The NationStates Feminism Thread IV: Fight Like A Girl!

[The Blaatschapen]

That's a very specific percentage. 74% rather than 75%

How come?

It's easy, look at what page number you are on, then look at the total number of pages, then calculate as a percentage. Tbh I'd want to read that extra few pages to get it to 75%.

Overachiever

[Sundiata]

Indian Supreme Court rules that unpaid homemaking constitutes work and adds economic value, recommends fixing a notional income

For reference on how big this for women in India, in 2011, 159.85 million women stated that “household work” was their main occupation.

It's about time, really. This sort of policy should be commonplace the world over.

[Rosmana]

Indian Supreme Court rules that unpaid homemaking constitutes work and adds economic value, recommends fixing a notional income

For reference on how big this for women in India, in 2011, 159.85 million women stated that “household work” was their main occupation.

It's about time, really. This sort of policy should be commonplace the world over.

Not that all women have to do this, but it IS a work, and it DOES constitutes work and adds economic value.

[Sundiata]

It's about time, really. This sort of policy should be commonplace the world over.

Not that all women have to do this, but it IS a work, and it DOES constitutes work and adds economic value.

Yes, yes. And it would also open the option for mothers to fully dedicate themselves to homemaking. Even fathers if they so choose.

[Rosmana]

Not that all women have to do this, but it IS a work, and it DOES constitutes work and adds economic value.

Yes, yes. And it would also open the option for mothers to fully dedicate themselves to homemaking. Even fathers if they so choose.

Agreed, and why is that funny?

[Sundiata]

Yes, yes. And it would also open the option for mothers to fully dedicate themselves to homemaking. Even fathers if they so choose.

Agreed, and why is that funny?

It's just not something you see often, a stay-at-home dad. Still, to tend to the needs of the household, it's better that one parent stays at home as opposed to neither.

[Rosmana]

Agreed, and why is that funny?

It's just not something you see often, a stay-at-home dad. Still, to tend to the needs of the household, it's better that one parent stays at home as opposed to neither.

Well, my brother in law does it, and it does not make him any less of a man.

Not saying you are saying it does though. LOL

But agreed!

[Sundiata]

It's just not something you see often, a stay-at-home dad. Still, to tend to the needs of the household, it's better that one parent stays at home as opposed to neither.

Well, my brother in law does it, and it does not make him any less of a man.

Not saying you are saying it does though. LOL

But agreed!

Yes, yes. Personally speaking, I would prefer for my wife to stay at home with the children. If not, the both of us.

However, if one of us had to professionally work, I would prefer it be me. More leisure time for my wife.

[Des-Bal]

Yes, yes. And it would also open the option for mothers to fully dedicate themselves to homemaking. Even fathers if they so choose.

I don't know what you think is happening but notional income is money you did not receive but are treated as having made. So if your wife dies you can calculate the lost value of her housework and be compensated. Nobody is getting additional money.

[Sundiata]

Yes, yes. And it would also open the option for mothers to fully dedicate themselves to homemaking. Even fathers if they so choose.

I don't know what you think is happening but notional income is money you did not receive but are treated as having made. So if your wife dies you can calculate the lost value of her housework and be compensated. Nobody is getting additional money.

Fathers too?

[Celritannia]

Agreed, and why is that funny?

It's just not something you see often, a stay-at-home dad. Still, to tend to the needs of the household, it's better that one parent stays at home as opposed to neither.

Or we decrease the working hours so both working parents can spend time with their child(ren) so they can make the money they need.

Not all parents are affluent enough to have one stay at home.

[Sundiata]

It's just not something you see often, a stay-at-home dad. Still, to tend to the needs of the household, it's better that one parent stays at home as opposed to neither.

Or we decrease the working hours so both working parents can spend time with their child(ren) so they can make the money they need.

Not all parents are affluent enough to have one stay at home.

Sure, and pay workers a just wage.

[Des-Bal]

Fathers too?

Homemakers. But again, this is for calculating the value a person provides, nobody is actually being compensated until that person is no longer capable of doing those things.

[Sundiata]

Fathers too?

Homemakers. But again, this is for calculating the value a person provides, nobody is actually being compensated until that person is no longer capable of doing those things.

Oh! Ok.

[Giovenith]

I wanted to share a sad and disturbing historical fact that I've learned in my readings, so that it can serve as a testament to the devastating impact that societal expectations around gender, sex, and class can have on both our understanding of the world and our responses to it.

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories with their obsession with subconscious sexual desires. What I only recently learned, however, is that far from just being the eccentric guesses of a pioneer in the newborn field of psychology, Freud's theories largely stemmed from his desire to invalidate recounts of sexual abuse by his female patients, especially those allegedly committed by upper class men of "excellent repute." Once sympathetic to his clients and understanding that their issues arose from trauma of immoral acts committed against them, when faced with the implications these facts had about his society and the way it treated men and women, Freud backed away from his initial findings and instead forced himself to come up with his Psychosexual Development theory in order to explain how his clients could "mistakenly believe that they had been abused."

From "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft (both quotes spoilered due to sensitive material):

We need to take a large step back in time for a moment, to the early part of Freud's era, when modern psychology was born. In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called "The Aetiology of Hysteria." However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest.

Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the "Oedipus complex," which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory, any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women's and children's reports of mistreatment by men.

Once abuse was denied this way, the stage was set for some psychologists to take the view that any violent or sexually exploitative behaviors that couldn't be denied — because they were simply too obvious — should be considered mutually caused. Psychological literature is thus full of descriptions of young children who "seduce" adults into sexual encounters and of women whose "provocative" behavior causes men to become violent or sexually assaultive toward them.

From "Trauma and Recovery" by Dr. Judith Herman:

In spite of an ancient clinical tradition that recognized the association of hysterical symptoms with female sexuality, Freud's mentors, Charcot and Breuer, had been highly skeptical about the role of sexuality in the origins of hysteria. Freud himself was initially resistant to the idea: "When I began to analyse the second patient ... the expectation of a sexual neurosis being the basis of hysteria was fairly remote from my mind. I had come fresh from the school of Charcot, and I regarded the linking of hysteria with the topic of sexuality as a sort of insult — just as the women patients themselves do."

This empathic identification with his patients' reactions is characteristic of Freud's early writings on hysteria. His case histories reveal a man possessed of such passionate curiosity that he was willing to overcome his own defensiveness, and willing to listen. What he heard was appalling. Repeatedly his patients told him of sexual assault, abuse, and incest. Following back the thread of memory, Freud and his patients uncovered major traumatic events of childhood concealed beneath the more recent, often relatively trivial experiences that had actually triggered the onset of hysterical symptoms. By 1896 Freud believed he had found the source. In a report on eighteen case studies, entitled The Aetiology of Hysteria, he made a dramatic claim: "I therefore put forward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience, occurrences which belong to the earliest years of childhood, but which can be reproduced through the work of psycho-analysis in spite of the intervening decades. I believe that this is an important finding, the discovery of a caput Nili in neuropathology."

A century later, this paper still rivals contemporary clinical descriptions of the effects of childhood sexual abuse. It is a brilliant, compassionate, eloquently argued, closely reasoned document. Its triumphant title and exultant tone suggest that Freud viewed his contribution as the crowning achievement in the field.

Instead, the publication of The Aetiology of Hysteria marked the end of this line of inquiry. Within a year, Freud had privately repudiated the traumatic theory of the origins of hysteria. His correspondence makes clear that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications of his hypothesis. Hysteria was so common among women that if his patients' stories were true, and if his theory were correct, he would be forced to conclude that what he called "perverted acts against children" were endemic, not only among the proletariat of Paris, where he had first studied hysteria, but also among the respectable bourgeois families of Vienna, where he had established his practice. This idea was simply unacceptable. It was beyond credibility.

Faced with this dilemma, Freud stopped listening to his female patients. The turning point is documented in the famous case of Dora. This, the last of Freud's case studies on hysteria, reads more like a battle of wits than a cooperative venture. The interaction between Freud and Dora has been described as "emotional combat." In this case Freud still acknowledged the reality of his patient's experience: the adolescent Dora was being used as a pawn in her father's elaborate sex intrigues. Her father had essentially offered her to his friends as a sexual toy. Freud refused, however, to validate Dora's feelings of outrage and humiliation. Instead, he insisted upon exploring her feelings of erotic excitement, as if the exploitative situation were a fulfillment of her desire. In an act that Freud viewed as revenge, Dora broke off the treatment.

The breach of their alliance marked the bitter end of an era of collaboration between ambitious investigators and hysterical patients. For close to a century, these patients would again be scorned and silenced. Freud's followers held a particular grudge against the rebellious Dora, who was later described by a disciple as "one of the most repulsive hysterics he had ever met."

Out of the ruins of traumatic theory of hysteria, Freud created psychoanalysis. The dominant psychological theory of the next century was founded in the denial of women's reality. Sexuality remained the central focus of inquiry. But the exploitative social context in which sexual relations actually occur became utterly invisible. Psychoanalysis became a study of the internal vicissitudes of fantasy and desire, dissociated from the reality of experience. By the first decade of the twentieth century, without ever offering any clinical documentation of false complaints, Freud had concluded that his hysterical patients' accounts of childhood sexual abuse were untrue: "I was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up."

Freud's recantation signified the end of the heroic age of hysteria. After the turn of the century the entire line of inquiry initiated by Charcot and continued by his followers fell into neglect. Hypnosis and altered states of consciousness were once more relegated to the realm of the occult. The study of psychological trauma came to a halt. After a time, the disease of hysteria itself was said to have virtually disappeared.

As of the writing of this post, the Wikipedia page for "The Aetiology of Hysteria" is just a stub.

Ironically, the whole tragedy is a testament to the power of denial, and of the role that gender-based oppression plays in that denial. We've come a long way since in understanding things like trauma, but I think this is a note about history that we ought to keep as a reminder to ourselves about the influence our culture has on us and thus the importance of staying open-minded and not afraid to explore uncomfortable conclusions about the world.

[Nakena]

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories

I thought he was generally respected, if highly controversial, in his field?

[The New California Republic]

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories

I thought he was generally respected, if highly controversial, in his field?

Yes he is. He was wrong in some areas and made assumptions that wouldn't be so readily accepted nowadays, but his ideas gave birth to our modern understanding of how to treat mental illness.

[Adamede]

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories

I thought he was generally respected, if highly controversial, in his field?

His ideas aren’t really accepted. The respect for him mostly comes from the fact that he was one of the first that tried to go about diagnosing and classifying mental illness and such.

[The Untied State]

didn't freud think all men are secretly attracted to their mothers and hate their fathers and vice versa? odd stuff.

[Des-Bal]

I mean how much of psychology is bullshit is up for debate with the whole reproducibility crisis thing.

[Istoreya]

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories

I thought he was generally respected, if highly controversial, in his field?

As a psychology student, the deep sigh that any lecturer I've ever had makes right before talking about Freud should sum up how he's thought of.

didn't freud think all men are secretly attracted to their mothers and hate their fathers and vice versa? odd stuff.

Young boys hate their fathers because they want to sleep with their mothers, known as the Oedipus complex.
Young girls also hate their fathers because they are jealous of their fathers for having a penis and this makes them want to sleep with their fathers, known as the Electra complex.

[Ostroeuropa]

Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud and his wacky theories

I thought he was generally respected, if highly controversial, in his field?

He's a guy who said;

"Do you know what, I reckon the earth isn't the centre of the universe. And furthermore, the sun is the centre of our system. What's more, there are pigeons who live on it and sacrifice their eggs to appease the earth god."

He gets credit for realizing psychology is a thing. Almost nobody takes his ideas about what psychology *is* seriously anymore.

This is, essentially, how I view feminists by the way.

"Sexism is a thing."

"Cool."

"And goblins cause it.".

"...".

The difference is Freudian psychologists didn't protest other forms of psychology and go around sending bomb threats to people who questioned their ideas, or claim people who noted they were talking absolute nonsense were "Against psychology".

[Kowani]

crossposting:

Missouri becomes the first state in the US to no longer perform abortions

[Agarntrop]

crossposting:

Missouri becomes the first state in the US to no longer perform abortions

De facto illegal

[The Black Forrest]

crossposting:

Missouri becomes the first state in the US to no longer perform abortions

Cool. Now all these people are going to step forward and help raise these unwanted children right? Hello? Hello? Anybody? Hellllooooooo?