We Should All Be Feminists

A modicum of statistical literacy? you mean like perhaps the report put together by the Office for National Statistics?

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/understandingthegenderpaygapintheuk/2018-01-17


Anyway I'm off to negotiate that pay rise based on all the statistics and studies that women made up just to get a bit of extra cash.

Here's some more clearly misleading statistics which were published this week by House of Commons Library (it references the ONS report as part of its evidence base). It focusses on the gender pay gap and not the more complex issue of equal pay - which, largely due to a lack of transparency amongst employers, is more difficult to quantify.

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN07068

That would thoroughly screw up any discussion about Donald Trump.

Not an echo chamber, just some informed intelligent people talking based on facts. 


Contrastingly, I had a very productive chat on twitter yesterday with an acquaintance who first doubted the gender pay gap, who then listened, read some articles and said he'd gone away informed. That, is how the grown ups do it. 

I've read plenty of articles across the spectrum, as well as the actual reports and analyses (I work in a research institute with statistics so I have to). Do not assume people with a different opinion are automatically less informed. Intelligent people taking based on facts eh? If you do say so yourself.

I have been considering starting a change.org petition for a 9pm curfew for men. If there are enough signatories the issue will have to be debated in parliament. Who knows we may even get them to pass a law. I think we should at least try it for a month. Can you imagine, a whole month with the men locked in after 9pm and us women free to roam the streets, parks and public spaces of the UK stress and hassle free. In the future we could have this extended to asking men step down from all positions of power - just for a trial month. Bagsie artistic directorship of the NT. Bring it on.

In the utopia I envisage men will never have to come to our aid because there will be enough protection in place. This is all a temporary measure you understand, giving men time to reflect upon and address the deficiencies that have brought the world to such a sorry pass. All the decent men will be deployed in the reprogramming of the weird ones.

I think the "outrage" comes from the fact that your proposal to deal with this issue is to simply enforce a different form of discrimination more than anything else.

I'm going to start this off by saying that I'm not getting at any particular person when I write this, or even any particular discussion. It's a difficult post to write, and I've no idea who will have been the most recent poster when I submit it. (There's one woman here who thought I hated her because I posted something immediately after she did and she thought it was directed at her. I tried to explain that her post hadn't been the last one when I'd started writing, but I'm not sure she ever believed me.) This particular post has taken well over an hour. I'm not even entirely sure what point I'm trying to make yet.

As I revealed last year in a similar discussion, I've been a victim of abuse myself, for about two and half years starting shortly before my fourteenth birthday. It's been difficult. But it was years ago, and although there are some things I was forced into that I still can't talk about, even to myself — the very thought of putting them into words gives them a power I can't face — for the most part I've recovered.

But the thing I find most distressing — the thing that means I have to take sedatives in order to sleep several times a month — is that as far as many women are concerned I'm treated as an abuser, not a victim. The sexual abuse was many years ago. The emotional and verbal abuse from women who really ought to be on my side happens almost daily. It's something I can never put behind me. It's a ceaseless torment.

Every time women treat the issue of abuse or sexism or feminism or anything else as a men-against-women thing it's basically telling me that what happened to me doesn't count. A year ago I was told in no uncertain terms that I wasn't allowed to have my own opinion of how I should best handle the abuse I myself suffered because my opinion wasn't woman-approved. It sometimes felt like I was being berated for daring to step on their turf. I suspect some of the women didn't even bother to read my difficult admission, as not listening to what any man had to say was very much the order of the day.

I can't put into words how much pain it causes me whenever any woman attacks "men" as a generic concept. It's not just the comments themselves: the very knowledge that there are many women out there who think of me as The Enemy and think they are right to do so causes me an immense amount of distress. The sexual abuse I suffered was at school and my abusers were other kids; they didn't have a full understanding of what they were doing, and knowing that has helped me to accept it. But all the people here are adults, and they bloody well should understand the implications of the things they say and do.

We all know that the way women were treated in the past was a disgrace and that although things are improving there's still some way to go, but it's vitally important to make sure the right target is attacked. Indiscriminate bigotry towards men isn't standing up for women's rights. It's beating up a kid who spent two and a half years having unwanted cocks shoved in both ends of him and doesn't even get to call it rape because legally it can't be.

Some people here seem more concerned with attacking men than with making things better for women. That needs to change. Because if your behaviour results in a child abuse victim needing sedation to sleep then you're not one of the good guys, no matter how much you justify it to yourself.

Hello lovely people. I'm going to write a proper "this is my life experience as a trans woman" thing when I get a moment but first I want to respond to the curfew thing.

When I was in my third year at university, I acted as a mentor to some of the first years who had attendance problems and who were slipping behind on their work. There was one particular boy, or should I say, young man, who was very clearly suffering from depression and it impacted his ability to complete his assignments and revise for his exams. It took me a while to get him to speak openly about his problems but it became apparent that he had very low self esteem, and found it distressing to go on social media because of nasty comments that he would find on there. A bit more digging revealed that it wasn't specific targeted abuse, he'd look down his Twitter timeline for example and see tweets like "men should just die" and "men are trash" with upwards of 20,000 likes each - many of which came from feminists and supposed social justice activists thinking they were making a bold progressive stance - and he would feel like each of those people were speaking specifically to him and had a whole army backing them up. When he walked through the university campus, he assumed that every woman automatically hated him for being male unless they proved otherwise. It eroded his self-confidence and he found himself unable to function because he felt so heavily berated because of his arbitrary characteristics that he lost sight of the point.

I'm gonna be honest, I was quite possibly one of those "eughhh f*** all men" types before I met that guy, but it completely changed my mind. You can never be too kind. You can never show enough compassion. Oppression is a vile thing to experience, believe me I know, but if your first response is to fire that same vitriol you've had shown to you into the faces of people who haven't done anything to you, you're probably not the great person that you see yourself as. Women go through a lot of sh*t, but that doesn't excuse such nastiness. 3 out of 4 suicides in the UK are male, men on the whole really struggle to talk openly about their feelings, and that's just as much because of the "you don't matter" culture social justice has created as it is the fault of other men. If when a man tells you that he's struggling your first response is to a) tell him why his problems are irrelevant or b) say "yeah well that's just patriarchy so it's your own fault anyway" then you need to take a step back and consider that maybe you need to show that same kindness you wish somebody had shown you when you needed it. Be kind, always.

Matthew, you're beautiful and amazing and if I could give you a hug right now I would. Anybody who tells you that you have something to feel guilty for for as a result of things beyond your control is an idiot. As a fellow sexual abuse victim, I will always have your back, and you are incredibly brave for speaking out