Good quote from "Who Stole Feminism?"

[errantember]

"The evidence that women have been excluded, and their abilities as thinkers and writers demeaned, is everywhere. But once a woman appreciates the extent to which culture and civilization have been male-dominated, two roads like before her. She can learn what she can be learned about womens' past achievements, and learn as well the reasons that their contributions to the larger enterprise were not greater; and she can then avail herself of the freedom she now has to accept the challenge to join with men on equal terms in the making of a new and richer culture. Or she can react to the cultural and scientific heritage as "androcentric" and move consciously to reconstruct the "knowledge base." It is at this juncture that equity and gender feminist academics begin to go their separate ways. The former stay within the bounds of traditional scholarship and join in its enterprise. The later seek to transform scholarship to make it "women-centered."

Who Stole Feminism by Christina Hoff Sommers, p. 55



I mentioned recently my belief that "life is less about finding your truth than it is about choosing your lies." This is a good illustration of that principle. Within the bound of women getting less press historically than men, it's very easy to support *either* of the two viewpoints above. And the responsibility for the worldview that results *and* the actions taken belongs to the chooser and the chooser alone. In this particular regard, "gender feminists" as Sommers dubs them, are creating a reality in which genuine inequalities are amplified to create a distorted worldview in which female oppression is far worse than it really is. No one is forcing them to do it. They choose it themselves.

Comments

[errantember.livejournal.com]

Pregnancy and childbirth are *definitely* a mortality risk, and one that men will never have to face. The hardest part of dealing with "equality" is in situations where the biological differences are inarguable and unequal.

The biggest answer the larger problem of unwanted pregnancy is the availability of reliable male birth control. Even if I do *everything* else in my power to prevent a pregnancy from occurring with someone I'm having sex with, I *never* have the ability to determine whether or not I end up with a biological child. This is one of situations in which things are currently most unequal for men. Women have a choice, but men don't. And it means ever time I ever have sex with anyone, I'm giving them huge power over the rest of my life. The only real answer to the problem is the technology and political will to explicitly divorce sex from reproduction. The technology for better male birth control exists, but it's not sold because our society is too fucking backward to demand it the way it has female birth control. Until *every* child is planned, we're still going to have many of the same problems we have today.

I completely agree on the last point. I'm undecided about whether that's a good or bad thing. The entire existence of the draft, I mean. On one hand, governments sometimes misuse the military as we are currently doing in Iraq, and requiring ordinary citizens to fight a rich man's war is something I could do without. On the other hand, if the entire country had sons (*and* daughters) in the military in compulsory service, the country would be *far* less likely to go to war in the first place.