The Flipside of Feminism- Has anyone read this book?

[desertvixen]

The paying for dates thing isn't so much a feminism thing as a relationship thing. If a man invites me to dinner (unless he is someone I have a clearly established friend relationship with, where we'll split it), then I expect him to pay. If I invite a man to dinner, I expect to pay.

But, in my relationship, he prefers to pay because that a) suits his sense of what is Right and Expected and b) I do a majority of the cooking when we eat at home.

Feminism is about choices, and protecting the right of women to make their own choices, and trying to fix some of the things in our society that are unfair. Like no universal maternity leave - when I have better options on maternity leave in the Army than I do on the outside, I say we have issues.

And what Patsy says about how feminism has helped men - yes.

[Pearl]

Why would maternity leave go away? Personally, I think it would be good to have maternity and paternity leave - it would really be helpful.

My first marriage was as a non-feminist and it was awful.

My second marriage I'm a feminist and so is my hubs and it's much much better. He actually is the one that taught me how to be a full feminist ;). Although, I'm still the submissive one in the relationship... He, however, helps a LOT with the housework - sometimes does more than I do. We go by 50/50 if we're both doing the same work outside of the home and if one or the other has something come up that takes up a lot of our attention it skews to more to one partner or the other.

[Shirley MacLaine]

And all this has to do with feminism... how?

Yeah, WTF? I'm not seeing any problems with feminism, just more problems feminism seeks to correct.

[LadyBBR]

Re: the second shift problem. It seems that the fight for women to gain better education and jobs was at least a fight that they could take some control over. And now (in present day) a woman can choose to pursue higher education and a professional job. However, the second shift fight is about making someone else (Dad or husband) take responsibility - not so easy. What is the answer? On the old board I asked this question of another poster who identified herself as a radical feminist. Must we separate ourselves from men completly? I believe there are men who are feminists, or at least willing to take up some slack, but IMHO they are few and far between. If we want to have a family, what are our options?

[Pearl]

@LadyBBR I think...that the world is and always will be terribly flawed. There will always be people who are discriminated against, marginalized, and oppressed. There will never be an answer. The only thing we can do is try to make things better - knowing that the making things better task will never be finished. We will never see a "final" result.

I say this before I try to answer your question (because there is no true answer) and that answer (and this is my opinion of course) is to be true to yourself. Live your life with no regrets to the best of your ability. There is no perfection in this world - the only choice we really have is within our own lives and actions.

There are good men out there - men who are feminist - who respect women as equals - who the idea of women being a "help-meet" or less than is foreign to their minds. Why would we separate ourselves from them? I think we are different - men and women (perhaps the difference is negligible), and perhaps that is part of the problem - that we are foreign to each other in our gender/non-gender differences.

Perhaps we are fighting a losing battle - perhaps not. The more we train our sons and daughters to understand these ideas - the better we'll be - and then there will be another battle that must be overcome.

For me, I live my life as honorably and true to self as possible and that makes me find contentment. I don't let extremists (not saying you do - just kind of musing here) tell me what I should do or what should be done. I only have one life - you only have one life (as far as I know for sure anyhow) and we should live it the best way possible.

And I am sleepy and am now thinking that your question is rhetorical and I'm gonna look like an idiot...or maybe not. ;)

[emmiedahl]

Re: the second shift problem. It seems that the fight for women to gain better education and jobs was at least a fight that they could take some control over. And now (in present day) a woman can choose to pursue higher education and a professional job. However, the second shift fight is about making someone else (Dad or husband) take responsibility - not so easy. What is the answer? On the old board I asked this question of another poster who identified herself as a radical feminist. Must we separate ourselves from men completly? I believe there are men who are feminists, or at least willing to take up some slack, but IMHO they are few and far between. If we want to have a family, what are our options?

I think this problem will be solved in a generation or two, thanks to feminism.

Most men don't get how much work is involved in taking care of a child and home, and they feel like they are being taken advantage of because they are being asked to do hours of work. They don't get that their fair half might be twenty or more hours per week.

Plus, most men didn't grow up with "women's" chores and don't feel comfortable performing them. Obviously my sons are not in that category.

Our responsibility as feminists is to raise feminist sons and to stand for our own rights within relationships so our daughters have that role modeling.

[Rosa]

Emmidahl, I'm not sure we even have to raise them feminist, just show them how to be decent human beings and it will turn out to be the same thing.

My partner's family claims to be traditional, but his mom always worked, so he falls back on pretty egalitarian patterns at home (he's downstairs cleaning right now because my family will be here tomorrow and I'm kind of paralyzed with stress over it.) My mom talked the talk, at least when I was a teen, but she was a SAHM for a long time and she was codependent with my alcoholic dad, so even though I have the theory my first impulse is often to pick up the second shift work and feel like a martyr about it.

[emmiedahl]

I guess I mean feminists at heart, even if they claim to be more traditional. You can't be a decent human being AND expect your wife to shoulder a superhuman burden while you watch football.

My husband is more traditional. It's been a long, labor of love.

[Patsy]

Hey Patsy, could you point me in the direction of these analyses? I'd love to see some hard numbers on what I've known from personal experience to be true.

I've been away from a lot of things for more than a week dealing with a few things, but I just wanted to say that I will prioritise trying to dig this up! It's on my to-do list!

[Patsy]

And for an update: I didn't keep many links and articles relevant to the topic at hand, and going through the few I did, a lot are now dead links. Sorry :(

I found this googling: http://www.xyonline.net/content/dodgy-m ... statistics

but I'm afraid it doesn't have the stuff on "abusive men who are angry their control over their children has been taken away". I know plenty of people who would say, from their experience with certain groups, that this is the case, but I was talking about sort of objective bystanders with journalism/anthropology backgrounds who had investigated the groups and come up with such summaries. I'm annoyed I can't find what I was talking about, or give further details - it may well have been part of a legal summary of groups, I really don't remember enough details.

[browngrl]

I haven't read the book so I can't offer any useful insight into the book.

However like Lindsay I was "muddled about feminism". Many feminists seem too strident, too militant, too anti men, too angry for me to identify with. Yet at the same time I see the fundamentalist/patriarchal movement as too strident, too militant, too anti women, too angry for me to identify with.

What I really want is choice.

Is there a word for this? I think the term feminism has become far too "baggage laden" to be useful to me. Perhaps it is time to coin a new word (if this has not already been done).

[eohiken]

Hey no worries. You inspired me to google myself and found this:

http://www.doublex.com/section/news-pol ... e?page=0,0

Also, and I can't remember where I read this, it might be in that article, that 85% of the time custody arrangements in divorces are easily and mutually agreed upon. Of the remaining 15% where there is a legal battle, abuse is an issue half the time. So these men who are so focused on fathers' rights have a higher than average rate of child abuse. Ergo, abuser's lobby.

[Guest Anonymous]

I think Lindsey and the authors of "The Flipside of Feminism" are making the same mistake. The blurb to describe "The Flipside of Feminism" says something like, "It's been 40 years since the women's movement and where are we now?" Now to be snarky, maybe 40 years seems like a long time if you're a Young Earth Creationist who thinks the world is only 6000 years old,* but in reality 40 years is not a long time at all.

In other words, Lindsey, it is not realistic to expect all women and all men to change automatically overnight. Deeply entrenched mores take a long-ass time to change. I am still a young woman (only just turned 40) and I remember a time when there were hardly any women in public life, most men did NO housework whatsoever, and it was considered terribly wrong in many places for a girl to ask a boy out. You can't say feminism has failed because people haven't 100% gotten with the program yet. The truth is feminism has been remarkably successful in a short period of time, but we still have a long way to go. Continued change is going to be slow and organic, and not always consistent, because that's how human beings operate.

That said, hard-core feminists are often quite consistent. Personally, I have always paid my fair share on dates, I earn more than my fair share of the household income, and no, I never expected (or received) an engagement ring from my husband.

ETA: I am just being snarky about the Young Earth Creationism. I actually don't know what Venker and Schlafly's beliefs on the topic are.

[dawbs]

I haven't read the book so I can't offer any useful insight into the book.

However like Lindsay I was "muddled about feminism". Many feminists seem too strident, too militant, too anti men, too angry for me to identify with. Yet at the same time I see the fundamentalist/patriarchal movement as too strident, too militant, too anti women, too angry for me to identify with.

What I really want is choice.

Is there a word for this? I think the term feminism has become far too "baggage laden" to be useful to me. Perhaps it is time to coin a new word (if this has not already been done).

I actually think reclaiming the word from the baggage is the better thing to do.

Christians don't claim to no longer be Christians because of the WBC/Phelpses of the world.

Feminists don't cease being feminists because some people have created a 'straw man' of the strident man-haters and used the label on them. (honestly, most people have never met these 'strident/militant' feminists, but everyone is somehow sure they exist to claim that label. Funny how that works). If we can claim the word as something 'normal' and NOBLE, it looses the baggage the label never should have had.

[Guest Anonymous]

Brwngirl,

I don't think you are alone in being reluctant to identify with feminism because you perceive people with that label as strident and militant. But I would ask you to consider the following:

1) If you believe in the basic principles of feminism, does it really matter one way or the other how other feminists act? I don't get upset by stridency of feminists, but sometimes a public feminist will say something goofy that I find embarrassing (*cough*Naomi Wolf*cough*). But that doesn't mean that my own feminism is diminished. In fact, my own commitment to identify as a feminist is strengthened when I think other feminists look bad for some reason or other. I am hopeful that my example can help show people in my life that feminists are not all goofy airheads (*cough*Naomi Wolf*cough*). Women's rights can be benefited by having LOTS of different kinds of women from the militant to the sweet and everything in between identify with how important our equal status is.

2) Your perception of feminists as universally strident and unpleasant may be influenced by those who oppose women's equality. One example is Rush Limbaugh's characterization of feminists as "feminazis" but there are plenty of other examples. Please don't let the sexists con you into being afraid to support your own right to equal citizenship.

3) I suppose you can believe in women's rights without using the word "feminist." But why shouldn't we have a word to indicate a person's commitment to women's rights? And why should we allow that word to be sullied by people who oppose our interests?

4) There are plenty of feminists who are pleasant and reasonable. I like to think I am a pretty nice person who plays well with others (though I can be snarky). Gloria Steinem was and is a model of calm, reasoned presentation of feminism. Katha Pollitt is another great example. There are plenty more.

5) I suspect there is a lower bar for what is considered "strident" and "militant" in women. There is a much higher cultural expectation that women act sweet and deferential, whereas men have more permission in our culture to act in an assertive way and to demand their due. So a woman standing up for her point of view might be considered "strident and militant" when a man acting the same way may not be considered such.

6) That said, there are certainly angry feminists out there. I also would ask you to consider whether a bit of stridency and militancy isn't perhaps called for. Don't feminists have plenty of things to be outraged about? I remember a time when men routinely talked to women as if they were morons. I remember a time (and my mother certainly remembers a time) when women were expected to blithely accept second class status. As we discuss on this site, there are entire religions structured around the idea that God tells women to defer to and wait on their husbands, and to be in constant submission to them throughout their lives. Even now, despite all the gains we have made, the largest scholarship program for women in the U.S. (Miss America) requires recipients to parade around in swimsuits to have their sex appeal (er, I mean "physical fitness") graded by a panel of judges. In some parts of the world, women are legally prohibiting from traveling without the consent of a male guardian and are legally prohibited from driving, or can be beaten by religious police for showing slightly too much anke. Other women are genitally mutilated to ensure their faithfulness to their husbands. And on and on. Personally, I think a bit of anger and stridency are called for and are helpful to the movement. If feminists were always "stayed sweet," people would walk all over them.

[Austin]

I actually think reclaiming the word from the baggage is the better thing to do.

Christians don't claim to no longer be Christians because of the WBC/Phelpses of the world.

Feminists don't cease being feminists because some people have created a 'straw man' of the strident man-haters and used the label on them. (honestly, most people have never met these 'strident/militant' feminists, but everyone is somehow sure they exist to claim that label. Funny how that works). If we can claim the word as something 'normal' and NOBLE, it looses the baggage the label never should have had.

Brwngirl,

I don't think you are alone in being reluctant to identify with feminism because you perceive people with that label as strident and militant. But I would ask you to consider the following:

1) If you believe in the basic principles of feminism, does it really matter one way or the other how other feminists act? I don't get upset by stridency of feminists, but sometimes a public feminist will say something goofy that I find embarrassing (*cough*Naomi Wolf*cough*). But that doesn't mean that my own feminism is diminished. In fact, my own commitment to identify as a feminist is strengthened when I think other feminists look bad for some reason or other. I am hopeful that my example can help show people in my life that feminists are not all goofy airheads (*cough*Naomi Wolf*cough*). Women's rights can be benefited by having LOTS of different kinds of women from the militant to the sweet and everything in between identify with how important our equal status is.

2) Your perception of feminists as universally strident and unpleasant may be influenced by those who oppose women's equality. One example is Rush Limbaugh's characterization of feminists as "feminazis" but there are plenty of other examples. Please don't let the sexists con you into being afraid to support your own right to equal citizenship.

3) I suppose you can believe in women's rights without using the word "feminist." But why shouldn't we have a word to indicate a person's commitment to women's rights? And why should we allow that word to be sullied by people who oppose our interests?

4) There are plenty of feminists who are pleasant and reasonable. I like to think I am a pretty nice person who plays well with others (though I can be snarky). Gloria Steinem was and is a model of calm, reasoned presentation of feminism. Katha Pollitt is another great example. There are plenty more.

5) I suspect there is a lower bar for what is considered "strident" and "militant" in women. There is a much higher cultural expectation that women act sweet and deferential, whereas men have more permission in our culture to act in an assertive way and to demand their due. So a woman standing up for her point of view might be considered "strident and militant" when a man acting the same way may not be considered such.

6) That said, there are certainly angry feminists out there. I also would ask you to consider whether a bit of stridency and militancy isn't perhaps called for. Don't feminists have plenty of things to be outraged about? I remember a time when men routinely talked to women as if they were morons. I remember a time (and my mother certainly remembers a time) when women were expected to blithely accept second class status. As we discuss on this site, there are entire religions structured around the idea that God tells women to defer to and wait on their husbands, and to be in constant submission to them throughout their lives. Even now, despite all the gains we have made, the largest scholarship program for women in the U.S. (Miss America) requires recipients to parade around in swimsuits to have their sex appeal (er, I mean "physical fitness") graded by a panel of judges. In some parts of the world, women are legally prohibiting from traveling without the consent of a male guardian and are legally prohibited from driving, or can be beaten by religious police for showing slightly too much anke. Other women are genitally mutilated to ensure their faithfulness to their husbands. And on and on. Personally, I think a bit of anger and stridency are called for and are helpful to the movement. If feminists were always "stayed sweet," people would walk all over them.

dawbs and Doomed Harlot, you are both make very excellent points. I, too, am not willing to let others co-opt the term feminism as a negative just because they don't understand it or are threatened by the concept. To refuse to identify as a feminist because of other people's negative perceptions of the word is to give them the right to take that word and redefine it to suit their own agenda. I'm not willing to do that because I'm not willing to let these people make the rules.

Doomed Harlot, on your point #5 - so, so true. An ambitious man who takes initiative and is assertive is hailed as successful and effective in our society. A woman with those same traits, however, is not ambitious, she's a climber. She doesn't take initiative, she's underhanded. She is not assertive, she's a bitch. There are so many ways in which women have gained so much, but since these sorts of less tangible attitudes have not been overcome, we still have work to do. Young women, in particularly, folding to the pressure of being called a "feminazi" will just allow us to lose ground, which ultimately, will hurt them the most.

I don't actually know any "strident, militant" feminists personally. I've worked in a number of liberal causes, to where one would think that these terrible feminazis would flock, and it's just a false assertion. In my day to day interactions with people, I try to be consistently kind and approachable, and I've had co-workers who, based upon just knowing me casually at work, act surprised if the topic comes up and I identify as a feminist. I guess they think I'm "too nice" to be a feminist (IRL, anyway) - lol. I have no problem standing up for myself or others (of either gender) when I feel that's called for, but I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder or viewing everything as an affront and neither do the feminists that I know.

[Guest Anonymous]

Austin, I have that happen from time-to-time. I don't usually run around in my professional life saying that I am a feminist, but when it comes up, people usually profess to be shocked. And then I'm shocked that they are shocked. I am a woman lawyer; of COURSE I'm a feminist!

(Yeah, I know Schlafly is a woman with a JD, but I think she views herself as some sort of exception to the rules about women.)

[Austin]

The weirdest thing someone ever said to me after professing shock at my assertion of being a feminist was, "But. . . you've got three boys!"

:shock:

Because being a mom, particularly of sons apparently, is incompatible with feminism? I don't know. I think I just blinked and looked at them with my "WTF" face.

[Guest Anonymous]

Well, obviously, Austin, being a feminist must mean you hate your own sons!