"Notwithstanding Latham's ebullience for stay at home dads (otherwise known as SAHD's), as he acknowledges, only 2 percent of men adopt this role, which means that 98 per cent of men are not the primary carers of their children."

What a charming display of illogic! Does this mean that if both parents work, that neither of them is a SAHD or a SAHM, then the child has no primary carer?

I wonder what this 98% figure would look like if we excluded from the sample families where the mother has kicked the father out of the family unit, or where he never got to be part of it at all. If 98% of fathers are not the primary carer of their child, in many cases they have no choice in the matter.

Latham had testicular cancer, we're told. And could have been "mentally" affected by the drugs he needed to take for the pain and or nausea!
And given a successful outcome, a virtual miracle family to be treasured?

I've always thought of Mark Latham as a quite brilliant if "eccentric" Richard head! With Richard shortened to the lessor dick!

Given his history, an obvious alpha male/butch, and all that goes with it?
Including the very best, most effective labor opposition leader we've had since Gough Witlem!

Fundamental flaws seem to include an alleged problematic attitude to females; and an ability to gravitate to other equally implacable left leaning leaders?

Hence the election killing deal with Bob Brown's Greens!
All of which points to extreme intelligence; but no practical pragmatism or plain old fashioned common sense!

Compounded it would seem, by his often fiery rejection of feminism; apparently normal in a butch male/very caring, stay at home dad!?
Rhrosty.

Strange, isn't it, how according to many a social commentator, such as Mark Latham, feminists are the source of all things bad for our society?!

I wonder if he has given a second thought to just how difficult things were for women, and their families, in the 'bad old days'?

I remember women often suffered with what was labelled a 'mid-life-crisis' after their children had grown up and left home. After all being a primary carer, with little opportunity for occupations outside the home, what would you expect?

I remember workers often spent a couple of hours in the pub with their mates and came home drunk, sometimes staggering.

Sometimes women organised the family finances and gave their husbands an allowance but more often than not, women were given 'housekeeping' money from which they bought all and sundry for the family. This often meant little was left for themselves while maybe turning a blind eye to extravagances like having a bet on the races.

I think you had to be there to know just how bad things could be for women. My mum had to get permission from my dad to have a hysterectomy, something that would be seen as primitive today.

Like Petra says, women value care and that's why they cop all kinds of disadvantage.

The breadwinner model of the family is archaic and we're moving into a new 21st century model. Our institutional framework needs some serious alteration to foster, rather than hold back progress, and people like Latham need a brain transplant.

don't know much about Lathams views however its hands off any criticism or challenge to 'feminist'. They want the right to high paid Government income, have their kids paid by Government income, choose to have a dad or 2 mums, play the victim and then blame the system if their way of doing things fail. Latham may have it 'wrong' but Petra certainly ain't got it right.

It's always interesting to hear men of the Left denouncing feminism - especially when, theoretically speaking, the Left is supposed to be the side of politics that is all for social equality. It's fun to watch them trip all over their own hypocrisy.

At least men of the Right are more honest about their entrenched belief in the innate superiority of the male and that women were put on this earth to be men's unpaid servants, cooks, nannies and playthings.

Right or Left of politics, women can't keep assuming that the only way to equality is via men's approval. Both sides of politics make a national sport of shaming and blaming women for failing to live up to their fantasies of what a woman should be.

Runner, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with Latham's views before you make uninformed comments. Pointless being part of the discussion otherwise.

Some interesting observations Killarney.
There are more women In Australia now then men. And as such, and the majority, elect governments!? No?

As the longer living gender, they now own more property, have more money in the bank and hold the majority of shares?
As majority shareholders, they ought to be able to influence board and CEO appointments! So why aren't they?

The biggest road block in the path of female progress are women.
Various surveys have most women preferring to work under men, rather than an entirely and eternally unreasonable butch females, capable of holding a catty grudge, and acting out on it!

Examples of women at the top include, (off with her head) Queen Elizabeth 1.
Iron Lady Margret thatcher, and our own Julia Gillard, who aroused hate; and from other females in particular, who found the quality of her voice grated to the point of madness, on their nerves.

Nor was the most vicious attacks coming from motor mouth shock jocks; but across the isle, in the person of Julie Bishop!
Who made many a cat claw gesture, to underline her willingness to fight!

I would have thought a more conciliatory, less attack dog attitude, would have advanced the cause of women; instead, as seems the usual case; putting them back years, and to the detriment of my daughters!
Rhrosty.

Killarney, it's not a Left/Right divide.
You're right about the progressives but wrong about the traditionalists, traditionalism is "the other Feminism",traditionalists put women on pedestals and seem to view them as morally superior to men.
I wonder if you've met many real patriarchs, the guys who work twelve hours a day so that their wife can play tennis, socialise with her friends and shop to her heart's content, I meet them all the time.
I've never met a man who expressed the view that women are inferior to men, it's usually expressed in terms of good women and bad women,virtue is a masculine quality, a virtuous woman is someone who is the equal of men and I hardly think the term needs any explanation.
There's also a difference between "respected" and "respectable", a woman might be a promiscuous criminal but still be respected by men because she's resourceful,loyal and reliable.

Women get great lives in Australia.

They go to university more often than men, study longer and get better qualified than men. They work for less years and take more sick leave, work closer to home in safe jobs that don't require much physical discomfort. They get to decide if they want 'their' children's father in their lives all the while comfortable in the knowledge that if they decide to 'move on' the state will coerce money from the father plus add additional tax payer money (the majority of which comes from males) to it. When women get older usually well before 50, they get to decide that they are 'tired' and opt out of full time work and often just retire anyway. Of course women actually live 6 years longer than men anyway.

Then to top it all off they get all the professional whiners carrying on constantly about how hard it is to be a woman.

I never though I'd say this but.... I.agree.with.Latham. Left-wing feminism is a terrible, corrosive form of mental illness. It has done untold damage to our society.

I think I could sum up my last post with:

Women have endless choices; while men are expected to work until they drop.

If feminists were really interested in equality they would ask that the retirement age for women be raised to 70 or even 72.

Women live longer, healthier lives than men but work less. Men retired 5 years later than women for many decades. Surely, it is time for men to receive some social justice.

This article seems to suggest that women who have children are victims because they have to juggle two choices and are not being helped by society, governments and employers to do so.

Why should they be helped any more than women who want to juggle work with some other activity? The choice to have a child is a purely selfish choice and there is nothing wrong with making purely selfish choices but that does not mean that some selfish choices are more deserving of assistance than others. If I want to juggle work with improving my golf game then should I also not be given help from my employer, the government and society?

Women have been crying foul about this ever since they obtained the freedom to ‘have it all’. There is nothing wrong with having the freedom to juggle two options but that does not entitle you to help so you can have more of your two options than anyone else. Everyone who makes a choice by definition eliminates other options. If you make a choice to juggle two things then you eliminate the possibility of being able to enjoy them both to the extent you would if you chose only one. It is very unfair to your fellow citizens and colleagues to expect them to carry the burden for you of the consequences of your choice to juggle two things. It is also very arrogant to suggest your particular juggle is more important to you than anyone else’s juggle is to them.

Seems to be some bitterness out there.

It sounds like you don't have children phanto - is that right? I don't think it is controversial to say that people who don't have kids - don't get these kind of responsibilities. I'm guessing your parents aren't elderly yet, or have you been responsible to care for someone who needs serious attention?

Sure, people can chose to attend to the requirements for care, but that's the thing - these people are seriously disadvantaged.

What do we as a society value - golf - or people?

But more than values - children become doctors, teachers, managers, CEOs - whatever - children invent new futures - a lot more than can be said for golf (or whatever other hobby you might chose).

Joannie:

My personal circumstances are irrelevant. My arguments need to be judged on their merits.

“What do we as a society value - golf - or people?” A scientist may say that for him to work at his peak he needs to spend a certain amount of time on the golf course. It may be the difference between him finding a cure for cancer or not. His golf could contribute to saving the lives of millions of people.

“But more than values - children become doctors, teachers, managers, CEOs - whatever - children invent new futures - a lot more than can be said for golf (or whatever other hobby you might chose).”

Children also become terrorists, dictators, murders, thieves etc. so that argument cannot be valid.

And the tribalists go on,nappy-slinging and bra-waving.

Joanne,

'Seems to be some bitterness out there.'

Do you mean like when someone becomes the Prime Minister of the country, the highest elected office in the land, and leader of the government but then blames 'misogynists' for her failures?

There is no one more bitter than a left wing feminist.

"At least men of the Right are more honest about their entrenched belief in the innate superiority of the male and that women were put on this earth to be men's unpaid servants, cooks, nannies and playthings" says Killarney.

But of course Killarney, & we know we are right, as we have so many ladies, present company included, confirming our belief, daily.

Rhrosty

‘I would have thought a more conciliatory, less attack dog attitude, would have advanced the cause of women…’

Sigh! Men don’t make passes at gals who are tough-asses.

Or in other words: ‘Be nice, neat, polite, look pretty and shut up, and then … maybe … we big benevolent men might think about throwing you girls a few crumbs of from the equality table.’

Jay

‘traditionalists put women on pedestals and seem to view them as morally superior to men’

Which is the most insidious and controlling form of sexism that men can possibly inflict on women.

‘… the guys who work twelve hours a day so that their wife can play tennis, socialise with her friends and shop to her heart's content, I meet them all the time.’

There have been gold digger femme fatales and spoilt, pampered women for as long as there has been a patriarchy. The big question is: Why do men keep marrying them? And the big answer is: Because they want a trophy wife to make them look sexy and successful.

Hasbeen

Your latest comment to me firmly endorses exactly what I said about right-wing men. Right, Mr Honesty?

Sigh...

Both sides act as if home duties are still an 16 hour a day occupation when most homemakers spend a maximum of four hours a day on chores, there's no way home duties can be compared to a full time job these days, if it is wearing you out you're doing it wrong.
This is why we have "helicopter parents" and "social justice warriors", the middle class stay at home/work from home mums and dads don't have anything better to do with their time but attach themselves to stupid causes,interfere in the orderly running of society and bother other people who have real jobs like school principals, for example.

Jay,

I couldn't agree more.

If I manage to get a day off work for some reason and make it down to the local mall on a work day, the first thing I notice is that it is full of working age women and retired men. The women often have gym clothes on, are sitting down chatting over coffee, or standing around talking after bumping into a friend.

Women get such good lives yet all we ever hear are complaints. Since this article there have been another two articles published on OLO alone. One about Afghan women (as if Australia women have anything in common with Afghan women) and another on women's superannuation. I haven't read it yet but it's probably claiming that women should get more money for less work again, all in the name of equality.

Orwell couldn't have made this up. Feminism really is a mental illness.

Dane, if feminism is an illness it's obviously caused by attitudes like yours. Can't fathom you believe the tripe you spout. Do some real research. See who holds most of the money and power in our society. Not women.

Jay and Dane,

Here's a little joke for you ...

A husband came home one night and found the house looking like the aftermath of a battle zone or hurricane - furniture upturned, food all over the floors and walls, broken crockery and ornaments everywhere, clothes all over the place, curtains torn and pulled down ...

Fearing the worst, he went running through the house calling out to his wife and children - only to find them happily sitting on the bed reading a story.

'Oh, thank God!' he said. 'I didn't know what had happened. I thought you had all been murdered or kidnapped!'

'Oh, no. We're fine,' she said.

'What happened then,' the husband asked, shocked and puzzled. 'Why does the house look like it's been completely ransacked?'

His wife sweetly smiled. ‘Well, darling,’ she said. ‘You know how you come home every night and ask me what did I do all day?’

‘Yes,’ said the husband.

‘Well, today I didn’t do it.’

Linden,
Men don't hold any power, the state and it's institutions and to a lesser extent large corporations constitute the power structure in Australia.
Because of the way society is ordered men who seek individual power or to set up autonomous power structures are automatically classed as troublemakers and outlaws then demonised and suppressed.
The idea of the constitutional monarchy or "English Republic" is to keep power in state hands and not to allow individuals or even the monarch to exert influence or create a following or cult of personality.
Feminism isn't a mental illness but it's a pretentious affectation and amounts to little more than status signalling for social climbers. In an age when everything from playing computer games to transvestism and religious fanaticism is now named an "identity" it's no wonder that Feminism has become just another line in the "about me" section of blogs and social media pages owned by freaks, shut ins and lonely cat ladies.
There probably are liberal Feminists still about but their voices are drowned in the surf of pop culture and the idolatry of weirdness and dysfunction pervading social media,meet Chanty Binx, like it or not she's the face of Feminism on the internet and the internet is where most people live now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVuK44kWgxk

Having watched these online struggles over gender issues and other contentious topics (AGW and atheism being the most obvious, but there are some others)with some interest and having participated myself with some vigour in the past, I'd like to offer some of my observations below.

1. It is indisputable that these types of topics are of passionate interest to some people. On every online discussion venue in which discussion of contentious topics is allowed, they attract a consistently large relative number of comments, many of which are obviously the product of a fair degree of preparation.
2. The people who participate in these discussions are usually a small subset of the subscriber base of the site and each topic has its 'usual suspects'.
3. The comments, notwithstanding the obvious work that may go into them, are usually rehearsing well-trodden paths and it is quite common for new commentators or unfamiliar comments to be ignored.
4. The topics share a common presentation as some form of dichotomous moral/ethical problem, so they rapidly revolve to in group/out group displays with no chance of any meeting of minds. If my argument is that your view is inherently immoral and yours is the converse, the discussion has nowhere to go.
5. The topics share the feature of having some genuine significance within the broader community, but little widespread interest.

So, having regard to the above, I'd really appreciate it if some of the participants here and possibly the author, if she is monitoring the site, would mind taking the trouble to think about and respond to a question.

Why do you do it?

This is not a question about your case, whichever side you might argue, it's about you. What motivates you? Is it just a game, perhaps a display for friends or colleagues offline? Or is there more to it? Have you considered different approaches, such as a cooperative effort to come up with mutually satisfactory solutions that might actually work? Do you have any ideas about how to break the endless deadlock?

I would be really interested in your answers.

Craig.
For me it's a game or a pastime, I usually work about 30 hours a week and don't have any friends or a social life so I've got plenty of time on my hands which needs to be filled.
I meet loads of people in my business activities but as a result of having to maintain a professional demeanour at all times I've never had a conversation in real life in which I was able to match wits with another person, to verbally joust or debate points of view so the internet gives me that opportunity.
So, no I do it purely for myself, not others and I don't use social media like Facebook or Twitter precisely because potential clients might read what I write and assume that I actually hold those views as convictions or beliefs, in real life I agree with whoever is holding the cheque book

Jay, that's a pretty poignant comment, which I suspect may resonate a little with lots of people for whom the 'net has become the major mode of social interaction. Thank you for being so candid, perhaps it might give some others the lead in sharing their own stories. Do you mind expanding on the reasons you find yourself in the socially isolated position you describe?

I found your comment struck a chord with me. I had a fairly unpleasant few years after a pretty nasty divorce and I'm afraid most of my friends found reasons not to maintain close contact after copping one too many earfuls of my misery. The 'net was a lifeline for me at that time, and like you, I relished the chance to hone my argumentation and rhetoric, which as it happened stood me in good stead in dealing with legal and bureaucratic matters. 10000 hours and all that...

What a waste of time!

Craig,
I'm married with kids and I have numerous business associates so I don't feel isolated at all, I just don't have any friends or a social life, that's down to me being perceived as a blunt, intolerant jerk most of the time.

Jay, given my earlier observations about the futility of these endless reiterations of stale topics which are nonetheless significant and with the benefit of your own experience and knowledge, do you have any suggestions about how the discussions might better be pursued? It seems to me that the discussions here reflect a situation within the wider community that really needs to be addressed.

It extends to politics generally, unfortunately, with discussions of political matters in the media and emanating from the parties often more reminiscent of schoolyard class elections than what might be expected of the people we trust to lead us. Silly talk of promises takes the place of debate about priorities; public bipartisanship is so rare as to be noteworthy instead of being the default as one might expect when all sides are acting to come to an optimum solution to genuine problems. Among the public political discussion has degenerated to sloganeering and assertions of dislike for specific political figures (it's rare for anyone to express a liking for anyone), all of which is based on nothing more than a shallow perception of personal interest driven by an even shallower media.

What can we do about it?

Great to be constructive otherwise why bother. A good place to start is to go back to the original article with this in mind. If any of you would seriously like to have the life of the primary caregiver, why not have this discussion with your partner. If she can get back into the workplace she may happily do so and you can experience the life up close and personal.

Joannie,
Been there, done that and worked a 40 hour week on top of it, being a full time homemaker is an easy life for either sex but an unequal division of responsibilities and chores when both partners are working full time as well is obviously unfair.
The other point is that running a home with children in it gets easier as they grow older, it's intense at first but from the age of ten or so they can take on simple chores and a few years on from that they are capable of cooking a meal, cleaning, gardening etc.
What's noticable is that the status of children within the family has also changed, they used to be our employees, now they're the bosses in many households with the parents working flat out to please them, running them about all over town and so forth.
Back in the day my brother, sister and I would have to do all our chores before we were allowed to ride our bikes the two miles into town to see friends or go to the swimming pool, Mum and Dad were just too busy to run us around.
That's what I meant in my earlier post about people making a big job of an easy lifestyle, if you make your kids help out, if you don't submit to their every demand and whim then with today's labvour saving appliances it's possible to get all your housework done in a few hours and have most of the day free.
Heck it's not even necessary to go shopping anymore, you can order your groceries online, get a standing order every week or even get pre made meals delivered if you can afford it.
Not to mention robot vacuum cleaners, combination washer driers, microwave ovens, cheap disposable nappies and the seemingly endless list of mod cons available to today's homemaker.

Craig,
I'm only interested in getting to the truth of the matter or as close to it as possible, the idea that patriarchy is an evil or even a worse way of life to any other is untrue, the Feminist depictions of power differentials between the genders or gender as power are also untrue.
I don't see the point in coming to terms with a fallacious set of ideas or trying to synthesise truth and untruth, an argument in which one side is dishonest can't be resolved through dialectic.

Jay

‘Been there, done that and worked a 40 hour week on top of it, being a full time homemaker is an easy life for either sex’

No, you have NOT ‘been there, done that’. Anyone who has genuinely ‘been there, done that’ knows that is an outright porky.

You may have worked a 40-hour week when your children were small, but if you want to argue that it was just a breezy hiccup in your life, go tell that to the fairies. I would say that, almost certainly, it was your wife who worked a 100-hour week to ensure that you could smugly claim to be a 40-hour week hands-on parent.

As she is married to a man who dictates that ‘feminism is a mental illness’ and that if she feels exhausted by parenting, she must be ‘doing it wrong’, I assume that she dare not complain.

Craig

As you can see from the above, you can leave me out the touchy-feely group hug. I’ve got ironing to do.

Craig,

Feminists have realized that the way to get resources flowing in their direction is to control the narrative (which they claim the right-wing elite has been doing for millennia). The dominant narrative is one where society sees the social arrangements as natural, normal, or unremarkable.

If you perceive all things as 'narratives' then there is no such thing as objective truth - just competing narratives. Thus, if Jay or myself were to use evidence to point out that housework levels are at their lowest level in human history then our data is dismissed as an attempt to impose our narrative, or to use fem-speak to 'privilege' our narrative. Feminists can dismiss any science that doesn't conform to their views in the same way, hence the epidemic of 'advocacy' research and journalism rather than fact-based investigations.

So bottom line, if you can't even agree on what constitutes a fact then you can't cooperatively work toward solutions. Sadly, feminism is one of the dominant narratives in Australia so I post here in the hope that moderate people will start to see how they are being purposefully manipulated (by both sides of the aisle).

P.S. There was a great article on "a voice for men" today by Jim Muldoon showing just how these narrative favors the mother who dropped her baby in the sewer

Killarney, I'm so sorry you perceived my questions as some sort of facile psychodramatic therapy session. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I've watched you and a few others here go round in circles for years and many of your counterparts on both sides in politics and especially media do the same. I am hoping to offer a way out through mutual cooperation, which has been shown to be the way that works best for all parties in a competitive situation. Business and Government has known this for years, which is why there is anti-cartel legislation. Robert Aumann and a couple of colleagues won the Nobel Prize in 2005 for proving it mathematically.

Let's face it, school kids know it instinctively and so do you and I and everyone else, but it requires and at the same time creates, over time, trust. Someone has to be the first to offer that trust (turn the other cheek as someone once famously said), hence my posts.

Bear in mind that Aumann's work showed another type of equilibrium, which is the one that has evolved into the current deadlock on so many of the topics I've already mentioned and that is for there to be no cooperation at all. The thing to bear in mind is that this type of equilibrium is the worst possible outcome for both sides and lasts only until one side's resources run out, then another stable condition you might have heard of arises - totalitarianism.

Check out Aumann's work if you like (it's easy to follow and very, very clear) but before you do, check with your own common sense.

However, it's entirely up to you whether you wish to take that offer to cooperate in creating a trust, rather than fear-based equilibrium; nobody can make you do anything here.

Your choice.

Jay, dialectic is the only way people who behave dishonestly can be convinced not to do so. People generally only act dishonestly because they erroneously believe that it is in their own interests to do so. Often, what is perceived as dishonest is not, it's simply a product of cognitive biases derived from misperceptions.

Stev, you should take the time to read Aumann's work, as well as that of Daniel Kahnemann on behavioural economics if you haven't already done so. These are the best ways I've found of making sense of the maximally sub-optimal equilibria that dominate our post-Marxist socio-economic structures.

What I'm trying to achieve is a reinstatement of a sense of common purpose - a fair go for all to make a fair go of their life. Some of the richest people in our world have come to understand this as a necessity and it's time that the rest of us did too.

Craig, I'm very familiar with the work of Aumann and Kahnemann and I don't think they hold the solution you seek. Economists (and game theorists) typically take individual preferences as given, sociologists do not. Google 'habitus' and 'social construction of preferences' to learn more and get back to me.

Stev, it's great that you've read Aumann and Kahnemann, I wish more would.

What you say in regard to the difference between economics and sociology is quite true and was well observed by Wilson in his great book Consilience a few years back. He made the observation in the form of a lament for lost opportunity and a hope for a greater role for cross-disciplinary integration of ideas.

The social construction you refer to is an emergent feature of the dynamically complex iterative system which is human interactions in groups. All of the great social organisational models have been attempts to impose order on the chaos of human interactions by constraining the limits of variability in one way or another.

Aumann's work shows that the only way for that to work is to produce maximally optimised stable outcomes is for people to cooperate and Kahnemann's work shows some ways to encourage people to do that.

If sociologists are not able to come to terms with that, then they will continue to fail to understand why they continue to fail to construct the outcomes they predict.

Craig, the game theory models you cite do not consider that one player can change the preferences of another thus their (and your) conclusions are suspect n my view. It is also very dangerous to believe that a player is just ignorant about the opportunity to cooperate. Manipulating preferences is a very conscious strategy.

Those with a progressive bent believe they can change preferences to achieve a 'better' distribution of resources. Conservatives are concerned that the unintended consequences of such changes might actually harm society in the long run. For instance, no fault divorce might create an incentive for men to not marry, a 'marriage strike' as some have called it. Also, take a look at the MGTOW movement.

Latham is arguing in this vein when he calls the demonization of motherhood a hoax because it constructs a narrative that work is good and parenting is bad. He constructs a counter-narrative that stay at home parenting is fun and desirable, which elicits a backlash from those seeking more of society's resources for women.

It would be nice for both sides to admit that some women (people) choose to stay at home and parent and some prefer to work but this doesn't help to establish a dominant narrative that changes social resource allocation.

Your personal narrative is problematic to me because you cast the process as a simple misunderstanding rather than a pitched battle over who will control the dominant narrative and thus the allocation of society's scarce resources.

Killarney, I take it you're not married.
Read the posts again, I worked full time as well as doing all the housework, the shopping and caring for the kids from the afternoon until they went to bed, with all mod cons it's easy, anyone who says otherwise is making mountains out of molehills....but try doing it all and cope with a wife suffering severe depression who spent her downtime from work in the fetal position on the couch and get back to me.
Furthermore I said that Feminism isn't a mental illness it's a middle class conceit and a way to signal one's social status, in my world and the world my teenage daughters live in the term "Feminist" is tantamount to an insult, Feminists are people who think that they're better than everyone else.

stev

‘Feminists have realized that the way to get resources flowing in their direction is to control the narrative …’

Well, there you go. That in itself is a false narrative.

As with all social justice movements, feminism challenges the pervading narratives, and that includes challenging the language of control. ‘To challenge’ is not the same as ‘to control’.

Also, feminism being a money/resource grab is another false narrative, created to discredit feminism by stripping it of its social justice credentials.

It’s also interesting that housewives worked for NO pay for many centuries and still do – the equivalent of slave labour in any other context. The economies of every country in the world built up a primary dependency on the slave labour of women (about 40-60% of GDP). Thus, it’s easy to create a false narrative of feminism as a money grab, when the real narrative is that feminism is putting a monetary value on work that was historically exploited as slave labour.

Craig

Demanding ‘trust’ is the prerogative of those who inhabit the dominant party in a conflict of interests. Always has been, always will be.

In the distribution of power across the genders, men have always called the shots and made the rules. Still do. So it’s only natural that they feel comfortable about demanding ‘trust’ from women, not the other way round.

Jay

I am at a disadvantage here, as I don't know the truth of your situation. What I would query, though, is your wife’s depression.

Depression and mental illness is very common among mothers of young children - the isolation, the lack of sleep, the exhaustion, the feeling that motherhood is undervalued, the 24-hour demands of babies and toddlers, the lack of privacy, the feeling of not coping, the loss of financial independence, a career gone off the rails and many other debilitating factors such as hormonal imbalances.

When so much of a woman's social identity is bound up in being a mother, it can all become overwhelming if she feels inadequate to the challenge or if she lacks family support, as many women do in these socially alienated times.

Some women find a great respite from all of this in going back to work (I certainly did). Others find the added burden of outside employment too much to bear.

However, if you dismiss feminism as a ‘mental illness’ or ‘middle class conceit’, you are dismissing one of the few sources that women can turn to in making sense of the tumultuous emotions that motherhood engenders in women living in this society. Feminism raises women’s consciousness about the system they live under and how it affects their sense of self.

Don’t write it off so contemptuously.

Stev, I think I see the problem. You're concerned with trying to understand a deterministic mechanism for specific interactions, where I look to understand the way all of those interactions combine to produce outcomes over time.
That is the nature of emergent behaviour. Both are needed to create a full understanding, but the reductionist approach cannot hope to be comprehensively predictive.

For example, to take the topic of the original article, feminists have been advocating change to social structures and constructing narratives about that for decades with the quite explicit aim of enhancing the lives of women. What has actually emerged, however, is a social structure in which women are forced to choose between things that they are intrinsically highly motivated to do, like having children, and things that they are extrinsically compelled to do, like working so the mortgage on the family home can be paid. As a result, the feminist focus has shifted to compensatory mechanisms like paid parental leave and childcare funding among many others.

The conflict between the intrinsic and the extrinsic is something that sociologists must come to proper grips with in the same way that an engineer must understand the relationship between stress and strain in order to create a structure that may be relied on to stay up.

It is an article of faith in the social constructionalist model that cognition is able to modify perception so completely that the narrative you mention is all that is needed to create a new structural form. That is a mistake.

Killarney, I don't demand trust, I'm offering it. You see, trust can't be demanded, only obedience can and obedience is a pretty poor substitute. It is to be hoped that trust will be repaid with faith, which is the fundamental principle of cooperative behaviour.

As I said, it's your choice.

With respect to your comment to Jay vis a vis a woman's social identity as a mother, why do you think that identity is so strong?

Killarney,
Work was my wife's problem, she's been at home for almost three years now and she's loving it, sure we're only a couple of thousand dollars a year above the threshold for a health care card but she's thriving, she's reconnected with the kids and her mum and sister and is the treasurer of a club.
I think the original poster quoted Germaine Greer as saying "I said get a life, not get a job!", the idea that a life of homemaking is selling women short is nonsense and with modern conveniences the drudgery traditionally associated with that life choice is all but gone, women can even study and take courses from home or run a small business of their own, such as online retail.

Craig,

I'm not talking about specific interactions. The dynamics of a game are predicated on the players understanding the game they are playing. Is it a prisoner's dilemma, is it a battle of the sexes, etc. Those seeking to control the narrative seek to manipulate the payoff matrix to make people think they are playing a different game. OMG, this is a crisis, do something. MORAL PANIC!

"feminism challenges the pervading narratives"

Thanks, Killarney, for conceding my point about narratives. Of course, the first step in trying to build a successful narrative is to paint all other narratives as false and use pejorative terms like 'slavery' and 'control' when referring to them. Oh, and be sure to cast your own narrative in heroic terms by throwing around words like "justice" and "liberation".

Naturally, the notion that men and women throughout history might have both had it tough is way too prosaic. For instance, what was the time between full male suffrage and full female suffrage in the UK? Centuries? Decades? No, 10 years!

And then there is that inconvenient fact that women lived 2-4 years longer for most of the 19th and 20th century. That hardly seems like the masters were lording it over the slaves does it?

Stev, what you're describing is a one-off games theory approach, in which we make our choices without regard for anything other than the immediate outcome. The "narrative" is no more than an attempt to construct a game with a specifically biased set of outcomes that happen to suit the narrator. It never works for very long, because human beings form a dynamic system that interacts in complex ways (including creating narratives of many different, conflicting types) to produce emergent outcomes that none of the narratives may have been designed to achieve and that none of the narrators regard as even close to optimal.

In other words, the games iterate or repeat over time somewhat recursively, with the outcome of one game influencing the way that the next one will be played. If I find that you act in an untrustworthy manner, I won't trust you next time and so on. In that environment there is only one possible optimal, stable way for us to behave and that is to be trustworthy and to cooperate with each other to help each other achieve our aims.

The thing is, this tells us nothing about what our aims should be, so it is important we are clear about what we really want, or we end up with the endless waste of the Cold War; stable only because of the threat of MAD, and all resources being used to shore up an equality of threat instead of equality of opportunity.

In my view this is precisely the position we have within much of the sociopolitical discussion and perhaps most evident in the gender area.

Don't be a party to it. We can do better.

Craig, I'm very familiar with repeated games. I find you are somewhat fixated on games with solutions. Check out the literature on hawk/dove games with more than 2 players. There is no guaranteed equilibrium. Whether hawks or doves dominate a population depends on the payoff structure. If one can control perceptions of payoffs then you can control behavior (at least in the short run).

However, I concur with your general point that single shot games change players' behavior when repeated and often lead to unanticipated (or unintended) consequences. Men going on a marriage strike because of the punitive nature of no-fault divorce and custody laws would be an example. As you point out, the way out of these impasses is cooperation, but this can only occur when both sides can agree on standards. Standards of value, standards of evidence etc. but the whole postmodernist project is based on rejecting standards.

I don't know if you have been following the UVa/Rolling Stone case in the US but an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Zerlina Maxwell was entitled “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims,” but after tons of Twitter mockery, the headline was changed from “automatically” to “generally.” See the strategy of the narraristas - who cares about the evidence, who cares about the standard of innocent until proven guilty, who cares about the truth?

If you can figure out of a way to get ideologues to stop strategically misrepresenting themselves then I'm all ears. Perhaps you could start by getting a feminist to define equality - would that be equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Try to nail them down on which one they mean.

Going back to the original article, if a woman chooses to stay home then that's her choice right? Oh no, that's not the outcome we want, she must have false beliefs planted by the patriarchy so it wasn't really a free choice.
"But I feel I made a free choice."
"No, you didn't. Sit down and shut up".

And therein lies the problem...

Stev, the propensity for hawks and doves to evolve is precisely why I refer to needing to develop a better way. A multi-partite game is soluble if every player is committed to resolution of every other player's problem. In other words, if there are no hawks or doves, or if being a hawk or a dove automatically leads to a maximally sub-optimal outcome for the hawk or dove.

A schoolyard example is that of the bully. If everyone allows the bully to exert her power unchecked, then each of her victims suffers. On the other hand, a bully confronted with a staunch group of potential victims is faced with a choice of either taking them all on or backing down, neither of which is a good outcome if you happen to be a bully.

The British Commonwealth exists where there was once a British Empire because the British recognised the alternative was total defeat and were smart enough to negotiate a mutually satisfactory (even if less than optimal to an Empire) outcome.

There is no Spanish or Dutch or Portuguese Commonwealth because they weren't.

Jay

'Work was my wife's problem, she's been at home for almost three years now and she's loving it ...'

Ooooh! That makes me go all goosebumpy!

Yet another woman has come to 'understand' that real happiness lies in being little more than the sticky glue that holds the family together, and that misery lies in pursuing her own financial independence and her own professional goals and dreams.

I guess you are too far gone to ever hope to see that your wife had little choice about where to find her 'happiness'. Many women find themselves married to men who are SO hostile to any prospect of a woman finding fulfilment outside of catering to the needs of her husband and family, that they will fall into line with the lifestyle their husband wants for them - not so much because it's what they want, but because it's the line of least resistance.

As I keep saying, a woman married to a man who sees feminism, i.e. the politicising of women's experience and the monetary value of motherhood, as a 'mental illness' or 'middle class conceit' can find no middle ground in terms of matching what she wants with what her husband demands. No wonder your wife hit the couch every night when she came home from work.

Craig

Sorry, mate, but you really are a bit of an intellectual bore. Stev seems to have some confused idea of what on earth you are going on about (or at least pretends to). But I doubt anyone else here does.

You can either decide to continue being an intellectual bore or stop being an intellectual bore.

It's your choice.

Stev

'Thanks, Killarney, for conceding my point about narratives.'

Aha! Yet another false narrative - i.e. telling someone they have inadvertently agreed with you when they actually haven't.

The basis of your false narrative is that whatever a feminist says is a false narrative and that, if you point out that their narrative is false, then whatever counter-argument they use to prove the truth of what you claim is their false narrative must be, in itself, another false narrative.

Cool. After all, you are a howling anti-feminist and that is the basis of all anti-feminist narratives

Killarney, I'm sorry you find my discussion with Stev difficult to follow. I'm sure if you think about it a bit you'll work it out, but I'd be glad to try to answer any questions you might have. There's not much that can be done about the boredom factor though, it's a pretty dry topic.

It's a lovely Sunday morning and I'm off to enjoy the cool air and the birdsong.