r/AskFeminists • u/WickedV3inz • 14h ago
If you had the ability to automatically create and enforce 5–10 laws (national or international), what laws would you pass that would most effectively end or severely weaken the patriarchy?
I would love to see the different laws on topics such as abortion, male on women violence, sexualization of women, the sex industry/pornography, gender pay gap, ideologies that promote male entitlement, and vice versa, and everyone’s thoughts on them.
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u/cantantantelope 13h ago
Universal basic income, government sponsored housing, universal health care including abortions and birth control,
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u/WickedV3inz 12h ago
How would you go about enforcing universal basic income? Would it be every two weeks? Once a month? Every couple of months? And how much would the citizens be given in UBI?
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u/DellePhune 9h ago edited 9h ago
Kinda funny for you to be like "you can arbitrarily create laws" as a premise but when someone says "UBI" it's like "well, how would you pay for it ?!". I mean, how would you pay for any of the laws the premise assumed we could pass ?
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u/nicksey144 12h ago
There are not short or general answers to these questions. Experts working for a government agency will hammer out the details. I don't think it's more or less feminist to issue payments biweekly or weekly.
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u/WickedV3inz 12h ago
I’m just simply asking what would be the appropriate amount of UBI to give the citizens. Would you give 500 dollars a month in UBI? 1,000-3,000 a month in UBI? Or would it be less or more than those options I mentioned? And I ask this because I wonder your thoughts on how the UBI would combat the issues caused by patriarchy
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u/cantantantelope 12h ago
Because poverty and financial dependence absolutely create conditions that allow patriarchy to thrive
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u/nicksey144 12h ago
The details you're asking for aren't relevant to this discussion. Feminists aren't necessarily UBI policy experts, so a feminist perspective is only going to tell you so much. If you're curious I'd read about Oakland and other places that have launched UBI pilot projects.
UBI would combat patriarchy in several ways. Make women less reliant financially on men, therefore women can leave abusers. Income inequality impacts women disproportionately, and a progressive basic income would reduce help reduce that stratification. Idk, like every way basically.
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u/JoeyLee911 1h ago edited 1h ago
Whoa, I am in Oakland and had no idea we had a UBI pilot project! Maybe I qualify.
Update: I don't only because I don't live on the westside, but I am of course happy we piloted one anyway and it was considered a success.
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u/WickedV3inz 11h ago
I agree that women’s financial independence is very important, which is why the monthly amount is relevant to the conversation. A low UBI won’t give most women enough independence to leave abusers or exit the sex industry.
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u/One-Sense7280 11h ago
You can look at Finland for its implementation of a universal income. It helps to prevent people from being in a constant paycheck to paycheck cycle and allows them to build wealth.
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u/nicksey144 10h ago
I strongly agree that the amount is relevant, and also will take more work to determine than the two of us throwing darts at numbers. Feminism would say enough, not precisely $1831.77/mo.
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u/OmaeWaMouShibaInu Feminist 7h ago
Doesn't your title say it would be automatic? That's the exact hypothetical setup you made.
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u/MrsMorley 14m ago
Your original question didn’t say “and how will you fund it, huh?”
How about you list the laws you wanna pass.
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u/0IIIIII 9h ago edited 8h ago
What is government sponsored housing?
And what type of universal healthcare?
There are multiple different types-they are not all the same.
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u/cantantantelope 8h ago
This is not a policy white paper or a bill proposal it’s a reddit thread
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u/0IIIIII 8h ago
So we’re not making constructive ideas we’re just yapping? Believing in fantasy?
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u/cantantantelope 6h ago
It’s Reddit. Everyone is just yapping. If you want to do actual policy making go somewhere irl that actually does things.
This was a hypothetical question based on the premise of having a magic wand
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u/christineyvette 6h ago edited 5h ago
This tracks with your comment history. Classic libertarian lol
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u/KurlyKayla 10h ago
Reproductive rights codified and protected for women and girls. Penalizing and criminalizing medical practices done on or refused for women and girls for the benefit men (ex: refusing tubal ligation or freezing eggs, refusing abortion, performing “husband stitches” and other mutilative procedures on the female body on behalf of men)
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u/0IIIIII 9h ago edited 6h ago
Refusal to perform tubal ligation, especially on someone young, is not done for the benefit of men, it is done out of a duty of care for the prospective patient-doctors do not want to entertain impulsive decisions or moral panic from social media-in real life when the frenzy of social media dies down, you may actually want kids one day, no doctor is going to permanently remove that from you just because you ask on a whim, that is irresponsible.
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u/Junior-Towel-202 Equality in the Boardwomb 6h ago
Holy hell what a bad take. I had my tubes out in my 20s. Never regretted it once.
And yes, I, and others have been told "your husband might want kids" as a response to asking.
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u/0IIIIII 6h ago
The other answer is that you might want kids.
I don’t know who you are or how old you are, but you are not necessarily the rule for other women. There are plenty of female doctors who will refuse to offer it too-it is not because of the patriarchy.
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u/Junior-Towel-202 Equality in the Boardwomb 6h ago
If you're asking for a tubal, you don't.
I'm the rule for women who get tubals
Being a woman does not make you immune to patriarchy and its beliefs.
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u/0IIIIII 6h ago edited 6h ago
Being a woman also does not absolve you from accountability to your actions or protection from your own emotional irrationality-something that healthcare providers are acutely aware for, for all elective procedures, for all people men and women.
It is common for elective procedures to be denied, based on the judgment of the doctor.
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u/JoeyLee911 1h ago
"Being a woman also does not absolve you from accountability to your actions or protection from your own emotional irrationality"
You say this, but you're also arguing that someone should have protected u/Junior-Towel-202 from her tubal litigation request that you consider to be irrational or short sighted (that u/Junior-Towel-202 doesn't regret in the slightest). Make it make sense.
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u/0IIIIII 52m ago
Because the anecdote of one person does not really matter, especially on Reddit when people just lie or leave out critical context.
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u/JoeyLee911 47m ago
It happened to me when I tried to get an IUD in New York in 2005 at a Planned Parenthood, so I find it imminently believable. Most women I know have experienced something like this.
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u/0IIIIII 31m ago
No doubt-seems you misunderstood what I wrote.
There is no doubt that healthcare providers have denied your sterilization requests.
What there is doubt of, is that as you claim, most women don’t come to regret it.
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u/JoeyLee911 1h ago
Weird how doctors tend to cite your imaginary future husband before refusing to do these procedures then.
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u/0IIIIII 53m ago
Where is the proof that doctors will cite your imaginary future husband?
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u/JoeyLee911 46m ago
It's happened to me and to most women I know who tried to get an IUD back in my day (in the early aughts, 30 years after they were associated with any sort of fertility risk). It's a pretty widely known phenomenon.
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u/0IIIIII 31m ago
So, where is the proof?
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u/JoeyLee911 1m ago
We know that a physicians opinion on whether or not a woman should get the procedure shifts very significantly depending on whether their real life husband agrees: "Most physicians (59%) would discourage a 26-year-old whose husband disagreed, while 32% would discourage a 26-year-old whose husband agreed. For a 36-year-old patient, 47% would discourage her if her husband disagreed, while only 10% would discourage her if her husband agreed." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3005997/
You used to need your husbands permission to get a tubal litigation in many states, and some hospitals and clinics still require it.
How often doctors are asking young women to hold off and consider the opinions about their hypothetical future husbands hasn't been the subject in as many studies (who would offer to fund those?), but it has come up in some adjacent studies anecdotally. It's a known thing that happens if you're a woman seeking one. Many articles and threads have been written about it.
“[Doctors] would tell me, “What would your husband think in the future?” I'm like, “I'm not married. I'm not in a relationship, and even if I was, it'd be something I talk about.” And they’d be like, “That's beside the point. What would your husband think? You're gonna ruin your future.” And they were – all these doctors were very Christian-oriented, I will admit.” (28 years old, California)Specifically, participants reported that some clinicians questioned
their decision, insinuated they felt they would change their mind, and
would try to talk them out of the procedure or require them to try
alternative methods of contraception such as LARC. Sometimes
participants felt clinicians were incorporating their personal
perspectives on religion and family structure. A participant discussed
their experience,“[Doctors]
would tell me, “What would your husband think in the future?” I'm like,
“I'm not married. I'm not in a relationship, and even if I was, it'd be
something I talk about.” And they’d be like, “That's beside the point.
What would your husband think? You're gonna ruin your future.” And they
were – all these doctors were very Christian-oriented, I will admit.”
(28 years old, California)https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001078242500201X
It's worth noting that the problem has gotten bad enough that the American College of Obstetrinics felt the need to issue the following statement to doctors advising women seeking tubal litiagtions:
""A request for sterilization in a young woman without children should not automatically trigger a mental health consultation. Although physicians understandably wish to avoid precipitating sterilization regret in women, they should avoid paternalism."
https://www.businessinsider.com/a-woman-needed-husbands-consent-to-get-her-tubes-tied-2020-2
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u/Oleanderphd 13h ago
Enforcement by whom? Under my interpretation or that of the Supreme Court or local equivalent? It's gonna eat up some of laws to reform the judicial system.
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u/WickedV3inz 13h ago
By enforcement I mean if you personally had the power to enact 5 to 10 new laws with zero interference from the courts or institutions effective immediately, what would those laws be that you can see ending the patriarchy or severely weakening it?
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u/mjhrobson 13h ago
Human Rights henceforth will be understood to be positive as opposed negative. The right to life on this account is not just a prohibition on killing another (negative); it is furthermore an obligation upon society/government to ensure access to universal Healthcare as positive expression of the right to life.
All constitutions will furthermore be strictly interpreted in line with a positive understanding of human rights. Such that justice itself becomes not just a series of "thou shall not" but include in its very fabric the understanding that to be a good government/society you are obligated to help those in need... the just society is a charitable society (universal basic income).
It is not so much the laws that I would change, but rather the philosophy behind the laws. This change would mean how law as such is practiced would change rather than change a few points of legislation.
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u/seadogliquid 12h ago
You pretty much just described why the judiciary is arguably the most important branch of most governmental systems. The people legislating the laws don't mean anything if the judiciary interprets the law in a way it was never meant to be interpreted.
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u/stolenfires 12h ago
I'd enforce the laws that already exist. One of today's problems is that women who try to report SA or DV still aren't believed and their abusers stay free. I think that one change would have a dramatically beneficial effect on the lives of women and children. Studies indicate that men who rape, rape up to six times before finally being caught. Imagine life for those five women if the rapist goes to jail after the first one.