The Feminist Thread

[tippy]

But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled “The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex.” He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built; he had a great jowl; to balance that he had very small eyes; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained. Could it be his wife, I asked, looking at my picture. Was she in love with a cavalry officer? Was the cavalry officer slim and elegant and dressed in astrakhan? Had he been laughed at, to adopt the Freudian theory, in his cradle by a pretty girl? For even in his cradle the professor, I thought, could not have been an attractive child. Whatever the reason, the professor was made to look very angry and very ugly in my sketch, as he wrote his great book upon the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. Drawing pictures was an idle way of finishing an unprofitable morning’s work. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psycho-analysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom—all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had. It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon; it was the professor’s statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially remarkable, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man—I looked at the student next me—who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight. One has certain foolish vanities. It is only human nature, I reflected, and began drawing cart-wheels and circles over the angry professor’s face till he looked like a burning bush or a flaming comet—anyhow, an apparition without human semblance or significance. The professor was nothing now but a faggot burning on the top of Hampstead Heath. Soon my own anger was explained and done with; but curiosity remained. How explain the anger of the professors? Why were they angry? For when it came to analyzing the impression left by these books there was always an element of heat. This heat took many forms; it showed itself in satire, in sentiment, in curiosity, in reprobation. But there was another element which was often present and could not immediately be identified. Anger, I called it. But it was anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions. To judge from its odd effects, it was anger disguised and complex, not anger simple and open.

Whatever the reason, all these books [men's writing on women], I thought, surveying the pile on the desk, are worthless for my purposes. They were worthless scientifically, that is to say, though humanly they were full of instruction, interest, boredom, and very queer facts about the habits of the Fiji Islanders. They had been written in the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth. Therefore they must be returned to the central desk and restored each to his own cell in the enormous honeycomb. All that I had retrieved from that morning’s work had been the one fact of anger. The professors—I lumped them together thus—were angry. But why, I asked myself, having returned the books, why, I repeated, standing under the colonnade among the pigeons and the prehistoric canoes, why are they angry? And asking myself this question, I strolled off to find a place for luncheon. What is the real nature of what I call for the moment their anger? I asked. Here was a puzzle that would last all the time that it takes to be served with food in a small restaurant somewhere near the British Museum. Some previous luncher had left the lunch edition of the evening paper on a chair, and, waiting to be served, I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr. Justice __ commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry. I knew that he was angry by this token. When I read what he wrote about women I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself. When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument; and the reader cannot help thinking of the argument too. If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a canary yellow. So be it, I should have said. But I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry. Or is anger, I wondered, somehow, the familiar, the attendant sprite on power? Rich people, for example, are often angry because they suspect that the poor want to seize their wealth. The professors, or patriarchs, as it might be more accurate to call them, might be angry for that reason partly, but partly for one that lies a little less obviously on the surface. Possibly they were not ‘angry’ at all; often, indeed, they were admiring, devoted, exemplary in the relations of private life. Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. Life for both sexes—and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority—it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney—for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination—over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, ‘The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!’ The exclamation, to me so surprising—for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex?—was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn their crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith’s tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.”

* * * * *.

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor's letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two -- the vote and the money -- the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important. Before that I had made my living by cadging odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kindergarten. Such were the chief occupations that were open to women before 1918. I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction that either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide -- a small one but dear to the possessor -- perishing and with it myself, my soul -- all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. However, as I say, my aunt died; and whenever I change a ten-shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off; fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They, too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, for ever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs -- the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people's fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children's lives. Walk through the Admiralty Arch (I had reached that monument), or any other avenue given up to trophies and cannon, and reflect upon the kind of glory celebrated there. Or watch in the spring sunshine the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that five hundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine. These are unpleasant instincts to harbour, I reflected. They are bred of the conditions of life; of the lack of civilisation, I thought, looking at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge, and in particular at the feathers in his cocked hat, with a fixity that they have scarcely ever received before. And, as I realised these drawbacks, by degrees fear and bitterness modified themselves into pity and toleration; and then in a year or two, pity and toleration went, and the greatest release of all came, which is freedom to think of things in themselves. That building, for example, do I like it or not? Is that picture beautiful or not? Is that in my opinion a good book or a bad? Indeed my aunt's legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky.

* * * * *

In my little street, however, domesticity prevailed. The house painter was descending his ladder; the nursemaid was wheeling the perambulator carefully in and out back to nursery tea; the coal-heaver was folding his empty sacks on top of each other; the woman who keeps the green-grocer's shop was adding up the day's takings with her hands in red mittens. But so engrossed was I with the problem you have laid upon my shoulders that I could not see even these usual sights without referring them to one centre. I thought how much harder it is now than it must have been even a century ago to say which of these employments is the higher, the more necessary. Is it better to be a coal-heaver or a nursemaid; is the charwoman who has brought up eight children of less value to the world than the barrister who has made a hundred thousand pounds? It is useless to ask such questions; for nobody can answer them. Not only do the comparative values of charwomen and lawyers rise and fall from decade to decade, but we have no rods with which to measure them even as they are at the moment. I had been foolish to ask my professor to furnish me with "indisputable proofs" of this or that in his argument about women. Even if one could state the value of any one gift at the moment, those values will change; in a century's time very possibly they will have changed completely. Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shop-woman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared -- as, for example (here a squad of soldiers marched down the street), that women and clergymen and gardeners live longer than other people. Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activities, make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock labourers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men that one will say, "I saw a woman today," as one used to say, "I saw an aeroplane." Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, I thought, opening the door. But what bearing has all this upon the subject of my paper, Women and Fiction? I asked, going indoors.

Excerpts from Chapter 2, "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf (1929).

[Uli]

Tippy rulz!

You go, girl!

[Dr Dave]

Well, women can be free of constraint now, if they're willing to work their tails off for it. Men are mostly free of constraint, but they don't have to work nearly as hard to achieve it. Select your own examples, dear friends.

(Hey Rita! I used "Dear" again!)

[cookie]

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

[Sergio Zamora]

I ain't gonna read that whole long first post, so everyone just assume I'm fer it.

[tippy]

"Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: to ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the servie of separation and confusion."

From "Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference" by Audre Lorde (1984)

[tippy]

"Emphasizing paradigms of domination that call attention to woman's capacity to dominate is one way to deconstruct and challenge the simplistic notion that man is the enemy, woman the victim; the notion that men have always been the oppressors. Such thinking enables us to examine our role as women in the perpetuation and maintenance of systems of domination. To understand domination, we must understand that our capacity as women and men to be either dominated or dominating is a point of connection, of commonality."

From "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" by bell hooks (1989)

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by tippy

"To understand domination, we must understand that our capacity as women and men to be either dominated or dominating is a point of connection, of commonality."

From "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" by bell hooks (1989)

Well, there it is.

[tippy]

Dave, you're the best!

[john williams]

Originally Posted by tippy

"Emphasizing paradigms of domination that call attention to woman's capacity to dominate is one way to deconstruct and challenge the simplistic notion that man is the enemy, woman the victim; the notion that men have always been the oppressors. Such thinking enables us to examine our role as women in the perpetuation and maintenance of systems of domination. To understand domination, we must understand that our capacity as women and men to be either dominated or dominating is a point of connection, of commonality."

From "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" by bell hooks (1989)

How true.

[saltwatersnow]

my female roomate is fond of saying women are the nigg!@s of the world

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by saltwatersnow

my female roomate is fond of saying women are the nigg!@s of the world

that was a john and yoko song from 1972, if you're not aware.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by saltwatersnow

my female roomate is fond of saying women are the nigg!@s of the world

She's supposed to send a penny to Johnny L's estate every time she says it.

[edit: Jon beat me to it]

[tippy]

[B]lack women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living--in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying."

From "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference" by Audre Lorde (1984)

[bluenoter]

Brava,Tippy! Yip! Yip! Yip!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Bread and Roses

Lyrics from a poem by James Oppenheim published in December 1911, probably inspired by a banner he saw displayed by members of a women's labor union in Chicago (not by a group of women during the famous Lawrence textile strike of 1912, as once thought). Music by Caroline Kohlsaat, then by Mimi Fariña.

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing:
Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes.
Hearts starve as well as bodies;
Give us bread but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too!

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race,
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes
But a sharing of life's glories:
Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes.
Hearts starve as well as bodies.
Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

[crawjo]

By: Carolyn C. Gargaro
Re-printed in Problems of Death: Opposing Viewpoints Series, Greenhaven Press

"Feminist" is a tricky term to use today - many women who are independent, support equal opportunity, and fight against injustices such as rape and abuse would consider themselves feminists. However, today's definition of "feminism" as defined by groups such as NOW, reject women who do not fit into their specific and radical idea of feminism. For instance:
Sue Purrington, exec. dir. of NOW's Chicago chapter, said the following regarding Feminists For Life: "Either they misunderstand the whole issue of feminism, or they are using it for purposes I disagree with. Their philosophy is irrelevant."
Patricia Ireland on Feminists For Life:: "Their only agenda is antiabortion work."
Chicago Tribune 11/12/89
In fact, Feminists for Life of America was founded by two women who were kicked out of NOW due to their pro-life views. A pro-life woman most often is told that she is not, and cannot be, a feminist. I myself have been told such a thing.

True feminism, as I believe, condemns those who support oppression - whether the oppression be against women, men, minorities, or the unborn. Modern feminism has lost sight of the true meaning of feminism in the regards that modern feminism does not acknowledge the value of women who choose to stay home rather than work in the "business" world, or the value of a child if it is in the mother's womb.

Pro-life feminists respect ALL human life, and they do not place their morality on people - including the unborn - by deciding who should live and who should die. Some people call pro-life feminists "anti-choice" - well, pro-life feminists *are* anti-choice, when it comes to abortion. They are also anti-choice when it comes to rape or the abuse of women. No one should have the "choice" to rape or abuse women either. No one should have the "choice" to beat a woman or not.

Pro-life feminists want REAL choice for women. A REAL choice where women have the option to *choose* effective birth control, effective being the key word. A REAL choice when it comes to having a career and a child - women should not be in the situation where they either have an abortion or risk losing their job. What kind of choice is that? And this sort of thing does happen. What does this say to women? That a pregnant woman isn't as valuable in the workplace? How is that showing a respect for women? How does that type of attitude "liberate" women?

Pro-life feminists reject abortion because they reject the use of violence to solve a problem. They want more than to just settle for mere equality of opportunity -- the opportunity to contribute equally to violence and and human rights abuses in society. Pro-life feminists seek to transform society to create a world that reflects true feminist ideals.

"True Feminist ideals" are part of a larger philosophy that values all life, including the life of the unborn. Feminists believe that all human beings have inherent worth - a worth which cannot be conferred or denied by someone else. ("Abortion Does Not Liberate Women," Feminists for Life)

Abortion is completely incompatible with this feminist vision. Abortion makes the unborn and the mother enemies, and basically pits women against their own children so women can achieve "equality." For in today's society, women have not achieved true equality - they still must, many times, abort to be on an equal level politically, socially, and in the business world.

This does not mean that men are to blame for all abortions - they aren't. In fact, it is often the men who respect women, the ones who will take responsibility for their actions, and want the woman to keep the child and who will help in the raising of the child, that are seen as the "oppressors". They are the ones seen as controlling women, when in actuality, it is the irresponsible ones that are seen as "compassionate." The men who encourage women to abort, to avoid taking responsibility for their actions are the ones who do not respect women.
Abortion doesn't "liberate" women - it "liberates " men. Abortion on demand liberates men who want sex without strings, promises, responsibility, or the rituals of romance. And if the woman has the baby? Hey, that's her problem. She could have gotten an abortion - she chose to carry the child; let her pay for her choice.

Abortion also "liberates" others - not the pregnant woman. For instance, employers do not have to make concessions to pregnant women and mothers. Schools do not have to accommodate to the needs of parents, and irresponsible men do not have to commit themselves to their partners or their children.

By accepting abortion, women have agreed to sacrifice their children for acceptance in this "pregnancy limits freedom" society. Many feminists have given in to the standard which permits the treatment of "unequals" unequally, and for the powerful to oppress the weak. Isn't this what feminists fought *against*?

Women who refuse to accept the "choice" of abortion also refuse to participate in their own oppression and in the oppression of their children. Pro-life feminists refuse abortion and all it represents. Pro-life feminists such as myself reject abortion and the idea of dominance that goes with it. Diminishing the value of one category of human life - the unborn - leads the way for the diminishment of the value of all human life.

Do I understand why women support abortion? Yes, I do. I see women discriminated against because they have children; I see women being abused and thus are scared to go through with a pregnancy for fear that the abuser will beat them more; I see women not getting equal job opportunities because they are pregnant or have children; I see women put in poverty because they are left by their partner to care for children alone.

But women should not be in these situations in the first place! Abortion is accepting of the fact that women are not truly equal unless they are "not pregnant." Abortion does not solve the underlying reasons why women often abort in the first place.

In summary, pro-life feminists feel that the "right" to destroy their own offspring is not a "right" - no one has the right to destroy another human being.

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by crawjo

By: Carolyn C. Gargaro
Re-printed in Problems of Death: Opposing Viewpoints Series, Greenhaven Press

Abortion is accepting of the fact that women are not truly equal unless they are "not pregnant." Abortion does not solve the underlying reasons why women often abort in the first place.

If nothing else, this is dreadful, sloppy writing.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

If nothing else, this is dreadful, sloppy writing.

Almost as bad as Susan Sontag, but not quite.

Originally Posted by cookie

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

I disagree. Feminism is the notion that men are scum.

Might I suggest a more radical notion? Masculinism.

Lets get serious folks.

Why do I love my wife so much? She's tough. She's fair. She's got an awesome sense of humor.

She's as much at home with a bunch of her female friends engaging in frilly, ruffly, womenly type stuff as she is in hanging out with the rest of the guys and cutting up, and making lewd jokes about both sexes.

She's successful and incredibly competent. She takes no shit, nor gives any in return.

She's mature enough to deal with any situation on her own without crying about it. She is not fearful of any man, yet does not have any problem with deeming another woman as a whiny bitch.

My wife doesn't fuck around. She is a real woman.

That is the kind of woman I love. Strong willed, fun loving, hard working, no bullshit.

Suck it up. Thats my wife's favorite line.

Suck it up.

[john williams]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Well, women can be free of constraint now, if they're willing to work their tails off for it. Men are mostly free of constraint, but they don't have to work nearly as hard to achieve it. Select your own examples, dear friends.

Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God... Mark Twain 1925

I work almost exclusively with women, which I like, but it has its advantages and disadvantages like all male environments do. Both the men and women I have known mostly work hard, all have some constraints, are free of others and all have made their own choices. You could find examples of almost any combination of gender and constraint or gender and freedom or whatever and of course it proves nothing.

Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength..... Virginia Wolff

"FEMININE? MASCULINE? We might all be happier if the words feminine and masculine were banned. Few, if any of us, fit all the traits evidenced by the majority of our own sex. (Many women are aggressive and active. Many men hang out in the "non-masculine" side of the brain. Most of us have non-traditional activities/ times in our lives.) We all have abilities for intuition, logic, vulnerability, feeling, assertiveness, softness, harshness, competition and nurturing. To label any of these traits as masculine or feminine just causes unhappiness in our society."
http://www.psychologyhelp.com/gend130.htm

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by JBW

I work almost exclusively with women, which I like, but it has its advantages and disadvantages like all male environments do. Both the men and women I have known mostly work hard, all have some constraints, are free of others and all have made their own choices. You could find examples of almost any combination of gender and constraint or gender and freedom or whatever and of course it proves nothing.

Ah, but your work environment is the product of many years of progress toward equal rights and opportunities for women. Women couldn't always make their own choices. If they were in the workplace (during peacetime) at all, it was in pink-collar ghettos. They're still paid substantially less (at least in the United States), by all economists' reckoning, and some glass ceilings still exist.

[john williams]

True Bluenoter. I don't think women are paid less here though, because we have award wages in most cases which don't discriminate by gender. I will concede that unfortunately the private sector/big business is by and large still dominated by men in the top jobs and old boys clubs. I of course am opposed to inequality and enjoy working alongside women, but do have a problem with all male or all female work environments and think a reasonably even mix is desirable.

Ah, but your work environment is the product of many years of progress toward equal rights and opportunities for women.

*barf*

They're still paid substantially less (at least in the United States), by all economists' reckoning, and some glass ceilings still exist.

*yawn*

My wife ended up in the upper two thirds of the pay scale for her position. Perhaps the others are just too stupid or too weak to negotiate for what they are worth.

Originally Posted by JBW

I don't think women are paid less here though

They aren't here either, brother. It's just some whiny myth that certain women in this society like to point out as "fact".

[Uli]

[Tom Storer]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

They aren't here either, brother. It's just some whiny myth that certain women in this society like to point out as "fact".

Scott, study after study has shown that women, as a group, are paid less than men for equal work. It's true in Europe as well as the US. Obviously this does not apply to every single woman, but your speculation that those women who suffer from this discrimination, and they are legion, are simply too weak or stupid to do any better for themselves, is wrongheaded, sexist even. This kind of attitude has always been used against members of a group that suffers from discrimination. Next thing you'll be praising your wife as a "credit to her sex."

If and when I have the time to do your research for you, I'll hunt down some of those studies and point you to them.

[bluenoter]

Thanks on all counts, Tom.

(Thank you too, Uli.)

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Well, women can be free of constraint now, if they're willing to work their tails off for it. Men are mostly free of constraint, but they don't have to work nearly as hard to achieve it. Select your own examples, dear friends.

(Hey Rita! I used "Dear" again!)

Get outta here! This time you didn't use it as a patronizing form of address to a new poster whom you assumed to be a woman.

I appreciate a lot of your recent posts on these matters.

[tippy]

I like feminism as an exploration of the dynamics of power. I don't like to use it strictly for gender. I think society as a whole is harmed by privileged groups who don't recognize their privilege and I think men/everyone is limited and harmed by a hierarchical structure where differences separate us into superior, inferior. I think the way that we think is the problem (along with what JBW said). I think to blame men for the way that society has been operating for gazillions of years is counter to feminist purposes and puts us in a deadlock that cannot be resolved--it's the same wrong thinking in my book--in order for women to win, men have to lose. That's just wrong. I also think the progress women have made as a group during my lifetime has been enormous and gives feminism the opportunity to fine tune, transform its earlier separatist message. I do not feel especially hindered economically because I am a woman. I do not have to get married to survive financially. I think that for other groups of people based on differences other than gender that some of these problems remain far more relevant than for someone like me.