Feminism

[slightreturn]

Please feel free to express your views honestly re; Feninism.
What to men really think about it?

Just to let you all know that I am still here. RL has made it difficult to respond before now, but I will do so presently. Thanks Sprogger and Zazen for the interesting posts.

Hi Sprogger,

Thanks again for your post.

I do not think that your reasoning concerning the teaching profession follows. As I understand your reasons, it is now female-dominated because it suits those in traditionally female roles (ie, home-maker); also its status as a profession has reduced because women dominate it. The problem with this is that teaching remains high-status, reasonably paid, and very, very secure. It is also not nearly as family-friendly a job as often supposed: teachers are as likely to work evenings and weekends as anyone. It is easier to say that as male teachers retire, they are not being replaced by men. After all, men have become less likely than women to take degrees, and teaching requires one (NB: this might explain why senior teachers, who one would expect to occupy senior positions, are more likely to be men).

Re men working with children, I take your post to mean that teaching is now regarded as feminine, and therefore beneath a man, therefore a man who chooses to teach must have some very strange motives indeed. The problem with this reasoning is that, as noted above, teaching remains high-status. It seems easier to say that as paedophilia has ceased to be a taboo subject, it has been noted that it is overwhelmingly committed by men. That has put all men who work with children - not just teachers - under suspicion. I am sure that creates a powerful chill factor and one which has nothing to do with teaching being regarded as 'women's work'. One of the reasons why I wouldn't want to become a teacher is because of that latent suspicion.

Also, I'm unsure about your comments regarding the elevation of masculine traits. Some of the crudest examples of sexism I can think of have been directed at women who exhibit them (Margaret Thatcher, for example): they are seen as a threat. Defining leadership as a masculine trait, yet viewing the de facto non-leadership of women as evidence of patriarchy is having one's cake and eating it.

Zazen,

Whenever I read this discussion, I have a problem lurking in the back of my mind. The problem is that no-one has actually stated what a modern Western feminist society might actually look like.

Now, I don't think anyone would disagree that ancient Greek society was sexist, and the same could be said of mediaeval European societies. Why do we say they were sexist? By judging them according to our own standards of course. The people of those societies wouldn't have considered themselves sexist at all: they would have said that women's lower status befitted their place in the natural order, or alternatively, they would have said that women were different to men but equal (and being different, entitled to less of the pie). We now know that the bases for these beliefs are false.

It is also inevitable that we inherit cultural presuppositions, and therefore might be tainted by wrong belief (however, part of our cultural inheritance is reason and scientific endeavour, which has contributed greatly towards changed attitudes, and ought to safeguard us from going too far wrong in this respect).

But on this line of thinking, it seems that we have a problem when we try to evaluate our own society. For example, it is easy to say that women are disadvantaged if they have a less than equal share of seats in Parliament. But then we have to ask why this is, and each step we go back, we have to peel another layer of a metaphorical onion. I find your allusion to Marxism interesting, because Marx never articulated in a concrete way what a communist society would look like. Marxism provides an excellent critique of capitalist society, but the solutions created in its name are controversial amongst Communists themselves.