Well, here I was carelessly surfing the internet and thinking to myself… geez there’s a lot of conservative crap being printed on the internet. With a slight sigh of relief I stumbled across your ‘blog.’ At the very first glance of your page I was quickly reassured with the state of the media. The media isn’t biased at all. There’s just as much conservative crap out there as there is ‘liberal’ bulldust such as yours (and for those wondering I use the term liberal very loosely).
To start off with I have to say that it is no real surprise that you got so worked up on the issue. Well, think about. If someone says something stupid your shrug your shoulders and think, if not say, what a “poor stupid bastard.” But in this case you had a person making logical, valid points and all you could respond with was a whole heap of swearing and false bravado. And to make things worse for you the person making these points was actually one of your own-kind (someone else who writes what they believe is right in an attempt to save the world.)
Oh… you thought I was referring to author’s gender. Opps, I guess you forgot the first rule of feminism: equality. Yes, that’s right – gender is irrelevant. WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE FINALLY UNDERSTAND THIS. The fact that it was a female writing the article is completely. Utterly. Undeniably. IMMATERIAL. But I suppose I should forgive you, when you can’t attack the content of an article you have to fill your page moaning about something.
The problem with old-feminists is that they completely lost sight of what they were fighting for. Originally, they weren’t simply about women’s rights, they were about equality. It just so happens that, at the time, women were getting a bloody raw deal. So, that’s what they fought for. Tooth and nail. They fought for a system where women could be educated, given the same opportunities and be just as, if not, more successful than their muscularly enhanced counterparts.
Conveniently (but predictably) you forgot to mention the fact that women do have a chance. And not just a 30% chance either. Confused? Oh, let me remind you of someone who actually has some facts.
Women in the present day are:
* Four times LESS likely than young men to kill themselves
* 22 times LESS likely to be imprisoned.
* And MORE likely than boys to leave school with no qualifications.
Oh, but didn’t you say:
“It's only when women are educated, supported and given the chance to excel do we have a $%&* choice.”
What’s worse is that you then go on to lament about the demise of the Office of Status of Women. Well don’t men have issues too? Isn’t this what we are fighting for here - Equality.
Agreed?
Anyone?
Oh… that’s right… now I remember why men don’t have an Office of Status. Because if they haven’t killed themselves then they are in prison or too uneducated to do anything about.
How convenient.
The thing that is admirable about Janet Albrechtsen is that she isn’t afraid to fight for equality. She isn’t the ego-thirsty, power-hungry person that you are. She can accept that 30% ain’t bad for women. Now, all your readers out there, bear with me here.
Let’s face facts. Men have penises and women have vaginas. Women give birth (using their vaginas). Men are strong and are more suited to the blue-collar jobs (not that anyone cares about those jobs anyway). But nevertheless, a bit like YOU said. You want to stay home and look after the kids. Well what happens if 70% of women agree with you. Do we then launch into a cry about the High Court?
No. We look at it objectively. Women have great opportunities. In fact, in some cases, they are better off than men. Most women are educated, out-of-prison and alive. And if a woman wants to gets on the High Court, SHE HAS THE OPPURTUNITY. So now that women have opportunities you can get off your high horse. Old feminism can slowly fade away. And a new, truer form of feminism can be bred where equality is fought for, regardless of the gender.
Citizen Jane
This, folks, is even more gold when one knows who wrote it, and I now feel 100% justified in certain possibly-irrational choices I may have made recently :-D
But, to the issue at hand.
Dear Jane
I agree with you, Jane, about equality. In fact, I was discussing this issue with a Friend From Up The Road yesterday and he takes exactly the same position as you with regards to what modern feminism is about. The term feminism should apparently be scrapped (in the same way one might say the ALP should get as far away from 'Labor' as possible which some creative corporate re-branding, but I'll save that one for a rainy day... it's too lovely a day today to be angry...) in favour of 'equalism' or, in the alternative, we should just forget about the whole damn thing all together and just get on with our lives.
However, there's something about forgetting the past which I just cannot deal with. What happens when you forget the past is that you make the same mistakes over and over again. This is the same issue I have with indigenous issues and economic policy... everyone gets lulled into a false sense of security when things are 'fine' and all of a sudden, you're back 70 years. As long as you, Jane, promise me that on the road to equalism we don't forget that women have suffered with the raw deal for a very long time, I agree that we need to support everyone with warm-fuzzies.
But, here's my reply speech (especially since you don't like them...) on the other issues you raised, in chronological order.
Firstly, I'm not the media. I'm an over-excited twenty-something nerd who hates to piss off the few real-world friends she has and has thus taken to venting in kilobytes. Furthermore, I believe there has been some good research done on the fact blogging doesn't affect the mainstream media enough to have real impact on the information war, and with 8 hits a day I'm not part of the tiny number who may in fact do so.
Secondly, I feel that my harping on Janet Albrechtson's gender was justified. Someone said to me yesterday that if a man had written what she had written, it would have never been published. Why would anyone say that if what she wrote wasn't ridiculously offensive to women and the hard fight fought by crazed feminazis everywhere? Plus, she wrote it as a woman, she should be able to justify it as a woman, and so I am going to write about what she wrote as a woman.
Thirdly, would you like to re-read my post and tell me exactly how many times I moaned without discussing 'content'? I may get emotional sometimes, but I generally try to stick to the issues at hand when I criticise something, without resorting to blatantly making stuff up.
Fourthly, I'm glad you accept that there needed to be a cat-fight for women to "given the same opportunities and be just as, if not, more successful than their muscularly enhanced counterparts" and that "as a result of the pressure from such people that many women’s lives have improved":
This is great. Women have achieved so much. But the brutal facts remain. The vast majority of the world’s women still have very little power, at work, in their relationships at home, or in the wider world. As British social commentator Polly Toynbee noted, even in the Britain of 2004: ‘the battle is only half won.’
Worldwide, 70 per cent of those living in poverty are women, as are two-thirds of illiterate adults. One in four women is beaten by her husband or partner. Every day, 1,300 still die unnecessarily in childbirth or during pregnancy.
I do not believe feminists have "lost sight of what they were fighting for". It is only when we accept sub-par results do we lose sight of the fight.
Fifthly, if you're up for some websurfing: here are some more facts about women and our (cough) place in the world.
Sixthly, when I was talking about [deleted] choices, it was in the context of responding to Auntie Jan saying feminazis do not offer women 'real choices'. I was saying we have choices. Because of feminazis and what they fought for. Yes, hurrah, something to celebrate! Auntie Jan goes on and on about how Old Femmos whine despite the progress we've made and yet what does she do? Whine about something we could celebrate. Way to go!
Seventhly, I understand the point you are making about the status of men. I'm sure you feel very strongly about it. All I have to say to that is, then let's stop arguing about women and men and fix the education system which currently favours the rich over the poor and is on a steady march to increasing that divide.
Oops, did I suddenly switch from whinging about gender to whinging about class? Here's the thing with equality in this country right now: Everything and everyone is divided into competing factions because it appears that the elites seem to like it that way. They're happy propping up their friends to high places and ignoring those who can't increase their status. My apologies for the digression, but there is a link...
The thing is, exactly the same issue exists with women. Women have always have and, if we ignore it, always will face an uphill battle for equality. Probably because we have different bits down there to men. (I am going to ignore the thing you said about Auntie Jan's ego: la la la la la la imnotlisteningoriwillswearagain la la la la.) My Friend From Up The Road pointed out that the number is 30% because 20% of women are having children at all times. (Like how 69% of statistics are made up on the spot.) Well, if that is the case, I give up. I concede. Capitulate, even. Ok, we have the chance and opportunity to be on the High Court now, let's get the hell over it.
But 30% isn't equality yet. We need to support everyone, men, women, children, elderly, indigenous people, migrants, students, workers, heck, even wild tree frogs, but we still have to fight for equality, as the best way to provide that support. We still have to fight because the current status quo doesn't give a shit. That's all I was saying. That and Janet Albrechtsen is evil.
Thanks for taking the time to send me a response, and I hope to talk to you soon
Sunili
P.S. I know I'm not one to talk about spelling, but I've recently found that Copy-Paste to Word only takes a few seconds ;)
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