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From: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: How feminism has failed me
Message-ID: <8911212350.AA24980@hop.toad.com>
Date: 21 Nov 89 23:50:35 GMT
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Liz Bonesteel raised some excellent points about the problems faced by
women who want families in the modern workplace.  What I can't
understand is how she blames feminism for them.  All the problems she
cited result from the old pre-feminist view that people who are serious
about their careers do not spend a great deal of time attending to
domestic matters.  Traditionally this was done by saying "men" instead
of "people" in the previous sentence's phrase, and assuming there to be
a full-time domestic servant (the wife) taking care of such matters.
What feminism has won so far is perhaps only a recognition of some
women as "honorary men", but it has always tried for far more.

Modern feminism considers child care an extremely important issue, and
politically has pushed throughout the eighties for child care that
would let people raise families and pursue careers.  That feminism has
not so far succeeded is hardly something you can blame on feminism; the
fault lies in the inertia of patriarchal society.  Things proceed in
stages, generally small stages, and it's unrealistic to blame feminism
for not delivering all desirable social change at once.  If feminism
were not trying, and trying hard, to resolve the kinds of problems Ms.
Bonesteel related so well, then it would be to blame.  But it *is*
trying to allow self-determination for women in this regard and others.

And, Ms. Bonesteel, I have been reading feminist literature since my
early teens, and I can't count the number of times I've seen women
acknowledge that it is perfectly all right to devote your life to
children and the home if that's what you really want, regardless of
your gender.  What has been fought -- and to some extent, won -- is the
freedom to make that choice rather than being forced into that
occupation.  If your co-workers, male or female, express such
patriarchal, unrefined, pre-feminist attitudes as you have expressed,
that is hardly the fault of a movement which has consistently held the
exact opposite.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

FROM THE FOOL FILE:
"Those Mayas were sacrificing not only pagan children, but baptized
 Christian children, for crying out loud!  And they were carrying out
 those sacrifices, those barbarities, with great savagery, without
 giving the victims the benefit of the humane types of death that the
 European Church accorded even to heretics and witches during that
 century, such as burning at the stake."
		-- Matthew Rosenblatt, rec.arts.books