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The Forum > Article Comments > Does feminism fail women? > Comments

Does feminism fail women? : Comments

By Mark Richardson, published 31/1/2008

Feminists have never seriously interested themselves in questions of how women might successfully marry and become mothers.

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Mark

Why is it so important that more women partner and have children?

As Fractelle pointed out, we need to consider a sustainable population.

Your article is very patronising, as if women can't make up their own minds whether or not they should marry and have kids and whether they can wear the responsibility for their decisions. Women do know that they have a biological clock, yet you persist in blaming a movement that stands for equality of CHOICE, because of individual mistakes a few women have made.

There are more important issues at stake here, like the Family Court catching up with the fact that more men want to be involved in parenting and wish to have greater if not complete custody of their children - BTW political policy is still dominated by males - ironic that so many fathers feel so dispossessed when the law makers are still mostly men. I apologise for going off on a tangent here, but I want to make the point that while far from perfect, feminism is not to blame for every injustice suffered by men.

I conclude that your article, Mark, is just another (thinly veiled) attempt to knock feminism. Healthy well loved children is what our goals should be and I believe both men and women hold the same ideals.
Posted by Johnny Rotten, Thursday, 7 February 2008 9:54:09 AM
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Johnny Rotten, I avoided this debate because I thought the article that sparked it was neither interesting, intelligent (really, Marie Claire? As a source?) or insightful. Women alone and women and men together have been having these debates for some time now and at a far more sophisticated level than this.

However, I just wanted to say that your posts have been exemplars of common sense, brainyness and native wit. Cheers from this chick.

You too TRTL. As always.
Posted by Vanilla, Thursday, 7 February 2008 12:43:24 PM
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"There are more important issues at stake here, like the Family Court catching up with the fact that more men want to be involved in parenting and wish to have greater if not complete custody of their children - BTW political policy is still dominated by males - ironic that so many fathers feel so dispossessed when the law makers are still mostly men. I apologise for going off on a tangent here, but I want to make the point that while far from perfect, feminism is not to blame for every injustice suffered by men.

I conclude that your article, Mark, is just another (thinly veiled) attempt to knock feminism. Healthy well loved children is what our goals should be and I believe both men and women hold the same ideals."
Posted by Johnny Rotten, Thursday, 7 February 2008 9:54:09 AM

The law makers maybe mostly men Johnny, how ever law makers can be manipulated. I read somewhere where one of the feminist activists, instead of going straight to top, actually targetted the advisors of the lawmakers, with good effect.

Lenore Weitzman published research which had an enormous influence on Family Law and this research was later found to be extremely faulty.
http://www.acbr.com/biglie.htm

See also
Manufacturing Research
http://web.archive.org/web/20050313222440/http://www.nojustice.info/Research/ManufacturingResearch.htm

and "Perceptions are not Facts"
same website.

Johnny rotten you are right to say that not all injustices experienced by men were created by feminist activists, however feminist activists use words like 'social justice' and 'human rights' when arguing for women, yet fail to take into consideration on how their proposals may create social injustice and breech human rights consideration for the other half of society.
Posted by JamesH, Thursday, 7 February 2008 7:51:30 PM
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If Marie Claire won't do, then how about Vivian Gornick, a lifelong American feminist:

"Who could ever have dreamed there would be so many of us floating around, those of us between thirty-five and fifty-five who live alone. Thirty years of politics in the street opened a door that became a floodgate, and we have poured through in our monumental numbers, in possession of the most educated discontent in history.

Yet, we seem puzzled, most of us, about how we got here, confused and wanting relief from the condition. We roam the crowded streets, in naked expectation of a last-minute reprieve."

In tracing this fate, Gornick recalls the time that she,

"discovered the promise of revolutionary feminism; and then the loneliness that came with what I took to be independence – turning it quickly into a political position ..."

She filled the gap in her personal life with work:

"Work … had come to seem everything. Loving a man, I had decided, would never again be uppermost in my concerns."

The effort failed:

"The only important thing, I told myself (again), was work … If I worked, I’d have what I needed ... What would it matter then that I was giving up on “love”?

As it turned out, it mattered ... As the years went on, I saw that romantic love was injected like dye into the nervous system of my emotions, laced through the entire fabric of longing, fantasy and sentiment ... "

As for autonomy and choices:

"what I was calling my “choices” weren’t really choices at all, they were simply the impulses of a conflicted being: one of them had to be acted upon. And thus, more often than not, after I had “chosen” I’d end up feeling stranded, confused and disappointed; surprised it was turning out this way; and as shut up inside myself as before – neither free nor independent. Ah, there was the rub. Not independent."

http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2006/09/silent-apartment.html
Posted by Mark Richardson, Thursday, 7 February 2008 9:19:27 PM
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Cheers Vanilla, JR. Right back atcha.

All those comments, mark, there was nothing stopping that person from finding someone and settling down except themselves.

But that was their choice. They can claim they were duped all they want, but if you don't have the conviction to go for what you want, well, that's your fault and nobody elses.
If you haven't got the choice to pursue a career however, well, you haven't got the choice. Better to have the opportunity to make the wrong choice, than not have the option at all.

That pretty much sums it up.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Thursday, 7 February 2008 10:37:47 PM
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Feminist Rosie Boycott realises her type harmed men, but she doesn't care
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=512550&in_page_id=1879

"For the feminist movement, this is not the sort of victory we envisaged at all."

On another blog is how marriage has become a lose/lose proposition for men.
http://loseloseprospect.blogspot.com/

Sam DeBrito in All men are liars blog wrote;

"It doesn't take a genius to work out that a woman who is judgmental, critical and whining whilst single - and has a whole planet-worth of men to castigate - is probably gonna to radically focus her displeasure when she has one localised, all-too-flawed husband to concentrate on.

And you've had no takers for the position, Laura? Wonders never cease."

So the lack of suitable male partners seems to be a world wide phenomenon.
Posted by JamesH, Friday, 8 February 2008 7:17:27 AM
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