The liberated woman - What happened?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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After the struggle by so many in the feminist movement of the last three or four decades, what happened? Social equality for women supposedly made some terrific gains. The daughters of the women who fought the good fight have had opportunities their grandmothers could only dream about. So what happened? Where are the female heroes of today? Who do young women look up to in our society? Given the opportunities to become equally involved in all facets of society, what is the deal? What is portrayed as “feminine” ideals is silicone, tummy tucks, botox, and who are the idols? Spears, Hilton, Anderson splashing around in the media like they’re in a Slut-of -the-Month contest…

What happened mom? Did you forget to explain to your daughters that they no longer needed to be eye candy for slobbering males to be successful? For all the feminist rhetoric, something went wrong somewhere. Who dropped the ball?

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they got tired of being men…

history never repeats…

-Imp

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Female heros? They are all around. If one chooses to only see the sex then that is what you will see. Women have never been the braggarts males are nor have they ever been as blatant. Because a few bad apples stick out does not mean the barrel is nothing but rotted fruit. Females wear their power capabilities etc. differently than their male counterparts.

Provocative statement Tent. and a very false one too [-X =; :smiley:

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Kris,

Ok… I’ll admit to a bit of hyperbole, but not much. I also realize that “sex sells” and that the media still panders to the lowest common denominator, but when I walk through a mall and see nothing but bare midriffs on the high schoolers accompanied by mom who has obviously been surgically “endowed”, then the few “rotten apples” seem to be infecting a pretty good chunk of the females in general society. There is too much of it to say that it is just a few. Same question: what happened? Where are the women who are protesting this?

They sure as hell do. They crawl out of a car wearing a mini skirt “forgetting” to have panties on… OK. That isn’t being fair… But what is the message to the 11 and 12 year olds who are looking for a hero to emulate?

Where is the female voice calling for an end to this sort of crap?

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It’s going out the door with morality.

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I think that when Oprah does her good deeds, she is seen as a hero. And yes, she is in the end an entertainer. But boys think professional athletes are heroes, and they are entertainers as well.

But some heroes aren’t famous. To the extent that people can realise their ambitions, they can be heroes to someone. Heroes are powerful - the more power a woman has, the better she can be someone’s hero. This may be the power to survive as a single mom - without welfare - which has as its origins the support for widows and their children. The power to have a child and not be married without too much shame, to make a life for your children without a man, especially when that man has abandoned a woman - and thier children, is the stuff of which heroes can be made.

This may fly in the face of some moralist thinking - but economic power is the kind that counts - for those who would be very wealthy but also for those who simply wish to survive without taking a garage apartment at her brother’s house and pretending that her husband died on a hunting trip. And so the moral and the economic are wed. The freedom that women have - because they can support themselves and because, in the minds of many, they are not irredeemably shamed to live without a man - that can be heroic, too. Because it is still not so easy.

I am not here advocating single parenthood - but if more men were heroes to their own children - even if all that meant was sending a check along once in a while, the world would be a happier place. And fewer women would need to be so heroic.

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Who said it was only mom’s responsibility? Although yeah, I get your drift that it was mom’s responsibility to make the women’s movement happen in the first place and it’s unlikely to be the dads of the world that will take on modern raunch culture you’re referring to. But I’m not holding my breath on the moms, either, although there are definitely some parents of both genders who don’t tolerate it in their homes.

Speaking of that, I recommend a book called “Female Chauvinist Pigs”, because it discusses raunch culture from a feminist perspective.

IMO raising kids requires a two-pronged approach: you guard them from media influence and you keep them actively participating in real (versus virtual) life.

I think everyone has to be very careful these days of unlimited pictures and words that pervade our lives. You gotta guard your frame of reference. And that’s something that probably doesn’t occur to many, because we’re irresistibly drawn to our TVs and our Internet and we don’t realize how much worse it is than it was 20 years ago. But it’s important to protect oneself and especially one’s kids from the overbearing influence of pop culture and the broadcast media that can get shovelled into your home 24/7. More importantly, you have to be strong enough to remove it or at least to keep a strict watch over it. Because kids really, really want it and will pitch a fit to have it. I’m even strict about my kids going to other houses where there aren’t the same sorts of parental controls. Fortunately, many of our friends feel similarly. People seem to have this idea that a television, just because it’s sitting there in a corner, needs to be watched. I disagree. It’s blaringly noisy, often banal or offensive in content and a HUGE diversion from family togetherness and contentment, IMO. And I believe that contemporary marketing is one of the ultimate evils of society. I really despise consumer culture. And I don’t believe most Americans even realize how much they’ve been taken in by it.

One of my good friends has a grown daughter who has two little girls. She has resorted to sewing some of their clothing, not because she wants to, but because she often can’t find age appropriate clothing in the stores. She calls them Baby Hooker clothes. I sometimes think that if I see one more little girl with “Sweet Baby” or some other such nauseous drivel embroidered on the behind of her low-cut jeans, I will ask her where her mother is and go smack her upside the head.

But back to the topic…there are plenty of strong, capable and wise female voices out there. You’re just watching the wrong television (which is most of it) and probably not reading the right books and magazines and web sites, lol. Or going enough out into the community and taking a look at who’s running a lot of the non-profits where really amazing stuff is getting done, stuff that really matters in the world. Look in the colleges and schools. City councils and school boards and state legislatures. Law firms, hospitals, museums, orchestras, high tech companies, athletics, women are even making substantial inroads into engineering and science. There are plenty of professional women everywhere who are smart and strong and successful and make excellent role models for girls. No, you won’t find them featured on “Hollywood Extra”, but then if that’s what’s available in the home, then who’s to blame?

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In Ireland, our one and only state pathologist is female.

She’s rather over-worked, as one might expect …

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Women by and large seem to have more of an eye for trends, edicate, status quo and all that. Women have always struck me as more conformist than men. I know that sounds demeaning, but I don’t mean it that way. I mean simply that women seem to watch out for, and place more importance on, doing the “right thing” or following the socially sanctioned norms. They’re more group oriented, more united among their social networks. This seems to drive them towards convergent behavior and thinking - that is, converging to a common set of standards and values that their social networks share. This runs the gamut from fashion, to morals, to vocations, to academic interests, and almost anything you can think of.

Of course, if the question is why did the feminist movement lose its momentum, this really doesn’t shed much light on it. Why couldn’t feminism remained fixed as the social norms and standards women looked towards throughout the past few decades? Why didn’t the feminist movement have staying power? Well, one answer I have for this is that, in many ways, the goal of the feminist movement was to push women to become more like men - that is, to diverge their interests and lifestyles away from the group and towards the individual. The independent, self-spoken, assertive business women was the archtypical roll model. This proved difficult because it blatantly clashed with the more natural tendency of women to want to look for standards and norms, something to guide their behavior and values so that they wouldn’t endanger their social acceptability. So what effect did this have? Well, if you were a young teenaged women in the 60s, caught up in this movement, you might have thought something along the lines of “OK, women’s lib is now acceptable, so I’m going to be a liberated women. I’m going to follow my heart no matter what others tell me. What does my heart say? It says I really want to follow the latest trends in fashion. I really want to be like those other women in the spot light getting all the (male) attention. I want to be beautiful. I want to be adored. I want men to like me. So I’m just going to do what they’re doing.” And there ends the path of independence.

But I don’t think the feminist movement is really dead. I don’t even think it failed. So women didn’t become more like men. So they rediscovered their feminine hearts. So what? At least now they’re doing it out of choice. Before the sixties, it was just expected that women would act like women and men would act like men. But now no one (except for a few backwards people) really expects anything of either sex. It shouldn’t be a surprise, however, that women still act like women. Nothing shocking about that. But it’s absolutely wonderful, and is a real sign of these liberal times we live in, that you do see many women breaking the mold and pursuing dreams and aspirations that we wouldn’t ordinarily expect of them. For example, women on construction sites, women running businesses, women in politics (and not just as beaurocrats), women in the military, etc. This would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. So as I see it, the feminist movement did accomplish it’s goal of freeing women - those women, as much of a minority as they may be, who, like square pegs, really didn’t fit round holes - of the stigma of seeking their own careers and lifestyles. This is the more important point: that women shouldn’t feel like they have to be more like men, but that they are free to do so if they really want to.

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I think the feminist movement was about opportunity. Just as the capitalist system doesn’t require anyone to become wealthy, but allows it, the feminist movement was about allowing women to have the same opportunities as men, without requiring that women take those opportunities. It was about changing social institutions, and not about forcing all women into one path. Women won the right to vote - but not all women vote. This is not a failure. Any more than it is a failure that not all black people vote. The freedom to choose is a freedom, after all.

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The female voice has never been in concert any more than the male voice has. Why is it the female’s problem that men cannot control their sex drive? Really, why can’t a woman wear what she wants to without the male going all horny? Women are blamed for this crap, when it is the male that refuses to control his thoughts. Rag at the women after you males stop thinking with your mini brain.

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Exactly!!!

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Come on, that’s not fair. I hold men responsible for slobbering all over women and gocking at them with their googly eyes when women wear something provocative and sexy - that we should be able to control - but not our thoughts. If you go out in something skimpy, something exentuating your clevage and showing a lot of skin, and you go flont it right in front of a guy, hell yeah he’s going to be thinking dirty thoughts, and no it’s not at all easy to control, but yes it is easy not to act upon it.

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The simple fact of the matter is that we do not care if other women choose to be portrayed as objects or sluts. It’s up to them to use their liberation however they choose.

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gib,
Its thoughts that cause the guys to go all gawky and google eyes. You can’t stop your physical unless you control your mental. I mean come on. Guys walk around in less clothes than women do. We don’t treat men like sex objects, Ok maybe sometimes we do,. But at least we can hold decent conversations with out staring at their crotches and other bulges. A female gets a little cleavage showing and guys are riveted. If guys can walk around more than half naked and still expect to be considered human before being a sex object, we females should be able to do the same… Brains before sex guys try it. Its not hard. Ok… well its not supposed to get hard.

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Not in my experience (but who knows - maybe I’m special).

Here, I’ll use a schematic:

[sexy woman] → [dirty thoughts] → [gocking and slobbering]

Where in this chain of events does free will and control come in? You seem to think it starts right after [sexy woman] (so us men should be able to stomp out our thoughts before they even start). Although I wouldn’t say we completely lack control at this stage, I would say the amount of control is pathetically weak compared to the amount of control between [dirty thoughts] and [gocking and slobbering].

I’d also like to point out that there’s a difference between “dirty thoughts” and “chovanistic attitudes”. To think dirty thoughts about some attractive woman is one thing - to honestly believe her only value is for sex is quite another.

Yeah, I guess we could put more effort into keeping our eyes focused on yours when we’re having a conversation (as opposed to cleavage), if for no other reason than out of simple respect, but I gotta say, I catch myself doing this a lot and it ain’t deliberate - it ain’t even conscious. The moment it becomes conscious, I quickly raise my eyes up with a slight sensation of self-consciousness (thinking “Gee, I hope she’s not put off by the fact I was staring at her boobs”).

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Well, there’s a wrinkle in that ‘freedom of choice’ stuff. I’ve noted before somewhere on here, feminism has never been about choosing to maintain the traditional role of unpaid stay-at-home caretaker for the simple reason is that it was a revolt against the two main aspects of that: 1) that it was already the default situation and 2) that it wasn’t just about who ran home and hearth…although that was part of it when it came to access to education and job opportunities…but the rebellion was also about the unpaid part. Because there’s a dual reality out there: even though a lot of women now go to college and get the good jobs, those women who ‘choose’ to stay at home (which, again, never needs to be ‘chosen’ in the traditional context) are still at risk of poverty and long-term financial insecurity should their husbands exit the scene. And the risk increases the longer they’re at home and out of the work force. The reality is you can’t present a 20-year-old college degree and no experience to a prospective employer and expect to be competitive with someone ten years younger who has a resume. And that might be okay if you have your primary-breadwinning husband living at home with you all the days of your life. But that’s not many, many women’s (and children’s) reality. Even with the vast improvements in enforcing child support, most working people can’t maintain two households – especially when daddy goes off and makes a second family – at the same standard of living as they can one.

So the choice is more complicated than it seems on the surface. And not as free, never as free.

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Ingenium - it’s not a perfect world. It’s also not so easy theasadays for a lot of women to make the choice, along with their husbands - who participate in that choice, to stay at home. Because the context is no longer simply the traditional one. In many social milieus, the rebel is the one who doesn’t work.

Although it didn’t seem so difficult for my (now ex-) wife to quit her job, despite that we didn’t have any kids.

Some items, like houses, are so influenced by supply and demand that the two-income family has a significant effect on the price. It can be difficult indeed to raise a family on one income.

Another wrinkle.

But it’s more than economics. We have always accepted women as primary and secondary schoolteachers, but not until recently as people who are in business for themselves as professionals, like doctors, lawyers and accountants. That’s a shift in public opinion. Likewise, Hillary Clinton is the first female who has run for president that wasn’t considered “the woman running for president”.

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Okay, Kriswest,

Front and center.

Now let’s review what you just said:

gib,
Its thoughts that cause the guys to go all gawky and google eyes.
We’ll see…

You can’t stop your physical unless you control your mental. I mean come on. Guys walk around in less clothes than women do. We don’t treat men like sex objects,
Really?

Ok maybe sometimes we do,.
Nice save.

But at least we can hold decent conversations with out staring at their crotches and other bulges.
…and you were doing so well on your last little sentence.

A female gets a little cleavage showing and guys are riveted.
And women dont get riveted when a man wears bulge enhancing attire…

If guys can walk around more than half naked and still expect to be considered human before being a sex object,
We’ll see…

we females should be able to do the same… Brains before sex guys try it. Its not hard. Ok… well its not supposed to get hard.
If you say so. Can you check this out for me?

youtube.com/watch?v=kX8Rn-GB-SE

I’m really starting to like youtube. I need to do an indepth study.

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:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: Sorry I have the ancient dial up method… vids are ungodly slow.

Can you fill me in on what I am missing?

Hey I admit if a guy has the right pair of jeans on, my eyes take a slow walk up and down his form before speaking with him. But, if I am talking with him I am paying attention to his words not the bod. Now when he walks away and he has that nice tight blue jean ass going for him. I might drop a drop of drool. But that is a secondary reaction after conversation. If he is a jerk, then no amount of physical sex appeal is going to get me to stare, ogle or fantasize. Ugly in, is ugly out.

Most women I know are like me in this, , welllll except my Lesbian friends. :laughing: