Why can't anti-feminists accept that feminists promote work/family choices, for *men* and *women*?

Question

Why do you think it is so hard for anti-feminists to accept that feminists support *women* and *men* who's ultimate desire is to be married and a parent?

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed by President Clinton in 1993 and guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for any of the following circumstances: the *employee's* own serious illness, to care for a child, to care for a spouse or parent with a serious medical condition, or to care for a newborn, newly adopted child or newly placed foster child.

FMLA applies to any worker, whether they are male or female, and NOW and many feminist organizations have supported FMLA for years. Why would anyone be against it? It supports working *families*, not just women or men. Here's more info about FMLA requirements, effects, and history:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs28.htm
http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/FMLAGuide5thedition02.pdf?docID=958
http://hr.cch.com/press/releases/absenteeism/default.asp
http://www.now.org/issues/family/fml

I didn't define anti-feminists since I was interested to see what others thought they were.

Since I personally believe both men and women can be feminists, I also think both men and women can be anti-feminists. I usually think anti-feminists are those that oppose women and men being treated as equally as possible. I am aware we have biological differences, so I don't have all the answers when strength issues are involved in occupations. I know that many feminists and men and women are who do not call themselves feminists disagree on what is "equal" and what is "being equal as possible".

I think that anti-feminists are not just people who disagree with feminists, but are what some people call "traditionalists", who do not want men and women to have choices in their jobs, homes, or society. They want both men and women to have rigid gender roles. They often blame feminists for the destruction of the "traditional" family, though poor women have always worked outside the home.

Answer 1

I am a Male 'Feminist' and I concur with Your observations. The trouble with the professional feminist element within our society is that 'They' know what everyone else wants, without ever actually bothering to ask for the opinions of others. When told of their errors in judgment and agenda they cry foul and blame others for not towing the politically correct, morally righteous line of conduct.
Which part of the words "Unpaid Leave Entitlement" would make a person feel comfortable about staying home for several months?
Many men want to retain their right to self-actualization, self-determination and self-respect. Is that such a bad thing, so long as they are not usurping the fundamental rights of others? If a man chooses to remain gainfully employed during the neo-natal period is he not still contributing to the social fabric and ostensibly maintaining the domestic equilibrium of the household?
As a Nurse (Male) I have seen many instances where the wife has wanted the husband to stay at home so as to share the work load as well as the joys of parenting. Men don't fear fatherhood. It is the threat of redundancy or superseding that controls their urge to return to work. The role of provider is intrinsic to men's nature.

Answer 2

I think the FMLA is fantastic. The difficulty in believing that all feminists, or perhaps, "professional feminists" want choice comes from two things.

1. Most of the modern feminists have railed against marriage and homemaking as oppressive inherently to women, dull, dreary, pointless, a waste of intellect, etc. Several feminists have quite literally called for the end of the nuclear family, and an end to letting women "choose marriage as a career" - for their own good.

2. NOW and other feminists push for subsidized, institutional child care. Parents *overwhelmingly* do not want this. What's worse, of course, is that *my* tax money will be used to subsidize this project. Since two income couples average about $20 k a year more in income than single income couples, this means that working class families are sending money to middle class families, and it becomes *even harder* to be an at-home parent - something that poll after poll shows that many poor women long to be. The government should not be in the business of granting preferential treatment to the care style that is least desired by parents and has the worst outcomes for babies. We are not in a labor shortage, as Sweden was when they first started this idea.

So, the message seems to be - "The two income family, or singlehood, is far superior to the married traditional set-up. If you will agree that you are a loser for not going along, and you will subsidize other families who go along with our "ideal", then we'll pretend to value choice."

Most actual feminists, I think, actually DO value choice. However, there are many who are promoting either #1 or #2, which means that they are NOT "pro-choice" on the matter.

Answer 3

I think the problem word I've been reading on the answers is "escape." especially escaping from gender roles. The terminology is negative, and an extreme circumstances makes the stay at home mother seem like someone imprisoned and oppressed. The stay at home mothers I know do it quite of their own free will and certainly don't feel oppressed! There is a point where the positive discrimination can go too far, but I don't know if it has reached a point where men are at all repressed by either side of the feminism argument. Was it Greer who recently said it has come to the point where the nastiest of women can now rubbish the nicest of men? Maybe there's an element of that, but I haven't witnessed it. What I always felt the equality movements needed was a large dose of understanding of physical anthropology. Human evolution gives most of the answers as to why the natural order of things is skewed and unfair. We as a race are sexually dimorphic and therefore our genetics are inherently sexist. Men and Women are born with a set of mental gifts concentrated on the traditional role of the pre-society humans. Man as the hunter, Woman as the guardian of the nest. No amount of equality legislation and philosophy is going to rinse this genetic stain out of us. We do however have self awareness and a learned culture system so there is no reason why these roles should not be made optional. It doesn't surprise me it took civilisation so long to get this figured out though because we had to get past the whole absolutist principle of God given place. To that I say a firm good riddance. But that doesn't mean liberated women now intend on chucking baby out of the window, burning their bras and going off to be truck drivers! Society must accept that women are always going to be rarer in top management, politics and physics labs. Conversely men are never going to flock to primary school teaching, midwifery, counselling and nursing. All we can do as an advanced society is remove all the obstacles to becoming anything we wish to be, no matter whether it is traditional to your sex or not. I have a number of platonic friendships with women, something some men seem incapable of I've noticed but it never troubles me. 2 of them are engineers in different fields, however both of them bemoan they're the only women in their office! I think it's awesome that they can do that in today's society and I think that is enough. Why try to push more women into aerodynamic engineering or vision engineering if they don't really want to be there? Why make more men nurses if most of them don't care about it? I conclude its simply not worth it just so we can have a statistically equal society. Its building an imagined utopia on a false premise. Anti-feminism is just plain loopy and I don't think there's point giving them time of day. Women (as well as men) have fought hard for equal rights and to now be arguing against that is sheer folly. For the future though I'm hoping for a post-feminist period, where we move on from gender politics and concentrate on pure individualism. Let everyone be what they genuinely want to be based on their abilities, and not be concerned whether its good for ethics statistics or not. Probably a pipe dream, I know.

Answer 4

Thanks for asking this. My FMLA question from a few months ago.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhUiqfpbH4llYo90U5wwSggjzKIX?qid=20070322072625AA9TCGr

As a reference from NOW.org's website: "maternity leave", 44 hits; "paternity leave" 0 hits.

NOW's position on FMLA: it's far inferior to any other national "maternity leave" benefit program in the world. Certainly better than nothing but a far cry for all other programs, they say. Of course never a mention of fathers, ever.

Whereas I would have thought that NOW would/should be first in line to applaud FMLA as the global mode since it treats men and women identically.

Not a single other program in the world provides the same benefit for men as it does women. I have read feminists compare FMLA negatively to most every other nation's policies, since they seem to not care at all about fathers.

Thank you for (to my knowledge) being the first feminist to say anything (at least in the last several months) positive about FMLA.

Stormsinger:

The question is asked on the premise of equality of FMLA. The Canadian and European (except Sweden) policies, which you say are superior do not treat men and women equally.

Therefore, I would think that feminists would criticize these countries their inequality not applaud them.

EDIT II:

Girly McFemale, *as usual* nailed it!

EDIT III: You can all the European policies "worker's rights" or something else. However, the fact is the policies specify that mothers get, on average 10-20 times longer paid leave than fathers (again except for Sweden).

In Germany, for example, there is NO paid parental leave whatsoever for fathers whereas mothers get 20 weeks of paid leave.

The premise of the question is fairness and equality. FMLA is fair and equal. When it comes down to it, feminists don't *really* care about dads getting equal leave.leave.

Answer 5

I've often wondered that myself. I'm a working feminist, and my sister (who is my best friend) is a SAHM. We both chose different lives, but that doesn't mean that I think she made the wrong choice.

Steve, one can both support the FMLA and realize that it is not enough. We fought for its passage because it's better than what was in place before (absolutely nothing). However, it's not nearly the protection that Europe/Canada has.

Edit: Steve, I'm all for equality. That is one of the good things about FMLA. However, a policy that is equally crappy for both men and women isn't exactly ideal. Most European countries that offer paternity leave may offer less than maternity leave, but they STILL offer more than FMLA does, making them better for males than FMLA.

I'd like to see a system where leave is equal for males and females, but where parents can take far more than a measly 12 weeks of *UNPAID* leave.

Answer 6

IMO, it is because those anti-feminists who believe that modern day feminism is simply a special interest group, While NOW has supported the FMLA which provides for both genders, they also contradictorily support the VAWA, which reaffirms the stereotype that men are the abusers and women are the victims of violence. The sexism of the act is blatant if no where else, but in the title of the act itself.

This is not to say that women do not need anti-violence programs, or that women are not more often the victims of *gender based intimate partner* violence, statistics are feuding in these areas, it is simply a valid argument that feminist groups such as NOW are willing to ignore the perpetuation of stereotypes as long as it holds true to what anti-feminists consider as it's root agenda: help for women, even if that means stepping on men.

I think when NOW stops contradicting itself, anti-feminists will be more likely to accept that feminism is fighting for both sexes, not just women

EDIT to poster: I concur that there are many forms of anti-feminism as there are for masculism, but your question implies the definition i went with, those who oppose not the ideal, but the practices of modern feminism, which seem to be the majority of anti-feminists on this forum, here's a question i asked, let them speak for themselves.

"Anti-feminists: where do you stand exactly?"
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AiOZVvf01G_zBSaSZ1TAeGrty6IX?qid=20070623134150AAuT204

Answer 7

Women didn't work(as much) in the past...
Feminism allowed women to work... the end product wasn't men working 20 hours a week and women working 20 hours a week. The end product was men working 40+hours a week and women working 40+ hours a week... and basic economics shows that we're competing against everyone else and the additional income from women didn't increase 'Purchasing Power' in each individual household(except for the fact that it helped the entire economy, as a whole----which does add a small benefit).

Of course, what I stated only applies to married households... now we're getting into a new 'playing-field' because a lot of households are now single people(break down of marriage---another contribution of feminism).

Answer 8

What do you consider anti-feminist? is it any man, or any one who may disagree on parts of topics of law but still fill the need for laws in areas of sexism are needed to protect all. or is it some one who flat out hates women and want them to be oppressed. I my self hope for feminist to take a more of a lets get to gether with the men and talk it out with them sense we are on topics about them and what we want done . but seems to me that really is not the case but hey i only have my Owen experience to go by when trying to talk to women.

Thank you for giving me a answer to what you was referring to as anti-feminism, now i can answer you even better. i don't know why those kind of people thank that way perhaps because they just cant handle change for the better and do not want to listen, the only word they hear is there Owen. make seance to you? i hope it dose and by the way i am not anti-feminist just letting you know hehehehe.

Answer 9

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/12-20-05vawapassage.html

I'd like to know why women's groups want laws passed which only protect women. That actually go and exclude men. For something which also affects men[1]. They would go and advocate something that protects women and specifically excludes men.

"feminists support *women* and *men* who's ultimate desire is to be married and a parent?"
But why will they ensure that women are protected and men are not?

Answer 10

They don't want to accept it, they have their own reasons for disliking feminists and they never want to hear the positive side, I promote equality for men and women in all walks of life, its important that we all support each other.