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Elisabella -> RE: Feminism (10/21/2009 7:22:36 PM)
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ORIGINAL: eihwaz
These are rather startling assertions. You seem to be operating from some cartoon parody notion of feminism. Were it not for the feminist movement: Women would not have the right to vote, the right to inherit property, the right to equal pay for equal work (still not a reality but much improved), the right to their own sexuality. Women would still be considered the property of their husbands, both de jure and de facto. Before the 1960s version of feminism, women were commonly regarded as responsible for being raped ("she was asking for it") and could be legally raped by their husbands.
Right, and now we're at a state where women have more legal rights than men do. So why are there still feminist activists? The goal has been accomplished. Have a beer, pack up and go home.
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This is a quite truncated list of the injustices and oppressions; the actual list is long, and many persist.
I have respect for the feminists who are working to end legal injustices in other parts of the world.
I don't have respect for the feminists who want to help save the poor oppressed white middle class Western women from being cheerleaders.
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I hope you're not saying you'd like to see a return to this pre-feminist state of affairs? (I believe that "feminism" denoted as such has its origins in the late eighteenth century, but I'm out of my depth on this history. Shakti? Somebody?)
No, that's not what I want. There's a difference between past feminist movements (those that lobbied for legal rights) and current feminist movements (those that are lobbying for social change) and it's the latter that tend to bother me. Like I said before I think that the social feminist movement (70's onwards) solidified an idea that traditional female roles are worthless and the only way to get respect was to embark on a traditionally male path. Of course there are certain segments of society (conservative religious groups, certain segments of the immigrant populations, etc) that don't feel that way, but as a whole, women are oversexualized and underfeminized.
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Certainly there are some extreme strains of 'feminism' -- most significant social movements have had, and have, fringe elements. I've personally been hammered by self-described 'feminists' as if I, as a male, was personally responsible for millenia of patriachal oppression, an accusation I really didn't appreciate. It's easy to discredit ideas and movements by citing the excesses of some of their adherents -- but it's intellectually dishonest. Perhaps it's gratifying in a facile sense to trivialize workplace sexual harassment as "not liking dirty jokes," but that's not the reality.
I wasn't trivializing all sexual harassment by equating it to dirty jokes, I was saying that people today actually sue for sexual harassment based on dirty jokes. Personally I think anyone who views our society as 'patriarchy' has selective vision - they see a lot of men on the top and assume men rule the world. But they don't look at the bottom - at the skewed male/female percentages of prison populations, death row inmates, soldiers killed in battle, murder and mugging victims, etc. They see patriarchy as "men at the top, women at the bottom" but the actual trend is really, "men at the top and bottom, women in the middle" and that's far more complex than a simple "patriarchy."
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So let's maintain some perspective on what are very real "women's issues" and the significant achievements of the feminist movement.
Oh I don't disagree that past feminists did a lot to benefit women. I just think current feminists are misguided.
I see it as something like the abolitionist movement in the US. The abolitionists were great. They accomplished their goals. Then they moved on. It would be like if there was still an 'abolitionist' movement trying to force social change on blacks, saying none of them should like rap music or wear their pants hanging down because it "makes the race look bad and keeps them in slavery" - really sort of ridiculous if you think about it. But that's pretty much what lots of feminists say about women's choices.
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BTW, the "separate spheres" doctrine is from the nineteenth century and, at least in some versions, predicated on the innate (biological) inferiority of women. And even where not, it's reminiscent of another notion of the nineteenth century, the "separate but equal" regime of the American South.
I hate to tell you, but women are biologically inferior in quite a few ways. We're shorter, slower, have less muscle definition...do you think there would be "womens sports" like the WNBA if women could compete equally with men?
We also have a lot of biological advantages - our centre of gravity is lower, we have a higher threshold of pain, we have more fat stores to stave off starvation...but really the point I'm making is that women and men are biologically *different* and that should be recognized.
Pre-op transexuals are often given hormones of the sex they're transitioning to, and it not only affects their physiology, but their emotional and mental state as well. FTM's report feeling more aggressive and horny and MTF's report feeling hypersensitive to their emotions.
Some people might not like the idea, but really now if both genders were totally identical, well, there wouldn't be two genders. And again I want to emphasize that I'm not saying that women should be banned from certain occupations or men should be forbidden from raising children alone, but I do feel that traditionally feminine pursuits are dismissed these days. A good example is the effect of mothering - from ancient times to the 1950's women were revered as mothers, complimenting a woman on how she raised her children was like complimenting a man on the new shed he built. It was a labour of love.
Today it's hard to find a woman who has a genuine passion for mothering and keeping a home. Kids are given video games and a house key at age 8 and most nights mummy brings home a bucket of fried chicken because she's too tired from working to cook. Both mummy and daddy grumble about who's going to do the housework because they're both tired from a day of labour...so the house stays in a general state of 'sort of tidy but not quite clean' which is exposed if you run your finger on the top of the ceiling fan. Housekeeping is a serious pursuit, and it's something that can actually be an art form, but since it's a traditionally female job it's denigrated as 'drudgery' - as opposed to, say, being an accountant, which has the same amount of repetitive tasks, just with less personal meaning.
The problem I have with feminism today is that the attitude many feminists present is "women can do traditionally male stuff as good as a man can," which itself is debatable (see above re: biological differences in physique and emotional temprement) but also, in my mind, devalues women as a whole. If feminism were more concerned with saying something like "the stuff women are good at is just as good as the stuff men are good at" and presented traditional female roles as self empowering and fulfilling pursuits, as well as embracing traditional masculine behaviours and attitudes in men rather than trying to feminize them, I'd support it.
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