Feminism and Figure Skating

[CassAgain]

And on men: the tendency is- the most discriminated person in the modern north american society is a white heterosexual 30yo male without special needs.

I know, right? Maybe those heterosexual male able bodied old white guys will be able to achieve positions of power in our society some day.

 

[Dragonlady]

And on men: the tendency is- the most discriminated person in the modern north american society is a white heterosexual 30yo male without special needs. To be fair, feminism is not the only reason of such an outcome.

I'd like to see links to studies to back up your assertion because the last time I looked, white heterosexual males held the vast majority of the power positions on Wall Street, in government, and in most religious organizations in North America. How did such powerless, put-upon people accrue so much power and influence given the level of discrimination they face every day?

 

[Medusa]

Apology accepted. I know you are a nice person.

I wish women in general be sweeter, softer, more humble. In one word, like Spun Silver said, more lady-like. The world would be much warmer and nicer. Look at those mothers who dump their children, or even kill their own fresh blood. It's horrible!!!

I am trying to remember a time where the majoritiy of women were like you want them to be. During what time in the history of mankind were the majority of women sweet, soft and humble - "ladylike"? When every second woman was dead before her 25th birthday because of childbirth? During the 19th century where poverty was still wide-spread and women were slaving away in factories? The word lady was reserved for a tiny minority for a reason: the majority of women simply never had the time to be a lady. There was work to be done, 12 hours/day and more, numerous children to be raised... Women couldn't afford being sweet, soft and humble.

And frankly, lots of women these days can't afford it either. I can't, when I am in the OR with two chauvinistic choleric surgeons I most certainly cannot afford to be sweet, soft and humble.

I am not even a diehard feminist. I don't care if someone calls me "darling" or "sweetheart" at work, makes immature jokes about women all the time - I absolutely don't care about superficial stuff, e.g. that everything has to include both genders à la he/she. And I think that girls should wear pink and purple if they want to (I love to wear it), play with dolls etc.

But I think we, as women, do ourselves a disservice if we really think that things went downhill after feminism struck. There was never a paradise populated with millions of ladies, who were elegant, soft-spoken, kind and modest. Throughout the centuries there were just a select few who were in a position where they could be ladies. The rest was fighting for survival. There was always abortion (with the difference that loads of women died during illegal abortions), there were always babies that were abandoned (the orphanages were full with children, children born out of wedlock etc.), and there have always been women complaining about their men and vice versa and there has always been prostitution.

 

[mare]

I'm not saying that being a "privileged" lady doesn't have its benefits, but it also limits your growth by restricting your thoughts and actions to what is deemed appropriate by society. I cannot tell you the number of frightened women I've known in my lifetime because they had been trained to be dependent on someone other than themselves. Being old enough to have participated in the advent of "feminism", which for me meant being allowed to use my brain to support myself and others, I have found this thread interesting and enlightening. I just wanted to say that being told who you are supposed to be, in my experience, is not
a good thing.

 

[Mathman]

And on men: the tendency is - the most discriminated (-against) person in the modern north american society is a white heterosexual 30yo male without special needs.

They will muddle through somehow. Especially the rich white heterosexual 30 year old male without special needs.

A little bit off-topic, but there was an interesting report on TV last night about the "economic recovery" that the U.S. is going through. Unemployment is not quite as bad as it was, millions of new jobs have been created. etc., etc.

But the majority of the new jobs have gone to men, and of these, most are in fields previously dominated by female workers. As well-paying jobs in manufacturing and industry have dried up, more and more men are taking a pay cut to work in the areas of health care and services.

I don't like...the declining birth rate...

Interesting but not surprising is the fact that the countries with the highest birth rates are the countries in which women have the least control over their own circumstances.

And on a less controversial note: Welcome to Golden Skate, solfan82.

 

[callalily]

But I think we, as women, do ourselves a disservice if we really think that things went downhill after feminism struck. There was never a paradise populated with millions of ladies, who were elegant, soft-spoken, kind and modest. Throughout the centuries there were just a select few who were in a position where they could be ladies. The rest was fighting for survival. There was always abortion (with the difference that loads of women died during illegal abortions), there were always babies that were abandoned (the orphanages were full with children, children born out of wedlock etc.), and there have always been women complaining about their men and vice versa and there has always been prostitution.

I'm not saying that being a "privileged" lady doesn't have its benefits, but it also limits your growth by restricting your thoughts and actions to what is deemed appropriate by society. I cannot tell you the number of frightened women I've known in my lifetime because they had been trained to be dependent on someone other than themselves. Being old enough to have participated in the advent of "feminism", which for me meant being allowed to use my brain to support myself and others, I have found this thread interesting and enlightening. I just wanted to say that being told who you are supposed to be, in my experience, is not
a good thing.

I wholeheartedly agree.

 

[Dragonlady]

. . . I don't like the coarsening of male-female relationships, the sacrifice of the idea of sexual difference, the default feminist suspicion of masculinity, the rise in female violence, the decline of marriage and rise of single-parenthood, the declining birth rate, or the normalization of prostitution and of abortion or child-murder, as earlier feminists quaintly called it (http://www.feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm#sbanthony).

The "coarsening of male-female relationships" has nothing to do with feminism. The sexual revolution began with the introduction of the birth control pill which ultimately led to today's current mores and attitudes which you refer to as "coarsening. Marriage declined because people didn't respect the vows they took or their partners. Again, nothing to do with feminism. Prostitution has been around as long as men and women have existed, as were abortion.

None of these things are related to feminists ideas or ideals, but that that won't stop neanderthals for blaming feminists for every ill society faces.

 

[Spun Silver]

^ I would be interested to hear more specifics on the employment data you refer to, MM. My impression has been that men have been hardest hit by the recession. The latest (I think) US BLS data do show a .5% decline in the male unemployment rate while women's has not changed - but men's is still higher than women's. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.toc.htm This is not true of Hispanics, though. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t03.htm

Your (MM's) comment on women's self-determination and the birth rate reminds me of another facet of feminism I dislike - the tendency to regard women's well-being and that of children in oppositional terms. The most famous examples of this are the arguments for abortion that liken pregnancy to kidnapping and the fetus to a powerful intruder who can only be stopped with deadly force.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
http://harvardmagazine.com/1997/03/right.fetus.html

So now I'm a neanderthal, Dragonlady? Well - no point in someone as stupid as I am trying to reason with a genius like you. :disapp:

 

[gkelly]

There are many different branches of "feminism": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies

There are disagreements and debates between and within these different branches.

The main thing that they share is belief in and promotion of rights of women. But which areas they focus on and which strategies they use to promote them will vary considerably.

Dismissing the whole movement because you don't like the priorities or strategies of one or more subbranches suggests that either you don't know very much about feminism or you don't believe women deserve rights to self-determination equal to men. I hope the former is the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies

 

[Mathman]

^ I would be interested to hear more specifics on the employment data you refer to, MM. My impression has been that men have been hardest hit by the recession.

The report that I heard focused on the situation in the state of Michigan. The claim was that men were hit hardest in the first two years of the recession, but now they are "recovering" at a faster rate than woman.

I think the main point was that in the good old days there were always plenty of factory jobs available which paid a solid wage ($17-$25 per hour or so with full health and retirement benefits) and which did not require any particular education, skill or training. Those jobs now are long gone, and Michigan's economic tailspin was out of control for a year or two. (This is not related either to feminism or ice skating )

Your (MM's) comment on women's self-determination and the birth rate reminds me of another facet of feminism I dislike - the tendency to regard women's well-being and that of children in oppositional terms.

This segue should not deflect us from the fact at hand, however (IMHO). In countries where women have no choice in the matter, men tend to father large families, whether they can support them or not. When women have a voice they typically come to the point where they say, "Whoa, Jack!".

 

[Dragonlady]

^ I would be interested to hear more specifics on the employment data you refer to, MM. My impression has been that men have been hardest hit by the recession. The latest (I think) US BLS data do show a .5% decline in the male unemployment rate while women's has not changed - but men's is still higher than women's. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.toc.htm This is not true of Hispanics, though. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t03.htm

Your (MM's) comment on women's self-determination and the birth rate reminds me of another facet of feminism I dislike - the tendency to regard women's well-being and that of children in oppositional terms. The most famous examples of this are the arguments for abortion that liken pregnancy to kidnapping and the fetus to a powerful intruder who can only be stopped with deadly force.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
http://harvardmagazine.com/1997/03/right.fetus.html

You make it sound like feminists hate children and will do anything in our power to avoid giving birth. In fact, feminists have been responsible for much of the child-centred legislation and protections for children which exist under our current laws. Prior to the rise of feminism, children had no legal rights at all and feminists were in the forefront of the movement to imbue children with rights, something that the reactionary right-wing folk have a really difficult time accepting because their parents should have all power over the children.

Feminists have pushed for quality day care for children of working mothers. Maternity and parental leave, and family leave to care for their families. They've fought for better pre-natal and post-natal care for young mothers.

Your whole anti-abortion rhetoric also rings completely false. Although given your link to an extreme right-wing evangelical organization, I shouldn't be surprised. I guess you have no problem with thousands of women all over the world dying in botched abortion attempts because, after all, they were killing their unborn children.

The thing of it is that as a feminist who opposes abortion, I had no worries that anyone was going to force me to have an abortion I didn't want and couldn't afford. If you oppose abortion, don't have one. Simple as that. But I don't try to force my beliefs on others and I've gone to the hospital to support friends who made a different choice than mine because it's not my place to judge whether or not what they did was right and I know they didn't come by their decision to terminate a pregnancy easily. No one does.

So now I'm a neanderthal, Dragonlady? Well - no point in someone as stupid as I am trying to reason with a genius like you. :disapp:

For someone who resented having words put in their mouth, you're pretty quick to do the same in return. I DID NOT call you a neanderthal. I said:

None of these things are related to feminists ideas or ideals, but that that won't stop neanderthals for blaming feminists for every ill society faces.

 

[Tonichelle]

Had my mother listened to the feminist doctor (who was touted as "progressive thinking") when she was pregnant with me, I'd not be here. I know, some would probably wish she had - more power to you - but I'm glad she went with the backwoods Korean older than dirt doctor who let a nearly 40 year old brod give birth.

 

[Mathman]

^ I think the point is that the power to choose was in your mother's hands, not someone else's.

(I, for one, am glad you're here. )

 

[jcoates]

Another reason why men are recovering faster nationwide is that many fields where women are highly represented are in the public sector (teaching, nursing, social work etc.). With local, state and federal budgets all being cut, those area are seeing the greatest impacts and thus having a greater proportionate impact on women than men.

On a separate note, isn't it interesting to note that some are just as bothered by the idea of mere contraception and it's impact on society as they are by actual abortions? While I support any woman having complete decision making power over her own body, I can understand how some would take issue with the decision to end a pregnancy for various religious or ethical reasons. But it's one thing to take issue with a practice an another thing altogether to seek to ban it outright. Still, what I can not deal with is the persistent position that some take that such opposition should extend to actual prevention of pregnancy even among married couples (a position which even politicians have resurrected recently). There is an undeniable practical benefit that legalized and widely practiced contraception provides. It gives a woman time and consequently choices about what to do with that time. She can choose to not get unintentionally pregnant and thus pursue an abortion, to pick the time when she is ready to parent or to devote more time to the children she already has, to herself and her own health or education, to her partner, to her friends, her church, her community or to nothing at all if she pleases. That was once the domain of far more men than women. Stigma and shame associated with having few or no children has gradually eroded, though not been eliminated. If we are really arguing that women should be relegated to having their choices made for them by circumstance rather than their own volition, then what progress have we made? If we accept what some have argued here that abortion, contraception and freedom of choice for women are wrong or doing permanent damage to society, then will we next be arguing that women should never refuse their husbands as a remedy? Oh wait Dr. Laura already argues that position. There is an inevitable direction to these arguments after all.

BTW artificial means of contraception have been practiced for millennia though not nearly as effectively or openly as modern methods. Perhaps that's the issue some have with feminism and its constituent parts: the openness with which it is all practiced. People have always done these things, but while many or most find the open admission of these facts to be tremendously freeing, a smaller segment are appalled by such openness and wish it would all go away or at least back into the closet where it can be thoroughly ignored (thus allowing all manner of problems to fester and grow in the shadows.)

A personal example about choice rather than contraception. I've already written about the choices my grandmother was robbed of earlier in the thread. Well my mother was just as unlucky in many ways. We come from the DC/Maryland area. Maryland was founded as haven for Catholics. Perhaps only Massachusetts or Louisiana have as deep a Catholic tradition as matter of percentage of population as Maryland. It's everywhere, trust me. Catholic roots and traditions run deep here even for African Americans and are hard to shake off (believe me I'm still trying). In the old days before the Church changed it rules in the mid 60s, it was common practice and in fact almost an expectation for Catholic families to aspire to "give" one of their children to the church as a nun or priest. Religious orders performed great services for the community including educating children, feeding the poor and providing continuity. There was pride in having your son or daughter enter religious life. The only thing was there was often little or no choice involved for the person who actually entered that life. That was the case for my mother. She was expected virtually from birth to become a nun, in part to help fulfill the lost dream of her own mother who actually wanted to have that life. The pressure was all the greater given that she was an only child. If not her then who? How could she say no and disappoint her parents? So she did what her family and community expected and made her novice vows straight out of high school before was even 18. It was not until 5 years later after the Church and the world and her parents' point of view had changed significantly that all sides realized that it was the wrong choice for her (a realization millions of young women around the world also reached). She was too much of a free spirit to fit into such a restricted life and was ready to make choices for herself even if she made mistakes. I would not be here if we still lived in a world where women were restricted to choices made for them by those around them. I'd call that an example of a woman's self-determination having a very positive impact on this person's birth rate.

BTW, Toni I'm glad you're here, but plenty of non-feminist doctors would and have given the same advice to women of your mother's age about childbirth. There are plenty of health related concerns aside from any social ones to take into account, particularly since every woman's individual physiology is unique and can react differently to the conditions of pregnancy. It's not fair to malign all feminists based on one piece of medical advice.

 

[dwiggin3]

Had my mother listened to the feminist doctor (who was touted as "progressive thinking") when she was pregnant with me, I'd not be here. I know, some would probably wish she had - more power to you - but I'm glad she went with the backwoods Korean older than dirt doctor who let a nearly 40 year old brod give birth.

 

[Mathman]

I don't think it gets us very far to talk about what-ifs. If Hitler's mom had got an abortion she would have saved the world a lot of trouble. If Mother Teresa's mother had been a celibate nun like her daughter we wouldn't have been blessed by that saintly lady. If one sperm hadn't outraced another I would be a completely different person (or half different anyway).

 

[skatinginbc]

I think that one of the consequences or the "shadow side" of this continuing fighting for feminism is one of the reasons contributed in the rising of homosexuality.

I think that one of the consequences or the "bright side" of this continuing fighting for feminism is one of the reasons contributed in the rising of visible homosexuals. See? Two sentences saying roughly the same reflect different attitudes. One, in the shadows, the other, bright and sunny.
BTW: "Why do you have to drag every topic into a gay issue?" Gay = Thread moved to Politics = Nobody gives a damn = Silencing opponents. Now that this thread involves both "abortion" and "gay"....Please don't move it, Moderator. I beg your mercy.

I wish women in general be sweeter, softer, more humble...The world would be much warmer and nicer. Look at those mothers who dump their children, or even kill their own fresh blood. It's horrible!!!

I wish men in general be sweeter, softer, more humble...The world would be much warmer and nicer. Look at those husbands who dump their wives and children, or even kill their own fresh blood. It's horrible!!!

Being from Canada (quite a liberal society), some posts on this thread have surprised me.

Canada is so liberal that a white-skinned stranger with a strong foreign accent dared to tell me, a Canadian citizen, face-to-face "Go back to your country".
Canada is so liberal that the local Chinese newspaper is littered with anti-gay sentiments. I wonder if Bluebonnet reads Chinese newspaper.:think:

 

[Olympia]

This thread is getting more and more interesting. When I get home from work, I'll have more time to post, but I'm enjoying everyone's comments so much.

The discussion about feminism and children is especially important, because it addresses the fallacy that feminists are anti-child. Dragonlady and Jcoates have done a sterling job of elucidating on the subject. Reproductive freedom doesn't mean freedom from having children. Some women prefer to remain childless, while others want intensely to bring up a family. This goes all the way back to the beginning of the women's movement: Susan B. Anthony was unmarried and childless, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a devoted husband and many children. I think Stanton actually became the more radical feminist in terms of her ideas, as I recall.

It's interesting to trace the history of the three major reform movements in American history, because many of the same people supported all three. Many of the suffragists began as abolitionists. Women like Elizabeth Stanton then took on the issues of suffrage because for all their zeal and smarts, they weren't considered competent enough to speak publicly about any issue. Stanton, a leading abolitionist, wasn't permitted to take the podium at an international abolitionists' meeting, IIRC in London.

Then a lot of suffragists became temperance advocates because women were often at the mercy of alcoholic husbands. It was all mathematical, really: the husband would take his salary and spend it all at the local saloon on drink. He'd come home with nothing, and the wife would have no money for food for the children. And there was nothing she could do about it, because all household money was considered by law to belong to the man. As for getting a job herself, most women were allowed only a few possibilities, including laundress and the job we call the oldest profession. We laugh at Carry Nation now, but she was a temperance crusader because she saw that drink literally destroyed families.

These were the good old days. No, we don't need to go back.

As for the coarsening of society, we could all go back to being June Cleaver, and we'd still have TV, films, and the internet with their endless stories of fights, exploding vehicles, and whatnot. In fact, most TV shows and movies that show that kind of thing (as well as music such as gangsta rap) are notable not for the presence of women but for their absence. Any women in the scene are purely for decoration or for the pleasure of the men involved. So though Spun and I both lament the degenerating of the social contract, I do not see the advance of feminism as the reason for it. My freedom, and all of yours out there, did not cause the desensitization of the public arena. Our retreat into daintiness will not clean up Dodge City.

 

[Pepe Nero]

I’ve been struggling with every bit of my will to not enter into an internet debate about feminism. A small part of me regrets ever using the word “feminism” in my original post, as I could have made the point I wanted to make without using that word. (I used it because it was the perspective that motivated the substantive issue I wrote about.) I am going to continue to resist going into that aspect of the debates being had on this thread, but I just wanted to thank some of the contributors who have done so: jcoates, Olympia, dorispulaski, louisa05, and Dragonlady. Your comments have been heartening to read.

let’s talk said that “The whole topic of this thread seems like an innocent trolling to me, or much ado about nothing.” I think this is an unfair comment. My original post was quite germane to the purposes of this forum. While you may not think that the question I raised is an important one, I see threads on this forum every time I visit that I don’t think are very important. Instead of going into the thread to tell the people who’ve participated that they’re talking about something that’s not very important, I simply don’t read it. I might add, this thread only became a discussion about feminism as a result of Spun Silver’s summary dismissal of feminism (#7).

I continue to think the name of the discipline is an interesting, if not important, issue. I would concede that my perspective is Anglophone, and that I know little about how the discipline is named elsewhere, or what the connotations of those names are. But where the sport is called “ladies” or the equivalent elsewhere, I believe that it belittles the competitors and stifles creativity, authenticity, athleticism, and art in the sport.

 

[callalily]

Canada is so liberal that a white-skinned stranger with a strong foreign accent dared to tell me, a Canadian citizen, face-to-face "Go back to your country".
Canada is so liberal that the local Chinese newspaper is littered with anti-gay sentiments. I wonder if Bluebonnet reads Chinese newspaper.:think:

In Canada abortion is legal, and so is gay marriage. No political parties are suggesting that this be changed. Social conservatism is not an influential force in the political landscape (except possibly in Alberta). A socialist party holds second-party status in the federal legislature. It's rare for a politician to speak of his/her religious beliefs - that's considered to be their private business.

Obviously you'll meet people with a variety of different opinions, and as immigration increases various tensions are being felt, but Canada is to the left of the U.S. on the political spectrum.