So the people who brought us the Women’s March on Washington have another big idea: A general strike of all American women. So far the idea looks to be just that, an idea; they haven’t even picked a date yet.
But if they pull it off, this act of collective resistance could have huge consequences. Ask the people of Iceland, or at least the older ones: That county had its own day-long women’s strike in 1975 which basically rocked the country to its core as a generation of men learned that women play an essential role in the economy, a fact that many of the world’s misogynists still refuse to believe.
Speaking of which, you may wonder what the misogynists of today think of the idea of a Woman’s Strike.
I took a peek into the Men’s Rights subreddit and found that the fellows there are mostly supportive of the idea, though for reasons far different than the strike’s organizers: MRAs, many of whom seem to think that women don’t do anything but gobble bon-bons while watching The View, are fairly confident that no one would even notice if each and every women vanished from the workplace and/or stopped doing unpaid work at home.
In the Men’s Right subreddit, our old friend ImnotMRAbut posted about the proposed ban under a headline written in the form of a question:
Someone called liquid_j asked “is there room for negotiation? Can we call it like a week? Maybe two?”
Another old friend, ThePigmanAgain, offered a similar take, suggesting that
They should make it a whole year, in my view. Let’s face it, apart from the nurses, we really don’t need women for anything.
Meanwhile, factspissyouoff found himself feeling pretty pissed off at all those women who think their lives amount to anything:
I heard about this elsewhere, and the second I did, I knew that this was exactly what would happen. Like, it was literally the first thing that popped into my head.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; MRAs/the Alt-Right/Trump-Supporters/etc. these days operate like clockwork. It’s possible to gauge how they’ll react to any given event based on the title of a single news article about said event
I really hope the woman’s strike works out, if for no other reason than stick it to these assholes.
The MRA, ppl! proving why a women’s strike is absolutely necessary.
BOOM!!
If a general women’ strike includes women (wherever possible) leaving their children in the care of their fathers for the entire day… That’d be one whole day that many MGTOWs wouldn’t have time to indulge in their weird fantasies about women.
And on that one single day, women will have accomplished going their own way. Something the MRAs and MGTOWs haven’t figured out do in many, many years.
It might be easier to arrange statewide dates instead, especially if they do it one day after the other, for fifty of them.
My fiancee has decided she will be part of the the “World Without Women” protest… And honestly I am so excited.
Her sign shop basically runs on her and I can’t wait for her boss to realize that he needs her to keep his business running smoothly.
I know at my own print shop it will mean nothing because the women there are either non-political or Trump supporters (seriously my female manager went to the Inauguration and is still happy with what’s going on and my coworker was an intern for Clinton but was doing it just for college credit.)
I really hope Tampa steps up this time and shows us how much we need 51% of the population.
and of course they do all post under false ID’s so that their mothers and sisters and partners do not know what they get up to in their spare time . . . . .
i am wholeheartedly in favor of this despite the fact that at my job i’m currently… let me think… yeah, the ONLY man in the department other than our supervisor. not that i believe most of the women i work with would be on board with this, but that’s beside the point.
You don’t even need to go back to 1975 to look at the effects of a women’s strike – there was one in Poland in October to protest proposed changes to the already highly restrictive abortion laws there:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37540139
SPOILERS: The women’s strike successfully prevented the passing of the bill.
Great idea. In the school I work at, slightly over half the teaching staff (including both deputy headteachers) are female, almost all the support staff – apart from myself, the business manager, and the caretakers – are female, and all the site supervisors, catering and (most of the ) cleaning staff. A full women’s strike would certainly shut down education in the UK, and I suppose the US would be similar. Though I imagine the Men’s Rights mob would consider education, catering, or any of the like to be ‘real’ jobs.
In fact it occurs to me that there’s an example of this happening right now: the recent TA (teaching assistant)strikes here in Derby in the UK have, in the main, involved female staff, and it’s caused chaos in the city with a lot of knock on effects for other schools, business, etc. The strike has been over an ‘equal pay review’ that turned out to be anything but, and it’s been ongoing and divisive enough to make the national newspapers. (Though the only national newspaper I read regularly is the stalinist rag the Morning Star, which I’m very well aware is flawed, but it’s short, and it has decent coverage of the boxing.)
If anyone’s interested, the following articles give an overview of the situation, and the way it’s being reported:
https://derbynews.org.uk/2017/01/25/parents-protest-in-council-offices-demanding-an-end-to-taschool-support-staff-dispute/
https://derbynews.org.uk/2017/01/05/strike-teaching-assistants-target-mackworth-with-a-simple-message/
https://derbynews.org.uk/2016/06/16/strike-teaching-assistantssupport-staff-fighting-for-fairness/
So the MRA are asking for a reality check?
Lol. Are you sure you want to know who runs important parts of your life?
Reality is misandry!
Ooh, I remember when the cleaning staff (female and male) went on strike in my high school. It lasted for maybe a month. The results weren’t pretty!
This strike, of course, is for only one day — but it aims to include all women. That’s a lot of woman hours of work!
Factspissyouoff needs some sort of transition between his second and third paragraphs.
Point? What effin’ point do you need when you have “facts”!
PS: I’m in moderation — and I think it’s because of my blockquote, the same one David quoted. Sigh.
Ya know, it wouldn’t kill them to do some actual research; for example, take this first result from a Google search for “female majority industries” that shows exactly which companies and government services (including schools, hospitals, and the IRS) would fucking grind to a halt if the women making up over two-thirds of their employees were to stop showing up to work one day.
On another topic, I’ve always wondered what the singular form of MGTOW is, given that the original acronym refers to Men Going Their Own Way. Is it an MGH(is)OW? Or are the singular and plural the same, like one deer, two deer?
@Terrabeau
We Hunted the Mammoth: every single man, living and dead, did that.
So too with Men Going Their Own Way. It’s not just one man — it’s a movement. Strength in numbers.
Is the solution really to have them read Lysistrata in high school? Because that’s where I first learned about it, and my class got the class clown and his popular woman-friend to be the central characters. So when the popular person in my class went on strike… it drove the point home.
I’ve worked in and around customer service…and I bet these assholes would anger burn their brain if they had to wait 4 hours to get through to any customer service line. that one telemarketer dude from eons ago would probably throw a fit.
@Kat: The custodial staff and cafeteria workers went on strike at my elementary school. There were 5-foot high piles of garbage in the corners of the cafeteria before long. I don’t know why the school wasn’t shut down. It was a huge health and safety hazard. As I remember, the teachers, principal, and administrative staff tried to pick up the slack.
The above is only indirectly related to the upcoming Woman’s Strike, but it’s a good illustration of what can happen when the workers people tend to take for granted, stop doing their jobs.
To be honest, I have heard quite a bit about the idea that feminine jobs are valued less due to their association with femininity. Does anyone have any experiences with this or any good studies which look into the matter? I feel like it’s an important area to explore. I’ve heard that having children will boost a man’s employability prospects and do the opposite for a woman so there’s a bunch of other effects like that.
With the crap that Trump’s pulled with abortion funding and how that’ll affect the globe (alongside vile associates such as Steve Bannon who seem less than agreeable toward women as a whole) on top of the whole anti-intellectualism shtick, some kind of industrial action would be pretty rad. I don’t know whether it’d resonate with the wider public without clarity of message but it seems like the next step up.
@CPphazor: The first thing I think of in regards to your question is the Ask A Manager blog. (I’ve been reading their archives because I have a shameful addiction to advice blogs.) There’s lots of stories about how women are treated differently from their male colleagues, but it’s not exactly a scientific study. I suspect there *are* scientific studies, but I’m currently not awake enough to go look.
Basically, when written out the singular is “Man Going His Own Way,” but the acronym MGHOW isn’t used all that often. So you can refer to “a MGTOW” even though that sort of makes no sense. I used to refer to them as MGTOWers, but I gave up on that.
@CPphazor
Look to Russia’s doctors for an example of “feminine” jobs being valued less. Doctors in Russia (who are predominantly women) are paid substantially less than they used to be when the profession was dominated by men. They also have a hard time ascending to leadership positions.
Women’s Participation in the Medical Profession
I’m sure there are better and more direct studies than this one, but it’s a good starting place.
Of Suffragettes and Sherlock Holmes..
This sort of fits here. There was a short lecture the other week about Edith Garrud and luckily someone filmed it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7XKmPNNkVOE
I wasn’t going to take part. Now I am.