HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pmfisher@milton.u.washington.edu (Patrick Fisher)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Matrilineal societies- have they existed before?
Date: 29 Jul 1992 23:37:26 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
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Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

	Is there any evidence that matrilineal societies have existed
in human history?  An anthropologist/sociologist by the name of Fisher
has said that hunter-gatherer societies in the past were often
matrilineal in nature.
	Any information would be appreciated!
	Pat-



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From: chdunn@cco.caltech.edu (Christopher Dunn)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Custody
Date: 21 Jul 1992 19:10:45 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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breene@cs.tamu.EDU ("L. A. Breene") proposes this scenario:

[Moderator's note: included text trimmed.]

>a. a couple is divorcing with children involved.
[Various circumstances which make it desirable for only one parent to
get the children.]  

>who do the kids go to?

Simple: Custody of all children is determined by a coin toss,
overseen by the court.

	--Christopher Dunn



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From: chdunn@cco.caltech.edu (Christopher Dunn)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: A feminist style socio-economic reform!
Date: 21 Jul 92 14:35:31 GMT
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AGRSS@lure.latrobe.edu.au ("SUBBAIAH,Santharam") writes:

(and I or I expect to endeavor to compose a response)

>	I plan to propose a series of reforms that could be considered
>by a feminist when he or she becomes the president of the USA, or
>better still, when he or she becomes an influencial leader of the
>strongest lobby in the corridors of White House.

>REFORM 1.
>	"All women who deliver normal children should be compensated
>in monetory terms for their child bearing services".

RESULT.
	If child-bearing is truly a burden, then once this principle
of compensation for pregnancy is established, the rich will pay the
poor to be their surrogates.  

	In reality, many women have mixed feelings of elation and
trepidation at the thought of carrying a delicate creature within.
I would give a testicle for the privilege.
	Nature encumbers us with countless burdens.  We are not
victims of nature; we are winners of life. 


	--Christopher Dunn


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From: uunet!infmx!robert@ncar.ucar.EDU (Robert Coleman)
Subject: Re: men's issues vs. women's issues
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
Date: 25 Jul 92 05:42:42 GMT

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>muffy@mica.berkeley.EDU (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>| >Not to mention a definition of "feminist."  *smile*.  For example, my
>| >version of feminism includes working on the problems of both men and
>| >women, just with a recognition (or belief) that women's problems are
>| >worse and that I therefore want to apply more energy to those problems.

>In article <14hncuINNsa5@agate.berkeley.edu> dwm@osf.org writes:
>| 	Aha!  So you admit you're not a feminist at all:
>| 	you're a humanist!    Welcome aboard!  8-)
>| 	A sense of perspective is a wonderful thing.

>I think by "humanist" "liberal" (in the classical sense) is
>meant.  Is a feminist just a humanist or a classical liberal?
>situation?

[Power imbalance in top echelons]

How come we don't know already, as we do when
>we say "feminist"?

	Oh, this is fun.  What is the feminist "take" on the
situation?  Is it that there are too many men in office?  Is it that
there shouldn't be men in office at all?  Is it that a Capitalistic
system can't be in place for a system equal in gender equality to
exist?
	Is it this way because men and women are biologically
different, men being naturally aggressive, or is it this way because
they're just the same, but men are perpetuating a power system?  What
is the feminist "take"?
	Is their an actual conspiracy to keep women out of office, or
is it just systemic?  'Fess up; we need an actual spokesperson for the
feminist movement.

	There's probably several "humanist" takes on the situation,
but I 'spect the main take would be that the system is biased to
prevent women from gaining office, and that isn't fair.  Feminists and
humanists could probably get together on this one.  There are lots
harder questions.  What is the feminist take on men being caretakers
of children?  Is it that men should learn to become good caretakers,
or that men cannot by nature be good caretakers?  Is a man bouncing a
baby on his knee being a good parent or a child molester, according to
feminist tenets?  Why don't we know the answer to that one already?

Robert C.
--
----------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: My company has not yet seen fit to
	    elect me as spokesperson. Hmmpf.

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From: fi@grebyn.COM (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: one for the "No Comment" file
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: 25 Jul 92 04:57:57 GMT

I described:
>>A commercial for a hair product called "Just for Men" [...]
>>
>>As the old _Ms._ used to say, "No comment."

Alex Matulich writes:
>I confess I do not understand the point of this post.  Rampant sexism
>exists in favor of both sexes in the advertising world, and this ad
>was certainly one of the milder ones.
>
>I thought it was about on par with those ads for just-for-women
>"Secret" deodorant, in which a husband tries to use it but a woman
>snatches it out of his hand with an admonishment.

Gosh, 'sorry I wasn't more clear.  What I found objectionable in the
ad was something that we've been discussing here with regard to Naomi
Wolf's _The_Beauty_Myth_: the implication that women should spend more
time on "beauty" than men do, and its accompanying implication that
men's time is too precious to waste on such frivolities.  The
references to time--"my wife can spend thirty minutes" said in a tone
of voice suggesting that *he* would never bother--and "*my* hair takes
forever, but *you* look great in just five minutes" said by the wife,
shaking her head in dismay that her "beauty" is so much more trouble
than his-- are quite obvious in the ad.

I found this more normative than the Secret ads.

							--Fiona W.

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From: falk@peregrine.Sun.COM (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: The King of Spain, or: Is Womanizing Sexist?
Date: 25 Jul 1992 03:34:53 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Distribution: world
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In article <14f799INNehu@agate.berkeley.edu> levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine) writes:

>	[King of Spain, while doing many good things for women, is
>	promiscuous]
>
>It seems that almost
>every powerful man I read an honest biography of uses women (or men, or
>both) as casually as I would use a bag of Fritos.

Is it necessarily bad to be promiscuous?  Is it impossible for a man to
be a feminist and promiscuous at the same time?  Is it not possible for
a woman to be a feminist and promiscuous at the same time?  (I knew a
N.O.W. chapter president who was.) Is a woman who sleeps with a
promiscuous man necessarily being used?  Is a man who sleeps with a
promiscuous woman not being used?  Do women have free will in these
matters or do they need to be protected?

It seems that you are making a number of assumptions that are not
necessarily right.  Why not judge someone by what they do, rather than
who they sleep with (and who chooses to sleep with them.)

		-ed falk, sun microsystems
		 sun!falk, falk@sun.com
	terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode,
	DSS, FBI, NSA, CIA, NRO, SDI, communist, proletariat.


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From: muffy%remarque.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.berkeley.EDU (Muffy Barkocy)
Subject: Re: Why she took my name/ narrow minded views..
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
Date: 30 Jul 92 22:07:15 GMT

In article <159kr0INNb1t@agate.berkeley.edu> et@madmax.aa.nps.navy.mil writes:
>In Article: 4548 of soc.feminism, Cindy Blank-Edelman  writes:
>> In the above workplace scenario,
>> because of previous workplace tradition, all of the women are still
>> referred to as "Honey" and all of the men are referred to as "Sir".

>You seem to be quite biased in your example and seem
>to miss the point.

She is not being biased, she is illustrating the current reality.

>I am sure that nobody calls a
>congresswoman or a woman CEO  or a woman teacher "honey".

You are wrong.  I have been a teacher (customer technical training), I
have talked to other teachers (female college professors), and I have
worked at a company with a female CEO.  Many of these women have been
called "honey" (or some equivalent) in professional situations.

>As far as I can see  women who hold certain "powers"
>or something to say/allowed to say in what they do  are
>usually taken as seriously as any other man.

Again, you are wrong.  *Some* women in power are taken seriously, but
many are not.  Also, why limit it to women in power?  In your
"democratic workplace," shouldn't *everyone* be taken seriously?  In
that case, what about my female friend who had a customer refuse to talk
to her, because she was a woman?  She had to get a male engineer on the
phone and have him relay the questions and answers (he did not know the
answers, but he was male, so the customer took him seriously).  What
about the receptionists at all the offices I've ever worked in?  Even
other employees don't treat them seriously, much less the customers.
The receptionists here routinely have to deal with the salespeople
"flirting" with them.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy | muffy@mica.berkeley.edu | wi.4636@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn

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From: mprisco@cat.syr.EDU
Subject: Re: Why she took my name/ narrow minded views..
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Syracuse University
Date: 25 Jul 92 05:22:18 GMT

In article <14ib2pINN37h@agate.berkeley.edu> uunet!mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!meshugge.media.mit.edu!cindy@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Cindy Blank-Edelman) writes:
>Ismail writes:
>
>[much omitted]
>
>> I think that the issues related to participatory
>> democracy and decision making by consensus are far
>> more in touch with our lives than  last names and
>> clothes that seem to occupy soc.feminism nowadays.
>
>I agree with you, but I still don't understand why they have to be
>mutually exclusive.
>
>To clarify: let's say that an organization has instituted
>participatory democracy and consensus-style decision making.  Yay.
>The organization has a meeting.  Because of their previous positions,
>all of the women at the meeting are referred to as "secretaries", and
>called by their first names, while all of the men are referred to as
>"bosses" and called "Mr. Last Name".  Is this situation really
>conducive to consensus or equal participation by all?  I don't think
>so.  The people in the organization won't be on an equal level until
>the titles are dropped and people are referred to in the same way
>(either with first or last names).  Until that symbolic name change
>occurs, insidious inequality will persist.

I think this is absolutely true.  This is why it is so important
that we change the way women are perceived by the media, for example.
As long as images like the beer commercials ("Think I'll
have a cold beer and...women!!") persist, so will opression of
women.

>
>I think it is the same thing in marriage.  In the effort to be more
>equal partners in our marriage, and make decisions by consensus, we
>made sure the symbolism of our names would not hold us back.  Now,
>what's wrong with that? :-)

Nothing at all, I agree.   When I went to get married I thought
then entire idea of changing my name was absurd.  If i'd wanted
to why would I have waited until I got married to do it?

Margot (mprisco@cat.syr.edu)

--
=====================================================================
=          H A V E   A   D A Y             :|                       =
=====================================================================

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From: uunet!mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!meshugge.media.mit.edu!cindy@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Cindy Blank-Edelman)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: A feminist style socio-economic reform!
Date: 21 Jul 1992 21:20:23 GMT
Organization: M.I.T. Media Laboratory
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RAM SUBBAIAH writes:

> REFORM 1.
>         "All women who deliver normal children should be compensated
> in monetory terms for their child bearing services".

Without responding to your general idea of paying women to have
children, I must object to your proposed discrimination against women
who bear "abnormal" children.  Children with disabilities will face
many forms of discrimination, unfortunately; do you really want them
to start out their lives that way?  Are disabled children less
valuable to society?  Why do you make such a distinction in your
proposal?

--Cindy Blank-Edelman



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From: panda@syrinx.umd.EDU (Lisa Nyman)
Subject: Re: women's schools and physics (was Re: gender balance)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Date: 29 Jul 92 16:19:42 GMT

In article <14l004INNhbd@agate.berkeley.edu> gilligan@bldrdoc.gov (Jonathan Gilligan 303-497-3861) writes:
>
>One thing I should make clear is that there are so few women in
>physics (about ten percent, or two per entering class in my grad
>school) that I don't have a large sample (I knew two women in physics,
>two others in other sciences, who had gone to women's colleges, and
>about a dozen in physics who had attended coed colleges) so my
>generalizations should be treated with due suspicion.

While there is also an uneven ratio of male to female persons
in the geographic sciences, surprisingly, there is about a 1:1
ratio in my office of cartographers (though this may be because
it is a government office).  Anyway, at my grad school, there was not
one woman on the faculty and this was very discouraging to me.  While
there were many female students (probably half) I felt extreme
lack of sensitivity for the need for female role models on the faculty.
A woman could easily think "Why should I bother if I can't get tenure
anywhere?".  I'm sure many of you can sympathize with a woman
sitting in a thesis defense or proposal with all male faculty
staring at her.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I and another woman gave math
and geography workshops to a bunch of delightful girls in a
program which encourages girls to get motivated with math.  I tried
to stress to them that they can get into the scientific and
technical world and told them that my office was actually 50-50.
But I wonder if young girls (These were 7th and 8th graders)
realize that such fields are lopsided.



--
Lisa Wolfisch Nyman         "Life is too short to wear ugly underwear."
panda@syrinx.umd.edu
Just remember, geographers do it in places unknown to the general public.
New from Dweeb Publishers: Memoirs of a Workstation Widow, Oh the Agony of It

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From: eris@tc.fluke.COM (Chris Beckmeyer)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Why she took my name/ narrow minded views..
Date: 30 Jul 1992 20:05:33 GMT
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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In article <CINDY.92Jul15224122@meshugge.media.mit.edu> uunet!mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!meshugge.media.mit.edu!cindy@ncar.ucar.EDU (Cindy Blank-Edelman) writes:
>Ismail writes:
>
>> My point was that actions taken related to "last name" and "I am free,
>> I, and only I choose what I wear" issues are not *thoughtful action*s
>> at all.
>
(stuff deleted)

>> I also think if a family wants to make a "symbolic statement" or just
>> wants to "show off" how progressive they are, the family should be
>> lastnamed after the female for a change rather than dashed last names
>> which would tend to grow off the page.
>
>Our symbolic statement was one of inclusion and unity, rather than a
>new exclusion.  I think naming the family after the female is a valid
>choice, just not the one we wanted to make.
>
>LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE WE ARE! (I'm such the show-off :-)
>
 
just another point of view... my brother-in-law took his wife's name (no
hyphens) when they married.  he was a theology student at the time and is now
an evangelical lutheran minister.  his decision to take her name was based on
some marriage command in the old testament (sorry, my bible knowledge is 
limited) which requires that the "son shall leave his father's house" or some-
thing like that. 

chris


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From: mackenzi@McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Paul Mackenzie)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Women and Engineering (was Re: women's schools and physics)
Date: 23 Jul 1992 18:50:45 GMT
Organization: McGill Research Centre for  Intelligent Machines
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In article <14l004INNhbd@agate.berkeley.edu>, gilligan@bldrdoc.gov (Jonathan Gilligan 303-497-3861) writes:

|> day one.  My suspicion is that a lot of women's colleges are
|> (consciously or unconsciously) buying into the assumption that science
|> is too hard for women, so they teach a watered down curriculum.
|> However, I don't have any direct evidence to support this conclusion.
|> I would be interested to hear from others who know more and can help
|> me strengthen my hypothesis or convince me that I should throw it out.

Definitely NOT true at the university I went to (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)!
All the women in my class did just fine, and their rankings were scattered
amongst the class (no one really expected them to be clustered together any
way, I hope).

Those who sought work after graduation had NO problems at all.  They were 
snatched up in a hurry.  Whether this is part of an AA program, I don't know.
I do know that a few of the men did have problems finding work.

So I guess my point is that if a woman wants to be an engineer, her employment
is almost guaranteed.  So that part of the question is probably solved.  I
guess the problem now is getting women to become engineers in the first place.

Paul




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From: ak104@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Clark)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: What's a female "Uncle Tom"?
Date: 26 Jul 1992 08:00:41 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Distribution: world
Reply-To: ak104@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Clark)
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Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

  I just started reading the book _Backlash:the Undeclared War
Against American Women_, by Susan Faludi. I found myself astounded
and infuriated by the twisted logic of some of the conservative
women in the book. In the chapter, "The Backlash Brain Trust: From
Neocons to Neofems", Faludi points out that the "back to the family",
"back to traditional values" views that conservative women try to
insist on other American women are blindly disregarded by themselves.
  I think we need a term for such women who are blind to the fact
they are reinforcing a second class status for other women.



							Bob Clark
  


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