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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 8:11 am 
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Clay_Allison wrote:
Bio-Feminism hasn't caught on, seeing is how it's not exceptionally possible. Even if they did come up with a way for guys to have kids, the five of them that would agree to it wouldn't help too many people even the score.

I know you're being a little facetious, but actually I think you've touched on a large factor behind the imbalance in representation. People in general aren't very motivated to cross old gender boundaries. Despite being a state school with a special purpose recruitment program (no, not quotas) for women, my engineering classes remain nearly devoid of women. Indeed, we seldom hear about women who are activly seeking a postion being denied because of their sex. Instead we hear the question of "Why aren't there any women around here?"

The thing that I think upsets some people is that women are now ostensibly free to do whatever they want. So the logic goes that if they havn't done something, it's because they didn't want to. "If you want to see a woman president, why aren't you running for political office?"

I'm not saying I completely agree with this, but it seems to me that once you get to legal equity, there isn't a lot more you can do for a group. You can encourage them to come on out and join the rest of us, but you can't <i>make</i> them do anything.

So, the question is how should we encourage women?

Ummm...I have no idea. Maybe that's what feminists should do. Make some useful suggestions for ways to encorage women to take a bigger part in running the world.



And not to derail the topic, but
Tamayo wrote:
(I am being pedantic: the word "gender" is properly applied only to other words, not to people or societal roles. Incorrect uses of the word "gender" are euphemisms for the correct word, which is "sex". Euphemisms hinder communication, and are therefore bad -- though I do admit that your phrase was shorter and easier to say than mine was, hmmm.)

I've heard a number of people advocate the use of the word 'sex' to denote whether or not a person has a Y chromosome and 'gender' to denote a masculine/feminine/gay/whatever societal role. It's a convenient handle if you have to talk about that kind of thing for any length of time, even if it does amount to more butchering of the English language.

Clay_Allison wrote:
Women could safely and healthily avoid their periods by taking Birth control without the <b>Placaebo<b>

Is this some kind of misspelling? Why should a <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=placebo&r=67">placebo</a> make any difference?

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:01 am 
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Rand Al'Tor wrote:
The topic is whether there IS still work to do to get equal rights.


In that case.

No.

Its over, people. I mean it. Give up. In western society its over. You win. Equal rights, shut up about it already. Tamayo, the old boys club is dead. Really it is. Sexism today is at the same state as racism. Disorganised, dying out and universally frowned upon. Wherever it is found in the professional world, it is systimatically stamped out.

Why are there few women in positions of power? Biology. You can protest and whinge and whine all you like, but it doesnt change the fact that deep down, men are the hunter-killers and women keep the homefire burning, gather, tend, heal and nurse. Some women are not, same as there are effeminite men, (A lot of them around here) there are women who exibit the aggressive qualities needed for command positions.

Maggie Thatcher was perhaps one of the greatest British PM's ever and dont let fuckwad hippies tell you otherwise.

One of my corpererals in the Army was a chick and she was a baddassed motherfucker. She actually didnt want to take the section with the chicks in it cause "Most girls arnt cut out for this shit. I've taken my share of mixed sections and the whinging makes my fucking head hurt"

She was one of the coolest people I've ever met.

My C.O was an female. Good Christ she could fucking yell tarnish off brass (Which would usually be the reason she was yelling)

My Uncle tells me stories of getting beaten up... yes getting the shit punched out of him at age 19 for sassing my grandmother while drunk. She's ever so slightly insane but she's still got balls that would put a brass monkey to shame, that woman.

So, I've encountered 'strong' women in my life. Grew up around them. Got trained and taught by them. Ask THEM why few women do what they do and they say it upfront.

Most women just are not interested in it. Those who are, few have the heart and the guts for it. Thats just how it is. These women have trouble odentifying with other women, funny enough. (And to kick the butch sterotype, most of them had husbands who were also pretty hard)

Why are their few women in positions that demand aggressiveness? Cause few women are agressive. Those who try are usually outclassed by men. Those who arn't, I hold in the highest reguard. I admire guts, and these people had it in spades.




Thats my $0.02 worthImage


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:36 am 
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Forevergrey wrote:
Maggie Thatcher was perhaps one of the greatest British PM's ever and dont let fuckwad hippies tell you otherwise.


:o Fuck no she wasn't!

I don't comment on Australian politics because I don't know enough about them, I suggest you do the same when it comes to British politics. Sure, she put on a good show of strength etc but if you look at the broader picture you will see how much she fucked up; i'm sure ollie can back me up on this one. Thatcherism was not good for Britain.

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there was going to be a military coup if the Conservatives didnt' win the election that put her in power, that's how bad the country was before

Forevergrey wrote:
dont let fuckwad hippies tell you otherwise.


now, you list all the bad things that her government did and then list how they've been changed, bettered even, by later governments

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 12:06 pm 
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With respect to women in science and engineering ...

Thinman wrote:
So, the question is how should we encourage women?

Ummm...I have no idea. Maybe that's what feminists should do. Make some useful suggestions for ways to encorage women to take a bigger part in running the world.


I agree entirely. Consider the comic-book-and-cartoon phenomena of Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon, both written by women, intended for audiences of young girls. In both cases, the young heroines hate scholastic endeavour generally and mathematics specifically. Women are not at all innocent in their own subjugation.

I despise Cardcaptor Sakura. It is pernicious.

Forevergrey wrote:
Why are there few women in positions of power? Biology. You can protest and whinge and whine all you like, but it doesnt change the fact that deep down, men are the hunter-killers and women keep the homefire burning, gather, tend, heal and nurse. Some women are not, same as there are effeminite men, (A lot of them around here) there are women who exibit the aggressive qualities needed for command positions.


Well, you have graduated from ad hominem to circularity, which is a step in the right direction, I suppose.

The biology-is-destiny argument is rather antiquated, I am afraid. You are likely unaware of it, but women can be very ambitious and very ferocious indeed; however, until recently, they have only been able to express their ambition in limited arenas. The attitude which you espouse above represents what men have been supposed to think about women: that the women are soft, pliant, and nurturing. It puts the girls in their place and assures the boys that the girls don't want to leave that place.

But don't take my word for it! Go look at any high school. Watch the girls fight for dominance amongst themselves. (Cruelly, viciously, mercilessly.) Watch the boys pant after the girls who achieve that dominance. Girls appreciate power too.

Because people of both sexes believe your statement above, they deduce that a woman who wants to be other than someone who "keeps the homefire burning, gathers, tends, heals and nurses" is aberrant. So ...

It is only men who are fit for leadership, therefore it is only men who are fit for leadership.

No.


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 12:41 pm 
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Tamayo wrote:
But don't take my word for it! Go look at any high school. Watch the girls fight for dominance amongst themselves. (Cruelly, viciously, mercilessly.) Watch the boys pant after the girls who achieve that dominance. Girls appreciate power too.


Funny how the girls who play the "Oh look, I have power cause I have a cunt" game end up never going anywhere in life.

So... I see you would like to embrace the pretence that women think exactly the same way as men? Bullshit, and I'm not even going to go google and give you a page full of scientific findings to support that. I claimed that women are less predisposed to roles that require aggression, as leadership positions do.

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It is only men who are fit for leadership, therefore it is only men who are fit for leadership.


Dont put words in my mouth, not after I make a statement that is the opposite of that.

I mean, christ, did I not list EXAMPLES of women I have met excelling in leadership positions? In the military no less.


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Women are, by and large, the reason that they are not in positions of power right now.

Who runs girlie magazines, who enforces the social norms that continually discourage females from being aggressive? It is women. Regaurdless of who started it, women are perpetuating it.

This can be seen in other minority/oppressed cultures, particularly the black minorities, where (as I mentioned) circumstances clearly show that black skin does not merit discrimination, but the culture of african americans does discourage success.

I feel that there is a very large parrallel here, with women perpetuating their own stereotypes when the world at large doesn't really care, a duality that both shifts the blame onto a group that no longer is responsible for it (males) and perpetuating the very thing the blamers (many feminists) supposedly wish to wipe out.

So, the job of the modern feminist isn't to blame men and demand we treat women better, its to get the other women (Icy) in line and stop them from blaming all their failures on the man.

-MiB

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 2:05 pm 
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The Man in Black wrote:
Women are, by and large, the reason that they are not in positions of power right now.

Who runs girlie magazines, who enforces the social norms that continually discourage females from being aggressive? It is women. Regaurdless of who started it, women are perpetuating it.


(My own emphasis on the phrase "by and large")

Women's attitudes of their own societal positions constitute a reason for their own social inferiority. Thinman made that point above, and I concurred. I do not accept the "by and large" however. Yes, Hugh Hefner's daughter now manages Playboy, but not a lot of women subscribe to that particular periodical, so women are hardly likely to be influenced by its ideas. Besides Playboy however, can you mention other such wastes of time perpetrated by women? Hustler and Penthouse still have male publishers, I think. What about less-obviously egregious nonsense such as GQ or Maxim or the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated?

Nevertheless, Playboy and its ilk are fairly harmless, I think. The dangerous ideas come from so-called "lad culture" as evidenced in such other publications as Ralph, which seem actively hostile to women outside the realms of the original KKK: Kinder, Kueche, und Kirche. I hesitate to invoke the word "backlash" -- Naomi Wolf is one of the bigoted, pseudo-intellectual fools who make sane feminists look very bad -- but that is what lad culture appears to me to be.

The Man in Black wrote:
I feel that there is a very large parrallel here, with women perpetuating their own stereotypes when the world at large doesn't really care, a duality that both shifts the blame onto a group that no longer is responsible for it (males) and perpetuating the very thing the blamers (many feminists) supposedly wish to wipe out.

So, the job of the modern feminist isn't to blame men and demand we treat women better, its to get the other women (Icy) in line and stop them from blaming all their failures on the man.


You may be enlightened and egalitarian -- I don't know very much about you, and I know I disagree with many of your viewpoints as expressed here on these forums -- but many of the men I meet are not so enlightened and egalitarian. I can go to conferences to deliver papers and be expected to deliver coffee instead. Sixty percent of university graduates are women, but ninety percent of full professors are men, and that latter fraction approaches unity in science, engineering and mathematics. The old-boy's club is alive and well.

Yes, modern feminists have to make women aware of their own power. That does not mean that the job of educating men is finished. Both men and women have to be disabused of the notion that women are merely guardians rather than leaders. Hey, isn't that what I am doing here?


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Hey, way to ignore the parrellels comment and the example (last page) of how black communities perpetuate their own bad status.

I mean here you are again presupposing that it had to be the men's fault and not the womens' that they're where they are today, and you provide no proof (since there are obviously a load of skeptics here.)

I have provided at the very least the pointing out that girlie magaiznes (ie, magazines read by females, not playboy) and feminine culture is not put there and enforced by men - its done by women. The reason women are by and large not in aggressive positions isn't because men don't accept them there, but because they arn't aggressive for the most part.

And I can assure you it is not men that women emulate when they act feminine and submissive.

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 3:41 pm 
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Fun thread, and on one of my favorite topics, too. I hope no one minds if I delurk momentarily at this late date.

Tamayo wrote:
Women's attitudes of their own societal positions constitute a reason for their own social inferiority. Thinman made that point above, and I concurred. I do not accept the "by and large" however...


I do, though this may be the result of my environment rather than of any kind of objective appraisal. The following is personal opinion and should not be expected to conform to strict standards of logical rigor; nonetheless, you may find it entertaining and/or instructive.

For context: I live, work, study, and prosecute essentially all of my social life in and around Santa Cruz, California, a hotbed of feminism if there ever was one. Men around here have two courses of action if they don't want to be (metaphorically, of course) stoned to death: to accept feminism as it is preached to them (admittedly rather more radical than feminism as a whole tends to be, as the average feminist doesn't feel the urge to preach), or to keep their opinions on the subject to themselves. This is all pursuant to the main point, which follows:

Around here, sexism as espoused by men towards women essentially does not exist. You still get flashes of it occasionally, such as in the farthest-right publications you can think of, but those are usually couched in other issues (abortion being the canonical example) and fairly well hidden. Yet you still get all the usual female stereotypes. What gives?

I think the answer is deeper than simple sexism, and the relatively female portions of our culture seem to be the best place to look for it. Yes, there's pornography (and I include such drek as Maxim and FHM within the auspices of 'pornography', for reasons that should be clear to anyone that's picked such a magazine up), but, as you say (and inconsequential issues aside), not many women read that kind of thing, so the answer must lie elsewhere. The men I have spoken to on the subject are either genuinely attracted to 'empowered' (I hate that term, as empowerment implies an external empowerer, but will use it for the sake of conciseness) women or do a fairly good job of pretending to be, so it's not an issue of actual sexual attractiveness. The feminist movement, whatever its faults, has done a pretty good job of eliminating institutional forms of sexism. And I know far too many aggressive women to buy the biological argument.

That pretty much exhausts the usual scapegoats. My best guess is that this apparent stereotyping of women is mostly thanks to upbringing. I can hear triumphant noises from the peanut gallery, but hold your I-told-you-sos; consider that children tend (stereotypically, at least, and it is stereotypes, after all, that we are dealing with here) to receive moral instruction from the parent of the same sex, and that most mid-childhood development takes place in a de-facto sex-segregated environment. Sometimes this is formalized (as in boys' or girls' schools, or variations on the theme), sometimes not, but either way most children draw their friends, mentors and role models from the same sex. Female-targeted entertainment likewise tends to be produced, or at least created, by women.

So what do female children get from this part of their education? Many things, of course, but most applicable to this argument is a lot of instruction on what constitutes proper behavior for a woman. Some of this is valid (viz. earlier comments on deserted parking lots, though I can't help suspecting a certain degree of sexual paranoia), but most, as far as I can tell, is not. Nowadays, a lot of noises about empowerment seem to be mixed in with the indoctrination, but, in the terminology of media and pop psychology, 'empowerment' tends to boil down to 'be yourself'... and what is that self being molded into? Why, the stereotypical bubblegum-pink princess, of course.

I'm not at all sure that 'sexism' is the proper term for the phenomenon, for reasons which I have already explained, but I do consider it an avowedly bad thing. So, what can we do about it? I think the most specific thing men can do is to make their intentions clear, in hopes of dispelling the aura of perceived sexual attractiveness that so much of the culture is predicated upon; more generally, it's a good idea to treat women, not better (in fact, in many cases this reduces to 'worse'), but less in line with the expectations set upon them. Women have a more difficult task, but also a simpler one: to work towards less artificial standards of behavior in their own culture. To blame men entirely, or even largely, would be to confuse cause and effect.

Incidentally, I study engineering with a heavy emphasis on mathematics (set and number theory, mostly), and about a third of my professors have been women. They tend to do a better job than the male professors I've had, too... perhaps because they have to.


Last edited by Pyromancer on Tue Jun 08, 2004 7:19 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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Pyromancer wrote:
I agree with mibby


Thanks pyro.

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 6:49 pm 
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Eh. More expansion than unqualified agreement; I'm mostly interested in why it's so. I do seem to be with you on most of the major points, though.

EDIT: Incidentally, where does the term "moonbat" (viz. early posts in this thread) come from, if anyone knows? I've run across it before, in Eric S. Raymond's blog, and its meaning isn't too hard to figure out from context, but I can't see any obvious etymology.


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Pyro wrote:
Women have a more difficult task, but also a simpler one: to work towards lack of sexual bias in their own culture. To blame men entirely, or even largely, would be to confuse cause and effect.


Because it bears repeating. I think the real problem lies not in the "male domenated society" type arguments, but in the minds of many females themselves. While our culture is conciously saying, "Yes, be empowered, dammit!", the subconcious message is, "Keep your traditional roles. Everybody's happy when we stay in traditional roles." The task we have, then, is either to find the factors that influence these sort of roles, or educate females of the existance of such factors.

As an example, the store I work at sells vacuum cleaners. Among the different models we sell is one branded as the "Barbie vacuum". Essencially, it's a somewhat underpowered vacuum, designed mainly as a toy so little girls can feel that they, too, are helping out around the house.

I'll let you work out the subconcious implications of this yourself. There are many more examples of this sort of influence, but that's the first one I can think of at the moment.


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 7:11 pm 
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Pyromancer wrote:
Eh. More expansion than unqualified agreement; I'm mostly interested in why it's so. I do seem to be with you on most of the major points, though.

EDIT: Incidentally, where does the term "moonbat" (viz. early posts in this thread) come from, if anyone knows? I've run across it before, in Eric S. Raymond's blog, and its meaning isn't too hard to figure out from context, but I can't see any obvious etymology.


http://www.barking-moonbat.com/

Originated in that blog, iirc.

Also, "you" or "I" have no "task" to do. The "task" is in the minds of all the females, and it is not a "task" but a choice, in the end, as to whether they prefer their old roles as subject to men but less responsible (ie, housewife. Though the work is hard, the responsibility is scaled back) or whether they, personally, wish to go out and take the opportunity afforded to them.

There can be no 'forcing' or 'reeducating' or anything like that: there is just choice. At best, just make them concious of that choice, so we can get rid of this blame-game crowd.

-MiB

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Danke.


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Correction, and thanks to the Supercow:

Superkuh wrote:
Moonbat, shortened from "barking moonbat", coined by Perry de Havilland of samizdata.net. Generally any extremist beyond the normal confines of the their -ism. I've been known to call these people "lint", indicating they have gone so far that they have detached from the "fringe". Not originally associated with either end of the politcal spectrum.


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Pyromancer wrote:
I hope no one minds if I delurk momentarily at this late date.


Not at all! I very much appreciate a reasoned, cogent position even if it is contrary to my own. The bullying straw-men and vitriolic personal attacks do become tiresome after a while. I came in late myself, I believe; I think my first posting on this topic was number twelve or thereabouts.

With respect to my rejection of The Man in Black's "by and large":

Pyromancer wrote:
I do [believe that is primarily women themselves who are the cause of their powerlessness], though this may be the result of my environment rather than of any kind of objective appraisal. The following is personal opinion and should not be expected to hew to any kind of objective standard; nonetheless, you may find it entertaining and/or instructive.

For context: I live, work, study, and prosecute essentially all of my social life in and around Santa Cruz, California, a hotbed of feminism if there ever was one.

Around here, sexism as espoused by men towards women essentially does not exist. [snip] Yet you still get all the usual female stereotypes. What gives?


(The emboldened text is my own: please correct me if I have misunderstood you.)

In Santa Cruz, could the Tailhook scandal have taken place? More to the point, could something like the Tailhook scandal ever occur anywhere in the West? I do not stand with some in thinking the massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal can be considered as a definite indication of a "yes" -- that horrible event was brought about by a lone madman with a rifle -- but I am also not of the opinion that even the terrible press given to the American military after Tailhook could change the minds of more than a million personnel under arms. "It wasn't me -- it was just some drunken squids up in Washington." It's just that the American military hasn't really changed that much: for example, women still aren't permitted in submarines, and there are about two women fighter pilots. I know that if I joined the military (and I had good eyesight, sigh) I'd want to fly fighter aircraft. I doubt I'm very special in that.

In Santa Cruz, do people demonstrate violently against medics who perform abortions? It is still the law in the United States that abortions are legal, but in some parts of the country, a medic can be taking his life into his hands to advertise his willingness to perform that service. More to the point, any woman who wishes to avail herself of that service may face overwhelming obstacles placed in her way by the demonstrators. As long as abortion is legal, any implementation or even toleration of such obstacles is rankest sexism.

In Santa Cruz, is there a well-funded, well-run public education system? You do know that American public schools rank nearly last amongst all the Western nations? (Canadian ones aren't much better. :-( ) Have the children of Santa Cruz learned to think for themselves or do their exhausted parents let the TV do the children's thinking for them? There is a lot of money invested in selling clothes and dolls and play houses and toy ovens and bad makeup to young girls, you know, and the advertisers have become very good at it. The bubblegum-pink princess archetype is golden.

You may say, "I am not prejudiced for or against women," and I am definitely inclined to believe you. You may say, "there is no systematic campaign to subjugate women" and I might believe you or I might not. But if you say, "no-one else around me is interested in maintaining the status quo with regards to women's social position either" I will cry "bullshit!"

"I'm all right, Jack" is just not good enough.


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Tamayo wrote:
(The emboldened text is my own: please correct me if I have misunderstood you.)


Mmm. As much as I hate to blame something as vague as 'society' for something which I consider less than ideal, blaming 'women' carries connotations of condemnation which I do not intend. Better to say that traditional female culture - which does not represent all women, any more than the 'lad culture' you referred to earlier represents all men, though it seems farther-reaching in its implications - is largely responsible for the effects I describe.

Santa Cruz as I write it isn't supposed to be a representative setting; it's not, as I attempted to imply with my comments about it being a "hotbed of feminism" (or words to that effect). Rather, it serves as a test case, or as close to a test case as is possible when dealing with entire societies. These debates tend to get bogged down in discussions of admittedly bad shit that takes place elsewhere in the world (and especially in its armed forces, a fact which I in no way condone), so I chose a setting I was familiar with where said bad shit was more or less minimized, in hopes of seeing through its much-maligned effects. Control cases are handily provided by the rest of the world.

Could a Tailhook-like event have taken place? Probably, though 'could have' is an annoyingly inexact term, and it would be vastly less likely here than almost anywhere else (Vegas doubly so). Are there violent demonstrations against abortionists? Not that I've seen, read of, or heard about, though plenty of demonstrations against corporate greed or other supposedly patriarchial aspects of society can be found. The public education system, and other aspects of raising a family, seem roughly on par with the other places I've lived; this is ideal for my purposes, as upbringing is precisely the factor I want to examine. Is it some sort of egalitarian utopia? Hells no... but for the purposes of this topic I don't want it to be, as I'm trying to determine why it's not.

I don't deny that direct sexism is significant elsewhere (though, thankfully, in increasingly isolated instances), and I don't condone its presence, as should be clear. But it's not the force it was thirty years ago; hence, it's reasonable to wonder about the degree to which it actually affects present sex roles, as no one seems to doubt that both it and traditional culture are responsible to some degree. That is the question which I attempt to answer.

(As an aside, I suspect that the obstacles to legal abortion which you describe could usually be described more accurately as examples of religious fanaticism than of sexism per se; however, that's another debate, and with respect to this subject it's merely academic. It's a bad deal either way, yes?)


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:27 pm 
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Tamayo, I know you like to use individual examples, but in order to argue for systematic discrimination you have to have more than individual examples, but rather analysis that points to institutional sexism.

They're out there. Find them.

-MiB

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:57 pm 
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I'm not arguing for systematic discrimination; I'm arguing against your "by and large" proposition that women are their own worst enemies. It's much easier to disprove a universally qualified statement than to support one; all one needs is a sufficient counterexample.

Thanks for the advice, though.


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