#yesallwomen

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The culture is different between married people and people who have children. Everyone has sympathy for mothers and children. There's far less sympathy for single men. If you're single and male, your career is all you have. You're on your own. It's hard to appreciate the "freedom" of being single when you're not an extrovert with vast supplies of energy to go out and socialize in the limited time you're not working, shopping, commuting to-and-fro, or sleeping. If you need a lot of time to rewind and de-stress after going out, you don't have much time left for going out and doing things to meet people.


Well, people who are single, disabled, live alone, and don't have money, generally don't get to see the nice side of the world. It's all about individual survival.


I have an issue with feminists being so contentious and combative. I don't look around seeing women in misery everywhere I look. Most seem pretty happy. The majority aren't alone and ignored and left to rot on the street. I agree that things aren't equal and fair for women, but why can't we try to deal with all the people living in misery before we focus so hard on making everything equal and fair? The priorities of the ranting people just seem off.

Marshall you are mistaken, as a single parent of 4 kids I can tell you I have no time, no energy, no money, no friends, no sex, no sympathy. At least you can have a poo without toddlers banging on the door! Be a bit more greatful for what youve got and less victimy. People are much more horribe to single mothers than single men, a chap here called me someone elses half eaten dinner.

People DO work VERY HARD on solving the issues of individual misery. But despite many valiant efforts, a situation like yours cannot be improved through political solutions, or even debate and argument. It only gets solved when the right person manages to find you, reach out, provide the perfect message that you are able to grab onto, and bring you into the right fold that will meet your needs. Or when you see an opportunity to reach up and make it happen for yourself. Plenty of people DO make it their mission to provide that hand or those opportunities, but obviously there still aren't enough and, even when applied, the action is not usually by itself enough, because many times those living isolated and unhappy have built so many layers of self-defense it can be impossible to break through the layers and change anything for that person.

You can't create or join a movement towards changing that because the reasons for it are extremely wide and varied.

But you can have an effective movement trying to get men to see and understand the issues women face.

Not to mention, just because women may appear less unhappy to you, does not mean that they are. Perhaps women are better at moving past their pain; we're designed to give birth, after all. We've got pretty strong survival instincts.

It is not all unrelated, in the end. You have a better chance of having a woman willing to reach out and try to break through when she feels safe in the community around her, and safe with you. If we can create a world where women don't have to live in fear of men, you will see them engaging more often in work that benefits men. I will always know that pretty much any man can physically overpower me, so the only potentially offsetting factor would be being able to feel trust that he wouldn't hurt me if I try to reach out to him. We don't live in a world where I can have that trust towards a man I don't know, and all you have to do is read the news to understand why. Much better for me to stay in my mini world of moms, kids, fathers and co-workers. It is a personal safety issue, unfortunately.

So. We've talked a little about your personal situation, but what are your interests and hobbies? The more you can be a part of a community, any community, the better chance you will have of feeling supported.

Do you love your kids? That's something to live for. People tell me to "love myself". That just seems narcissistic to me. I'm tired of fighting for myself. It's pointless. It's empty.

The reason is very simple. It's called capitalism. It's also the reason so few people have time to do anything that would really make a big difference. It isn't any single individuals fault for not working hard enough. It's the whole damn system. The whole culture. I really don't have any hope for civilization. Sorry. Have to call it for what it is. We as a species are doomed. I'm not a hopey/faithy person. I'm not interested in lies. I'll try to find a reason for myself to keep going, but fixing humanity is beyond me.


I don't see modern feminism doing much of anything. They'll all cheer when exactly 50% of the CEOs of the fortune 500s are female, even though they had to become just like the male sociopaths in order to get there and don't actually give two s**ts about starving single mothers.


Comparing subjective grievances is pointless and you brought it up, not me. Fact is, if the majority of women aren't clinically depressed 90% of the time they are probably happier than me. It could probably be demonstrated with a brain scan. At this point you're probably going to tell me I'm choosing to stay depressed or some nonsense. Save it. The truth is depression will hurt me the same whether I choose to express an opinion that isn't cheery and full of rainbow farts or not.

Marshall, I thought we were talking about generalities, and the general population of women v. the general population of men, not how you compare to 90% of women. That doesn't seem like a fair comparison for the broad statement I thought I was talking to.

I'm not going to offer you any fake happy rainbows. I know you are in a difficult situation and feeling depressed. You, as one individual, is a different discussion than the state of humanity, who should be debating what, and what issues we should have on the front burner as a society. It gets tough because we're kind of flowing from one conversation to the other without me realizing the target in the conversation has changed. I apologize for that.

I don't know how to change things for you, but others who read here might be in a different situation and maybe I could give them some ideas that might change things for them. Who knows. I just wish I had answers for everyone. I throw things out there and hope for the best, but much of what we deal with here is beyond what I can figure out. We all just keep trying to learn together, right?

Take care.

I wasn't comparing the general population of women to the general population of men. I was comparing the general population of women to the portion of the population that's isolated and suffering because of it.


I see a lot of very socially isolated and unhappy adults posting on these forums, both male and female. Like to count the number of suicidal posts in the Haven? Social isolation is a big problem, but it gets ignored as irrelevant. It's one of those "first world problems". It isn't put on the same level as shelter or clean drinking water. Why not? Because bitching about unequal pay in the top income brackets is a more hip topic. Maybe less women become investment bankers because they're superior to men. Women make less money because less of them are selfish and greedy, which should be a good thing.


That's fine. I don't expect you to know. I'll be honest. I've been derailing this thread because I'm currently annoyed with internet feminists who keep arguing with me on another site over the most asinine BS. It doesn't matter if you agree with them on 99% of the issues, they pick at the 1% and call you an enemy for it. They're almost as stubborn as right-wing randroids.


You too.

Which means the problem is ignorance. Is that correct?

If I am, then the first step is to accept the idea that they may be laboring under faulty assumptions.

Second, once they do this they need to check what assumptions are sound and if any are unsound then revise or ditch them.

Think of it in terms of systems.
Here's all these women in your neighborhood living in a system that goes like this: Woman functions as domestic slave; husband provides all money and status, and provides quite a bit of both. All those women in the neighborhood were busy doing the same things. Upkeep of the house/yard to a standard that wouldn't embarrass; fulltime childrearing including all school/medical/camp/etc admin necessary; cooking meals husband will like; laundry service; social-calendar keeping; party-throwing; bill-paying, maybe; family-coordinating; arranging things the way husband will like. All mothers look after all children in this circle.

Your mom is not part of this system.

Now here comes your mom waving money. By definition, it's pin money. But these ladies don't need one woman's pin money, and are not interested in that sort of independence. Suppose they were, though. Suppose they took your mom's money and took you guys on, on your mom's schedule, and allowed your care to interefere with running their households, and pissed off their husbands.

Don't you think they had more to lose that way?

Suppose they got together one day at the pool and started talking about how your mom really did seem to have it made, bless her heart, and how they were sick and tired of their husbands' demands and independence was what they wanted, only too bad they hadn't gone to med school. But they did know how to do childcare, so there ya go, instant childcare business:

Problem: Money in childcare is tiny if you're actually taking good care of the children. It's a lot of work, a lot of legal exposure, and very little take-home. Why? Because by definition, so long as it's a private service rather than a tax-based service, it can't cost more than a small fraction of a professional's take-home pay. And all of a sudden you need adequate square feet per child, mandated caregiver:child ratio at all times, nutritionally adequate food, programs that don't consist of planting the children in front of TVs, supervision if children leave the premises (no more running around the neighborhood), and a list of other things aimed at ensuring the children don't come home maimed or in small boxes. You're going to do all this in the house your husband probably doesn't want turned into a daycare.

Problem: How many of the neighborhood ladies are going to be owners? Or are they all going to compete for the not-much-money?

Yes, "they don't have money" is a problem, but your mom waving the green was not their solution. Incidentally, running a home daycare is a usual way out for stony-broke divorcees and widows with no training and young children of their own. It doesn't get them far. A medical or fin degree, on the other hand -- you can do something with that.



Again fine, but if you're going to do all that, do it for more than min wage or you'll never get anywhere. You can't just think "get money", you have to think about how, its costs, returns, and how possible these things are for most.

I think one of the most influential pieces of legislation in this regard was probably the one that allowed married women to apply for credit in their own names, and without their husbands' permission. I don't know how you're supposed to start a business without a credit line.



Link to that law, please? I have trouble imagining a law like that working mechanically...on its face, actually, it looks more like a union-pushed or anti-age-discrimination law than anything else. Because this is what people do, they want a young guy who'll work his nuts off for no money, so they go with him rather than the person who's got the advanced degree and sixteen years' related experience. And it's going to be very hard to avoid the perception of age discrimination that way, it's not as though you can say "Cody brings a fresh new perspective" without implying "and Sam is a freaking dinosaur who still listens to Bon Jovi on the way home."



I'm not sure of that. My dad was pretty involved. He didn't complain much, though.[/quote]

Good on him. It's also possible he had less to complain about. Your mom wasn't doing an easy thing.

A lot of guys are in a similar situation. They don't control their income, and their work enriches somebody else more than it does them.



Again, that's the situation that most Western men are in today - not just the 'working class,' but also the 'professional class.' I remember looking at my options sometime in high school and realizing that every course being suggested to me would put me at a leverage disadvantage. Both sexes have internal hierarchies that aren't fair. In my case, I went without work for a prolonged period of time to build skills that would give me better leverage (which nobody was offering to teach me), which got me portrayed as a 'loser.' The only other option was to resign myself to just the sort of dead-end track that those women didn't want to be stuck in.



The situation where this makes the most sense is when both 'professionals' work, so you have perhaps $140,000 to $500,000 in total annual income from which childcare money can be drawn. If the parents don't want to pay for quality care for their kids at that point, then don't serve them. That's a culture problem.



I still mean to reply to your original post about this elsewhere, but I keep being site-tracked by threads like these. In general, I support paying for all quality work, and that includes domestic work.

I might support a government stipend for stay-at-home parents in place of expanded parental leave, simply because it's hard fill both roles well. (That said, there are plenty of jobs that could accommodate leave of a few months to a few years.)

The problem with that is the same one that we have with schools: Everyone wants to indoctrinate their kids. Creationists are one example, but there's also pseudoscience and selective history on the left. Deciding what portion of childcare expenses serve 'public good' would probably be divisive.



Where were women banned from borrowing? Was it the banks that refused, or a statute prohibiting it? It's definitely hard to start without a credit line.



The law is called the Women's Economic Security Act. The conference committee report is here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF2536&version=0&session=ls88&session_year=2014&session_number=0&type=ccr



I may not be the best person to bring this up to. I understand that boomers are peeved, but I don't think that they have it any worse than I do. It may be better in other parts of the country, but baby-boomers in Minnesota have run our state colleges and universities like an old guild system. You have to pay your dues ($50,000-$100,000) to compete for good jobs, and you still have to cope with an advancement system that's seniority-based rather than merit-based.

I don't think that people should be pushed out of their jobs simply because young workers are cheaper, but one of the reasons that those younger workers are willing to work cheaply is that they have college loans to pay off. Another is that their housing costs have been kept high. Both of those expenses go to pay older landlords and school employees. Boomers supported laws that kept those costs high because it served their short-term interests, reducing competition for their jobs by requiring expensive credentials, and propping up their real estate investments.

I'm sympathetic to your comments about domestic slaves, but I also have my own generation of indentured servants to think about.

More like prejudice, a refusal to see what is really because it is easier to believe what they already do, as it makes everything the women's fault instead of their own. In my experience, for most of the men I am thinking of, they aren't going to accept the idea that they are laboring under faulty assumptions because they don't want to.

Thankfully, not that many men are like that. Those that are are just more vocal, so they seem more prevalent than they really are.

If they believe their own faulty assumptions as truth then where do they derive these fallacious assumptions from? How did they come to believe these assumptions as truth?

Why do some people continue to believe their own assumptions when logic or empirical evidence may prove the contrary to be true?

I have details missing. For me, if I know I have faulty assumptions I correct the assumptions to understand things better. Why wouldn't others? If it turns out that you're right in our discussion about society in the other thread, then I will alter my position. If my reasoning is fallacious I will want to know where I'm fallacious, why and I will alter it.

Why wouldn't others do so? Why do others stick rigidly to their beliefs no matter how fallacious, contradictory or detrimental they are?