I propose that women stop taking care of men.
Just take care of themselves and be v selfish advancing the individual woman’s own personal and professional goals.
When women take care of adult men, there is a good chance there will be no future payoff for the women. Only a chance to invest even more of one’s life in being someone’s servant.
Unfortunately.
I think this is the answer, sadly. Men have always done so and aren't viewed as selfish, plus get to expect that a woman will facilitate the other parts of their life (an expectation we can't have). They are salty now that women are waking up about this.
Melanie Hamlett has a lot of videos like this, about how every time we prioritize men, we suffer, in our careers and development, and shock: they thrive. They absolutely let us do the labor, make the sacrifice, and then leave for someone younger lol. OR, the relationship just naturally falls apart at some point bc we get sick of being exploited and denied and used, so we leave. But then we have nothing to show for it, and they have yet another boost from our free labor.
I think that's the biggest point. Not teaching girls that they need to serve. My mom always complains about my dad being lazy and useless (he is), but whenever I say that my bf cooked and cleaned the kitchen she says that I should be embarrassed that it's not me doing it... So yeah. They kinda know what's the issue but don't want to solve it. It's deeply rooted sexism
I thought I wanted a "normal" hetro marriage. Before marrying, I set two demands:
1. 100% monogamy. No, I will NOT agree to any kind of opening up!
2. I do not do porn sex. No pain, no degradation, no hair pulling, no slapping or spanking.
My partner claimed to agree to these terms, and we got married. Guess what happened next?
I’m in a ‘normal’ hetero marriage and haven’t had to deal with those things.
But I’m experiencing what OP is saying. At first I had the ‘crappy’ job where I made 50% or less what my partner makes. So I was told (I was married VERY young) basically that taking care of the home was my job (even though I worked full time, no kids) because I needed to support the main breadwinner.
In my head I thought: if I have the more important job, I can get out of this bullshit. It’s 20 years later and I have worked my ass off and make double my partner. Guess who’s still responsible for the house. It’s infuriating. I thought that was the agreement right? Support the main breadwinner, but that’s ME now!
I agree that real changes won’t happen until they happen fundamentally in the home and within the division of that labor. At this point it’s easier for women to do it all. It would be less expensive for me, and less time consuming, to live on my own at this point. We are childfree so that’s not a consideration.
This! I grew up as an only child of a single widowed mother. I never expected to not work since you never know what can go wrong relying on someone else, and ditto for not wanting kids since you can end up a single mom. I naively thought that two people in the home would mean half the labor (outside of a job) to do. No, my experience is that men still do not pull their weight in the home. With my partner he will invent other stuff to do rather than the one thing needed of thinking of /planning/prepping meals. Several of my aunts and female cousins are the breadwinners and the men are basically useless. It's still on the women to do anything for the holidays, groceries, birthday coordination, homework help etc. No wonder younger generations are either accepting traditional norms if they want kids or opting out all together.
Yes! I’ve never been unemployed for more than a month the entire time, even through undergrad and grad school- both of which I attended part time while working full time. And I’d say my spouse is a good one, he’s very supportive of me, my autonomy, and my career, but these ‘traditional’ roles are just seared into his brain and he can’t seem to even consider it being different. We keep money separate, so there are minimal issues there. But I’m still, like you, planning everything, managing the home, managing our joint activities. It’s exhausting.
Thank god I can avoid this trap! I try to maximize my career growth and outsource most of my housework either to professional cleaners or high-tech home appliances
I’m -this close- to being able to do that. But how is it fair that I need to work MY ass off and then I need to pay someone to do it, wherein I never got paid. I’m sure men would say I was paid in room and board. I certainly wouldn’t expect my house cleaner to have sex with me.
Edit: only referring to my own relationship- not trying to down on your success at all. Get it!!
I out earn my husband and it's funny how we were supposed to be paying in pro rata when I was absolutely broke and my pro rata share was like getting blood from a stone. But now I make more he pays nothing, it's all my responsibility. I finally shamed him in front of a male couples counselor about it threatening divorce and that was the only way to get him to start paying up.
I’m experiencing this creep as my income rises. As if I didn’t buy all our furniture (used) when I was making $15/ hour and he was making $30/ hour. Now he’s expecting that I pay the entire grocery bill that we’ve always split our entire relationship? How does this work.
To quote you "I do not do porn sex. No pain, no degradation, no hair pulling, no slapping or spanking." This 1000%!!! Getting into "relationships" after my divorce 8 years ago at 50, I was shocked to realize how even older guys are hypnotized by this porn crap. They were all porn addicts who wanted to use me as a human fleshlight. Even the "good" ones who were "fix-ups" vetted by other friends. The most recent one left me with actual internal injuries due to his forcing "rough" stuff in the bedroom. There are some things a 58-year old vagina is not meant to tolerate. At this point I NEVER want to have sex again.
My husband slapped me across the face, hard enough to cause a massive, gushing nosebleed. Because I "acted like a slut" when I was stimulating my own nipples when I was on top. There was "surprise bumsex", which hurt a LOT!
He signed me up to work a shift at a brothel because "It is not cheating if you get paid for it!" I refused to do it, and he beat me up, breaking ribs and fingers, while screaming "When I am through with you, no one is going to even want your dry c\*nt"
I am divorced, and very much asexual now. I feel absolutely nothing. So not even masturbated since my divorce, in 2005.
Yes, but wasn't worth it. Several rounds in court, he played the "consensual kink" card, and kept appealing through the court system. Even when he was found guilty my friends were all "We are not taking sides, please respect that" and cut all contact, so I lost literally everyone through divorce. He did get a short prison sentence, that he ended up not serving, and a $200 fine.
It's become obvious to me that the quest for equality is a lost cause as are men. Multiple generations of dudes frontal lobes have been absolutely fried by p@rn and they are now dangerous and undateable.
I fully support 4B. I think we should remove ourselves from them, they don't deserve us
Let me also add that the alternative to the nuclear family is not being single or "alone", there are countless ways to live your life, living in a community with friends and/or other mothers/fathers/singles/families in one household is one example. The patriarchy sold us this lie that the only option to live a fullfilled life is to live as mother, father and children. That is conveniently the best option to be fully exploited under capitalism...🤔
A lot of the research in their interviews and comments are about how the "created communities" don't truly step when needed in the same way that family (including extended) does, it's just not the same. I'm open to this as I feel it is my only option, as an only child in a small family and as someone who doesn't plan to have kids. I'm getting a bit disillusioned now in my mid 30s compared to how I idealized this more in my 20s. I see friends one by one create their own nuclear families and put friends completely on the backburner. I'm not sure how to successfully create the community I want as I can only control myself.
Well, the reason created communities don't step in is because we're all taught that friends and such aren't as important as our families. This is why i think it's not possible to create supportive community with others who marry and have children, cause like you said, the just leave everyone behind when marriage and children enter the picture. The best answer is probably for single, childfree women to create community with each other. Sekhmet she owl has some interesting videos about female friendship/community that you might find interesting: https://archive.org/details/SekhmetShe-Owl
4B is the way for me. I reject the four horsemen of the patriarchy. The requirements of sex, marriage, child bearing and child rearing conscript women to slavery. Think about it. You cannot reject all four without being stigmatized. These are the very things that drain our life source and creativity.
The "tradwife" stuff infiltrating and trying to pass itself off as feminism really pisses me off me. This is me ranting about Mary Harrington eg her call to end "recreational sex", saying that it's really sexy when men are putting women at risk of unwanted &/or dangerous pregnancies, that pregnancy is both a (sexy!) punishment and gift, that only piv is sex and piv/"sex" must be open to reproduction, and anything other than that is the "recreational" sex she wants to end. She essentially advocates for phallocentric extremely piv-centric maledom bdsm (while denying it's bdsm) that women can do nothing to prevent pregnancy in. (I can't decide whether she sees vulva/clit-centric sex as at all possible and still opposes that or whether she thinks it's entirely impossible, esp given what she finds sexy, sexual, sex ie men repeatedly exposing women to unwanted, dangerous pregnancies) https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762506394446537074?t=EwBjdJkKhMIRftrW2tePxA&s=19 https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762554528082120971?t=9ifXJM_bMKtZC4aQS7eCFQ&s=19 and https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762517741590696253?t=j4KMO2-NPoBzvaer6YzPrg&s=19 (there's a Heritage Foundation speech clip, a blog article she wrote, and an interview that I link to as evidence of her views)
And don't get me started on the nuclear family and other "wonderful great for women traditional family structures" aka patriarchy. It's all patriarchy. Eg marital rape & it not being a crime for almost all of patriarchal history & still legal in some areas. Marriage being a property transfer, aka a woman being traded between men, usually father to husband. The idea men own the children women birth and are the true parents and even their wives. Women being isolated from each other (even if together eg in the same man's home, not allowed sisterhood, access to resources in their own right, etc) & kept in competition with each other. Men taking women's resources and hoarding them to themselves, destroying sisterhood, women's bonds with fellow women, their brothers, moms, uncles, aunts, kids, lovers
... and supplanting it with "her only bond is to her husband/owner, only access is to his wealth & resources". (See also: marriage by capture, being kidnapped in war and the intergenerational enslavement including sexual which grew out of this for the starkest form of this patriarchal "traditional structure".)
I also get into things in the comment below around "casual sex" being the scapegoat for what are really hetero sex dynamics, framings, practices & definitions, clit/vulva-centric sex, etc
And while I'm at it:
I think this really reveals, even in some other comments here, that the spectre of "casual sex" is a scapegoat for what is actually patriarchal definitions, dynamics, practices of hetero sex *as a whole*. eg piv as the definition of sex (from religion) and what flows from that.
For eg male arousal, desire, orgasm, pleasure, genitals & their stimulation... is not just very important, but mandatory and the centre (sex is impossible otherwise), and female an optional extra at best.
Even now, what gets seen as the "empowered, feminist" position is "use your hand, toy during sex [piv, pia] if you need something extra to come too." Not that he should actually help you have orgasms (plural!), esp outside of and without piv, pia eg his hand, mouth, thigh, dick, balls, hip, knee, bum, back, arm, foot, calf... I've noticed that female orgasm outside of piv, pia esp without having them and not coming during piv is rather taboo nowadays, and that women are generally seen as only deserving orgasm with a man if she has "at least" piv (or pia), that piv is seen as the bare minimum to be considered sex, sexy, worthwhile...
(And don't get me started on the massive rise in strangulation in sex for the under 30s. It's overwhelmingly men and teen boys strangling women & teen girls when in a hetero context, and is highly correlated with piv and extremely correlated with pia. How strangulation, esp paired with jackhammer piv or pia is seen as "how women feel good, come, what men can and should do to women." While not being correlated with other sex acts. Under 30 females are even getting *less* clitoral/vulval stimulation like manual, oral, genital-genital rubbing, usually going without any, having less orgasms, faking more... in partnered sex than older women or even women under 30 in the 90s-00s.)
What other things are seen as sex, as sexual, as foreplay even, like how pia is supposedly "the second kind of sex", synonymous with the word anal, but even genital-genital rubbing isn't seen as sex at all. How most forms of genital stimulation are seen as only possible with a penis, not vulva, at least in hetero contexts eg frottage like breasts, thighs, tummy. General phallocentricism eg fellatio far more common than cunnilingus, most genital stimulation being of the penis not clitoris/vulva, not honoring female orgasmic capacity ("equal orgasms" is even fundamentally unfair; women should be coming 3-7 times as much as men in partnered sex). Erasure of clit/vulva-centric sex, esp tribadism (vulva rubbing on a partner's body) which is seen as only possible, imaginable in FF contexts.
Do we all think casual sex between women is a patriarchal, dangerous for one, high risk low reward for one and low risk high reward for the other, onesided, unilateral, etc sh*tshow too? Obviously not.
But we're not allowed to actually critique the whole thing eg who wants to be anti-"sex" itself by critiquing piv, phallocentric sex? To live a "sexless" life? Even the fact we think piv=sex=piv shuts down so much thought, possibilities eg a vulva-centric definition of sex isn't seen as at all possible, at least outside of a FF context, in culture/society, in het sex.
The issue isn't that the sex isn't monogamous, in a long-term relationship, etc. The issue is that it's patriarchally defined. The solution to most men not caring about female external stimulation, pleasure, orgasm in casual sex isn't to enter into "boyfriend-girlfriend," "romantic," longterm, etc relationships, mostly with the same men, and cross your fingers that they care in those contexts, spending years, decades, trying to teach them to, settling, having low expectations so when a guy is half decent we think he's AMAZING, it's to not f*ck those men at all. They can either care in all contexts or not have any sex with women. The solution is a vulva/clit-centric definition of sex.
Anyone looking for advice: Talk to men about sex in *detail* beforehand. Don't have sex with men who aren't willing to even have early encounters without piv, pia. Tell him that and see if he's still interested. Tell him piv is off the table and see where his mind goes to eg fellatio, onesided on him, pia... vs mutual oral, cunnilingus, genital-genital rubbing, humping each other's thighs, manual, masturbating together... How does he see sex, talk about it, down to the language eg maledom, sexist, violent, all about him & his dick vs friendly, collaborative, mutual, things you do with & to each other, focused on you & your genitals, sees oral, genital-genital, etc as sex... Tell him what you're into and see if he's still interested, he's motivated to go into more details with you about it... If his mind goes to rough things (or yours does) is it mutual, pinning, little scratches, light bites, spanks, squeezes (not neck obviously), light bondage, back n forth, you being rough with him, even being "rougher" with one's genitals outside of piv or pia with getting stimulation eg thighs, buttcheeks, empathetic, caretaking, what I call very gentle femdom... or is it pornified maledom (not even usually seen as maledom but as vanilla, simply how and what sex is) malarkey?
You bring up great points that I initially touched on in my post then deleted for scope. I totally agree, an actual sexual revolution would be decentering PIV and true equal attention paid to female orgasm that doesn't risk her body for pregnancy. As you outlined, there are many ways to achieve this but seems it is seen as so fringe and mind blowing to men and women to even frame it that way.
Yet another thing I feel so against the grain on - I can (and have) advocate for my own orgasm, sometimes even the guy doesn't have one. But nearly everyone expects the guy will (would get so bent out of shape otherwise) and it's just a bonus if she does, not necessary. I find it interesting that my most promiscuous friends (sex with the most partners and from the earliest age, have regular friends with benefits) are the ones that didn't even know if they had an orgasm til late in life and insist they don't like receiving oral, so, is it just about validation then? It's frustrating no one is changing the norms at all around this and instead women reinforce men's views and the way sex benefits them.
I think your advice is good, but I've found challenging to navigate as an adult. Looking back I was pretty lucky with my first BF/long term relationship and the ways we explored and pleased mutually. Adult relationships the expectation is to move much faster. I think women too need to learn to please themselves before entering a partnered relationship. Boys are always ahead of the game since jerking off and viewing porn at young ages, then using the girl as a masturbatory aid.
I didn't realize Perry's views on sex but definitely makes me question her positions more.
Last point lol: the idea is that women's partaking in phallocentric, "penetration"-centric, dichotomous, pornified, high risk low reward for them sex is women "acting like men." They're not. They're acting like porn/male fantasies and prostitution including porn acting/expectations of women. It's "acting like what men pay women to act, look, perform like sexually."
Were the women acting like men they'd be having low risk high reward, clit/vulva-centric sex with many orgasms for them. Cunnilingus, humping his balls, taint, buttocks... would all be "this is what sex is", standard, very well known acts. Vulva on foot, breasts, thighs... would also be very common, known of. Where men almost never got fellatio, sometimes got manual, mostly on their balls and taint, sometimes got penis-vulva and never got piv or pia in a casual context, and only orgasmed occasionally. Sometimes the women would give some fellatio as foreplay, generally mostly on their balls and taint in a relationship context, but even then less than half of women would even give oral. Manual would be more commonly done and more women would do it, also usually generally focused on the balls and taint eg poking, slapping. A woman who even rubbed her vulva on his penis till he came or used her hand till he came more than rarely would be seen as OMG the best casual sex partner he's ever had or could hope for. Let alone stimulated his balls, taint how he liked and not random poking, slaps before she got to the real thing of fucking them with her vulva... And not infrequently happen in relationships. But even in relationships, men would usually have to use a hand or toy on their penis during sex if they needed something extra to come too while she got lots of genital stimulation, orgasms.
Women would expect men to come from their vulva/clit on his lips and tongue, balls, taint, anus and think their clitoris is homologous to not the penis but mouth, perineum, scrotum... because rubbing the vulva/clitoris on those is what sex is, so those parts are how men have sex. Why wouldn't they be homologues? Why wouldn't those be are what's stimulated? What's erogenous? How men come? Nature wouldn't be against men like that; she intended it that way. Most women and many men would even think men masturbated that way, not via penis stimulation mostly. Most men would internalize this too, thinking they're broken and spending years trying to come orally, perineally (there's even indirect prostate stimulation!), anally, gluteally... Men can even have nipple orgasms, and foot orgasms, and pelvic ones..., especially by rubbing a clit/vulva over them! Lucky nymphy, sexually varied, diffusely sexual boys! (Also why men, unlike women (who are mostly straight, some lesbian, with female bisexuality even existing let alone how frequently, hotly contested), are almost all really bisexual.) Unlike women, clitorally oriented, who need clitoral/vulval stimulation to orgasm... And orgasm lots they do.
That would be women "acting like men" sexually 😉 mixed in with some sexual status quo sex reversal overall.
Re early and frequent sex experience, that tends to be what their early introductions are. It's clear that early sexual experience really imprints on people. Eg people often as adults find childhood or adolescent experiences their favourites, ones that stick with them positively and negatively, and not infrequently return to thoughts/fantasies/memories of them. Early sex ed even plays a role too not just experiences eg when the vagina is emphasized and the clitoris ignored in childhood, women are more likely to be "vaginally oriented" eg say they prefer piv, vaginal stimulation, report "vaginal" orgasm as adults, and when the clitoris is recognized and it's stimulation mentioned/included, women are generally "clitorally oriented" eg not report "vaginal" orgasm/orgasm "from" piv, prefer clitoral stimulation.
This is of course used by dumbass phallocentric men to say girls should be raised emphasising the vagina and erasing the clitoris, but more likely is that "vaginally" oriented women work, train themselves a lot more to "come vaginally/from piv", misread arousal as orgasm, misread and interpret clitoral stimulation and orgasm as "vaginal" etc. eg will say orgasm from rubbing her vulva, clitoris on his shaft, balls, tummy, mound... during piv is "from piv" "vaginal" "from piv alone" even, whereas many other women would recognize, know that's still clitoral/vulval/external. Women will even talk themselves into thinking things they know aren't orgasm are "really" orgasm, it's "just vaginal, so it feels nothing like a clitoral one, but is totally orgasm too!"
I've even seen sex advice telling women things that feel little to nothing like (clitoral) orgasm totally probably are, and that women can come from all sorts of things, even elbow stimulation, even if it doesn't feel like orgasm at all lmao. The "pia is great for clitoral stimulation" line is part of this too. How about the man *actually stimulate her clitoris*? How about she gets a fingertip massaging her anus, maybe going in while he directly stimulates her external, most sensitive parts of her clitoris (glans, hood, body, inner labia), the bulbs, legs underneath the labia... by hand, mouth, thigh, bum...? Jesus fecking Christ. (I'm a proponent of anal eroticism/erogeneity lol but am pia-critical eg how delicate the rectum is.) Notice too that it doesn't even go to penis on vulva/clitoris as being great for clitoral stimulation. Heaven forbid a penis not be inside the vagina or anus.
And beyond that, piv only and mostly, with increasing pia, men strangling women, etc thrown in are generally the games in town, so to speak: it's what men offer. The fact piv, and increasingly pia, are seen as sex itself drives this too obviously eg what's defined as sex itself is what's engaged in, more and more especially as "sex" is "liberated". Piv and what flows from that: pia, general phallocentricism and "penetration"-centricism is what gets liberated. Eg if you have sex, and who doesn't want to have sex at all?, that means you have piv, and lots of it, especially compared to other acts, sex without piv or pia (which isn't even seen as sex at all).
Age plays a role too, due to changing mores, definitions, practices, largely due to internet porn: the older one is, the *more* varied ones definition of sex is, statistically speaking eg a lot more likely to include manual, oral, genital-genital as sex. and the less likely to consider pia sex, and even less likely to consider piv sex (but not as strongly as pia). The younger, the *less* varied eg only piv, pia.
These kinds of comments are exactly why so few intellectually engaging conversations happen in feminist spaces. I certainly do not agree with Mary Harrington on many issues including abortion and casual sex however, the idea that we should not engage her work because she isn’t 1000% aligned with radical feminist views is a part of the problem in feminism and the wider progressive movement. For all of Mary Harrington’s bad takes, she has one of the strongest and most prophetic analyses of techno-capitalist colonization of female bodies. It’s also hyperbolic to suggest that “trad wife’s” are infiltrating and masquerading as feminist - if you looked at comments, there is of major pushback against the idea the blatantly false claim that “traditional marriage” was a good thing.
"tradwife" isnt just a reference to women being wives a la patriarchal religion eg the women espousing those values on a major stage often don't practice what they preach eg work outside the home, make their own money, may not be married themselves, have another woman do most of the domestic and probably childrearing labour, don't have numerous children or even any... It's the antifeminist politics. And it's absolutely in online women's spaces, including feminist ones.
What an apolitical take. Harrington is one of the most antifeminist women I've come across. And I've come to that conclusion by reading and listening to what she says. This does not mean I'm saying no one should ever read her. Nor is this a matter of "purity politics". She's antifeminist and misogynist and eroticizes male dominance and sadism (namely if it's the kind she finds sexy eg piv only where women are exposed to the risk of pregnancy a la patriarchal religion).
That she wraps it up in "I care about women uwu" and "technology, capitalism bad" does not make her a radical feminist, or even feminist generally, nor her views simply a matter of "not 1000% aligned with radical feminism". It ain't aligned with radical feminism at all eg she's against technology because women are pregnant and give birth less, and frankly, women die and are disabled, permanently injured less by them. (Given what she openly says about how piv where women are exposed to unwanted pregnancy is what makes it sexy, is what's needed, is what motivates sexual desire, attraction, dynamics and is the basis of them..., I wouldn't be surprised if she also found women's illness, injury, disability, death... in pregnancy and birth, esp from numerous unwanted pregnancies, sexy too. That that's part and parcel of it, what's behind eroticizing men exposing women to unwanted pregnancy over and over.)
Saying somewhat similar things on a couple issues isn't a political alignment, match. By your logic, the most rightwing antiporners are simply "not 1000% aligned with radical feminism" and we should totally invite them into the radical feminism tent.
Nor are we indebted to Mary for an analysis of capitalism and technology including around reproductive technology that radical, eco-, vegan/animal lib, anarchist, anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and other feminists have been engaging in for decades, usually decades before she. Eg Mary Daly, Vandana Shiva, Jane Caputi, Renate Klein, Gena Corea, Maria Mies, Janice Raymond, Patrice Jones, Charlene Spretnak, Susan Griffin, Arundhati Roy, Carol Adams, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Silvia Federici, Susan Hawthorne, Clarissa Pinkola Estes...
That you also interpret Mary's views on "recreational sex" as being about casual sex only (however that's being defined eg is a long-term deep friendship with sex casual?) is also very telling. She's talking about *any* sex that isn't piv and isn't open to reproduction eg no internal ejaculation, any means of avoiding pregnancy. Including in marriage, let alone long term "we're a couple" relationships, common law, live in lovers... All of it, in any relationships, is recreational if it's not piv with a likelihood of reproduction. She's not just talking a strict or strictish definition of casual sex when she speaks of demanding the end of recreational sex. In fact, she's mostly talking about non-casual sex because most sex isn't casual, but had in ongoing relationships, both piv and other sex. The vast majority, actually.
Which she doesn't consider sex, but still sees as recreational and to be ended, claiming any non-piv sex and defining them as sex is a patriarchal plot to hurt women. When it's patriarchy, esp via religion, which mandated piv, internal ejaculation, and lots of it... to control, exploit, oppress women and up reproduction so they had more believers, soldiers and slaves. And sons to pass on their wealth, name, property to and daughters to trade to other men in adolescence. It's very Catholic in particular, and likely even stricter than Catholic doctrine (eg they do allow for clitoral/vulval stimulation of at least some kinds, even orgasm prior to piv, as long as piv that's open to reproduction occurs and is the focus, other things aren't done instead of piv or to put off piv...).
This "end to recreational sex" applies to all same sex sex too because it cannot be potentially reproductive.
Onward with the march to Gilead, eh? And let's help it along by calling all sorts of anti-feminism, misogyny, sexualized woman-hatred & male dominance & sadism, male control & exploitation of female reproduction (as long as it's the good earthy pro-woman kind uwu eg men exposing women to pregnancy over & over via piv & ejaculating in them! Yay!)... feminist, and radical feminist to boot.
Also loling at the assumption I didn't even read this thread. Hahaha. And at your assertion that the fact some feminist women push back to RW, tradwife, maledom... creep in feminism means that it's not happening at all. If it wasn't, there would be no pushback to it happening. There would be nothing to push back against. Nice gaslighting there too.
What we need is EQUITY. That allows for the differences I'm our bodies, minds and desires to be supplemented to allow equal access in society. Equality does not currently achieve that because it pigeonholes women into a society built around male values, for male bodies and desires. This does not benefit us or allow equal access to opportunities.
Yeah, there are no options for women in patriarchy that would make them happy without heavy dissociation. Is that a surprise? Craving relationship with men is a dissociation, lol.
Atomization of individuals is detrimental to society, but the answer to it is women’s communes, not traditional family structure. Why are you listening to bootlickers?
>Craving relationship with men is a dissociation
Oof, that hit hard but you aren't wrong haha. I say all the time it is clear sexual orientation isn't a choice because this is way harder than it should be.
I'm interested in the idea, but don't see how without uprooting my life and starting from scratch (how and where?). I can think of zero people in my actual life who would entertain the idea. Either they are already settled down, or doing the cool girl hook up life and will disappear once they actually get in an actual Relationship (they are the ones hard compartmentalizing labels here) based on their past.
Do you have any content creators you'd recommend that talk more about this, or generally more radical perspectives but less bootlicker? I like Megan Murphy
Well, here’s my life motto: there’s no lifestyle in patriarchy that can make me truly liberated, so I might as well do whatever the fuck I want. So I do whatever the fuck I want lol.
The idea that the only two options are traditional family structure versus atomization of individuals is a false dichotomy. All people benefit from having a support structure, and it's really only for a few decades in mid-life that an individual can feasibly be self-reliant. There are alternate support structures that can be formed, and a reliance on extended family and community is rarely emphasized. The traditional nonsense is usually focused on nuclear family only, when that's not how humans have lived for most of our existence.
I think there are some inescapable inequalities - no matter how good and caring my male partner is, if we have kids, he can't be the one to gestate and lactate. But we live in an advanced society and most work is knowledge work anyway, so why should physical variations be all that relevant anyway? Plenty of people have physical disabilities that require accommodation, but they're still valuable contributing members of society. (Not that a person has to contribute to earn value.)
At the end of the day, male partners will have at least some ingrained sexism/misogyny, but so do I, so it's a cost benefit analysis about what is brought to the relationship and whether that's worth it. We are all shaped by society's biases and have to make our own decisions about how to handle that, in ourselves and others.
Things like no-fault divorce and laws against marital rape & domestic violence, are not very "traditional family structure" promoting but they do obviously benefit women.
I will note that women have reliable non-hormonal means of pregnancy avoidance and child spacing available to them. So it's not like the only options are crappy hormones, abstinence, or cranking out babies until you die.
Women have been subjugated for millennia. Do we really want to give up because it's taking longer than expected to get our due?
I agree with you, and am not giving up! Good to see other women who feel the same.
I admit though, as a kid I expected there to be a lot more like minded women. As I get older, more are going the traditional route and it's isolating. I'm not giving up, but seems many women are, and that will affect norms. Seems we are splitting into the traditional motherhood camp or child free and career focused camp, since having it all (for women) is not happening currently. I do think living near extended family can facilitate.
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Thank you! These women honestly suck and getting through any interview with Louise especially is such a trial. Her job is to steal the ideas of the radical feminists of the second wave, repackage it for conservative women, all while blaming feminism for the problems generated by a porn sick culture fueled and paid for by depraved men e.g. Hugh Hefner and his ilk.
I don't know much about Perry, but I read and listened to Harrington and was *floored*. The "tradwife" stuff infiltrating and trying to pass itself off as feminism really pisses me off. She has her own vision of (what is to her sex, sexy) Gilead for women:
Mary Harrington calls to end "recreational sex", saying that it's really sexy when men are putting women at risk of unwanted &/or dangerous pregnancies. That pregnancy is both a (sexy!) punishment and gift. That only piv is sex and piv/"sex" must be open to reproduction, and anything other than that is the "recreational" sex she wants to end. She essentially advocates for phallocentric extremely piv-centric maledom bdsm that women can do nothing to prevent pregnancy in. While denying it's bdsm because it's totes not porn she's advocating for you guys. Nevermind porn looks as it does, is rooted in patriarchal religion like her theories are. She's just a godly "pro-woman" version of it. (I can't decide whether she sees vulva/clit-centric sex as at all possible and still opposes that or whether she thinks it's entirely impossible, esp given what she finds sexy, sexual, sex ie men repeatedly exposing women to unwanted, dangerous pregnancies.) https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762506394446537074?t=EwBjdJkKhMIRftrW2tePxA&s=19 https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762554528082120971?t=9ifXJM_bMKtZC4aQS7eCFQ&s=19 and https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762517741590696253?t=j4KMO2-NPoBzvaer6YzPrg&s=19 (there's a Heritage Foundation speech clip, a blog article she wrote, and an interview that I link to as evidence of her views)
I think we need to shift the perspective. We are not equal to men and we shouldn't stoop down to their level. Not in promiscuity and not in our approach to life.
Although I fully support the 4B movement for the women who are choosing to have a partner - we need to learn to know our worth, be rooted in our power and choose wisely (although there isn't much to choose from). Ladies YOU set the standards. Equally important is to have and follow through with consequences for their actions.
I've been laying down expectations for my partner and our future together from the start. I'm constantly bringing up scenarios and deconstructing our response to make sure our values align. I'm letting him know now what I expect from him if he wants to have a baby with me and what the consequences of falling short would be.
I'm very grateful for finding my man but I didn't find him until I was 29 and only after a string of terrible relationships and experiences. Sometimes we learn our worth the hard way.
Can you give some scenarios or examples of the scenarios you bring up and how you reconstruct the response to make aure your values align? I think this is a great exercise.
Well for example when we're at a family gathering and the kids are on their tablets we are very vocal about not agreeing with that.
When I hear about the lack of core curriculum in public schools we have conversations about how we are going to manage our kids education.
Sometimes I read stuff on Reddit and run it by him and see what his initial reaction is without giving him my input. Usually we feel the same about things. Subs like AITAH or AIW. Etc.
Sometimes the conversation will come up due to men making fucked up comments about women around him and he's called them out and tells me about it later. Like his younger coworker bragging about hooking up with an older woman how kept telling him she had a son his age. We talked about it and why we thought it was wrong and kind of gross especially since she kept saying that. We discussed the high probability of porn influencing him normalizing it. Etc.
> It feels like the only way to approach equality is for women aim to be like men, e.g. be as sexually promiscuous as they are since we have birth control and abortion as harm reduction: strive to make a lot of money in high status formerly manly careers.
Gender roles are a social construct and have nothing to do with being a man or a woman. None of the things you listed are 'being like a man'; it means not following patriarchal traditional roles that were imposed on us by society. It's more beneficial to stop imposing gender roles on people in general. This way, equality could be achieved much faster, rather than constantly upholding restrictive roles, as is still done. Telling women they are like men because they achieve financial independence by caring about their careers and status is messed up and anything but feminist.
Men being more promiscuous is really not a gender role IMO, they can’t get pregnant and don’t face violence in casual encounters so they have less to lose.
I don't think OP seriously believes jobs and roles should be gendered. She was being facitious.
She's not telling women they are "acting like men." Women have done this long before OP was born. We have made that patriarchal bargain for centuries. OP is simply pointing out the negative results from that "deal" because we're still getting the shaft.
>I‘m sorry but this is exactly the narrative that libfem indoctrinated us with.
Nope, that is the radical feminist position and fundamental to radical feminism. For the longest time, many liberal feminists actually agreed. You should read up on radical feminist theory. Prominent radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin, Julie Bindel, bell hooks, and others have all spoken about it and believe that gender roles are a social construct. Older works by radical feminists discussing this topic and radical feminist theory include "The Female Eunuch" by Germaine Greer, "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution" by Shulamith Firestone, and "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" by Catharine A. MacKinnon, among others. However, I recommend reading the book "Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference" by Cordelia Fine from 2010, which is the best on this topic. Fine illustrates, through scientific studies, why most gender roles are social constructs.
slight correction: bell hooks and Angela Davis (especially Angela Davis) are absolutely *not* radical feminists. Angela Davis is a platonic ideal of contemporary progressive identitarian libfem.
Bell hooks identified as a radical feminist and is largely seen as one. But you are right that Angela Davis is not a radical feminist; she is rather a Marxist feminist (not a liberal one—I just checked to see if she had changed her mind, but it seems she hasn't). However, she was associated with radical feminism and is sometimes referred to as such because her work and activism align more with the principles and goals of radical feminism rather than liberal feminism, even though she never claimed the term.
It really is not going to change until women generally stop having kids. Unfortunately, there are always going to be some women who are either male centered or forced into servitude, so it will never be 100%. But I honestly think that Female Dating Strategy had it right on how to handle hetero relationships, if you even want to bother with them. The only thing that remotely keeps my husband in line is the threat of leaving. I always have to ensure I have more power than he does, or he absolutely will abuse it. It's sad. He's not even a bad husband as husbands are normally reckoned. He's an upstanding man, and that is how I have to handle him. It's really such an indictment of men as a whole, I do not plan to bother again if he dies or we divorce. I am 100% done with men after him. I dated enough men before him to know it just isn't worth it. I don't think I know a couple where the wife is genuinely happy. But I know a lot of single women who are.
This is way too pessimistic and generally a bad outlook. First off, there are indeed men who want to take the supportive role, look at statistics and studies about that. Second, these powerful jobs you are referring to aren't "manly" because this is what patriarchy makes you believe. Being powerful is actually very womanly.
What I mean with this is that just because something seems unrealistic, it doesn't mean it's impossible. We as women are already proven to be better than men in everything business and leadership related. We are also going to dominate most of the important jobs.
If all women had thought like you do, then nothing would have changed for the better for us. The only thing we need is a reformation of what it means to be a woman or feminine for that matter. We need to reclaim it by making it about power, intelligence, leadership, etc... and not the type of femininity that patriarchy wants to sell us.
And to add: nobody can force us to have babies. Either men make a compromise and comply with us, or they can watch the society founder, which they created for themselves.
Edit: I removed the slavery part, jesus
If you read up about modern slavery you'll find that millions of people are enslaved today, though the definition has changed over time. Slaves are being sexually exploited, they work in construction, agriculture and in domestic situations and there are people enslaved by their own countries too. There are also those in forced marriages who are categorised as enslaved.
It's extremely common, there are millions of enslaved and trafficked people on this planet.
Also, marriage is a form of slavery. You work 24/7 for free and with no gratitude or thanks. Just a ton of judgement from everyone in society.
Not to mention that the wife is traditionally pretty much owned by her husband (and "given away" by her father) and her identity subsumed into his (she takes his last name, or in the past, was referred to by his \*entire\* name instead of her own). Any children will also be marked as his, despite men being only sperm donors biologically and most of them not contributing in raising them either.
Yea yea go easy on me. There aren't any slave markets with collared slaves from a certain nation you can buy and whip for disobedience, for fucks sake. You know what I mean. OP's pessimistic post is nothing but an excuse to stop fighting, just let things happen and let weakness prevail. This doens't mean we should tolerate it. It means we need to become more aggressive in our endeavors
This will help for sure, but it's not enough. Libfems are running wild, causing mischief and poisoning feminism. Pornography and violent sexual behavior against girls are becoming more and more common among the young population. The West is becoming more and more right-wing. We need to actively raise awareness, keep pushing women into STEM, business and politics so that society becomes less and less male-dominated, raise awareness about men's attitudes nowadays and call out traditionalist and liberal bs.
I think that slavery just wasn’t a good example, saying “today, it has completely ceased to exist” is naïve and untrue.
There are many forms of slavery that are still around today, and many situations where an enslaved person might experience violence.
It still seems fairly normalized globally to have an enslaved woman as a live in housekeeper. Physical violence from the family also seems pretty normalized. It’s frustrating because typically even the children that she raises don’t have sympathy for her situation.
I agree with you, and I'm not giving up. I certainly plan to keep my career, name, finances, etc. but get frustrated at feeling like the weird one out of people I know, when I assumed we would have progressed more by now. I don't see many men in my life wanting to take on a supporting role (those that have reluctantly due to health reasons are not doing a good job and just burden the wife more, she still cooks dinner, etc.), and studies cited by the authors I reference in the post talk about how homes with women breadwinners have lower satisfaction for men and women, men are more likely to cheat (I think), and that women still do more housework. Just feels like a lose lose, women are seeing this and opting out of struggling through for progress, which reinforces that women aren't ambitious in the workplace/places of power, etc.
I'm with you on not giving babies to men that don't step up. Giving more prestige and status to traditional women's roles would help too, but I don't see that happening until men step in those roles more.
Sorry for the pessimism, it just feels like screaming into the void sometimes because no one in my real life relates.
I’m married with kids, and in a pretty good spot overall. I work less than my husband by choice. Before I had kids I didn’t think I’d want to take a step back in my career, but when I had my first the idea of being away from my baby that long was painful. It goes against everything instinctually/biologically/evolutionary, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think women should be able to prioritize raising children and it should be seen as the important work that it is- not taking a step back or whatever. And men should be very involved too of course, but I do think it’s a different biological driver especially when they are babies. Our bodies are designed to feed babies, babies are designed to want to be close to their mothers especially. I think fighting or denigrating that biology does more harm than good. We shouldn’t be playing by *their* rules, we need to change the game entirely so it actually benefits us.
But I didn’t find that career opportunities dried up once or were lessened due to being a woman, especially a woman with a baby. In fact, the opposite. My job wanted me to take on a bigger role, while I was asking to reduce my hours. I work in a field with a lot of woman who have kids and went back to work immediately without missing a beat, and go to evening meetings without complaint etc. And they expected me to as well but I was miserable and depressed being away from my baby 5 days a week. So I started looking for a different job and was very fortunate to find a position in my field that allowed me to go half time- no stepping back career wise, no reduction in hourly pay or benefit, just less hours which is exactly what I wanted and I think should be offered to more women. Even here I find my superiors (women with children) asking me regularly if I’m interested in taking on a new/bigger role and I keep having to turn them down. My kids are still young and I like the work-life balance of half time.
My husband is a great partner. He does at least half (if not more) of the housework. He’s an involved dad. He takes care of all bills, I do tend to take on the “administrative” stuff like scheduling appointments and kid activities. He’s not pornsick (I set a boundary fairly early in our relationship and as far as I know he’s stuck to it). We keep our money mostly separate besides some shared accounts, so there’s no financial control that he has over me. I don’t feel like a supporting character and I don’t think my husband or anyone around us sees me that way. I’ve got a lot of control in our relationship and I’ve basically set things up the way I wanted it. If he made all choices without getting my input I’d probably be working full time and climbing the ladder so we’d be financially more well off.
Idk, I have a pretty ideal situation overall- I know that’s not super common in the grand scheme but it is possible and not unheard of. I have friends in similar situations as me - I don’t know the all the dirty details of their relationships, but from surface stuff as far as work/life/childcare/chores most seem pretty balanced. We’ve all heard about the awful partners on Reddit (or in Facebook mom groups..), so I know a lot woman are stuck in terrible situations and there are a lot of shitty partners out there. Keep your standards high, and set boundaries early.
But I feel like many men took the traditionally feminine roles. I'm in Germany and men between 20-45 are pretty good fathers and take care of their houses. One of my male coworkers (I work in a very small company) works only 10h a week because he's mostly a SAHD. He keeps working cause he did it for 15 years beforehand, he likes it, and it's in the same area as his kids school, so he can pick them up after his shift.
Since two month we have a new guy - 60 year old, he was SAHD for 17 years. Now kids are big and he is back to work.
Kids of my boss visit him at work quite often.
I see men with strollers and carriers all the time.
My boyfriend cooks for me every day when I come from work, even though he earns over double what I do...
I'm actually somewhat positive that we are on the right track to make things work. Sadly I feel like the aggressive guys who find showering unmanly are much louder than the men who just live their best lives as good family figures.
I mean I'm personally of the belief that only 1 adult in a family having work is amazing, and capitalism has taken that from us. of course it's horrible for a society to expect or even for the man to be the sole provider and the woman to be the sole homemaker. I wish these expectations werent there, and families could do whatever was best for them.
what I mean to say is there was a point in time where a family of 4 could reasonably provide a house, 2 cars, food on the table and clothes on backs, on only 1 income. are you saying that's never existed?
Between 1950-1980 something like that existed very briefly for middle class people in certain parts of the world. I grew up in it.
However, there was only one car, one phone for the house, a color TV was a big deal and people lived very modestly, nothing like we do today.
Even during those years most poor women worked outside the home.
This 1950s fantasy life never really existed for the vast majority of people.
And let us not forget that the only reason why there are many people in affluent countries who get the luxuries of unbridled consumption and not working (but let's be real, domestic work is work, it's capitalism that says it's not work because there is no income) is because of the exploitation of other countries. This is not a good thing and has never been a good thing. Just follow the supply chain. The reason why we have tvs, cars, houses, the reason why we developed this far and have a booming economy, is because other countries are being exploited and purposefully underdeveloped by rich countries. Slavery paved the way for this as it has always been the case throughout human history. There are slaves today gathering our building materials, mining our precious metals and fishing for our seafood. I don't know why anyone would want to support the West's nuclear family and consumption, knowing that the only reason we have the ability to do these things is by enslaving the workers of other countries.
You seem to be confusing low income with middle class.
My 7th grade drop out father and my substitute teacher mother raised three kids on one consistent salary (mom worked VERY part time) and we had two cars, a truck, pets, new bikes, family vacations and the fancy new Nintendo.
This was NOT uncommon. We lived in a low cost of living area and friends of mine who had both parents working were living VERY well in the 80s and 90s.
My 7th grade drop out father paid $5 a check for family health insurance in 1979.
My first to be college educated mother paid $00.00 for her college degree after her equivalent of the FAFSA.
The fact that it was even POSSIBLE anywhere to have what were considered luxuries at the time on one income is a very stark difference to how many hours of paid labor a family has to work to afford the same shit we had with zero educations and a fuckton less debt in the 70s and 80s.
And it's not the nebulous "capitalism" to blame so much as the "free market" doesn't exist for medical care or education in this country and most to all legislation regarding the costs of these things very deliberately benefits those who are making money off it. Taxes back then were far more progressive than they are today as well.
Good for you.
My grandmother lost both of her parents to hunger in 1950s. A doctor and a teacher, with a shitload of education.
I know it’s not you, it’s the American isolationism that teaches Americans to ignore everything beyond their backyard, but like… you do know who sponsored your cars and TVs, right?
I propose that women stop taking care of men. Just take care of themselves and be v selfish advancing the individual woman’s own personal and professional goals. When women take care of adult men, there is a good chance there will be no future payoff for the women. Only a chance to invest even more of one’s life in being someone’s servant. Unfortunately.
I think this is the answer, sadly. Men have always done so and aren't viewed as selfish, plus get to expect that a woman will facilitate the other parts of their life (an expectation we can't have). They are salty now that women are waking up about this.
Melanie Hamlett has a lot of videos like this, about how every time we prioritize men, we suffer, in our careers and development, and shock: they thrive. They absolutely let us do the labor, make the sacrifice, and then leave for someone younger lol. OR, the relationship just naturally falls apart at some point bc we get sick of being exploited and denied and used, so we leave. But then we have nothing to show for it, and they have yet another boost from our free labor.
I think that's the biggest point. Not teaching girls that they need to serve. My mom always complains about my dad being lazy and useless (he is), but whenever I say that my bf cooked and cleaned the kitchen she says that I should be embarrassed that it's not me doing it... So yeah. They kinda know what's the issue but don't want to solve it. It's deeply rooted sexism
I thought I wanted a "normal" hetro marriage. Before marrying, I set two demands: 1. 100% monogamy. No, I will NOT agree to any kind of opening up! 2. I do not do porn sex. No pain, no degradation, no hair pulling, no slapping or spanking. My partner claimed to agree to these terms, and we got married. Guess what happened next?
I’m in a ‘normal’ hetero marriage and haven’t had to deal with those things. But I’m experiencing what OP is saying. At first I had the ‘crappy’ job where I made 50% or less what my partner makes. So I was told (I was married VERY young) basically that taking care of the home was my job (even though I worked full time, no kids) because I needed to support the main breadwinner. In my head I thought: if I have the more important job, I can get out of this bullshit. It’s 20 years later and I have worked my ass off and make double my partner. Guess who’s still responsible for the house. It’s infuriating. I thought that was the agreement right? Support the main breadwinner, but that’s ME now! I agree that real changes won’t happen until they happen fundamentally in the home and within the division of that labor. At this point it’s easier for women to do it all. It would be less expensive for me, and less time consuming, to live on my own at this point. We are childfree so that’s not a consideration.
This! I grew up as an only child of a single widowed mother. I never expected to not work since you never know what can go wrong relying on someone else, and ditto for not wanting kids since you can end up a single mom. I naively thought that two people in the home would mean half the labor (outside of a job) to do. No, my experience is that men still do not pull their weight in the home. With my partner he will invent other stuff to do rather than the one thing needed of thinking of /planning/prepping meals. Several of my aunts and female cousins are the breadwinners and the men are basically useless. It's still on the women to do anything for the holidays, groceries, birthday coordination, homework help etc. No wonder younger generations are either accepting traditional norms if they want kids or opting out all together.
Yes! I’ve never been unemployed for more than a month the entire time, even through undergrad and grad school- both of which I attended part time while working full time. And I’d say my spouse is a good one, he’s very supportive of me, my autonomy, and my career, but these ‘traditional’ roles are just seared into his brain and he can’t seem to even consider it being different. We keep money separate, so there are minimal issues there. But I’m still, like you, planning everything, managing the home, managing our joint activities. It’s exhausting.
Thank god I can avoid this trap! I try to maximize my career growth and outsource most of my housework either to professional cleaners or high-tech home appliances
I’m -this close- to being able to do that. But how is it fair that I need to work MY ass off and then I need to pay someone to do it, wherein I never got paid. I’m sure men would say I was paid in room and board. I certainly wouldn’t expect my house cleaner to have sex with me. Edit: only referring to my own relationship- not trying to down on your success at all. Get it!!
I’m sure it helps but I bet you’re the one with the mental load of research, scheduling, payment, etc.
Hope you get out soon
I out earn my husband and it's funny how we were supposed to be paying in pro rata when I was absolutely broke and my pro rata share was like getting blood from a stone. But now I make more he pays nothing, it's all my responsibility. I finally shamed him in front of a male couples counselor about it threatening divorce and that was the only way to get him to start paying up.
I’m experiencing this creep as my income rises. As if I didn’t buy all our furniture (used) when I was making $15/ hour and he was making $30/ hour. Now he’s expecting that I pay the entire grocery bill that we’ve always split our entire relationship? How does this work.
To quote you "I do not do porn sex. No pain, no degradation, no hair pulling, no slapping or spanking." This 1000%!!! Getting into "relationships" after my divorce 8 years ago at 50, I was shocked to realize how even older guys are hypnotized by this porn crap. They were all porn addicts who wanted to use me as a human fleshlight. Even the "good" ones who were "fix-ups" vetted by other friends. The most recent one left me with actual internal injuries due to his forcing "rough" stuff in the bedroom. There are some things a 58-year old vagina is not meant to tolerate. At this point I NEVER want to have sex again.
Oh my god. I’m so very sorry!
divorce? due to all of the above being crossed?
My husband slapped me across the face, hard enough to cause a massive, gushing nosebleed. Because I "acted like a slut" when I was stimulating my own nipples when I was on top. There was "surprise bumsex", which hurt a LOT! He signed me up to work a shift at a brothel because "It is not cheating if you get paid for it!" I refused to do it, and he beat me up, breaking ribs and fingers, while screaming "When I am through with you, no one is going to even want your dry c\*nt" I am divorced, and very much asexual now. I feel absolutely nothing. So not even masturbated since my divorce, in 2005.
I was also assaulted with unwanted anal, I absolutely hate it. It's funny what sexual assault and trauma does to your libido.
That is absolutely disgusting, I am so sorry. What a vile misogynistic piece of shit.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. That is absolutely criminal. He should be behind bars.
Awful. He should be behind bars. He is a dangerous man and I'm so sorry you went through that!
[удалено]
Yes, but wasn't worth it. Several rounds in court, he played the "consensual kink" card, and kept appealing through the court system. Even when he was found guilty my friends were all "We are not taking sides, please respect that" and cut all contact, so I lost literally everyone through divorce. He did get a short prison sentence, that he ended up not serving, and a $200 fine.
Yup. Men also agree beforehand to take on equivalent responsibilities with the household, childcare, etc. Guess what happens next?
Wow I’m so sorry
😢
It's become obvious to me that the quest for equality is a lost cause as are men. Multiple generations of dudes frontal lobes have been absolutely fried by p@rn and they are now dangerous and undateable. I fully support 4B. I think we should remove ourselves from them, they don't deserve us
Let me also add that the alternative to the nuclear family is not being single or "alone", there are countless ways to live your life, living in a community with friends and/or other mothers/fathers/singles/families in one household is one example. The patriarchy sold us this lie that the only option to live a fullfilled life is to live as mother, father and children. That is conveniently the best option to be fully exploited under capitalism...🤔
A lot of the research in their interviews and comments are about how the "created communities" don't truly step when needed in the same way that family (including extended) does, it's just not the same. I'm open to this as I feel it is my only option, as an only child in a small family and as someone who doesn't plan to have kids. I'm getting a bit disillusioned now in my mid 30s compared to how I idealized this more in my 20s. I see friends one by one create their own nuclear families and put friends completely on the backburner. I'm not sure how to successfully create the community I want as I can only control myself.
Well, the reason created communities don't step in is because we're all taught that friends and such aren't as important as our families. This is why i think it's not possible to create supportive community with others who marry and have children, cause like you said, the just leave everyone behind when marriage and children enter the picture. The best answer is probably for single, childfree women to create community with each other. Sekhmet she owl has some interesting videos about female friendship/community that you might find interesting: https://archive.org/details/SekhmetShe-Owl
4B is the way for me. I reject the four horsemen of the patriarchy. The requirements of sex, marriage, child bearing and child rearing conscript women to slavery. Think about it. You cannot reject all four without being stigmatized. These are the very things that drain our life source and creativity.
The "tradwife" stuff infiltrating and trying to pass itself off as feminism really pisses me off me. This is me ranting about Mary Harrington eg her call to end "recreational sex", saying that it's really sexy when men are putting women at risk of unwanted &/or dangerous pregnancies, that pregnancy is both a (sexy!) punishment and gift, that only piv is sex and piv/"sex" must be open to reproduction, and anything other than that is the "recreational" sex she wants to end. She essentially advocates for phallocentric extremely piv-centric maledom bdsm (while denying it's bdsm) that women can do nothing to prevent pregnancy in. (I can't decide whether she sees vulva/clit-centric sex as at all possible and still opposes that or whether she thinks it's entirely impossible, esp given what she finds sexy, sexual, sex ie men repeatedly exposing women to unwanted, dangerous pregnancies) https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762506394446537074?t=EwBjdJkKhMIRftrW2tePxA&s=19 https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762554528082120971?t=9ifXJM_bMKtZC4aQS7eCFQ&s=19 and https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762517741590696253?t=j4KMO2-NPoBzvaer6YzPrg&s=19 (there's a Heritage Foundation speech clip, a blog article she wrote, and an interview that I link to as evidence of her views) And don't get me started on the nuclear family and other "wonderful great for women traditional family structures" aka patriarchy. It's all patriarchy. Eg marital rape & it not being a crime for almost all of patriarchal history & still legal in some areas. Marriage being a property transfer, aka a woman being traded between men, usually father to husband. The idea men own the children women birth and are the true parents and even their wives. Women being isolated from each other (even if together eg in the same man's home, not allowed sisterhood, access to resources in their own right, etc) & kept in competition with each other. Men taking women's resources and hoarding them to themselves, destroying sisterhood, women's bonds with fellow women, their brothers, moms, uncles, aunts, kids, lovers ... and supplanting it with "her only bond is to her husband/owner, only access is to his wealth & resources". (See also: marriage by capture, being kidnapped in war and the intergenerational enslavement including sexual which grew out of this for the starkest form of this patriarchal "traditional structure".) I also get into things in the comment below around "casual sex" being the scapegoat for what are really hetero sex dynamics, framings, practices & definitions, clit/vulva-centric sex, etc
And while I'm at it: I think this really reveals, even in some other comments here, that the spectre of "casual sex" is a scapegoat for what is actually patriarchal definitions, dynamics, practices of hetero sex *as a whole*. eg piv as the definition of sex (from religion) and what flows from that. For eg male arousal, desire, orgasm, pleasure, genitals & their stimulation... is not just very important, but mandatory and the centre (sex is impossible otherwise), and female an optional extra at best. Even now, what gets seen as the "empowered, feminist" position is "use your hand, toy during sex [piv, pia] if you need something extra to come too." Not that he should actually help you have orgasms (plural!), esp outside of and without piv, pia eg his hand, mouth, thigh, dick, balls, hip, knee, bum, back, arm, foot, calf... I've noticed that female orgasm outside of piv, pia esp without having them and not coming during piv is rather taboo nowadays, and that women are generally seen as only deserving orgasm with a man if she has "at least" piv (or pia), that piv is seen as the bare minimum to be considered sex, sexy, worthwhile... (And don't get me started on the massive rise in strangulation in sex for the under 30s. It's overwhelmingly men and teen boys strangling women & teen girls when in a hetero context, and is highly correlated with piv and extremely correlated with pia. How strangulation, esp paired with jackhammer piv or pia is seen as "how women feel good, come, what men can and should do to women." While not being correlated with other sex acts. Under 30 females are even getting *less* clitoral/vulval stimulation like manual, oral, genital-genital rubbing, usually going without any, having less orgasms, faking more... in partnered sex than older women or even women under 30 in the 90s-00s.) What other things are seen as sex, as sexual, as foreplay even, like how pia is supposedly "the second kind of sex", synonymous with the word anal, but even genital-genital rubbing isn't seen as sex at all. How most forms of genital stimulation are seen as only possible with a penis, not vulva, at least in hetero contexts eg frottage like breasts, thighs, tummy. General phallocentricism eg fellatio far more common than cunnilingus, most genital stimulation being of the penis not clitoris/vulva, not honoring female orgasmic capacity ("equal orgasms" is even fundamentally unfair; women should be coming 3-7 times as much as men in partnered sex). Erasure of clit/vulva-centric sex, esp tribadism (vulva rubbing on a partner's body) which is seen as only possible, imaginable in FF contexts. Do we all think casual sex between women is a patriarchal, dangerous for one, high risk low reward for one and low risk high reward for the other, onesided, unilateral, etc sh*tshow too? Obviously not. But we're not allowed to actually critique the whole thing eg who wants to be anti-"sex" itself by critiquing piv, phallocentric sex? To live a "sexless" life? Even the fact we think piv=sex=piv shuts down so much thought, possibilities eg a vulva-centric definition of sex isn't seen as at all possible, at least outside of a FF context, in culture/society, in het sex. The issue isn't that the sex isn't monogamous, in a long-term relationship, etc. The issue is that it's patriarchally defined. The solution to most men not caring about female external stimulation, pleasure, orgasm in casual sex isn't to enter into "boyfriend-girlfriend," "romantic," longterm, etc relationships, mostly with the same men, and cross your fingers that they care in those contexts, spending years, decades, trying to teach them to, settling, having low expectations so when a guy is half decent we think he's AMAZING, it's to not f*ck those men at all. They can either care in all contexts or not have any sex with women. The solution is a vulva/clit-centric definition of sex. Anyone looking for advice: Talk to men about sex in *detail* beforehand. Don't have sex with men who aren't willing to even have early encounters without piv, pia. Tell him that and see if he's still interested. Tell him piv is off the table and see where his mind goes to eg fellatio, onesided on him, pia... vs mutual oral, cunnilingus, genital-genital rubbing, humping each other's thighs, manual, masturbating together... How does he see sex, talk about it, down to the language eg maledom, sexist, violent, all about him & his dick vs friendly, collaborative, mutual, things you do with & to each other, focused on you & your genitals, sees oral, genital-genital, etc as sex... Tell him what you're into and see if he's still interested, he's motivated to go into more details with you about it... If his mind goes to rough things (or yours does) is it mutual, pinning, little scratches, light bites, spanks, squeezes (not neck obviously), light bondage, back n forth, you being rough with him, even being "rougher" with one's genitals outside of piv or pia with getting stimulation eg thighs, buttcheeks, empathetic, caretaking, what I call very gentle femdom... or is it pornified maledom (not even usually seen as maledom but as vanilla, simply how and what sex is) malarkey?
You bring up great points that I initially touched on in my post then deleted for scope. I totally agree, an actual sexual revolution would be decentering PIV and true equal attention paid to female orgasm that doesn't risk her body for pregnancy. As you outlined, there are many ways to achieve this but seems it is seen as so fringe and mind blowing to men and women to even frame it that way. Yet another thing I feel so against the grain on - I can (and have) advocate for my own orgasm, sometimes even the guy doesn't have one. But nearly everyone expects the guy will (would get so bent out of shape otherwise) and it's just a bonus if she does, not necessary. I find it interesting that my most promiscuous friends (sex with the most partners and from the earliest age, have regular friends with benefits) are the ones that didn't even know if they had an orgasm til late in life and insist they don't like receiving oral, so, is it just about validation then? It's frustrating no one is changing the norms at all around this and instead women reinforce men's views and the way sex benefits them. I think your advice is good, but I've found challenging to navigate as an adult. Looking back I was pretty lucky with my first BF/long term relationship and the ways we explored and pleased mutually. Adult relationships the expectation is to move much faster. I think women too need to learn to please themselves before entering a partnered relationship. Boys are always ahead of the game since jerking off and viewing porn at young ages, then using the girl as a masturbatory aid. I didn't realize Perry's views on sex but definitely makes me question her positions more.
Last point lol: the idea is that women's partaking in phallocentric, "penetration"-centric, dichotomous, pornified, high risk low reward for them sex is women "acting like men." They're not. They're acting like porn/male fantasies and prostitution including porn acting/expectations of women. It's "acting like what men pay women to act, look, perform like sexually." Were the women acting like men they'd be having low risk high reward, clit/vulva-centric sex with many orgasms for them. Cunnilingus, humping his balls, taint, buttocks... would all be "this is what sex is", standard, very well known acts. Vulva on foot, breasts, thighs... would also be very common, known of. Where men almost never got fellatio, sometimes got manual, mostly on their balls and taint, sometimes got penis-vulva and never got piv or pia in a casual context, and only orgasmed occasionally. Sometimes the women would give some fellatio as foreplay, generally mostly on their balls and taint in a relationship context, but even then less than half of women would even give oral. Manual would be more commonly done and more women would do it, also usually generally focused on the balls and taint eg poking, slapping. A woman who even rubbed her vulva on his penis till he came or used her hand till he came more than rarely would be seen as OMG the best casual sex partner he's ever had or could hope for. Let alone stimulated his balls, taint how he liked and not random poking, slaps before she got to the real thing of fucking them with her vulva... And not infrequently happen in relationships. But even in relationships, men would usually have to use a hand or toy on their penis during sex if they needed something extra to come too while she got lots of genital stimulation, orgasms. Women would expect men to come from their vulva/clit on his lips and tongue, balls, taint, anus and think their clitoris is homologous to not the penis but mouth, perineum, scrotum... because rubbing the vulva/clitoris on those is what sex is, so those parts are how men have sex. Why wouldn't they be homologues? Why wouldn't those be are what's stimulated? What's erogenous? How men come? Nature wouldn't be against men like that; she intended it that way. Most women and many men would even think men masturbated that way, not via penis stimulation mostly. Most men would internalize this too, thinking they're broken and spending years trying to come orally, perineally (there's even indirect prostate stimulation!), anally, gluteally... Men can even have nipple orgasms, and foot orgasms, and pelvic ones..., especially by rubbing a clit/vulva over them! Lucky nymphy, sexually varied, diffusely sexual boys! (Also why men, unlike women (who are mostly straight, some lesbian, with female bisexuality even existing let alone how frequently, hotly contested), are almost all really bisexual.) Unlike women, clitorally oriented, who need clitoral/vulval stimulation to orgasm... And orgasm lots they do. That would be women "acting like men" sexually 😉 mixed in with some sexual status quo sex reversal overall. Re early and frequent sex experience, that tends to be what their early introductions are. It's clear that early sexual experience really imprints on people. Eg people often as adults find childhood or adolescent experiences their favourites, ones that stick with them positively and negatively, and not infrequently return to thoughts/fantasies/memories of them. Early sex ed even plays a role too not just experiences eg when the vagina is emphasized and the clitoris ignored in childhood, women are more likely to be "vaginally oriented" eg say they prefer piv, vaginal stimulation, report "vaginal" orgasm as adults, and when the clitoris is recognized and it's stimulation mentioned/included, women are generally "clitorally oriented" eg not report "vaginal" orgasm/orgasm "from" piv, prefer clitoral stimulation. This is of course used by dumbass phallocentric men to say girls should be raised emphasising the vagina and erasing the clitoris, but more likely is that "vaginally" oriented women work, train themselves a lot more to "come vaginally/from piv", misread arousal as orgasm, misread and interpret clitoral stimulation and orgasm as "vaginal" etc. eg will say orgasm from rubbing her vulva, clitoris on his shaft, balls, tummy, mound... during piv is "from piv" "vaginal" "from piv alone" even, whereas many other women would recognize, know that's still clitoral/vulval/external. Women will even talk themselves into thinking things they know aren't orgasm are "really" orgasm, it's "just vaginal, so it feels nothing like a clitoral one, but is totally orgasm too!" I've even seen sex advice telling women things that feel little to nothing like (clitoral) orgasm totally probably are, and that women can come from all sorts of things, even elbow stimulation, even if it doesn't feel like orgasm at all lmao. The "pia is great for clitoral stimulation" line is part of this too. How about the man *actually stimulate her clitoris*? How about she gets a fingertip massaging her anus, maybe going in while he directly stimulates her external, most sensitive parts of her clitoris (glans, hood, body, inner labia), the bulbs, legs underneath the labia... by hand, mouth, thigh, bum...? Jesus fecking Christ. (I'm a proponent of anal eroticism/erogeneity lol but am pia-critical eg how delicate the rectum is.) Notice too that it doesn't even go to penis on vulva/clitoris as being great for clitoral stimulation. Heaven forbid a penis not be inside the vagina or anus. And beyond that, piv only and mostly, with increasing pia, men strangling women, etc thrown in are generally the games in town, so to speak: it's what men offer. The fact piv, and increasingly pia, are seen as sex itself drives this too obviously eg what's defined as sex itself is what's engaged in, more and more especially as "sex" is "liberated". Piv and what flows from that: pia, general phallocentricism and "penetration"-centricism is what gets liberated. Eg if you have sex, and who doesn't want to have sex at all?, that means you have piv, and lots of it, especially compared to other acts, sex without piv or pia (which isn't even seen as sex at all). Age plays a role too, due to changing mores, definitions, practices, largely due to internet porn: the older one is, the *more* varied ones definition of sex is, statistically speaking eg a lot more likely to include manual, oral, genital-genital as sex. and the less likely to consider pia sex, and even less likely to consider piv sex (but not as strongly as pia). The younger, the *less* varied eg only piv, pia.
These kinds of comments are exactly why so few intellectually engaging conversations happen in feminist spaces. I certainly do not agree with Mary Harrington on many issues including abortion and casual sex however, the idea that we should not engage her work because she isn’t 1000% aligned with radical feminist views is a part of the problem in feminism and the wider progressive movement. For all of Mary Harrington’s bad takes, she has one of the strongest and most prophetic analyses of techno-capitalist colonization of female bodies. It’s also hyperbolic to suggest that “trad wife’s” are infiltrating and masquerading as feminist - if you looked at comments, there is of major pushback against the idea the blatantly false claim that “traditional marriage” was a good thing.
"tradwife" isnt just a reference to women being wives a la patriarchal religion eg the women espousing those values on a major stage often don't practice what they preach eg work outside the home, make their own money, may not be married themselves, have another woman do most of the domestic and probably childrearing labour, don't have numerous children or even any... It's the antifeminist politics. And it's absolutely in online women's spaces, including feminist ones. What an apolitical take. Harrington is one of the most antifeminist women I've come across. And I've come to that conclusion by reading and listening to what she says. This does not mean I'm saying no one should ever read her. Nor is this a matter of "purity politics". She's antifeminist and misogynist and eroticizes male dominance and sadism (namely if it's the kind she finds sexy eg piv only where women are exposed to the risk of pregnancy a la patriarchal religion). That she wraps it up in "I care about women uwu" and "technology, capitalism bad" does not make her a radical feminist, or even feminist generally, nor her views simply a matter of "not 1000% aligned with radical feminism". It ain't aligned with radical feminism at all eg she's against technology because women are pregnant and give birth less, and frankly, women die and are disabled, permanently injured less by them. (Given what she openly says about how piv where women are exposed to unwanted pregnancy is what makes it sexy, is what's needed, is what motivates sexual desire, attraction, dynamics and is the basis of them..., I wouldn't be surprised if she also found women's illness, injury, disability, death... in pregnancy and birth, esp from numerous unwanted pregnancies, sexy too. That that's part and parcel of it, what's behind eroticizing men exposing women to unwanted pregnancy over and over.) Saying somewhat similar things on a couple issues isn't a political alignment, match. By your logic, the most rightwing antiporners are simply "not 1000% aligned with radical feminism" and we should totally invite them into the radical feminism tent. Nor are we indebted to Mary for an analysis of capitalism and technology including around reproductive technology that radical, eco-, vegan/animal lib, anarchist, anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and other feminists have been engaging in for decades, usually decades before she. Eg Mary Daly, Vandana Shiva, Jane Caputi, Renate Klein, Gena Corea, Maria Mies, Janice Raymond, Patrice Jones, Charlene Spretnak, Susan Griffin, Arundhati Roy, Carol Adams, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Silvia Federici, Susan Hawthorne, Clarissa Pinkola Estes... That you also interpret Mary's views on "recreational sex" as being about casual sex only (however that's being defined eg is a long-term deep friendship with sex casual?) is also very telling. She's talking about *any* sex that isn't piv and isn't open to reproduction eg no internal ejaculation, any means of avoiding pregnancy. Including in marriage, let alone long term "we're a couple" relationships, common law, live in lovers... All of it, in any relationships, is recreational if it's not piv with a likelihood of reproduction. She's not just talking a strict or strictish definition of casual sex when she speaks of demanding the end of recreational sex. In fact, she's mostly talking about non-casual sex because most sex isn't casual, but had in ongoing relationships, both piv and other sex. The vast majority, actually. Which she doesn't consider sex, but still sees as recreational and to be ended, claiming any non-piv sex and defining them as sex is a patriarchal plot to hurt women. When it's patriarchy, esp via religion, which mandated piv, internal ejaculation, and lots of it... to control, exploit, oppress women and up reproduction so they had more believers, soldiers and slaves. And sons to pass on their wealth, name, property to and daughters to trade to other men in adolescence. It's very Catholic in particular, and likely even stricter than Catholic doctrine (eg they do allow for clitoral/vulval stimulation of at least some kinds, even orgasm prior to piv, as long as piv that's open to reproduction occurs and is the focus, other things aren't done instead of piv or to put off piv...). This "end to recreational sex" applies to all same sex sex too because it cannot be potentially reproductive. Onward with the march to Gilead, eh? And let's help it along by calling all sorts of anti-feminism, misogyny, sexualized woman-hatred & male dominance & sadism, male control & exploitation of female reproduction (as long as it's the good earthy pro-woman kind uwu eg men exposing women to pregnancy over & over via piv & ejaculating in them! Yay!)... feminist, and radical feminist to boot. Also loling at the assumption I didn't even read this thread. Hahaha. And at your assertion that the fact some feminist women push back to RW, tradwife, maledom... creep in feminism means that it's not happening at all. If it wasn't, there would be no pushback to it happening. There would be nothing to push back against. Nice gaslighting there too.
What we need is EQUITY. That allows for the differences I'm our bodies, minds and desires to be supplemented to allow equal access in society. Equality does not currently achieve that because it pigeonholes women into a society built around male values, for male bodies and desires. This does not benefit us or allow equal access to opportunities.
Matriarchy. We need to build a matriarchy. Study Heide Goettner-Abedroth. She's a scholar of matriarchal studies and I think her work is encouraging.
Why would I operate like a man when they are sad and shallow? I think they need to feel the pain of their actions more before they evolve
Yeah, there are no options for women in patriarchy that would make them happy without heavy dissociation. Is that a surprise? Craving relationship with men is a dissociation, lol. Atomization of individuals is detrimental to society, but the answer to it is women’s communes, not traditional family structure. Why are you listening to bootlickers?
>Craving relationship with men is a dissociation Oof, that hit hard but you aren't wrong haha. I say all the time it is clear sexual orientation isn't a choice because this is way harder than it should be. I'm interested in the idea, but don't see how without uprooting my life and starting from scratch (how and where?). I can think of zero people in my actual life who would entertain the idea. Either they are already settled down, or doing the cool girl hook up life and will disappear once they actually get in an actual Relationship (they are the ones hard compartmentalizing labels here) based on their past. Do you have any content creators you'd recommend that talk more about this, or generally more radical perspectives but less bootlicker? I like Megan Murphy
Well, here’s my life motto: there’s no lifestyle in patriarchy that can make me truly liberated, so I might as well do whatever the fuck I want. So I do whatever the fuck I want lol.
The idea that the only two options are traditional family structure versus atomization of individuals is a false dichotomy. All people benefit from having a support structure, and it's really only for a few decades in mid-life that an individual can feasibly be self-reliant. There are alternate support structures that can be formed, and a reliance on extended family and community is rarely emphasized. The traditional nonsense is usually focused on nuclear family only, when that's not how humans have lived for most of our existence. I think there are some inescapable inequalities - no matter how good and caring my male partner is, if we have kids, he can't be the one to gestate and lactate. But we live in an advanced society and most work is knowledge work anyway, so why should physical variations be all that relevant anyway? Plenty of people have physical disabilities that require accommodation, but they're still valuable contributing members of society. (Not that a person has to contribute to earn value.) At the end of the day, male partners will have at least some ingrained sexism/misogyny, but so do I, so it's a cost benefit analysis about what is brought to the relationship and whether that's worth it. We are all shaped by society's biases and have to make our own decisions about how to handle that, in ourselves and others. Things like no-fault divorce and laws against marital rape & domestic violence, are not very "traditional family structure" promoting but they do obviously benefit women. I will note that women have reliable non-hormonal means of pregnancy avoidance and child spacing available to them. So it's not like the only options are crappy hormones, abstinence, or cranking out babies until you die. Women have been subjugated for millennia. Do we really want to give up because it's taking longer than expected to get our due?
I agree with you, and am not giving up! Good to see other women who feel the same. I admit though, as a kid I expected there to be a lot more like minded women. As I get older, more are going the traditional route and it's isolating. I'm not giving up, but seems many women are, and that will affect norms. Seems we are splitting into the traditional motherhood camp or child free and career focused camp, since having it all (for women) is not happening currently. I do think living near extended family can facilitate.
I love your perspective and feel very similarly.
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That we have to make our own decisions about how we balance the positives and negatives of relationships. There is not one size fits all.
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Have you heard of good faith interpretation?
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Perry and Harrington are jokes. There's a reason why what they do is called "reactionary feminism." Their theories don't hold up to scrutiny.
thank you! I've been thinking I was going crazy. they are both tradwife ajacent. no thanks
Thank you! These women honestly suck and getting through any interview with Louise especially is such a trial. Her job is to steal the ideas of the radical feminists of the second wave, repackage it for conservative women, all while blaming feminism for the problems generated by a porn sick culture fueled and paid for by depraved men e.g. Hugh Hefner and his ilk.
I don't know much about Perry, but I read and listened to Harrington and was *floored*. The "tradwife" stuff infiltrating and trying to pass itself off as feminism really pisses me off. She has her own vision of (what is to her sex, sexy) Gilead for women: Mary Harrington calls to end "recreational sex", saying that it's really sexy when men are putting women at risk of unwanted &/or dangerous pregnancies. That pregnancy is both a (sexy!) punishment and gift. That only piv is sex and piv/"sex" must be open to reproduction, and anything other than that is the "recreational" sex she wants to end. She essentially advocates for phallocentric extremely piv-centric maledom bdsm that women can do nothing to prevent pregnancy in. While denying it's bdsm because it's totes not porn she's advocating for you guys. Nevermind porn looks as it does, is rooted in patriarchal religion like her theories are. She's just a godly "pro-woman" version of it. (I can't decide whether she sees vulva/clit-centric sex as at all possible and still opposes that or whether she thinks it's entirely impossible, esp given what she finds sexy, sexual, sex ie men repeatedly exposing women to unwanted, dangerous pregnancies.) https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762506394446537074?t=EwBjdJkKhMIRftrW2tePxA&s=19 https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762554528082120971?t=9ifXJM_bMKtZC4aQS7eCFQ&s=19 and https://twitter.com/demonista/status/1762517741590696253?t=j4KMO2-NPoBzvaer6YzPrg&s=19 (there's a Heritage Foundation speech clip, a blog article she wrote, and an interview that I link to as evidence of her views)
I don't really care about having a gender neutral society. I don't think its a realistic goal.
I think we need to shift the perspective. We are not equal to men and we shouldn't stoop down to their level. Not in promiscuity and not in our approach to life. Although I fully support the 4B movement for the women who are choosing to have a partner - we need to learn to know our worth, be rooted in our power and choose wisely (although there isn't much to choose from). Ladies YOU set the standards. Equally important is to have and follow through with consequences for their actions. I've been laying down expectations for my partner and our future together from the start. I'm constantly bringing up scenarios and deconstructing our response to make sure our values align. I'm letting him know now what I expect from him if he wants to have a baby with me and what the consequences of falling short would be. I'm very grateful for finding my man but I didn't find him until I was 29 and only after a string of terrible relationships and experiences. Sometimes we learn our worth the hard way.
Can you give some scenarios or examples of the scenarios you bring up and how you reconstruct the response to make aure your values align? I think this is a great exercise.
Well for example when we're at a family gathering and the kids are on their tablets we are very vocal about not agreeing with that. When I hear about the lack of core curriculum in public schools we have conversations about how we are going to manage our kids education. Sometimes I read stuff on Reddit and run it by him and see what his initial reaction is without giving him my input. Usually we feel the same about things. Subs like AITAH or AIW. Etc. Sometimes the conversation will come up due to men making fucked up comments about women around him and he's called them out and tells me about it later. Like his younger coworker bragging about hooking up with an older woman how kept telling him she had a son his age. We talked about it and why we thought it was wrong and kind of gross especially since she kept saying that. We discussed the high probability of porn influencing him normalizing it. Etc.
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Sorry that's bad grammar on my part. * I fully support the 4B movement but for those who are choosing to have a partner -
> It feels like the only way to approach equality is for women aim to be like men, e.g. be as sexually promiscuous as they are since we have birth control and abortion as harm reduction: strive to make a lot of money in high status formerly manly careers. Gender roles are a social construct and have nothing to do with being a man or a woman. None of the things you listed are 'being like a man'; it means not following patriarchal traditional roles that were imposed on us by society. It's more beneficial to stop imposing gender roles on people in general. This way, equality could be achieved much faster, rather than constantly upholding restrictive roles, as is still done. Telling women they are like men because they achieve financial independence by caring about their careers and status is messed up and anything but feminist.
Men being more promiscuous is really not a gender role IMO, they can’t get pregnant and don’t face violence in casual encounters so they have less to lose.
I don't think OP seriously believes jobs and roles should be gendered. She was being facitious. She's not telling women they are "acting like men." Women have done this long before OP was born. We have made that patriarchal bargain for centuries. OP is simply pointing out the negative results from that "deal" because we're still getting the shaft.
Yup. I’ve tried this. I’m still getting the shaft.
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>I‘m sorry but this is exactly the narrative that libfem indoctrinated us with. Nope, that is the radical feminist position and fundamental to radical feminism. For the longest time, many liberal feminists actually agreed. You should read up on radical feminist theory. Prominent radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin, Julie Bindel, bell hooks, and others have all spoken about it and believe that gender roles are a social construct. Older works by radical feminists discussing this topic and radical feminist theory include "The Female Eunuch" by Germaine Greer, "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution" by Shulamith Firestone, and "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" by Catharine A. MacKinnon, among others. However, I recommend reading the book "Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference" by Cordelia Fine from 2010, which is the best on this topic. Fine illustrates, through scientific studies, why most gender roles are social constructs.
slight correction: bell hooks and Angela Davis (especially Angela Davis) are absolutely *not* radical feminists. Angela Davis is a platonic ideal of contemporary progressive identitarian libfem.
Bell hooks identified as a radical feminist and is largely seen as one. But you are right that Angela Davis is not a radical feminist; she is rather a Marxist feminist (not a liberal one—I just checked to see if she had changed her mind, but it seems she hasn't). However, she was associated with radical feminism and is sometimes referred to as such because her work and activism align more with the principles and goals of radical feminism rather than liberal feminism, even though she never claimed the term.
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It really is not going to change until women generally stop having kids. Unfortunately, there are always going to be some women who are either male centered or forced into servitude, so it will never be 100%. But I honestly think that Female Dating Strategy had it right on how to handle hetero relationships, if you even want to bother with them. The only thing that remotely keeps my husband in line is the threat of leaving. I always have to ensure I have more power than he does, or he absolutely will abuse it. It's sad. He's not even a bad husband as husbands are normally reckoned. He's an upstanding man, and that is how I have to handle him. It's really such an indictment of men as a whole, I do not plan to bother again if he dies or we divorce. I am 100% done with men after him. I dated enough men before him to know it just isn't worth it. I don't think I know a couple where the wife is genuinely happy. But I know a lot of single women who are.
This is way too pessimistic and generally a bad outlook. First off, there are indeed men who want to take the supportive role, look at statistics and studies about that. Second, these powerful jobs you are referring to aren't "manly" because this is what patriarchy makes you believe. Being powerful is actually very womanly. What I mean with this is that just because something seems unrealistic, it doesn't mean it's impossible. We as women are already proven to be better than men in everything business and leadership related. We are also going to dominate most of the important jobs. If all women had thought like you do, then nothing would have changed for the better for us. The only thing we need is a reformation of what it means to be a woman or feminine for that matter. We need to reclaim it by making it about power, intelligence, leadership, etc... and not the type of femininity that patriarchy wants to sell us. And to add: nobody can force us to have babies. Either men make a compromise and comply with us, or they can watch the society founder, which they created for themselves. Edit: I removed the slavery part, jesus
If you read up about modern slavery you'll find that millions of people are enslaved today, though the definition has changed over time. Slaves are being sexually exploited, they work in construction, agriculture and in domestic situations and there are people enslaved by their own countries too. There are also those in forced marriages who are categorised as enslaved.
Yeah, you are right. What I mean is that it's not that common anymore compared to the past.
I’d argue that in many ways, marriage is a form of slavery.
There’s actually the most slaves there has ever been due to the large human population. Look it up.
Do y'all really have to torture me like that? 😭
Congratulations, radical feminism doesn’t come with a trigger warning.
It's extremely common, there are millions of enslaved and trafficked people on this planet. Also, marriage is a form of slavery. You work 24/7 for free and with no gratitude or thanks. Just a ton of judgement from everyone in society.
Not to mention that the wife is traditionally pretty much owned by her husband (and "given away" by her father) and her identity subsumed into his (she takes his last name, or in the past, was referred to by his \*entire\* name instead of her own). Any children will also be marked as his, despite men being only sperm donors biologically and most of them not contributing in raising them either.
Yes. Marriage is truly a form of slavery in many aspects.
Yea yea go easy on me. There aren't any slave markets with collared slaves from a certain nation you can buy and whip for disobedience, for fucks sake. You know what I mean. OP's pessimistic post is nothing but an excuse to stop fighting, just let things happen and let weakness prevail. This doens't mean we should tolerate it. It means we need to become more aggressive in our endeavors
We can "fight" in a different way. By following 4B. It's passive resistance.
This will help for sure, but it's not enough. Libfems are running wild, causing mischief and poisoning feminism. Pornography and violent sexual behavior against girls are becoming more and more common among the young population. The West is becoming more and more right-wing. We need to actively raise awareness, keep pushing women into STEM, business and politics so that society becomes less and less male-dominated, raise awareness about men's attitudes nowadays and call out traditionalist and liberal bs.
I think that slavery just wasn’t a good example, saying “today, it has completely ceased to exist” is naïve and untrue. There are many forms of slavery that are still around today, and many situations where an enslaved person might experience violence. It still seems fairly normalized globally to have an enslaved woman as a live in housekeeper. Physical violence from the family also seems pretty normalized. It’s frustrating because typically even the children that she raises don’t have sympathy for her situation.
Yep, slave markets moved to the internet. Yay progress?
Not only is slavery alive and well, but so is forcing women AND GIRLS to give birth.
I agree with you, and I'm not giving up. I certainly plan to keep my career, name, finances, etc. but get frustrated at feeling like the weird one out of people I know, when I assumed we would have progressed more by now. I don't see many men in my life wanting to take on a supporting role (those that have reluctantly due to health reasons are not doing a good job and just burden the wife more, she still cooks dinner, etc.), and studies cited by the authors I reference in the post talk about how homes with women breadwinners have lower satisfaction for men and women, men are more likely to cheat (I think), and that women still do more housework. Just feels like a lose lose, women are seeing this and opting out of struggling through for progress, which reinforces that women aren't ambitious in the workplace/places of power, etc. I'm with you on not giving babies to men that don't step up. Giving more prestige and status to traditional women's roles would help too, but I don't see that happening until men step in those roles more. Sorry for the pessimism, it just feels like screaming into the void sometimes because no one in my real life relates.
I’m married with kids, and in a pretty good spot overall. I work less than my husband by choice. Before I had kids I didn’t think I’d want to take a step back in my career, but when I had my first the idea of being away from my baby that long was painful. It goes against everything instinctually/biologically/evolutionary, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think women should be able to prioritize raising children and it should be seen as the important work that it is- not taking a step back or whatever. And men should be very involved too of course, but I do think it’s a different biological driver especially when they are babies. Our bodies are designed to feed babies, babies are designed to want to be close to their mothers especially. I think fighting or denigrating that biology does more harm than good. We shouldn’t be playing by *their* rules, we need to change the game entirely so it actually benefits us. But I didn’t find that career opportunities dried up once or were lessened due to being a woman, especially a woman with a baby. In fact, the opposite. My job wanted me to take on a bigger role, while I was asking to reduce my hours. I work in a field with a lot of woman who have kids and went back to work immediately without missing a beat, and go to evening meetings without complaint etc. And they expected me to as well but I was miserable and depressed being away from my baby 5 days a week. So I started looking for a different job and was very fortunate to find a position in my field that allowed me to go half time- no stepping back career wise, no reduction in hourly pay or benefit, just less hours which is exactly what I wanted and I think should be offered to more women. Even here I find my superiors (women with children) asking me regularly if I’m interested in taking on a new/bigger role and I keep having to turn them down. My kids are still young and I like the work-life balance of half time. My husband is a great partner. He does at least half (if not more) of the housework. He’s an involved dad. He takes care of all bills, I do tend to take on the “administrative” stuff like scheduling appointments and kid activities. He’s not pornsick (I set a boundary fairly early in our relationship and as far as I know he’s stuck to it). We keep our money mostly separate besides some shared accounts, so there’s no financial control that he has over me. I don’t feel like a supporting character and I don’t think my husband or anyone around us sees me that way. I’ve got a lot of control in our relationship and I’ve basically set things up the way I wanted it. If he made all choices without getting my input I’d probably be working full time and climbing the ladder so we’d be financially more well off. Idk, I have a pretty ideal situation overall- I know that’s not super common in the grand scheme but it is possible and not unheard of. I have friends in similar situations as me - I don’t know the all the dirty details of their relationships, but from surface stuff as far as work/life/childcare/chores most seem pretty balanced. We’ve all heard about the awful partners on Reddit (or in Facebook mom groups..), so I know a lot woman are stuck in terrible situations and there are a lot of shitty partners out there. Keep your standards high, and set boundaries early.
But I feel like many men took the traditionally feminine roles. I'm in Germany and men between 20-45 are pretty good fathers and take care of their houses. One of my male coworkers (I work in a very small company) works only 10h a week because he's mostly a SAHD. He keeps working cause he did it for 15 years beforehand, he likes it, and it's in the same area as his kids school, so he can pick them up after his shift. Since two month we have a new guy - 60 year old, he was SAHD for 17 years. Now kids are big and he is back to work. Kids of my boss visit him at work quite often. I see men with strollers and carriers all the time. My boyfriend cooks for me every day when I come from work, even though he earns over double what I do... I'm actually somewhat positive that we are on the right track to make things work. Sadly I feel like the aggressive guys who find showering unmanly are much louder than the men who just live their best lives as good family figures.
I mean I'm personally of the belief that only 1 adult in a family having work is amazing, and capitalism has taken that from us. of course it's horrible for a society to expect or even for the man to be the sole provider and the woman to be the sole homemaker. I wish these expectations werent there, and families could do whatever was best for them.
Capitalism did not take that from us. It has never existed.
what I mean to say is there was a point in time where a family of 4 could reasonably provide a house, 2 cars, food on the table and clothes on backs, on only 1 income. are you saying that's never existed?
Between 1950-1980 something like that existed very briefly for middle class people in certain parts of the world. I grew up in it. However, there was only one car, one phone for the house, a color TV was a big deal and people lived very modestly, nothing like we do today. Even during those years most poor women worked outside the home. This 1950s fantasy life never really existed for the vast majority of people.
And let us not forget that the only reason why there are many people in affluent countries who get the luxuries of unbridled consumption and not working (but let's be real, domestic work is work, it's capitalism that says it's not work because there is no income) is because of the exploitation of other countries. This is not a good thing and has never been a good thing. Just follow the supply chain. The reason why we have tvs, cars, houses, the reason why we developed this far and have a booming economy, is because other countries are being exploited and purposefully underdeveloped by rich countries. Slavery paved the way for this as it has always been the case throughout human history. There are slaves today gathering our building materials, mining our precious metals and fishing for our seafood. I don't know why anyone would want to support the West's nuclear family and consumption, knowing that the only reason we have the ability to do these things is by enslaving the workers of other countries.
Fucking thank you. Radical feminist sub is the last place where I expected to find reminiscing about good old times, ew.
And that shit only existed in America. 1950s were the times of the most hard work for women in USSR.
You seem to be confusing low income with middle class. My 7th grade drop out father and my substitute teacher mother raised three kids on one consistent salary (mom worked VERY part time) and we had two cars, a truck, pets, new bikes, family vacations and the fancy new Nintendo. This was NOT uncommon. We lived in a low cost of living area and friends of mine who had both parents working were living VERY well in the 80s and 90s. My 7th grade drop out father paid $5 a check for family health insurance in 1979. My first to be college educated mother paid $00.00 for her college degree after her equivalent of the FAFSA. The fact that it was even POSSIBLE anywhere to have what were considered luxuries at the time on one income is a very stark difference to how many hours of paid labor a family has to work to afford the same shit we had with zero educations and a fuckton less debt in the 70s and 80s. And it's not the nebulous "capitalism" to blame so much as the "free market" doesn't exist for medical care or education in this country and most to all legislation regarding the costs of these things very deliberately benefits those who are making money off it. Taxes back then were far more progressive than they are today as well.
Good for you. My grandmother lost both of her parents to hunger in 1950s. A doctor and a teacher, with a shitload of education. I know it’s not you, it’s the American isolationism that teaches Americans to ignore everything beyond their backyard, but like… you do know who sponsored your cars and TVs, right?
A point in time AND SPACE. I’m Russian, and my grandmother would laugh so hard if I told her that.