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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is stigma against young mothers. There is stigma against older mothers. There is stigma against working moms. There is stigma against SAHMs. There is stigma against women who chose not to become a mother. There is stigma against women who struggle to become moms (though weirdly it’s started to feel like this is the one woman we’re ok with because she wants to be a mom but hasn’t achieved it — we feel sorry for her but don’t hate her, lucky her).

So often these conversations wind up falling apart as women argue over their choices and options and how they are treated by other women... there is no way to resolve it among ourselves. Women are set up to compete with each other and them criticized when we do.

It’s misogyny. All of it. And the best thing we as women could do is simply support and defend each other against it, rather than seizing an opportunity to position ourselves as “one of the good women who made the right choices.” You see, there are no right choices. Half the time, what is treated as choice is not.

I love young moms and old moms and women who are not moms and working women and trans women and tired women and happy women and all the women. You are all doing great. Let’s make sure we all have access to healthcare (including abortions and birth control), access to economic independence, and freedom from harassment and assault. Everything else is immaterial.[/quote]

+1,000,000

I’ve lived 50 years now, from being teased by the neighborhood boys when I was only 7 that I must be a women’s libber (I had never said anything about women’s lib, I was only 7 - I suppose they were parroting conversations between parents at home) to harassment in the workplace as a peon to harassment in academia to harassment as the top lawyer of a jurisdiction. And all along the way, beginning with my own mother, the reality that so many of my sisters would put pleasing the male gaze above supporting another female.

Misogyny is sickening, and most sickening when it is internalized. It is deeply internalized even in a great many feminists. And a great many of us are raising the next generation of entitled lazy men who will harass and take advantage of our daughters for decades to come.

All mothers and all women are judged, most harshly by other women. The truth is that women have a great deal of power in society, if they’d only exercise it. Patriarchy only succeeds because of the willing participation of women. [/quote]

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