One of the most frustrating things I have found about men and women’s actions, especially in relationships, is that women are always expected to give men the benefit of the doubt, communicate better, and act when men have been poor at communicating.
When women complain that men are not doing their share of the chores it’s always: have you tried communicating that with them? Have you spoken to them about it? Have you given them a list of chores to do? Basically, have you done everything humanly to make it easier for him to do these chores?
I saw another one recently where a woman was complaining that her husband asked her three times when a certain appointment was and she said things like this put the mental load on her and was just draining. Basically every single comment was some variation of telling her she needed to put it in a calendar, saying that he probably has other things on his mind because of work or male-dominated chores (when the oil needs changing, when the grass needs mowing, etc), or basically telling her that he has a job so remembering all of this is hard and she needs to help him. (Or just insulting her.)
Meanwhile, I saw a post where a guy said that his wife always ate his fries when they got fast food so instead of doing anything about it, he hid the fries or ate them before she could get any. The responses? SHE needs to communicate better about what foods she wants in the future. On a different post where a woman was complaining that a man was eating all the snacks she would buy for herself, no matter how much asked him not to and actively hid the snacks, half of the suggestions were that she needed to buy more snacks because he clearly wanted them even if he wasn’t communicating it properly. So women eating men’s food and not asking for their own is poor communication and she needs to communicate better. But men eating women’s women’s food and not not asking for their own is poor communication but women should understand that it means he wants the snacks and get them?
Then when men don’t pull their weight in the household it’s: maybe he’s stressed from work. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he doesn’t know what needs doing. You, at the woman, need to communicate with him about this.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that people still assume that men are working and paying for everything while women remain at home, despite most households having two working adults.
And when the relationship ultimately breaks down then it’s her fault: SHE should’ve communicated better. SHE should have expressed her unhappiness. SHE should have done more. Nothing about the fact that she man ignored her and didn’t pull his weight, only about how her actions lead to the end of the marriage. Because men are always owed the benefit of the doubt and women always need to communicate better.
I'm gonna add to this the part about DV and sexual assault/ rape in relationships: when he clearly crosses a boundary, such as pretending to hit her, she should communicate to him clearly that she didn't like it and that. She should give him the benefit of the doubt that he is just being playful and a prankster and she is overreacting if she feels irritated or scared. But then gets blamed for not taking action to leave him sooner once he actually hits her.
He rapes or sexually assaults her and everyone turns around and tells her to stop overreacting, it was just a miscommunication - on her part. She should do a better job of communicating her sexual boundaries, the very same thing he very likely will tell her. She might not even realize that terms such as sexual assault or rape might be applicable here, since she's been conditioned to analyze and explain away men's bad behaviour. She just needs to communicate better.
I used to believe that. I communicated every way I could that I did not like certain things in bed. I told him afterward, because I froze in the moment - I was shocked. He told me he can't remember these things unless stated in the moment. My then best friend confirmed I should really learn how to communicate better.
Of course he did it again. It took me several times until I was able to even talk the moment he did it. There, I did it, I did the communication, I succeeded at the thing I was failing at that caused him to treat me so badly.
Except it started a negotiation instead, during which he didn't stop. It took several minutes. I felt defeated. Again, it absolutely was because I didn't communicate clearly enough in that moment. He even apologized, with a "I'm sorry, but..."
But now I had done the thing. I had communicated, in the end clearly enough for him to stop, so now he knows that I don't want this. Except he did it again. And when I interjected this time, with a little more courage, asking him why he did it again, he simply said "how was I supposed to know you didn't like it this time?"
I'm generalizing here, because there was more than one thing. Like, one time it was about me pushing him away and him continuing, because I didn't push hard enough, you see, he didn't even notice that. I don't want to get into any further details.
My point is, communication is not the issue. But we all know this.
I dislike the way that people dance around the oppression of women when it comes to conversations about history. Lots of people acknowledge that women were seen and treated as property, but the horror of that experience is rarely conveyed. When teaching about women's rolls in ancient cultures there is always that comment about women not being able to own property, that they were property themselves, and were expected to be submissive to men. But what does this actually look like?
It looks like rape. Like mothers being seperated from daughters. It looks like being forced to cohabit with and serve an owner who will force himself on you and breed you like stock. It is the sadness of miscarriage and the realisation that your body won't hold up. It's mutilation and violence. It's watching the deaths of your friends knowing that none of them lived a truly happy life. It's watching your daughter grow up knowing that she will be sold into servitude and raped until she dies, the same fate you face. In some cases you didn't even have a name.
Women's oppression is the oldest form of oppression, and yet we are still so strongly gripped by patriarchy that there is a refusal to acknowledge what that actually means. We have barely even started earning our rights in the west, and our sisters still face the terror of what I have described above. Women are always one step away from losing everything, and yet the movement meant to fight for women's liberation is being overun by men and misogynistic women. It's easier for them to uphold the status quo than challenge it.
Women need to learn their history, the grim and horrifying reality of it. The truth of our existence under patriarchy. If we don't seek out this truth, then history is doomed to repeat.
Harems WERE female spaces. They were enforced and not voluntary but they were not just where female slaves were kept. Anon's comparison is nonsense, but the responses are as well.
I think you are missing the point here. ‘Women’s space’ means something more than just a place where women are kept, it means politically/socially/economically autonomous spaces created by and for women.
We don’t count brothels or prisons or sex-segregated spaces under patriarchal religions as women’s spaces, because they don’t further women’s liberation.
Marilyn Frye wrote so powerfully about the difference between patriarchal and feminist separatist spaces in her essay “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power.” Check it out if you haven’t read it!
What do you mean you can’t find a job? Have you looked on Indeed? What about Linkedin? You should try Upwork. How about Rise? Have you tried Jobera? Take a look on Dribbble. You GOTTA be on Jooble, dude. Get on Jooble. Jooble has it for you.
"How often have you heard the argument that we have to slowly implement gender and racial equality in order to not "shock" society? Who is the "society" that people are talking about? I can guarantee that women would be able to handle equal pay or a harassment-free work environment right now, with no ramp-up. I'm certain that people of color would be able to deal with equal political representation and economic opportunity if they were made available today.
So for whose benefit do we need to go slowly? How can white men be our born leaders and at the same time so fragile that they cannot handle social progress?"
You do not have nine lives. You have one body, one timeline, one set of years that will not be returned to you for revision. The elderly people who say they thought they would live forever are not being poetic. They are describing a very specific and very common failure of the human imagination to make the future feel as real and as urgent as the present. Your future self is a real person who will live in the body and the circumstances and the consequences of the decisions you are making right now. She deserves better than to inherit the results of your present comfort and present avoidance.
crazy how i find myself thinking i've got a handle on it all finally and then i see the ways that other people tangle their lives together so easily and live so easily together with their friends and i feel like that girl at the top of the stairs painting by norman rockwell
i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
Sophie Turner also said that she was only 13 years old when she learned about oral sex from the Game of Thrones script. Underage actresses were not protected from adult content on set, and the way the writers treated them and their characters raises many questions.
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