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Women Are the Biggest Enemy of Feminist Revolution
by Alex Birch
What happens when you decide to blame a symbolic group for all the evils in the world? You become your own worst enemy. Ladies who identify themselves as feminists should take a good look at this gender study within the theatre business:
For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.
Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?”
Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”
Here we see two immediate facts being revealed that most feminists would rather not hear:
1. Women typically dislike other successful women, especially when they stand in a direct power relationship to each other (example: employer-worker). Women are by nature less competitive than men, and so when a certain group of women try to compete in career fields, other women feel threatened by that behavior and react defensively. Remember Gail Trimble?
2. Men appear "hostile" toward women precisely because they do not discriminate against women. They treat them just like they'd treat men, e.g. they bully, harass and challenge them at whim. That women respond so negatively to this reveals that men and women interpret the situation differently. In this case, men didn't seem to discern between male and female playwrights, maybe because it's a situation where the male radar doesn't alert real competitiveness, but the more sensitive female radar does.
Conclusion: The organized male patriarchy may not be the biggest enemy of feminist revolution, after all.
HT: 2Blowhards
Overcoming Gender Bias
Why does much of the discrimination against women come from women themselves?Women know from the time that they are born that they are considered to be a disappointment and a "second class" citizen. Women fight to be considered as good as men and they often do it by rising up into their ranks and rejecting the "lower class" of being female. It is common for a woman to say, "I really would rather work with men than women," or "I would prefer the company of men." What they are really saying is, "I'm not part of that inferior group; I have crawled my way out of the trenches to be one of the elite.”
There is no doubt that women have a tougher time having their work acknowledged than men, regardless of the field... after all, men hold the power in the system, and humans naturally gravitate to those in power. There are a few things that we can do:
1) We can band together and support one another outside the system, as the blacks did in the ‘60s. I have made a conscious effort to attend functions organized by women to network with them as it validates me as a woman and reinforces my resolve that we have much to offer, by expressing who we are.
2) We can make a conscious effort to support other women. Let’s start by attending plays they have written and saying only positive things; there will be many critics quite willing to call down their work. We don’t need to add to that.
3) We can value female attributes. If we believe in ourselves so will others. Personally, I take every opportunity to call attention to the fact that the companies that are outperforming in the current recession have more women in senior positions. There are good reasons to hire and promote more women - we just need to keep reminding everyone.
My Comments
I wrote this comment and have other thoughts on women and how important it is for us to value ourselves if we want others to do the same See my comments at my blog at http://stillettochick.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/valuation-is-like-beauty-...
In Celebration of Women! Betty-Ann
Enemies
The observation that females might be their own worst enemies is in line with our innate biological functions. Women are also going against their 'nature' when they cry for feminism. Men provide the bread, the lady takes care of the home. The modern perversion of this innate biological understanding is the root of all evils.
^ Very black and white worldview.
''Men provide the bread, the lady takes care of the home.''
The neurological differences between the sexes are generally larger than the differences between individuals no matter what feminists say, but the individual differences still plays a key role; every human has elements of both he provider and the carer, it's not a bipolar on/off thing as pop-nihilist pages like this makes it sound (suits their comic book worldview as whole well though). In old societies it made sense that it was almost exclusively the male who was the provider since he had significantly more of the hunter in him and the other way around, but today when we don't need this absolute split to survive, people are simply more able to live out their personalities to the fullest. You'll still find that women do most of the job home and males do most of the providing even in the most progressive countries and that's never likely to change, but the bigger opportunities a developed liberal democratic culture has given (and keep on giving) for men and women to follow their own desires with less expectations on how to act does not work against nature, but rather for it.