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From: marla@Eng.Sun.COM (Marla Parker)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Personal Change
Message-ID: <1596@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 22 Oct 90 19:52:45 GMT
References: <656193285@romeo.cs.duke.edu> <58384@microsoft.UUCP>
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In article <58384@microsoft.UUCP> ellene@microsoft.UUCP (Ellen EADES) writes:
>...
>I think part of feminism is the ability to look at yourself, set
>goals, make hard decisions, and live your life as you want to.  If
>your friend's first priority is remaining with her husband, she needs
>to accept that he is unlikely to change.

I'd call this wisdom, not feminism. :-)

Changing oneself is hard enough; changing someone else nearly
impossible and in some ways morally wrong in my opinion.  I'll try to
set an example and stand by my beliefs, but I wont try to coerce my
spouse to change.  (What about children, though?)

My husband and I were each raised in extremely sexist families.  That
cannot be wiped out by just saying, "Ok, now we're going to be equal
and have an equitable marriage."

He says, with some humor, that a few years after we married I became
"way feminist", and if pressed he might admit to being somewhat
feminist himself.  For both of us though, what we believe in theory
and what we practice in fact are not always the same.  Sometimes it
seems like what *I* believe in theory and what *he* practices in fact
are not even close!

But close enough, fortunately.  Given that I have changed since we
first got together, if he had NOT changed at all, and/or he had become
more sexist and more like our fathers instead of less, then I would be
faced with some difficult decisions.

--
Marla Parker		(415) 336-2538
marla@eng.sun.com