Do you consider yourself a feminist? (A question for both women and men.)

[brokeplex]

Bill just because we're not at the level of Islam, doesn't mean there is no discrimination worth fighting.  You're a gay man, do you think gay people in this country are just whining?  Equal rights is over and done!  Heck, there was a gay president.  There are gay men all over Hollywood and the arts.  Gay people can have civil unions and marriages.  They can be out in most all areas.  Now let's visit the Islamic world where you really have a case of brutal subjugation of gay people...

Del, there is a quantum difference between the status of straight women and the status of Lesbians in the US. Or straight women and gay men in the US.

Your conflating comparison is so disturbing that I am hesitant to even take the time to list how different the status of straight women is to gay men or Lesbians - I must assume that you are joking, and just move on.

[delalluvia]

Del, there is a quantum difference between the status of straight women and the status of Lesbians in the US. Or straight women and gay men in the US.

Your conflating comparison is so disturbing that I am hesitant to even take the time to list how different the status of straight women is to gay men or Lesbians - I must assume that you are joking, and just move on.

The problem Bill is we're not conflating anything.  You saw or heard about the movie "North Country"?  Based on a true story.  In America.  In the 1970's.  The lawsuit by the women in the true situation was filed in 1984.  It was finally settled in 1998.  Yet you claim discrimination against women in our country is over and done.  Untrue.  So your claim can be seen as disturbingly dismissive of what women like Lois Jenson go through in this country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co.

[Front-Ranger]

Arts - there are WAY more than a few token female museum directors and curators, symphony conductors, pop artists, C&W artists

In the writing "team" of Proulx, Ossana and McMurtry - I think that is a 2:1 ratio in favor of women

Business - there are numerous CEO's that are women, and there are more female entrepreneurial startups each and every year, than male startups.

About the writing team of Proulx, Ossana, and McMurtry...which one got the Oscar?

Regarding women CEOs...I challenge you to name even 10 female CEOs in the Fortune 500!

and this can go on and on, as US society has completely changed from my grandmother's day, when it was very rare indeed to find women in places of accomplishment.

now lets visit that Islamic world, there you have a great case that women are brutally subjugated.

Maybe things have changed among the places of accomplishment. But, what about the everyday world of poor women? Women are still pretty much in the same place they've been for 20, 30, 50 years. Supplying cheap or free entertainment for men via coerced sex, and they have to pay the ultimate price...children and the continued cycle of poverty.

[Ellemeno]

Of course I´m a feminist. 

What buffymon said.

[brokeplex]

About the writing team of Proulx, Ossana, and McMurtry...which one got the Oscar?

Regarding women CEOs...I challenge you to name even 10 female CEOs in the Fortune 500!
Maybe things have changed among the places of accomplishment. But, what about the everyday world of poor women? Women are still pretty much in the same place they've been for 20, 30, 50 years. Supplying cheap or free entertainment for men via coerced sex, and they have to pay the ultimate price...children and the continued cycle of poverty.

I am not going to browse google looking for female CEO's, when we all know that they exist.

On second thought yes I am, as I am tired of hearing the Feminist party line on the "glass ceiling" go uncontested. And as I am also equally tired of hearing the Feminist party line about how women "suffer in the educational system" go uncontested, so I will link again to "The War Against Boys"

Women CEOs for FORTUNE 500 companies
There are more women running FORTUNE 500 companies this year than there were last year. Currently, 10 FORTUNE 500 companies are run by women* (up from 9 last year), and a total of 20 FORTUNE 1000 companies have women in the top job (up from 19).
CEO Company Rank
Claire Babrowski  RadioShack  423 
Brenda C. Barnes  Sara Lee  111 
Dorrit J. Bern  Charming Shoppes  641 
Mary E. Burton  Zale  715 
Patricia Gallup  PC Connection  992 
Susan M. Ivey  Reynolds American  280 
Andrea Jung  Avon Products  281 
Kay Krill  AnnTaylor Stores  786 
Linda A. Lang  Jack in the Box  692 
Kathleen A. Ligocki  Tower Automotive  551 
Anne Mulcahy  Xerox  142 
Janet L. Robinson  New York Times  557 
Paula G. Rosput Reynolds  Safeco  339 
Patricia F. Russo  Lucent Technologies  255 
Mary F. Sammons  Rite Aid  129 
Marion O. Sandler  Golden West Financial  326 
Stephanie A. Streeter  Banta  940 
Margaret C. Whitman  eBay  458 
Mary Agnes Wilderotter  Citizens Communications  768 
Dona Davis Young  Phoenix  666

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/womenceos/


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This we think we know: American schools favor boys and grind down girls. The truth is the very opposite. By virtually every measure, girls are thriving in school; it is boys who are the second sex

by Christina Hoff Sommers

The War Against Boys

It's a bad time to be a boy in America. The triumphant victory of the U.S. women's soccer team at the World Cup last summer has come to symbolize the spirit of American girls. The shooting at Columbine High last spring might be said to symbolize the spirit of American boys.

That boys are in disrepute is not accidental. For many years women's groups have complained that boys benefit from a school system that favors them and is biased against girls. "Schools shortchange girls," declares the American Association of University Women. Girls are "undergoing a kind of psychological foot-binding," two prominent educational psychologists say. A stream of books and pamphlets cite research showing not only that boys are classroom favorites but also that they are given to schoolyard violence and sexual harassment.

In the view that has prevailed in American education over the past decade, boys are resented, both as the unfairly privileged sex and as obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. This perspective is promoted in schools of education, and many a teacher now feels that girls need and deserve special indemnifying consideration. "It is really clear that boys are Number One in this society and in most of the world," says Patricia O'Reilly, a professor of education and the director of the Gender Equity Center, at the University of Cincinnati.

The idea that schools and society grind girls down has given rise to an array of laws and policies intended to curtail the advantage boys have and to redress the harm done to girls. That girls are treated as the second sex in school and consequently suffer, that boys are accorded privileges and consequently benefit—these are things everyone is presumed to know. But they are not true.

n.b. this article in the Atlantic is 4 pps long, to read it in its entire (not that I expect doctrinaire victimized feminists to do so, but there are some men on this site WHO WILL READ IT AND NEED TO READ IT) go to :

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200005/war-against-boys



_________________________________________________________________

Wasn't there a 2005 Oscar given best "screenplay"? And wouldn't the award have been given to both Ossana and McMurtry? Proulx did not write the screenplay, so she would not have been considered.

The world  of "poor women". IMO I think that to offer FACTUAL REFERENCED information about how "women" are being used for "coerced"? sex is a bit more useful than subjective unreferenced hearsay. I would suggest that information about the widespread family planning assistance and public welfare assistance that is being offered to those same single mothers might also be important.

And could there POSSIBLY be a correlation between FREE FOOD + FREE HOUSING + FREE MEDICAL CARE  AND MORE BABIES?

As far as men knocking the women up and abandoning them when they get pregnant and refusing to help support the kids, I suggest prison farm vacations for those men - work and work under the careful supervision of the prison system in order to pay for their children's support.

I think the link between poor education, babies and poverty is well known. If some women are choosing to follow that foolish route, then how is that anyone's fault but their own? We make our own choices in life, and coloring everyone with victimhood crayolas certainly doesn't solve the problem of poverty. It it did, it would have worked long ago, in Lyndon Johnsons' "War on Poverty" in the 1960's. Since then we have taxed producing working people to the tune of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in order to support what has essentially become a class self perpetuating baby factories - a permanent underclass of nonproducing people. I think that it is time to change tactics.

[serious crayons]

Women CEOs for FORTUNE 500 companies
There are more women running FORTUNE 500 companies this year than there were last year. Currently, 10 FORTUNE 500 companies are run by women* (up from 9 last year), and a total of 20 FORTUNE 1000 companies have women in the top job (up from 19).

Wow, I went and googled, copied and was ready to paste the above paragraph as a rebuttal to your post, before I noticed that my rebuttal was actually already contained in your post!

Um ... 10 out of 500 CEOs? 20 out of 1000?

That's two percent, BTW.

And brokeplex, I'm already anticipating your response, about women choosing not to become CEOs or somesuch. Don't bother.


But I'd rather this thread not devolve into a debate on whether or not women already have achieved full equal rights. That seems like a good topic, though perhaps deserving of a whole thread of its own. I'd rather discuss whether people consider themselves feminists or, if they reject that label, why. Especially if they believe that women SHOULD have equal rights.

For example, brokeplex has not said anything to indicate he doesn't think women should have equal rights. And yet he does not consider himself a feminist. To me, that's contradictory. If you believe the first, you're automatically the second, IMO.

[Brown Eyes]

I also wanted to add, that there seems to be a misperception that feminism has something to do with women/girls gaining rights or social stature at the expense of men/boys (as the posting of the "War on Boys" article suggests).

Feminism is about a goal of equal rights.   And, the phrase that's often used, "gender equality", means just that... balance and fairness.  It's not a game of winning and losing. 

Social dynamics inevitably do shift for men as progress is made in women's rights (in whatever given culture being considered).  The hope would be that the shifts and changes would be positive for men as well as for women.  It might/does involve sharing power, and divying up roles, jobs, etc. in different ways and ways that might seem new to men. 

But, feminism is not about girls getting a better education than boys.  Or women taking all the jobs away from men. Etc.  It's about getting an equal education and having a chance at the same types of jobs.

In terms of education and, perhaps especially things like sports there's still a lot of work to be done to improve things for girls. The fight for women's education has been very long and difficult over numerous generations.

 

[louisev]

Considering that 51% of the US population is female, the astonishing revelation that there are 10 CEO's in the Fortune 500 who are women is a travesty, not a proof of opportunities for women.

And I don't really understand how anyone can maintain with a straight face that single women with children get automatic health care and support.  Maybe you need to update your information.  There are very nearly 50 MILLION Americans without any health care benefits at ALL.  Of the now-state-managed TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) program, there are only 13 million families nationwide receiving assistance.  Does anyone here seriously believe that all of the disadvantaged single-mother-headed families receive public aid?  This would be a joke, if it weren't so tragically sad that anyone can be so ignorant of the real situation of the poor in this country.

[Monika]

I assume this is not a serious post.

but, just in case....it's somewhat hard not to be sarcastic. "what about the everyday world of poor women"? What about the everyday world of poor men? How about the everyday world of poor people? The overt sexism of this post is exemplory of the nature of feminism--focus only on women and the rest of the humankind are irrelevant.

 

...yes feminism tend to focus on....females

just like black civil right groups tend to focus on...black people


and etc etc


it´s really not that complicated

[serious crayons]

What a sexist thing to say! Is that the 'with us or against us' position that has appeared fairly promient in the feminist agenda?

I don't know that it's "with us or against us" so much as it is simply how I define the term "feminist." Why, how do you define it? You sure seem to know a lot about feminism, so I'll be interested in hearing what you think it means.

If supporting equal rights and not being a feminist is a contradiction, then I would like to know if you support equal rights for men, and if so, are you a masculinist?

Of course I support equal rights for men. If that makes me a masculinist -- a word I've never heard, but oh well -- then that's just fine by me.