It's sad b/c it's true. I've been reading The Feminine Mystique and it's so odd to see such mentalities have been the norm (and unquestioned) in the 50s and the start of the 60s. Women would voluntarily avoid doing courses in college because they didn't want to become "brainy" which could inhibit their ability to gain a husband, get married and start having kids asap. Not all women, but most.
Also the one great quote was from a guy who said that he couldn't envision that by the year 2000 that women might be in the workplace in equal competition with men.
Women would voluntarily avoid doing courses in college because they didn't want to become "brainy" which could inhibit their ability to gain a husband, get married and start having kids asap.
I find that so completely foreign.
(I did avoid taking Intro to Combustion because apparently it's the kind of hard where it blows your mind open to Lovecraftian dimensions and then they never find your body.)
Tell me about it! I am trying SO HARD to get my mind around it, but I really can't. The notion that a woman is nothing more than her biology is just such a HORRID notion in my mind.
Intro to Combustion sounds fascinating. Was it an English/Writing course then, or was that just an analogy?
Heh, just an analogy. It's a very, very math-intensive course on the chemistry of combustion. I wasn't in fire protection engineering, so I didn't have to take it. I took non-parametric statistics that semester instead.
Tsk... if I were better in math would would probably be the only chemistry course to interest me. lol The pyro lab we had in university first year chem was by FAR the most enjoyable. I am quite curious how it works.
I like reaction chemistry (real gas dynamics was my favorite grad class), but not enough to take a course in it when I was also doing computational fluid dynamics. I enjoy "occasionally not doing computer-intensive iterative solutions" too much.
I would have loved grad studies. Stupid depression. I was ONE percent short of honours when I graduated (I was too stressed and fed up to continue; I needed a break). That's actually quite the accomplishment when you consider I failed exactly half my courses the year it snuck up and attacked me. Even moreso since I was working 20-30 hours each week throughout university.
It's not that I don't have the intellectual capacity, I was just overwhelmed. I'm not staying at this point, but I'm doing some soulsearching this time to figure out the best course of action from here.
Yeah, I bailed a few credits short of my grad degree for mental health reasons. Crippling anxiety, in my case. I might be able to challenge the department (adviser and dept. head are on my side) and get them to award it, but the thought of doing so literally gives me panic attacks. So fuck it. Maybe in a couple years, before my credits expire.
I had contacted a university to find out what it would theoretically take to upgrade my degree to an honours so I could do a thesis and get a proper 4 year degree. I never got a reply. I'm thinking maybe I should try again, and contact other uni's in the city as well. If it would be easier to get a 1 year B.Ed than to upgrade, and if I can go into an MA program with that, I think I'd rather go that route. I'm unemployed so it's not as though I have a job to conflict with getting a student loan.
I would have loved grad studies. Stupid depression. I was ONE percent short of honours when I graduated (I was too stressed and fed up to continue; I needed a break). That's actually quite the accomplishment when you consider I failed exactly half my courses the year it snuck up and attacked me (i.e., my second year or third year). Even moreso since I was working 20-30 hours each week throughout university.
It's not that I don't have the intellectual capacity, I was just overwhelmed. I'm not staying at this point, but I'm doing some soulsearching this time to figure out the best course of action from here.
Ergh...The Feminine Mystique is problematic because it mainly represents the perspective of white, middle-class, heterosexual women.
For women of color, queer women, and women of lower socioeconomic status, Ms. Friedan's theories were just as strange and foreign to them as they are to you.
The overarching message you see in the book is that it's more about the society and research which was giving the message through research and popular media that the role of women is based solely upon their ability to reproduce. Even when they were starting to see outside of that perspective, there was still a tendency for professionals to almost rationalise why women would be happier learning less and being the happy housewife.
The original start of the women's movement began through the anti-slavery movement. Two women had travelled to one state for a convention, only to find out they were not able to enter or attend because they were women. That became the insight into how they were not equal either, and moved towards suffrage. There were black women just as interested in the women's movement, especially in the suffrage movement.
The Feminine Mystique that Friedan explained could have been an issue mostly with a group of women, but her research was initiated by a survey she did of women at her former college. She was shocked to see women wanting to go back to being only housewives, not like her generation which sought education and careers.
It comes down more that the white males who were running the nation were attemtping to dictate to every other demographic how they should (or not) go about things. It was all socialisation. However some of the perspectives held back then you can still see today resonating at a lower frequency (the notion that men and women are intrinsically different, and not just physiologically).
Right, and I'm saying that since not every woman had the option of being just a happy housewife (women of color, poor women, queer women), Betty Friedan's book is talking only to a very specific subpopulation of women.
I know there were black women who were part of the suffrage movement and of second wave feminism. However, perhaps you didn't know that the suffragettes originally didn't want the vote for black women. Their opinion was it would be easier to get the bill passed if they excluded women of color.
Black women had similar critiques of second wave feminism for defining the concerns of all women by what most concerned white, heterosexual, middle class women.
The fact that Friedan conducted her research at her former college at a time when most colleges weren't admitting black women should tell you something about the possible biases in her theories.
You can still find value in the book, of course, I'm just reminding you that Friedan was in no way, shape, or form writing a book about an experience representative of all American women.
You can still find value in the book, of course, I'm just reminding you that Friedan was in no way, shape, or form writing a book about an experience representative of all American women.
Oh totally. There have been tonnes of critiques of the book ever since its publication.
I know there were black women who were part of the suffrage movement and of second wave feminism. However, perhaps you didn't know that the suffragettes originally didn't want the vote for black women. Their opinion was it would be easier to get the bill passed if they excluded women of color.
This I had not known. It doesn't particularly surprise me, given the time.
My knowledge of the women's movement is very vague and this book is the first where I'm intentionally learning more about the subject. The only reason this is my starting point is that I had to do presentation (brief) about the book in high school in English (it was a lesson in researching topics on the Internet, not in-depth). Later in life I found the book in a used book store so I picked it up. More recently I decided to investigate the womens' movements and since I already own this book... it was as good a place as any to begin.
The Victorian/white/middle-class bias was what falsified many of Freud's theories. His ideas just do not work when you look outside that realm.
Friedan is a good starting point, and I certainly don't want to discourage you. :-)
If you ever find yourself interested in the black feminist movement or the responses of black women to mainstream feminism, Patricia Hill Collins wrote the seminal piece, Black Feminist Thought. It's a really great book.
I don't know why stuff like this is so hilarious to me, probably because it's so obviously misguided that it can't help but be funny.
Of course, I've also claimed to share many feminist ideals and be a misanthrope in the same breath. I then tried to argue that they aren't actually mutually exclusive with an angry feminist who had been drinking while at a club.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 06:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 06:15 pm (UTC)And... don't get the clam chowder.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 07:31 pm (UTC)Also the one great quote was from a guy who said that he couldn't envision that by the year 2000 that women might be in the workplace in equal competition with men.
My how times change.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:03 pm (UTC)I find that so completely foreign.
(I did avoid taking Intro to Combustion because apparently it's the kind of hard where it blows your mind open to Lovecraftian dimensions and then they never find your body.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:29 pm (UTC)Tell me about it! I am trying SO HARD to get my mind around it, but I really can't. The notion that a woman is nothing more than her biology is just such a HORRID notion in my mind.
Intro to Combustion sounds fascinating. Was it an English/Writing course then, or was that just an analogy?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 09:06 pm (UTC)It's not that I don't have the intellectual capacity, I was just overwhelmed. I'm not staying at this point, but I'm doing some soulsearching this time to figure out the best course of action from here.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 09:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 09:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 09:08 pm (UTC)It's not that I don't have the intellectual capacity, I was just overwhelmed. I'm not staying at this point, but I'm doing some soulsearching this time to figure out the best course of action from here.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:04 am (UTC)For women of color, queer women, and women of lower socioeconomic status, Ms. Friedan's theories were just as strange and foreign to them as they are to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 05:10 pm (UTC)The original start of the women's movement began through the anti-slavery movement. Two women had travelled to one state for a convention, only to find out they were not able to enter or attend because they were women. That became the insight into how they were not equal either, and moved towards suffrage. There were black women just as interested in the women's movement, especially in the suffrage movement.
The Feminine Mystique that Friedan explained could have been an issue mostly with a group of women, but her research was initiated by a survey she did of women at her former college. She was shocked to see women wanting to go back to being only housewives, not like her generation which sought education and careers.
It comes down more that the white males who were running the nation were attemtping to dictate to every other demographic how they should (or not) go about things. It was all socialisation. However some of the perspectives held back then you can still see today resonating at a lower frequency (the notion that men and women are intrinsically different, and not just physiologically).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:12 pm (UTC)I know there were black women who were part of the suffrage movement and of second wave feminism. However, perhaps you didn't know that the suffragettes originally didn't want the vote for black women. Their opinion was it would be easier to get the bill passed if they excluded women of color.
Black women had similar critiques of second wave feminism for defining the concerns of all women by what most concerned white, heterosexual, middle class women.
The fact that Friedan conducted her research at her former college at a time when most colleges weren't admitting black women should tell you something about the possible biases in her theories.
You can still find value in the book, of course, I'm just reminding you that Friedan was in no way, shape, or form writing a book about an experience representative of all American women.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:24 pm (UTC)Oh totally. There have been tonnes of critiques of the book ever since its publication.
I know there were black women who were part of the suffrage movement and of second wave feminism. However, perhaps you didn't know that the suffragettes originally didn't want the vote for black women. Their opinion was it would be easier to get the bill passed if they excluded women of color.
This I had not known. It doesn't particularly surprise me, given the time.
My knowledge of the women's movement is very vague and this book is the first where I'm intentionally learning more about the subject. The only reason this is my starting point is that I had to do presentation (brief) about the book in high school in English (it was a lesson in researching topics on the Internet, not in-depth). Later in life I found the book in a used book store so I picked it up. More recently I decided to investigate the womens' movements and since I already own this book... it was as good a place as any to begin.
The Victorian/white/middle-class bias was what falsified many of Freud's theories. His ideas just do not work when you look outside that realm.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:26 pm (UTC)If you ever find yourself interested in the black feminist movement or the responses of black women to mainstream feminism, Patricia Hill Collins wrote the seminal piece, Black Feminist Thought. It's a really great book.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-12 08:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 12:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-13 07:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-14 12:16 am (UTC)Of course, I've also claimed to share many feminist ideals and be a misanthrope in the same breath. I then tried to argue that they aren't actually mutually exclusive with an angry feminist who had been drinking while at a club.
Not one of my better ideas.