Did feminism go to far?

[xLx]

i'm sorry but i'm going to defend my right to use 'authored'. english being the mercurial entity it is, i think we should be mindful of the consequences of leaving our language un-updated (see, i did it again there). if other people are allowed to put 'meta-' in front of practically any other word and then use it as if it makes them clever, then i think i should AT LEAST be allowed to use a back-formation like 'authored'. we stole 90% of this crap from the classics anyway. and look at the french: they get away with 'le shampooing'?!!?

besides, even if i secretly believed it was wrong, it wouldn't stop me. i'm just pure evil!

Not truly a back-formation, the word you used, but there's no better grammatical term for it: Back-formation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The modern approach to back formations is to take a word that was never a verb and turn it into one arbitrarily - examples: to author, authored by, impacted

 

[D_Kay_Sarah_Sarah]

But women don't want men to do the housework... they want men to be servants who do housework to the woman's specifications.

The trouble comes back to the always wrong part...
Whenever I did the dishes... it was always wrong... I cleaned up a mess wrong, changed a baby wrong... no matter how hard I tried... it was never good enough...

Does your husband stand over your shoulder when you cook trying to tell you that's not how to hold a pan?
Women do this quite a lot.

The women don't just want help... they want to exert control over that help.

Maybe you've had a bad relationship where you have felt taken advantage of but i assure you we aren't all dominating bitches.

If i come home from work and find my man cooking dinner i will sure as hell eat that meal, enjoy it and thank him. It isnt because i felt he done what he should have but i appreciate that he wanted to do that.

But you are right that many women want to control their men and want things done to their specifications. In a round about way i think it has to do with women feel resposible fr maintaining the home and in 99% of cases if the house is dirty it is her that visitors will judge as being lazy or unhygienic. Not saying it is right just thats the way it is

 

[Phil Ayesho]

That is the reality for most full time working mothers.
THIS IS FACT.

Poor babies...

Cry me a river.

Got what you stamped your foot and demanded and turned out it wasn't such a joy....


Actually- turned out your mothers were fighting something that never existed... male domination.

Men in this country have always done exactly what they HAD to do to get the attention of women.

The hand that rocks the cradle determines the mores of the society.



In truth, I feel for women. They can do anything... they have options... they can choose to stay at home and feel like shit for not having careers, or have careers and feel like shit for not staying home to raise the kids... or they can try and do it all and feel like shit for not doing any of it well enough.

They wanted it all and got it all... and it turns out that men, who don't really have any option but to work till we die... have it easier.
We don't have to wonder about the path not taken because we only have the one acceptable path.


But where women make a mistake is in thinking that if her man helped out more she COULD have it all.

There is only so much time... pick a life's path and be happy in it.

But don't blame your choice and its consequences on me.

 

[D_Kay_Sarah_Sarah]

Just wish it could have come without that Male=Bad thing.

I think that may be a little of an exaggeration. If you've noticed all of the ladies here at this site are here to appreciate our fellow men. There is very little if no male bashing going on

 

[xLx]

after reading some of the NON-GRAMMATICAL-PEDANT* posts here i'm starting to think there's a gloomy paradox here: to win the respect of men (beyond the level the law requires, i mean) women have to go out and work themselves to death to succeed in the professions, politics, etc. which will probably make them miserable, as it seems to do with most 'successful' men.

so in the end it comes down to a choice: be happy and suffer the contempt of men, or suffer drudgery and high blood pressure.

personally i'm inclined to say fuck it. the idea that we should only respect people who are intelligent and/or hard-working depresses me anyway. i might even be tempted to argue that much of this angst comes from men working themselves too hard in the first place.




*nah just kidding, you guys are ok really

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Maybe you've had a bad relationship where you have felt taken advantage of but i assure you we aren't all dominating bitches.

Never meant to imply that--- speaking in very general terms in very broad strokes...

I meet women who break that stereotype... but not enough, not nearly enough to make this society feel any different.

 

[HazelGod]

They wanted it all and got it all... and it turns out that men, who don't really have any option but to work till we die... have it easier.
We don't have to wonder about the path not taken because we only have the one acceptable path.

And you wonder that women walk all over you and generally treat you like shit?

 

[xLx]

this is that same bullshit logic that thinks women can autonomously bear children. or maybe that they manipulate men into knocking them up with clever psychology.

you might want to consider all the women who got pregnant because some asshole insisted on not using a condom, then kicked up a righteous fuss when she mentioned the 'A' word.

takes two to make a kid, surely the responsibility should go both ways too?

Poor babies...

Cry me a river.

Got what you stamped your foot and demanded and turned out it wasn't such a joy....


Actually- turned out your mothers were fighting something that never existed... male domination.

Men in this country have always done exactly what they HAD to do to get the attention of women.

The hand that rocks the cradle determines the mores of the society.



In truth, I feel for women. They can do anything... they have options... they can choose to stay at home and feel like shit for not having careers, or have careers and feel like shit for not staying home to raise the kids... or they can try and do it all and feel like shit for not doing any of it well enough.

They wanted it all and got it all... and it turns out that men, who don't really have any option but to work till we die... have it easier.
We don't have to wonder about the path not taken because we only have the one acceptable path.


But where women make a mistake is in thinking that if her man helped out more she COULD have it all.

There is only so much time... pick a life's path and be happy in it.

But don't blame your choice and its consequences on me.

 

[Quite Irate]

i'm sorry but i'm going to defend my right to use 'authored'. english being the mercurial entity it is, i think we should be mindful of the consequences of leaving our language un-updated (see, i did it again there). if other people are allowed to put 'meta-' in front of practically any other word and then use it as if it makes them clever, then i think i should AT LEAST be allowed to use a back-formation like 'authored'. we stole 90% of this crap from the classics anyway. and look at the french: they get away with 'le shampooing'?!!?

besides, even if i secretly believed it was wrong, it wouldn't stop me. i'm just pure evil!

Web 2.0-speak is all bullshit, though. Everyone knows that. It's all about how you couch it, not whether what you say means anything or has any value whatsoever. Which is a good general rule for all high end business, actually.

I'm not about to get into a debate on grammar reform, though. All I'll say is this - It's stupid and you shouldn't do it. And you're a bad person because of it. And you'll go blind. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.

 

[D_Kay_Sarah_Sarah]

In truth, I feel for women. They can do anything... they have options... they can choose to stay at home and feel like shit for not having careers, or have careers and feel like shit for not staying home to raise the kids... or they can try and do it all and feel like shit for not doing any of it well enough.

But where women make a mistake is in thinking that if her man helped out more she COULD have it all.

This is a good point. Women feel they can have it all by having a career and a home life but why is it that men are content to have a career but put no effort into the home life? Wouldnt you as a male want input int your home and family?

 

[Phil Ayesho]

I think that may be a little of an exaggeration. If you've noticed all of the ladies here at this site are here to appreciate our fellow men. There is very little if no male bashing going on

A good point...
Certainly I suspect that any woman reading this site is unlikely to be a man hater.


But be aware that its not so much the bashing... its the unspoken assumptions... the cavalier attitudes and lack of self awareness.

For example, most women honestly believe that they want to know what a man is feeling.

But if what we say isn't what you think we should say... you get angry or hurt.

That's not wanting to know us... that's wanting to control us...

Personally, I think it comes from playing with dolls, where you could control what every charcter in a relationship thought and felt and said...

But honestly...
I felt I could say these things here because of the kind of women who post here.

 

[xLx]

now you tell me, is 'couch' a back-formation?!

if i've caught you running a double standard i'm going to milk it indefinitely, that's just the kind of miserable rat i am.....

:tongue:

ps if i'm going blind i'm taking you with me. and a few others, hopefully. the more the merrier.

Web, 2.0-speak is all bullshit, though. Everyone knows that. It's all about how you couch it, not whether what you say means anything or has any value whatsoever. Which is a good general rule for all high end business, actually.

I'm not about to get into a debate on grammar reform, though. All I'll say is this - It's stupid and you shouldn't do it. And you're a bad person because of it. And you'll go blind. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.

 

[HazelGod]

why is it that men are content to have a career but put no effort into the home life? Wouldnt you as a male want input int your home and family?

Because they are allowed to do so by the women in their lives.

I can't speak for all men, but I'm basically a lazy creature...I tend to assume all is well in my world unless I'm alerted otherwise. It hasn't happened often, but believe you me, my wife has let me know in no uncertain terms whenever I've been lax in keeping her at the center of the world. Sometimes she's been right, other times she's been a drama queen...but no matter the case, she's always gotten my attention, which is ultimately what matters in keeping our relationship working.

 

[D_Joseba_Guntertwat]

what makes me think it's been different is the outcome: we've lived in a largely sexist-free society (superficially, at least) for twenty years now; women make up roughly half of all students now, and (you would imagine) form roughly a half of the pool of talent going into the workplace. yet the boards of most companies are entirely male. if we truly lived in a fair, pluralist society then two people of equivalent ability would enjoy equivalent success.

May I suggest a few reasons why this is not the case and may never be. Firstly, women usually take time out from their careers to have kids - you could argue that maybe men should be doing that more, but let's be honest women are much better at it than men.
Secondly, women are often less ambitious or competitive than men. I don't mean all women, I know a lot who are very driven and that's great, but on average I think women do push themselves forward less.
Given equal opportunities, would you expect all jobs to eventually reach a 50/50 split between the sexes? I wouldn't - certain jobs are better suited to one sex than the other, for example, builder, nurse, nanny.

 

[Quite Irate]

after reading some of the NON-GRAMMATICAL-PEDANT* posts here i'm starting to think there's a gloomy paradox here: to win the respect of men (beyond the level the law requires, i mean) women have to go out and work themselves to death to succeed in the professions, politics, etc. which will probably make them miserable, as it seems to do with most 'successful' men.

so in the end it comes down to a choice: be happy and suffer the contempt of men, or suffer drudgery and high blood pressure.

personally i'm inclined to say fuck it. the idea that we should only respect people who are intelligent and/or hard-working depresses me anyway. i might even be tempted to argue that much of this angst comes from men working themselves too hard in the first place.




*nah just kidding, you guys are ok really

Only again, I go back to saying that individuals ultimately make their own freedom. And contempt is hardly a word I would use for stay at home moms. Contempt is possibly how you perceive male reactions to the traditional male-female balance of power, but I don't really know where you see this as a widespread level of discontent.

I don't think gender roles have as much to do with who is repressing whom as people like to believe. Humans by nature are competitive. Women by nature are socially competitive, to the point of being absolutely cutthroat. Self satisfaction is often more than enough of a reward for women. Men by nature compete for objects and real life stuff that shows they have an upper hand over the next guy. It all goes back to cavemen neurological functions, in the end. The hubris we humans display, thinking we're anything more than the result of millions of years of hardwired ape mentality slowly adapted for changing skull shapes.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

This is a good point. Women feel they can have it all by having a career and a home life but why is it that men are content to have a career but put no effort into the home life? Wouldnt you as a male want imput int your home and family?

Men do put effort into their home life...

Just not the effort YOU want us to.

Again, you reveal a control issue. If it ain't YOUR way, then it don't count.


Look, from a man's point of view, knocking myself out to earn money, that I bring home and hand over to my wife, IS a contribution... the most important contribution they can make.

And the way I parent my children is not the same as a woman's... but its important to their development...
It might seem like play to you... but that is what Dad's are good for. And it matters.

This is what I mean when I say the unspoken and unrealized assumptions....

Just the pain assumption that men DON'T contribute.

That is you defining what constitutes contribution, without regard to male perspective.


You want to know who's holding the shitty end of the stick? Just take a look and see who's end is shittier...
Men die 8 years earlier than women, on average, mostly from stress related causes.

Men routinely die of heart attacks in their 40s and 50s'

And as any career woman is rapidly learning... the traditional "male" role is brutal and wearing.


You want it all? fine, take responsibility for your own wants...
Most men learn early that they can't have it all.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Irate is doing a better job than I am... I leave it to her.

 

[Quite Irate]

now you tell me, is 'couch' a back-formation?!

if i've caught you running a double standard i'm going to milk it indefinitely, that's just the kind of miserable rat i am.....

:tongue:

ps if i'm going blind i'm taking you with me. and a few others, hopefully. the more the merrier.

To couch is a regular verb. Modern definition dates back to 1529. I mean, rly.
I couch
You cough
He/She/It couches
We couch
They couch

Not seeing a back formation.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

May I suggest a few reasons why this is not the case and may never be. Firstly, women usually take time out from their careers to have kids - you could argue that maybe men should be doing that more, but let's be honest women are much better at it than men.
Secondly, women are often less ambitious or competitive than men. I don't mean all women, I know a lot who are very driven and that's great, but on average I think women do push themselves forward less.
Given equal opportunities, would you expect all jobs to eventually reach a 50/50 split between the sexes? I wouldn't - certain jobs are better suited to one sex than the other, for example, builder, nurse, nanny.

Well said.
Statistics show that a company hiring a 27 year old woman runs a 90% risk she will leave her job to have a baby within 5 years.

Women still earn 78 cents to every dollar a man earns because, on average over their careers, women will work 78 days to every 100 that a man does.

 

[xLx]

you're right of course about builders and nannies and so on. but i think it would be sad if women were practically disqualified from all those professions which require hard work and long-term commitment. i have no time for that minority of women who want to pursue a career and raise a child as well. it's simply not feasible and you end up with a kid who calls his polish nanny 'mum'. i went to school with enough people like that and it usually showed.

i realise we'll never have 50% representation in the management of every company, but it would be nice if we could even reach an average 80-20 split. from what i've read even that is a long way off. but my real gripe is with political representation: it seems a matter of course for any democracy that women should be represented to somewhere approaching 50%. there's a lot being done to try to engineer this, which is good, but there's clearly more work to be done. and frankly if a man has a child with a woman who aspires to high political office, then i think he should be willing to take on MORE than his share of the child-rearing. 'for the greater good', if you like.

May I suggest a few reasons why this is not the case and may never be. Firstly, women usually take time out from their careers to have kids - you could argue that maybe men should be doing that more, but let's be honest women are much better at it than men.
Secondly, women are often less ambitious or competitive than men. I don't mean all women, I know a lot who are very driven and that's great, but on average I think women do push themselves forward less.
Given equal opportunities, would you expect all jobs to eventually reach a 50/50 split between the sexes? I wouldn't - certain jobs are better suited to one sex than the other, for example, builder, nurse, nanny.