Dear Individual,

Don't make assumptions about me.

You don't know me or who I now work for.

My range of work/life experience has been extremely vast
and varied.

How about adding something of substance to this discussion
for a change?

"Of course it could be argued that the "door ceremony"
in which men open doors for women, symbolically
reinforces the idea of female dependency and delicacy,
while asserting men's paternalism and control."

Foxy I and my partner enjoy those courtesies as well but when viewed as a social control mechanism and put in context with a bunch of other traditional courtesies expected of men towards women they look a lot more like subjects showing deference to their masters. Swap out gender and substitute race and the picture looks a lot different, or even place in the heirarchy of other structures. It's not those high in status expected to give up their place or stand aside for those lower down in status.

For most people those courtesies don't carry a loaded meaning, one of the great failings of feminism is that it has so consistantly taken the meanings to acts and history that suit a picture of female oppression by men and ignored sometimes more credible explainations.

Access to real power and direct influence in the affairs of human kind is something that the vast bulk of people never get, most don't have that power and influence even in the workplace. I don't think most sane individuals have the drive that it takes to seek it out and hold it either. Continuing to make the proportion at the top of that particular tree out to be some kind of indicator of the status of access to a broad range of opportunity and life choice available to the men and women I think is badly misleading.

Factors like average life span, suicide rates, access to housing and food, access to wealth (rather than earnings) and a variety of other more realistic factors tell a very different story than the proportion of each gender in board rooms.

BTW I'm not claiming female oppression of men, rather trying to make a point about how subjective the measures typically used to claim a raw deal for women compared to men generally are.

R0bert

Foxy, the thing is, women are women and men are men. We are different and that's just life.

I suggest that one reason why we are seeing change, is broken relationships, because 99 % of separations sees the mother as the primary care giver. And rightly so in many cases, when the kids are young.

But, along with this has come a huge change in the attitudes of kids, as some (mainly boys) get to an age where they tell mom what to do, then take that into the workplace, whereas others often look for a domineering girlfriend almost as if they are replacing their mother.

As I have said many times, we are now raising a bunch of limp wristed soft cocks, where as we once raised boys to be men. Sadly, those days are gone in most cases as so many young guys today are either pansies, or bullies.

Foxy,
please stop trying to change our view of your mentality, it's too late for that.

Rehctub "As I have said many times, we are now raising a bunch of limp wristed soft cocks, where as we once raised boys to be men. Sadly, those days are gone in most cases as so many young guys today are either pansies, or bullies."

Rehctub , would you like to explain to us all what you mean by 'limp wristed soft cocks' and 'pansies'?

According to you, the good ol' days of boys being real men are gone.
I'm assuming you consider yourself a real man?
What is your definition of a 'real man' then?

Dear RObert and Rehctub,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I often state that "it can be argued..." by
way of broadening a discussion and introducing
other perspectives to consider.

Of course as individuals
our reactions to things vary. But one thing
is certain and that is that throughout history
men have generally been the dominant sex and
women have been subordinate to them. Both
men and women have usually taken this for
granted as a "natural" state of affairs, passing it
down from generation to generation as part of their
culture.

Over the past quarter-century or so, however,
millions of people have challenged the traditional
relationship of the sexes, particularly
in the post-industrial societies of North America and
Western Europe. Growing numbers of women in these
societies have been entering economic life, and in
doing so have earned not just income but also
independence. The result of this shift has been important
changes in the status of women - changes that have
opened up new risks as well as new possibilities.

Two centuries ago, the average woman had a much
shorter life expectancy and she had a larger
number of children between her
twentieth and fourtieth birthdays. Today, female life
expectancy is between 80 - 90, and the average woman has two
children during a five-year period in her twenties.

Historical roles that kept a woman housebound today seem
irrelevant when she may live for half a century after her
last child is born.

Sex inequality may possibly have arisen
because it was functional at the time.
Today - the modern
woman may want to play a more "instrumental" role (with its
own strains), and some men may prefer to play an
"expressive" one.

Like the feminine role, the masculine role is now more
ambiguous, more flexible, more subject to interpretation by
the individual. And that is only natural in the highly
individualistic and highly open to change
society in which we live.

Dear Individual,

What you think of me is irrelevant and adds nothing
constructive to the issues being discussed.
Try again.