CONT'D

I forgot to add - the list on the website that I gave you I thought was horrific.

What has to happen in today's society is, the masculine role has to become more ambiguous, more flexible, more subject to interpretation by the individual. Resolving this kind of ambiguity is part of the challenge of social and culture change. Under the 'old' system, everyone knew what their roles were, and most people unquestioningly behaved as they were supposed to. The system constrained people, but it freed them from the need to make choices.

There should be fewer constraints today, allowing the individual to have the liberty (or the burden) to choose his or her own path to self-fulfillment.

Foxy: "True liberation from the restrictions of gender would mean that all possible options would be open and equally acceptable for both sexes."

There was a story yesterday in the Age about Australian workplaces being a so-called "boys club". Here's a quote:"A QUARTER of Australia's working women say females are not treated equally in the workplace - and one in five of their male colleagues agree." That means that THREE QUARTERS of women and 80% of men say women are treated equally. Is that not enough? Must we be homogenous?

Foxy:"What has to happen in today's society is, the masculine role has to become more ambiguous, more flexible, more subject to interpretation by the individual."

From where I sit, the men have done an enormous amount of accommodating to women's demands and we still have to change? As it happens, I agree with you that flexibility is the key for both genders, yet the topic has become so skewed that even a reasonable person such as you makes the tacit assumption that men are flawed and women are not.

You may recall that I mentioned I fear for my son's future in the "Brave New feminist-dominated World". I attended an information session last night for a "gifted and talented" program at my daughter's intended high school. The head teacher was proud enough to mention the fact that over the past 17 years, the participants, all hand-picked from a large pool of applicants, had been more than 2/3 girls. They had also asked some past students of the program to attend - they were all women and had wondrous tales to tell of how well they were doing as a result of the program. What had happened to the boys?

Dear Antiseptic,

I should have explained further. I did not mean to suggest for one minute that men are flawed and women are not. I'm the most flawed woman I know, whereas my husband - I think is a saint!
That's the problem - in debating, we sometimes make a statement and not explain fully what we mean - presuming that the other party will understand, forgetting that you don't really know me or what I think.

What I was referring to was that under the 'old' system, everyone knew what their roles were, and most people unquestioningly behaved as they were supposed to. The system constrained people, but it freed them from the need to make choices. There are fewer constraints today, but the individual now has the liberty (or the burden) to choose his or her, own path to self-fulfillment.

What will be the final shape of gender roles? Sexual equality does not mean necessarily gender similarity or a 'unisex' society. It does not necessarily mean that women will gradually adopt characteristics of men or that the two existing genders will converge on some happy medium. The most probable pattern is one in which many alternative lifestyles and roles will be acceptable to both men and women.

Our society I hope will become individualistic and highly open to change and experimentation, and it is likely that men and women will explore a wide variety of possible roles.

I'm so sorry that you feel scared for your son's future. Hopefully things will turn out differently for him. For the better.

Take care.

This seems to illustrate my point about the most extreme examples being used to create generally-applicable responses, leading to consequences affecting many men and children in perfectly normal, loving relationships.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23644674-2,00.html