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I think that the original premise was that SOME PEOPLE (and perhaps mostly men) were of the thinking that it was a woman's place to be stuck in a domestic role whether she wanted it or not. This is borne out by the few posters here who believe that women going to work (*gasp!* like men!) is "destroying society." It is an argument you find here and there, certainly on this site, if rarely out in the wild, depending on who you know I guess.
Suppose some women would respond to this notion with "See! Society is repressing me!" I respond to it with...well...that's kind of dumb if you ask me. It only gets disturbing to me as a woman, when I hear about actual political leaders with the power to shape law and policy, trying to push a one-size-fits-all social agenda based on "traditional values" where women have less choices and less freedom.
Of course, in this idealistic world where women tend the hearth fires, men have less freedom, too. They have to work, and do whatever it takes to provide, and cannot count on their partner to step up and bring home the bacon if they get sick or injured or lose their jobs. Tough. And the very accomplished few stay at home Dads I know? Forget it! Get out there and get a job! lol... Why?
My man does not wish I'd be his little housewife. I told him, since he's much older than me, my income is what will make the difference to allow him to retire early enough to maybe pursue some of his photography ambitions, rather than working a job he hates until he falls over. Our life plans definitely involve me having a career. I make more than he does. This is not a problem for us.
0biously it is about power and control, or coming to grips with "losing" something never intended to be a permanent state of affairs anyway. And we're long past the expiration date on the male persecution complex, clearly. So long as all aspects of human comradeship are twisted by commercialization and the profit motive, we can only make individual changes to our interior lives, and act outwardly to generate a less hostile and uneven society. I have some training in academic theology and pointedly seek to rid my mind and heart of insidious, culturally conditioned, lies about women. Women and men are equal - period. Spiritually, first, all other rights and responsibilities groundswell from that concept.
The other day I was reading the comments on a news story and one man there commented that women should stay home and take care of the children. It gave me a pause, especially as I realized that this was from a younger man, perhaps 30 years old.
I'm just curious to know where this attitude comes from, women as well as men. I realize a lot of men are bitter about former wives and girlfriends, but somehow I feel the issue is deeper than this. So does it come from the way a person is raised, or is it because a person is angry and wants a target or is it a religious thing? Just what is it about independent women that make others feel so threatened, if that's the case?
Where and why do people have this attitude that women should not be able to have a life outside the home?
Personalities. Even if you have a Conservative upbringing, you can either rebel or believe in it. Some will rebel, some will believe it. What determines which one you'll choose? Your personality.
Over the years of going to school, watching the news, and now going online, we hear so much information on how society is. But what determines if we think this info. is good or bad? Our inherent personalities.
It comes for centuries old norms. It was "normal" for women to stay at home to raise the family. There were only a few jobs that women could get: teachers, nurses, and secretaries. Most only worked these jobs until they got married. About a hundred years ago, teachers COULDN'T be married. If a woman got married while teaching, she lost her job.
There was a time when a family could live on one income so many families had that luxury of having one "bread winner." Because of that, women were dependent on their husbands.
Things started to change in the '60s & '70s when women's lib became a movement. The economy pushed women into the workforce and they started to find their independence. Women realized that they didn't need to get married & have kids to be fulfilled-that's not to say that married women weren't fulfilled. But, they also learned that they didn't have to be dependent on their husbands.
...
In the British colonies & then in the US, those are not centuries old norms. In log cabin days & sod busting days, women labored just as men did, plowing, seeding, weeding, milking, churning, darning, cooking, gathering roots & berries & anything else edible, tanning hides. That pattern repeated itself right across the continent. & the Civil War & WWII (especially) had women replacing men in factories & farming & anywhere possible, so that able-bodied men could fight. Those norms may be hallowed in staid old Europe & similarly hierarchical societies, but the US isn't one of those. We wouldn't be here @ all otherwise.
Women's lib in the US is a throwback to settler society - not the prettified images from bodice-buster romance novels, but the real thing, when a wife might have to milk, churn, tend the cook fire one moment, fight off wildfire, stampede or man a gun in the next. It wasn't for sissies of either gender, & lots of people - men, women & children - died in the attempt.
I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. It sure went a ways off the beaten path, but I never was one for insisting threads stay strictly on topic, even if those are the rules. For one thing, life isn't always about staying strictly on the straight and narrow and we all learn so much when we wander a bit. For another, I feel most things are connected to other things and talking about one thing only without context to anything else is a mistake.
As for the differences between men and women, I remember something that happened to me years and years ago. I was in a court reporting class, a job market which is dominated by women. In one of our classes, we had one male.
The teacher described a situation which required a cartload of work and everything being a priority. Then she added one more thing to the mix and asked what we would do at that point. One girl said she would cry and there were laughs and head noddings all around. The one male in our class then spoke out and asked, "Well, then what should I do?"
Meaning that for him, unlike the women, crying wasn't an option.
I know some people will say that a man has the right to cry when he needs to and it shows sensitivity and compassion. This is also what I think most people mean when they say men are being demasculated, if that's a word.
For me, it was just the opposite, though. I decided that day that if crying wasn't an option for someone else, then it didn't have to be an option for me, either. And that decision that day led to realizing how strong I could be when I made up my mind for myself instead of letting society and others do it for me.
For those criticizing feminism, what I hear is people telling me I am expected to cry, despite how I might feel.
Quote:
Originally Posted by southwest88
In the British colonies & then in the US, those are not centuries old norms. In log cabin days & sod busting days, women labored just as men did, plowing, seeding, weeding, milking, churning, darning, cooking, gathering roots & berries & anything else edible, tanning hides. That pattern repeated itself right across the continent. & the Civil War & WWII (especially) had women replacing men in factories & farming & anywhere possible, so that able-bodied men could fight. Those norms may be hallowed in staid old Europe & similarly hierarchical societies, but the US isn't one of those. We wouldn't be here @ all otherwise.
Women's lib in the US is a throwback to settler society - not the prettified images from bodice-buster romance novels, but the real thing, when a wife might have to milk, churn, tend the cook fire one moment, fight off wildfire, stampede or man a gun in the next. It wasn't for sissies of either gender, & lots of people - men, women & children - died in the attempt.
Interesting you should bring that up. I just finished reading The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, about a wagon train leaving Independence, MO for Oregon in 1845.
The last part of the book made a reference to the women who went along, And I quote:
"Raw or not, the women did their part and more. They traveled head to head with men, showing no more fear and asking no favor....They had a kind of toughness in them that you might not think, seeing them in a parlor. So, on a trail, women came to speak and men to listen almost as if to other men. It was lucky for the pride of men that few traveled with their wives to Oregon. They'd never quite believe again a woman was to look at but not to listen to."
The book was published in 1949.
I like to think, in a manner of speaking, that all feminists are those women traveling to Oregon. We're speaking and men are learning to listen.
I really couldn't care less how many abortions are performed in the US. I don't care about fetuses. I care about the children who are already here. You know, the over 300,000 in foster care that can't find a permanent home, the ones who age out of the foster care system and end up on the street, and the almost 700,000 kids who are abused annually. Simply put, I am in no way going to advocate that we add more kids to these ranks, especially if they are going to be born unwanted and unloved.
You take care of all the kids in foster care first and I'll reconsider my opinion on abortion, which is that you and others like you don't get to force your personal feelings about it on anyone else.
^^^^^ THIS!!!!!!!!!
Bravo, finally someone else thinks the right way on that issue, there are an estimated 200,000 UNWANTED children, including babies clogging up the foster-care system in this country alone, we do not need to bring in any more unwanted fetus' until that number in foster care is ZERO!
Plenty of women out there are on hard drugs, crack, meth, are ill equipped and unsuitable to have and raise children when they are like that, others don't want any.
Let's just add a few MILLION more UNWANTED mouths to the planet to feed so EVERYONE is worse off, I can just imagine how horrible things would be with 50 million more in this country, essentially adding almost six cities the size of New York City!
Take the estimated 30 million abortions and calculate about half of those (15 million or 7.5 million females) if they hadn't been aborted would have had children of their own, assuming a conservative 2 children each for 7.5 million females would have added another 15 million to the 30 million = 45 million, but, a certain number of the older group of females who had 2 children each- those children would right about now be of child bearing age. All told, those 30 million would have today, or within say five years from now or so- have added about 50 MILLION more mouths to this planet.
Adding the 320 million already here, we would now be awash with 370 million people in the USA in a land area that as recently as 1900 had only 75 million people.
What would that mean? well, let's see, we have 20 MILLION who cant find jobs today, and haven't been able to for long term, if we had 50 million MORE, we would now have 70 MILLION people with no jobs, after all, if we have 20 million now who cant get work, adding 50 million more would add that many more.
50 million also would mean- assuming 2 people to a car at least 25 million more CARS on the road, 25 million more homes would have had to have been carved out of the forests and land, 25 million more septic systems, electric connections, sewer, garbage disposals, water connections, and use of raw materials and fossil fuels.
All I can say is, that would have RAPIDLY rocketed us to making the science fiction "Soylent Green" movie into REALITY.
Per capita use of OIL is approximately 68,672 barrels/day per 1,000 persons, for the 50 million figure 3,400,000 MORE barrels of oil PER DAY the US would have to import today had those abortions not happened.
We already use 18,690,000 barrels of oil a day in this country and you see what it does to the supplies, prices, and pollution, add in another 3.4 million barrels a day demand to an already overtaxed refinery and distribution system and watch what happens to the prices EVERYONE would have to pay on everythign from gasoline to food which requires diesel fuel for farming, harvesting, processing, transporting.
Thank goodness for safe, legal, ABORTION!
Quote:
As of 8 am, there were 905 surgical abortions performed in the United States alone this MORNING. Numbers based of Guttmacher Institute.
Excellent! that's 905 fewer being added to the foster-care system and about 68,000 less barrels of oil we have to find, extract and burn- adding to the overall pollution each day, about 2,000 or more- fewer disposable diapers winding up in the overfilled landfills each day too. This is great news for those of us already HERE.
Bravo, finally someone else thinks the right way on that issue, there are an estimated 200,000 UNWANTED children, including babies clogging up the foster-care system in this country alone, we do not need to bring in any more unwanted fetus' until that number in foster care is ZERO!
Plenty of women out there are on hard drugs, crack, meth, are ill equipped and unsuitable to have and raise children when they are like that, others don't want any.
Let's just add a few MILLION more UNWANTED mouths to the planet to feed so EVERYONE is worse off, I can just imagine how horrible things would be with 50 million more in this country, essentially adding almost six cities the size of New York City!
Take the estimated 30 million abortions and calculate about half of those (15 million or 7.5 million females) if they hadn't been aborted would have had children of their own, assuming a conservative 2 children each for 7.5 million females would have added another 15 million to the 30 million = 45 million, but, a certain number of the older group of females who had 2 children each- those children would right about now be of child bearing age. All told, those 30 million would have today, or within say five years from now or so- have added about 50 MILLION more mouths to this planet.
Adding the 320 million already here, we would now be awash with 370 million people in the USA in a land area that as recently as 1900 had only 75 million people.
What would that mean? well, let's see, we have 20 MILLION who cant find jobs today, and haven't been able to for long term, if we had 50 million MORE, we would now have 70 MILLION people with no jobs, after all, if we have 20 million now who cant get work, adding 50 million more would add that many more.
50 million also would mean- assuming 2 people to a car at least 25 million more CARS on the road, 25 million more homes would have had to have been carved out of the forests and land, 25 million more septic systems, electric connections, sewer, garbage disposals, water connections, and use of raw materials and fossil fuels.
All I can say is, that would have RAPIDLY rocketed us to making the science fiction "Soylent Green" movie into REALITY.
Per capita use of OIL is approximately 68,672 barrels/day per 1,000 persons, for the 50 million figure 3,400,000 MORE barrels of oil PER DAY the US would have to import today had those abortions not happened.
We already use 18,690,000 barrels of oil a day in this country and you see what it does to the supplies, prices, and pollution, add in another 3.4 million barrels a day demand to an already overtaxed refinery and distribution system and watch what happens to the prices EVERYONE would have to pay on everythign from gasoline to food which requires diesel fuel for farming, harvesting, processing, transporting.
Thank goodness for safe, legal, ABORTION!
Excellent! that's 905 fewer being added to the foster-care system and about 68,000 less barrels of oil we have to find, extract and burn- adding to the overall pollution each day, about 2,000 or more- fewer disposable diapers winding up in the overfilled landfills each day too. This is great news for those of us already HERE.
I trust you do not work, drive a car and have taken in lots of foster kids.
I think at it's root many men feel threatened by independent women. If a woman is earning her own money, she has the means to leave whenever she wants.
This is EXACTLY why I will never get married. My mother did the traditional, get-married-ASAP thing, she attained no education beyond high school, no career training, and had no work experience beyond waitressing, and after a few years of marriage my father started cheating on her and treating her like crap. I was just a little kid, and begged her to divorce him and take me and leave him, but her answer to me was that she couldn't afford it. I had a miserable childhood because my mother decided to be "traditional". Traditional = entrapping women and children, rendering us helpless to a man's whims. Screw that! (My mother is still married and now an alcoholic. smh)
I am so grateful that I live in a society where I can make whatever choice I want: work, get married and not work, get married and work, full-time, part-time, whatever. I do not have to depend on a man for anything. I am also an atheist, so I don't have to live my life based on what a man in a funny hat believes. My life is mine, all mine, and all you traditionalists can go to hell!
Let me know when men start getting abortions. Then I'll expect them to take care of their own birth control, too. Let me know when men are allowed to tell women to GET an abortion. They can't. Women's decision, remember?
Don't want the responsibility? Choose to have sex with a man that wears a condom. If you don't, that is on YOU as a female.
Ever heard of a condom breaking, or failure rate even with proper use? No birth control method is 100% effective: even sterilization!
I trust you do not work, drive a car and have taken in lots of foster kids.
I'm already HERE, and been here 57 years, I'm not some "accident" that wasn't wanted in the first place, yet to be born.
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Guns & butter
No birth control method is 100% effective: even sterilization!
