I am leery about conversations on feminism

4 Responses to I am leery about conversations on feminism

1. Jenn @ Juggling Life | October 25, 2009 at 2:39 pm |

   I think she is on to something–respect is an impor­tant part of the equa­tion. Respect in gen­eral is in short sup­ply lately and def­i­nitely as regards to women–and fre­quently women are the worst ones when it comes to respect­ing and sup­port­ing one another.
   .-= Jenn @ Jug­gling Life´s last blog ..Ummm, Youre Not Actu­ally A Nice Per­son =-.

2. Colette | October 26, 2009 at 12:36 pm |

   I think she def­i­nitely has some good points.

   I’m in high tech, which has been heav­ily hit by lay­offs for 8 or 9 years. I’ve been laid off twice, and my reac­tion has always been “OK, what’s next”. I keep in touch with for­mer col­leagues, and some­times go back to visit. My male col­leagues, on the other hand, seem to have much more of their self image tied up in their job — when they get laid off, it’s much more dev­as­tat­ing, and it’s rare to hear from them again.

   I’m not Amer­i­can, but the cov­er­age of female politi­cians (or pub­lic fig­ures in gen­eral) def­i­nitely shows a gen­der bias — when was the last time you saw a story that talked about what a male can­di­date was wearing?

   Another part of the puz­zle that she doesn’t talk about is child care/home respon­si­bil­i­ties. I worked with a group of won­der­ful men — hap­pily mar­ried, engaged in their chil­drens’ lives — and when their wives had plans in the evening, they’d be “babysit­ting”. I’d point out that it’s not babysit­ting when it’s your own child, and they’d reply that they don’t know the bed­time rou­tines, etc.
   .-= Colette´s last blog ..It’s in the bag =-.

3. meg | October 27, 2009 at 4:03 pm |

   She has some inter­est­ing points but I think she missed the point of some of the ear­lier fem­i­nists — they were all about get­ting respect. I do agree that a sense of humor is invaluable.……

4. Dawn | October 27, 2009 at 11:25 pm |

   I dare­say I could get an entire rant up and run­ning here, though 90% would be based on hearsay, since I am not in a pro­fes­sion where there are a lot of men to com­pete against, I don’t own a car, and so on. I would say part of the rea­son we don’t get as much respect as we should is because we aren’t out there demand­ing it or forc­ing it. I’ve heard peo­ple say that in our rush to prove our­selves equal, we low­ered our­selves (see her com­ment about the cussing, etc); I don’t know. Cer­tainly the ear­li­est feminist/suffragist goals have been met–I can go vote, earn my own money, buy prop­erty if I want, etc, etc. Can I go work in a male-dominated field? Tech­ni­cally yes, but in real­ity? Beats me.
   I do know that while some behav­ior can be leg­is­lated, att­tudes cannot–and they take a heck of a lot longer to change.

   And then I dis­cov­ered this: http://www.anndaly.com/blog/2009/10/top-10-uwritten-rules-that-could-sabotage-your-career.html
   I can tes­tify to at least one part of that: “one inter­nal cor­po­rate study showed that women will apply for an open job only if they meet 100% of the cri­te­ria listed, while men will apply if they meet just 60%.” Very true.