What is it that keeps holding women back from uniting and presenting a true, new force for good in the world? Are all the great women bloggers out there capable of coming together to destroy the eons of bias, discontent and futility of protest?
Can we ever get rid of that posh parasol, hat and gloves, elitist “feminist” label and celebrate our woman selves that come in all shapes, colors and abilities, mostly unexpressed?
Perhaps the plethora of well-written blogs speaking to the issue of equality in fact, instead of parroting the MSM’s happy housewife meme, hurts rather than helps. Each one offers links to other blogs but the click of the mouse does not connect us together, it just gives us more reading material.
Women born early in the last century read these blogs and retch between their tears of frustration. What they experienced, suffered and worked to change for their daughters is just what the modern blogs are pissing and moaning about now.
The so-called women’s movement for equality apparently provided the daughters with the right to free and open sex, the right to keep their own name when married and the right to continue to support the status quo.
Their mother’s plea that women should not be objectified was turned on its head by daughters who just love being objectified or have taken the attitude of “FU! I’ll dress as I like, so there.” And how the guys love it.
All of the information and knowledge gained by the mothers of yore are available in women’s studies, books, on-line and from the mothers who have survived. All useless – those who will not learn from the past are not only repeating it but are also adding new wrinkles to the old patriarchy playbook.
Wake up! It’s not the individual men who are doing this to you. Many of them are supporters – they are on your side. It is the culture and the extent to which you have given in and accepted your lesser-human status.
It’s the choices you have made to give preference to, and adorn, your bodies instead of opening and using your mind. ”Be warriors for equality!” - Xena Warrior Princess
Despite knowing that the Primary was rigged for Zero, almost all of those so-called women supporting the one woman in the race happily jumped on the unity pony. Then they jumped ugly on their friends and relatives who would not capitulate to what clearly was the ultimate in the battering of a woman. Tag ‘em and frag ‘em – misogyny rules.
The candidate and Party that supported these atrocities received their accolades from voters singing hosanna to the tall dark and hansom of the fairy tales they were brought up on. It wasn’t so much about the kool-aid as it was about the hormones.
Women seem prone to exhibit a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker. This has been called The Stockholm Syndrome.
No wonder. Male power has only to shake the “fear rattle” and most women respond like the well oiled, well-trained Zombies they are. The culture has taught them that protection lies only with the male.
The brave woman who made the cracks in the glass ceiling and took the vicious cuts and bruises herself watched in agony as those, who had declared support, turned their backs on her.
Then these liberal, elitist, ladies, who had preached equality and tolerance as their credo, erupted when a strong Conservative woman came on the scene. Feminist leaders led their sisterhood followers into another wild game of tag ‘em and frag ‘em that still continues.
This sisterhood and their leaders are now the tip of the misogyny spear to the delight of the male power structure. They descending like a mob of Harpies to claw a woman Governor to death and found instead one strong woman person who had learned well from the elder sisters and mothers of the last century.
Below are links to two blogs with recent, well-written articles. Sadly the content is very similar to things written in the last century – we’ve gone a damn short way, baby.
Six Part Series on the Need for Feminism
1. The Right to Go Out
2. Planet of the Guys
3. Our Father Who Art in Heaven
4. The Invisible Women
5. The Female Body as Property
6. The Longest Revolution
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html#475045112303344609
Women Will Never Be Equal
http://www.partizane.com/node/435#comments
4 comments:
Commenting hastily ... I think too many women have been hasty this season. Some seem more interested in distinguishing themselves from other kinds of 'not really feminists', or in finding a 'new angle' -- than in supporting other women or common sense.
Some have backstabbed Hillary, endorsing Obama in the spring. Others have attacked Sarah Palin for various reasons.
Now imo some Hillary supporters have hastily neglected homework and common sense and joined with bots and backstabbers to attack Hillary's old 90s Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers -- whom the Clintons appointed to the Treasury at the beginning of their administration and promoted through several confirmation hearings throughout the 90s.
To paint Summers as a non-PC monster insults the Clintons. The fact is that their 90s Treasury did a great job cleaning up after Bush Sr and common sense says bring them back to clean up after Bush Jr.
I'm gathering material about Summers. If interested pls contact me at tdo@turndownobama.com
Would you mind some random thoughts on this whole mess?
Women had a unique chance for gaining true equality in America during the late sixties, early 70's. There was enough economic prosperity that people who owned the status quo felt they could share a little without giving away anything important to themselves. I don't believe that's happened since.
The culture-makers, for want of a better term, were young and not yet inextricably embedded in familial and economic dependence (or even just familiarity with a certain level of comfort). As it is now, most of those who see what needs changing are talking to those who by now would have to give up a little to a lot of status for abstractions like honor and integrity.
And give it up they would have to. The other group of hardened fledglings are men - men who have been saturated since the first "bitch" was tossed out by a TV comic, in acceptable sexism, in that evil little flicker of smugness that comes with knowing it's okay to publicly humiliate someone for no reason. Men who have sat like zombies for ten to thirty years in front of TVs that show only women cleaning, only women shopping, only women tending to children, only women as fetished body parts. Those men are the ones the current crop of women would have to untangle their dependencies from.
Statistically no woman makes enough to support herself and a child, hence the equation of "single parent" (female only) with poverty. Women, by not looking too hard at the men they live with, can avoid or at least defer being cast out of the economic and social class they were born into but cannot keep without entering into a sexual contract with a man. And statistically speaking, many of those same women will later have no choice but to acknowledge that equality, respect, friendship and honor were never part of that sexual bargain.
So they'll have enough honesty to see the problem, or at least cast sidelong glances at it, but not the immediate need or the courage to act decisively.
I’ve watched a women-in-computers list go from a group of autonomous individuals who cared passionately about their jobs to a lot of ladies who mostly find excuses to defend the very sexist status quo in IT employment. These are the women who’ve flowed into and filled up the spaces the women before them opened up with such great effort. Just enough status, just enough money to make their self-induced blindness and self-centered comfort with the status quo reasonable enough, for now. I’ve also seen this same kind of thing among college faculty and staff, and on academic lists.
Last but not, etc, women give birth to, are children of, sisters to and live in the closest physical daily contact with those who directly benefit from keeping women down. There’s nowhere to retreat and gather strength, there’s no three quarters of a country that will lecture and impose a high and hypocritical morality on one defeated quarter, there’s no religion that makes the eradication of injustice to women its own noble goal – indeed, many religions are conduits for just the opposite. There just aren’t that many exceptional human beings that can resist all this, live in it and change it
I’ve been disgusted with the slave race my perfectly normal highly functional body makes me part of, but now believe it’s not women so much as that the human race can’t eradicate oppression. Women are the intractable test case: if women’s equality were achieved, there would be no oppression that could last. As it is now, whoever wants justice for someone else’s benefit is just swapping around the latest fashion in masters.
BonneyAnne
BonnieAnne,
I'm hoping you come back to read this as I'd like your permission to use part or all of your comment with attribution, of course.
You have made some fine points that I'd like to spread around for others to read and for further discussion.
I agree that women have become entrenched in the morass of our society but still hopeful that there is a way out.
gapperserve@comcast.net
Gendergapper,
Please feel free to quote and please don’t worry about attribution, but I would ask that you keep whatever you do quote in context (however random). One famous former feminist attached to an academic ladies list proved highly untrustworthy in that respect. It's very difficult to know who to ask or not, so now I just remind everyone.
BTW, the FFF has become one of the foremost O-borgs and had the honor of introducing the “Palin doesn't support contraceptives, so lets all donate to Planned Parenthood” silliness to that collection of Platonic cave-dwellers. At least Planned Parenthood got some donations from the reality-free episode.
BonneyAnne
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