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Emily Pecot's avatar

This whole concept is a big reason why I have distanced myself from most of my mom friends (ie those who see the nuclear family as default).

I am a single mother who is overall happy and doing my best to make truly free choices, but also struggling make it in a society that sees single motherhood as the problem rather than the structures that keep single mothers from thriving in their singlehood.

I grew tired and frustrated and honestly a bit disgusted spending time with my married friends who have deluded themselves into thinking that the hard choices of escaping bad marriages or at least standing up to their half-assed (or worse) husbands are not choices they can make.

Particularly since many of these women are privileged enough to be able to make those hard decisions and still more or less be ok.

They refuse to admit to themselves that they *can* make those choices, but it's going to make life harder for them, and that's not a price they're willing to pay for legit feminism.

So they get together with me because I'm a safe space and complain about their husbands.

And they put me on a pedestal for making my hard choices and sacrificing security in the name of freedom rather than meeting me there or even really understanding my existence.

Patriarchy is awful, but internalized misogyny is right up there.

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booksfrombed's avatar

This post really hits the nail on the head *applauds*. Still, I have a bone to pick with one line: 'sexism permeates into the private sphere more often and more intimately than other kinds of oppression tend to'. As a disabled woman: no, it doesn't, unless you're simply counting the number of people affected. This is basic intersectionality. The impact ableism has on my personal relationships is, hands down, greater than the impact of sexism, precisely because it's a less recognised form of oppression and its targets are more marginalised. It's closely entwined with sexism, too, because ideas of ability are so gendered. There's similar stories for many different kinds of oppression, from transphobia to racism.

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