I'm sure I pissed a few people off. Vent your feelings here.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Answers

Didn't piss me off. Hard to be pissed off and cheer at the same time!

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't women approximately 51% of the population to begin with? I'd think the article would congratulate the university system for finally having an accurate representation of the makeup (by gender, of course) of the population.

Poor men. We have it so rough.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Anybody remember how Tim Allen got his start? "Men are pigs. Too bad they own everything. Arrr, arrr, arrr." Funny how he dropped that line of humor once he got famous and started actually working for, well, men. Who owned tv and movie studios. And paid his rent.

I think it's part of human nature to divide people up. Tall, short. Fat, thin. White, black. Male, female. We remember who and what things are in our environment by how they stand out from everything else in it. The tall, thin, black woman. As our society advances, the ability to make some distinctions fades somewhat, but there will always be some divisiveness based on things that we can point at and say, "one of these things is not like the other." Well, if one of these things can have babies, or if one of them can pee standing up, those will serve to make a distinction between the two. Whether or not it should is an entirely different matter.

The last three big excuses for sexism are ability to have babies, hormonal/emotional differences, and We've Always Done it This Way.

My wife took off 1 month when she had a baby. I took off 2 years. More men are taking time off to have babies, and more women are not. That one's going away.

The differences in how women treat problems are beginning to be seen as less important than how severely depressed or neurotic people deal with them, evidenced by the commonness of Prozac and other anti-depressant drugs. That problem isn't really going away; it's just being perceived as not as important as other issues.

Unfortunately, that third one is a real killer. We have LOTS of things in our society which make no sense, everybody hates, and nobody's changing (ask Gerald Ford how it felt to win the popular vote vs. Carter, but still lose the election). No company remembers the hundreds of women in their employ who either didn't have kids, or didn't let having kids interfere with the jobs, but if one woman comes along and blows off her job completely because of a kid, people in charge will remember that forever.

Whew. major venting there. glad I got that off my chest.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Thanks for sharing this news item, Beth. It pissed me off too.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

You didn't piss me off. Men DO fare better in this work society and just society in general. Pigism is still alive and thriving here in this backwater town I live in. I see it and deal with it every day.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Patrick, I thought of that, too. I'm not sure when that demographic factor kicks in -- I think it's partly accounted for by the fact that women live longer, so the numbers might not be that far apart at the college level. Then again, I think more older women go back to college late in life.

One thing that occurred to me -- could the difference in population size, coupled with the fact that far more men than women go to prison, and that the peak age for criminal activity is about the age when most people go to college, all work together to mean that as long as men have a greater rate of incarceration, equal gender representation among the non-incarcerated population is always going to mean that more women than men go to college? Wow, was that convoluted, or what?

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Well, Beth, based on this forum, it seems that your readers are far less piggish than some of mine!

When I wrote my entry on sexism, I received several e-mails the next day from angry readers who felt that my claims of discrimination were unjustified, and that women in our society have the same opportunities as men, and that any attempts to increase the number of women working in high-level positions in the sciences would mean giving women an unfair advantage.

I think the problem really boils down to the fact that different people have different ideas about what constitutes equality. From a legal standpoint, women in the U.S. pretty much do have exactly the same opportunities as men. Gender discrimination is illegal--except in the case of affirmative action programs, which actually favor women. For many people, this is evidence of the equality of women, or even that women have an advantage over men in their careers.

Also, a lot of people simply fail recognize discrimination against women. One of my readers sent me this e-mail about a particular discrimination case I had mentioned: "The department heads said there was no discrimination, and even those who claim discrimination say it was "unconsious discrimination". (When we have beaten discrimination to unconsiousness, we should congratulate ourselves.)" This man seems to feel that if discrimination is sufficiently subtle and unintentional, it can't possibly do any real harm to women, which is, I feel, an extremely inaccurate perception, but probably one held by many others.

In addition, many people feel that women's underrepresentation in high- level jobs has a simple explanation--that most women CHOOSE to put their family responsibilities ahead of their careers.

This claim has a pretty decent amount of truth behind it, which makes people very accepting of it. However, it rests on the assumption that women make this choice FREELY, which I feel is untrue for several reasons.

There is strong social pressure for women to be the primary caretakers of their children. Most of us grew up in families with that arrangement, and for most of us, that is the only real model we have to base our own families on. Additionally, men who cut back on work to care for their children are still stigmatized far more than women, who are essentially expected to do so.

The thing that really makes me mad, though, are the people who use biology to justify childcare being the mother's responsibility. Yes, women have to give birth to the child, obviously, but most women are perfectly capable of working outside the home right through their pregnancies. The next hurdle is breastfeeding. Many women choose not to breastfeed, or are incapable of doing so, but even if you did breastfeed, it wouldn't be so hard to balance it with your job. You could use a breast pump, or the dad (who would be the primary caretaker) could bring the baby in to work for feedings.

Finally, there's the claim that women are psychophysiologically better suited for childcare--the old "maternal instinct." In my opinion, this idea is really a bunch of hooey. For one thing, there's no scientific evidence showing that male humans are physiologically less capable than female humans at loving and caring for children.

And even if women were shown to have a biologically-based mothering instinct, so what? In order to get along in society, we all deny our natural biological instincts scores of times every day! For example, right now, I feel like taking a nap, but I'm not going to, because I'm expected back at work. Denial of our natural instincts in favor of a greater good is practically the essence of being human! We are constantly resisting our caveman instincts to cheat on our spouses, kill our annoying co-workers and eat entire 1-lb. bags of tortilla chips, and it doesn't hurt us! It makes us better!

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Interesting.

I went to a women's college, so the whole female professor/TA issue was moot for me.

To boot, Smith is undergraduate focused, so we didn't really have TA's at all.

Having gone to a women's college though has distorted my view of college -- I have _no_ idead what the average college going kid's experience is, though I'm making an assumption there that women's education and private education are in fact quite different from public, co-ed institutions.

Some things, like how classes are handled, are probably very alike, but others, like the overall campus atmosphere, are probably very different.

People often ask me if I think that single-sex education is still relevant in this day and age and I always nod my head and vehemently defend it. If the inequities are as large as you say Beth, then yeah, women's colleges still very much have a place.

The other thing that this whole thread has made me ponder, has to do with the need/perceived need to have a college degree to get a job.

One of the things that pisses me off the most about America, is the fact that there is discrimination against folks who don't have degrees.

My honey is one of them and he's a damn good sys admin/hardware tech, but in order to move up into management he's going to have a to take a whole bunch of really stupid classes. I'm sure he also doesn't get paid as much as his college-degree toting cohorts.

My beef though, is with high school education. See, if a high school education on the "normal track" was worth a damn in this country, then we wouldn't be so concerned with who does and doesn't have a college degree.

IMHO the problem isn't whether enough guys or people in general are going to college, but how poor most high school educations are, unless you were in the AP track from day one.

Having come into junior high from a European elementary school, I was amazed at how far behind in just about everything my fellow sixth graders were. I was reading at higher levels, had covered more advanced math and had already begun the study of a foreign language two years prior to returning to the US.

Why is it that the education system in this country treats its students like morons? Why do we place so much importance on competitive sports? Why do wait until the pathways for learning languages are practically closed before we begin teaching them? And why do we wait so long to teach our kids to read and write?

I'd love to see some reform of the educational system in this country, so that less weight would be placed on getting a college degree. High school graduates should be able to find better types of jobs than the ones that are most commonly, open to them.

Hrm. Well I've drifted away from sexism, but I have to admit that I've been lucky, even in a field that has traditionally been dominated by men. I've never felt discriminated against because of my gender, or even my weight.

I've never had a problem getting a job, even when I had a very short window of time to find one. Granted, I've only been working professionally for four years, but the truth of the matter is that I haven't encountered the kinds of problems that a lot of women describe in the work place.

Maybe it's because I project attitude and dress very simply, maybe I just read as non-sexual. I don't know.

I do know that I benefited from single-sex education at several stages in my education -- junior high/early high school and college. Being in that kind of supportive environment sort of melted away any self-imposed expectations about "a woman's place" -- by having the message that I could, do or be anything I wanted to be and given the right tools to get there, I came out of school with little apprehension about career choices, in the sense that I never felt as if anything was closed to me.

It would never occur to me to think otherwise.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

A subject near and dear to my heart. Once again, Bethie dear, you have put it *just right.*

I do have one tiny observation to add, which is marginally off-topic: the value of a college degree. I finally figured out, recently, that part of the reason employersa value degrees to such an extent is this: If you're able to force yourself to sit through four years of boring, incompetent teachers and mind-numbing, soul-killing routine, you will be amply prepared for the drudgery of a corporate career.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Perhaps the University of Maryland is more gender-equitable than most, but I know I had a ton of women instructors as a History/English major. More than half of my English instructors were women.

So send your theoretical daughter East for her education! We also have a really nice-looking campus, a great engineering school and a basketball team. Oh, and libraries and things like that as well.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Poor Whittle Men! I love this quote, it made me laugh outloud:

"While we must continue to support the advancement of women, we must also foster support and a climate of expectation for young men to create a society of equity.

We need to ask a critical question: Do boys learn differently from girls? If they do, what are the implications for our classrooms? How can we respond to the needs of boys and also to the needs of girls who may have a different learning style?"

This question is being asked of a society that has two different "kids" computers coming out on the market: Barbie and HotWheels. Guess which one has the math and science programs? Know what Mattel said when presented with that? They whined that the "popular Barbie programs" took up too much space on the hard drive, and something had to go! I wonder what those popular programs were? Dress Barbie for her hot date with Ken?

Grrrr.

Beth, you really did an excellent job of addressing this idiot and his article. Jeez Louise, these guys get really fuckin' Threatened when they think they might be losing their stronghold on society, don't they? I've been reading _Promiscuities_ by Naomi Wolf (love her), which is about Female sexual coming of age in our society and throughout history. She points out that before the Industrial Revolution, women's sexuality was not only recognized, it was feared. Women were put under all sorts of ridculous religious rules regarding their sexuality, because their passions could not be trusted. Around about the Industrial Revolution, the increasing secularism and impending independence gave men cause to rethink this. To quote Ms. Wolf,

"If men were to demand liberty and equality, women, too, if not checked by a strong, new belief system to the contrary, might clamor for their own right to liberty and equality in all areas, including the sexual....Economic expansion had created a class of educated women who could enjoy the leisure that would permit them to threaten the stability of the sexual double standard....The new ideology claimed that, biologically speaking, women were far beter equipped than men to control the impulsive and carnal drive of deire."

Nice little switcharoo, that. This ideology caused women to start using "sexual purity" as their standard. Isn't that grand? They had US hold ourselves in reserve...they had US pitted against one another, eager to conform to society's expectations and eager to call another, more passionate woman, a "slut". Since they could no longer control our sexuality through religion, they simply changed biology. A fully independent, sexual woman was a threat. Much like a fully educated and independent woman can be.

I know I went from education to sex and back again, but, really, this seems frighteningly parallel to me. Men don't seem to want to give us any advantage whatsoever. "we must also foster support and a climate of expectation for young men to create a society of equity."?? He makes it sound like women have been in control. Hah! It's already set up for boys and it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Thank you Beth! It needed to be said, and you said it so well!

When dealing with an issue of sexism, one quick way to see things from a different perspective is to "put the shoe on the other foot". For example, if the rate of violent attack by women against men & children were as great as the rate of violent attack by men against women & children, how would our current culture respond?

Regarding education, we still have a long way to go. We still ignore and/or forget brilliant women in the sciences, art, politics, religion, finance and education. My son's college English. Lit. text last year had 3 or 4 female authors to 100 male authors.

When my son was little and I read him storybooks, I substituted the pronoun "she" for "he" about half the time. This worked especially well with animal characters, and he thought nothing of it. If we were outdoors and saw birds, squirrels, dogs, etc., I would say, "Look at the squirrel! What's she doing?" (About half the time)

THEN, my son went to preschool, and there came a day when he referred to a squirrel near the play area as "she." "That's a HE," came a resounding chorus of pre-schoolers, intent on getting it "right" and correcting his "mistake."

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Actually, Heather, I think the author was a woman!

Good points, Ev. One thing I'll point out, just as an aside: half of all violence against children in the U.S. is committed by women. Women are far more likely to be primary care givers, of course, and children are most likely to be abused by their primary care givers.

In criminal justice, equities tend to go the other way. It's true that men commit a far greater percentage of the criminal and violent acts, but they are also generally punished much more harshly, as well.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I am wondering when the serious underrepresentation of women in the prison populations is going to be rectified, actually. Why are over 90% or prisoners male when women and men are so equal? Clearly this must be some fault of the system. I think we should withhold public defenders from females, assign females stiffer sentences, provide help programs only to men, and in general take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the prison population is 50/50. It's only fair, dammit. Hail equality!

---

Mattel has been unfairly roasted over that computer issue. The fact is, the Barbie and Hotwheels computers were designed to be toys. Mattel had enough fun stuff developed to fill the Barbie computer. They did not have enough fun programs developed for the Hotwheels computer, so they filled the empty space with the less desirable learning programs. It is just typical female hysteria that this is interpreted as some kind of sinister plot.

We could just as easily claim that by putting more fun programs on the Barbie computer than the HotWheels computer Mattel is trying to discourage boys from using computers. They'll get bored with the math, go outside, and become involved in criminal activity. Meanwhile, the girls are busy getting used to using computers and are all set to take over the job market.

---

I find the hypocricy of today's entry stunning. While women were behind steps must be taken to even things up. When men are behind it doesn't matter. Typical female attitude.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

While I am skeptical of statistics-based 'news' in general, having done my fair share of legitimate but very shady data manipulation in the past (mostly to prove the point of just how manipulable statistics can be) - I would just like to mention that I had a ton of female graduate assistants in college. I was taking Biology, with a Religious Studies minor - and the vast majority of my science TAs,as well as a good minority of my humanities TAs, were female. I'm not sure if that was a fluke, or because I was at a Canadian school, or because there are more female *science* TA's than humanities TA's (contrary to most assumptions), or because I'm a few years younger than Beth and things have actually changed.... who knows. I did have many more male than female profs.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

From earlier in this forum: "The fact is, the Barbie and Hotwheels computers were designed to be toys. ... They did not have enough fun programs developed for the Hotwheels computer, so they filled the empty space with the less desirable learning programs. It is just typical female hysteria that this is interpreted as some kind of sinister plot." And what toys we give our children to play with doesn't matter one iota. Nope, the things kids have to play with contributes not a bit to their socialization, imagination, creativity or willingness to learn. Having the option to poke around with a math program and not having that option might as well be the same thing, since every single child will never look at it or try it out, let alone use it once in awhile on a rainy day when they've exhausted the less challenging games.

Right.

I don't care what Mattel did or did not mean to do, it matters. They are certainly marketing these toys in a blue-is-for-boys and pink-is-for-or girls way that is bad enough to have made issue by itself. Even if "accidental" placement of educational materials only the on the boys machines, and not the girls, was simply a result of years and years of cultural conditioning and not a conscious, "sinister plot", that does not mean we should ignore it. If we can, we should do something to change it. If we can't have change yet, then the least we can do is be aware of it and express our displeasure. (The fact that you label this expression "typical female hysteria" may mean that you might find this entire concept foreign and unpleasant.)

One last thing: "When men are behind it doesn't matter"

When men are behind in our society, you let me know. If it ever actually happens in my lifetime, it'll probably matter

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

It depends on how you define behind. More than 90% of prisoners are male. More than 90% of soldiers killed are male. Life expectancy of males is lower than females.

When women catch up you might not be so glad they did. Oh, but that's right. We're only working to achieve equality in areas that benefit women. I forgot.

As for the Mattel thing, I agree the blue-is-for-boys and pink-is-for girls is bad enough to be an issue in itself. Unfortunately Mattel is a for profit company. It is simply delivering what the average 'Mericun wants to buy their child. If they felt their was a big market for the one-color-fits-all computer you can bet your ass they'd produce it.

I never said we should ignore the Mattel thing. I believe the media, and possibly the post above, misrepresented the facts, that's all.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

This is in response to Marianne's comment about her many female T.A.s:

Yes, it's true--in the life sciences at the graduate level, there are an approximately equal number of women and men. However, the big dropoffs occur at the postdoc, assistant professor and full professor levels. This study on sexual discrimination at MIT shows just how bad it is. These numbers have stayed virtually unchanged for almost 20 years now!

I think this is the case in many other fields as well--women are as successful as men throughout college and graduate school, but then after that stage of their careers, they tend to just get farther and farther behind...especially if they have children.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

You might want to read this:
Our Sons, Our Schools by Warren Farrell, Ph.D

Aside from the date rape stuff he's spot on.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

"More than 90% of prisoners are male. More than 90% of soldiers killed are male. Life expectancy of males is lower than females.

" This is all primarily due to the effects of testosterone (aggression, violence, drive to dominate, more likely to take chances, drive to reproduce (and the more women you mate with the better), etc.). If males were castrated prior to puberty the numbers would be much the same for both sexes. It doesn't have much to do with Mattel et al. If this castration occured in a few successive generations society would consider the 'kinder, gentler male' as the norm, and the differences we see in professional status, education, childcare, etc would be *individual* differences rather then gender differences. The only other option we, as females, have at our disposal to even the gender gap is to start taking exogenous testosterone. Now, instead of a kinder, gentler world we have the recipe for annihilation! This world is bad enough with 49% of the population on a testosterone rush (war, hate crimes, violence, wife/child abuse, football season , etc) I shudder to think what it would be like if we all ran around with our brains in our pants...

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Big Joe, I'm not likely to even engage in a debate with someone who tosses around phrases like "typical female hysteria." I find that sort of comment on par with the worst kind of sexism, and you can take that shit elsewhere. It's not welcome here.

As for the rest of your comments, you can find hypocrisy anywhere you want -- but the point of yesterday's entry is that men are not behind. When they start to fall behind, I'll worry. Right now, they're not behind, and the Washington Post article was just jumping around in hysterics (typically female?) because women have finally pulled to an equal place with men.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

It sounds like you are saying men and women are different. Are they not equal?

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

As for TA's, I'm not sure why it was so bad at UCLA, especially in the English department. My perception was that it was a terribly sexist department -- there was a male TA who was notorious for sleeping with students, and it was just a very macho bunch of guys. Of course, I only took three English classes that had TA's, and as I recall there was one female TA in another section. But mostly it was men, and the professors were virtually all men. I had one female instructor for two of my classes who was just wonderful, but I don't think she was on tenure track, and she eventually left for Stanford. My roommate had a female (non-tenure) instructure whom she thought very highly of. Carolyn See (author and LA Times book critic) taught some classes and she was great, but again, I don't think she was on a tenure track. My last female English instructor was someone I'd never heard of, which probably means she was a visiting or emeritus professor.

My poli sci classes were fairly specialized and were almost all taught by the same professor, so the fact that I didn't run across any women is more understandable. But I had a lot of classes taught by TA's in poli sci, and only one of them was female.

One thing I learned very quickly in college: if an instructor was female, she was going to be really, really good. Some of the men were really good, as well, but there were a lot of male professor who were so-so. There were no so-so female instructors, which indicated to me that a woman had to be a lot better than a man if she wanted to get on that faculty.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Oh, I have so much to say about this, but I'm traveling right now and paying long-distance dial-up, so it'll have to wait until I get back. Anyway, in response to Beth's observation about instructors, years and years ago Bella Abzug(?) put it best (and the quote's been up on Medley for a few days now):

"We don't want so much to see a female Einstein become an assistant professor. We want to see a woman schlemiel get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel."

A study a couple of years ago was written up in _The Economist_ (not exactly the most progressive periodical) in which it had been carefully observed that in medicine in Sw--? (I forget.. one of the S-beginning European countries) women had to be 2.5x as good to get equivalent funding as men (accounting for all kinds of variables). I can dig up the cite if anyone's interested.

LIM

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

What bothers me is the number of men I've talked with who don't admit that there IS any sexism in effect today, in terms of opportunities open to women. Their point being that any failure to achieve a high level of success is due to lack of qualified females and/or women's inability to overcome obstacles. By this circular logic, if there is discrimination, it is the result of women's lacks or failures. I think it's a blissfully ignorant and self-justifying DENIAL of reality, which is that we still live in a world-culture that is both threateningly blatant and insidiously subtle in it's repression, subordination and devaluation of the female.

Someone once said to me, "Well, would YOU want to give it up if YOU had all the power?" My response was, "As far as I know, yes, because it just doesn't WORK that way." I don't know many people who feel that women should "take over all the power." But 50-50 would be nice. Especially since we've tried it the other way throughout most of recorded history, and IT'S NOT WORKING, because it's way out of balance. I really believe that women and men working together 50-50 will produce the most balanced and wise judgements for humanity.

I respect males I know who are strong enough to be gentle, and wise enough to realize that "power" is not control over others, but taking responsibility for one's OWN life and actions. I respect women for not making bloody war in the fight for equality, but for using our courage, strength, and compassion to show the way and set an example of how civilization can really work without the "Might-Makes-Right" philosophy that has left us reeling from violence, torture, murder, rape and war. I think the reason that there has never been a women's war is not that women aren't "allowed" to be soldiers, but rather that women know we have a choice, and war is not the best choice to solving our differences.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Why blow funding on someone who is just going to quit to have a baby? When a woman isn't very good at what she does, she has another option. She can quit to have a baby. When a man isn't very good he has no other option. He has to just keep doing what he's doing.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Beth: spot on.

Another reason why proportionately less guys might be getting degrees - they just don't need them as badly. To equal a man with a grade eight education in income, women still need a university degree. Perhaps more men are choosing to go to vocational colleges and become plumbers or electricians or whatever. The fact is, there's less of a motivation for them to get college degrees because they know they'll be able to earn a living without one.

On a side note, I took a combined English/Mathematics. The English department was about 50/50 for gender split, but *all* of the management of that department was male. In the Math dept, only one female professor, who taught statistics (the culture of math is that stats is a lesser subject) and was an associate, not a full professor. To be fair, the university was aggressively trying to change the gender breakdown. I graduated in 1995, so not much has changed yet. It's slow, but it's happening - it's an advance that we're allowed to be pissed off about these things now.

By the way, in my country (Canada), men do not get more severe criminal penalties - about 10% of our prison population is female, but compared to men convicted of the same crime, they average around three years longer in jail than men do.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

regarding abook mentioned earlier, there's an interesting, well-thought-out, and in-depth review of it published here Although I doubt Warren will ever read it, owing to the domain name/journal name.

Other than than, right on, Beth.

-trouble

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

What, precisely, is stopping women from becoming plumbers? Women don't *need* a degree unless they turn up their nose at a good honest living like plumbing.

I sure wish I could find a female plumber, so I can save some money by paying her 60% of a male the next time my pipes needs work.

"If women really earned fifty-nine cents to the dollar for the same work as men, what business could compete effectively by hiring men at any level?" -- Dr. Warren Farrell

The whole wage discrepancy thing is largely poppycock.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Are you trolling, Big Joe, or do you actually think that what you're posting are reasoned opinions with factual backup?

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Beth, your original rant is right on the money. Which saddens me immensely, as we were fighting these same battles when I was in college mumble-mumble years ago. Too many activists in the 80s apparently thought that the feminist revolution was over and the good folks won. Now it looks like we're still a long way from meaningful equality, but even what we've got is enough of a threat to make some men react out of fear or insecurity and come across as wackos.

One small suggestion for equality: I believe it was Hippocrates who coined the term "hysteria," which has been used for millenia now to indicate an unbalanced state of mine. Perhaps we should give males their rightful half of the etymological balance and promote the use of the term "testicularia" in its place for the next several millenia.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Anecdotally, I have been noticing for some time that in my own family and those I grew up with, the daughters all have a higher education level than the sons. And we all have similar incomes. Once again, women have to work harder just to stay even. But the issues about advanced degrees in the sciences suggest some other, subtler problems. Others here have mentioned how difficult it is for a woman to have any sort of family life if she is in the lab for the amount of hours this sort of degree requires. Well men who are that kind of lab rats don't have any family life either. Yes, they are capable of *siring children*, but no, they are not capable of *being fathers*. This means that some woman is back there making it possible for such a man to "have it all," and incidentally passing on to their children the model that this is the way the world works. Stinks, don't it?

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2000

i'm always torn between rationally, politically believing that women should have full equality... and feeling that somehow a feminism which goes beyond access to jobs and equal pay-- 'social feminism' -- is all part of a plot to keep me from ever having sex again or feeling free to ask anyone out or even regarding a girl human with sexual intent.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

Lohr, I've wanted to say this for a long time, but your gratuitous and off topic post on this long-dead thread has finally given me the opportunity: you are one of the most revolting human beings I've ever encountered, online or off (and I represent sex offenders), and I fervently hope for the sake of womankind that you do not have sex again in this lifetime.

Jesus fucking christ, get some help.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

Y'know, Beth, I fail to see the problem here. I support (however not?) women in having equal access to pay, to jobs, to careers in whatever field they choose. But the campaign against 'sexism' has extended into social areas so that in many ways it's now impossible to ask anyone out, flirt with anyone, or even admit to feeling physical desire without being accused of being a horrible person. Feminism has turned against sex in many ways-- attacking the whole idea of flirtation, male desire, sexual experimentation. You only have to read feminist writers on issues of sex these days to see what I mean. Why is it "revolting" to be opposed to that?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Lohr wrote:

You only have to read feminist writers on issues of sex these days to see what I mean.

Feminist writers hold all sorts of positions on sex, but only a tiny handful could be described as being opposed to women having sex with men in general. I suspect that the reason why you feel threatened by feminism is because of your own attitude towards women. You have repeatedly described women in objectifying terms in numerous fora, referring to them as "girl humans" and stating in my forum that "Those with wealth and power can choose from among those with youth and beauty...People may those [sic] with moral or 'spiritual' qualities, but they don't want to have them in bed or on their arms at parties." If that's your attitude, then it seems that YOUR sexuality is inherently degrading to women.

And I hope you were kidding when you said that you felt that women's equality was a reasonable tradeoff for success in your own sex life.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Well, for once, I'll jump in, though this was a longdead topic.

Since women began making their way onto public and social spaces, it has always been their responsibility to worry about the dangers and implications of flirting and behaviour, eye contact and smiles, amount of clothing shown and body language. the risks were high, from jobs and livelihood, rape, attack, harassment, etc. What the feminist debate on this has done, is to finally try to get men to take some responsibility for that. All those "free" days of yore, when a man didn't have to think about all that stuff, were days when women had to do ALL the thinking about it. It was not spontaneous for women in the same way, except in that women's socialising to some extent prepared them for it (however crossing into unfamiliar social territory meant that socialising could be useless). Back when it was all so 'spontaneous?' you were being sheltered from you half of the responsibility for social interaction. Get over it. it's not coming back.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

I think Joanne has it exactly right when she says that women need college degrees more than men, and that in a lot of cases men know they're going to be able to make a living without going to college. As for why women don't become plumbers, I don't know personally but have read that it's extremely difficult for women to get accepted into any historically male occupation such as plumbing.

Another factor when it comes to women vs. men in college may well be that many men have devalued the benefit of a college education precisely because there are so many women there now. After all, if women are doing it in droves, how desirable can it be, right?

Someone mentioned Warren Farrell. The guy has some valid points, but for the most part is a complete jerk. Try reading "Why Men Are the Way They Are" without puking.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Jen pretty much summed up my thoughts, Lohr. It makes me very tired when I hear a man who repeatedly demonstrates an utter lack of social skills and any sense that women are -- duh! -- human, and then blames his lack of sexual success on feminism.

Here's a wacky idea: stop publicly proclaiming your fondness for snuff sites. See a psychiatrist and work out some of your issues. Stop reducing women to either "leggy, taut, and young" or "anti-sex feminists" in your twisted, fucked up worldview. Then you might get laid.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

1. Beth Campbell is my hero.

2. Re: women in "traditional men's" occupations. There is an excellent book called "Hard Hatted Women" that is an anthology of writing by women working in "traditional men's" occupations. It doesn't really come to any conclusions but it does give a lot of interesting perspectives and tell a lot of good stories. I seem to remember being a little disappointed that many of the women picked for this anthology were college-educated women who CHOSE to go into a skilled trade, and there were not so many women that were just, say, raised in a coal- mining family and became coal miners.

3. Also re: women vs. men in skilled trades: When an occupation becomes "female dominated" it often loses both social stature and pay. Teaching is one example. Clerical work is another. This is reason #78324 to overthrow Capitalism... Capitalism will create inequality where it can, so long as said inequality increases the profits of the Capitalists (and having to pay you less money than they would pay a man directly increases their profits). That's not even an abberation, those are the RULES of Capitalism, it's how the system is SUPPOSED to work.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

David:::: Is there a country where your non-capitalist, sexism-free, heaven-on- earth system exists? Even partially?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Joy, in case David does not answer:

I think the answer is no, but his union is working on changing that right here in the USA. Stay tuned. He will let you know when his group "wins."

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

I find it interesting that a dead thread about sexism can bring up capitalism.

David spewed: "..3. Also re: women vs. men in skilled trades: When an occupation becomes "female dominated" it often loses both social stature and pay. Teaching is one example. Clerical work is another. This is reason #78324 to overthrow Capitalism... Capitalism will create inequality where it can, so long as said inequality increases the profits of the Capitalists (and having to pay you less money than they would pay a man directly increases their profits). That's not even an abberation, those are the RULES of Capitalism, it's how the system is SUPPOSED to work."

When I see the above shit spewed out, I want to vomit. If you ever did get a society where capitalism didn't exist and everyone was "equal", it would be the most degenerate shithole on the planet. David is so far off the mark it isn't even funny.

People are not equal. Each person has different abilities, different levels of skills, different knowledge sets. Capitalism is the only system that allows an individual to leverage his or her skills and knowledge to best advantage, so that his or her life is better off. When people can freely interact with others and enter into contracts from a position of mutual self-interest, both sides win. It's a win- win scenario.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Lohr, you can always pay for sex. Then you don't have to worry about social skills, offending feminists, etc.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

Yes, but Lizzie, he still wouldn't really *enjoy* it.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

And he'd be jealous of the man down the block having sex with a more attractive prostitute...

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

I think men, for the most part, have a different sexual agenda than women.

And though social constructs may dictate our behavoir, no matter the make-up of the particular society, polarization of the sexes exists. (anyone have a counter example?)

And polarization inevitably causes conflict.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2000

I'm a young scientist and I've made it to the assistant professor level at a research university without ever encountering any *explicit* discrimination.

But the pressure on me not to follow this path has been enormous. I have bought my success by sacrificing every important personal relationship that I had --- my friends and family are now too far away to visit more than a couple of times a year, I got a divorce, I broke up with another boyfriend that I liked very much, because it was either follow him and give up on the career, or take what might be the one chance to do what I've been training to do all of this time, i.e. have creative control over my own research program.

I've jokingly compared being a scientist to being a rock star many times. If you're successful at either, you're always on tour, the demands and expectations to produce a new work of art every year just keep getting higher and higher, and you can't form lasting relationships with anyone (unless they can fit in your suitcase) because you're expected to be able to go wherever the job calls you. I like to watch VH-1 Behind the Music in part because I really feel a kinship with rock stars and their screwed-up intimacy-lacking lives.

It's not sexism, it's science, but it's a a lot easier for male scientists to find a wife who will fit in their suitcase. Recently, I've met a few guys who might be interesting, and when they find out what I do and what the shape of my career might look like, they flee screaming.

I'm here now and I'll make the best of it for a while, but if I don't get tenure, I'm going to stop trying. Of course, by that time I'll be in my mid-30s and will have really used up a lot of my life on this particular path.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000

WOW! I'm a high school student and doing a project on sexism and thought there really are some great great points given in this dicussion. One thing i wanted to comment on is really how little there is on the internet and everywhere on sexism. It's really a huge but closed up topic. Great that everyone here is commenting.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001