Dare To Be A Feminist

When I added 'Mr.' I saw the reality of gender discrimination.

What happens when girls aren't under the scrutiny of boys? Do they get more girly or less so?

A new study has found that girls at same-sex schoolsfeel greater pressure to adhere to gender norms — and were bullied if they didn’t — than those at mixed-gender schools. Perhaps even more surprising, the same researchers say that girls at same-sex schools evaluated their self-worth based more on social confidence than cognitive confidence — while girls at mixed-gender schools weighed academics more heavily than social prowess.

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“I was quite surprised by the results,” he says. “But do I think that these result would generalize to schools in North America? I do.”

Other experts disagree.

Gender violence occurs throughout the life cycle. Violence during the prenatal period includes sex-selective abortions, forced abortions, battering during pregnancy, and forced pregnancy. During infancy, violence against females include infanticide, emotional and physical abuse, and restricted access to food and medical care. During childhood, females face genital mutilation, incest and sexual abuse, differential access to food, medical care, and education (compared to male children), child prostitution, and sexual slavery. The adolescent period brings the risk of dating and courtship violence, economically coerced sex, sexual abuse in the workplace, rape, sexual harassment, and forced prostitution. Violence throughout women’s reproductive years includes abuse by intimate partners, marital rape, dowry abuse, partner homicide, psychological abuse, sexual abuse in the workplace, sexual harassment, rape, and abuse of women with disabilities. Elderly women experience violence in the forms of self-immolation, abuse of widows, and elder abuse (which affects mostly women) (Heise, Pitanguy, and Germain, 1994). 

Parrot, Andrea & Cummings, Nina. Forsaken Females: The Gobal Brutalization of Women. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2006, (p. 12)

In January of 2013, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta signed a historical dotted line, lifting the 1994 ban on women serving in combat positions in the United States military. The lift on the ban was met with confusion and celebration, concern and cheers. The ban, officially called the ground Combat Exclusion Policy, declared “service members are eligible to be assigned to all positions for which they are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground” [1]. Today, 214,098 women serve in the U.S. military, representing 14.6 % of total service members [2].

The justifications for the ban were not made explicit at the time it was put into effect; then again, no explanation was really necessary. In 1994, it was widely accepted that there were “practical barriers” to a woman being an adequate soldier, namely physical constraints, emotional frailty, and tensions between the sexes [3]. In 1991, General Robert H. Barrow, former commandant of the Marine Corps, testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, saying, “If you want to make a combat unit ineffective, assign some women to it” [4]. These prevalent attitudes make it unsurprising that the 1994 ban was put into effect without much debate.

Now that the ban is being lifted, some of these same attitudes are being cited by critics and concerned citizens alike. But truly evaluating these apprehensions shows that not only is lifting the ban plausible and overdue, but also one of the strongest triumphs for women’s rights in decades.

Raise your hand if you think it’s time for us to un-teach Google some of these things.

Especially important to me is the possibility of change for older men. I have been involved in an ‘Ageing Men’s Group’ since the 1990s. Our project is precisely to explore how ‘ageing men are changing men’. One conclusion is that retirement or semi-retirement from waged work– has allowed us to redefine relationships with partners in ways that are more equal and also enabled more caring relationships with children, grandchildren, male friends and others. We have also learned that it is possible to redefine relationships between men, in less competitive and anxious ways. Influenced again by feminist ideas and practices, we have constructed a small male public in which it is possible to be less secretive about life’s problems and more accepting about our differences. Around the group there is also a network of friendships, sustained by meetings, phone calls or the Internet. I have learned, perhaps for the first time to trust other men, even in a collective context.

While this study is interesting, what I am noticing is that it seems to have a life of its own as it gets picked up by news outlets. For many, it may be misread as  “women are now out-earning men,” and the media will go through another period of collectively wondering if we need feminism.  Then, the media wants to focus on what they perceive to be the personal dynamics of the story. You can hear the commentators–men and women alike–dying to ask the question, and they usually do: how will it affect men if they are out-earned by their wives? What will it do to the marriage?  Can men handle it?  Will their feelings be hurt, their egos bruised?  What should women do?

The ACLU won a round this week in its court challenge to a Kansas law passed during the 2011 legislative session.  There are a few court challenges being waged in Kansas and the cost of these challenges continues to rise. ...