From: sk73171@cs.tut.fi (Kiiskil{ Sami)
Subject: Re: Sexism: Defined
Organization: Tampere Univ. of Technology, Finland.
	<1992Sep8.153043.22075@news.acns.nwu.edu> <mxrnslk.payner@netcom.com>
	<MUFFY.92Sep8211733@remarque.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 20:44:38 GMT


In article <MUFFY.92Sep8211733@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:

> First, you are focusing rather narrowly.  Feminism has had many other
> effects besides Dworkin's (so far, not very effective, fortunately)
> anti-pornography laws.  For example, education for women, the vote for
> women, the change in parenting/housekeeping roles so that both men and
> women have more choice in what role they play, the change in how the
> institution of marriage is viewed, etc.  Perhaps Gordon, who is much

-education:
Average grades for women are higher than those of men, if the amount of
female students in universities is still lower than male. Does that
mean thet there should be different selection exams for women, so that
they would be accepted more easily until the situation is reversed ?

-vote for women:
Isn't that quite old... 1800-1900 mostly.

-parenthood roles:
It is impossible to make men pregnant and deliver babies with the technology
available today. Same problem is with breast feeding, even if it is
possible to build fake breasts to use as bottles, the enzymes
contained in natural mother's milk aren't duplicable. So there is certain
physical limit to how far this 'equality' stuff can go.
What comes to proper division of housekeeping activities I haven't never
understood the logic behind that. If a person likes other one very
much, why he should put all the work on the other and make her feel
bad ? As far as I know, liking someone usually isn't reason to try make
her feel bad but just the opposite.

-marriage institution:
If a couple of persons decide to share their lives with each others,
why that should be prevented ? The former east germany used the method
of removing children of politically incorrect parents and giving 'em
to better ones. The results can be seen.

> Second, there are many things that feminists are working for which have
> not yet been fully achieved, such as the ERA (no discrimination on the

Which is mostly based on the fact, that it is much easier to try find
another than to report to 'equality-value-representative' ( or
whatever the term is... ). 

> basis of gender), abortion (both pro and con...*grin*), female-oriented

Which could be prevented in most cases if women doesn't think that the
male should always decide wether have sex or not.

> pornography (yes, some of us are very pro-porn), encouraging women to

There is the device called as the 'power switch' in most tv sets that
can be used to adjust the amount of porn. The more sophisticated
models even have the ability to change channel.

> study science (against societal beliefs that women just aren't good at
> science and math), accessible/affordable child care, etc.  Again, as I

Is't that theory already have proven wrong. The main reason fo women
being unable to handle techincal subjects is the lack of interest. And
if someone isn't interested on subject she woudn't try to find out
anything about it and therefore does't understand it. 
At least the grades for women and men aren't showing much difference
when cheked out from the exam result lists, maybe women have little higher
average, but that is exeptable.

There are many effective ways to handle children, like granparents or
municipal daycare.

> am not really involved politically, I have probably missed a lot of
> things.

> Sure, the media *loves* people like Andrea Dworkin, so you hear a lot

Never heared about before.

> about the effects that she has had, but that doesn't mean that those are
> by any means the major effects or efforts of feminism.

There isn't much possibility that feminism will become a major
movement, mainly because it's self-stablizing. That is, when feminist
can't have babies there won't be people that got the feminist ideology
from their homes, but they must learn it afterwards. And because the
earlier things are learned the harder they are to change, that amount
will always be quite small.
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