Watching some *bullshit* programme on how feminism is dead, has in fact been detrimental to women, and how they “can’t have it all”. The upshot of the argument is that women have tried to become men, and instead have made themselves less happy, less appealing to men, and less able to have children and care for their families. That they end up undermining the institution of marriage and destabilising society by wanting to have it all.

I can’t even begin to tell you how vehemently I disagree with this hurtful and self-sacrificing load of shite. People bemoan the ladette culture and ask if women are really happy behaving like sexually liberal drunks. They ask if they’re happy earning less and working harder at the same jobs. People ask if women who postpone having children are happy to go through fertility treatments and adoption. People ask if mothers who work outside the home are happy given their general exhaustion and stress levels.

These are all the wrong questions.

What they should be asking is: just how would society change if it was *men* caught in the above scenario? Because if there was true equality in salary, opportunity, expectation, responsibility, and choice in today’s society, none of this would be an issue.

Where is the expectation that men take on half the childrearing? Where is the expectation that men sacrifice their careers for the good of their children? Where are the egalitarian salaries so that families can decide what’s best for them, not what makes the most financial sense? Where is the expectation that men stop acting like drunken sluts? Where is the expectation that men make some of the hard choices about going back to work? Where do we get off lauding ourselves as a progressive society because a few elite women have made it to the top, instead of working diligently to change the fact that the women who do get there only do so at great personal cost?

Women’s roles have changed tremendously over the past 50 years. Yet men’s roles have changed hardly at all. So why, on top of everything else are *women* responsible for changing society? Why the hell aren’t we taking men to task for not doing their part?!? Why the hell should women have to downsize their expectations of society? Certainly no one expects men to self-sacrifice like that.

Instead of asking if women are happy with their modern expectations and responsibilties, we should be saying, “Women aren’t happy with their current expectations and responsibilities – now what the fuck are you gonna do about it?”

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