Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar
From: rivero@dev8.mdcbbs.com
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: social pressure fallacy
Message-ID: <1991Mar25.115828.1@dev8.mdcbbs.com>
Date: 5 Apr 91 18:42:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: dev8.1991Mar25.115828.1
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas M&E, Cypress CA
Lines: 37
Approved: ambar@ora.com

Okay, I am going to leap into this topic of 'social pressures' as a
determinate in a woman's (or man's) life, and I shall use as my
examples both my own mother and that of my wife.  These two women were
born less than 2 years apart and less than 150 miles apart
geographically.  Both were raised on the East Coast of the United
States.  Both came from families with strong "traditional" beliefs.
Both married men of equivalent education and career.  Both had 3
children.  Both were ultimately divorced.

In one case, the woman in question followed the prevailing social
pressure, halting education at the high school level.  She spent her
days in an almost caricaturish ritual of beauty salons and New York's
finest department stores.  In her post-divorce world, she stills seeks
a husband who is 'supposed to' pay her credit card bills.

The other woman actually defied her parents to go to college, working
to pay her own tuition.  After raising her family, she took a second
degree in chemistry, not exactly a lightweight subject.  She enjoyed a
career that equaled her husband's.  Her post-divorced life cannot be
analysed owing to an untimely death, but she was well equipped to live
her own life as she chose it.

For two American women to have had such similar starts and such
diverse endings points out the fallacy of the 'social pressures'
argument.  Personal will has a lot to do with one's direction in life.
It is easy to point fingers and blame parents, spouses, or society at
large for a life that winds up filled with little more than tupperware
parties and daytime television.

Your life is what you make of it, and I for one am sick to death of
underachieving women (and men) who would rather blame society,
parents, husbands (or wives), or men in general (or women in general)
than take responsability for their own lives.

Talking about life is a damn poor substitute for living one!

			Michael Rivero