From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: Japanese Women's Lib
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 23:51:31 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <1992Apr11.033859.6114@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:

>	My understanding is that companies there tend to fire women who
>get married and have children. Japan still has a long way to go in the
>field of feminism.

Either that, or we've gone a long way down the wrong road, and need
to switch gears quickly to get back to where they are. It depends
on whether you think of feminism as 'a great new idea whose time is
coming', or as 'a relic of outdated Marxist exploitation-thinking
whose time has gone.'

In any case, keep this in mind: the feminism we are so propagandized
by here is a PURELY American phenomenon. There are women who call
themselves "feminists" elsewhere, but the intensity
and degree of male-bashing we are accustomed to exists NOWHERE else.
In Europe, Asia, wherever, women are MUCH more into the "feminine"
traits that feminists despise, and in Europe feminism is regarded
as a tired old 1960s idea, like the New Left and LSD. Europeans
can't see what all the fuss was about over Clarence Thomas and
Anita Hill; her charges, even if true, strike them as something FUNNY, not
as something horrendous. ONLY here in the U.S. of A. do we portray
men as the enemy of women, only here do we blather endlessly
finding 'sex discrimination' and 'sex harassment' in ambiguous
or even totally innocent situations. It is possible that we, and
we alone, know what is right and what is wrong in relations between
the sexes, but when ONE country veers so far from not only its
cultural neighbors, but all of human history as well, and given that its
own social institutions are crumbling, well, it strikes me as a
BIT arrogant to shout (as we do) that "ALL OF THE WORLD, AND ALL
OF HISTORY, ARE WRONG, AND MUST FOLLOW US!!!!!!!".

>
>:   The amazing thing (to me, at least) is how incredibly *happy* so 
>:   many women seem there, especially the younger ones. (Maybe they're
>:   happy because they know it's the MEN who will end up having to
>:   work so devilishly hard!) I have *never* seen anyplace where the
>:   women laugh and enjoy themselves with such abandon. I don't THINK
>:   you can fake that, it seems too real, too spontaneous and widespread.
>
>	And how can one be sure that this is a case of seeing what one
>wants to see?

The laughter of Japanese women that echoes throughout public places was
to me the most unexpected thing I encountered during my trip to Japan,     
expecting to see the American stereotype of Oriental women as
being some sort of miserable robots. Sure, you can call it a
case of "seeing what one wants to see", but I don't know how you
could cause all of them to "fake it" so convincingly, and keep doing
so everywhere, all the time.

>
>
>	Looking at this account, I can tell what Robert Sheaffer's
>ideal of womanhood is -- women subservient to him and like-minded men
>such as Chuck Herrick. To exalt the ideal of women being submissive to
>men is clearly a form of misogyny. It is just like exalting the ideal
>of "good" black people as those who are submissive to white people. It
>is rather surprising to realize that the two sexes are actually very
>much alike, at least mentally, so that's why expecting women to be
>subservient to men is unfair to both sexes.
>
>	This is a remarkable view for a self-proclaimed Libertarian.

Well, the choice of the word "subservient" is yours. What is an
undeniable fact of biology is that males are, ON AVERAGE, more
aggressive then women. (I assume that I do not need to explain
to you about two populations having different average values
of a given trait, but with considerable overlap). Human experience
shows that it IS possible to build a stable male/female relationship
with the male playing the more aggressive and dominant role. It
does NOT give us any examples of the reverse, and there are 
excellent reasons for believing that it is not a long-term
stable model. Even in same-sex couples there is generally a
"dominant" and "submissive" partner: surely you, Loren, who lecture
us on that subject, are not unaware of this!  Why should
opposite-sex couples be different?

Now, it is surely true that nobody HAS to
be "subservient" to anybody, or even "submissive"; it's all
voluntary. A woman who wants to live by herself is free to do so.
A woman who wants to dominate a man is welcome to try her hand
at it; indeed, given the degree to which American gender has been
bent, she is actually quite likely to find one. Whether or not
this leads to a lifelong union is a risk she must assume; should
the marriage break up when she is in her 40s or later, the man
will have a far better chance of finding a suitable mate than
she will. Surely you have not failed to note the great likelihood
that an uncompromising feminist will grow old alone; go to any New Age
gathering here in the Bay Area, and you will find it filled with
unattached, intense, and aging Goddess-worshippers, perusing every kind
of "psychic" flim-flam and "wholistic" twaddle in a desperate
search for meaning in their lives. A woman I used to be going
with once said to me, "Oh, that old lady next door is so dependent on
her husband, just like a typical woman of her generation."
And I wanted to reply (but held my tongue), "Well, SHE is still
married, you are not." So it is all voluntary, you see. We all make
our choices, and then we must live with the consequences of them.
If a woman chooses to masculize herself, she is free to do so;
surely no reasonable person could disagree. But I think that
contemporary feminists are doing her a disservice by presenting
it as the ONLY reasonable course of action, and as one without
cost or risk.
-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

     "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions
     of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs 
     embarked upon now ... in 1985, when it is calculated [under the most
     optimistic scenario] that the major die-back will be over, ..."
       
                       Dr. Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb," 1968