Feminism and the silencing of women

[JudithB]

The men whose behaviour you wish to change aren't imo likely to go, the men who would go probably already have to varying extents the views you wish espoused....

Don't you wish to change their behaviours too?

 

[JudithB]

Kind of a group therapy thread...?

Isn't there a thread on here about toxic masculinity? I didn't venture in there.

 

[8ball]

Isn't there a thread on here about toxic masculinity? I didn't venture in there.

Mixed bag of a thread. A few good bits.
No actual self-flagellation and purging of sin going on, though.

 

[Pickman's model]

Don't you wish to change their behaviours too?

No, I want them to change their behaviour

 

[killer b]

I don't think in the long run that appealing to the better nature of members of an oppressor class is that useful: you'll get the occasional one prepared to stand on the barricades with you, and a few more who'll pay lip service... but the rest? Even getting them to recognise they're an oppressor in the first place isn't really possible. There's very limited gains there for a lot of effort. We're currently roughly one week into the latest failure to use this approach in national politics, on reflection.

If the liberation struggles of the past teach us anything, it's that militant political action is the only way to achieve real change - but what militant political action looks like, and how you might build the kind of networks of solidarity necessary to make it work in this particular context is beyond me.

 

[trashpony]

I think women need to create that now. Seriously, we’ve been appealing to men’s better nature but it doesn’t work.

As to what men can do, call shitty misogynist behaviour out. I’m sure most urban men do but the more you do it, the more confident other men will become and the less socially acceptable it becomes.

The micro-aggressions - the ‘bet she’s on the blob’, ‘fucking women are useless at maths’ type stuff - is death by a thousand cuts. Challenge that and you will eventually make a difference to men idly watching women get raped on their phone while they’re waiting for the bus.

All of it is grounded in women being other, being non-men. Get rid of that thinking and patriarchy is over.

 

[elbows]

Challenging the lower level stuff, the festering foundations, is always worth it yes. Can tell it has an impact too, because straight away there are usually attempts to isolate and reject these dangerous complaints/ideas that threaten to change what is considered acceptable within that group. Often by trying to dismiss the complaints as being some issue solely within the mind of the person doing the challenging. 'ooh whats wrong with him?' and probably these days some of the modern terms that seem to get thrown around, whether it be SJW or snowflake or referenced to being triggered or whatever. These noises are made because people are threatened by the challenge, good. However loud their bark or backlash, their shields are imperfect, some of the ideas are getting through and making a difference. There is nothing inevitable about the continued normalisation of disgraceful things.

As for the other, I get so depressed by how early that thinking starts. A strong focus on our perceived differences is, I suppose, understandable during stages of early development where we are finding out about the world and ourselves and other people and roles. In a society where all sorts of attitudes, structures, balances and experiences are awful, this delicate stage of development can be poisoned with an alarming degree of indifference. And then the stage is set for all the horrors that will be built atop this ugly and distorted foundation

 

[elbows]

Oh dear the Jesuit 'give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man' just popped into my head and waved its dark underbelly at me when placed in the shadow of that last subject.

Not that I should be restricting this subject to the 'why?' years of development. There are plenty of subsequent stages where attitudes can be improved or ruined.

A climate of pervasive indifference, interspersed with occasional outbreaks of narrow care. Something needs to bubble over.

 

[mango5]

I was in a very crowded workplace social club very near Whitehall one evening last week and 2 men in their 60s were watching videos of very busty naked women jiggling their tits. Three of us could see it from the adjacent table. On the way out I told them that they were behaving in poor taste amongst colleagues and received only shrugs and 'you're making it up' responses. All the other men at their table ignored the exchange. I may as well have been mute.

 

[8ball]

I was in a very crowded workplace social club very near Whitehall one evening last week and 2 men in their 60s were watching videos of very busty naked women jiggling their tits. Three of us could see it from the adjacent table. On the way out I told them that they were behaving in poor taste amongst colleagues and received only shrugs and 'you're making it up' responses. All the other men at their table ignored the exchange. I may as well have been mute.

You work in the Houses of Parliament?

 

[colacubes]

You work in the Houses of Parliament?

And lolz like this are exactly the problem and why we aren’t listened to.

 

[Manter]

This from a Labour Party leadership candidate. Ugh and aargh. So much gaslighting in one paragraph. And the reason I put it here is because it’s the old (right wing) trope never being alone with a woman one because, y’know, you can’t trust them. Which effectively shuts women out and shuts them up

 

[mango5]

And lolz like this are exactly the problem and why we aren’t listened to.

This is one of many corrosive parts of silencing behaviour. Minimising bantz.

I had been comparing this incident with a similar one where a fellow was watching porn on his phone on a crowded bus. I did not challenge him. This continues to bother me. The social club incident brought it to the surface again.

As I have said before, the effects of these situations are compounded when later we start feeling inadequate because we saved mental and physical energy by having to act with fake pleasantness and unassertiveness.

When considering how and when to challenge shitty behaviour by men towards women we are too often caught between real fear of aggressive response, tedious corrosive mocking, and self-recrimination.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[killer b]

This from a Labour Party leadership candidate. Ugh and aargh. So much gaslighting in one paragraph. And the reason I put it here is because it’s the old (right wing) trope never being alone with a woman one because, y’know, you can’t trust them. Which effectively shuts women out and shuts them up

Fairly sure he's completely torpedoed his own leadership run with this interview, so there's that at least.

 

[8ball]

This is one of many corrosive parts of silencing behaviour. Minimising bantz.

I had been comparing this incident with a similar one where a fellow was watching porn on his phone on a crowded bus. I did not challenge him. This continues to bother me. The social club incident brought it to the surface again.

As I have said before, the effects of these situations are compounded when later we start feeling inadequate because we saved mental and physical energy by having to act with fake pleasantness and unassertiveness.

When considering how and when to challenge shitty behaviour by men towards women we are too often caught between real fear of aggressive response, tedious corrosive mocking, and self-recrimination.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I was actually just interested to know whether this was public or private sector etc. or generally what kind of workplace because it’s a pretty depressing thing, but might be much more so depending on context, who these old guys were etc.

But anyway, thread is now on ignore so that’s one bit of being silenced by your oppressors sorted.

 

[Manter]

Fairly sure he's completely torpedoed his own leadership run with this interview, so there's that at least.

I hope so. A Facebook group I am in is full of good lefty bros well-actually-ing. Accusations from women ruin men’s lives, it is often one person’s word against another’s etc

 

[killer b]

I was actually just interested to know whether this was public or private sector etc. or generally what kind of workplace because it’s a pretty depressing thing, but might be much more so depending on context, who these old guys were etc.

But anyway, thread is now on ignore so that’s one bit of being silenced by your oppressors sorted.

this post has it all.

 

[JudithB]

I hope so. A Facebook group I am in is full of good lefty bros well-actually-ing. Accusations from women ruin men’s lives, it is often one person’s word against another’s etc

And yet rape is pretty much decriminalised. So many lives ruined

 

[killer b]

I hope so. A Facebook group I am in is full of good lefty bros well-actually-ing. Accusations from women ruin men’s lives, it is often one person’s word against another’s etc

I think enough people will find it repellant, not least the 50% or so of the membership who're women. TBH he was never in with much of a chance anyway, but this nails it down.

 

[campanula]

Have knitted some gloves for daughter with feminist logo - should I look for additional knuckle-dusters?
Seriously, she has been tasked by her (woman) line manager and senior manager (also female) to go and check on one of her clients who has abandoned her kids and vanished with a known, violent offender...and my 36 year old daughter has been expected to go alone, somewhere well off her 'patch' to try to find the missing woman. WTF? How can this be asked of her (she will be refusing to go without a police escort). The upshot is that she feels seriously unsafe at work (exacerbated by her boss voting Tory) and feels this is being asked of her as some sort of bizarre 'test' of loyalty. (I have told her to take a month's sickie because she is phoning me in tears, several times a day after working in a system which is financially and ideologically broken (the only metrics of value are business, outcomes, statistics). Bad enough to feel so unsupported...but coming from 2 senior women makes it so much worse. And herein lies a big problem - complicity in a patriarchal system which has all the power to punish or reward.
Apols for anecdotal guff but I do think it is illustrative of the depth and complexity of gender inequality and expectations.

 

[eoin_k]

Might want to edit that post campanula in terms of maintaining anonymity. It's all a bit specific...


ETA I appreciate the irony of posting that on a thread about silencing women.

 

[campanula]

Might want to edit that post campanula in terms of maintaining anonymity. It's a bit specific...

OK, done (I think).

 

[eoin_k]

OK, done (I think).

Sounds like a shit position to be in. My mum jacked in a job a few years ago due to managers not having her back in a similarly risky situation.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I’m not sure if this is apocryphal- can someone verify? I remember being told that the Sport/Sunday Sport used to publish details of rape and sexual assault cases as little bite-sized filler around their page three photos.

I remember the way tabloids were full of rape/assault stories next to pics and stories of 'sexy' young women in 70s/80s. Women's names, where they were from, and their ages always appeared in news about rape until the law changed to prevent it in the late 70s. I remember clearly the Sun having rape stories on Page 3, as it made me so angry. I studied newpapers in the early 80s and wrote a thesis about the sexualising of images of women in mass media.

Not sure about the Sport, it only started in the late 80s and I can't say I ever read it, thought the way they marketed it made it look even more trashy than the Sun - so it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Utterly depressing.

Billie Eilish turned 18 and apparently became the most-searched person on PornHub

 

[friendofdorothy]

I had to look up who she was - I do remember reading something now, about she wears baggy clothes and doesn't want to be sexualised or gendered.

Utterly annoying. Porn is used as a weapon to belittle women and keep us in our place.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Don't want to be that person but it's all based on one tweet that nobody else has confirmed so is almost certainly not true.

According to some reports, her name was actually the most searched term on PornHub on her birthday. indy100 has been unable to confirm this, but if it's true it is truly disturbing.

This is not to say that there are not people who have been trying to sexualise Billie Eilish despite - or likely because of - her determination not to allow that as an artist. I remember a twitter thread that went around a while back with some bloke perving over a random candid shot of her where you could actually see some part of her body (she makes a point of dressing in baggy clothing). This was generally completely shut down in the replies, but there's an obvious motivation of trying to teach her a lesson, how dare she think she's special etc.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

She was probably asking for it. As woman putting herself about in public, she’s got a cheek to ration the male gaze. She cant have it both ways, she can’t be a famous young woman and dictate how men get to observe her. Patriarchal rights to objectification must be upheld, defended and exercised.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

So the recent display of misogyny on the Gwyneth Paltrow thread has effectively silenced me.

I seem to have hit my limit with this bullshit. Nothing changes, we just keep going round in the same old tired circles.

 

[8ball]

So the recent display of misogyny on the Gwyneth Paltrow thread has effectively silenced me.

You clearly have a different perspective on things, but from my reading of the last few pages of the thread, there were some posters making some very childish jokes, you then pulled them up on it, and were backed up by several other posters, including a mod.