On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, Martha Bartter wrote:
[snip]
> If we assume that a female utopia achieves gender equality in jobs and
> pay and respect and opportunity and general honor, then we must assume
> a utopia where motherhood (which is the woman's privilege) gets honored
> -- whether it's paid or not.
Really, motherhood is the woman's privilege? I will assume that
you mean something more than just biological motherhood. Would you say
that motherhood is also the woman's responsibility? Or, is it your
opinion that women ought to have complete rights with respect to parenting
and share the responsibility. I would like to suggest that that position
is quite possibly very sexist.
I would think that a society that really did honor parenting (I
puposefully changed the wording) would probably restrict it to those best
suited to it (like in herland) (of all sexes available).
I would like to go on record here as having the opinion that women can
take all the roles that men can and vice versa. In my opinion, women
can be mathematicians, politicains, fathers, soldiers, sexist pigs, and
rapists, just as men can be poets, feminists, mothers, pacificts,
housewizes, and victims. We are all people. That overrides everything
else.
I will let no one, female, male, or other prevent me from raising
children, cooking, sewing, knitting, reading what I want, to, playing with
dolls, epsousing feminism, and so on, on the basis of my being male. When
I even consider the possibility that I might be so restricted, my heart
speeds up, I start breathing heavily, and my chest and throat constrict
with agitation.
Such activities have not been "honored" in the past. However, some of
us rail at all restrictions and dividing distinctions.
>... So we can't call the US any kind of female
> utopia, no matter how much better things are for women than they were a
> few dozen years ago. If we insist that a female utopia allows women to
> treat men the way men have treated women for so long, we envision a
> reversal -- different in kind, but not in character -- from Le Guin's
> The Dispossessed.
A female utopia? I personally am more interested in feminist utopias.
And yes, I do think that there is a very large difference. Reverse sexism
and I'll be fighting against it still, just as I hope many female
feminists would. It certainly doesn't hurt to consider societies based on
such reversals, and I even find doing so enjoyable, but I really don't
consider them to be utopian. I consider them to be either dystopian or
"ambiguous." Societies based on different sexes altogether like
_A_Door_Into_Ocean_ or _Herland_ are different however, because in such
societies there is no group being discriminated against.
Anyway, that's how I feel,
-- Joel
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