It's not a prejudice on my part [at least of opinion] but it may be one of expression - and also a prejudice of interpretation and expectation on your part. I find it quite idiotic that
prejudice is always associated with the most extreme, since everybody has their
predelictions and what they have learnt that they
pre-judge to expect of the same kind of people in future.
We may not use the same language because I write much more concise as an 'essay' (or in response to
mischief) and for more than the single recipient, than were I relaxed in a friendly situation able to judge the person's responses and leqap in to correct misunderstandings. Literally, round here I can't always communicate with people - North Dublin has perfected the art of talking the side of the mouth using only vowels and all of them E! Even other Dubs can't always follow them
My prejudices are that women have been sexually suppressed and men emotionally suppressed and that people generally want to feel they
belong and have a purpose directed to themselves and close associates ('family') in anything they do, not to just feel numbered cogs in the machine in the way of
Metropolis (1925 silent). I am a child of the 60s and proud of it, that hoped this
consumerist world where we are all more subject to Commerce than the USSR ever was to the State would never happen and we would all live in a
leisure society free to do as
we choose or at the worst maybe conscripted to ten year's employment before we can
do our own thing whether it makes money or not, secure in a world where everybody is an aristo instead of Stalin's where everybody is a serf. Idealist - but what point ideals if they are attainable and then new ideals must be sought for?
In that respect, I call what is so often called
feminization as
humanization - it is not for women only, men are just as capable of valuing themselves by their personal relationships and of feeling their life should be more than
Metro, Boulot, Dodo - a French expression meaning all you do is get on the train, work all hours and sleep. Remeber
Job Satisfaction? What happened to that? In one word - Thatcher, in another Reagan, in two
Corporate State.
I doubt very much that you are
intellectually weak. I suspect more that you are
intellectually strong enough to play ironic. All the same. I do not think there is a lot of difference between anything you have said and I have been saying to the horror of self-styled 'feminists' for years that is only repeating what all the women I've known and do know - who would be called 'feminists' years ago but today are just 'normal' and have no time for 'feminist' whining 1950s
feeble female. Where there is difference, then it deserves discussion, not personal abuse
or pretending it is something else - which you may not have done but certainly has been done to me by self-styled 'feminists' whom I regard as just as much opposed to the 'feminist' ideals of value for
women's work and men's involvement in it and making 'commerce' work for 'the people' instead of 'the people' having value only as far as they work at and buy what profits corporate masters.
It's the Economy, Stupid. No it isn't - it is
The People and
The People like a little place of their own, a feeling of doing things for their delight in their creativity, their sense of
belonging to others who care about them - and the one most people miss that is far more important - of having their care for another
accepted, to feel secure and worthwhile that I have loved and created and been more than somebody's paid functionary. Until I read him, I did not realize how much Trotsky had to say that is still idealistic (and also how much has dated since 1936!) Actually, Mrs Bronstein had as much to do with it as he did and he acknowledged that, though her full name has not been passed on with the same flying colours.
I grew up where everybody owned their own farm or business and only the lowest of the low had to sell themselves for a wage, or were 'passing through' learning to earn their right to set up in a profession in their own right. We may be born 'working class' but we need not stay as dependent industrial serfs.
I have seen all along how closely I agree with many things you say. So. I believe, have others, and it is their deliberate intention to beguile and to prevent mutual understanding. It could always be that you are being sarcastic, and laughing up your sleeve as well but if so, others may think differently and all you would get out of it is disgruntled stagnation, which seems rather a waste of effort.
You strike me as militant, not as prepared to write females off unless they conform to demands traditional to males that the males should be liberating themselves from, but jaundiced about individual male behaviour. I've been lucky to personally know only women I could never imagine as some kind of weird aliens (except for a few on these boards - but none on most boards I frequent). just as people and mostly [ii]friends[/i]. When they are not friends, well neither are most men - so what? If everybody were a friend and a lover, friendship and love would be nothing special.
Jean has highlighted that I see many of your posts as hating men. Of course, if you start from a premise of hate, hate is what you get back. Jean claims
lack of coherence in that statement. I see it as the obvious
what you give returns to you. I say that you may hate 'men' because you define 'men' to mean those males who fit your image to hate, just as men who go on about 'women' show that they have only ever chosen or noticed that particular kind of female. I have always made sure to draw as much distinction between modern 'feminists' and 'women' as between 'BNP' and 'British' or 'Black Power' and 'Black American'.
I have rarel met any woman who does not find 'feminist' an insult or any who does not take for granted everything that these 'feminists' keep telling her she is deprived of. Those few I have were the
silly little girlies who just couldn't face up to equality with men and paraded the old whining 1950s
feeble female helpless image instead of the strong equal partner working together to support each other emotionally. They are the ones who'd expect the man to take them out and wait on them, then whine how 'oppressed' they were if he expected the same. Naturally, they choose the kind of man who wants a dependent pet instead of an equal friend, so decry all men as what they have told men they want - and got.
"Be careful of what you wish for - you might get it"Rather, most women resent the way 'feminists' contrive to always put them down as inferiors to men when they stand up to say that they control their own life - than you very much Aunty, I don't need you to tell me to be ashamed of
giving myself to boys because maybe if you try, you can remember being 17 and just as randy and in control as the boys your Aunty told you were 'taking advantage' as if you were too stupid to control your own self too.
and lastly, the issue that you answered here. Doesn't is strike you as strange that when I have spoken up for better State support and respect for women to choose to treat motherhood as a career instead of slaving behind a counter with all kinds of dirty tricks to deprive them of their statutory rights, it is the self-styled 'feminists' who rush to oppose equal recognition for women doing something for themselves that men cannot and to sweep the possibility of allowing men equality as paid parents away by just saying
Men don't want to without any question that women
don't want to be ground-down wage-serfs any more than men do either and both would rather be free to have their day under their control.
Girls may not
want to spend their life working for somebody else and prefer to be in control of their own family and work at what they choose as then choose when they choose. 'Feminists' find that alarming and talk about 'conditioning' and look for ways to get them out doing their
duty.
Boys may be all bragazzio and look on personal commitment and love with disdain and want to show their mates they can have the big car and all the other goodies avoid personal commitment and
girly things. The 'feminist' reaction? Well that's just boys, girls can't do anything to change them, doesn't matter anyway, it's girls doing the same that matters, not changing boys to be more 'feminine'. Yes, there are some women still who don't respect a man unless he swaggers as the
breadwinner and knocks them into place - but those women want exactly the same man as these 'feminist' hand-wringers so feeble when it comes to changing men to be more human and so determined to change women to be as inhuman as the men they both hate and long to be.