My Issues with the Feminists

First, let me assert that I am a feminist, at least as far as condemning domestic abuse (and the attitude of men toward women that is shown by men who feel they can do that sort of thing to their spouses and girlfriends), condemning sexual harassment, favoring equal pay and equal opportunity, and encouraging girls to consider any and all traditionally masculine occupations.

Also, I positively applaud when women in third-world countries start businesses; and I believe women should have control over their own health and reproduction, and do not feel that a man should be able to override the woman's decision. (Sadly, in too many countries, women cannot obtain contraception supplies or even counseling because of the objection of a husband, priest, or some other--usually a male).

On the other hand, I find I have to take issue with some of the claims, assertions, and implications that feminist women seem to use.

I used to work for a woman who was quite the energetic feminist. One time when she and I were chatting, I referred to one of my female students--this was community college--as a "girl." Said boss very quickly said, "I she over 16? If she's over 16, don't refer to her as a 'girl'."

Well, this is nonsense. Never mind that many women refer to their fellows of that gender as "girls" (or even guys!). Adult men are often called "boys": the boys in the band, boys' night out, the boys of summer, our boys in the service. And surely many, if not all, of the males to whom this term is applied are over 16.

Can you say "double standard"? Maybe even hypocrisy?

Next, women seem to like to facilitate the idea that cancer is a women's issue: women own cancer, and seem to be trying to make "cancer" synonymous with "breast cancer." Contrary to the impression they foster, breast cancer is not the most common type of cancer. Both of these are false. According to statistics I just saw, one in three women will get cancer, whereas for men the figure is one in two! And breast cancer is the third most common type of cancer. Most common is digestive tract (I would have thought lung cancer). Second most common is male genital tract cancer. In other words, more men die from prostate cancer (possibly lumping it with some other "male genital cancers," if there are others) than women die from breast cancer. Yet, where are all the marches for prostate cancer, the pink ribbons, etc.? Women have been very vocal about all the women who are carried off by breast cancer--and that is a terrible thing, to be sure. (Let me hasten to point out that I have lost more than one friend to breast cancer, and it has stricken my family as well.) But by comparison, I have to suppose that men are just dying in silence.

P.S. Confession, disclaimer, or whatever: I am a survivor of prostate cancer, so maybe I have an axe to grind in all this.

Copyright © 2017.

Feminists (and PC-ers), Leave the Language Alone

It’s not that often, these days, that we hear the word feminism or feminist. We do, though, hear a lot of talk about political correctness; and I think that many feminist ideas are included nowadays in what we call political correctness.

At one time I had the misfortune to work for a woman who was a pretty strong feminist. She criticized me, one time, for referring to one of my community-college students as a "girl." "If she's over 16," this woman asserted, "she's a woman, and you shouldn't call her a girl."

Yet adult males are sometimes referred to as "boys": "the boys in the band"; "a night out with the boys."

Not only are the feminists wrong in this particular case, I think they are so bent on cultivating the idea that women are persecuted in our society that they try to make out that even the language is against them.

I can graciously accept saying "letter carrier" instead of mailman; or "fire fighter" instead of fireman. Yet I feel that an insight into our English language and its history shows that the assumption that underlies this linguistic policing is incorrect.

The feminist/PC assertion is that, every time you see –man as part of a word, there is the implicit assumption that the word denotes a male, or implies that the person to whom the word is attached is assumed to be male.

Let's look at the word woman. It descends from the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) wifman. That is, wif (meaning 'woman' and giving us the modern word wife) + man, meaning 'person'. Thus woman means 'woman-person', or, if you will, 'female person'. And man, when not qualified, just means 'person'—that is, a human of either, or of unspecified, gender. So –man, as it exists in all our compound words, does not, as the feminists insist, mean that we are sexistly asserting that the person is or is assumed to be male.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Second Thoughts on Polygamy

I want to take back what I said about polygamy in an earlier post. I just read a first-person piece by a woman who had been a "sister wife" in a polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) family living in Mexico, and that has opened my eyes; I now see polygamy as an evil.

Polygamy is so anti-feminist. It is like those old ideas of the Sultan's harem. Women seem to be by nature monogamous (or, more properly, monandrous) and usually desire only one spouse. They are jealous when they share their husband with others. So, it's torment for at least some of these wives in polygamous families. They endure it because their religion commands it; and they are made to believe it is God's will and the way to heaven (just one more example of the countless ways in which accepting religious doctrines can cause human grief).

The wife writing in this piece says that their family (with at least six wives) had "over forty" children--who hardly knew their father, since he did not have time to spend with each of his "families." Also, there was not enough money to go around for these six families.

All in all, I think it's pretty heart-breaking to read this. Of course it's all terrific for the guy. That's why it's so one-sided and unfair. I think now I agree with having it be illegal.

Here is the link to this article; it quite vividly depicts the plight of such a wife. Disclaimer: I don't endorse everything that Susan Ray Schmidt says in her article.

www.lemondrop.com/2010/10/19/escape-from-polygamy-a-former-sister-wife-shares-why-she-left/?icid=main|main|dl5|sec4_lnk1|178483

Copyright (c) by Richard Stein

A War on Men?

I've commented before on the characters on two cartoon TV programs, Homer Simpson on The Simpsons and Peter Griffin on Family Guy. These guys are stupid, they're foolish, they are disgusting fat pigs. And, not least, they're incredibly insensitive.

Their wives, on the other hand, are smarter, wiser; they embody all possible good sense and compassion. Their main lack of good sense might seem to be that they tolerate and forgive their husbands, as they always do, even when it's mind-blowing that they do. I'd like to see Marge or Lois say, "That's it, I've had it, this time you've gone too far. I'm through. I want a divorce." Don’t you think divorces have occurred with less provocation? So these women gotta be saints. And, even more strangely—here my non-mainstream sensibility might be coming into play—they continue to find their husbands sexy.

And there are a couple of TV commercials that depict men (a husband in one case, and a husband and father in the other) as stupid. In one, the husband set out to kill the weeds in the family's lawn, and killed the grass in the process. His wife has to indoctrinate him with the mantra, "weeds, not grass."

In the other one, for AT&T high-speed Internet, the husband—a middle-aged guy--can't seem to grasp that their new Internet service lets all the family's computers connect wirelessly, and keeps asking for his "Internet cord." Even his young daughter is far more savvy than Dad and keeps trying to explain to him.

It looks like there's a pattern here: at least four instances in which a male is depicted as stupid. The poor, patient, long-suffering females have to try to put up with them. I guess it's just part of the superior nature of women that they not only understand men and recognize all their foibles, they know it's woman's lot in life to forgive her man. Men are terribly flawed but hey, you know, they're good for something so we gotta keep them around.

I think the tables have turned: we used to have TV shows about shrewish, intolerable wives who got murdered by their husbands. And, as often happens, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

Nowadays, if it were women who were depicted as unfavorably as the men are in my examples above, we'd have all the feminist organizations up in arms and calling for a boycott of the TV show or the product sponsor. Note just the fact that we have the word feminism. What is the word for advocacy or defense of males? There is no word. I rest my case.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Politically correct language

The latest is, Is the term master bedroom offensive? Well, how about calling it a mistress bedroom instead?

Seriously, as regards "non-sexist" language, I have no problem at all with saying police officer instead of policeman, fire fighter instead of fireman, letter carrier instead of mailman. But what about manhole? I think I did actually come across some ridiculous substitute for that, perhaps personnel hatch. This from a book publisher, terrified of having the wrath of the feminists unleashed upon them.

What about manhunt? I bet the feminists are perfectly happy to leave that one alone, since only males are bad enough to be hunted for, right?

At the University of _____ (okay, I'm leaving out the name but probably should let the opprobrium be applied), they have an "ombudsperson." This is political correctness going way too far. They presume to take a Swedish word and open it up and change part of it, a word that just happens to be the same in Swedish as it is in English—man—and substitute a morpheme which is not Swedish, person.

And I don't like changing alderman to alderperson. My objection here is that alderman is a fine old word—in fact, very old, going back maybe 1500 years to Anglo-Saxon times—and I hate to see it morphed. But maybe that is not all of my objection to it since I don't like congressperson, either.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Feminist Viewpoint in TV Cartoon Sitcoms

The TV shows The Simpsons and Family Guy both have husband/father characters (Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin, respectively) who are pretty much stupid and worthless human beings. Homer in particular is foolish, lazy, irresponsible, insensitive, and driven by his appetites—for beer, for doughnuts. . . . Yet on both shows, their wives love them and are infinitely forgiving. The wives, in fact, are endowed not only with infinite forgiveness and love, but definitely have a monopoly on the intelligence, wisdom, and common sense in their respective families.

In a typical episode, the husband, Homer or Peter, makes foolish mistakes that send the family (or the town or the nuclear plant) to the brink of disaster. Something somehow always saves the day, the guy apologizes to his wife, and she forgives him, 'cause she loves him. (Some of these characterizations might fit The Simpsons better than Family Guy, I feel I ought to admit.)

We'll leave aside the issue of whether it's realistic for any wife to be so infinitely forgiving and infinitely patient. (I, for one, have to wonder how it is that a point never comes when the wife has simply had enough, and I'm sure divorces have occurred with less cause.) If you want to look at older television, The Honeymooners might be seen in the same vein as The Simpsons and Family Guy and thus a predecessor of the newer shows: Ralph Kramden is always doing foolish things, getting himself in trouble in one way or another (and the creativity of the show is precisely to devise new ways in which Ralph can get into trouble).

So, when the husbands are worthless and the wives have all the intelligence, strength, wisdom—all the virtues—think about this portrayal of men and women. This looks to me like a feminist view of the qualities of the two sexes. Well, convinced as I am of this idea, one problem with it is that in both cases, the originator of the show is a man: Seth McFarlane in the case of Family Guy and Matt Groening in the case of The Simpsons. I'm not sure that this totally viscerates my theory because it's certainly conceivable that a man can take a feminist viewpoint.

On the other hand there's I Love Lucy, where the gender roles are the opposite. Lucy is very clever, but in a perverted sort of way. She concocts improbable schemes to get what she wants and to get around her husband, Ricky, who rules the roost like a traditional husband. However, her schemes always backfire, and Ricky has to forgive her. This looks like a reversal of The Simpsons and Family Guy. However, Lucy challenging the husband's supremacy in the marriage may still be feminist.

Okay, three where the wife has to forgive, one where it's the other way around. The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy are both from the 1950s, but certainly modern feminism has roots that go back much further than that.
Copyright © 2009 Richard Stein