From the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/elizabeth-warren-family-policy.html

I guess I'm just a sideliner, since I don't have children. Just food for thought.

"Part of the problem here is that in reacting against a social conservatism that seems hostile to female ambition, much of feminism has subjected itself to corporate capitalism instead, and embraced a “lean in” norm that essentially asks women to accommodate themselves to career paths made for men. This leads to angst when professional women have children and the demands of corporate life push them back into the old division-of-labor patterns. But worse, it requires a lot of cultural deception about how easy it is to postpone having kids, joined to a crude, “freeze your eggs” form of corporate patriarchy (draped in wokeness, but no less anti-woman for all that) that’s good for Apple and Google but lousy for long-term female happiness."

A lot of so called modern feminism is "anti-woman." It aims to set women against men, both against transgenders and to invent new categories like gender-fluid (bodily fluids, eww!), non-binary etc. The end game is to abolish the female gender and femininity not to empower it.

They also have totally hypocritical stances on sexuality. Nude scenes &
pictures are sometimes exploitative and part of the evil "male gaze", yet at other times they're empowering, depending on who's doing it. These are the same people who complain about women being made to wear high heels to work (which they shouldn't be) and then in another breath, they tell us that full body niqabs (those Muslim outfits) are women's choice and that if you criticize them you're being Islamophobic.

Jordan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A lot of so called modern feminism is
> "anti-woman."

I fear you are assuming that there is only one "feminism" or one category of women. That presumption breaks down under the weight of women's diversity.


----------------
> It aims to set women against men,
> both against transgenders and to invent new
> categories like gender-fluid (bodily fluids,
> eww!), non-binary etc. The end game is to abolish
> the female gender and femininity not to empower
> it.

What if sexuality is governed by the same Bell Curve as every other human characteristic? In that situation there is no problem of "abolishing. . . female gender" but rather an opportunity to treat people as individuals.


----------------
> They also have totally hypocritical stances on
> sexuality. Nude scenes &
> pictures are sometimes exploitative and part of
> the evil "male gaze", yet at other times they're
> empowering, depending on who's doing it.

That would be because there is no single "feminism." Why do you feel a need to shove everyone into the same mold?


--------------
> These are
> the same people who complain about women being
> made to wear high heels to work (which they
> shouldn't be) and then in another breath, they
> tell us that full body niqabs (those Muslim
> outfits) are women's choice and that if you
> criticize them you're being Islamophobic.

You just said there are various "feminisms" and then here you assert that there is a single "same people" who have fixed views on clothing and Islam. That is a contradiction.


------------
Jordan, people don't fit in clear-cut categories. If one recognizes the diversity of gender and sexual identity, then the contrasting and conflicting opinions among women (or men) cease posing conceptual difficulties.

I think Jordan is talking about the radical left, the people progressives don’t know how to rein in. There’s a crowd that thinks power is the ultimate virtue so they discount feminine soft power in favor of patriarchal power games. I don’t think it’s a widespread phenomenon. They just happen to be loud. The usual progressive solution of “give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” should work fine.

Very possibly correct. I just get tired of the polarization of such terms as "races," "radical feminists," "cultural Marxists," and, for that matter, "Fascists." Those are all terms that are thrown around as pejoratives, meant to end discussion rather than initiate it.

People come in all shapes and sizes, and trying to fit them into neat little compartments is a fool's errand.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2019 12:33AM by Lot's Wife.

“People come in all shapes and sizes, and trying to fit them into neat little compartments is a fool's errand“

Right. Let’s start with Bill & Suzy.

Bill & Suzy?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Jordan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > A lot of so called modern feminism is
> > "anti-woman."
>
> I fear you are assuming that there is only one
> "feminism" or one category of women. That
> presumption breaks down under the weight of
> women's diversity.

Nope - that's why I said "a lot of".

Well aware of this. The tensiom just now (AFAIK) seems to be between the different waves of feminism, and outliers like Paglia.

> In
> that situation there is no problem of "abolishing.
> . . female gender" but rather an opportunity to
> treat people as individuals.

This reminds me of the bit in the Life of Brian where the crowd says in unison, "We're all different" (or something like that).

> ----------------
> > They also have totally hypocritical stances on
> > sexuality. Nude scenes &
> > pictures are sometimes exploitative and part of
> > the evil "male gaze", yet at other times
> they're
> > empowering, depending on who's doing it.
>
> That would be because there is no single
> "feminism." Why do you feel a need to shove
> everyone into the same mold?

Obviously certain individuals hold multiple contradictory forms of feminism in their heads, because you can see the same invididuals advocating these contradictory positions on the same day or even in the same sentence. In the old days, we called this "doublethink".

> ------------
> Jordan, people don't fit in clear-cut categories.
> If one recognizes the diversity of gender and
> sexual identity, then the contrasting and
> conflicting opinions among women (or men) cease
> posing conceptual difficulties.

"Diversity" - now there's a buzzword. It has popped up in the last couple of years and is now all over the place. It's a wordtrap, since no organization can ever be diverse enough, since someone will claim it excludes some other category.

So called diversity is also paradoxically used to hide a lack of variety in some cases - I remember an arts body boasting about its supposed diversity - the vast majority of people in it I knew white women from moneyed backgrounds, and it was justified by saying X number of them were lesbian, X number were non-native English speakers, one or two were trans etc. The joke was that all of them, including the non-white writers came from practically the same backgrounds, and had attended the same educational institutions yet they dressed up their lack of diversity as "diversity".

Once you start breaking down the terms which are used, there are far fewer categories than the diversity brigade would claim. Some people claim to be pansexual, but there is no genuine difference between that and bisexuality, since it means the person in question wants to have intercourse with people with XX and XY chromosomes. Likewise a lot of the terms regarding gender, are just there to create more categories, based on an imagined exceptionalism, when in fact many of said are synonyms or near synonyms. Sexuality and gender have changed very little over thousands of years, despite than the prohibitions by various societies on some kinds of behavior, yet we seem determined to pretend otherwise.

"Diversity" can be a buzzword, no doubt about it. And there are organizations such as you describe, in which people with nearly identical backgrounds find ways to speak of themselves as "diverse" when in many ways they are not. That's all true.

But the question I have is why you find the word so worthy of critique. In the first place, humanity is immensely diverse; human sexuality, like height and weight, are distributed along a Bell Curve. You can draw a vertical line at any point along the curve and call people on one side "X" and on the other "Y," but you might with just as much validity have drawn the line elsewhere. The curious point is why you feel so uncomfortable with that diversity and would prefer to assign people to an arbitrary number of arbitrarily defined categories in the first place.

The same is true of sexual identity. Perhaps "pansexuality" and "bisexuality" are similar or even identical terms. So what? Why does one person's choice of words to describe himself bother you? Yes, human sexuality has always been the same; it has always been diverse. But over very long periods of time and space people have been punished or killed for not fitting neatly into categories, and one of the great things about the modern world is that in some cultures many or most people no longer care how individuals feel about themselves and act behind closed doors.

That is actually a good thing. So why do you feel so compelled to delineate arbitrary groups and squeeze people exclusively into one or the other? Does it harm you if someone calls herself "pansexual?"

Sorry...

“Out of the frying Pansexual" just happens to be the working title of Judic West's new nonfiction novelization of antebellum Mississippi's adoration of Georgia's peaches.

Again, sorry.

You KNOW I will read anything Judic writes--especially if you buy it for me.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Why do you feel a need to shove everyone into the same mold?
>

That is rich. You are usually the one trying to shove people in the mold you chose for them. Jordan is just the last one to get this treatment.

I don't see that in LW... I don't like pushy people and I like her, so either she's fooled me or I've fooled myself, both of which are possible.

I have a lot of respect for the PoV you, visitors welcome, bring to RfM and in looking back just now at a number of your posts, I've never disagreed with you.

But as they say, "Reasonable minds may differ, but remember to put on gloves before slinging mud." At least I think 'they' say this.

Visitors Welcome Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are usually the one trying to
> shove people in the mold you chose for them.

I've never seen her do this.

> Jordan is just the last one to get this treatment.

Speaking of mold. The age of putting people into easy to digest categories is hopefully so overgrown with mold that it will be impossible to put us back into those holes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2019 05:54PM by Elder Berry.

Visitors Welcome,

I'm not sure what you are saying here. My disagreements with you have been over your blanket condemnations of Islam. So as I see it, you are the one with the categories and I am the one who argues that individuals should be seen as such and not as members of an (often) repressive religion.

I've seen women do really well with corporate jobs. The jobs have gotten a lot more family-friendly, because they've had to do so. Sure, there are some executive officer jobs where a woman puts in an insane amount of labor, but that's not most jobs.

I don't think it's ever been easy to balance work and family life when you have a dual-income household, but I've seen people manage it. In a number of cases the wife (or the husband) takes extended time off from work when the children are young.

I do feel sorry for little kids when they are not feeling well at school. Some parents have a friend or family member who can step in, or they are able to take time off from work to care for their sick child. But I've also seen sick kids who are forced to tough it out.

I hate being caught in the "one-income-at-a-time" Trap! Having multiple incomes at a time is where it's at! I need to be appointed to a bunch of big corporation boards! Going to one board meeting a week would probably be greatly income-ish.

The smartest way to go is to finish up education first, get a little financial head start as a couple and then maybe have a couple of kids.

Having kids in college and/or wasting 2 years on missions will make most Mormons poor forever.
Not to mention giving away 10% income or having too many kids.

It's insane to go the Mormon route unless a couple has wealthy parents who are willing to help out with regular infusions of money.

Even with all that, having both parents work at the same time can be very stressful.
It's hard to be a boss babe and coming home to the rightful demands of children after work.