Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ora!daemon
From: judy@altair.la.locus.com (Judy Leedom Tyrer)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Personal Change
Keywords: consciousness raising history tradition
Message-ID: <18763@oolong.la.locus.com>
Date: 26 Oct 90 00:26:48 GMT
References: <656193285@romeo.cs.duke.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: Locus Computing Corporation, Inglewood, CA
Lines: 45
Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <656193285@romeo.cs.duke.edu> cel@cs.duke.EDU (Chris Lane) writes:
>I have a friend who really needs her husband to change his awareness,
>to realize his fair share of responsibility for their family.  They've
>been arguing a lot recently, and he's getting more and more
>unreasonable.  She doesn't want to leave him, and can't realistically
>do so, without suffereing a severe drop in quality of life, I'm not
>talking about loosing the BMW, she already makes most the clothes her
>family wears.

>Also, of course, she still loves this man.  I simply don't know of any
>plausible way I can help.  Her husband is an adult human, and there's
>no way to count on him changing, but by Godd(ess), he needs to change.
>What are ways to impel people to decide to change?

I have a close friend who is married to a Brazilian man.  I asked her
once if all Brazilian's were as chauvanistic as he and was told that
from Brazilian standards, he was liberated.  (His mother told her she
should have breast reduction surgery since men don't like big breasts
- that's how bad it is.)  She has made ENORMOUS progress.  I'd have
left by now.

Basically, she quit fighting.  She does what she would do were she
living alone.  If she feels something is his job and he won't do it,
it goes undone.  For example, he doesn't think he should have to pick
up his own clothes.  He leaves them all over the house expecting his
wife to pick up after him.  She refuses.  She takes all the clothes
that are strewn throughout the house and just throws them on his
closet floor - clean and dirty alike.  He is always cussing about not
being able to find things and she just quietly says, "Well, if you
want to start putting your clothes away you won't have this problem."

A lot of times women (and men - my husband finally banned me from
doing laundry because I didn't do it up to his standards) have
expectations of how things should be done and what should be done and
then complain because the men (or women) don't do them THAT WAY.  So,
if your friend's husband doesn't do dishes and she doesn't want to do
dishes that night, instead of having a fight, just don't do dishes.
There are worse things than dishes in the sink.

But I think it is really impossible to change another person.  You
make them aware by letting them experience another viewpoint.  But
fighting to get someone to change is futile.  ("Never try to teach a
pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig").

Judy