[QatzelOk]

What does "feminism in the workforce" have to do with any particular culture?

Workforce gender-neutrality is about global capitalism and has nothing to do with any particular culture.

Women-in-the-workforce is all about industrial productivity, and has nothing to do with enriching the lives of females.

The "buy your babies delicious food" meme that we have been presented with (by commercial media) is pathetic. Kids eat more processed commercial poison than ever. And they currently starve for the kind of education that only parents can provide (and used to provide for a million years).

This is the other side of putting harnesses on women and strapping them into cubicles for 40 hours a week - the one commercial feminist-supporters don't like to talk about because it reveals commercial feminism as a tragedy of fashion following.

The equality of women in many cultures has to do with a social respect for child-rearing. But not in commercial culture. In commercial culture all that can get a women respected is the conspicuous consumption of status symbols.

soundtrack

It was a nice run while it lasted, but it's now time for women to slowly pull off the denim jeans and find some cloth in the dusty sewing basket with which to craft a few postmodern skirts.

Commercial feminism officially ends on January 1, 2011.
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[Nattering Nabob]

The equality of women in many cultures has to do with a social respect for child-rearing.

Indeed...the more primitive the culture the more "respect" there is for women who stay home and rear children...

Gender neutrality in the workforce is only a capitalist ploy to tear women from the role that nature gave them over the course of millions of years of evolution...

Sarah Palin (not to mention Glen Beck) approves of this thread...

[W01f]

I often have a hard time distinguishing between satire and seriousness in Qatz's posts, but I actually agree with him here to an extent. It's not as if the feminist movement was some capitalist conspiracy, but it certainly worked in capitalism's favour, and today seems to be working more towards that end than to the original cause, which is no longer an issue in western society. Modern day feminism is about women being men. This doesn't benefit women, albeit it benefits capitalism. What's so attractive in being a man? Why would a woman want to be like a man? We take on many of the heaviest and undesirable burdens that society has to offer.

[Headache]

Too late to go back now. Have a good time trying to raise a family off a single income like people did in the good old days.

[Cartertonian]

Indeed...the more primitive the culture the more "respect" there is for women who stay home and rear children...

I often have a hard time distinguishing between satire and seriousness in Nat's posts!

My wife is certainly a victim of the modern, Western drive to force women to be equal to men in the workplace. She doesn't want to work, and sees her focus as raising our six kids, but at the same time she feels worthless in society because she is not balancing a successful career with raising six kids.

Have a good time trying to raise a family off a single income like people did in the good old days.

As you clearly surmise, Headache, it is not easy.

[W01f]

My wife is certainly a victim of the modern, Western drive to force women to be equal to men in the workplace. She doesn't want to work, and sees her focus as raising our six kids, but at the same time she feels worthless in society because she is not balancing a successful career with raising six kids.

It's ironic and just shows how short-sighted people are. The alternative would be to have one, maybe two children, and give them an inferior upbringing with a nanny or daycares, all to advance her theoretical personal career. But which is a bigger benefit to society in the long run? Her petty career, or an additional four or five productive members of tomorrow's aged society, which will be in more need of young talent than at any time prior in history?

[Il Duce]

This sounds like a Germaine Greer rant. I agree with what you have said though. Women's lives have not been enriched that much.

[Le Rouge]

I would say we are living in a post-third wave feminist society and that feminist projects are anemic at this point and time. I'm waiting for the fourth wave but I think we will see a massive resurgence of feminist projects, particularly in the "developing world", before any fourth wave feminist frameworks emerge.

[Zyx]

These are liberal movements. However with feminism it gets worse. Modern feminism in a sentence is 'we are men who control sex.'

[Nattering Nabob]

Modern feminism in a sentence is 'we are men who control sex.'

This thread delivers...

[Zyx]

Nattering Nabob, you can learn something if you sit back. For in the beginning of the second wave, women met with one another and discussed the childcare problem. Many disagreed with the idea of abandoning the children to the elements. Whereas one can say "Well it should be both men and women rearing children" today's feminists call for "neither."

[Nattering Nabob]

Nattering Nabob, you can learn something if you sit back.

I'm trying to sit back...but it's difficult to do while convulsed with laughter...nevertheless I am learning entirely too much...

For in the beginning of the second wave, women met with one another and discussed the childcare problem. Many disagreed with the idea of abandoning the children to the elements.

OK...you got me...I learned absolutely nothing from that part...

Whereas one can say "Well it should be both men and women rearing children" today's feminists call for "neither."

Today's feminists not only want to be men who "control sex"...but they also want neither men nor women to raise children?

Maybe I could sit back if I had seat belts...

[Cartertonian]

Surely if we did truly live in a liberated, post-feminist age, my wife would both be able to target her energies on motherhood with a clear conscience AND be respected for it.

Or is that, 'having your cake and eating it?'

[Zyx]

Nattering Nabob, you wrote that "Glen Beck" said "Women should get back in the kitchen" as if to dismiss the whole debate. But you misunderstand that it's a central theme in feminist scholarship that isn't so easily one side or the other. You appealed to authority to argue a point completely ignorant of the history of the debate. That's what you should have learned. I do not understand how you can vaunt such a lack of learning. Just sit back.

Professional women do not aspire to raise children. They get nannies for that. And women do wish to control sex. That you should know from personal experience.

[Cartertonian]

Within the body of feminist scholarship then, Zyx, is there nothing that supports my post?

If feminism is about empowering women to be the best they can be, is there no room for empowering women who choose that life to be the best mothers they can be?

[Nattering Nabob]

But you misunderstand that it's a central theme in feminist scholarship that isn't so easily one side or the other.

Yet you can sum it up in a single sentence?

Modern feminism in a sentence is 'we are men who control sex.'

You appealed to authority to argue a point completely ignorant of the history of the debate. That's what you should have learned. I do not understand how you can vaunt such a lack of learning. Just sit back.

I'm 48 years old and have listened to the debate as it took place over the years...I'm not the one posting single sentence cartoon versions of it...

And women do wish to control sex.

It's slightly more complicated that that...

[QatzelOk]

If feminism is about empowering women to be the best they can be,

Of course it's about that - the word feminism.

But "best they can" was defined as "possessing more status symbols than others" by commercial media, and this same media coopted the feminist movement of the 60s/70s and lead it to where it went: two-parent incomes.

The idea that women would be "the best they can" through income equalization and social programs was flushed down the toilet in favor of creating more soldiers for the war on lack-of-status-symbols.


The commercial media of the sixties and seventies sent missed messages regarding female empowerment.
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[Vera Politica]

I somewhat agree.

Workforce gender neutrality should have been about removing the relevance of gender in the public/private division of labor and fostering a great respect for private labor (i.e. 'home-caring'). The fact that two incomes are necessary only shows a significant decline in the standard of living. Feminism has adversely affected both women and men.

[Cookie Monster]

The fact that the capitalist system exploits the emancipation of women in the labour market to make labour more cheap does not mean that we should have remained with the gender division of labour seen in the 50's and earlier.

[Ter]

The women entered the labour market after WW2 because they were working in the war industry during the war, with the men gone.
This facilitated the feminist movement.
After that, the divorce rate shot up and happiness was reduced to a great extent, for both men and women.

This is now happening in developing countries like India

"There's been a 100% increase in divorce rates in the past five years alone."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12094360

I have to agree with Qatz.

Ter