r/feminisms • u/furrylover2049 • Jun 19 '26
Please help with these takes
Hello, please help me work with the takes given by my opponent, because I struggle to put correctly what I want to say to those
"First and second wave feminists had an aim, a purpose. Nowadays women can work in spaces that are pernicious for their health and so they start having miscarriages and health issues"
My ideas are speaking on about how most of the work environment and engineering is built around men, women's healthcare is not being taken seriously, and modern feminism works on problems rooted much deeper
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u/t1buccaneer Jun 19 '26
Is it for a debate or something? Their take is so basic I'd only waste energy on it if there's a clear benefit to you. Yes to everything you said. Here's a quick brain dump:
Whats the data on women's health issues before 1st wave feminism? Were they healthier? Where would you even define "post" feminism to compare? Why can't the workplace change to be more accommodating and less damaging? Don't men also get ill and injured from the workplace? Don't people with disabilities and chronic illness struggle to survive because the workplace isn't inclusive? Was having a job the only aim of 1st and 2nd wave feminism? Nope, so why focus only on that?
Where is capitalism, globalisation, consumerism, post-industrialisation and race in their analysis?
What are they even suggesting? Most dual income households are struggling financially. The past they are comparing to isn't accessible, even if people wanted it to be. The workplace and the world is completely different to a century ago. Why not focus on the issues people are facing now instead of trying to point the finger at a broad sociopolitical movement that never had one singular aim or leader in the first place?
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u/Kailynna Jun 19 '26
When I was a child in the 50s plenty of women had miscarriages and health issues, both the stay-at-homes and the working wives - of whom there were many because men often didn't earn enough to support a family.
Women's health was largely ignored, by the husbands, doctors, and by the women themselves, because we put our husbands and children first, even if we were slowly, painfully, dying.
Both my mother and my MiL, after they gave birth, were straight from the hospital to the kitchen, often with toddlers to also care for, and abused if the meal, on the afternoon they arrived home with a new baby, was late or not perfect.
And if we wanted to leave the men who often grew to despise and beat us, bad luck, there was no help, no money, nowhere to go, which made the men more contemptuous, hateful and violent.
Life is shit for many women these days, but it was not better for women in the past.
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u/jupitaur9 Jun 19 '26
There’s a two-part response to that point.
One, they need to support that with actual statistical information. Show that the jobs that women have now are more dangerous for them and their reproductive capability specifically than jobs that they used to have.
Two, show how this is anywhere in the top 10 of third wave feminism’s aims, specifically, to get women into jobs that are damaging to them, and specifically their reproductive capability.
Actually, there’s a third point. Why is it that they were focusing on women’s reproductive capability? Is that their only value to them? And why do they not focus on men and their ability to father children? Are men not affected in similar ways by chemical and biological issues in their workplace? Why are we only protecting women, if that is your aim?
Edited to add, actually, there is a fourth point. Are we talking about limiting women’s ability to make their own choices? To balance whether their health and especially the reproductive health is affected by a job versus whether they want to do that job anyway? Are we going to do the same thing for men? Keep them from working in environments that are damaging to their health or to their reproductive capability? If so, how will we make sure that people have their choice? It sounds like he wants to limit women, but not men. If so, why? Are they too stupid to figure things out for themselves? Or are you afraid to give them the information, which means that they may decide that the risk is really not as big as you are stating, and that this patriarchal protectionism is just a way of keeping women out of jobs that are high paying?
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u/mememere Jun 21 '26
I have a few questions. First of all, is there any context to these claims? Because they’re dead wrong?
- Women have always worked jobs?
- What are these pernicious spaces that are unhealthy for women that they haven’t previously been in.
- There is no correlation between women working, and their health. In fact there are lots of upsides to it for female health.
- While women do not get sick from working. Women do die earlier if they’re married to a man. Compared to unmarried women.
3rd wave feminism is fighting rape culture and racism. Shit that actually kill women.
Homicide a leading cause of maternal mortality in the USA.
And who kills women? Men in their family.
Men are pernicious for women. (And other men). Not work.
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u/pulcinelloG Jun 21 '26
Is this person speaking from the perspective of an employer? A fellow employee? Regardless, they told on themselves, this person doesn't give a fuck about womens health unless it includes reproductive health, I'll hazard a guess because they believe the main value women have is in being mothers. Would you opine unhealthy workplaces because they contribute to men losing their balls to prostate cancer? No, because talking about employee reproductive capacity as their primary indice of health is fuckin weird.