I think my own father thought much less of me when I was a kid because I didn't play sports (at least, not organized ones, anyway), showed little interest in most "masculine" things that were popular in my area, like fixing cars and hunting, instead preferring to read, learn and write.
The cult of masculinity is just as pervasive and oppressive as the idea of patriarchal oppression.
Funny, I don't think my father truly respected me until I became a paratrooper in the Army, which proved nothing to me but apparently a lot to everyone else.
Tell me about it. I played a traditionally girl's instrument in band (flute; later went on to get a degree in it), and suffered a lot of hazing as a result. There are still quite a few psychic scars and if I had to do it all over again, I might choose differently. (Perhaps. On the upside, once in college being a heterosexual male flutist sitting amongst a section full of girls did offer certain advantages. ;))
I sometimes wonder whether our modern, looser gender roles actually make this sort of thing worse. It's as if kids are reacting against ambiguity by becoming increasingly rigid and intolerant. I'm not sure what the solution would be if that's the case, because I wouldn't want to go backwards in terms of equality and opportunity for women and whatnot.
I'm also curious to what extent other countries experience this and how it varies by socioeconomic class.
There was so much estrogen in that article it was hard to read. Every knowledgeable source cited was a feminist, she was clearly a feminist. Why does it seem like every feminist is either a sociologist, a writer, or both.
Are there any feminists involved in engineering or science? Or are all of them involved involved solely in liberal arts/pseudo sciences whose main and often only source of money is from the students that they teach, who can only become professors or leave the field.
This is rapidly becoming a rant about about liberal arts so I had better stop.
On the feminism thing though I am only speaking from personal experience, so I could easily be wrong.
There was so much estrogen in that article it was hard to read.
When you open with a line like that, you sound stupid and brutish. When you then assume that feminists are all liberal arts majors, you sound the same. Of course they're not.
If you want to rant about the liberal arts, go ahead. I'm in a liberal arts school and I'd love to have a discussion about your criticisms. But don't open with what ought to be the firing shot from an impassioned argument, then pander off and not write the criticisms that you'd best be backing yourself up with.
I just don't see the difference between feminists bitching about inequality every second and people who claim they are losing their jobs to immigrants.
There are always going to be people who are more interested in directing blame away from themselves for their failings and on to other people.
Of course the men vs women situation isn't fair, but they have equal rights plus they can't get drafted. They are legally given the same rights as men, and that is where the drive for feminism ends and the drive to blame other people for your mistakes begins. In my experience people who focus on griping about things beyond their control never achieve the way they could have if they spent more energy trying to succeed, and less energy pouting about setbacks that are beyond their control.
Women are really better off then a lot of other groups that aren't nearly so outspoken and full of rage.
And "There was so much estrogen in that article it was hard to read." Is just calling a clearly biased article biased.
And liberal arts schools are fine as long as you aren't going for a phd. If you are though you must truly believe you have the drive to become a real professor, and/or think that you deserve to do work for unreasonably low compensation to the point of not being able to pay back loans. And if they string you along and you never become a professor it is especially harsh.
I don't hate liberal arts, I just hate the way business people running universities take advantage of people interested in seriously pursuing them. Any person pursuing any phd out of college is going to be very poor unless they work super hard and never take any years off until they are like 27-30. And if you pursue a phd in something that isn't clearly needed by lots of people you can fall into a trap of never getting proper compensation for the amount of work and study you have done.
