#economic feminism

[liberaljane]

[hadesoftheladies]

“what oppression do women face? what rights don’t they already have?” let me explain something very simple to you. having laws that permit women to have jobs, divorce men, abort, or kill in self-defense is literally 25% of the battle. why? because of infrastructure and societal bias.

for example, it is technically illegal to rape (legislation) yet few rapists are ever convicted and even if they are, their sentences never match the crime. why? for one, it’s hard for girls and women of challenging socioeconomic backgrounds to access services or resources like rape kits or information on how to seek legal assistance; and in the course of this, the police men are likely to sexually abuse them as well, resulting in more trauma and reducing their chances at seeking justice (infrastructure). even if a woman were to get a job (and the law doesn’t allow discrimination), if the social bias is that she can’t perform well, she is still less likely to be hired. if she is hired, she is more likely to be underpaid (read up on the velvet or pink ghetto).

government (legislation and judiciary) are reflective of social consciousness. they may agree with the rights of women (sometimes) on paper, but whether or not they are meaningfully enforced is completely up to those with the most socioeconomic power, which, for now, is largely still men (in that men maintain most of the wealth, property, and high opinion in a populace, they also control most popular metanarratives via religion, education, pornography and entertainment which means they largely control public perception). because men in patriarchal society keep their resources to themselves and seek to elevate only themselves. racism can be illegal, and still rampant, in a country. so it is with misogyny and homophobia.

if men hate women in a system that has long been organized to benefit them, a few legislative changes won’t automatically change that system. it has to be altered structurally and socially as well.

and that takes a whole lot more fighting

[bitchesgetriches]

Ask the Bitches: How Can I Make Myself Financially Secure Before Age 30?

The road to being financially secure is just lousy with potholes. You’re going to fuck up. You’re going to have accidents and completely unforeseen bad things are going to happen to you. You’ll get sick, or your family will need you, or you won’t get that job you were counting on, or you’ll lose a bunch of money.

Here’s the thing though…

You will not give up.

At no point are you allowed to roll over and content yourself with mediocrity because succeeding is too difficult. You’re going to get creative. You’ll find new and innovative ways around the roadblocks in your way. You’re going to look around you at those assholes who have it easier than you and who don’t understand a fraction of what you have to deal with. And you’re going to know that you are stronger.

You have been forged in the fires of adversity and that experience has made you nigh unstoppable. Making it to thirty with a fat bank account and a well-ordered life makes you a certifiable badass. But doing it in the face of hardship and heartache and numerous setbacks? That makes you mighty.

Open your arms wide to the coming hardships. Look the steaming pile of garbage that is life in the face and say, “You will not break me.”

We believe in you. You’re going to be great.

Keep reading.

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[coochiequeens]

‘100% feminist’: how Eleanor Rathbone invented child benefit – and changed women’s lives for ever

She was an MP and author with a formidable reputation, fighting for the rights of women and refugees, and opposing the appeasement of Hitler. Why isn’t she better known today?

Ladies please reblog to give her the recognition she deserves

By Susanna Rustin Thu 4 Jul 2024

My used copy of the first edition of The Disinherited Family arrives in the post from a secondhand bookseller in Lancashire. A dark blue hardback inscribed with the name of its first owner, Miss M Marshall, and the year of publication, 1924, it cost just £12.99. I am not a collector of old tomes but am thrilled to have this one. It has a case to be considered among the most important feminist economics books ever written.

Its centenary has so far received little, if any, attention. Yet the arguments it sets out are the reason nearly all mothers in the UK receive child benefit from the government. Its author, Eleanor Rathbone, was one of the most influential women in politics in the first half of the 20th century. She led the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec, the main suffragist organisation, also formerly known as the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) from 1919, when Millicent Fawcett stood down, until the roughly five million women who were not enfranchised in 1918 gained the vote 10 years later. In 1929, aged 57, she became an MP, and remained in parliament until her death in 1946. While there, she built up a formidable reputation based on her advocacy for women’s rights, welfare reform and the rights of refugees, and her opposition to the appeasement of Hitler.

It would not be true to say that Eleanor Rathbone has been forgotten. Her portrait by James Gunn hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Twenty years ago she was the subject of a fine biography and she is remembered at Somerville college, Oxford – where she studied in the 1890s and ran a society called the Associated Prigs. (While the name was a joke, Rathbone did have a priggish side – as well as being an original thinker, tremendous campaigner, and stubborn, sensitive personality.) She also features in Rachel Reeves’s book The Women Who Made Modern Economics, although Reeves – who hopes shortly to become the UK’s first female chancellor – pays more attention to her contemporary, Beatrice Webb.

A thrilling tome … The Disinherited Family by Eleanor Rathbone. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

But Rathbone, who came from a wealthy dynasty of nonconformist merchants, does not have anything like the name-recognition of the Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett, or of pioneering politicians including Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson. Nor does she enjoy the cachet of writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose polemic about women’s opportunities, A Room of One’s Own, was published five years after Rathbone’s magnum opus.

There are many reasons for Rathbone’s relative obscurity. One is that she was the first woman elected to parliament as an independent (and one of a handful of men at the time). Thus there is no political party with an interest in turning her into an icon. Having spent the past three years writing a book about the British women’s movement, I am embarrassed to admit that when I started, I didn’t know who she was.

Rathbone was not the first person to propose state benefits paid to mothers. The endowment of motherhood or family allowances, as the policy was known, was written about by the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, and tried out as a project of the Fabian Women’s Group, who published their findings in a pamphlet in 1912. But Rathbone pushed the idea to the forefront. A first attempt to get Nusec to adopt it was knocked back in 1921, and she then spent three years conducting research. The title she gave the book she produced, The Disinherited Family, reflected her view that women and children were being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth.

The problem, as she saw it, was one of distribution. While the wage system in industrialised countries treated all workers on a given pay grade the same, some households needed more money than others. While unions argued for higher wages across the board, Rathbone believed the state should supplement the incomes of larger families. She opened the book with an archly phrased rhetorical question: “Whether there is any subject in the world of equal importance that has received so little consideration as the economic status of the family?” She went on to accuse economists of behaving as if they were “self-propagating bachelors” – so little did the lives of mothers appear to interest them.

Rathbone’s twin aims were to end wives’ dependence on husbands and reward their domestic labour. Family allowances paid directly to them could either be spent on housekeeping or childcare, enabling them to go out to work. Ellen Wilkinson, the radical Labour MP for Middlesbrough (and future minister for education), was among early supporters. William Beveridge read the book when he was director of the London School of Economics, declared himself a convert and introduced one of the first schemes of family-linked payments for his staff.

But others were strongly opposed. Conservative objections to such a radical expansion of the state were predictable. But they were echoed by liberal feminists including Millicent Fawcett, who called the plan “a step in the direction of practical socialism”. Trade unions preferred to push for a living wage, while some male MPs thought the policy undermined the role of men as breadwinners. Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finally swung behind family allowances in 1942. As the war drew to a close, Rathbone led a backbench rebellion against ministers who wanted to pay the benefit to fathers instead.

Rathbone celebrates the Silver Jubilee of the Women’s Vote in London, 20 February 1943. Photograph: Picture Post/Getty Images

It is for this signature policy that she is most often remembered today. At a time when hundreds of thousands of children have been pushed into poverty by the two-child limit on benefit payments, Rathbone’s advocacy on behalf of larger families could hardly be more relevant. The limit, devised by George Osborne, applies to universal and child tax credits – and not child benefit itself. But Rishi Sunak’s government announced changes to the latter in this year’s budget. From 2026, eligibility will be assessed on a household rather than individual basis. This is intended to limit payments to better-off, dual-income families. But the UK Women’s Budget Group and others have objected on grounds that child benefit should retain its original purpose of directly remunerating primary carers (the vast majority of them mothers) for the work of rearing children. It remains to be seen whether this plan will be carried through by the next government.

Rathbone once told the House of Commons she was “100% feminist”, and few MPs have been as single-minded in their commitment to women’s causes. As president of Nusec (the law-abiding wing of the suffrage campaign), she played a vital role in finishing the job of winning votes for women.

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in women’s suffrage, partly due to the centenary of the first women’s suffrage act. Thanks to a brilliant campaign by Caroline Criado Perez, a statue of Millicent Fawcett, the nonmilitant suffragist leader, now stands in Westminster, a few minutes walk from the bronze memorial of Emmeline Pankhurst erected in 1930. Suffragette direct action has long been a source of fascination. What is less well known is that militants played little part in the movement after 1918. It was law-abiding constitutionalists – suffragists rather than suffragettes – who pushed through the 1920s to win votes for the younger and poorer women who did not yet have them. Rathbone helped lead this final phase of the campaign, along with Conservative MP Nancy Astor and others.

Rathbone was highly critical of the militants, and once claimed that they “came within an inch of wrecking the suffrage movement, perhaps for a generation”. Today, with climate groups including Just Stop Oil copying the suffragette tactic of vandalising paintings, it is worth remembering that many women’s suffrage campaigners opposed such methods.

Schismatic though it was, the suffrage movement at least had a shared goal. An even greater challenge for feminists in the 1920s was agreeing on future priorities. Equal pay, parental rights and an end to the sexual double standard were among demands that had broad support. After the arrival in the House of Commons of the first female MPs, legislative successes included the removal of the bar on women’s entry to the professions, new rights for mothers and widows’ pensions. But there were also fierce disagreements.

Tensions between class and sexual politics were longstanding, with some on the left regarding feminism as a distraction. The Labour MP Marion Phillips, for example, thought membership of single-sex groups placed women ��in danger of getting their political opinions muddled”. There was also renewed conflict over protective legislation – the name given to employment laws that differentiated between men and women. While such measures included maternity leave and safety rules for pregnant women, many feminists believed their true purpose was to keep jobs for men – and prevent female workers from competing.

Underlying such arguments was the question of whether women, once enfranchised, should strive for equal treatment, or push for measures designed to address their specific needs. As the debate grew more heated, partisans on either side gave themselves the labels of “old” and “new” feminists. While the former, also called equalitarians, wanted to focus on the obstacles that prevented women from participating in public life on the same terms as men, the new feminists led by Rathbone sought to pioneer an innovative, woman-centred politics. Since this brought to the fore issues such as reproductive health and mothers’ poverty, it is known as “maternalist feminism”.

Rathbone and other Liverpool suffragettes campaigning in 1910. Photograph: Shawshots/Alamy

The faultline extended beyond Britain. But Rathbone and her foes had some of the angriest clashes. At one international convention, Lady Rhondda, a wealthy former suffragette, used a speech to deride rivals who chose to “putter away” at welfare work, instead of the issues she considered important.

The specific policy points at issue have, of course, changed over the past century. But arguments about how much emphasis feminists should place on biological differences between men and women carry on.

Eleanor Rathbone did not live long enough to see the welfare state, including child benefit paid to mothers, take root in postwar Britain. Her election to parliament coincided with the Depression, and the lengthening shadows of fascism and nazism meant that she, like her colleagues, became preoccupied with foreign affairs. In the general election of 1935, the number of female MPs fell from 15 to nine, meaning Rathbone’s was one of just a handful of women’s voices. She used hers to oppose the policy of appeasement, and support the rights of refugees, including those escaping Franco’s Spain. During the war she helped run an extra-parliamentary “woman-power committee”, which advocated for female workers.

She also became a supporter of Indian women’s rights, though her liberal imperialism led to tensions with Indian feminists. During the war she angered India’s most eminent writer, Rabindranath Tagore, and its future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when she attacked the Congress party’s policy of noncooperation with Britain’s war effort. Tagore criticised what he called the “sheer insolent self-complacency” of her demand that the anti-colonial struggle should be set aside while Britain fought Germany.

Rathbone turned down a damehood. After their first shared house in Westminster was bombed, she and her life partner, the Scottish social worker Elizabeth Macadam, moved around the corner to a flat on Tufton Street (Macadam destroyed their letters, meaning that Rathbone’s intimate life remains obscure, but historians believe the relationship was platonic). From there they moved to a larger, quieter house in Highgate. On 2 January 1946, Rathbone suddenly died.

Rathbone’s blue plaque at Tufton Court. Photograph: PjrPlaques/Alamy

A blue plaque on Tufton Street commemorates her as the “pioneer of family allowances” – providing an alternative claim on posterity for an address more commonly associated with the Brexit campaign, since a house a few doors down became its headquarters. She is remembered, too, in Liverpool, where her experience of dispersing welfare to desperately poor soldiers’ wives in the first world war changed the course of her life, and where one of her former homes is being restored by the university.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But walking in Westminster recently, I imagined her hastening across St James’s Park to one of her meetings at Nancy Astor’s house near the London Library. Today, suffragettes are celebrated for their innovative direct action. But Rathbone blazed a trail, too, with her dedication as a campaigner, writer, lobbyist and “100% feminist” parliamentarian.

 Sexed: A History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin is published by Polity Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

[evidence-based-activism]

taking care of your own house isn’t “unpaid labour” it’s called being an adult which y’all seem to understand just fine when you’re shaming men but not when you’re the ones doing the work. “most jobs” are not salary. And the only hourly jobs that pay overtime are agricultural positions. Which are male dominated. So if we are talking about unpaid labour that should be at the forefront of the discussion not household chores.

Unpaid labor refers to the massive amounts of work that is necessary for society to function but does not receive direct compensation and is therefore not registered in economic indicators like GDP.

The reason this is a feminist issue is because women are responsible for a disproportionate amount of unpaid work, which results in significant negative impacts both for individual women and women as a class.

Women around the world do three times as much unpaid care work as men [1-3]. A 2020 analysis [4] found that globally, all of women's unpaid work was worth almost 11 trillion dollars. A Pew Research analysis [5] found that when considering both paid and unpaid work, American women spend 2 to 3 times as much time on unpaid work as men, which corresponds to a proportional decrease in paid work and leisure time.

This work is absolutely vital for the continual functioning of society. As mentioned in [4], in "1975, 90 percent of Icelandic women refused to cook, clean, or look after children for a day. It brought the whole nation to a standstill," which is reiterated in [3].

And why does the gender gap matter? Because women's disproportionate burden limits their personal economic stability and advancement [3, 5]. It also has substantial, negative effects on their mental health [1].

With that context, here is my answer to your ask:

---

"taking care of your own house isn’t “unpaid labour” it’s called being an adult"

Something can be both necessary and unjustly allocated. Yes, a functioning society requires people cook and clean and take care of children and elders. If it were equally divided across all sectors of society, then we may not have needed a specific term to describe the hidden – but vital – work that underlies our society.

However, in reality, women bear a disproportionate amount of this requirement. This results in gender-specific disadvantages which are most easily illustrated via the conceptualization of a specific term "unpaid work".

(Further, I'd point out that your statement here implies that men are failing to "be adults" by failing to perform their fair share of unpaid labor.)

"which y’all seem to understand just fine when you’re shaming men but not when you’re the ones doing the work"

See everything I wrote above. Further, note that women are doing the vast majority of this work. Men's failure to do their fair share is a reasonable basis for shame.

'“most jobs” are not salary.'

I mean, sure, in America about 56% of jobs are paid at an hourly rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [6]. This is not really relevant to the matter at hand.

"And the only hourly jobs that pay overtime are agricultural positions."

I assume you mean hourly jobs that don't pay overtime. Either way, this isn't true. Anyone who is considered an "exempt" employee is not paid overtime, which can include hourly workers in some industries (e.g., railway workers, seasonal employees, etc.). And, again, this really isn't relevant to the matter at hand. The 44% of American jobs that are salaried also don't pay overtime, along with all the other carved-out exemptions for hourly employees.

"Which are male dominated"

In America, sure. Notably, however, when looking worldwide, women are "responsible for half of the world’s food production" and "60 and 80 percent" in "most developing countries" [7].

"So if we are talking about unpaid labour that should be at the forefront of the discussion not household chores."

The issues with America's labor policies are an important class issue that you are completely free to focus on. The existence of this issue, however, does not negate the widespread problem with women's unpaid labor.

And importantly, the BLS also shows that a greater proportion of female agricultural workers are unpaid (3%) compared to male agricultural workers (<1%) [8].

---

In conclusion, women are burdened with a disproportionate amount of unpaid work, which causes significant negative impact on both individual women and women as a class.

References under the cut:

Seedat, S., & Rondon, M. (2021). Women’s wellbeing and the burden of unpaid work. BMJ, n1972. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1972

Hanna, T., Meisel, C., Moyer, J., Azcona, G., Bhatt, A., & Valero, S. D. (2020.) FORECASTING TIME SPENT IN UNPAID CARE AND DOMESTIC WORK. UN Women.

Not all gaps are created equal: The true value of care work. (2022, May 25). Oxfam International. https://www.oxfam.org/en/not-all-gaps-are-created-equal-true-value-care-work

Wezerek, G., & Ghodsee, K. R. (2020, March 5). Opinion | Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/04/opinion/women-unpaid-labor.html

Parker, K. (2013, March 14). Chapter 6: Time in work and leisure, patterns by gender and family structure. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/03/14/chapter-6-time-in-work-and-leisure-patterns-by-gender-and-family-structure/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2022, April). Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2021 U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/pdf/home.pdf

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Fact Sheet: Food Security and Gender. https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnadr706.pdf

Employed persons in agriculture and nonagricultural industries by age, sex, and class of worker. (2024, January 26). Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat15.htm

[o0katiekins0o]

I don't know. I don't think it's feminism making fewer women prioritize marriage and children.

I think it's because an entire generation of girls turned on MTV, and instead of music videos, watched 16 year olds give birth to 17 year olds' babies while said 17 year olds played gameboy.

Just maybe it was seeing young women's lives completely disintegrate while the young men's lives remain largely unchanged.

And the older men who should honestly know better aren't beating these same charges either so what do you expect?

It's hilarious how it's always dudes who jerk it to the concept of the "free market" who are whining about "feminism ruining women" when it's literally the most free market response to say "I'm not investing until I'm reasonably certain the payoff is worthwhile."

That's just the free market hard at work, my dude.

If you really were a "high value man"- women would have noticed by now. Women love a great value.

[eclecticwordblender]

thinking about this one time at uni when i, an english literature student had to explain to an economics major how billionaires build wealth by creating human-made deficit and therefore there aren’t any ethical billionaires.

funny how this economics major's conclusion was, "yeah but i have faith in taylor swift."

when i say i wanted to bang my head on the wall so bad…

[slyandthefamilybook]

I think we need to have a serious re-evaluation of what "leftist" means bc there ain't no fuckin way authcoms are on the same left as me lmao

[theremina]

If I keep having to end friendships and quit jobs because I refuse to be treated as less human or deserving of respect than some gentry-ass bullies who happen to be superficially charming and/or conventionally attractive and/or socially powerful and/or inordinately wealthy ... and then I get scapegoated in the aftermath for "not knowing my place" or maybe just actin' a little cunty?

SO BE IT.

With gusto.

[yesornopolls]

Do you identify as a feminist?

[feministdragon]

"All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as “The Right to work,” or “To each the whole result of his labour.” What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL!"

120 years ago a man wrote this in an extremely influential book. I read this and want to cry, that everything he wrote about the state of the world is still true, and still Bad.

Now I read these words as history, and not a call to action, and this also makes me want to cry. But I read on, to find out what those that were thinking this 100 years ago have to teach us now.

[liberaljane]

Nothing more expensive than being poor.

Digital illustration of the back of a person's jacket. There's a James Baldwin quote that reads, "Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor'

[dailyanarchistposts]

If we stop, the world stops

Millions of women around the world participated in events for International Women’s Day (IWD) on March the 8th. The most militant action was in the growth of the ‘Women’s Strike’, with 5.3 million people on strike in Spain. In Britain, the interest in the tactics of the strike on IWD is relatively new, yet still 7,000 women pledged to strike. In addition, links were made to grass roots unions such as the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIUW) with support for their pickets for a Living Wage. Sex workers also co-ordinated their own actions for decriminalisation and trans women held an action over the problems of access to NHS services.

The organisers in Britain made it clear that the strike should focus on demands for working class women, including those who often face the most exploitation and discrimination, like migrants, sex workers, trans women. It is not just a strike about traditional work but also about ‘invisible labour’, such as care, domestic and emotional labour, and against male violence. The historical origins of the day make it clear that the purpose is not to have more women politicians or company directors (see box). Instead it is focused on the majority of women who are at the bottom of the pile, both in the workplace and in the home. According to one organiser of the Women’s Strike in Britain: “We are instead taking action – action against our exploitation under capitalism, where the domestic and emotional work we do for little or no pay is made invisible, while austerity measures force us into a more and more vulnerable position. This is feminism for the 99%”.

It was in Spain, however, that the strike was the most successful. This was partially because of the support it got from the mainstream unions. However, it is clear that they were forced into support as a result of the massive upsurge from the grass roots organisations. According to one source (thefreeonline.wordpress.com): “An important feature of this strike is that it has been promoted and organised from the bottom up, and not the other way around. That is to say, the initiative of the strike has been born first in the streets, in the neighbourhoods and districts and has developed in open assemblies. It has not been a proposal of the unions, but of the feminist movement.” The mainstream unions only called for a 2 hour strike whereas unions such as the CGT and the anarchist CNT called for 24 hour stoppages.

Despite calls for the strike to be based on working class women, it is uncertain to what extent many women could actually participate, given that they are the ones in the most precarious position. In Spain, headlines were given to women in media and other professional jobs. In Britain, the strike was most successful in the universities, with 61 universities taking part. However, the link to CAIWU and sex workers showed that there certainly was support outside the universities.

If women are to truly win all the demands put forward on the day then we must go beyond demands for equality in the system and call for both the end of capitalism and patriarchy. So how is this going to happen? The strike in Spain may have been very successful in terms of numbers on the streets but what will it achieve in terms of winning demands? Politicians and even bosses may pay lip service to the aims of IWD but they are unlikely to do anything about it. In the end, using the success of March the 8th, women and men must continue to organise at the grass roots level and build up a movement that lasts much longer than a day. The linking up of a number of groups on the 8th provides a good basis on which to move forward.

Origins of International Women’s Day

March 8 is International Women’s Day. This date commemorates March 8, 1909, when 129 employees of a cotton textile factory in New York were killed when their own owner set fire to the factory while all of them were inside making a protest demanding labour rights. In addition, the colour of feminism is violet because, it is said, the smoke that came from that fire was violet, like the fabrics that were there that day. At an International Congress of Socialist Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin proposed this date as the International Women’s Day in honour of the cotton workers.

[bitchesgetriches]

Read more:

How to Pay Hospital Bills When You’re Flat Broke

[tommming]

Gift Economy

Maybe we all feel something so dark and painful deep down, something off and something exhausting about living in this world, which has become so thoroughly pervaded by capitalism and the values of white christian imperialism, because life is a gift meant to be given, and we are not made to exchange one thing for another.

In many indigenous societies, instead of having a transactional economy ("barter" is a myth by the way) there exists what anthropologists call a gift economy, where the main way things get passed around is through gifts and reciprocity.

I think that life itself is a gift we have received, and it's ours to do whatever we want with it, but the best thing to do when you receive a gift is to give again, if you are able. I for one think that the meaning in my life comes from giving; giving myself to my wife, and to my work, giving gifts and sharing love with my friends, giving my heart to music and to the beauty in the world around me. Life is a gift, so I want to give it.

[puffinmaster246]

Not trying to pick on op specifically cuz I keep seeing takes like this and this one isn’t unique but it’s been frustrating how many I’ve been seeing saying this exact thing especially due to Trump’s election.

Women HAVE been doing this. Leftists DO do this. Feminism has ALWAYS done this. I don’t understand why everyone has convinced themselves feminism is and always has been some man hating campaign that only ever talks about women and completely disregards the feelings of men because it isn’t. During the MeToo movement it was almost impossible to find a post talking about sexual assault that didn’t have a disclaimer, even when totally irrelevant, like “btw this applies to men too”. Any time men come out about abuse or neglect or their sad feelings or how toxic masculinity/patriarchy affects them negatively they always get loads of support.

What world is everyone on tumblr rn seemingly living in wherein everything MRAs say about feminism not supporting men enough is TRUE? Is your bubble so small that you’re only seeing TERF/radfem shit on tumblr and that’s informing you about the wider feminist movement completely? Even just the wider liberal movement?

It feels like all I ever see is “hey guys remember to be nice to men” like we’ve been brutalizing them. These MRAs and insecure misogynistic men are getting radicalized and doing more radicalizing against women not because they’re sad, or insecure, or because women are being too mean to them or shutting them down in conversation, or abusing them, or whatever else. Men (and I’m talking specifically about these cishet MRA types) are being radicalized because they feel entitled to more sympathy and space to speak than other people. And they’re finally experiencing situations wherein they’re getting the SAME amount of sympathy and space as everyone else.

It is not women’s jobs to interact with misogynists and baby them until they feel better so they don’t rape us or hit us or manipulative us or verbally abuse us. We’ve already been doing that for centuries. Men are finally starting to be treated like everyone by women else instead of like royalty and they’re acting like they’re being uniquely abused, ignored, or whatever else. But all I ever do and all I’ve ever done is be forced to sit and listen to men talk.

If you’re going to make a post asking for people to be nicer to men and deradicalize men and give men a space to talk about their feelings and insecurities, address that post to other men. Women are not really the ones most often in male spaces to start with and we’re not the ones that need to be forced, again, to be mens’ therapists. These men aren’t being radicalized by MRAs because they’re lonely or ignored or sad, they’re being radicalized because they feel entitled to more space than everyone else and they feel entitled to women.