labellementeuse | (no subject)

I took The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer down from the shelves today, which I have always meant to read but never have, and I started reading it (I should be reading Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine, but I am not). I was most relieved by this passage, right at the very beginning:

After the ecstasy of direct action, the militant ladies... settled down..., while the main force of their energy filtered away in post-war retrenchments and the revival of frills, corsets and femininity.... Evangelism withered into eccentricity.

The new emphasis is different. The genteel middle-class ladies clamoured for reform, now ungenteel middle-class women are calling for revolution.

Germaine Greer wrote that in 1971, about second-wave feminism. Today, now, everywhere are the post-feminists, women who want equal rights and equal pay but shy away from the word "feminist", roll their eyes at the mention of oppression, insist that just everything is fine, argue happily that women are paid less because they have the children (and that's O.K., because mothers aren't productive and don't deserve to be paid), are enthused about the sexual revolution but missed the part where it said that you shouldn't have to fake it and that it's still O.K. to say, actually, no, I don't want to do that with my body, are happy to beg their boyfriends to fix their computer, don't speak up when they feel uncomfortable, don't say it's not O.K. to say that, don't think female genital mutilation is their problem, don't think the education of women in the third world is their problem, don't think it's part of feminism, don't think it says anything about women today, don't think there's any difference between the way men and women are treated, don't think the media portrayal of women is a problem.

I want, in ten years' time, I want someone to be writing a book about my feminists, the feminists of today, and say that now we are calling for revolution. I know it can happen. I know it needs to. I hope it will.

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I keep comparing your statement "I think that certain members of that particular group exaggerate things and make up problems that just don't exist." with your repeated statements about women being forced into fields like Engineering and Science and thinking, wow, and I'm the one making up a problem that doesn't exist?

anna_en_route has articulated this quite well already, but I want to respond to your comments which essentially say, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with having only 25% women in a certain field, it's only a problem when parents/society act to ensure that. The thing is, even as society offers scholarships and encouragement for women in engineering - and my university has the biggest engineering school in the country and there definitely is some of that - it simultaneously tells girls (much more subtly) that they're not good at geometry and spatial skills, that they like English and the Arts subjects more, that Engineering is for boys - it's a simple as giving boys Legos and girls dolls, as mundane, as insidious as the example you gave about science experiments. Scholarships and encouragement exist to counteract this, and the energy to do that is not a waste of time and it most certainly does not amount to forcing women into a field.

I am having trouble reconciling your acknowledgement that social pressures ecist to force women out of these fields, with your resistance to admit that that is a problem that needs discussing, a problem that needs exposure.

In re: media portrayals of everything being sucky, and everyone not speaking up when they're uncomfortable. Yes, this is absolutely true. That doesn't make it false in the particular cases I'm speaking about. For example, both men and women are portrayed unrealistically in the media; men are socialised into certain roles, just like women are; men are held to an unreasonable standard of beauty. On the other hand, men's standards of beauty involve being fit and strong; women's standards involve being skinny and pretty. The jobs men are socialised into (doctors and pilots) just happen to be more prestigious and better-paid than the jobs women are socialised into (nurses and air hostesses.) Of course that doesn't mean it's not difficult for men who want to be air hostesses or nurses. But it is harder to get the training to be a doctor or a pilot (still one of the most male-dominated roles) than it is to be a nurse or an air hostess.

And even when men are air hostesses/stewards, they're held to a different standard than their women co-workers, who are required to wear make up and present a certain standard of beauty beyond being clean-shaven and tidy.

Finally the boys and computers argument was an example. Yes, it's fine on a individual basis for you to go to your boyfriend. I go to my boy friends all the time. It's a different thing when every woman is going to boys to ask for help. (The bias towards women being educated in terms of english etc does indeed exist, as you point out, and it is my opinion that high-school education really fails boys in this respect. I am hugely concerned by this. Just because I didn't address it in this post - which is about something else entirely - doesn't mean I'm not aware of it or not interested in it.)

And even when men are air hostesses/stewards, they're held to a different standard than their women co-workers, who are required to wear make up and present a certain standard of beauty beyond being clean-shaven and tidy.

On the other hand, in office environments, men are expected to wear long sleeved shirts and ties, while women are usually allowed to wear most things as long as they're tidy and not too revealing.

Not that this invalidates your broader point. Just sayin'.

If I had to choose between spending an hour on makeup/hair and wearing a tie it seems like a pretty easy decision (as it is I'm a code monkey so I don't have to make that choice)

Well, I strongly detest ties and feel fairly casual about makeup, but that's just me. But it's worth noting that office workers outnumber stewardesses and other makeup-compulsory occupations many to one.

But before I seem like I'm using this narrow example to claim patriarchy doesn't exist, I'll say I'm not - in fact this is an example of where men, mostly lower class men, lose out from patriarchy, since they're required to enforce it (since the suit-and-tie is the very image of the patriarch) without benefiting from it.

Well, I strongly detest ties and feel fairly casual about makeup

I have worn both ties and make-up on a daily basis, and I can assure you that ties are quicker and more convenient than make-up - you may detest the symbolism of the tie, but at the end of the day it's about as symbolic as make-up and much, much less of a hassle.

Anyway, I don't disagree with you (or you with me) in any particular sense, so this is really quibbling.

Quibbling it may be but I try to never let an opportunity to complain about office dress policy pass me by.

Watch women walking to work in sneakers and then changing into uncomfortable high heels, at least ties don't hurt at the end of the day

True, but I don't know of many workplaces which require women to wear high heels, but requiring ties is extremely common.