Funny, I was an honorary guy at the bar I worked at. I get really irked when I get disregarded for any reason. I rarely attribute it to sexism, but I guess I could most of the time.
I came across a great article in my new issue of Discover magazine. It's about an anthropologist named Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (no vowel). She is fascinating and as an anth student in college I never learned about her. Even with the feminists I had for teachers. She's very controversial and many of the concepts she wrote about were scoffed at only o be taken into general acceptence years later.
A bit on SBH:
BIO
Here's an interesting spin to the topic:
Sexism as a Symptom of the Elite
Both articles are interesting and informative littlek, thanks.
I'm enjoying them myself.
I think that women at times are too sensitive and assume they will or are being slighted. In addition I have seen women take advantage of the fact that they are women and use the sexual harassment card to get away with things a man never could. IR. departments shudder when a charge of that type is made and it's guilty without recourse for the poor man.
Regarding a women working for a women boss My wife always told me that If she had her choice she would never work for a women boss. Her expression "they are bitches," a man always treates a women with more respect.
I work for/with a woman. She's at the top of my list for the best boss.
Way back when I was teaching math in high school, there were only 1 or 2 women in a department of 12 - 15, because, of course, "girls couldn't do math". I worked very hard to convince my female students (as well as my male students) that "doing math" has nothing to do with gender.
At first, I was given only "basic" classes, because, even if a woman could DO higher math, she probably couldn't teach it. That changed too. And in the years since then, many things have changed for women, for the better - I sometimes wonder if younger women today realize just how much.
Has anyone seen "Far From Heaven"? It's an excellent movie that takes place in the fifties - set gorgeously in a perfect little suburban town with a perfect little family living, of course, the perfect life. NOT! In a non-preachy, subtle manner, the movie deals with the issues of gender discrimination, racism, and homophobia.
The fifties are exactly the reason why we had the sixties - everything needed to blow apart in order for us to be able to breathe and think freely.
(Sorry if I got a bit off topic.)
Phoenix, the article on SBH in March's Discover is great, but not online yet.... keep an eye out for it!
<Phoenix/ stepping up to the podium, looking at the audience, and stopping to take a drink of water>
As I see it, one of the biggest problems in our society, is that people tend to place themselves in one of two camps with respect to behavior, disease, and abilities. It is the nature/nuture controversy, and it has been raging for years.
The difficulty lies in that often these two factions don't listen to one another. The nature camp will claim that genetics is everything; biology is destiny, and there is little that a person can do to change the the potential abilities, drives and desires with which a person is born.
The nurture camp, an the other hand, disregards the effects of genetics on human behavior, and cites environment and upbringing as the deciding factor in the fate of a person. To even suggest that people behave differently, and have different sets of abilities and talents because of dissimilar evolutionary processes is, if not blasphemy, at least politically incorrect.
I take the middle ground on this issue. I believe that human behavior is a complex interaction of both biology and environment. The difference between us and the lower species, is that we can think, and we can plan ahead. Our brains are wired that we are not simply a mass of instincts and reflexes. We can consciously make modifications in our thinking, unlike the predominantly rote behavior of the animal.
I have been a feminist before feminism was a political catchword. As such, I believe that women have the right to achieve whatever goals of which she has the capability and the motivation. I also acknowledge that women ARE different than men. We ARE wired differently, and we are socialized differently than men.
I think that both men and women need to realize that there is a complementarity between us both. Our unique skills and ways of looking at situations, enriches the human experience. But we are not slaves to our genetics, because human beings, in a much greater way than other life forms, have the ability to THINK!
We have the ability to rationalize, to re-evaluate, to shuffle priorities. I think that the concept that only we THINK is a little too broad.
We have the ability to moderate or natural instincts to a degree to suit our non-natural lifestyles.
littlek- Rationalizing, reevaluating and shuffling priorities are various actions that are subsumed in the act of thinking.
You aren't in bad company with your premise Phoenix. Steven Pinker has said much the same for years but not many people are willing to listen. Read his book "How The Mind Works". In that he takes the nature/nurture argument several steps farther - to the point where they are one in the same...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?cid=996941
Pho - of course, but I think that many animals think on a lower level than those.....
Yep! It's an excellent book Phoneix and fits in quite well..
Oh, how I love the internet. I just put a hold on: Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, & How the Mind Works, from my local library!
fishin- Am I strange? To me, the premise that I described seems so logical.
