i think young women (college age or there about) have a false sense of security about the rights that women have gained in the recent past.  This election was hopefully a wake up call that there is a powerful group of men out there who want to see women's rights diminished.  

Sometimes when I see young women in the work place I want to give some of them a smack.  Women have and continue to work to be taken seriously and its disheartening to see young women who don't get how important it is to be professional.  When I was working with my friend at her law firm we went before a judge one day and this young woman right out of law school showed up in a jean jacket. she looked like she was going to the mall.  i had another young woman show up at the office when i was in private practice with so little clothing on i had to go get her a lab coat to put on to cover up.  Maybe that is part of the stereotype that young women are buying into.  (and then there are the 22 year olds who flirt with their 42 year old married mentor... but that's another story.)
the issue of "having it all" is an interesting one.  i sorta grew up thinking i really could have it all.  i could have a career and have babies and raise a family.  and then i realized you really can't have it all. at least you can't have it all at the same time.  when i figured that out i sorta felt like I'd been duped.  so i went into starting a family thinking —this is doable.  what i ended up doing was working shitty jobs that I could work around taking care of the kids. i had not a single benefit for the first 15 years of my career.  
it was my choice to put my kids ahead of my career and i wouldn't change that decision but I am enormously grateful that i took a bit different route and got a job with  a pension and benefits because now that my husband has decided this whole family/wife /responsibilty thing its really not all that fun, I am able to take care of the kids and myself financially.  i'm really lucky.  i think a lot of women are not in a position to do that.  So...I guess I'm thinking that we've come a long way but we are on tenuous ground and we have a ways to go in really acheiving equality and educating younger women about the tenuous nature of the whole process.
         

 hippiechick wrote: 
One other thing: porn

In my world porn is pretty prevalent, commonly referred to on tv programs, and ubiquitous on the net. On HIMMM the other night, the jokes about Barney and his strip club habits was the main thing.

Young men must watch porn and think that women are whores and every girl likes to have hooker sex. I don't care about old skool porn, but the stuff available now is vile and very demeaning to women. If this is the kind of attitudes that young men have about women, this is a serious problem. 

 Servo wrote: 
All ya have to do is look at the picture. 

 Servo wrote: 
Yes, but your post was heavy on stereotype and low on truth.  Hate to break it to you, Swervo, but not all Christians are Republican.

Further, there are other cultures besides fundamentalist Christians who promote a sexist, male-chauvanist social order (ever heard of the Taliban?)

The notion that young women in the US shape their cultural attitudes based primarily or even partially on Republican political ads (rather than on a lifetime of growing up and observing their parents and other adults in action, interacting with peers, and consuming movies, books, and other cultural detritus) is facile.

 aflanigan wrote: 
Misdirection doesn't make the truth go away.  And sadly the truth doesn't make practitioners of logical fallacies go away.  As Rev. Al Sharpton says: "nice try, but we gotcha."

 Servo wrote: 
Nice try, ace.

Care to put some actual thought into your response this time?

 hippiechick wrote: 
Last night I had supper with a friend who's a college professor.  When I ordered a St. Pauli Girl N.A. my friend mentioned tht she had been in the city that the beer is named after.  St. Pauli has a burgeoning red light district, and "St. Pauli Girl" is code for "prostitute".  FYI

 aflanigan wrote: 
All you have to do is read a fashion mag to see what influences young women. I do think there has been some improvement, since bone thin is no longer still the standard, and young women no longer feel like their hair has to look like this, her clothes like that. 

Educated women are doing just fine, but women with less opportunities are still trapped in traditional roles (as are men).

One thing that needs to change is objectifying women. Women are not beer taps or beer bottles, for example. People need to stop talking like the righties did during the elections, that women don't have a right to make their own decisions about their own bodies. Motherhood needs to be honored, and women's choices of home/career should be recognized, and men need to contribute more at home. I see many young men taking their babies out on their own; I can't imagine my husband ever making that effort.

I think we have made great progress, everything takes time to evolve. 

 aflanigan wrote: 
I can answer that.

So many women are buying into '50s-era stereotypes because a group called "Christians" (a.k.a. the Republican Party) has spent billions (that's billions with a "b") of dollars over the last 30 years on propaganda promoting so-called "Christian values" that tell women that God wants them to be subservient, no questions asked, even if their men couldn't make it without them.

Is that good enough for you?

 aflanigan wrote: 

I think that we need to work on the idea that women SHOULD be able to do it all. It harkens back to noenz's original journal that I think was really about the difficulty that women of my generation deal with of, career or family or both, and that each of those decisions often ends up with regret.
i also think we need to be expecting to make the same amount of money. hands down.
  

 hippiechick wrote: 
Why, is it, do you think, that young women today continue to buy into sexist stereotypes?  What do you think third wave feminists should be doing to correct the situation and make progress regarding equal rights and respect for women?

 aflanigan wrote:
The term "the weaker sex" was meant to mean more than physical strength, it was meant to demean women in all areas. That they are frail, not as smart, subject to mood swings. Not able to do what men can do. This attitude has kept women in traditional female roles for a long time. Yes, this is insulting and wrong. 

However, once women have found their way out of the role assigned to them, they have blossomed and flourished. In fact, a recent concern is that young women are achieving much more than young men, with higher college grad rates and more motivated than young men. Women are learning not to be threatened by men, and are breaking into the "boy's clubs" that men used to keep women away. This causes other situations, such as smart women finding it difficult to find a partner of intellectual equal.

Most of "manliness" or "femininity" is cultural. Women have been held back for centuries because of (European) men's insecurity of their role in the world and also have used physical force against women to maintain dominance. It's all about power and control. And, unfortunately, many many women have accepted this role and have forced themselves into living the lives that were assigned to them by society instead of being the best that they can be. This is currently a huge problem with some young women, and some orgs are working to help women grow into new roles that have been traditionally been masculine and to eliminate the self-hatred that women feel about themselves.

No one wants men and women to be the same, that is impossible. And furthermore, everyone is an individual that is affected by environment as well as genes, hormones, and dna. Our goal should be to look at each individual and recognize them for the person that they are inside, and not depend on external appearances (man, woman, white, of color, tattooed, long hair, etc.) 


 

 aflanigan wrote:I'm trying to point out that the problem with sweeping generalities, as you yourself note with your bathroom comment, is that they almost always have exceptions. 

When you try to justify feminism by saying "ignore my gender" or "women and men are equal", you invite the scorn of people with sexist attitudes who will happily point out the exceptions to these generatities as a way of dismissing the sentiment behind such generalities.

Women have been called the "weaker sex" for some time.  IMO it is more productive to acknowledge that they are physiologically different from men (and thus not be able to lift as much dead weight as men in the olympics, for example) than to try and insist that "women are as strong as men" in an attempt to retire the "weaker sex" label.  To me, it's better to argue that "weakness" and "strength" come in many forms, and while men may have less weakness or more strength in some areas, women have more strength/less weakness than men in other areas (elderly women, for example, are much less likely to commit suicide, indicating perhaps that they are emotionally stronger than men). 

That, to me, is the more convincing argument as to why the "weaker sex" slur is not only insulting but wrong.

 hippiechick wrote:I'm trying to point out that the problem with sweeping generalities, as you yourself note with your bathroom comment, is that they almost always have exceptions. 

When you try to justify feminism by saying "ignore my gender" or "women and men are equal", you invite the scorn of people with sexist attitudes who will happily point out the exceptions to these generatities as a way of dismissing the sentiment behind such generalities.

Women have been called the "weaker sex" for some time.  IMO it is more productive to acknowledge that they are physiologically different from men (and thus not be able to lift as much dead weight as men in the olympics, for example) than to try and insist that "women are as strong as men" in an attempt to retire the "weaker sex" label.  To me, it's better to argue that "weakness" and "strength" come in many forms, and while men may have less weakness or more strength in some areas, women have more strength/less weakness than men in other areas (elderly women, for example, are much less likely to commit suicide, indicating perhaps that they are emotionally stronger than men). 

That, to me, is the more convincing argument as to why the "weaker sex" slur is not only insulting but wrong.

 aflanigan wrote:
I'm sorry, are you being ignorant on purpose? If you are trying to be amusing, maybe an emo would help. 

In the workplace, or in many areas of life, is there any need to differentiate gender difference (bathrooms excluded of course, and even there...)

There are also people wh identify as transgender or non-gender. There is at least one person who is declared as non-gendered.

At some time in the future, people will stop categorizing and will look at others for who they are as individuals, not by what box they fit in. The change is already starting to happen, but we are a long way away from actual gender neutrality.
 

 hippiechick wrote:
Well, I think that if I were to start seeing a gynecologist, it would be a waste of money, so I still plan on giving consideration to gender differences.

 aflanigan wrote: 
I didn't say that there aren't differences, I am saying that it should just not be a consideration.

My daughter has lived in a world where she has never suffered from any kind of discrimination. She is an extremely bright woman who has been nurtured along since childhood, through grad school and into government where she has been rewarded for her talents. This thrills me, because I have experienced so much sexual harassment, as well as pre-Title IX discrimination.

I know that this isn't true everywhere. I feel subtle discrimination in my own work place. But I am so happy to see so much progress in this area.  

 hippiechick wrote: 

To me, feminism isn't about pretending that gender differences don't exist, it's about ending the habit of treating women as second class citizens.

 aflanigan wrote: 
I look forward to the day when we don't have to speak of people in terms of their gender or color.

A Very Feminist Thanksgiving