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I read a mad rant on a blog by an otherwise beautiful & intelligent “colleague”, I’ll let her speak for herself:

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I love men. They truly rock. They created the wheel (so rumor has it), the combustion engine, the typewriter, Starbucks, and are 50% responsible for all life on this planet (for now at least.) Well, that’s my disclaimer...I love men...because everything that I am about to say pretty much indicates the contrary, so you have to trust me. I do love men. However....

Right around the time I turned thirty I began to notice an odd thing about the world. It is completely designed from a male perspective. Now you have to realize that I totally understand that the world did not just one day become penis-dominated....it just so happens that at about the age of thirty I stopped being all about me (i.e. I took my head out of my arse.) And wouldn’t you know it...the first thing I see when I start considering that there other people in the world is that half of the people really just don’t matter. Hmmmm.....

You would think that a female who has spent the majority of her life engulfed in mathematics, physics, and engineering would notice the discrepancy between men and women, right? In truth, I was either too busy competing with men or completely oblivious to anything in the world outside of my immediate realm (see previous reference to head up arse.) It never occurred to me the social pattern within the physics lab – where I’m a 1% minority - was just an exaggerated version of the rest of the world. Gosh, it was like one day I woke up and discovered my DNA reduced me to nothing but TNA!

There are many people – women and men alike – who see the feminist movement as women overcompensating for years of repression. Well, heck, at least there’s acknowledgement that women were repressed for years. The truth is that the women’s movement is about more than just making sure that women have the right to vote and earn equal pay for equal work. It’s about drawing attention to the fact that the world is almost entirely run by, AND DESIGNED BY, men. This is what is referred to as a patriarchal society.

Men may or may not be able to grasp what I mean when I say that the world is designed by men. It is not because engineering and architecture are fields populated almost entirely by men. It is because almost everything about the world has been created to benefit a man. The lids on jars are near woman-proof. My first keyboard was way too big for my little girly hands. Heck, I struggle to push the revolving door at my attorney’s building just to get inside…yet a MAN has no trouble with it. Oh, and let’s not forget the super-bad engineering by a male. My underpants are designed purely to appeal to a man’s sex drive and not because a floss of fabric in the tush is comfortable. But you know...it goes beyond the design of every day things.

One of the biggest areas that I have been examining lately in terms of historical patriarchism is the political structure. Have you ever notice that it is WOMEN who end up on welfare? Women who have to sue their boss for sexual harassment? That is because the world is designed by men. The biggest implication of living in a man’s world is that the gender roles are therefore defined by men. MEN get to tell me that I’m pretty before I feel that I am pretty. MEN get to decide that I am smart before I get to BE smart. And the one I really love…MEN get to decide that it is legal (or not) for women to have an abortion. In a woman’s world….men would start out sterile and have to EARN the right to procreate.

Ah….there’s the bitterness we were waiting for. LOL. Oh, there it is. That’s the sort of statement that makes people say, “Now that’s a married woman who kept her own name.” And of course, I did. I had it for all of my life…WHY am I supposed to change it? So my children aren’t confused? LOL. OK, sure. I thought it was about taking away my identity right after I figured (most of) it out.

I guess the question I need to throw out here is to women. Have you NOTICED we live in a man’s world? I mean, think about it. It’s entirely based on logic and not on intuition or emotion. Those are BAD things. The difference between HISTORY and HYSTERIA is not just in the Latin root (hysteria comes from the Latin hystericus, meaning hysterical….think HYSTERECTOMY.) I mean, come on, we live in a world where WOMEN ARE DENIED BIRTH CONTROL by holier than thou Wal-mart pharmacists, while VIAGRA is COVERED BY INSURANCE. Are you getting my point? I mean, hell, even the Judeo-Christian GOD is a friggin’ man.

Alright. Men....I adore you. I just wish you could live for just a month in a world of cramps, craving, welfare, and breast implants. Then, maybe for a moment, you would know what it is like to live in a world dominated by a genitalia you do not possess.

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Well, as long as one of us gets to be happy ;)