Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon
From: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: what feminism has done FOR men
Message-ID: <658777310@grad17.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 23 Nov 90 07:56:07 GMT
References: <18940@oolong.la.locus.com> <27312450.6cab@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
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Organization: Nefolet shel nemushot (Fallout of Wimps)
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In article <27312450.6cab@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) writes:
	
>When I criticize feminism today, I do so in the context of great
>respect for what the feminist movement has advanced.  My complaint
>with today's feminist movement is that, IMHO, it has retreated from
>the moral high ground of advocating gender equality and justice and
>has become essentially a lobby for women.

And why had it happened Dave?

Why the movement changed the way it treats men so drastically?

Have they forgot what they had known 25 years ago?

My answer is that they treated men nicely when they thought that they
needed our help.  When they decided (rightly or wrongly) that they
don't need our help anymore then the effort was reversed.

Women are better off if men don't compete with them in the traditional
women rules.  Therefore we see now the fight for women's priority in
child custody (just think about the *effort* by NOW to free Dr.
Morgan.), while trying to cut into the traditional men's rules by
affirmative action.

Hillel                                          gazit@cs.duke.edu

"I couldn't define "liberation" for women in terms that denied the sexual and
human reality of our need to love, and even sometimes to depend upon, a man.
What had to be changed was the obsolete feminine and masculine sex roles that
dehumanized sex, making it almost impossible for women and men to make love,
not war.  How could we ever really know or love each other as long as we
played those roles that kept us from knowing or being ourselves?  Weren't men  
as well as women still locked in lonely isolation, alienation, no matter
how many sexual acrobatics they put their bodies through?  Weren't men
dying too young, suppressing fears and tears and their own tenderness? 
It seemed to me that men weren't really the enemy - they were
fellow victims, suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made
them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."
                                 --  ("The Feminine Mystique", Betty Friedan)