Okay, my fellow sisters who also worked for liberation, talk to me about

[Skidmore]

what happened. How did we get back to the future so quickly? How did we go from moving the boundaries forward for young women and having them just want to be "babes". How did we, as a generation, who scorned the bra and loved the mind contribute to the development of this superficial culture which still objectifies women and demeans them in very overt ways? We raised these children who are out there now. We lived with these spouses and brothers. What happened?

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. If that's what you think,

you didn't understand what we were working towards.

If a young girl decides she wants to be a babe, that's her choice.

If she decides she wants to be a surgeon, that's her choice.

If she decides she wants to be a programmer or a gamer or a mother of five kids, all home-schooled, that's her choice.

We were working for choices for the next generation, and we succeeded.

Rethink your posture, and see if we didn't do far better than you might think right now. You might not like some of the choices, but, hey, the rightwing probably doesn't like them, either. We wanted the girls to have choices that we didn't have, and they do.

[Katherine Brengle]

4. However, many of us feel as though...

it is one choice or the other--a rewarding career OR motherhood and marriage.

It isn't as easy as we'd like to think to do both.

[EFerrari]

10. Feelings aren't facts.

And no, it's not easy. Being dead is easy, lol. Being a working mother is not.

I remember feeling like I was always in the wrong place -- at home when I should be at work, at work when I should be at home.

My job to negotiate the challenges and I'm heartily grateful I took them on. :)

[Katherine Brengle]

14. The only problem with this theory is that...

men still get off clean. It is still considered normal for them to go off and work all day and not take a proactive role in the raising of children.

I shouldn't just have a choice between giving up having a family, giving up having a career, and giving up both because it is not rewarding to try to balance them.

I'm just voicing the feelings of a lot of women of my generation. And in this case, feelings are facts--just ones we like to overlook.

[EFerrari]

18. I don't know anyone who considers paternal noninvolvement

in childrearing normal. My sphere must be limited. :silly:

More seriously, why partner up with someone who is stuck in the 1940s? For that matter, working class women have always worked, no matter what the soap ads pitched.

What reward are you looking for, Katherine? Your "generation" didn't invent competing goals you know. :)

"Nobody said it was going to be easy." Leslie Marmon Silko -- Ceremony

[donsu]

19. I've read Silko too, have you read Almanac of the Dead?

nt

[EFerrari]

21. No, I haven't. Yet. :)

[Katherine Brengle]

2. Speaking as a member of the younger generation----

I think that the prevailing feeling among many young people (I am 24) is that feminism is over in a sense--that the rights we have were already won and that the fight is over. I don't agree with this, but I think it is a common feeling.

Also, I hate to say this, but I think many younger women resent our older feminist counterparts, because we all grew up thinking we could "have it all" and when we are actually faced with real life, wanting a career and also wanting a husband and children, we see that it isn't as easy as we thought it would be. At the same time, we are now expected to be able to handle "having it all" and it is a lot of pressure. We end up feeling like we aren't giving enough at work and we aren't giving enough at home.

And then there's the general indifference with which many in my generation view political issues--there's a lot of apathy and anger and hopelessness there...

[tigereye]

5. it isn't easy to have it all

but it is good to have some of the things that you want. ;) It's the balance that can be hard.

speaking as one of the older feminists.

I just hope all of us will get out there and fight for Choice. Again.

[Skidmore]

6. Thank you. I remember when my daughter came home

from high school one day and uttered the word "Feminazi", attaching it to some story of a woman who was trying to get a message out about future options for girls in the school. She just tossed it out casually, I asked her where she learned such a word (I really didn't know it was a Limbaugh word until I started frequenting DU), and she just as casually spouted that "everyone says that", but couldn't tell me where it came from. That's when we had "The Talk", and I don't mean "The Birds and Bees" talk. She heard about the choices available to her great grandmother and her grandmother. She heard about choices available to her mother. Not just in terms of childbearing, but in terms of society in general. She heard that suffrage was more than "suffering" women their vote but also was about the suffering that won them that right. She heard that one day she might be a mother, and her children will need to make choices too. That the choices she made as a woman for herself and other women in society would very much affect how they would choose on many levels, including how to treat one another. These were not just choices about the body and reproduction--but basic respect for all humans and their abilities.

AND she learned that being a babe was not the only choice.

[sarahlee]

9. Great story

I tried to do the same for my daughter. She is 24 now and after sleeping for a while, started "waking back up" last year. She needed an abortion and it really sunk in .... why her mom had given up so many Saturdays for years to escort women into clinics... and that lead to other discussions, like how she got to be the manager of her department at a big retailer.

[LaurenG]

3. The Almighty Corporation

Who instills values through commercialism and commercials. Make them uncomfortable with themselves and then sell them the cure. It works every time.

[madmom]

7. It's called the dumbing down of America, it's happening with the

guys too, just not as blatant."If you have a fast car that's all that matters" "if you make lots of money (doesn't matter how) that's all that matters" "You can do what you want, just don't get caught" control, control, control, that's the message being sent to the guys today. They are not being taught any different (do they even teach ethics in high school?)

[Cleita]

8. We didn't go far enough.

We should have taken over and let the men be subservient to us for awhile, and we should have done it on a global scale. Instead we tried to be equal to men and it wasn't good enough for them, so that's why we are losing ground again. Next time we just take over.

[EFerrari]

11. (Hey -- don't spill the beans, Cleita.)

[Skidmore]

12. Carrie Nation.....

My sister was named after Carrie Nation, believe it or not.

[sandnsea]

13. We tried to be like men

Rather than elevating the status of woman as woman, we turned feminism into a competition with men. While I believe any individual woman should be able to do anything she wants, including working construction or firefighting or fighting wars, most women don't want to do physically demanding jobs. But the further feminism went along, the more it became about women proving they were as tough as men, instead of equal value of female as female. So we didn't get better pay for the jobs we tend to do, or long term benefits that really help, like child care or elder care. I think alot of women just ended up with more responsibility. And some younger women, in a sort of rebellion to that same as males thing, decided they had to be "babes" in order to prove they were still female, and babymakers.

At the same time though, whoda thunk we'd be here. Just never in a million years. I do think alot of young women are going to wake up pretty quickly.

[Katherine Brengle]

15. I absolutely agree with this.

Men and women ARE different. That's a matter of simple (well, okay, maybe not "simple" lol) biology. We are built differently and we think differently.

Feminism started losing when it became a matter of competition and comparison.

As long as women are held to the "standard" of men, we create our own 2nd class status. We need to let go of, "We can do this as well as men," and "We are just as strong as men," and all of that--we can do this because we can. We are strong because we are strong, not because we can do the things a man can (which, in many cases, we can, but this is a completely ridiculous standard by which to judge ourselves).

[Cleita]

17. I was definitely in the equal pay for equal work side.

I thought I should make the same amount of money as the men who had equal skills and education, however, I found out that they guys on the loading dock, some of whom didn't even finish Jr. High made twice as much as I did.

Also, a woman should be able to climb the corporate ladder, if she is inclined to, which in my day didn't happen unless she owned the company like Estee Lauder. Also, women with law degrees, who had passed the bar couldn't get jobs as lawyers but had to settle for para-legal or legal secretary.

Women who were doctors had to be pediatricians or gynecologists because they weren't accepted in the other specialties. Teaching and nursing were what most women in my day were encouraged to pursue, however, the better paying teaching jobs went to men.

I could go on and on, but you know that there are certain things we can't do equally as well as men because of our physical strength and size, but also many men can't either for the same reason, so yes we should do what we are good at and we should be paid equally for it.

As for trying to do traditionally men's jobs many of us pushed into the jobs for the money. I know I pushed into bartending at a time when women were scorned for it because the money was better. Nowadays, most bartenders are women.

[sandnsea]

20. Which is valuing women as women

We have to start with the presumption that the skill set we bring to the world already has equal value. Teaching and nursing have value and there isn't any real reason the income disparity should be so incredibly vast between those careers and doctors and lawyers. We let it happen and we haven't done near enough to challenge the value in those traditionally female jobs. Once the value in being female is established, then the equal pay thing would fall right into place. That's the way I see it anyway.

[Nikki Stone 1]

16. Skidmore, I'm in total agreement with you

I am teaching the younger generation and they just don't get it. They have grown up with rights that our mothers never had, and they just don't understand how easily those rights can be taken away. (Of course, that's true for all civil rights now)

Maybe this abortion thing will wake them up. Then again, maybe it won't.