Feminists Face Tough Times After Election

[Greylyn58]

Well as if I and other Liberal women didn't already know this...


NEW YORK - America's feminist leaders and their critics agree on at least one current political fact: These are daunting times for the women's movement as it braces for another term of an administration it desperately wanted to topple.

"The next four years are going to be tough, so we must be tougher," National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy recently told supporters. "Our health, our rights, and our democracy are teetering on the brink."

NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation and numerous like-minded groups campaigned zealously against President Bush, contending that his economic agenda would inflict disproportionate harm on women and that his potential judicial appointments could jeopardize abortion rights.

snip...

Many of the conservative activists and organizations that cheered the GOP triumph - and now claim expanded influence in Washington - are stridently anti-feminist. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, for example, recently referred to NOW as "The National Order of Witches"


God! Why do these old men hate "MY" freedom? I and other Progressive/Liberal women must really threaten them some how.

:grr: :argh:

LINK to article: start.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20050109/41e0ba50_3ca6_15526200501091253722805

[Warpy]

1. They want control. They just don't remember how they got it

back in the 1940s-1960s.

I've talked with a lot of men who consider themselves prochoice, but who want to control the process and give or withhold permission. I've talked to men who say they believe in equal pay for equivalent work, as long as the wife makes less.

What we've had is women making progress and men staying the same, resenting every bit of housework any of them do because the wife is out earning a living.

This is why they're threatened. They've lost the ideal of the man conquering the world while the wife remains home, alone and powerless, a personal unpaid domestic servant. I mean, who wouldn't want that? Powerless people won't leave you and you can make them do whatever you want, right?

Of course the problem is that they could still achieve this ideal with a willing partner if WAGES had kept pace with inflation. But they'll never make that connection, will they? They'd rather pass stupid, restrictive laws.

[izzybeans]

2. I think this is true to a large extent but...

as a male I wonder if there are more of us out there who really never thought about the world like that. Whose mothers made more than our fathers and whose fathers didn't mind that thier wives were conquering the world. I think now its a matter of who writes the laws not being just male but being something else, like republican and male or even republican and female. There's nothing like a "W stands for Women" sign to make your laugh muscles get sore out on the campaing trail.

[Hippo_Tron]

3. Funny, I don't think I would marry a woman who doesn't intend on working

And hell if she made more money than me, that would be perfectly fine.

[izzybeans]

4. GPAC dissappointed:

relatedly, I just recieved this bit of info. from a friend.

http://www.gpac.org/archive/news/notitle.html?cmd=view&archive=news&msgnum=0579

GPAC Disappointed: Makeup Can Be Required of Women
Date: 4-Jan-2005

~ Appeal Denied in Jesperson v. Harrahs Sex Stereotyping Case ~

WASHINGTON (January 4, 2005) The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GenderPAC) today denounced a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holding that a female employee fired for refusing to wear makeup cannot sue her employer for sex discrimination.

<snip>

Darlene Jespersen – an exemplary employee for two decades – was fired when she objected that the new standards "forced her to be feminine" and made her feel "dolled up" like a sex object.