question for the hippie women

Hi Carol.

I just reread some of the posts here and just wanted to say that equal time needs to be given...to female abusers also.
While not as previlant,it exists.

I think in the groove of "Feminism" and embracing the strength of themselves..some women got feminity and weakness mixed up.
It's not weak to be feminine..as Fen Mamma said we woman do have to look at things from a feminine point of view..its all we got.
But never forget that you are a woman..and there's a bunch of great stuff that goes with being that.
It should never be viewed as a 'war',,an 'us against them' kind a thing.
Thats where my opinion on a spin differs.
If you walk into a situation and view it as you do and process it from your viewpoint...where does that leave the other person.

The feminist movement had a leg to stand on because things were grossly out of balance for "the weaker sex"...
So women had to band together and take a huge stand to bring things into more of a balance.
We don't need 'cavemen' anymore to hunt and be ravished by.
We could have done it ourselves anyway....are men necessary?????

Of course that question has different answers..depends on who you talk to.
For me...we are ALL necessary.
But I won't go into my spiritual stuff...lol

There are the most wonderful men and women and children out there...
And there are alot of them who appear to be not so wonderful...till you peel away some of the bullshit surrounding them and you find the wonderful person underneath.
And yes..well some of them can't get beyond the BS...maybe another time.

So I belive the answer to all of this is to just go after what you are passionate about.
No matter what sex you are. Heck there were alot of great male feminists around in the 70's.

 

A chuckle for all the "feminists"

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Equality is neccesary, but we went about it the wrong way. Second Wave Feminists (especially in the 1970s) felt they had to either ignore or bash motherhood, in order to "gain" equality. This lost a lot of womyn in the 1990s, when they realized that not paying attention to their children , and or letting strangers raise them was a BAD mistake.


Many womyn in the younger generation take for granted what feminism gave them, and don't even realize that much of what they had wouldn't have existed of they had lived just a few decades before. So they say "I'm not a feminist, but......" They want good jobs (not just being a nurse or a teacher, both EXCELLENT professions, but we now have access to other professions, if we want) THey want protection from Domestic Abuse, and don't realize that womyn in my mother's generation simply didn't have ANY protection from abusive partners, they want everything that feminism gave them, but want to give feminism none of the thanks.

And part of that is some of second wave feminism's mistakes. Mothers should NEVER have been left out of the equation. The idea that a father and a mother are equal to a child should never have been propagated. The idea that "Equality" is the same as "Indenticality" was a mistake.

This is giving me a headache, I'll try to finish later. Sorry.

Oh my God. I will just write this off as a "youthful indescretion." because I'll get a worse headache if I have to actually address this silly, totally naive, media inspired statement.

 

:&
I love your posts Teepi..you are such an inspirational woman. I haven't been in the old hippies forum much lately, and I came to this and remembered why I'm even here at the forums...
Rock on mama!

 

That isn't a demeaning sexist statement, or anything.

Considering that women just LOVE advertising, movies etc. that show men as total and utter incapable morons while the women just roll their eyes and git-r-done....

Ha.

Let me suggest then that we remove the gender allowances for jobs. Ya wanna be a firewoman? You need to tote as much as the male next to ya. What's that? Can't do it? FAILED. No whining to the equalization socialism board, just hit the weights.

 

HA I agree Iron....anyone wanting a job should be able to meet the criteria of that job period.

If I am trapped under something, or can't walk out of a burning building and a woman who weighs less than I do comes to save me...we're both doomed.

And yes Maggie I also agree wholeheartedly. In trying to gain certain things and attitudes we lost certain things and attitudes. Thus we ended up with men who viewed feminists as "bulldykes who wanted to anihilate the male" or women who were out to "recruit" their women and fill their heads with a bunch of crazy ideas.

And then their were the "have it all" women...led by Helen Gurly Brown.(she wrote the book) Women who were viewed as "superwomen" the ones that had a home, children a husband a full time job and brought home the bacon and could fry it up in a pan and blah blah blah...
This caused alot of women to feel even more interior because they realized that when you have but 2 hands and your trying to juggle 6 things with a baby on your hip and a boss on your back...well, things begin to fall.

SOOOO....I do believe you have to realize your limits and not be ashamed to let the low priority stuff go in order to take care of the most important things.

Children don't care if you have 2 cars in the garage, they just cherish the time you spend with them.

Is it more important to work more to buy designer clothes...or more important to teach a child to sew for themselves....

That time that is lost that could have been spent making memories with your kids cannot be made up...they really do grow up so fast.
My daughter just turned 29....and the time went so quickly.

 

Many early feminists were. Remember SCUM? Or "like a fish needs a bicycle?"

All women, you know it's proof POSITIVE that they're WAY more capable than we men, who simply find jobs are good at them etc.

Then you blame men.

They also need a mother and father, but then again, that's heresy in this modern age...

The way the economy is going, you need two incomes just to afford the rent.

 

HMMM...Iron, not sure where you're coming from...actually I was agreeing with you.
And I don't see where I blamed men for anything.

Rent is relative. We pay 167.00 out here, own the house we built and over 8 acres.

yes although if you live in a town or city and choose to stay in that lifestyle you may need 2 incomes....but my point is...is that whats important?? 2 cars in the garage..children who are shuffled to school, daycare and have to schedule their lives around a mom and dad who are flat out too tired at the end of the day and too busy on the weekends to have much family time.

There is a movement in this country to "downsize"...people are giving up high stress jobs and high priced lifestyles and discovering its well worth it.

The attitudes of the men I spoke of before were justified in some instances if you read my previous posts where I talked of women who were so hell bent on showing what a strong feminist they were that they refused any type of domestic responsibility.

I have my priorities in a certain order, and it works for me. When my children were young they and my partner were number 1 in my life. Their well being was the most important thing and I was not concerned over how we were percieved by others ie:"keeping up with the Joneses"....
I was concerned about the way I was showing them in how to grow, how to be silly, how to accept themsevles and others, how to respect the planet etc. those were the lifes lessons I deemed important.
Others may do that or not.

I just think that attitudes were scewed in accordance with what the feminist movement was/is and what it was percieved to be/have been.

Depended on where you were and where you were going.

 

Well, speaking just for myself, I work harder, I'm stronger and am in better physical shape than MOST of the men I know. I think people should do whatever work interests them, and if I feel like building a barn, then I will. Don't believe in lifting weights, that's something people do who don't have enough REAL work to do...

 

IG, enough with the SCUM Manifesto. I) Only you and I know what it is. 2) NO real feminist thought it was more than it was.....the ravings of a psychotic lunatic. "Most" feminists did not curry to SCUM by any stretch of the imagination.

Carry on.

 

Amazing, though, Mags, that they followed through with that manifesto even though they "don't believe in it".

Mind you they're all hypocrites. Germaine "Fish" Greer got herself a bicycle in the end, right?

 

Who followed through on that nut's manifesto? She advocated Cutting Up Men. I mean, that is NOT feminism, it's just hatred.

 

Yes, Maggie. That's what feminism is all about. All of what they want to achieve is at the EXPENSE of men, not of their own work.

 

nope thats NOT what feminism was or is about. Maggie is right...that idiots Manifesto was the ravings of a lunatic. She attempted murder and was way over the edge.
BELIEVE me if all feminists were about that.....AAACCKK!!!

This is what I mean about the whole movement being percieved by people based on where they were then and where they were going with it.

In a previous post I brought up the aspects of the movement were in my opinion breakthroughs.

The popular belief that the "Little Woman" was just that and had to have her tender ears, eyes and mind 'protected' by men because left to her own devices who knew what she might come up with was a joke.

As Patsy said...we are strong...we are capable of what we can each do. Sometimes it is a tremendous amount more than some men.
So we should be treated as such.

Not all women who believed/believe in equal treatment was/is on the "fuck all men" bandwagon.

 

Well, since women got the vote it's been less about issues and more about which candidate has the nicer hair. I am not drawing conclusions here, but that WAS the concern at the time.

But feminism isn't about equal treatment. It's about "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine."

 

One of the things that bug me are generlizations....not ALL women OR men are anything.



To me and quite a few dictionaries...this is the definition of feminism - which is the movement toward the full social, political and economic equality of all people. In my own life, I like to add on: that every person have access to enough information to be able to make choices in their own lives. By that I mean, it's not so much about what choices we make, but that we have the freedom to make them. For instance, do you want to be a homemaker, a teacher, a dentist? And I stress that this applies to EVERYONE.
Alot of feminists were and are mothers and if my son wants to persue a career in nursing, he should be able to do that and be accepted and respected for it.

true Feminism comes down to choice...that each of us has the choice to persue the life we choose to lead, whether it is in a job we are qualified for, having and raising kids, in court cases, etc.

Of course decisions are made on stupid things like hair, look at society as a whole...alot of men live and breathe football when they themselves have never even been on a team.
People spend hundreds of dollars on a vehicle because it "looks" a certain way....to me thats stupid.


Thing is...bottom line...no one should be able to tell you or me that we "can't" have or do something based on what sex,color or religion we are.

Of course there were extremists and as I mentioned in a previous posts...extremists are what give any movement a bad rap.

Thats all I got...I'm outta here...

 

All that bra burning, do you know how much bra's cost? Bugger off

 

AACCKK!! Bra burning....the young ones here don't get alot of this I know...

here in the U.S if you did not wear a bra before 1972 you were a slut...or worse.

The burning of bra's was symbolic of not being tied down.
That if you chose to be free of those ties..(bra's) you should have the freedom of that choice.

It had nothing to do with burning a bra...sheesh...

I do not consider myself a feminist...but I do understand the movement and agree with some of it and think some of it very stupid.

 

Don't be patronising! Some women did burn bras as the symbol of what you're talking about. I know this, i didn't grow up in a box you know. I know what it meant. Jesus

 

It does take two incomes to raise a family; in most cases; unless one of them is a doctor ' lawyer' or works for Haliburton and plays golf with Bush-Americans are losing their health care more each day-and the rich get the tax break-This administration has done so much harm to the economy of this country; our grandkids will be buried in debt for years to come-The area between the "haves" and the " have nots" has widened -your now rich or your poor-not much in between-O- and watch what ya say on the phone!-their listening