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I agree. The feminist movement went too far too fast. The thing about evolution is that it is well,... evolution. At its outset, feminism was fashioned as a rebellion against the status quo. The status quo being a generation who had raised families during a worldwide depression and then a generation who had turned to welding together tanks, building air-frames and carrying the load at home while the men went to die, and who, once that was over were mostly glad and thankful to go back to being in a traditional role.
Certainly, I'm not saying all the changes that have taken place are bad, just that you don't make a fork in the evolutionary road with a metaphorical atom bomb.
As uncomfortable as it is to ponder on, women have one role in the furtherance of our species and men have another and societies up until recently have done their best overall to recognize and accommodate these roles. When one realizes each deviation from your planned path is a form of change that should be measured and deliberate, the feminist movement in the U.S. was an anarchic answer to an as-of-that-time un-posed question and caused unrealistic expectations and conflict between sexes for really a very low benefit to those from either camp who chose to go overboard, they having been ruled by their passions. Luckily, we all, with a little humor and tolerance, have mostly healed up and moved on. In fact, it is kind of surprising to me the anger that accompanies discussions around the "battle of the sexes" at all. Almost as if it is meant to destroy the beauty of the male-female relationship.
Nah. This is not the big, huge change that has come down on humanity like a bomb.
The internet is.
And I won't hear any talk of "oh they said that about radio and television" because it's not even close. The internet allows anyone anywhere in the world to craft and spread propaganda in an effort to create chaos and mayhem among their enemies. The internet allows one lonely disaffected person, rather than thinking it's their own problem and seeking help, to find others and validate their grievance until they are filled with rage.
The internet gives people the illusion of community with few or none of the benefits of the real thing.
And...online dating. Which makes everything so disgustingly commodified and transactional, has people increasingly upset that efforts to order up a human like you would a toaster on Amazon, isn't working out.
Online dating is a HELL of a lot more unnatural than feminism.
And that's before even mentioning endless, limitless online porn, or highly addicting video games. All of it together, the capitalism fueled tech takeover, has made a far bigger mess of the "male-female relationship" than women wanting to vote and wear pants.
As a guy (yes real biological... not transitioned/identify/some sort of choice thing).
I spoke about this subject with the love of my life of 35 years (32 married), and she agrees with me that the biggest thing that has failed women is one large demographic (MSM/liberal democrats/millennials/gen z/woke) that are allowing women to be marginalized by those who "identify" as women.
Losing all that was fought for by letting biological men take many aspects of being a women away from them is the biggest failure. There will always be those that try to "cheat", and I agree there are men who truly feel they are women. But to allow what we see today is the biggest threat today to "biological" women than anything else my wife and I see.
And feminists aren't fighting enough, and we have no idea why.
Feminism failed women because now it's consider necessary like you said for women to get educated, have a career while still responsible with the burden of raising a child and risk pausing their career. Is that a good expectation to achieve? How about many GenZ men who still believes raising a family together is fine if he only has to contribute 50% of his finances while the women has to contribute 50% and her body with producing children. How is that a fair deal? Majority of GenZ males thinks financial burden should be split equitably and he still needs to be treated like your "his" woman.
Where I see feminism failing women is telling them they could do it all, which of course is pretty much what they're doing now: working full time, caring for children, and keeping the household chores up. Very few men even today will come home from a full day's work and help with the chores or the kids (and I say that's on the men).
So as long as I see that men continue to abdicate their responsibilities around the house, I see feminism as a choice. If you, as a woman, can find a traditional man to support you and you want to stay home, have kids, and be a housewife, then that's fine by me. If you want to work for a living and be an equal partner with your husband, that's fine with me, too. Unfortunately, women want both these things and sometimes, because of men who die or bail out on their family, they end up doing both whether they want to or not. I'm not saying a family without a man won't be successful. But it will take a great deal more effort. Maybe more than most women (and the few men who are raising their children without wives) want to put into it.
However, other times women want both and it's simply not going to happen. At that point, they need to make a choice for themselves. No career or no kids. And sometimes they choose wrong. And when a woman does choose wrong, then it is what it is. You have to accept what life throws at you. If you were a woman who wanted kids and couldn't have them, that's something you need to accept. Likewise, if you were a man who wanted sons and got 5 daughters instead, that's something you have to accept.
I'd put lack of acceptance into the main reason people believe feminism has failed. I'm not saying you're old fashioned, MK, but there are still men who are upset women can vote. It's time to move on from that and deal with what's here.
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The right man is someone like your father, unfortunately all these men today are just man child. With broken families usually a man has 2 divorced parents who wants to make sure that he gets to be with a woman enjoy all the benefits including shared expenses and NOT have to marry the woman. Then as she gets too old and they don't have a child. The man feels he finally matured and wants to start a family, he bails leaving the woman around 35-38 years old and the woman with the broken heart is scrambling to find a replacement man and no men from 25-40 will automatically wants to marry a woman this late and even with a great job she will end up settling for some junior analyst or Graduate Student still working on his doctorate. The dating pool is getting larger these days, every bumble profile features women in her late 30s looking to settle down finally and 50/50 wants a kid. I guess egg prices are dropping.
The younger the woman, the more independent she usually is. What is this guy going to do when his younger chick decides she, also, doesn't want a 1950s life?
I'd also add, most women today have a higher expectation for the men in their lives. Personally, any man that I knew who had abandoned his family because his wife didn't want kids, would in no way find me receptive to him, whether I wanted kids or not. It would be insulting to me to even think of taking on a man who made marriage vows (remember them?) and then would break them. How do I know he's not going to do the same thing to me if I burn his dinner one night?
Also, the kid/no kid thing should be talked out completely before any couple even begins to think of getting married. Further down the road, if one partner changes his mind and decides to bail, that would then be a compatibility issue. And I hate to break it to you, but women, with or without kids, get married in their later years as often as men do in their later years, with or without kids.
Many, many men these days are single with kids of their own, and maybe you'd be surprised at how many women DON'T think these men are a good catch, whether the kid resides with their father or their mother. I read about so many women who are on dating profiles and say specifically NO KIDS and most of them have given up because the men in these same profiles either lie about having a kid or lie about wanting them. What a great way to make a first impression! As far as the women are concerned, if they eventually want a kid, they don't want someone else's and as many of these woman are well able to support themselves, they can afford to be as picky as the men you're telling us about.
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This is why as a man over 45 and accomplished, my dating pool is growing. I would never imagine seeing 25-29 yr olds in the mix and I though I had to settle for women in the high 30s but instead I'm getting tons of women in their late 20s and early 30s looking for a traditional man with traditional values to be with.
As long as they know what they're getting into. You have to ask yourself, if the times when the woman was a stay at home mom, raising the kids and taking care of the household, and it was such a happy time, why did it change?
I'll tell you why and you won't like the answer.
You're too young to remember times of no birth control, but my mother, who had three kids before birth control came along, always said she didn't want any. And this is a woman who enjoyed being a housewife.
My aunt had a miscarriage and it would have been her fourth child. She was relieved because she certainly didn't want any more kids.
My neighbor lived in dread of getting pregnant again.
My grandmother had 11 kids and an abusive husband. At that time, she had no control over either having kids or staying with him.
And there are many more examples. These are the reasons feminism rose up. If women were so happy being child carers and housewives, then why were they so happy to leave those roles behind? Remember Valium, Mother's Little Helper?
This is what feminism has done: it's given women a choice. Women have gratefully taken this choice and it's sad that while some of them wish they didn't have a choice today, what they don't realize is that not having a choice might be fine for them, it also puts millions and millions of other women right back into the prison of being tied to man and a life she might hate.
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Whomever declares "I don't need a man, I don't want children." Think about how you arrive at this declaration and retrace. What a price you've paid and bargained for.
I don't need a man and I never wanted children. I've paid the price in independence and freedom and mental health. I would not have been a good mother. I would have abused any child I had. I would have hated the life of being a housewife. My life has been as far from easy as you can imagine and I never worked any great career or made tons of money. But I can't even imagine how much worse it would have been had I had children. I wouldn't mind being married even now, but I am still picky and I have standards. I won't put up with an abuser or someone who thinks he's going to tell me what to do. I'd rather be single.
And there, MK, is your feminist.
Think about how you arrived at your own feelings. A world of women serving men makes the easiest of lives for a man. Then, feminism. Whoops. Now the man has to learn to cook and clean up after himself. He has to accept that women can be his equal and in the workplace, even his superior. His altar on top of the world is gone. Are you sure what you're feeling isn't linked to male privilege?
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feel like oppression."
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute."
Rebecca West The Clarion
Nov 14, 1913
Last edited by rodentraiser; 12-26-2023 at 05:03 PM..
Reason: crediting Rebecca West
Nah. This is not the big, huge change that has come down on humanity like a bomb.
The internet is.
I disagree. When this whole thing of women's lib started it seemed to me and other guys my age as a rather bewildering phenomena. I was a lot younger and dumber than I am now but my cohort didn't get women's lib where I was raised. All the girls seemed happy doing what their moms had done before them. But then, maybe this is the central problem. Young men really didn't realize how unhappy young women were at the time because the guys had no frame of reference for this except what we saw on the 6 o'clock news. That is what I mean by evolving. Guys weren't ready for some of the things going on at that time where I was living. We were naive.
And I think it did come down like a bomb for many. Dividing those incapable of thinking things out to their conclusion into opposite corners of a philosophical ring meant to keep them apart. For how can one be "liberated" unless one is held captive?
Feminism has created such intolerance, now feminists (women) are attacking other feminists (women). Is it tragic irony or a product of an ill evolved social movement?
Back biting, reputation destruction and gossip is still used against women by women. Feminism is a tool of discord with it's original intent to confront an injustice. That's changed to intolerance and conformity.
New Yorker article about the life of the feminist pioneer Shulamith Firestone, Susan Faludi details how the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s fractured. She quotes a line from Ti-Grace Atkinson's resignation from a New York feminist group:
Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.
Of all the things that are true... strong and independent is never EVER, intolerant and confirmative.
Feminism has created such intolerance, now feminists (women) are attacking other feminists (women). Is it tragic irony or a product of an ill evolved social movement?
Back biting, reputation destruction and gossip is still used against women by women. Feminism is a tool of discord with it's original intent to confront an injustice. That's changed to intolerance and conformity.
New Yorker article about the life of the feminist pioneer Shulamith Firestone, Susan Faludi details how the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s fractured. She quotes a line from Ti-Grace Atkinson's resignation from a New York feminist group:
Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.
Of all the things that are true... strong and independent is never EVER, intolerant and confirmative.
Oh, dude...before feminism and women's lib and whatever, some women were DEFINITELY still back-biting, catty, gossiping and competitive. Are you kidding? Go watch a period drama. Those women have always existed.
It's just that back then, it was a battle to catch the best husband or wars over social standing or judging one another's clothing or homes or extensions of ongoing family feuds.
But I return to something I said in an earlier post...I don't label myself feminist because I don't stand in solidarity with women, but rather with human beings who want freedoms and choices and to behave in good faith with one another. There are bad PEOPLE in this world. Of any gender. One must guard one's interests against them. I would side with a decent man against a female user any day, or counsel a man who is being naive about what he can expect with some pretty young gal who just wants to use him...as I have with some of our posters who felt they could just import a woman from another country, and she'd be his doll with no puffed up American ideas in her head. Like, you think you can keep her in a bubble? Brainwash her to reject everything around her? Sooner or later you cannot control other people. If both in a relationship did not give informed consent to a negotiated life together, that house of cards will probably fall. Unless you are just spectacularly lucky.
And that's something that makes me shake my head about the way that some men talk about women. As though they are...fungible female units. MK talks about "getting" women in their 20s...what does that mean, "getting?" It sounds like he's dating, not in a solid relationship (though perhaps I am wrong?) so does he mean they are coming up in his app, or talking to him, or going on dates with him, or sleeping with him, or what? Are we talking about real relationship potential, or are they just giving him a shot and then either he nopes out before he knows if they'd actually stay with him or they nope out once they really work out who he is? What's really going on there? Not really my business or anything, but not only do I feel that a failure to see women as PEOPLE is dehumanizing to the women, but it's also setting men up for mistakes that can really wreck their lives.
My youngest son, who has been homeless, a mess with mental and physical illness and drugs and alcohol and all sorts of stuff over the last few years...has no trouble at all "getting" young women. But what does that mean? Well, he can get them to talk to him on apps, meet up with him, even have sex with him. But the only kind he can get a RELATIONSHIP with? Sure the last couple were cute young women around his age and all...but they were train wrecks. Is it worth it to "get" a good looking young woman when she is a raging alcoholic who hits you and if you dare stand up for yourself, cries abuse? Who drags you into company with dangerous people? Who fills your life with stress and drama? Who threatens your life or creates situations likely to land you in jail? Who can get pregnant and create the cascade of consequences tied to that?
She was not a doll. She was a person. With the agency to affect his life with her choices.
And until he gets his life together, stays away from drugs and alcohol and gets a job and apartment and a bit of sanity going on....he is not going to "get" a relationship with a safe, sane, reasonable person. Such a woman will take one look at his mess and run the other way.
And this is the kind of thing that drives me a little nuts about all this generalized gender wars talk, "has feminism harmed women"... WHICH ONES? It is silly to talk of women (or men!) as a unified whole. Some individual women will take this freedom and make disastrous choices with it. For some, maybe being treated like a child for life and "taken care of" by a husband might have been better because they can't handle the freedom in front of them. Well, what about young men? They have not always made the best choices either. Who was ever going to parent them for life? Should anybody have to? Individuals take the sum of their brain chemistry and genetics and upbringing and everything they are and everything they learn...and then they make choices and have to roll with the outcomes they create. Some succeed, and some fail. Those who cannot handle the responsibility often wind up losing their freedom in one way or another. The more mistakes you make, the fewer opportunities life puts in front of you.
But whether anybody likes it or not, we are here. We're not going back to the 1950s or any other time in history, we are here. Now. And the way that things work now, is that if anybody is thinking that they can control their partner, they're making a huge mistake. You cannot control other people, and sooner or later it will blow up in your face in any of a variety of possible ways. Neither a woman nor a man can force another person to be the partner they think they want, if that isn't genuinely what the other person wants and chooses to be. They might play along for a while but it won't last.
What really baffles me is that the vocally anti-feminist American Right of the last several decades' worth of talk radio and entertainment news has simultaneously preached non stop screeds of "individual responsibility" and demands that everyone stand accountable for their choices...that everyone can succeed if they work hard enough, and that if you fail, it's on you to take the consequences... Yet at the SAME TIME somehow, also says that all this freedom to make choices is bad for people and everyone should be forced...by law, by shame, by whatever...to "live right" in a specific way. It's wild how those who mouth the word "freedom" seem to have no clue what it means.
If I'd had support or guidance from my family, I would have left my ex probably during my first pregnancy. That's where I remember having the first moment of really understanding the gravity and awfulness of my situation. But I did not have that, I had no better way to survive (barely) at that point. Later we moved to where his family lived and I had this sense that I had to impress them, and that to be a good mother, I had to keep my family together and must not fail to perform the role of mother to the utmost. That it was my job to control his behavior and manage his emotions (when he was in a mood to rant, I had to get him to go out of the house away from the kids, and maintain the illusion to the kids that everything was fine.) I had to coach him endlessly on how to act at work so as not to get fired, I even intervened with his command when he was in the Army and saved his career once. If I failed it was my fault and if he failed it was also my fault, and if the kids failed it was my fault...I had to carry everyone. But I was pretty determined to do it, until it reached a point I no longer could, and where his behavior became seriously unsafe and terrifying.
I wanted to get the kids raised before I looked at a decision to leave him. I only made it until they were 13 and 15.
But the thing is...I can't say that I did not see the many red flags in the early days, before I got pregnant and stuck... I did. I was just too young to understand what they would mean for me. Surely I had all the time in the world to correct any mistakes, and the future was nebulous and abstract. I had no way to comprehend what "you will pay for this for the rest of your life" would mean...nor even the concept of "the rest of my life" in the decades and decades. I lacked the ability to understand it. He'd been married twice before me (he was 29) and I seriously thought that those other two women just were not smart enough or strong enough to handle him and make a good life with him. That I could do better, and I'd show everyone. This of course was reinforced by his insistence that his prior two wives were terrible and crazy and all that. And he conveniently didn't tell me that he'd emptied the clip of a handgun into the wall next to his last wife's head during an argument. She did not bother to tell me that until after I'd left him all those years later, either. But would it have gotten through to me, when nothing else had? I can't say.
At 18 my brain was seriously impaired in the making of choices department.
It would have been better if I'd been able to wait until I was 25 or 30 or even 35 before doing anything that bound me to someone with a life long promise and the ties of blood. The aging of my uterus would not have put me at more peril than my immature brain did.
And then the wonderful, peaceful, stable people available to me who wanted me when I was 36...yeah, none of them wanted kids. I remarried and I am SO. HAPPY. And my child free friends, none of them are alone or miserable. They are living the good life. No, society did not "brainwash them" into thinking that luxury spa vacations were better than having kids....they actually freaking are, much of the time. I told myself when my kids were young that devoting my life to them was the most fulfilling possible thing and that selfish pursuits were ultimately empty, but you know...as soon as the hormonal fog of being mama bear to two small children cleared out... I mean, if my kids were doing alright now, every sacrifice I could say was worth it. But they aren't and I don't know if they ever will be. And so I do resent the millions of dollars and the time and energy I devoted to them, that has not paid off. I do feel it could have been put to better use. And no, it would not have been better for them if I'd been a stay at home Mom, either. Why? Because their father was not stable enough to reliably provide. Again...who I could get at 18? That.
Money actually can buy you a hell of a lot of happiness. And while you may not have kids to leave it to, there are plenty of causes out there and hell you could always meet a low income family with a promising youngster and pay their way through college like my Great Aunt did. Successful career women with no kids are NOT miserable, solitary cat ladies in middle or old age. Not at all. They've got the means to go forth and find whoever they want to be their companions.
That's just sour grapes talk from men. I have never heard more than a bit of a wistful "what if" from such a woman now and then...quickly brushed aside. Now the ones who did NOT have successful careers, or who got taken advantage of by other family members and who did not accumulate the resources to have a decent life for themselves? They have regrets. Their lives are not happy and they can imagine any number of reasons why. But a bad relationship is never, ever better than no relationship at all.
I think we all have the filter of our experiences, emotional turmoil and expectations. No one knows what really goes on in anyone else's mind. I have a friend from my army days who dated a useless man and got pregnant. She married him because... In the 70's that was still what most women did if the man wanted it. He left her with no money to move to another state with his girlfriend when the baby was a few months old. She figured out how to take care of herself and the infant. Her family could not help her much, they wanted to but they were in bad financial shape themselves with their own problems. When the baby was 7 months old he showed up and wanted her to move two states over to live with him. She was in a bad situation so she went. 6 weeks later he quit his job and moved to yet another state with a different girlfriend. Leaving her with 2 weeks of paid rent and no food in the house. Because she had only been there 6 weeks social services would not help her. Her brother was able to send her a little money and he saved up to rent a uhaul and bring her home, but it took him a month. When she got home she got a job, started college and took care of herself and her daughter.
We all make emotional mistakes, some of us falling for a reprobate that doesn't really care for us, some of us refusing to trust anyone (two ends of the same stick). One thing that helped my friend and me when we needed to work was our army history. In the 70's it wasn't something that young women did, join the military. Now it is common. And just because some women don't make the mistake of marrying a reprobate when we are too young to know better, doesn't mean they had any less childhood stress. We all have our limits and misunderstandings about how the world works.
Are the majority of women, as the article here seems to point out, upset because they ended up with no husband or family, or are these the regrets of just a few lone women? Do women think feminism failed them simply because they never thought about the consequences of their actions, or because feminism didn't go far enough? What are your thoughts and opinions?
Since the 1970s, feminists have preached that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
But what do the facts and data tell us?
Female-headed households are significantly poorer than male-headed households across society.
Without the income of her husband or male partner, a mother is at a big disadvantage financially.
On top of that, children brought up in single mother homes are:
- 5 times more likely to commit suicide
- 9 times more likely to drop out of high school
- 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
I think this is compelling evidence that a fish does indeed need a bicycle.
Feminism, at least the modern version of it, appears to be anti-family and anti- normal society. Therefore, not only does feminism fail women, but it fails men and children as well.
I think this is compelling evidence that a fish does indeed need a bicycle.
Feminism, at least the modern version of it, appears to be anti-family and anti- normal society. Therefore, not only does feminism fail women, but it fails men and children as well.
1 - The quote was about women and men in relationships (and women needing men's financial support, or their control/domination) more than raising families or being parents, I think.
2 - Something like 90% of single parents are women. Do you have similar statistics for children of single fathers? Because it seems like these issues have many causes, relating to single parenthood and potentially finances, not just the lack of a man present. Which reminds me - how about those two mom households? I wonder how your stats compare there.
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