Oh please oh please oh please...can I serve you some more, you ungrateful bastards?
*People often rush up to me on the street and beg me to solve their lifes problems.
I'm a **famous blogger. My name, is 'knifey'.
Recently, instead of staying up all night researching topics, and feeling tired and trigger happy when I go to work the next day, I decided to do a series of thoughts... things that occur to me when I should be doing other things, and note them here. Maybe they can grow up to be big blogs in future, or maybe just something to think about.
I was ruminating on the feminist movement, and all of the finger pointing that has often accompanied it. Of course men get blamed a lot, and that's because they did it.
But in just the same way as women allowed themselves to be dominated over by a patriarchal husband-figure (to a degree) by convention and societal expectations of the time, so too, were men playing a part.
As wrong as it is, if you grow up with a nigger breaking his back in the paddock for your parents, not only are you probably going to think "Well, that's the way it is", but also wonder where you're going to get a nigger of your own when you buy a farm as well. I use that word on purpose, because if you're shocked by it, you're on the right path.
So in the case of the 1950's nuclear family, I think that men were just trying to be men in the main, obeying their parents conventions, societies expectation, and womens desire to be loved by men. But also, religions demand for maintenance of the status quo. Religion used to play a much larger role in society and family than it does today- even families that didn't really believe in the whole God thing would go to Church on a Sunday, because it was expected.
Men grew up with a woman in the kitchen, so why would it occur to them to change that? Change wasn't big in the 50's. And I know it causes outrage to think that Dad comes home after work, and gets served by a woman who spent all day cleaning the house, looking after the children, and trying to keep her makeup perfect; but in the minds of men, they were paying the mortgage, car payments, and putting food on the table, so why not? Besides, Mum did it too.
Clueless idiots? Sure! Evil overlords? Maybe not so much...
So apart from the higher-ups that thought up the systems the rest of society lived by, I think mens main crime was a crime of ignorance.
I know as much as it was frowned upon to divorce back then, men also suffered their whole lives under societies expectation... trapped in marriages they maybe never wanted in the first place. Society says: "Think of the children" (which religion says it is your job to create, and to do so within wedlock, and blah blah blah...)
So I put it to you that men were controlled too, and while I in no way seek to belittle the suffrage movement or feminism, I think there is a dimension there that is worthy of consideration.
Just a thought...
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
*Not true.
**I wish.
I'm a **famous blogger. My name, is 'knifey'.
Recently, instead of staying up all night researching topics, and feeling tired and trigger happy when I go to work the next day, I decided to do a series of thoughts... things that occur to me when I should be doing other things, and note them here. Maybe they can grow up to be big blogs in future, or maybe just something to think about.
I was ruminating on the feminist movement, and all of the finger pointing that has often accompanied it. Of course men get blamed a lot, and that's because they did it.
But in just the same way as women allowed themselves to be dominated over by a patriarchal husband-figure (to a degree) by convention and societal expectations of the time, so too, were men playing a part.
As wrong as it is, if you grow up with a nigger breaking his back in the paddock for your parents, not only are you probably going to think "Well, that's the way it is", but also wonder where you're going to get a nigger of your own when you buy a farm as well. I use that word on purpose, because if you're shocked by it, you're on the right path.
So in the case of the 1950's nuclear family, I think that men were just trying to be men in the main, obeying their parents conventions, societies expectation, and womens desire to be loved by men. But also, religions demand for maintenance of the status quo. Religion used to play a much larger role in society and family than it does today- even families that didn't really believe in the whole God thing would go to Church on a Sunday, because it was expected.
Men grew up with a woman in the kitchen, so why would it occur to them to change that? Change wasn't big in the 50's. And I know it causes outrage to think that Dad comes home after work, and gets served by a woman who spent all day cleaning the house, looking after the children, and trying to keep her makeup perfect; but in the minds of men, they were paying the mortgage, car payments, and putting food on the table, so why not? Besides, Mum did it too.
Clueless idiots? Sure! Evil overlords? Maybe not so much...
So apart from the higher-ups that thought up the systems the rest of society lived by, I think mens main crime was a crime of ignorance.
I know as much as it was frowned upon to divorce back then, men also suffered their whole lives under societies expectation... trapped in marriages they maybe never wanted in the first place. Society says: "Think of the children" (which religion says it is your job to create, and to do so within wedlock, and blah blah blah...)
So I put it to you that men were controlled too, and while I in no way seek to belittle the suffrage movement or feminism, I think there is a dimension there that is worthy of consideration.
Just a thought...
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
*Not true.
**I wish.
3 comments:
I'm female and I'm right with you. We all suffer under expectataion, male or female.
And on the feminist movement: I have a problem these days with the femnist movement....it's allowing women to blame men and take no responsibility for our own actions. I thought feminism was all about looking after ourselves.
Feminism is about a woman's right to choose and to have options to choose from. It's about basic human rights and social justice, equal opportunity, not equality. And yes, under all hegemonic constructions there are those who are aware of the structure and condone it, those who are unaware of it, and those who are aware of it and fight it. No matter whether it's gender stereotyping or fascism or fashion. But if you can see it, and you don't like it, don't use the Nuremberg defence. IMO.
Yeah, that's what I was hoping for- I want to be educated, not just write blogs as if they're gospel. So I feel illuminated by opinions like that. I'm not one to use the Nuremburg Defence personally, but I can see conditions where others might (right or wrong). I would put forward that it is society that raises us in effect, to think in certain ways, and that it takes a very illuminated personality to realise that what is expected, may not be right. And I believe this society I'm in still has a very long way to go, with many illuminations to come.
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