One I hear constantly is that we (I as a woman who mentions gender inequality often) just see problems but don't point out the solutions... Right, because I, a lowly individual woman in the vast world, can come up with the perfect solution to a centuries old social problem that has taken all sorts of forms over time, encompasses every aspect of our lives, is very layered and is relentlessly recursive 🙄. It's so aggravating. Or the men who want the complete roadmap to becoming better completely outlined for them by women. I just read a comment on a YouTube video about household inequality by a guy who said that he needed to be told exactly how to be better because, the problem is not that men are not able to be organized, but that the impulse to procrastinate is just too hard to overcome... I just..... Honestly, I am not interested in engaging dudes on gender anything anymore. It's a neverending battle that I just don't have the bandwidth for. I'd rather spend that time doing emotional labor for women who haven't quite seen the light yet instead. At least with them I feel like we're working together towards improving our lives somehow.
The "I feel sorry for your husband" really resonated with me. Someone said that to my first husband, I'm thinking because I had the nerve not to want to sit at home every night with him while he did computer programmer shit. There's only so much TV a woman in her twenties can watch before she feels the need to go out and socialize (my particular preference being karaoke, when I wasn't in a stage play). He had a full length mirror on its side behind his two computer monitors (long before that was really a thing) that was there so he could see the TV without having to turn around/away from his computer stuff, which would (yuck) involve seeing me. But how dare I go out on a Saturday night and sing the blues. Obviously, I should have been at home every night, dancing attendance, there in case he like needed a beer, or an orange soda while he coded, and IMed his other loser computer nerds. Right, yeah, sure. Oh, and that comment? "I feel sorry for your husband"? Came from a woman. Yeah, so fun!
This often comes up when I chat (online or otherwise) with male nurses and paramedics. Sexual Assault and harassment of female healthcare providers is extremely common, up to and including rape threats. We have ALL had our intimate parts squeezed and groped at the very least.
Men always feel the need to say, "Well, old demented ladies constantly proposition me, and THAT IS NOT RIGHT!"
As of that were not happening in a context full of misogyny and privilege where they know it will go no further and we all know it can get infinitely worse for us. Male providers will even pull the "I had no idea what you girls go through until it happened to me." It hasn't happened to them because unlike us, it hasn't happened to them both on AND off the job.
When feminism discusses the earnings gap, we are told to stop complaining because women 'choose' lower paying jobs and that women 'choose' to sacrifice career for motherhood. And yet paradoxically, misogynisys bleat on about how it is men who do all the dangerous jobs, how it is men who work long and unsociable hours, how men create the infrastructure of the world we live in, and how women are insufficiently grateful and deferential; that we should reward men with our servitude. And yet they fail to address the elephant in the room: that men CHOOSE to do those jobs and under those conditions! And they are ALREADY rewarded - with pay! Whilst the life-work that women perform (without which nothing, including men, would even exist) is correspondingly leveraged to reduce, rather than enhance our value and status.
I have not yet had the chutzpah to share your work with a man who needs to hear it, but one of my (sweet summer child yet to be radicalized) mom friends said, "She's right but she sounds angry."
Loved the post, and I appreciated your response to the "Karens" comment. It's been bothering me for awhile that the term seems to have shifted from being a shorthand critique of white women weaponizing their whiteness to harm people of color versus now, so often it just seems it's applied to any woman around middle-age who's perceived as being annoying or heavy-handed. It both reinforces sexist stereotypes and leeches the criticism against racism that the term initially had.
I care not for men advocating for ' free speech', then blocking me for,
and UNWILLING to listen to, let alone, to learn from ... ... MINE !
SMASH sexism. SMASH the PATRIARCHY.
One I hear constantly is that we (I as a woman who mentions gender inequality often) just see problems but don't point out the solutions... Right, because I, a lowly individual woman in the vast world, can come up with the perfect solution to a centuries old social problem that has taken all sorts of forms over time, encompasses every aspect of our lives, is very layered and is relentlessly recursive 🙄. It's so aggravating. Or the men who want the complete roadmap to becoming better completely outlined for them by women. I just read a comment on a YouTube video about household inequality by a guy who said that he needed to be told exactly how to be better because, the problem is not that men are not able to be organized, but that the impulse to procrastinate is just too hard to overcome... I just..... Honestly, I am not interested in engaging dudes on gender anything anymore. It's a neverending battle that I just don't have the bandwidth for. I'd rather spend that time doing emotional labor for women who haven't quite seen the light yet instead. At least with them I feel like we're working together towards improving our lives somehow.
The "I feel sorry for your husband" really resonated with me. Someone said that to my first husband, I'm thinking because I had the nerve not to want to sit at home every night with him while he did computer programmer shit. There's only so much TV a woman in her twenties can watch before she feels the need to go out and socialize (my particular preference being karaoke, when I wasn't in a stage play). He had a full length mirror on its side behind his two computer monitors (long before that was really a thing) that was there so he could see the TV without having to turn around/away from his computer stuff, which would (yuck) involve seeing me. But how dare I go out on a Saturday night and sing the blues. Obviously, I should have been at home every night, dancing attendance, there in case he like needed a beer, or an orange soda while he coded, and IMed his other loser computer nerds. Right, yeah, sure. Oh, and that comment? "I feel sorry for your husband"? Came from a woman. Yeah, so fun!
Constantly pulling focus to "men's issues."
"Well, MEN get sexually harassed too!!!!"
This often comes up when I chat (online or otherwise) with male nurses and paramedics. Sexual Assault and harassment of female healthcare providers is extremely common, up to and including rape threats. We have ALL had our intimate parts squeezed and groped at the very least.
Men always feel the need to say, "Well, old demented ladies constantly proposition me, and THAT IS NOT RIGHT!"
As of that were not happening in a context full of misogyny and privilege where they know it will go no further and we all know it can get infinitely worse for us. Male providers will even pull the "I had no idea what you girls go through until it happened to me." It hasn't happened to them because unlike us, it hasn't happened to them both on AND off the job.
When feminism discusses the earnings gap, we are told to stop complaining because women 'choose' lower paying jobs and that women 'choose' to sacrifice career for motherhood. And yet paradoxically, misogynisys bleat on about how it is men who do all the dangerous jobs, how it is men who work long and unsociable hours, how men create the infrastructure of the world we live in, and how women are insufficiently grateful and deferential; that we should reward men with our servitude. And yet they fail to address the elephant in the room: that men CHOOSE to do those jobs and under those conditions! And they are ALREADY rewarded - with pay! Whilst the life-work that women perform (without which nothing, including men, would even exist) is correspondingly leveraged to reduce, rather than enhance our value and status.
I have not yet had the chutzpah to share your work with a man who needs to hear it, but one of my (sweet summer child yet to be radicalized) mom friends said, "She's right but she sounds angry."
Damn right we're angry.
Loved the post, and I appreciated your response to the "Karens" comment. It's been bothering me for awhile that the term seems to have shifted from being a shorthand critique of white women weaponizing their whiteness to harm people of color versus now, so often it just seems it's applied to any woman around middle-age who's perceived as being annoying or heavy-handed. It both reinforces sexist stereotypes and leeches the criticism against racism that the term initially had.