quote:Christy, I can't help wondering whether ANYTHING we do will be "at the expense" of young boys, as long as sexual equality is measured numerically, by percentages.
And thus the problem with feminism in an equal society. If you push women's rights too far, you infringe upon the rights and welfare of men.
But why not start promoting EVERYONE's welfare simultaneously, rather than trying to manipulate percentages and gaps? Instead of feminism, why not a movement dedicated not to women's rights or men's right, but rights in general.
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Kat, please don't take that quote out of context. I know that the feminist movement has made some noteworthy strides. But they have gone too far. I still believe it has hurt women more than it has helped. I didn't say it never helped. I merely said it's hurt more than it has helped.
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Maternity leave in Poland is paid. You get 16 weeks off if it's your first baby, 18 when second, and 26 weeks if you give birth to more than one child. After 14 weeks, the father can take the leave for the remaining time.
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(((Kasie))) *grin* I don't like abortion, but if the feminist movement has done nothing but Title IX, it would be worth it.
Did you know that girls involved with sports get better grades? Are more likely to graduate? More likely to go to college? Less likely to get pregnant as a teenager? Less likely to have eating disorders? Have better self-esteem? Are healthier? In almost every way, life is better because of it.
Added: And I say that as a girl who hid out in the debate room and was not aware there was another sport besides football until she was a freshman in high school.
Brigham Young said that if he had to choose between educating a son and educating a daughter, he would educate the daughter. Brigham Young. I absolutely love that.
Sorry about the delivery. I'm serious, though. You can't dismiss feminism unless you know all of the effects, not just the negative ones. It's had consequences of both kinds, but I seriously doubt that anyone thinks that going back to a time where reporting a rape means a girl is "ruined" would be a good thing.
quote: Did you know that girls involved with sports get better grades? Are more likely to graduate? More likely to go to college? Less likely to get pregnant as a teenager? Less likely to have eating disorders? Have better self-esteem? Are healthier? In almost every way, life is better because of it.
I remember that commercial.
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posted
*grin* Yep, the commercial was based on studies that I'm too lazy too look up right now.
What do you think of it?
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Feminism isn't an all or nothing proposition, but saying it wasn't worth it is an all or nothing statement. The things that are better are too necessary and too long-delayed to lament their coming.
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aretee, You totally missed my point. My point was not about lowering quality life to stay home.
My point is that to have the SAME quality of life that my parents did with one parent staying home has become extremely difficult in the last 25 years.
I couldn't stay at home and raise my children in the part of the country where they live today and I was raised, at the quality of life they raised me. (They live in the greater Los Angeles area, I live in the Chicago area.) Where we live in the Chicago suburbs, it would be nearly impossible too, yet our housing costs are literally half of what they are in CA as far as home buying goes. And my parents were EXTREMELY frugal. We went on ONE family vacation ever, in my childhood and that was to Colorado to visit my grandparents. My Dad never took vacation days always worked for the extra income. My mother shopped for deals all the time. I never wore a brand new pair of jeans (or most other clothing) until I was 12 when I grew taller than my friend that I got them as handmedowns from. They only had one car (the same one)until I was 8 or 9.
I have kept their frugal habits for the most part though with a few exeptions. My boyfriend, Steve has the EXACT same profession as my father... Civil Engineering. Paying women less because of time off for maternity leave is rediculous. The single father that I work with whose wife died in a car crash takes just as much time off as any woman. But the cost of housing in most urban areas, has become so outrageous it takes two incomes to get your children out of the ghetto. This can't be good for men or women or families. But if both parents are working at the same profession to do the best for their kids they can if the woman is only earning 80% of what her husband is there is still a DIRE need for feminism in this country.
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I thought the issue is the usefulness of feminism now, not the usefulness of feminism 40 years ago.
quote:Brigham Young said that if he had to choose between educating a son and educating a daughter, he would educate the daughter. Brigham Young. I absolutely love that.
That's sexism. Why do you love it? Would you still love it if he said he'd favor educating the son over educating the daughter?
This is yet another example of what's so troublesome about feminism: It sends the message that sexism against men is okay.
posted
Honestly? Because of the thinking behind it. Educating a daughter means educating the whole family. It's for the next generation. Quality of life for the family and the society as a whole is raised because of it.
And yeah, I love it because it means Brigham Young was smarter than the "educating a woman is useless" meme that was so prevelant at the time.
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posted
I haven't been anything besides an engineering student, so that would be as an engineering student both undergrad and grad. I'm the only female in the BME classes I have this semester, and one of 2 in my combustion class. We were definitly the minority where I did my undergrad, and here, based on the role sheet of the course I am a teaching assistant for, we are also a minority. And it isn't even close. I know I noted the total # of women in my research area on another thread.
So it's just not my experience.
However, the statistic I'd like to see would be percentage admitted, not attending, obviously accounting for SAT/ACT scores and GPA. If there's an issue of discrimination by the university, that's where it would show up.
I wonder how much of the arguement on this thread stems from us all not having the same definition of feminism. Tres, my version is about equality. Dag, I also have serious issues with supporting or joining most so-called feminist organizations because they promote things that don't fit into my concept of what feminism it. Maybe we should have a thread where we all just post what we think feminism is and not comment on each others posts until we've gotten to the second page or something.
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quote:Educating a daughter means educating the whole family. It's for the next generation. Quality of life for the family and the society as a whole is raised because of it.
Why would educating a man not be?
quote:And yeah, I love it because it means Brigham Young was smarter than the "educating a woman is useless" meme that was so prevelant at the time.
Not really... it just means he held an equally wrong but less popular view - that educating women was more useful than educating men.
posted
Wait, so educating the father doesn't have a positive effect on the family? Families only benefit from the knowledge of the mother? That doesn't make any sense, especially in the case where the father is the main breadwinner, and his education directly affects the quality of life for his children. Not to mention that fathers are far more involved with their children today, compared to the past, so that kids can directly benefit from their father's knowledge as well.
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The word has so many connotations that just fighting through the meaning is a hard enough task. Well I'm for female and male equality when it comes to treatment, I never call my self a feminist simply because I don't like what most of the groups do that are associated wth that name.
posted
You know, at age twelve I could sense the inherent evilness behind the Mia Maid teacher's assertion that my only function in life was to bear many babies and keep my husband's shirt ironed and learn to tie ties properly so that he could perform his all-important priestly duties. (insert gagging emoticon)
I offered a dissenting opinion to this woman and was informed that first off, if I really felt like higher education was needed, I could attend a 2-year college in homemaking arts to better prepare myself to be a wife and mother and secondly, I would never make it to the highest level of the Celestial Kingdome if I didn't get married in the temple and have a minimum of one baby.
Newsflash: a woman's role in life is NOT defined by her uterus or her breasts or her ability to support a man in acheiving success. A man's role in life is NOT defined by his penis, the strength of his biceps, or the paycheck he may or may not bring home.
People are defined by their ability to be decent human beings, no matter their gender, age, occupation, social status, paycheck, physical apearance, etc.
It should make no difference at all whether I am a female or a male. Note that I said "should" - the sad fact is that we live in a world that is still defining people based on their differences rather than their commonalities. What's worse, these differences are looked at in terms of power structure and who's bigger/badder/best, etc. How sad.
And before anyone points the "feminist rag" finger at me , know this:
1) I was paid more on the basis of my skill and willingness to work hard in a traditionally male-dominated field (this was pre-mommy days). Apart from the lingering curiosity by the men I worked with as to my sexual orientation (they decided I was straight because of my manicured fingernails and their belief that lesbians never paint their fingernails)I had a good working relationship with these gents. So, on one hand I broke through the proverbial "glass" ceiling, yet I was regarded as somehow less that fully female because I was strong, capable and tough. *Shrugs* 2) I absolutely agree that there must be consideration of how women are treated worldwide, what their status is, and come to some conclusion and decisions about how we as a nation will deal with such issues as sex trafficking, mail-order brides, child pornography/sex sales. (Thank you, Dan - I worked on these topics a couple of years ago. They're difficult to broach.) Health and safety need to come first. Frequently, they come last. 3) Personally, I resent the living heck out of the culture that has made it practically impossible (whether economically, social acceptability, etc) for at least ONE parent to stay at home with the "flesh and bone" of their own "flesh and bone." As a culture, we don't value children, we don't value women, we don't value family. Instead, we value arguing over the semantics of what these things mean in the context of both daily life and the bigger context of our communities. And that's sad, too.
*Steps off soapbox with sigh of relief*
Now that I have all that off of my chest, did you all know that I am a registered republican?
(Edited for one last spelling mistake and an emoticon add)
My dad is a TRUCK DRIVER. I'm sure your dad makes more than him. My mother stayed home until a time when my dad lost his job. Then, she went to work and he stayed home until he found a job. We had two cars, a motercycle and a sailboat. And we took family vacations every year.
What are you trying to say? If your housing costs so much, move. We lived in a nice sub-urb of St. Louis. Move out of LA or Chicago and go where the houseing markets are cheaper. Or, if you don't want to, stay and continue to work. It's about priorities and choices. If a woman wants to stay home, in many cases, she can. It may mean a lower standard of living, but that is not always bad.
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posted
Feminism - the movement specifically advocating the rights of women and attempting to advance their status within society relative to everyone else.
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quote:If the goal is more educated children, it isn't automatically wrong.
Again, why would educating women instead of men result in more educated children?
quote:Larger Issue: decrying feminism means repudiating the positive benefits as well as the negative ones.
The issue is the CURRENT benefits, and whether it is still useful now. And I'm not really sure what the positive benefits of feminism today are, if there are any. I suppose it helps to some degree to encourage women to achieve somewhat, but I think that would exist plenty enough without feminism in today's society. An equivalent movement promoting achievement for both men and women equally would do just as well at that without the negatives.
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PS-I told all my Mia-Maids they should be educated and LIVE before they marry. I told them to discover who they are and what they are supposed to do. Then, when men come a-courtin' they should choose one that would help them acheive their goals for the future.
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Tres: Yeah, that's not a loaded definition.
How about "relative to the second-class status to which they were relegated before"?
I see it as a social contract. The mom-stay-at-home and man-at-work is a deal. (And the goal.) If you want to pay women less because their husband is supporting the family, then conversely, you must pay men who desert their family less and give the money automatically to the mother of the children.
If we truly valued the family, then there would be no way for a man to leave his family and form a new one, leaving the old one to fend for itself. Laws in pre-feminist days supported the ideal arrangement without having any recourse for if it didn't happen. It assumed that people would all make the same choices.
That's actually one of the things that came negatively with abortion and birth control. It...(and I hate to say this) let men off the hook. If a woman could make sure she doesn't get pregnant, or abort the baby if she does, then having one becomes her choice and out of his hands. I don't like the forced-to-pay child support no matter what, but having no say in whether or not an abortion occurs. Either the parents are in this together, or else they are both on their own. Since with a pregnancy the scenario now involves a third person, it needs to be the first.
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quote: you must pay men who desert their family less and give the money automatically to the mother of the children.
That's not too bad of an idea. I don't think you could enforce it, though. How could you without violating other civil rights? Hmmm.
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wow aretee, you clearly had a much higher standard of living during childhood than I did. (and notice, as an adult I have made a conscious choice for a higher standard of living in a lesser location than where I grew up.)
I've seriously considered this point. I have some friends in Michigan, who live in a relatively inexpensive area. He actually is a truck driver working out of Indiana, and she works at Burger King. They have one child. Their cost of living is so much less it is sickening.
In Oklahoma and more rural parts of Illinois you can have a *much* higher standard of living with lower actual cost. People actually drive nicer cars down in Oklahoma than they do up here (unless they are truly *rich*) because the living to income ratio is so skewed.
But the fact is, that the reason why more people live in the cities and why there are more people in the larger more expensive cities, is because that is where the jobs are. An chemical engineer is either in a metropolitan area, or out in the middle of nowhere at a chemical plant with nasty stuff so far out of the way that no one will care if it explodes because it was a worthless area to begin with. But those jobs are much rarer than you would guess, exactly because of the cost of living thing.
I think in economics they are called "opportunity costs". I would be interested in seeing CT's statistics on where the children of the poor are actually healthier, in the rural poor, where medical care for the poor is more inacessible and there are lousy environments, or in the city, where there are lousy environments, even if you have to wait in line forever, normally you can get your child seen by a health professional.
If you were a poor family, with both parents working at low income jobs and no insurance which would you choose?
posted
Sure wish you had been my Mia Maids teacher, aratee
ah well -
Good work! Keep it up!
Edited to add: AJ, I don't know about where you live, but here in WA state, the poor in the rural areas actually have higher rates of medical home pacements, well-child checks, dental care than the urban poor. It's not a constant for any area - just thought I'd let you know!
posted
Aretee: That's just it. You can't. Since you can't make sure that the "reason" men are paid more actually happens, then you treat everyone equally and let them work out their social arrangements among themselves.
Tres: There are lots of causes worthy of work out there. Saying one needs attention does mean the others are useless.
Banna: The MIA maids are the 14 - 15-year-old girls.
posted
Shan I was speaking mostly from experience with Oklahoma which I'm more aware of, having lived there for a while. And hearing tales of what went on in the rural school systems where my roommate's parents worked. And Oklhahoma is I think much larger down the totem pole in terms of mean income compared to WA.
AJ
(yup just checked the US census bureau. Median income WA: 44K Median income for OK: 33K)
I just mean that because feminism as such does not address all social issues that need attention, it doesn't it isn't needed or is useless.
I'm worried as heck about the dropping rates of college enrollment and graduation for men. I've even seen in this generation of my family. The guys have all gotten married relatively young and didn't graduate from college. The only people with college degrees are the daughters. That's partly because my brothers are computer programmers and don't need a degree to do their job, but still, it's worrying. And it's representative of a larger trend.
MIA = Mutual Improvement Association It's the old name for the Young Men and Young Women's (teenagers') group. The Wednesday night activities are still often called Mutual for no logical reason.
posted
It goes beyond income, AJ. It is an issue that depends heavily on health insurance accessibility (private or government), doctor/dentist buy-in to providing services to the poor (who usually have government sponsored insurance which pays a fraction of the actual cost), transportation issues, education and community buy-in to the importance of providing services in an accessible fashion for low-income people.
Also, compare the cost-of-living to the median income to a "self-sufficiency" income. It's a rather fascinating thing to look at - I take Wa. State down to the individual county level for community needs assessments in my work, so this is just an area that interests me . . . I look for similar county structure in terms of demographics, economy, etc. Keep the apples:apples rather than apples:oranges idea -
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Yes, but the advancement of women in society entails the dropping of men. You can't have one without the other. And if women reach the equality line and feminism keeps pushing, that necessarily means it's going to be promoting inequality, and discrimination against men, if it succeeds.
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I bow to your more incredible knowledge shan (even if I am a purple grape) I got off the topic of feminism I guess.
My point was basically women not getting paid as much in a two income working poor family is hurting the family. Feminism would espouse equal wages for the men and the women and therefore would elevate the poor even at the lowest levels.
posted
That has been the issue for, for instance, Title IX. Because the opportunities for women need to be more equal, if there is not an increase of money to the sports programs, some men's sports are being dropped.
But that HAS to happen. It's unfortunate for the men sport that is dropped, but it only existed in the first place because of an inequality that is being corrected.
In a year of corporate bombings and criminal CEOs, when the poster child for a Fall and the biggest object of schadenfruede is Martha Stewart, then feminism is still needed.
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You know most of these anti-feminist arguments, make less sense than an excercise I have seen done.
Try blaming the National Debt on Women's Sufferage and I bet you can come up with more convincing anti-feminist arguments than anything I've seen so far in this thread.
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kat:"It's unfortunate for the men sport that is dropped, but it only existed in the first place because of an inequality that is being corrected."
How is this the case? In what way did inequality cause colleges to start up men's wrestling programs, as an example?
I agree with the rest of your statement; I just don't get that particular claim.
By the way, since you're a supporter of Title IX, I imagine you would probably hate Papa Joe Chevalier. He's a radio sports talk show host, and he's the most brilliant one out there (in my opinion). But he has a glaring flaw, and that is his view on women's sports. He can't let more than a handful of days go by without a big rant about Title IX.
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posted
I'm not going to take the extreme view of whether I like the sum total of Feminism or wish it had never happened. I think the question of Feminism today is whether it is helping or hurting. Whether backlash is driving more of the young and impressionable away from assertiveness. Whether Feminism addresses possible behavioral differences between the sexes.
Mack mentioned the problem of abuse. I don't know if it is worse for males or females, for perpetrators or victims That is, I heard a factoid once that most child abuse is perpetrated by women. (I use factoid here in the sense that the idea depended on a lot of never reported supposition). Is sex abuse worse than beating? Why? What does that tell us about the difference between males and females? I'm pretty sure a boy who has been beaten feels guilty as often as a girl who is raped.
I believe there is a difference between men and women, but I'm not sure where the feminist movement is acknowledging it. As a prospect for their philosophy, I feel they just want me to be successful by the measure that men have established.
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I'm puzzled. I'm not arguing with you, AJ. Just sharing information. It's an issue that cuts across so many different areas and levels. And looks very different depending on region. But also looks very similar in many ways -
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No, I know you weren't arguing, Shan, but I realized that if the argument is going to be made, you are more equipped to do it than I am and haven't made it, so maybe it isn't as valid of an argument as I thought it was.
quote:Try blaming the National Debt on Women's Sufferage and I bet you can come up with more convincing anti-feminist arguments than anything I've seen so far in this thread.
I could say the same about pro-feminism arguments.
quote:That has been the issue for, for instance, Title IX. Because the opportunities for women need to be more equal, if there is not an increase of money to the sports programs, some men's sports are being dropped.
But that HAS to happen. It's unfortunate for the men sport that is dropped, but it only existed in the first place because of an inequality that is being corrected.
In the case of sports, the most popular should be the ones to survive. That's how you be fair to every individual.
For instance, if 5 women want to play one sport, but 30 men want to play another, and only one team or the other can be afforded, the women should not get to do it in order to balance out some equation. That'd just be discrimination against men mascarading as equality for women. After all, they'd be less likely to get to play a sport they want just because they weren't born women.
Yet this is the sort of thing feminism promotes - going beyond equality in order to advance women.
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well it is also a capitalism vs. socialism argument too in a way.
If the government actually subsidized all sports instead of mandating "equality" at a University leve you would have higher performance of all athletes in olympic sports. But olympic sports aren't the ones that make money.
I think the income question gets bogged down pretty easily. Unless you want to use the "tax-base" argument as a means of showing that politically/economically our country supports working outside the home, not inside the home.
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Tres, saying that more boys want to play sports than girls, when the opportunity for the girls to play sports has not been there, is a circular argument. It takes time to build a sports program. You know that.
It's like saying that dropping enrollments in college for guys isn't something to worry about because obviously the girls want to go more.
---
LawGuy: I have to admit that I've never heard of him, and have a no-talk-radio ban in place in general. I also have an aversion to ads of all kinds. I'm afraid I don't listen to the radio much.
I didn't play sports in high school. Or ever, for that matter. No one in my family did. The whole concept was relatively bizarre for my geeky, bookish, gothy family. But from what I've read and seen, I'm convinced. It can be a very, very good part of a balanced life.
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I bow to your more incredible knowledge shan (even if I am a purple grape) I got off the topic of feminism I guess.
