The question is, is she singling out the radical whackos - “bra-burning” being the accepted shorthand - or is she dismissing the whole women’s liberation movement? I took it to mean the latter, but I could give her the benefit of the doubt.
If she had said that she hates “those feminists”, then I think it would be safe to assume she meant the whole women’s liberation movement. But the qualifier she used–“bra burning”–signifies to me that she meant the radical wackos.
The Panthers did, however, change the definition of “Moderate.” If you read Who Speaks for the Negro, Robert Penn Warren’s analysis of the Civil Rights Movement, you find that the leading southern intellectual found Dr King to be the most radical force in America in 1965.
Every great social movement relies to a certain extent on a “tough cop/good cop” approach, with Huey Newton, Andrea Dworykin, Emma Goldstein and Henry Broward as the implied left fist behind the outstretched right hand of “compromise.”
This, incidentally, is why liberal Democrats fought so hard to keep the DLC out of power. It enabled the Democrats to win the White House, but surrendered a vast tract of political landscape by putting the “center” between Clinton and Reagan/Bush.
No, “bra-burning” is a tag that people add on to feminist to delegitimize the entire movement. The last bra got burned a long, long time ago. IIRC, it was a bit of a spoof, not an angry thing. That bra-burning goes with feminist (and no one asked what the OP meant by that) shows this. It is yet another example of opponents of a position tarring hundreds of thousands of people with the extreme actions of a handful. Kind of like considering anyone against the Vietnam War as a long-haired hippy.
yep. If you don’t have a extreme, your moderates look extreme. And there is no change. People want to say “hey, those people are reasonable compared to the nutjobs over there!”
It bothers me more when she reveals that she doesn’t understand that more likely than not, she is a feminist.
Yes, the word has now accumulated some unpleasant connotations. Those connotations are not based on the general principals of feminism (social and economic equality), but on political distortions and extremists from both sides.
For example:
This was criminal assault. The woman was obviously unbalanced and not at all representative of the women’s movement. I hope that you have not mistaken her attack on you as being typical.
I too love having doors held for me and I enjoy holding them for other people. I smile either way and don’t make an issue of it. To the best of my knowledge, that has been typical of the feminists that I have known over the last thirty-five years – both men and women.
I believe they preferred to be called suffragists, actually: the term “suffragette” was considered demeaning.
Well there are biological explainations for this. Women have the option of taking time off to have children, this time off does not bode well for climbing the ladder of success in the power structure or corp. environments. Also I would argue that men are in general more aggressive then women, and to get to the top required aggression almost by definition.
It could also be that men and women in general have differing goals when it comes to work. I am not certain that this is just society’s influence either as some of this may be hard wired.
On the other end women usually have a easier time in some respects, like if she does take time off to raise her child she has a easier* time re-intergratign herself into the workforce then if a man does the same - it is almost a mark of death on his resume.
- Note easier does not equal easy.
Unfortunately, studies and lawsuits have not backed this up. The most recent one I’ve saw had to do with making partner at a lawfirm - even women who remain single and dedicate their lives to their career make partner less often or take longer than similarly motivated men. There is certainly truth to the belief that some women choose to “mommy track” and some women choose professions or styles that aren’t condusive to ladder climbing. And I completely believe that women have a little more movement even in professional jobs for combining work-life (I need to leave early to get my kids to the doctor) with lesser consequence that is just now starting to be equally applied to men. But some women choose to dedicate their lifes to their careers and they don’t move ahead as fast as men.
That’s subtle, and its difficult to fight - its the perception that needs to change that women will “quit to have a baby so why promote them.” Or that they can’t be as tough. That’s the sort of thing that does take time, you can’t just legislate it. You can use discrimination laws and class action lawsuits to make people motivated to pay attention.
Its also gets easier for each successive generation of women as each one has less cause to doubt herself. I graduated from high school in 1984, late enough that the big battles were - I assumed - won. I graduated in the top ten in my class and our superintendant invited us all in. He asked each of the boys where they were going to college and what they were majoring in. And then the asshole - who was probably 40 years old, young enough that his excuse couldn’t have been “gee, I wasn’t aware women are actually people” asked the girls if they had boyfriends and where their boyfriends were going to college and what their boyfriends were majoring in, and if their boyfriends played any sports.
I’m astounded. Not that he’d think along those lines, but that he’d say so out loud. I hope they fired him. I’ll bet they didn’t, though.
The problem is that even if a certain female has chosen a childless life and devotes herself totally to work, the possibility is there that she can change her mind or might have a oop’sie (unplanned pregnancy).
Even if this certain female is not able to have children there is the biological reality that women can have children and are therefore less dependable in a long term corperate evvironment. This would seem to be a natural tendancy that as long as women have children will always be reinforced, I don’t know how one would have a society overcome this, and I don’t know if we should, as I said that women have certain other workplace advantages, which also should go away or be equalized.
You also indicate that women can be as tough, but that doesn’t mean they are as tough. And they may express their toughness differently then men.
How do you measure ‘similarly motivated’, sounds like something that can’t be accuratly measured.
I also wonder how the monthly cycles effect how others perceive her. Could it be that due to this that her boss might see her as too variable (which could be seen as undependable) to be a good canidate for promotion? I know men also have some cycles, but to a lesser degree and he will be more consistant. If the boss is a female I would still think this would apply, again the man looks more consistant, though the boss may be more understanding of her (female worker’s) variability, and to go to the other extreme, the boss may be a feminazi and promote her due to sexism.
I’m not saying I know that the above is a reason, but it does seem to make sense that it may be one. And if it is based on biology I can’t see how it can ever end.
I don’t know if an “adult” ever heard the story. I was “outta there” and didn’t burden my parents with it (and mine were not parents to fight political battles anyway).
Gee, and yet men overwhelmingly are the perpitrators of workplace violence, a suspected hormonal/biological difference. They are more likely to see early ends to their careers from strokes and heart attacks, so while its unlikely they’ll get waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy (and those, for a woman dedicated to her career, aren’t going past the first trimester anyway), they could be waylaid by another medical issue. Men can can also change their minds on the importance of their careers - and are also more of a “flight risk” - more likely to switch jobs more often than women, which causes the same sort of uncertainity. They are far more likely to leave to start their own business, which - unlike the career of raising a child - often puts them in direct competition with their previous employer.
The sexism is that we are willing to overlook the biological differences with men that cause them a disadvantage in the workplace, while we can all enumerate the ones that make women less advantageous to promote.
So? There’s always the possibility that a man can decide to have a child and decide to be–you know–a full-time father. One that picks the kids up from daycare and stays home when one gets sick. One that decides it’s not worth working fifteen hours a day when you could get to have a sit-down dinner with the family.
My boss is an example of this. He’s a work-a-holic professor with a high-powered lawyer wife. Both decided early on to not have children. Five years ago they changed their minds and decided to adopt. Both have had to change their lives dramatically. He’s still a work-a-holic, but he’s not pulling in fourteen hour days anymore.
It’s unfair to judge a woman harshly because she may change her mind and decide to–gasp!–have a life outside of the office, when a man can do the exact same thing, with the same consequences.
If I’m not mistaken, men can have children too. No, they do not get pregnant, but they do produce progeny and raise kids. And our society expects men to show up as dads and contribute to households as something besides breadwinners.
That many choose not to is not evidence that fatherhood is less natural than motherhood. It just means that men have traditionally given themselves a pass when it comes to certain responsibilities. Society will change this, I believe.
I should not have to disavow a future of having family just to receive respect in the workplace. Not when the male CEO and all the top executives can have portraits of their kids on their desks.
I should not have to worry about the ramafications if I decide I do want children. If I tell you I can do the job and my record confirms this, then you should believe me.
What workplace advantages does a woman have?
Is this a bad thing? I know quite a few tough women–women who objectively tougher than the men around them. And I know some women who are not “masculine” tough but they are still quite competent in their job.
I work in an all-male workplace, with a bunch of macho guys who literally and figuratively flex their muscles and pound their chests all the damn time. I do not do this (unless I’m being funny) and I’m not going to. I don’t understand why I should behave like this, in order to be a scientist. And it is unfair for me to have to adopt a set of behaviors (that are stereotypically “male”) just to fit in. I do not have to be macho to be a field ecologist–this is an arbitrary job standard.
I don’t think so.
Ha! The whole “her-hormones-make-her-unstable” hypothesis. What a load.
Just because a boss perceives her as being a slave to her hormones does not mean she actually is.
I used to have a female colleague that no one got along with. I swear, every time she did anything unreasonable, the other coworkers would whine about her being on her period. The thing is is that I knew this woman’s cycle (she’d always start her period a week before mine…yes, I’m that sensitive to my environment) and she was NEVER ON HER PERIOD during those times. Instead of accepting that this woman had a hard-ass personality, her physiology was blamed.
I’m not saying that PMS is not real and that women never get irritable or loopy during certain times of the month, but I’d wager that women are largely dependable, consistent creatures. I once had a woman boss who was moody, but I used to have a male boss who was ten times as worse. I think because women are so sensitive of their bodies and states of mind, they are more likely to regulate themselves when they feel “off”. (I know when I start crying at stupid made-for-TV movies, I mentally check the calendar to make sure it’s not just the hormones are talking). Men, however, are more likely to not control themselves when they are in bad humor. They can have a bad mood and not worry about people concluding anything about their reproductive parts or the “weakness” of their bodies.
Yeah, the men can be sexist because they have real, rational reasons (women having buns in their ovens, women being nuts because of their periods) but when a woman favors another woman, it’s because she’s a “feminazi”. I love it.
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If you’re asking what would motivate a young woman to say she hates “those bra-burning feminists,” maybe her brand of feminism also includes the freedom to make her own choices without being told what to do by other women as well, such as this one:
Just as veterans may lament that their efforts fighting in wars preserves the right of anti-war protestors, perhaps some feminists (like the arm-grabbing door Nazi) lament that the good fight was fought only to have women choose to be catered to, have women choose to enjoy porn, and so on.
There isn’t much freedom in being a Free Woman Who Lives The Way Feminists Dictate. If I had to guess, perhaps it’s this that she hates.
Whether her position of accepting all the benefits of equality without giving up the benefits of chivalry is a fair position or a hypocritical one is open to debate.
So does mine. But I still appreciate the feminists of the past (warts and all ;)) for making it possible for me to live in a world where I can make my own choices. The difference between the pre-feminist world and the nonsense of isolated kooks like the one in Diosa’s example is that men really did used to have all the control over what women did and didn’t do.
I’ve also had ‘feminists’ tell me I shouldn’t remove my body hair, and even one who tried to persuade me I should stop having relationships with men. Unlike pre-liberation women who had very little choice but to obey what their fathers and husbands said, I was free to decide for myself on those and other points.
kanicbird writes:
> Well there are biological explainations for this. Women have the option of
> taking time off to have children, this time off does not bode well for climbing the
> ladder of success in the power structure or corp. environments. Also I would
> argue that men are in general more aggressive then women, and to get to the
> top required aggression almost by definition.
There’s a counterargument that shows that equality of job opportunities for women in the U.S., while it is much better than it used to be, isn’t as good as it could be. Look at the opportunities for women in other countries. One measure of this is the percentage of women in the national legislatures of the countries (which would mean for the U.S. the percentage in the House of Representatives and the Senate). The U.S. is no better than average for the world. 15% of the House and Senate are women, which is just about average for the world. Remember that this average includes a number of countries with no women or almost no women in the political process. There are countries (particularly in northern Europe) with about 45% of their national legislatures being women. So if one were to argue, “Well, perhaps we reached some kind of natural limit in the number of women in positions of power, and, anyway, isn’t it true that the U.S. is about as advanced in this issue as any country in the world,” the reply would be that, while the U.S. is improving on this issue, it’s only slowly improving, no better on average than most of the countries of the world, and there are other countries that are doing better than the U.S., so the U.S. has not bumped up against some natural limit in the number of women in power.
From the statement “I hate those bra-burning feminists” it’s hard to tell whether this hypothetical young woman doesn’t appreciate what the movement has accomplished in the past. She may only dislike it for what it has become and how its proponents are actively affecting her life now (given the arm-grabbing example). Personally, I wouldn’t assume more than a modern context, which means something different to each person depending on how old they are and how much they know.
For someone to say, “I hate Republicans” (just as a f’rinstance, no offense to anybody) I wouldn’t automatically infer that they hate the entire Republican Party, everybody in it, and everything it’s ever done back to its inception. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
A young woman’s only exposure to self-described feminists might be of the arm-grabbing you-can’t-betray-the-sisterhood type who shout at her and tell her how to live her life. I couldn’t find fault in the sentiment, really. Tactics that were necessary in 1965 to foster change may now do more harm than good.
I think a lot of us feminists are tired of being judged by the crazy ass fringe that always gets featured in the media.
It’s sad, but honestly, what’s more entertaining-the rational, normal feminist or the foaming at the mouth lesbian separatist?*
*No offense to lesbians-I’m talking about the hardcore fringe fems who claim that you have to be a lesbian to be a feminist.
Sort of reminds me about how all those rational reasonable Christians feel to get lumped in with Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson. Yeah, there are some - maybe even alot - of anti-evoluationary loons, but the majority are perfectly pleasant people.