From: bickis@skmath3.pa.dec.com (M. Bickis)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Taxonomy of stereotypes
Date: 16 Apr 92 17:28:41 GMT
Article-I.D.: agate.skdg9INN60f
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <29EB41AD.12430@ics.uci.edu> tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu 
(Cindy Tittle Moore) writes in reply to me:
>>However, the prescription that nurturing is expected of women is
>>not damaging, for to be nurturing is a positive quality.  The world is
>>not made worse by women striving to be nurturing.
>
>You might be missing an aspect of "prescription" -- what about
>*outside* prescription?  That is, the women themselves do not try to
>be more nurturing, but the people around them try to do so.  

I presume you mean "try to make them so".  I still fail to see the problem.
I assume that we are talking about a liberal society where such attempts
have no force of law.  Thus, other people might exert peer pressure to
have her fall in line with the prescription.  The woman is free to
decide that her values are different, or that she is incapable of
meeting her peers' expectations, and thus not follow the prescription.
Of course, it takes strength of character to do so.  However, I don't
see why one should worry about people lacking the strength of
character to assert character weaknesses.

That is the idealist's view.  Pragmatically, we have to recognize that
not all positive qualities are achievable, and that futile attempts 
to meet unrealistic expectations can be damaging.  A person may feel
like a total failure because she or he falls short of a prescribed
ideal.  This problem, however, is not restricted to "stereotypes", but
can occur whenever we have goals.  The solution is to acknowledge our
human failings, and to recognize that noone can achieve everything.
But just because we know that we will never realize all our ideals
doesn't mean that we shouldn't have any.   That would lead to a
shallow pragmatism that follows the path of least resistance.

>This leads, in my view, to problems such as anti-abortion folks trying to
>force women to bear children to term (for a variety of reasons, one of
>which is the image of the nurturing female).  

I regret that I am not allowed to address *that* point on soc.feminism.

>Other applications of this prescription naturally extend to keeping 
>females at home so they can nurture the kids.

It depends on how far you want to carry the "positive" label with the
extension.  Surely you aren't saying that it is a bad thing for women to
nurture their children?  Granted, a woman who stays at home to do so
makes sacrifices, and such a decision may be "damaging" to her career.
But I was thinking beyond mere self-interest.  People who put their
careers ahead of their children shouldn't have children.  And "staying
at home" is not the only way of nurturing.

>So I would say that, yes the prescription of nurturing women is
>damaging.  And I would also say that the tandem absence of one for men
>is what allows the extension I described above -- since it wouldn't be
>the man, it'd be the woman. 

If you ask me to order possible worlds, I would say that

(Men & women nurturing) > (Women nurturing) > (Nobody nurturing).

Are you saying that if you can't have the best, you'll settle for the
worst?

>How does that bit of datum affect your tables?

I wouldn't change them.  Note that I labelled the positive
prescriptive as "idealizing", since I was well aware of the problem
discussed above.  It still presents problems, but I couldn't call it
damaging.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>bickis@sask.usask.ca<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mik Bickis       \,,,       .*#*.  \    University of Saskatchewan
Department of        \,,,  ^\\|//^  ```\   Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mathematics & Statistics \   )|(        ```\   Canada      S7N 0W0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<S|A|S|K|A|T|C|H|E|W|A|N|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


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