Mother of Invention

Y’know, sometimes when I have worked myself into a blinding rage about the way that some men behave towards women, I do my very best to inflame the situation further. I’ve actually been known to wonder to myself:

“Do these blokes have mothers?”

That just makes more incensed. Because the obvious answer is that they do. And yet, their attitude to women just plain stinks. I often worry about the mothers of these men, thinking that perhaps their home was not a very nice place to be. I can’t imagine what it is like to be surrounded IN YOUR OWN HOME by men who think they are better than you and who minimize your contribution at every turn.

Of course, let’s not assume, however, that mothers are necessarily feminist. I know from my experience with mothers (other than my own) that in fact they are not always so. And surely one of the roles of mothers IS to teach our children (regardless of gender) that they are wonderful. But we must also teach them that they are responsible, and have a duty to consider the views of others.

But it’s one thing to have a genuine debate on gender roles and the changing nature of our society. It’s another thing entirely to:

- degrade women for the sake of their gender

- imply that women have got to where they are just by sleeping their way to the top

- hold only women responsible for the shifting patterns of parental work

- justify your abuse and assault of women on the basis that they stepped outside the narrow bounds that you have “set” for them (like you have any right to do that in the first place

I’m not going to link to any of the web sites which do exactly what I’ve referenced above, just reading them for myself was infuriating enough and I won’t inflict it on you too.

As the mother of a boy, this is something I worry about every now and then – that the son of a feminist turns out misogynist in order to rebel against his mother.