The reason you women are scared is because sex is the only power you have over a man. If you think women are desperate to get married right now with the current marriage strike that this generation of American men are on, just wait until they can have a girl who is a perfect ten in looks, does everything and anything they want, never gets old, and shuts the fuck up with the push of a mute button on a remote.

I guess its not uniquely female anatomy

Most western countries have long ago made it illegal to discriminate in job selection on the basis of gender. If, under those circumstances, women have not yet taken up more stressful leadership positions or most of the most horrible jobs that men are still willing to undertake, then that will have a lot to do with women’s own choices and priorities. Stop complaining and instead manage your own careers if you really do want to die in a mine or in a company boardroom.

Speaking of naughty terminology, we are at the point in some companies where we could refer to the “broadroom”, but we are much further away from needing to coin terms to reflect any female presence in mines and sewers.

Exactly! I can’t think of a better way to hurt somebody than to dangle love in front of their face and then rip it away because of something you already knew existed. So when you “come out” as a political lesbian, aren’t you just a hetero who hates that you want sex with men? That’s not fair to the lesbian you’re pretending to be attracted to. Let’s call a spade “a spade.” Political lesbians are really spite lesbians.

As a mother, how would you work toward improving men’s (and society’s) views of motherhood?

Where to begin… Actually, I think this is more a capitalist issue than a sexist issue. Countries that have worked motherhood, and fatherhood, into the tax code don’t seemingly hate it. In a capitalist economy, it’s worthless. It can’t be quantified with a monetary value.

My husband decided to take out a life insurance policy once we had our daughter because he is our primary breadwinner (half of my salary goes to daycare and the rest to family/Ellie activities). I asked him if I should take out a policy too…but there really isn’t a policy out there to replace my value as mother, wife, laundress, chef and ego-fluffer. I don’t resent any of these jobs. But my country does. The United States sees me as practically worthless on paper.

I think beefing up paid maternity leave makes sense. We punish working women who elect to have babies. If they’re part-timers, their jobs aren’t protected and they can claim a disability wage but no pay during pregnancy. Three months leave for full-timers is a joke. I am lucky that my husband makes a solid income, but I don’t take this for granted. I had an amazing first year with my daughter and only recently put her in daycare two days a week (I’d previously worked from home). My employer has been loyal to me throughout. This is certainly not the norm. Many women can’t afford childcare and work outside the home, and they’re stuck. So, as capitalists would see it, not only did they not make “enough” money to begin with, they now earn nothing. There’s just no profit margin in motherhood, I guess.

I can’t do anything about how people perceive me in my role as mother; I’m probably doing a lot of things wrong, according to some. I think the best thing I can do is love my daughter and love being a mother. I do. That love is great PR, no?

I generally find motherhood to be a reviled and degraded position outside of the liberal upper-middle class.
I don’t disagree with you here. That’s why my wording (I have decided that motherhood is the ultimate privilege of women…) stresses my own inner definition of motherhood, something that I know many women and men regard as loathsome. And yet, cultures are full of mother-worship: the Virgin Mary in the Christian religion (plagued with other issues for women, I know – see “The ugly truth about Mary”) or Durga in Hinduism (who even dominates the first three days of Navratri, happening now); actually, most Hindu godessess represent the sacredness of motherhood. Sure, motherhood can be used to enslave women – it does put us in a vulnerable position, physically and emotionally. But I love being a mother, and I love being a woman. My feminism starts from here.

Two of your “hates” are relevant, I think: menstruation and unwanted pregnancy. That’s biology and, mostly, we can’t do away with it without medical intervention. But your other “hates” (threat of rape and disrespectful treatment from men) are status-related and that’s what we want to eradicate, no? So you don’t really hate being a woman, per se; you hate being a woman in a male-centric culture. Is that more accurate? If we didn’t have these threats to our safety and were generally regarded as equals, wouldn’t we love being women as much as men love being men (or we assume they do)? As for menstruation and unwanted pregnancy, yeah, I agree…they suck! But I wouldn’t want to deal with nocturnal emissions or voice change or shaving my face every day or random erections, etc. either. (GEEZ – you couldn’t pay me enough to have a penis! I prefer my neat and hidden lady bits, thank you!)

It’s difficult for me to find things in common with most radfems since they have all these rules: no sex with men, no motherhood, no menial labor – and certainly no stay-at-home labor, no make-up or revealing clothing, etc. I don’t want to ask women to follow my rules. I think that’s what men have done forever…so why elect a supreme class of radical women who get to tell other women what to do?

As for your specific situation, I agree that you should live your life in a way that feels natural for you. I’d hope that my traditional “femininity” (ha ha! – not a given) and your traditional “masculinity” would keep us on the same team: the let-us-women-be-happy-and-diverse-too team.

–I read your blog again and saw you support eradicating gender roles as well. Sorry for my misunderstandings above. I do feel the need to clarify my preferences and show how I think, but I now understand we’re fully on the same page regarding gender roles. My apologies…I should work on reading more before I rush to comment. If you want to edit what I wrote above, go ahead. I definitely don’t think you’re being the same as rad-fems and didn’t even above, so I shouldn’t have asked the question. I just got hung up on the language.

–US privilege is a big old joke. We live in a corporate kleptocracy, and our citizens are being sold to the highest bidder. In our country, the corporation’s rights reign supreme over our own. If this is such a great, privileged nation, why are we so low on the list when it comes to health, infant mortality, distribution of wealth, and equality for women? US privilege is just another means to get more people divided and angry at each other.

–Dworkin is on another planet. Just because she was abused by men doesn’t mean her views are the universal truth. It’s insulting to insist that any woman in a heterosexual relationship is subjugated and unaware of it because rad-fems hold Dworkin up as truth. If you want to see something extra-scary, try arguing with a self-loathing male who lectures you, a genderqueer, pansexual ciswoman, that you’re self-loathing and self-subjugating for watching porn or championing sex-worker rights.

I have had that conversation with those types of men, and I always finish with the old “If you don’t want to watch porn, have heterosexual sex, or fight for sex worker rights – DON’T! But QUIT policing everyone else because of some academic text you read and took as fact.”

–Political lesbians…yes. I’ve dated my share of women who could only get between the sheets when drunk enough not to care that I don’t have a penis. I think some of them wanted to be bi because “bi is cool,” and others wanted to be welcomed into the “cool lesbian fold” and get jiggy with the politics. I need all the allies I can get, but please, not at the expense of my feelings, and not at the expense of my health, when I find out you’re concurrently getting busy with a long line of men you haven’t told me about. That’s just not fair.

Dating women who are lesbians because it’s cool or political is just about the worst. It’s exactly like dating a gay man who’s trying to be straight because he thinks it’s the most socially acceptable thing to do.

–As a mother, how would you work toward improving men’s (and society’s) views of motherhood? As someone not cut out for motherhood, I might not come up with the best solutions, since I’m not in that role, though I’ll say that universal healthcare, daycare, and a social safety net will go a long way. And should be a MINIMUM requirement to start, The stats on how poorly this rich first-world country fails in maternal health and infant mortality is just too damn telling.

The MRAs scare me most on this issue. They seem to be calling for female genocide, and even those who aren’t, view women as giant inconveniences who they have to “put up with” to get sex. I would love to see prostitution legalized mostly for the health and protection of the prostitutes, but also so these MRAs could just get their rocks off and go away, instead of tricking a woman who wants a husband and family into thinking they support her.

However, I took exception to a couple of the things you posted.

You wrote:

“and they also claimed that being a born woman comes with no privileges in and of itself, hence the constant use of the term male privilege. (I have decided that motherhood is the ultimate privilege of women; and even if one can’t physically give birth, serving as a mother – step-, caregiver, etc. – is a privilege of our sex because it is an endeared and exalted position amongst our class.”

I generally find motherhood to be a reviled and degraded position outside of the liberal upper-middle class. It’s seen as thankless work, and we hold most mothers to impossible standards we ourselves can’t attain. We love the “bad mommy” trope, and the news is filled with examples of “bad mommies” for the world to see so we can all shame them. Deadbeat dads don’t get the same scrutiny. And if you want to see how little guys think of their mother-wives, watch how hard men howl in protest when they have to pay child-support or alimony after a divorce. Many guys don’t think what you’re doing is work.

I would therefore say that men have inherent male privilege because they don’t have to guard against motherhood, rape, and STDs that cause cancer when they have sex. And they never need take on a role that is largely reviled or regarded as thankless work that should not be compensated, outside of the liberal upper-middle class. Conservative men view pregnancy and motherhood as just punishment for sex. Why do you think they are working so hard to take our abortion rights away?

You wrote:

“I think that being a feminist and also hating being a woman cannot coexist in one body. Ergo, you either learn to love your womanhood, or you give up your claim to feminism. This is one reason I welcome transwomen into the fold: hey, you want to be a woman, more power to ya!”

I take exception to this definition. I hate to pull out the “you just don’t understand” card, but people who stick to one gender role and are happy in it don’t understand those of us who don’t and aren’t.

I hate several aspects of being female, including:

•menstruation (painful and, to me, disgusting – and many other women agree. We’re just not allowed to admit we hate menstruation because the women who find it a spiritual and beautiful experience accuse us of hating ourselves. We don’t. We just hate being in pain and passing blood “down there” for days. Pretty simple.)

•the threat of pregnancy (I would never want to go through that, and all the solutions to ward it off, condoms excepted, ruin my health, as would pregnancy, so I generally just avoid P-in-V with bi men I date. Oh, and the lovely expectation that every woman is dying to have hundreds of babies that docs still share? Please. Treat me as a person, not as a fertile womb.)

•the constant threat of rape (happened to me once, and I was victim-blamed while he got off and was cheered)

•being treated as a sex object rather than a person by many men I meet, and being hated by women because they think I’ll steal their man (Neither gender knows I don’t date straight men, and if they were worried about it, how about an honest conversation? Nah, that’d never happen. Ha!)

•Just generally thought of as lesser (less competent, less trustworthy, less rational, more hysterical, more emotional, more demanding and nagging, more deceitful, and I could go on) because men and women both have more confidence in males – as friends, as co-workers, as bosses, and so on. I am the reviled, mistrusted gender. The typical female gender role also encourages that my gender act lesser and get less in return. Why do you think women’s magazines want us to focus so much on makeup and pleasing men? The media keeps sending us the message, over and over again, that this is all we’re good for.

So while I might look femme, I’ve taken on a lot of male roles in my life (breadwinner, bill-payer, non baby-haver) and communicate in a way that is considered unfeminine and threatening (direct, assertive, eye-contact). I feel like a non-defined gender, and I often leave the “gender” part blank on forms. The female one doesn’t suit me, but society’s expectations of a male don’t suit me either.

Genderqueer people are seldom understood in society today, and no one knows what to do with them, because they don’t conform to gender-role expectations. I work to fight gender roles. But I like myself just fine. What I don’t like is the typical female roles or behaviors I am expected to embrace.

But my shorter point is, if someone like me has to renounce their rights to feminism simply because they find many of the female biological and social roles to be horrible fits, and don’t find the “woman” label to be entirely accurate, then aren’t you doing similar to the rad-fems who assert that transwomen and men can never be feminists? (“Not my Nigel.”)