Yes... women are womansplaining to men about being victims of patriarchy... because we have no idea what that's like.
Pro tip: literally all of this is rooted in misogyny and expectations of women to be perfect mothers.
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"The everyday sexism I face as a stay-at-home dad" - Matthew Jenkin, father, explains
- Thread starter galv
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Yes... women are womansplaining to men about being victims of patriarchy... because we have no idea what that's like.
Pro tip: literally all of this is rooted in misogyny and expectations of women to be perfect mothers.
No I mean there are presumably men in this thread explaining why the article writer, a gay father, is wrong about his experiences with fatherhood.
You'll find no disagreement from me here. Society needs to give fathers more benefit of the doubt, and remove some of the expectations of child rearing from women.
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You can complain on the internet all you want if it makes you feel better.
If you are, however, feeling depressed getting unsolicited advice as a parent, you are beyond the pale and should be getting professional help because there is clearly something going on in your life besides the advice. Tying unsolicited advice to shaking your baby is disingenuous at best. I would argue most of those people didn't want to be a father in the first place. Being told how to change a diaper or how to feed a baby isn't going to lead to a father shaking his fucking baby. Get out of here with that Olympian level stretch. All parents get unsolicited advice, male and female.
The homophobic messages the gentleman received were that, homophobic, but getting bad advise from strangers and getting applauded for simple parenting as a father is par for the course. These behaviors change with time, and calling it sexist on the internet will not lead to changes in the behavior. It comes across as MRA bullshit, personally.
"This is bad because it is happening to me! " No, it happens to everyone with kids. What's sexist is the pay gap. What's sexist is non existent paternal leave in most of the US. Getting told you are "babysitting" your child is a minor annoyance at best.
The author is soft as hell. I read this thing a few times to see if it changed my mind and it didn't, especially when juxtaposed against the pictures of a white guy and the whole piece is thick with that privilege.
5£ says there's a daddy group that he could've gone to and that little anecdote about the mommy group actually pissed me off. Mothers are there to support other mothers and connect with women. Like, let them have their space to talk about things that are unique to them, which they might feel uncomfortable discussing with a man around, gay or not.
Did he experience homophobia? Sure did. But to call it misandry and compare that to sexism that women face as mothers? That's a step too far for me. You should be calling out men for being fuck up fathers and propagating the patriarchy before calling women misandrists.
5£ says there's a daddy group that he could've gone to and that little anecdote about the mommy group actually pissed me off. Mothers are there to support other mothers and connect with women. Like, let them have their space to talk about things that are unique to them, which they might feel uncomfortable discussing with a man around, gay or not.
Did he experience homophobia? Sure did. But to call it misandry and compare that to sexism that women face as mothers? That's a step too far for me. You should be calling out men for being fuck up fathers and propagating the patriarchy before calling women misandrists.
Shit described certainly does happen. You quickly learn to give no fucks, not a big deal.
Most places there's no such thing as a daddy group.
Most places there's no such thing as a daddy group.
No, the thing parents in this thread are complaining about is the MRA bull shit. The implicit and explicit notion that only mothers can parent effectively and that men should man up and start being men again or what have you is the MRA bull shit. Concepts like "A woman's place is in the kitchen" is the flipside of "A man's place is to grin and bear it and do the man's job," and other old stereotypes. That is the sexist, chauvinistic platform.
That said, though, I'm not feeling depressed about unsolicited advice about being a parent, and I don't need professional help. If you read my post, and that was your take away, then you need to take 5minutes, re-read a post multiple times, and then reply to it. I also wasn't saying that unsolicited advice leads to shaking a baby, but rather, that the same thing that leads to unsolicited advice is what contributes to the idea that you're espousing: that parents need to stop whining or complaining, buck up because they're not victims, or what have you, and that is what stigmatizes depression and anxiety in parents, and that is a contributor to things like shaking babies (there is good academic research the connection between paternal postpartem depression and shaken baby syndrome)
Your post is needlessly argumentative. If you don't feel comfortable having a discussion about something, instead of just being antagonistic and argumentative, then don't.
Just noticed your edit. Do you not see how these things are tied together? The sexist pay gap, the lack of paternity leave, and the things people are talking about in this thread (whether it's condescending advice, or the person who thought that a father was abducting a child, the general de-emphasis on fathers as parents as opposed to mothers, etc) are all related to each other. The sexist pay gap is partly because women were given reduced places in the workplace which is partly because men were never given paternity leave which was partly because parenting is stigmatized as a place for women and not men, or at least that a woman's role is supposed to be one thing, while a men's role is supposed to be another.
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There might not be one in Nowheresville, USA, but there's a zero chance there's not one in London, where the guys live.
One of the frequent criticisms of MRAs is that they don't actually contribute materially to social work for men, not that the idea of "men's rights" is inherently invalid. Fatherhood is, again, one of the few areas of life where men have more difficulty assuming the role of child rearers because society expects it of women and women exclusively. Nursing is another similar case. So when an actual father is trying to draw attention to real social biases fathers face, accusing him of being an MRA is reversing cause and effect.
Self styled MRAs are typically dog whistling misogynists. Calling the writer "soft" and that he needs to stop whining is ironically part and parcel of why we don't view men as natural caregivers. How do you expect this attitude to change if you won't give it due credit for being a legitimate cause?
Self styled MRAs are typically dog whistling misogynists. Calling the writer "soft" and that he needs to stop whining is ironically part and parcel of why we don't view men as natural caregivers. How do you expect this attitude to change if you won't give it due credit for being a legitimate cause?
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THANK YOU! These concerns aren't an attack on women, they're a critique of toxic masculinity and strictly adhered to gender roles and the biases we end up with from them. The posters that keep calling the couple soft or whiny are only reinforcing their point.
So this behavior is ok and the dude needs to go somewhere else instead of people not treating him like an incompetent jackass?
I don't see it very often, but this seems like some actual real world misandry right here.
You glossed over my main point to believe that I was accusing by you of needing help when I was talking in the general sense. This is what I mean by frailty. Not in terms of gender roles but in terms of the need to be a victim. You jump straight to the defensive when you brought this depression nonsense into the conversation.
My main point is why this came across as MRA bullshit, the gentleman has help and support groups if he looked for them, he's not complaining about sexism at all, just what happened to him, and that makes it disingenuous to me.
Part of the reason this story is even noteworthy is because this is one of the exceedingly few scenarios where there likely actually *isn't* a group for him to go to that's intended for men.
They are in the UK. There are actually father support groups in the UK. They are not in the third world country that is the US.
Hmmm...women try to create a safe space for themselves and MEN wonder why men that go into those spaces aren't treated special or handled with kid gloves. This is your argument? Did you read my first post in this thread?
Women don't owe us shit. It's upto us men to clean up the mess that we created. This isn't some macho bullshit. You put in work regardless of the bullshit you get for being a man and don't expect a pat on the back.
Yeah, I must wallow in my self hate.
I'd actually argue that the hook for this story is that he's gay and expected better treatment because of it since he isn't one of the "bad ones."
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Okay, but the linked article isn't talking about support groups, nor do I think that the author of the article is asking for support groups. He took his baby to a sensory class. He just happened to be the only father there.
He took his child to a safe space for women and wasn't treated special.
I don't really feel any sorrow for the guy, I am sorry. Those are the kinds of things any reasonable person would take on the chin with the understanding and empathy of why these spaces are created.
Essentially, I agree with Power of Sparda.
You are being disingenuous. Must have glossed over the part when they were at a restaurant and the person said
Mind pointing out where it was specified that he took his daughter to safe spaces for women? Reading the article made it seem like he took her to regular places.
Basically, some receipts would be nice.
All I see is you misrepresenting the original article repeatedly to diminish the guys experience.
It needs to be said that homophobia is rooted in patriarchy as much as sexism, because it is based on the disgust conservatives (both men and women) have for men operating outside the norms prescribed for men, one of which is being the stay at home parent of a two parent household.
Criticizing him for trying to draw attention to the ways our patriarchal culture stifles either sex is unreasonable. He's actually personally upending the social expectations of the heteronormative nuclear family. He, and fathers like him should be supported, as much as we would support women who reject the expectations of being mothers in modern society.
You can't neatly separate social issues into the piles of "isms" and "ias". It's all interconnected.
Criticizing him for trying to draw attention to the ways our patriarchal culture stifles either sex is unreasonable. He's actually personally upending the social expectations of the heteronormative nuclear family. He, and fathers like him should be supported, as much as we would support women who reject the expectations of being mothers in modern society.
You can't neatly separate social issues into the piles of "isms" and "ias". It's all interconnected.
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edit: scratch that. He talks about mommy/baby groups and complains about there only being daddy groups on weekends and how he felt excluded from groups he thought could help him.
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God if anyone had tried any horse shit like this when I was out with my baby I woulda lost mah damn mind....
How are people so fuckin invested in other people's lives? Like who even cares about some family with a kid. Move the f along...
How are people so fuckin invested in other people's lives? Like who even cares about some family with a kid. Move the f along...
im quoting this because its so fucking true.
I've actually made dates for my wife to go out with her friends because she wouldnt do it at first. She of course would let me go anytime i wanted to go to like an astros game. And im not babysitting my own fucking kids, so patronizing when people say that shit about dads.
I don't think that infant sensory classes are intended to be specifically spaces for women. Viewing spaces pertaining to childcare exclusively as places for women is part of the problem that the article is talking about.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's going into spaces designated specifically for mothers and asking to be treated like he's special. He's asking to take his baby to a place where parents take their babies and be treated like a competent parent.
way to totally miss the point, at no point did his post equate at all, getting unsolicited advice with the cause of depression. FFS.
my wife had post partem dpression after both of our kids. She's a PhD, licensed and certified therapist, i think she knows just a little about depression. Her depression has 0 to do with any advice she got from anyone.
That was my point, though. That getting depression from unsolicited advice is unlikely and there are likely other problems you are dealing with.
again, your missing his point go back and re-read his post. His point was your post comes off as very much part of the stigma of depression, "if your depressed, suck it up and deal" if that's not your intention thats how your post came off to me as well.
Amen!
lmao too many truth bombs.
yeah, he's full of it. Meetup.com was suggested to me and there were Father's groups on there. If for some reason he couldn't find one in the city of London he was free to create one. I'm sure there's like-minded fathers in that city full of people.
That is in no way sexist. The waitress was attacking them for being a gay couple! "Two (gay) dudes can't take care of a kid, where's the woman?". If my brother and I were at the restaurant with my son, that waitress wouldn't say anything.
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I disagree, do you believe that if it was 2 gay women they'd get a similar comment?
Yes, from a bigoted homophobe. "That young feller needs a father!"
No, my post was if you are depressed, get professional help. But the depression is there (underlying), and won't be triggered by dumb advice by strangers.
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In my experience society is much more accepting of 2 moms than 2 dads but agree to disagree I suppose.
