RE: Challenging Feminism. What's your opinion?
Well, call me old-fashioned, or just old(er than most of you). The feminist movement of the 1970s was very important and allowed women a voice in the conversation, a voice at work, a voice about the kind of work she could do and it led to acceptance of women as equals at all levels in business and other pursuits. Feminism also brought, for the first time, freedom for all women (not just women with means) to choose when to start a family via accessible birth control and safe abortions. This was a huge step for women in the work force to be able to pursue work with the same opportunities as men.
With 45 years between then and now, I think that younger people have grown up not even knowing the struggles and what was at stake and that women actually had to stand up and fight for this basic freedom.
We now have a political swing that has been cutting off access to women for all kinds of basic women's health services.
This is not the direction a forward thinking country (or world!) should be going in, and it's a serious issue. If women, especiially poorer women with less means, are blocked from basic women's health , we take away equality and minimize the importance of their lives.
Another aspect to the importance of feminism, is the fact that even though women are told they can do anything, once they do it, you can pretty much bet that a man is there to knock her down. Paulina Poriskova, the former model, just had a great piece published in the NYT...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/paulina-porizkova-america-feminist.html?_r=0
As for the Gender Studies query above, I think that it is just like any other liberal arts subject and should not be belittled. If a student is a psych major, do they have to be a psychologist? How about a history major. Do they have to be an historian? No.
Anyway, Call me a feminist :-)
Hi @gardenlady - thanks for commenting :)
I think the issue is not a gender one it's more so all about behaviour. The Political causes you talk about are happening, I agree, but the same is being taken away from men. I spearheaded a team that helped men and women achieve what they wanted in life through focus and activity, and what was apparently striking is that both reported the same wants and needs. Our team was shut down in the end due to lack of funding. Like I say, it's not biased, this closing down of stuff.
I wasn't really belittling it. I was hoping to understand it a bit more - I really don't know what the progression after Gender Studies is. A psych major may not go on to be a Psychologist but they have that option there!
Thanks for the conversation though - I really appreciate all sides of the debate :)
I agree that behavior is a huge part of it. But I don't see the political causes equal to " the same is being taken away from men. " Can you expand on that? Cuz I'm not sure what you mean. In the meantime, men, in Congress, (no women!) are trying to take away funding, and have succeeded in taking away funding for basic healthcare for women and for access to basic women's healthcare. All in the name of religion! Religion! This is wrong.
I couldn't comment on America. I live in the UK. We're not very religious over here as a country. We have Charles Darwin on our £10 notes lol. Perhaps we are both right then? :)
What feminism boils down to, abusers vs abused.
The feminist ideology could had given us electricity for all I care, but in thinking that men keep women down to stay on top there's no avoiding feminism will also give its believers resentment.
I'm glad that @raymondspeaks opened up this discussion. Glad that you and your partner's relationship survived the miscarriage, man. I imagine it might still be painful.
I think I might consider myself an aspiring feminist. At age 17, my first lover, poet/choreographer Stephanie Sylvia wore her body hair and turned our little crew on to Starhawk who was an important figure in reintroducing female-centered ritual, Motherpeace Tarot which shares non-patriarchal views of archetypes (which of us can list as many famous female heroes as male ones), Isadora Duncan who made more than one body type acceptable in dance.
My partner of twenty(ish) years, @rivkah is very interested in current feminist thought and lead me to the writer bell hooks, who in All About Love shared the idea that men are socialized that we are supposed to be in charge, especially in relation to woman (and children), and spend a lot of our energy trying to prove that we are in charge. In fact, we would be a lot less stressed out if we weren't trying to be in charge.
Rivka and I discuss the expectation alluded to in the joke shared above (@crewjohn) that men take on the dangerous tasks. Reading this post made me realize that the job of potentially getting hurt or killed might in fact be easier than the job of being the caregiver or even the survivor. And woman as caregiver is the expectation, whereas man as caregiver is the exception. What is death anyway but another birth? One of the many amazing quotes in All About Love describes birth as being a death from the perspective of the foetus.
One of the really cool concepts I learned from The Heroines Journey by Maureen Murdock is that men tend to do, while women tend to be, and that both approaches to life are equally important.
Good comment. I think some men like to lead and others like to follow. The same can be said for women. It's why individuality and relationship dynamics are so important :)
It's funny watching our almost-eight-year-old act like the bossy control freak we can be. Relationship dynamics are so challenging sometimes.