The weird world of anti-feminist trolling
The trolls descend (again), finding an equitable relationship, and more
In this week’s newsletter
Intro and a few thoughts on mom guilt
Feminist Advice Friday
An update on the new closed membership group
Some useful links
This week I had a couple of posts get more attention than usual, and the same thing that always happens happened again: a bunch of people showed up on my social media to yell at me. I’ve been thinking a lot about what they say, and what I think it means.
The content of the trolling I get always falls into one of a few categories:
“Why do you hate your kids so much? You must be a bad mother.” As if we must love every second of motherhood to be good at it. As if there is anything in life that can’t be made better, any collective experience that is not influenced by negative social influences.
“Why do you hate men so much?” This one’s especially revealing, given that pretty much all of my posts emphasize that men can and should do better. The real misandry comes not from me, but from the folks who think men are capable of no better.
“I don’t see this inequality. You must just have chosen a bad partner.” What these posts miss is that I’m actually quite happy with my partner. We have an equitable relationship. But I care about women who don’t have this. I guess they don’t
All of these posts share something in common: victim-blaming. It’s not society’s fault that it sucks so much to be a mother. Instead, the problem is that mothers who fail to love every second are bad/undeserving/with the wrong person. This takes a collective, shared, political experience—the oppression, abuse, and general misery so many mothers feel—and turns it into an individual failing. Then, it attempts to make mothers feel guilty and inadequate.
I’ve written about this before. A misogynistic society wants moms to feel inadequate. It wants us to feel that everything difficult about motherhood is our own fault. Because if we spend all our time feeling guilt and shame, we don’t have the energy to work toward collective liberation.
So this week, if you can, I hope you’ll spend some time considering the role guilt plays in your own life. I hope you’ll contemplate the possibility that, if you feel bad or ashamed of something, the antidote is telling someone else. You just might find that they feel the same way. And you just might realize that you’re both having these feelings because of a societal conspiracy to make women (and Black people, and poor people, and disabled people, and all minority groups) hate themselves.
Feminist Advice Friday
A reader asks…
I’m a college student in my first serious relationship. I actually started reading your page because I was angry about how my dad treats my mom. I agree with you that leaving all of the housework to the woman is abusive. I guess I didn’t really understand how common it is. And now I realize this is the norm, not the exception to the rule. What I’m realizing is that we stop this pattern by disrupting it before it begins. How do I do that, though? I see a lot of women on your page say that the problems only began when they had children. Is there any way at all I can tell if my partner might be like the men in your posts? I love him and I want to be with him. I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life miserable and resentful. Is that possible?
My answer:
You’re on the right track already because you’re thinking about these issues. That’s going to make you more attuned to any emerging inequality well before it escalates out of control. I wrote a blog post about avoiding marring lazy men a while ago, and there may be some help for you there. But I think your question warrants a discussion of how men get to be the way they are.
When I was in my early twenties, the women all around me spent a lot of time talking about problematic men, just as they do now that I’m in my thirties. Back then, the problems centered around men who didn’t call, didn’t keep their word, didn’t find meaningful ways to show love. And yes, sometimes there were also men who were already not pulling their weight when it came to household labor.
Those men, when women married them, became the husbands who left to golf for the weekend while their partners did everything else. That’s because household chore inequality is not an accident. It doesn’t just randomly happen to otherwise good relationships. It is a product of a broken relationship—and specifically, of a man who believes his partners matter less than his own. Even if he’s doing dishes and cooking, the signs will be there.
But more typically, these relationships begin as inequitable relationships. It’s just that the woman doesn’t notice the inequity until it’s really out of control. Kids require a ton of work. Maintaining an apartment without kids doesn’t. If you’re doing 15 more minutes of housework a day than he is, it might not seem like a big deal. But it is a big deal when that figure gets multiplied by the messy realities of adult life with children.
So you need to notice the little things. Notice how he slides comfortably into his chair while you grab the last load of laundry. Nip these things in the bud now before they become normalized.
Look also for other signs that he just doesn’t value you, your needs, or your effort. Because with men like that, household labor issues are just the beginning. Everyone has a few things they’re not good at. Maybe he buys crappy gifts or has trouble being on time or whatever. If the overwhelming theme is that he can’t treat your needs as important, though, run.
Run now. No matter how much you love him, men like that do not change of their own free will, because they don’t usually get consequences. By giving him a consequence, you increase the odds that he’ll be a better partner for the next person.
Deep down, I think you know if your partner is the sort of man who is going to foist labor onto others. If you don’t, try asking him. Is he defensive? Then he’s more concerned with distraction and deflection than with reassurance and respecting your needs. If, by contrast, he wants to ensure you never do more than your fair share, then you just might have a keeper.
I publish #feministadvicefriday every Friday(ish) here and on Facebook. You can get early access to Feminist Advice Friday, as well as other content I don’t publish anywhere else, by subscribing for free to my Substack newsletter. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using this site’s contact form.
I publish #feministadvicefriday every Friday(ish) here and on Facebook. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using my site’s contact form.
An Update on the New Closed Facebook Group
Last week I sent out news about a new closed Facebook group I created for paid subscribers. The goal of this group is to provide a safe, smaller community to discuss issues of feminism and motherhood. We’re already seeing some Feminist Advice Friday-style questions there, as well as more generalized discussions of motherhood.
I’d love to have you join us. For now, this group is a paid group requiring a $5 monthly fee. You can pay this fee by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack. The purpose of this fee is twofold: 1) it supports my work and the effort it takes to maintain the group; 2) it keeps trolls out.
You can join the group here. Please note that you must answer all three membership questions by putting something, anything, in the box. Facebook will auto-reject your membership request, and I’ll never even know about it, if you don’t.
But I never, ever want finances to keep anyone away from support. If you cannot pay, you can still join. Just put a note to me in one of the membership questions briefly explaining that you’d like a fee waiver. Or you can email me directly at zawn.villines@gmail.com.
Useful Links
Work by me:
Parenting as a Mom vs. Parenting as a Dad
“In the typical heterosexual family, a father can enjoy time playing with his kids, confident that mom will clean up any mess they make. He can deviate from the routine knowing that mom will be there to pick up the pieces. And for him, worrying about homework and parent-teacher conferences and school applications and extracurriculars is just not reality. These are things he can completely ignore—all while refusing to credit his partner with doing them.
A dad who only plays with his kids is just parenting in a different way. A mother who only plays has neglected everything else, and is a terrible parent.
Dads enjoy the privilege of treating fatherhood as an option. It’s something they can check into and out of at will, confident someone else will step in. For mothers, there’s no escape, no credit, and often, no support.
In a patriarchal society, fatherhood is a hobby.
Motherhood functions more like a prison.”
The Clock: Logging the Misery of Pandemic Motherhood 18 Minutes at a Time
“American mothers are drowning. That’s what the experts tell us. We, the mothers, the ones actually experiencing it, just feel like we are continuously failing.
The experts tell us that, too. That we’re failing.
That we need to not cosleep.
That we need to use fewer screens.
That we need to be calmer and more relaxed and get more exercise and spend more time outside and parent gently but not too gently and and and and…
All any of us can hear are the ticking clocks. The things we’re not doing. The frozen time between now and whenever this pandemic ends. Will it ever end?
Will it be better when it does? Because we were drowning before, too. And now we’ve normalized being exhausted and overwhelmed all the time.
I can’t wait for the day that, instead of writing a thinkpiece and interviewing a bunch of mothers about the seemingly hopeless realities of motherhood in this epoch, an institution points the finger at the society that needs to change, the men who need to shoulder their fair share, the government that needs to fund childcare and mandate paid leave. I can’t wait till we treat this as an everyone problem instead of a mothers’ problem.”