Posted on 05/28/2002 7:17:49 PM PDT by The Giant Apricots
"You better watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical…" — Supertramp's Logical Song
In the past, women ruled the home, taking primary responsibility for raising the children.
In that same past, men ruled the workplace. Every workplace. Without exception.
Two distinct spheres, each ruled by one sex.
Some seek a return of that past, wanting women completely out of the workforce. This is based upon the premise that these roles, women as caregivers and nothing else, and men as providers and nothing else, were best for society in the first place.
That premise is infinitely arguable. I'd argue strongly against it with every fibre of my being.
The same contingents contend that society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals.
That much is true. Society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals.
However, their answer to that imbalance is to endorse the paradigm of women as caregivers and nothing else; of men as providers and nothing else.
That is the wrong answer.
The college-and-career sphere must be equally open to both men and women, and really should be pursued by both men and women.
The expansion of one's learning, and education, and opportunity to achieve a degree in a particular field of expertise should never be limited by a person's biological sex.
No academic or career field should be dominated by women, as some are. No academic or career field should be dominated by men, as some are. Such domination, such imbalance, probably indicates insufficient affirmative outreach.
Intelligence, work ethic, and the ability to learn are the most important qualities of both college students and career professionals.
These qualities are not specific or exclusive to women.
These qualities are not specific or exclusive to men.
Thus, every field of academic pursuit should not only be equally open to women and men alike, but where significant imbalances occur within a given department, affirmative outreach should be proactively initiated.
Ditto for every career.
It is a good thing for career fields to be diversified between women and men. There should be no presumptions of "well, women are better at…" or "well, men are better at…"
Either such presumption attaches to both biological sexes the erroneous fallacy that capability and character, in a given area of endeavor, are innate to one biological sex over the other.
That is a foundation of racism: the belief that capability and character are determined by a person's physicality. It is the path of least resistance, the easiest way to go. In pop-culture parlance, it's "Neanderthal Sociology".
"Neanderthal Sociology" allows people of all chromosomal combinations to look at someone else and say, "They are of Color X. Therefor they are good at (stereotypical list A) and have the following failings of character (stereotypical list B)".
"Neanderthal Sociology" also allows some folks (male and female alike) to presume capability and character by biological sex.
And thus to prescribe certain roles to each, and to proscribe each from certain other roles.
It's almost amazingly retrogressive.
And as their knuckles drag upon the ground, reality remains…
Reality is extremely simple: people should, as individuals, pursue the career-and-family paths in life that they are, as individuals, good at. The sole qualifier upon such a pursuit is that no one else's equal rights, especially the rights to have and protect life, should be abrogated on the basis of gestational age, developmental stage, biological sex, race, or ethnicity in the course of that pursuit.
The conscription of roles by biological sex, exactly the same as conscription by race, is evidentiary exemplification of the need of some, on both sides of the political aisle, to avoid reality.
Reality is that people should do what they are good at.
So, given that meritocratic paradigm, why does this article acknowledge that, "society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals"?
Because in effect, the arrangement of "women as caregivers and nothing else, and men as providers and nothing else" meant one coin on either side of the scale.
The insurgence of women into college and careers put two coins on one side of the scale…
…while leaving only one coin on the other.
The answer to the imbalance is not a disclusion of women from college and careers, as some claim.
Not in part, not in fraction, not at all.
Quite the opposite.
The answer to the imbalance is to put two coins on the OTHER side of the scale.
Men are still not equally represented in parenting. That is their second coin, their real source of balance in life. And by extension, the re-inclusion and equal representation of fathers in families is the single greatest need of a society in tremendous need of being re-balanced.
And so, fathers must be treated equally by society, en route to parity.
That includes pop culture: when a movie or television program indicates that most men aren't valuable as fathers, these portrayals should be pro-actively rebuffed.
Two recent examples come from mainstream companies J.C. Penney and Sears.
J.C. Penney's ad, for a "One-Day Sale", has a father asking his child, "Where's your mother?" The image moves on to happy shoppers at a J.C. Penney, while the voice-over chirps "Don't worry dads, it's just one day" — as though fathers could not, before this knuckle-dragging worldview, be capable of running things on their own for more than one day. Mainstream sexism…
The Sears commercial is almost identical: it shows a father with his two daughters at a restaurant.
"Where's mom?", they plaintively say. The father asks one if she'd like a burger; she replies, "Dad! I'm a vegetarian". Then the voiceover comes on and says no problem: the Sears Sale is only on for a few days.
The clear message, like in the J.C. Penney commercial, is that dads are less competent parents. This is part-and-parcel of a systemic devaluation of fathers as caregivers.
The re-valuation of fathers as caregivers is critical to the health of society.
:)
If men are the powerful sex....
As the only man ever elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New York City, Dr. Farrell has been listening to both sexes for a quarter of a century and is uniquely able to write in a way that both articulates men's feelings and women feel more love for themen in their lives.
The Myth of Male Power, Dr. Warren Farrell
Really? Nursing and teaching grammar school have been women dominated for a century.
ROTFLMAOL
Men have only ever ruled anything women thought they could deal with and not screw up too much.Mostly men vs men situations.Keeps the peace, dont you know.
Women for centuries have even professed a fear of insects in order for males to feel themselves in a position of power, more so since Winchestor/Ruger/Ingrahm/ Smith $ Wesson became household names.LOL
I do appreciate a healthy dose of true testosterone, but I have never,in my entire life ,seen a "real" man intimidated by a "real" woman. Or vice-versus.
This is not to say I do not believe it can happen,just that I am not automatically overly sympathetic. Case by case basis.It can and does happen, but mostly by men lacking in testosterone or women lacking in estrogen, and either/both filled with insecurity.
1-young boys committ "suicide" during a pleasure enhancing, masturbation ritual in which they "slightly" hang themselves. Obviously, such action has very little room for error.
Old men committ suicide because when a man is no longer able to provide and protect what is the use in living.
2-By 1998 men and women longevity was virtually the same, with women coming down while men went up.
3-Politicians buy women's votes by spending money on breast cancer research, have been buying women's votes for years.
4-Because a) for heterosexual men, their wives spend their money, b) for homosexual men, they spend their money and live for today because their life expentancy average age is 45 years old.
,,, that's the reason the Family Courts exist for.
I have. See my posts and link in #3 & 4. I never said he was God's gift to writers but he makes some very good points in his book. I have been a masculinist for many years. I am also a woman.
Reality is extremely simple: people should, as individuals, pursue the career-and-family paths in life that they are, as individuals, good at. The sole qualifier upon such a pursuit is that no one else's equal rights, especially the rights to have and protect life, should be abrogated on the basis of gestational age, developmental stage, biological sex, race, or ethnicity in the course of that pursuit.
The underlying confusion of this piece appears even here. The author describes an opinion he is advocating as "reality." Unfortunately, in its details this opinion flies in the face of reality, as well as freedom.
Rather than pick apart the many and varied failures of this confused piece, I'll cut to the heart of the matter.
Mr. Flair ignores the fact that men and women are different. I don't mean different in terms that one is oppressed, or that one is better. I mean simply different. They have different capabilities, and they make different choices. Reality reflects this truth. Some fields are dominated by one sex rather than the other due to dissimilar average ability between the sexes. Other fields are dominated by one sex rather than the other not because of physical disparity, but because one sex prefers that field more than the other. Given the undeniable fact of difference between the sexes this is a normal outcome, not a problem to be resolved by social engineering.
Flair displays an ideological fetish for a form of absolute equality divorced from reality. An ideology that treats men and women as indistinguishable and interchangable, and castigates those who disagree, is at war with human nature itself.
As for the workplace, it's changed over the years because everyone's having to work harder - two incomes are necessary in most homes. I'm confident that I could run a home as efficiently as my wife could. We share tasks around our home as a matter of reflex and both hold down day and after hours jobs. Any women wishing to enter the workforce to experience the glamour of supervised employment certainly has my blessing. Any women who run their own businesses have my admiration, as they will work considerably harder.
The phrase "the past" is not constrained to timelimits of one century.
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