether you are a mother or not or whether you care for or are interested in babies and children or not.

"Real change is never going to be effected if women are at home looking after babies while men write, interpret and enforce the laws"

And it is certainly not going to be affected by buying into the belief that the only real work is paid work, that motherhood and child-rearing is secondary. We have had a female prime minister. There was nothing feminist about that and she did nothing for women.

Who has said that they believe that paid work is the only real work? I genuinely don't understand why you keep arguing that this is what "feminists" think. I keep saying that it's feminists who have fought for parenting work to be recognised.

I'm saying that it does nothing for women to believe in child-rearing if none of them are in positions of power to turn that belief into action.

For the last time, what do you want from feminists? Is it just that you want us to tell you that being at home with your children is fine and dandy? Or would you like to see social policies enacted that support at-home parents? If so, how do you think that's going to happen?

We have had a female prime minister. There was nothing feminist about that and she did nothing for women.

I have written a lot about the social policies I would like to see to support mothers.
I can see that you don't understand my argument.
I felt the need to start this topic after seeing a lot of worrying posts on other topics by women denigrating the work that women do wrt babies and child-rearing by saying that men and women are the same and therefore men who care for children should automatically get the same rights to children as the mother. I think a policy like this is naive.

Sakura, I've noted two social policies to support mothers that you have spoken about on these threads. Correct me if there are more.

The first is that mothers should automatically get first refusal on custody arrangements should parents split. This seems to be a very parent centered way of determining custody. Everyone who has raised an issue with this arrangement has argued that custody arrangements must be decided with a view to what is best for the children. How would you deal examples where stability for the child would mean staying with a father who was the primary carer? What would happen to children whose mothers have serious mental health issues? Would they have to stay with their mothers (who I would assume would receive some support) even if a stable father wished to care for them? What about mothers who refuse help? My family has a history of mental health problems and one of the things that all the sufferers I know have in common is a refusal to receive help until things go really wrong.

The second is the desire to see SAHMs paid a wage by the state. Would this apply equally to SAHDs? How much would it be, would it be a living wage or a token amount? Would there be a limit on the number of years it was paid for or the number of children that the state would pay for to be cared for by the mother? Would the wage earner be treated as an employee (a contract, annual objectives, an appraisal, the sack if you failed to meet certain minimum standards) and if so how would this be monitored? Alternatively would the wage be a no questions asked benefits type of arrangement, so it is assumed that if you are at home with a child you are doing an adequate job? And the key question would be, how would we fund it? Presumably we would have to tax people who work (men and women) more to afford this? If so, how do you think couples who take a substantial hit on childcare to enable both to work would feel? You'd be asking women who work (and some of whom are worse off by working when they've paid childcare costs) to pay more tax and be even worse off to subsidise women who chose to stay at home.

Can I just say that I am very glad sakura is on the thread and it's a good perspective to read? It clearly is at odds with the views of some of us femininsts but it's all the better to read it.

There have always in my view been two types of feminists - it was the same in the 70s when I first was reading femininst stuff - one side is - women are very different from men (better even), gentle caring and want to spend a lot of time at home and being with their children and that that is as good as being a man (morally better even) - they are often slightly communist in a sense, wanting different power structures, all wealth shared, payment perhapsfor those at home etc etc... Then there are the others which is what I think the feminist movement really started out in the UK in the 1800s as getting women legal rights - rights to vote, rights to become doctors, lawyers etc and not necessarily believing because we are female we have to spend our lives doing dull domestic stuff which as I've trie dto argue above many many women find bores them to tears. It is below us. I am in the latter camp and I know huge numbers of women who are keen to forge careers and have families and don't want to change society so they have the privilege to stay at home with the hoover. What intelligent woman in her right mind wants to clean the house and sing wheels on a bus for 12 hours a day? Come on....

So there is this gulf between the two kinds. I find it hard to understand the other kind. I can try. I bought an island. I understand religion. I get huge delight from things other than making money and my career. I adore my children . So I suppose I can envisage some communal nirvana where society is different. Except and this is very important - they never worked. All those communes ended up with women in the kitchen and men doing more exciting things or fell out with infighting.

I could also imagine an argument that if 96% of the prison population is male, many problems like colour blindedness, autism etc are much worse in males and the Y chromosome is dying out anyway and we can have children without men if we bank enough sperm let's just eradicate them from the planet or fence them off and that we certainly don't need them as women can do anything. I'm not sure the happy little housewives though are likely to fall into that camp (and nor do I - I like men and I don't think men and women are so very different as some women at home like to suggest).

But getting back to s' last post - yes I do denigrate the work housewives without servants do. As a Catholic I can of course understand the personal satisfactino some people get in service, in washing the feet of the poor, in putting yourself second, in serving the needs of others but I don't think ultimately it does women much good nor is a good example to our daughters and the result will be women will lose their gains. If employers see all these women who can't hack it , work for 3 or 4 years and then cop out why on earth hire them?

The denigration point is interesting. I just find it hard to fathom what is enjoyable about the role. i can understand someone being fed untrue propaganda that unless your child is attached to your body 24/7 for the first few years it will be damaged (an agenda which suits misogynist men very well) but not an educated woman saying I like to get up and then spend my day keeping house and looking after my under 3s. Don't they get bored?

Yes someo

Much food for thought in this thread which I'm still trying to digest, but I have to pick up on one thing in your post Xenia:

"What intelligent woman in her right mind wants to clean the house and sing wheels on a bus for 12 hours a day? Come on...."

Well I don't want to spend 12 hours a day cleaning and singing wheels on the bus, I must admit. But this leaves me wondering who, in your view, should be doing this mundane work? Should this work be split between the parents: 6 hours of dullness each? Or are you OK with paying another person (almost certainly a woman) to do all of this for you?

Like I say, this debate involves lots of complex issues that I haven't worked through to the point that I can post a coherent argument about it. But reading through the thread it seems to me that working class women are being forgotten. Because, if you're not going to do it, that work has got to be done by someone else, hasn't it?

Your vision (in your post at 03:56 - good God woman when do you sleep?) is very seductive tortoiseshell and if it can be realised I'm all for it. I just have some sympathy with Sakura's pessimism that men will play ball on this one.

Until most fathers are doing what your DH is doing, I think Sakura is right to caution against pretending that they all are now and handing them over custody on the basis that they are bloody brilliant fathers because once a week they do what mothers do six times a week. Which, given the ingrained mysogyny in the legal system, is a real danger and I think we should be alert to it.

That doesn't militate against working towards your vision of most fathers doing what most mothers do as a matter of course and therefore freeing up women to take their rightful place in society. I just get very uncomfortable when people talk as if it's already happening, when mostly it's not. I don't disagree that it needs to though.

Womeh have a role to play in their own relationships to make it so though b y not even on the first dates picking up that dishcloth or letting him assume she cooks because she's female. To some extent you tolerate sexism and allow it to happen and more fool those women who accept it. They have dug their own dull grave, let them have a life of boring housework and that will teach others not to let that happen.

I'm a capitalist feminist. The romans had leaders and slaves. The Victorians had a massive servant class. In Africa indians employ africans to serve them in some places. In India the caste system took care of it. Everywhere you go the rich whether female or male delegate to the lowest of the low. We are hierachical species and it is all such fun. Yes there will be undeducated people below us who cannot get better jobs than to clean our toilets but that's a problem - it keeps them fed. It's fine. It's how thing work. You don't have to be communist and a feminist nor even socialist.

I didn't really want to derail the thread to "custody" issues. Most parents agree contact after divorce. In a very few cases it goes to court. Househusbands have a reasonable chance of securing it. It would change the law to force fathers to have children half the time. It works in some places abroad where it occurs. I also know fathers whose children have chosen to live with them after divorce. But just as women are silly if they become housewives so are ment pretty foolish if they take the risk of taking on a housewife because it increases the chances they will lose children they love after divorce. This is not rocket science. Ensure your wife continues to work full time after babies, do your bit at home and you'll have a much ebtter deal on divorce. Enjoy the services of the female slave at home conveniently ironing your shirts during marriage and you'll suffer for that indulgence on divorce both financialyl and in terms of child contact after.

Hee, HerBeatitude, I'm in Australia so it was lunchtime for me. It's 8pm here now.

I'm not arguing for handing over custody before the men have proven themselves, of course. I'm arguing that men like my husband should be given a chance by society to prove how good they are as parents, and should we split, that the legal system should recognise that skill. This is what is frustrating me about this thread. No-one at ALL is arguing that men should be given legal rights over children that are not broadly commensurate with the amount of time and care they've put into parenting. We're arguing that the existence of a womb does not mean that one should be automically.

And I think happysmiley's point is very wellmade; this argument about women getting first refusal is about the woman, not the child. That's why I keep referring to it as a turf war.

Xenia, while we broadly fall on the same side of the fence,
"What intelligent woman in her right mind wants to clean the house and sing wheels on a bus for 12 hours a day? Come on...."

Actually, I get a lot of pleasure out of those things. I sometimes find your posts uncomfortable because sometimes I do want to just keep house - but my husband and I have an agreement, and just because social forces would be on my side if I said 'nope, sorry, changed my mind, I now see that a mother-child bond is more special than a father-child bond, so you can give up the fulfilling career path and go back down the mines* thanks' doesn't mean it's the moral choice. We have an agreement, we both take equal responsibility for both spheres, and I shouldn't get to opt out of that just by dint of being a woman. Neither should he be able to say 'oh, hey, I realise that I'm inherently competitive and hierarchial and better suited to the paid workforce than you, so if you could give up your career and stay home while I bring home the cash, that'd be good. Cheers'.

*literally.

Sakura, you have written about the social policies you'd like to see. You haven't told me who you think will enact them, if women are at home with their children. Surely not the men you think so little of?

Not sure if that post was in answer to my question, Xenia - was it? So are you saying that the children should be looked after by the 'lowest of the low' and that's fine because humans are naturally hierarchical?

See this is why I can never be bothered to take Xenia's arguments seriously.

Most of us are struggling towards a vision of a society where every human being, male or female, not very bright or genius, are entitled to have dignity and a good life. Tolerating the idea of a servant or slave class is simply beyond the pale for me, it's not at all fun.

Moleworth, I agree, it does look like we ignore the needs of poorer women because we live in a society where money buys you choice.

I have no answer to that, but I do have a couple of examples of the differences between the sexes with regards to money and choice which I think are illuminating.

I know a couple of people who gave up high paid careers for lower paid jobs they genuinely love. The woman became a hairdresser and the man set up his own gardening business. Both have taken large pay cuts but are now much happier in their work.

The woman has relunctantly had to give up her new job as she cannot justify it because she will be worse off if she pays for childcare. She loved hairdressing and wants to go back one day, but at the moment it doesn't pay so she will be a SAHM.

The man is about to have a child. There is no question that he will give up a job he loves. May have been different if it was his old job that he didn't love but not now he has this gardening business. Re childcare, they'll find a way to manage, it may not work out financially but there's always a way.

The difference between the two of them isn't about money (neither of them are awash with it) but about perceived choice. Why does my male friend feel that he has more choice than my female friend?

Moles - yes. But I don't mean pack them off to wet nurses as in the 1500s for 5 years or be the family in India in 1900 who would send them back home at 7 and see them at 18. I mean during the day whether you're a house wife or husband you might well want to bond with them, have them brought to you for breastfeeding as I did, cuddle them, pop in to see them, take them out on a walk or more traditionally look after them frmo 5am or whatever time most of my babies woke to 8am and then from 7 to whenever the baby started its every 3 - 4 hours breastfeeding al night but during the working day or your own other pursuits day have help with them. Yes, I think most women prefer that. And given the advantages taht then gives you in terms of career over the next 40 years it's much the bst way for women.

Now if the woman's job would never be more than minimum wage in a shop then of course she might decide that's not much more fun than looking after a baby - but then she's bottom of the food chain bad career not many qualifications low IQ woman or just unlucky woman.

What I certainly don't mean is that working parents never see and don't want to see their children. They go through massive efforts to be with them. I flew out to Dubai over night earlier this year, went straight off to my engagement and I flew straight back the night I ended purely because I don't like to be away from the children very long. In other words working parents do bring up their children and do ltos of child care for them but they don't necessarily want to do it all day day in day out because it's boring.

happysmiley that is really interesting. Forty years ago, an average man would have thought he had a duty to give up his gardening job because there was still this notion of breadwinner rather than contributor. And I suppose we've had decades of propaganda now telling us that work should be fun and fulfilling not a burden to bear as best we can.

But men still expect to have more fun and fulfillment than women do.

HB, I'm sure my gardening friend still feels an obligation to support his family and I guess he'll do that by trying to keep building up the business.

I wonder why my female friend doesn't feel the same obligation to support her family financially. She could probably build up her new business if she wanted to.

HB: "Most of us are struggling towards a vision of a society where every human being, male or female, not very bright or genius, are entitled to have dignity and a good life. Tolerating the idea of a servant or slave class is simply beyond the pale for me, it's not at all fun. "

See, for me, feminism is rooted in these principles: acknowledging the worth of every human being and fighting for freedom from oppression.

Xenia, you are arguing that oppression is natural. Your feminism is one which is only concerned with women securing right to join men (who currently occupy that position) in their rule over the oppressed (AKA 'the lowest of the low'). Your view of the 'lowest of the low' is that they are in that position by virtue of their low IQ or their lack of hard work. I find this offensive and repugnant and not compatible with any form of feminism I would want to be associated with.

hs I wouldn't bet on it, there's a recession on.

Interesting as well, that the couple are doing the childcare cost analysis on the basis of her potential income, rather than on their joint income.

Molesworth exactly so.

I simply don't recognise it as feminism, except of a very perverse sort.

hs I'm guessing your friend thinks she is supporting her family financially, by saving it childcare costs.

Swings and roundabouts.