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From: li@uw-vlsi.ARPA (Phyllis Li)
Newsgroups: soc.singles,soc.women
Subject: Re: Feminists
Message-ID: <358@uw-vlsi.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 8-Oct-86 13:23:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-vlsi.358
Posted: Wed Oct  8 13:23:28 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Oct-86 05:50:15 EDT
References: <4107@reed.UUCP> <7428@sun.uucp> <153@endot.UUCP> <1944@ihlpa.UUCP> <6705@lll-crg.ARpA>
Reply-To: li@uw-vlsi.UUCP (Phyllis Li)
Organization: UW/NW VLSI Consortium, Seattle
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Xref: watmath soc.singles:460 soc.women:305
Summary: The feminists i've seen

In article <1944@ihlpa.UUCP> gadfly@ihlpa.UUCP (Gadfly) writes:
>> I mean in the 70's everyone was more radical and it gave non-feminists
>> a bad taste in their mouths (so to speak).  Some feminists just
>> haven't learned that screaming your views at some people don't make
>> them listen--if anything they block their ears completely.
>
>Well, they can take their bad taste out of their mouths and stick
>it in their ears.  Whoever came up with the notion of feminism as
>some sort of bel canto operatic style?  All the feminists I know
>are soft-spoken, patient and articulate.  But then, this is true of
>most oppressed idealists.

Guess you are just lucky.  Like Lynn, all the fems that I ever met that
proclaimed themselves feminists were the militant type, ones that put down
anyone that would open a door for them unless it was a female (and then they
would look at me funny), ones that berated dates for trying to pay the bill,
ones that said all their problems came from men trying to dominate them, and
who would, quite seriously, say that a woman could do anything a man could
but better.  Luckily for me I've only known five, one from high school, the
others in college.

But, all in all I was *really* put off by that, and avoided all contact with
anything that might be feminist BECAUSE they were so unreasonable.  

Now, I'm not saying that all feminists are like that, in fact from what I
have seen here, not all are.  However, I just wanted to point out that there
are still a lot of women that simply turn others off with behavior that
could even be assigned to the irrational, unreasonable sterotype of a female
that they are supposed to be countering.  In fact, when I heard about the
ERA in school I was dead set against it, knowing little other than what the
"feminist" said about it.  It didn't make sense to me to have standards
lowered for firemen so that more women could be firemen, it didn't make
sense to actually *make* everyone hire women just because they were women
and needed women to meet federal quotas, and most of all I *am*not*a*MAN and
I didn't want men and women to be the same thing like they said it would do.

I know a little more, now.  And, yes, I agree with Lynn that a less radical
approach would probably have made it a lot easier to swallow.  Of course I
think that I was in high school or intermediate school at that time, so it
really didn't matter; but, I can easily see where it would have frightened a
lot of women at that time.

Liralen Li

-- 
"A closed mouth gathers no foot."

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