How many people do you agree with that you think are wrong?
Such a reference would seem to lack objectivity.
Could you rephrase that in English? My “Nonsense” is a bit rusty.
I didn’t refer to them in order to claim I was right, I referred to them as an illustration that the claim that women had it so bad back then is largely a myth and that many of them are just as contemptuous of present day life in this country as I am. As I said upthread, it wasn’t until the late sixties/early seventies that a bunch of 18-to-20-year-old female college students with no real world experience got radicalized into believing that things like men holding the door for them was really just a way of keeping a foot on their neck. So silly, but as recent history has shown, there’s no shortage of people eager to think of themselves as victims, so perpetuating the myth of has been pretty easy for the ideology of victimhood to pull off.
Funny, but I’ve never had a woman react negatively to my holding the door for her, or picking up something she’s dropped, or letting her go first…although I do any of those things for men too, depending on the situation. (Unless they were acting, but I’m usually pretty good at picking up on that kind of thing.) The old protective instinct has come out when there was a threat, too.
Walking her home isn’t often an issue because at least one of us has a car, and usually both. However, it can be seen nowadays as having ulterior motives.
It isn’t easy being green…
Tell me one thing that you believe that you know to be wrong.
My life in general includes many, many older Americans who generally think life now is significantly better than when they were children. But that’s just anecdotal, and thus no more or less significant than SA’s online pals.
“Largely”? “Many”? I don’t really think a Facebook bubble of people who agree with you is a good sample on which to base this conclusion because the people who don’t agree with you aren’t in it.
Anyone ever tell you you couldn’t pursue your dream of becoming an archaeologist or a pilot or an underwater diver because men don’t do that? I’m glad the 18-20 year old women of the time said “Hell no!” As for the door, it was 45 years ago and that’s a long time to hold a grudge. I started university the year after Marc Lepine shot a classroom full of women as well as some dumb tasteless incident during Engineering Week upset a number of girls on campus, so I was called a pig and found my name as well as that of every other guy in engineering on a list of “potential rapists” posted around campus to make some point or other. I got over it, so can you.
I’ll reply whenever I want to whatever I want, thank you very much.
“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Those were some radical sentiments for their time. The founders of our country came out of a time where it was believed that your place in society and the world was the divine manifestation of God’s will and plan and it was not your place to try and change it. It was believed that your husband, your king, the lord of your manor was inherently better than you and that this hierarchy needed to be accepted. The idea of pursuit of happiness was also radical - the prevailing idea was that your life was the property of your king and your God. Personal happiness had no place in the equation.
The Declaration of Independence is more aspiration than declaration. It took us ,as a country, time to implement this ideas. And it’s a continuing process.
But the countercultural revolution that you show so much disdain for was a time when great advances were made in setting forth the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
We changed the country’s attitude towards war. We fought against the mass slaughter of unwilling soldiers in Vietnam. We still have war, but this country no longer has tolerance for the kind of casualties we saw in Vietnam. And all military service is now elective. Draft lotteries are one part of the “good old days” that I would hope nobody misses.
We also took part in eliminating the legalized racism that ran directly counter to the Declaration of Independence and hampered so many of our citizens in their pursuit of happiness.
And we no longer felt constrained by societal roles that impaired our pursuit of happiness and our status as equal citizens. We still aren’t there yet. And there are still political forces that are pushing back on those ideals embraced by the Declaration of Independence.
Because it’s hard to embrace an ideal of equality when you are coming from a previous position of superiority.
And it’s easy to be dishonest about it. And impolite. And to care so much about keeping things unequal that you will throw all values and morals out the window in order to WIN. You might even go as far as colluding with a foreign power. Or at least trying to. Which is not very decent or chivalrous.
Donald Trump is more than one guy that’s been in office 14 months, he’s the culmination of the pushback against these core American ideals. And hordes of tight-assed old men that are tired of being equals with women and minorities have embraced him as their circus master. While glossing over the fact that he’s a crude foul-mouthed womanizer, a genuinely horrible person, and less of a Christian than Buddha. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
But I will grant that there were good things about the late 1950’s. We had robust investment in infrastructure. We invested in science and our space program was the embodiment of American Exceptionalism. A family of 5 could live comfortably on a single middle manager salary. Employers cared about their employees and reinvested in their businesses.
All of this was made possible by the top marginal tax rate of 91%. As well as financing the making of a great America, this disincentivized greed. And even in the era of McCarthy, no one screamed socialism. The idea was that if you were one of the winners in the free market system, you acknowledged that the system was responsible and gave back accordingly.
I really do wish we were a more moral country in that regard, and I wish we saw more of that societal morality in businesses and wealthy individuals.
But that’s far cry from bemoaning the downfall of society because women don’t wear high hells and aprons while they’re vacuuming.
Further reply is not warranted.
Pioneering women in archeology.
Couldn’t find anything on female divers of the 40s or 50s, but my own experiences with relatives who were female and in businesses of their own, plus the accomplishments of the women linked to above lead me to believe that if some woman wanted badly enough to be a diver, she would have been. There aren’t that many men who engage in it either.
Look, there’s no question that women have more opportunities now than they did then. And there’s no question that that’s a good thing. But they didn’t have it bad back then either and many of them felt that, if anything, they had the advantage.
The biggest problem with the women’s movement and with many of the issues the left decides to get het up about is that it’s enemy-centric. The men of the past didn’t deliberately set out to mistreat women in any way. Most of the circumstances that existed in the 50s and 60s where women were concerned were simply those that had grown into being over the centuries, where women tended the house and kids and the men labored to support them. But never was there a general or agreed upon animus toward women or desire to enslave them or consider them as children, as the feminists of the time would have us believe and some of us still do.
But every good Trotskyite knows that the way to foment revolution is to get people mad, and the best way to get them mad is to villainize who or whatever it is you want them to revolt against. Thus we wound up with men being villainized, which resulted in, among other things, women calling us pigs and would-be rapists and glaring at us when we held the door for them.
Hahahaha! Thanks, but what I meant was that I’d addressed the salient part of your post, and that nothing else about it warranted comment from me.
Spat on me when I held the door open, actually. Just the once. I told her “Fuck you, then.” I got over it. It’s not like they’re doing it now.
At least, not to me.
That would be Mrs. Putnam, TYVM.
This is still just a difference of opinion. Okay, according to you and your acquaintances, America was generally better in the 50s. According to most folks I’ve spoken to who were around back then, America is a lot better now.
Your opinion isn’t more special or more worthy than theirs.
Of course, you would never have been exposed to The Second Sex that dated from 1949 when the oldest Boomers were four years old. And while we are of similar ages, I knew several women (or girls, at that time, prior to 1965), who lamented the fact that they were prohibited from pursuing desired careers because colleges either closed the needed courses to women or put limits on the number of women who could apply because “men/boys needed the seats.” I also knew a couple of women who, having been “allowed” to take specific classes, were actually denied jobs for which they had applied, explicitly because they were women. Of course, by then it was 1970 so they had simply been “radicalized” into wanting jobs for which they had prepared most of their lives. I wonder if you never encountered them because they already knew your position on those issues?
Sort of like villainizing feminists, today.
In my entire college career, I encountered ONE woman who got mad at men holding the door for her, and her roommates and classmates would roll their eyes when they talked about her as a nutcase. Were there women who shared her opinion? Sure. Just as there are still men who don’t think that Harvey Weinstein or Don Trump have displayed any bad attitudes or behaviors.
I’m surprised that your arms don’t fall off wielding that four foot wide brush that you always use to paint history in your own weird colors.
Funny, for decades I’ve experienced women snootily gliding by with neither a word nor glance as I held the door for them. On those rare occasions where I did get a glance it was more of a glare.
However, now that I’m getting older I find that both sexes are beginning to smilingly hold the door for me. 
You know, I have held or opened the door for numerous people and not a one of them indicate any kind of resentment. Perhaps your appearance or manner is somehow off-putting. If one does it with grace and not the slightest hint of arrogance or obligation, it tends to be received well.
There is also the probability of confirmation bias. If one expects to be treated rudely, anything short of a huge smile is going to be perceived as “snooty” or “glaring.” I, on the other hand, never look for any response from a person (male or female) simply because I held a door and I would guess that the overwhelming majority of my interactions have resulted in thanks.
Likewise. I have never ever had a negative reaction to holding a door (and often do it for whatever gender is coming behind me). Sometimes there is another set of doors right after the one I just held and the most typical response in that case is that the person I just held the door for then holds the next door for me! Turnabout is fair play.