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What Do Women Want This Year?
Townhall.com ^ | January 15, 2016 | Suzanne Fields

Posted on 01/15/2016 5:28:53 AM PST by Kaslin

Eight years ago -- that's a generation in presidential politics -- Hillary Clinton expected that as the first woman in the Oval Office she would be making the State of the Union address this week. Instead she's in Iowa and New Hampshire, up to her knees in snow and slush again, fighting off Bernie Sanders, who was left for dead a month ago and has suddenly begun rising in the polls in both states, inflicting severe dyspepsia in the Clinton camp.

But this is not the Year of the Woman, and "women's issues" are not front-and-center this year. Clinton's not trying to make it so. This time around there are different kinds of women voters, and many of them don't see the world through a feminist lens. Younger women aren't impatient to see the first woman in the Oval Office, because they see smart, capable women ascending everywhere. Nearly everyone recognizes that women have the intellectual and academic smarts to succeed, going off to professional schools in greater numbers than men. Young women understand that a woman's making it to the White House is only a matter of time.

Young women have worries and concerns that transcend politics, worries and concerns that can't be easily fixed in the political arena. These women confront a contradiction central to feminist theory, a contradiction that was not anticipated when Gloria Steinem dressed up as a bunny with a cotton tail at the Playboy Club, all to protest male chauvinism.

What the older feminists did not anticipate was how dramatically sexual attitudes would change. They didn't foresee that many young women, who were taught that autonomy was central to women's liberation, would be ill-prepared to withstand the consequences. Young women would inherit a freedom that many would find difficult to handle. Some women were strong enough to play by men's rules; many were not.

The change in sexual attitudes has become particularly confusing to women on campus. Men and women have continued to give each other mixed sexual signals, leading to misunderstanding, frustration and fear. Anxieties have been exacerbated as parents, who once were the moral tutors, have abandoned their roles as gatekeepers. What followed has been an epidemic of rape accusations, if not always actual rape, at many universities. One woman achieved media immortality by carrying her mattress around the Columbia University campus as an updated "Scarlet Letter," to focus attention to the man she said had done her wrong.

Rape, which once was a capital offense, has become diminished and trivialized to the pain of both men and women, victims of "he said, she said" perceptions. College administrators finally realize late that many of the young in their keep are unprepared to deal with their sexuality. No one wants to bring back the Victorian rules of yesteryear, but many seek better ways to educate in a world that changes with mystifying speed.

Jonathan Kalin, 24, founded "Party with Consent," an organization that teaches, sometimes with Hollywood movies, "cool" ways for college men and women to learn how to say what they mean. It's not the stuff of romance, and it's not "Romeo and Juliet" or even "Casablanca," but it aims for the effective clarity of plain expression. Homework assignments might include learning a whole new vocabulary (perhaps not with the rigor of Latin declensions) to require a young man to listen more closely to his beloved's emotional responses on a "spectrum of consent." Is she offering enthusiastic consent, implied consent or reluctant permission?

Such programs require students to understand that drunkenness, a big problem on campus (and for the neighborhood surrounding the campus), confuses the meaning of consent. This is particularly important because lectures in how to behave are usually followed by raucous parties with bands, open bars and bowls of brightly colored condoms printed with the phrase, "Did you consent?"

This would be easy to satirize if it weren't so sad. Some programs reduce new sex education to the traffic-school model, and liken consent signals to the signals of traffic lights: red, yellow or green. This isn't all that different from the campus of the 1940s and '50s, when the grandfathers of this generation boasted to each other of getting to first base, striking out or hitting a home run.

In the campaign season, pundits over-generalize about the "woman's vote" and the "woman's voice," dividing women up into narrow categories, simplifying the meaning of feminism and overlooking the larger cultural framework where women live. Long ago, Sigmund Freud asked naively, "What do women want?" The answer changes from generation to generation, but the question survives no matter who's running for president.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: hillary2016; womensvote
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To: Vermont Lt
Chocolate. 1500 words indeed! :-)
21 posted on 01/15/2016 5:56:40 AM PST by JEDI4S (I don't mean to cause trouble...it just happens naturally through the Force!)
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To: JEDI4S

Fabric. OK fabric and chocolate.....


22 posted on 01/15/2016 6:01:57 AM PST by Mom MD
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To: JEDI4S

In Asia they say want the three “C’s”

Cash
Credit Cards
Condo

So 4 words


23 posted on 01/15/2016 6:02:33 AM PST by Fai Mao (Just a tropical gardiner chatting with friends)
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To: Kaslin

New shoes?


24 posted on 01/15/2016 6:03:30 AM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: xp38

lol Well yeah, always.

For my dogs to be healthy.
For DH’s job to be secure & stay as great as it is.
A little time on the beach.

Same as always.


25 posted on 01/15/2016 6:11:39 AM PST by KGeorge
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To: Kaslin

“What do women want?”

Don’t give a flip what they want, until they care about what men want.


26 posted on 01/15/2016 6:15:34 AM PST by Adder (No, Mr. Franklin, we could NOT keep it.)
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To: Kaslin

27 posted on 01/15/2016 6:16:07 AM PST by ScottinVA (If you're not enraged...why?)
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To: Kaslin

What women want is a man who respects us. We want a man who will not demean, degrade or humiliate us, in private or in public. We want a man who is strong in the things we cannot do, but tender, understanding and loving towards us. There are lots of other attributes that escape me now, but those listed are a good start. And these attributes require some maturity to understand and implement.....something most college males don’t yet have because of their youth or upbringing.


28 posted on 01/15/2016 6:20:01 AM PST by originalbuckeye ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: Kaslin

No rattlesnakes on my property
No grasshoppers in the garden


29 posted on 01/15/2016 6:25:01 AM PST by SisterK (its a spiritual war)
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To: Kaslin

A long vacation without children.


30 posted on 01/15/2016 6:25:08 AM PST by Tax-chick (Would everyone just stop FUSSING all the time, please?)
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To: Tax-chick
Can't blame us.

I can remember when I grew up when my parents went on vacation they always took my sister and myself to relatives to spend the time there. I never had that luxury when our kids were small.

31 posted on 01/15/2016 6:33:53 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

No, I don’t have anyone volunteering to watch my kids, ever. Including their father.

Well, that’s not quite true: #2 Son (19) has “volunteered,” anticipating pay, but I’d like to have the rest all still living, thanks.


32 posted on 01/15/2016 6:35:05 AM PST by Tax-chick (Would everyone just stop FUSSING all the time, please?)
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To: xp38

I am strangely drawn to this pic. lol


33 posted on 01/15/2016 6:36:35 AM PST by sheana
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To: SisterK
A good whiskey and a lot of it

a man with a sense of style

good manners

no punk ass, faggoty liberal bed wetting

brings over cheap beer and Marlboro Blacks.

owns more than one John B Stetson

34 posted on 01/15/2016 6:50:37 AM PST by atc23 (The Confederacy was the single greatest conservative resistance to federal authority ever)
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To: Hildy

*We are living in bizarro world.*

Yeah and this Conservative Woman agrees.

Anyone, ANYONE but this horrific creature.


35 posted on 01/15/2016 6:56:51 AM PST by Uversabound (Our Military past and present: Our Highest example of Brotherhood of Man & Doing God's Will)
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To: urbanpovertylawcenter

But she won’t ... if Bernie wins, however, it will be considered Stalin’s second term ...


36 posted on 01/15/2016 6:57:29 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Mom MD

Oh you had to say it, didn’t you? Fabric is a problem for me. Much worse than shoes.

(& they say that admitting you have a problem is the first step. . .)


37 posted on 01/15/2016 7:01:04 AM PST by KGeorge
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To: Kaslin

Money

No advice

Pliable

Listen listen listen as they do what they call vent

Be responsible and give them security

Make decisions for them when they want you to but don’t act like you are.....admittedly this one has gotten harder in the fembot era

Have stamina and a very strong oral appetite and take time with them and be close to them ....as intimate as they will allow....and yes there are times for wild abandonment and fast passion.....they will let you know when that is

Be the father in all ways for your children

Be prepared to fight....it can happen

Obey God or at least respect the notion

Women are not easy....they can’t help it....some is inherent and some is conditioned

The good women are well worth it

There are good women everywhere but they tend to grow like mushrooms in Dixie

Ribs rock!


38 posted on 01/15/2016 7:10:08 AM PST by wardaddy (Save western civilization and save the world....lose it & it's a dark ages unknown to human history)
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To: Fai Mao

LOL


39 posted on 01/15/2016 8:01:21 AM PST by JEDI4S (I don't mean to cause trouble...it just happens naturally through the Force!)
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To: PIF

“They want Father Bernie now...”

You mean, you mean, he is the new messiah???

Oh joy!!! :-)

/s/

IMHO


40 posted on 01/15/2016 8:02:15 AM PST by ripley
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