How We Got Somewhere Else – Very Briefly

Just briefly, re: your last question, my women’s history lecturer made quite a point about how their was a swing in academic circles away from women’s history (which she still taught) to “gender studies”.

“But oddly, unlike the civil rights struggle more generally, ‘feminism’ didn’t get to win any victories. It has remained, in the cultural consciousness, this rather alien thing one doesn’t necessarily want to associate with.”

Title Nine girl here. One of three sisters raised by a single parent – my father – in the 1970s. So really, the idea that ‘feminism’ didn’t win any victories is ignorant. YOU may not want to associate with it; the label “feminist” has receded like that of “negro” – but feminism won major victories.

Take a look around – you’ll see things you didn’t much see in the 1950s – women in sports; women in the business world; women in academia (though perhaps not on panels at Yale.)

Have we reached the top of the mountain? Hell no. And is there pushback? Hell yes. My mother grew up in a time when her options were teaching and wife. When she got married, she HAD to quit her job – that was the company line. That’s simply not the reality today. Now do women choose to quit to take care of children? Should men do more with children and chores? Yes…. We’ve not yet found a balance between Jack Welch and Betty Friedan.

Some books:
Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich
Lean in, by Sheryl Sandberg
Backlash, by Faludi
Anything by Jane Austen
Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
The “Imagination & Community” essay in Marilynne Robinson’s “When I was young, I read books”

The whole episode is one of my historical markers for questioning how much attention is optimally paid to “dialogue-changing” movements that see changing narratives and common speech as important. My issue isn’t with that concept – certainly changing the discussion is vitally important. However, if that attention comes at the cost of not doing other traditional things to alter what’s happening, then the “tone changing” efforts will simply run into the same old tone-deaf institutional barriers as ever before.

Clearly it is possible to get a bunch of friendly folks on your side, and you can all run around stating the same thing. Double-speak doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem – rather it’s the problem that everybody feels happy here but the spread of ideas from that group out to making broader change in society is insulated, either because the group itself is insulated, or because the groups that need to be reached are insulated from the new narrative.

Re that sentence on Gloria Steinem visiting a Republican women’s club in Schenectady. You know who was one of the original Senate supporters of the ERA? Strom Thurmond. You know what Phyllis Schlafly said about it? That it was somewhere between “innocuous and mildly helpful.”

“Republicans all want it to be the case that their party was always, already, the party of Civil Rights. And Democrats were all bad racists, opposed to that. By contrast, you don’t hear a lot of Republicans say “of course I’m a staunch feminist, but …” ”

Although, afaict, inauguration day isnt exactely a swaying mass of raised fists and cries of black power.
They dont explicitly say they want to take away African Americans right to vote or resegregate the country, but so what?

No TV network of any kind or ideology would dream of showing the little-girl-cooks-rice-for-her-father commercial that features in the Sheehy excerpt. That fact, standing alone, says a fair amt about how much has changed in U.S. society since 1970, thanks in part to the feminist movement. Was it completely victorious? No, definitely not. But it accomplished a lot in a relatively short time. Contra Ed Herdman @5, changing “narratives and common speech” is important, but that’s not all that changed.

I might respectfully suggest that Holbo, if he hasn’t, read a good narrative history of the U.S. in the past half-century, of which I’m sure there are several excellent ones available. It would seem to me helpful to place the history of U.S. conservatism, feminism etc in the broader context.

I have this picture of post-W.W. II politics as a series of conservative moments, or conservative moments waiting to happen.
Yes. That’s the problem. That is a distorted view of post-WWII politics in the U.S.

My reading is that you’re arguing neither party want to be seen as the party of racism, (and by extension want to be seen as the party of Civil Rights?) .. but Id add that neither party *wants* to be seen as the party of misogyny (although I might be wrong on that – as a non American) and neither wants to be *seen* as disenfranchising women, so Im not sure what the difference is.
If it’s only rhetorical, (they wont associate with the word feminist) then the Reps (from what I can tell) dont really associate, in any meaningful way, with the rhetoric of African American emancipation. Apart from ertain aspets of the Civil Rights movement. Which is a no brainer
If you see what I mean

More seriously, if you (John H., not godoggo) were arguing that Republicans turned against feminism and it suits the Republican party to frame that as a culture-wide backlash, when it’s only the wish of Republicans not to be seen as troglodytic (with maybe some liberal Democratic loss of nerve), that would be interesting.

Recent finished Feminism in Modern Japan by Vera Mackie, which is a history of the movement since Meiji. Got Desiring Revolution by Jane Gerhard lined up, with a Gayle Rubin reader, Zillah Eisenstein 1979, Nancy Fraser Fortunes of Feminism, Convergence:Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy, some Haraway, some Malabou…oh never mind, you’re reading Frum.

French students didn’t take over the gov’t, Japan continued to be a base for American Imperialism, pot didn’t get legalized, integrated schools didn’t work out so well. Whole lots of stuff paused and regrouped after 1968 and the French have been looking at that hard ever since. I do not think it was entirely backlash or repression, something happened internally to the Left. Maybe we scared ourselves.

But it isn’t as if it hasn’t been studied in fifty years, and feminism ain’t such a special case of whatever whyever went down.

I think that’s sort of the point. As a white female lawyer whose husband does probably better than 50% of the housework, the feminist movement made a huge difference in the life I’ve actually had as opposed to the life my mother had. And lousy as plenty of politicians are on women’s issues, no one’s seriously trying to roll that back. But somehow “feminism”, despite all the real concrete victories, doesn’t get broadly recognized as what brought us from the benighted past to the tolerable present.

The “civil rights movement” on the other hand, gets recognized as a sacred fetish object even by the people trying hardest to roll it back. It’s a peculiar difference, and it’s hard to figure out exactly what it means.

Then it [feminism/women’s lib] just … went away. Poof.

This is wrong. It didn’t go away. In some parts of the culture it’s the norm. Hence, to take one small example, the concern on CT about gender balance in contributors to the book symposia, or CR’s post about the one-day Yale conference w no women participants. Or the concern, to take a bigger example, about trying to make sure that faculties increase their percentage of tenured women (as they should).

I don’t know exactly what blogs Holbo reads, but reading a post like this I begin to wonder if he reads CT…

I’d say that the Republicans want it to be the case that misogyny was always already not a problem. And, anyway, we solved it without any help from feminism.

I think there’s a strand of thought that says what we have now is, and always was, common sense. Everybody knew it, so they didn’t need feminism. But there was a little group of holdouts who had to be shown to be ridiculous, or something, and their political power reduced. And once that happened, no one needed feminism anymore. . . . Except people who wanted to go against (supposed, as they supposed) common sense.

There are other strands of thought, of course. There’s the idea that it wasn’t common sense at all but had to be fought for; and won victories not because everybody already agreed with all of it, but because large enough, sometimes disjoint subgroups already agreed with parts of it. There’s the idea that there’s a female way of thinking and a male way, and right now they’re out of balance and the female needs to be more prominent. There are others. The one I described first isn’t really the most common, among feminists, I believe.

But it’s not the norm under the name ‘feminism’. Even though it’s feminism. Do you see the distinction?

Yes. But I’m not sure the word is in as much disrepute as you suggest. But as I just said, what do I know? I cd be totally wrong about this.

Actually, didn’t the whole gay rights thing go through exactly that same phenomenon? In the ’70s all the cool kids were claiming to be gay (or at least bi), from Mick Jagger, to David Bowie, to Elton John. Bisexual chic was on the cover of Newsweek in 1974. Disco even had a brief moment of mainstream popularity!

But then 1980 happened, and it was Reagan and AIDS, and everyone went back into the closet for two decades. (Well, obviously, not *everyone*.)

And I think there was a similar moment in the 1920’s as well (memorialized in “Cabaret”).

John,
Obviously I’m missing something, because I took your point in @29 to be that people who are working hard to get gender balance at conferences don’t tend to call themselves feminists. I found that puzzling, and perhaps a little feverishly thought that’s what you were saying. But that can’t be right–are the women who post at the Feminist Philosophers blog not feminists? So I guess I’m just puzzled.

If you were just saying that of course everybody agrees that conferences ought to be gender-balanced, even if they’re not in favor themselves of feminism, I guess that makes sense.

… and my math puts 1957 BEFORE 1970!

What an interesting turn of events, LFC! You have a difference of opinion with John H., I ask him for clarification from farther on his side than he is, and finally you explain how he was explaining my own position to me. That’s never happened to me! (Not since I changed my name, to be sure . . .)

I find JH’s post interesting but will also say I find it a bit hard to understand. So, to state up front what I’m understanding – I’m reading two main points/questions:
1. Where did feminism come from and where did it’s incredibly powerful movement go?
2. Why do so few people identify as feminist, even when holding positions that would be considered feminist in, say 1970

Re: 1.) I see three main forces at work.
a) increasing labor force participation of women during WWII and its after-effects
b) more and more women with College education
c) participation of many women in other 60s activism – i.e. they’re already politicized & know how to organize – and their encounter with the blatant sexism in the movement.

a) and c) together do quite a lot to explain the timing of its arrival.
The fade, I would guess, has a lot to do with the fact that there _are_ in fact a ton more opportunities for women now. That doesn’t just reduce the anger that drives activists, it also channels protest into more typical institutionalized frameworks (NOW, Emily’s List, NARAL, gender/women’s studies departments etc.). And these aren’t necessarily unsuccessful. Yes, abortion rights are in terrible shape, but other areas of women’s rights and power are still gradually – if too slowly – improving (political representation, representation in management, higher education, awareness of and policies to address sexual harassment).

Re 2.) Isn’t Civil Rights the outlier here? Environmentalism also seems to me to have a pretty bad name (I doubt there are more self-identified environmentalist than feminists, and “tree-hugger” and “bra-burner” work pretty much on the same level).

From JH’s update to the post:
when I read about leftist student movements in the 60’s, or the New Left, or Women’s Lib, I have this very strong sense that this was just an asteroid strike. Where did this suddenly come from? I don’t really get it. The effects make sense, given the cause. But damned if I can get a grip on the cause itself.

If, per I. Wallerstein for example, one views 1968 as a worldwide revolutionary upheaval similar to 1848, then from one perspective it’s going to seem like an asteroid strike, b/c that’s how revolutions look from one angle. I do think it’s possible to identify causes, but I can see where the asteroid-strike impression comes from.

Socialist feminism went the same way as socialism
Separatist Feminism separated.
Eco-feminism went Green.
And liberal Feminism went neo-liberal.

Like a lot of others here, I lived through this; unlike many, I’ve never read systematically on the cultural history of the last half-century in America. But here I go, nevertheless.

To me the central thesis is clear and correct enough: feminism came along and won many battles, but the name “feminism” itself was widely discredited. (I’ve even taught gender classes – not in the USA – where students were asked to write a page on “Why I Am (or Am Not) a Feminist” and got about half the class saying “Not,” even though pretty much all would have been feminist by most external criteria.) Why did this happen? In large part because there was a backlash – there always his – and the reactionaries successfully tarred “feminism” with the brush of its most radical elements: bra-burners, manhaters, etc.

In almost the same era, there was a civil rights movement that had similar – i.e., mixed – success, but without the same discrediting of the term itself. Why? The same effort by the reactionaries to describe all the activists as unacceptably radical took place, but it didn’t stick. No matter how often they called MLK and his cohorts “Reds” – and heaven knows J. Edgar Hoover and the redneck right tried! – the label just didn’t stick, and the American public differentiated between “civil rights” (good) and the Black Panthers and others of that ilk (bad). This, it seems to me, is more the paradox than the rollback of “feminism” as a label. The reactionary attempt at re-labeling we have always had with us, and always will; and in general it will be well financed and resilient. Look at how successfully they have blackened the term “liberal,” once owned with honor by many American politicians and intellectuals!

So is the difference in this case as simple as the martyrdom of Martin Luther King? Had he lived, and been continuously, over decades, vilified for both his character (womanizer! plagiarist!) and his politics (Marxist!), would the civil rights movement, as embodied by him, have been reduced in rhetoric to the same sad level as “feminist” and “liberal”? We can only wonder

[Haven’t read all the comments, so apologies if this point’s already been made:]

I think the contrast between civil rights and feminism (or between ‘feminism’ and ‘civil rights’ is shallower than you’re making it out to be.) What you get with civil rights is the hollow embrace of the term ‘civil rights’ and of a horribly sanitized version of King. Of course, we want black people and minorities to be equal! Just don’t expect us to enact any policies that might, you know, help bring this about. Similarly: Of course we want women to be equal to men in society, we want them to be ‘leaders’!, and famous athletes, etc., but you, don’t actually expect us to let them control their own bodies or lives.

What I’m saying is, as far as I can tell, the contrast is simply that the term ‘feminism’ didn’t get claimed and perverted by the reactionaries. Which, in one way, shame; in another, thank fucking god! But not convinced that it’s an important contrast.

Republicans are suffering from massive cognitive dissonance.

I’m pretty happy with a cognitive dissonance thesis in a lot of areas, but here I’d go with a massive dose of cynicism. And I’d adduce Belle Waring’s post about what conservative white people say to each other when they’re around each other as some kinda support (from a couple of months back, that BW post).

Obviously, should’ve read the whole thread before commenting. Anyway:

1. Still inclined to agree with Ronan way up above, which is the line I was essentially pushing in my first comment (currently @55).

2. #25 is really helpful; had no idea that’s what you were trying to get across. LizardBreath’s point is right and good (@21), but—very obliquely—I’d say that at least a part of it is that it’s a very different mode of oppression. Here’s a fairly obscure way to get at it: no one would respond to a charge of sexism by saying, “But one of my best friends is a woman!” (Much better to start talking about the Savannah!)

Or, I think five toes sloth is quite right in a way (as also rw @52), but I’d deemphasize the martyrdom stuff (again). There’a an Act, after all. It’s done with, easy to claim. And in a way, no one continued calling themselves civil rights activists—or better, no one kept being identified primarily as such—after the major legislative victories of the 60’s. Insofar as ‘feminism’ was a going concern, the backlash was against it, vs. some new thing (like ‘affirmative action’, which could obviously be seen as a continuation of ‘civil rights’). All by way of saying, still think the contrast is more superficial than not.

The problem with “feminism” is that the left changed its meaning, too. For example, I support a first-strike nuclear deterrent, genetically modified food, and charter schools. So, knowing only those things about me, is it possible that I’m a feminist?

Feminism was a movement for equal rights, and it had succeeded. In general, IMHO, in the area of identity politics the Democrats are the crazy party, which, for the most part, explains Republican electoral endurance.

Men and women are so profoundly different that it’s impossible to detect gender in a written statement. It’s a sort of Turing test whose outcome has been understood for decades if not centuries. The wiring of their brains is so much at variance that their output is … so nearly the same that we can’t tell them apart. Aristotle is an unreliable guide in this regard; he also thought women had fewer teeth than men.

I think it has something to do with the vast expression of threatened masculinity which seems to be such a huge part of the reactionary movement of our times, but it’s hard to draw a cause-and-effect connection. The venom directed at any woman who dares to call herself a feminist is astonishing, and this may be part of the story.

@68 But you can’t ‘fix’ racism and sexism (or any other identity-based stereotype people might harbor) to your satisfaction. You can only make the discrimination in the public sphere illegal and enforce the law, case by case. If the result doesn’t look like your expectations, it is easy and tempting to blame devious covert racists and sexists, but perhaps there’s something else, some other factors at work. Or perhaps, at least in some cases, you just need to wait a little longer, until the changes ripple out. It might take a few generations.

It is indeed strange that “feminism” as a word still has a bad reputation among many people, while the movement itself made significant gains.

Theory 1: This could be similar to the effect you see where some Republicans are against the Federal government on general principle, but are in favour of specific government programmes. (i.e. serious disconnect between the abstract political rhetoric, whether it be against “feminism” or “the government”, and practical action).

Theory 2: “Feminism” was a pretty diverse movement, with some parts of it making much more radical demands than others. It’s possible it was that the less radical part that made gains, while the label “feminism” got attached to the more radical part.

As a semi-objective definition of what constitutes a radical demand: one that requires people to make a significant change to accomodate it. Thus, abolition of slavery was a radical demand for the Confederate states, as the rich landowners would be seriously affected by loosing their slaves. Single-sex marriage, on the other hand, can be seen as not a radical demand, as it barely affects anyone who doesn’t want to get gay married.

P.S. While sexism definitely still exists in academia, it appears to be strongly correlated with older people who will retire soon. So one might hope for some further gains due to natural replacement (cf. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

This might be naive, but to me the obvious difference between the civil rights movement and feminism is that civil rights is easily framed as a universal concern, and feminism isn’t quite so. It’s easy to say that everyone should have civil rights, that this is an important and essential part of equality before the law and so forth, but it’s much harder to explain why feminism isn’t basically just a sectional interest of the kind that must (from an ethical standpoint) be listened to roughly in proportion to the extent that the section of society it represents is suffering from genuine injustice, but no more than that. In other words, a centrist can believe that feminists have legitimate grievances that should be addressed without believing that feminism as a fundamental world-view is a good thing, and civil rights really does not present the same difficulty.

The idea here is, I think, that feminism is ultimately about female supremacy, in the same sense that socialism is about the dictatorship of the proletariat. This suggests that there’s such a thing as “too much” feminism, and that a centrist’s willingness to lend support to feminism decreases as more feminist goals are achieved, to avoid the risk of some kind of “overshoot”. This would explain why, if feminism achieved a lot in a short space of time, the withdrawal of support for further feminism from centrists would also appear to occur quite suddenly.

Another way of stating this would be to say that we might imagine one day achieving total gender equality, at which point “feminism” would no longer be needed; it could be said that the goal of feminism is its own obsolescence. The same cannot really be said of civil rights, though at this point we’re not really comparing apples with apples. One might imagine that some centrists would fear that if feminists were granted their every wish, actual living leaders of feminism might not be willing to accept their obsolescence and would wish to continue exerting influence for its own sake, beyond the point where they start doing more harm than good. I’m not sure anyone would ever actually state it like that, but as a model I think it does have some explanatory power for some people’s intuitions in dealing with radical political movements.

This isn’t really my own view – I’m broadly of the view that feminism is a good thing for men as well as women and “too much feminism” is sort-of like “too much justice”, but I can also imagine a kind of “bad feminism”, say the transphobia of the rad-fems, whereas I struggle to imagine what “bad civil rights” would look like.

(on submission, I agree with SusanC, Rob and Roman(rf) above)

70-73 are finally getting somewhere.

It’s their club, and they get to decide if I am a feminist. If the criterion is the prioritizing of the dis-establishment of the white male canon, Miley Cyrus and Jonathan Franzen and the seating arrangements at academic conferences and the number of women partners at white shoe law firms rather than young girls throwing themselves out of factory windows, int’l human sex trafficking, and universal day care I am actually pretty happy to move the latter set of issues into the economic sphere and call them goals of socialism rather than feminism. Their personal doesn’t have to be my political.

But it was always likely to be thus in neoliberal America. Trickle-down social justice was always available to justify some women becoming more liberated than others, with the status, power and remuneration awarded those bought into the hierarchies, and used their positions to exclude those who value egalitarianism over meritocracy.

They took the deal.

If I might venture an idea.
Feminism doesn’t get the respect or credit it deserves, because it is considered to be a movement largely by women.
On the other hand, civil rights is perceived to be a movement accomplished by men.
However racist one might be, it is evident that civil rights changed alot. And because it was done by men, even if you disagree with the the goals, you have to respect its successes.
Feminism was accomplished by women, so of course it doesn’t get any of the credit. It is not seen as an idea worthy of respect.
I am aware that there were women who were prominent in the civil rights movement and that a lot of the success of the movement is due to women. But, they don’t get the credit they deserve- and I think this is consistent with my point.
Just an idea. I also largely agree with #68

We’re talking specifically about feminism in the US, I think. So here’s a thought experiment: what would have happened if ERA had passed? With that kind of official endorsement, would feminism/women’s liberation/sex equality/whatever now be seen as a done deal – part of the mainstream & hence part of everybody‘s mainstream – in the same way as ‘civil rights’?

Another angle: ‘civil rights’ was an extreme cause in its day, but the ‘civil rights’ movement was a very broad and fractious coalition, including a lot of people considerably more ‘extreme’ than MLK. Can we turn JH’s comparison on its head and say that the acceptability of ‘civil rights’ is a sign of the weakness of that movement (and the destruction of its radical wing(s)), and the bad name feminism still has is a sign of its strength?

I support a first-strike nuclear deterrent, genetically modified food, and charter schools

… and if you want to slap a label on that, slap away.

I have a photos taken in 1964 on Thanksgiving day which shows about a dozen women in a kitchen fixing up a feast. Not a man in sight (A different photo shows a number of them sitting in the garage with a Jim Beam bottle sitting on the hood of the car). My mother was one of the youngest women in the kitchen photo and she was at the time in nursing school and (I believe) the only one in that photo who had undertaken any education beyond high school.

Fast forward to this years Thanksgiving day and there is a good likelihood that there would be a moment when a photographer could again be able to capture about a dozen women in the kitchen fixing up a feast. Setting aside the clothing and the photo quality, the captured scene would appear to be largely the same.

The differences would all be outside the frame.

All of the women in the 2013 picture, save my grandmother, will either have been to college, in college or well on their way to going to college.

All of the working age women in the 2013 photo would have had jobs outside the home (or recently retired from them), including two with professional careers, a COO and one doctor.

The younger women in the photo would have all played on sports teams in multi-gender sports such as softball, basketball and soccer -an impossibility for the women in the 1964 photo.

Some number of men would need to have been shooed out of the room for the 2013 photo because they were in some way helping with the dinner. This would never have happened in 1964. None of these men would have explicitly identified as “feminists” but all would have agreed with notions about equality in the workplace, sharing home duties, raising children together etc….perhaps what might be called the ‘soft’ values of feminist planks.

The off camera men would all have known how to do child care basics ranging from changing a diaper to helping with homework to doing pick-up and delivery to activities and going to school meetings. Had the ’64 men been polled on these topics, laughter would have been the most likely response.

I guess my point is, as per the OP, while much has undoubtedly changed, many of the changes have outward subtlety – like the men knowing how to cook or the women being educated, its just not obvious in the picture. This subtlety tends to earn far less credit for any organization or group than landmark events like a Supreme Court ruling, an assassination or a law but represents significant progress (with yet more to come, hopefully).

I was looking for articles about the subject of Chris Bertram’s border post, when I got side tracked reading one essay that mentioned Gloria Anzaldua.

Some of what I then read of hers i think has relevance to some of this discussion which seems to gravitate a lot to ideas of a kind of monolithic feminism…

“6. the blow up … a clash of realities

New knowledge occurrs through tension, difficulties, mistakes and chaos – Risa D’Angeles

You fly in from another speaking gig on the East Coast arriving at the feminist academic conference late. Hayas un desmadre. A racist incident has unleashed flames of anger held in check for decades. In postures of defiance, enraged women of colour protest their exclusion from the women’s organisation decision-making processes; “white” middle-class women stand, arms crossed, refusing to alter its policies. When they continue conducting business as usual las mujeres de color walk out.

The urgency compelling every woman to give testimony to her views is so thick you can almost taste it. Caras reflejan angustia and blanched looks of shock; eyes glint with hostility; feelings of disgust, bitterness, disillusionment and betrayal clash, spatter and scatter in all directions…

Like most feminist conferences, this one begins as a bridge…”

From: The Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation
” now let us shift…the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts”

p.s. Susan Faludi’s piece from last April in The New Yorker on Shulamith Firestone, which I read thanks to Anderson’s having linked it a while back, might also be quite relevant. [I had to use google to jog my memory here. I’ll blame cognitive overload, or something.]

p.p.s. If it wasn’t clear, I think Sheehy’s “hegemony” judgment is an overstatement. But don’t have time to try to document that now.

Re: repeating them is not going to persuade anyone.

Sigh. Yes, indeed, it’s hard to persuade the man who has closed his mind to the evidence (or who has benefited from feminism so much himself). But I hold out hope.

I think Rob @73 is on to somethig here.

I think the apposite question here is why isn’t there a word masculinism to match feminism? It seems hard to me to redefine the role of females, unless the role of males is also redefined.

I know that Feminists often emphasise that they are after social change, not just equality of rights. But renegotiating society is not something can be acchieved unilaterally, nor is it necessary true that a univeral solution exists that will suit everybody. So this has effect of making Feminists look irritating and irrelevant for many people.

As with respect to the OPs point about the timing of perception change, well I think two words explain a lot : “the pill”. The pill made a whole lot of life choices practicable that weren’t before.

@reason, 95
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masculism
A word exists. A movement, not really.

Isn’t part of Perlstein’s argument, though, that a substantial part of post 70s conservatism is a direct backlash to the Civil Rights movement?

“I know that Feminists often emphasise that they are after social change, not just equality of rights.”

Equal rights for women certainly was a major social change. What you’re talking about is, perhaps, social relations, commonly held attitudes. They’ve changed too, and they’ll keep changing.

the U.S. economy basically slammed into a brick wall in the mid-1970s, thanks to Nixon/Kissinger’s staggering ineptitude in both foreign and domestic policy

There’s plenty to criticize Nixon and Kissinger for, but slamming the economy into a brick wall I don’t think is one of them. The economy of the whole ‘developed’ world hit a brick wall c.1970-1973 for various structural reasons, and ‘the golden age’ of postwar capitalism was over. Nixon might have coped better (maybe he shdn’t have ditched the dollar-gold connection), but he wasn’t the basic cause of the ec. trouble. And the Arab oil embargo, though important as a political event, was a wave on the ocean of the underlying economic forces.

“Hector actually a long running joke commenter”

A masquerade.

re comments 102-103:

1. the economic crisis of the 1970s was due to worldwide structural reasons, and not particularly the Nixon administration’s handling of the economy.
2. the rightwing backlash had begun under quite good economic conditions of the mid-1960s and was already extremely well advanced by 1973 (Nixon had been elected twice, Heath was already about to fall to Thatcher, Begin was rising in Israeli politics from the late 1960s on, Commentary shifted from left to right in 1966-1970, etc).
3. if you look closely at the rightwing backlash of 1965-1970 in the US, it was not fueled by some global or general economic distress. Rather, it was fueled by the specific economic problem of urban desegregation outside of the South (in other words, white flight to the suburbs).

The economic fiasco of the 1970s provided further fuel to the rightwing backlash but was not the origin of it.

“I didn’t always have this conservatism-centric theory of post-war history…The fact that the 60′s happens suggests that I’m wrong…. I don’t feel I get where the leftist force came from. Why there was so much of it, but then not more of it.”

There is, on the other hand, Marx’s suggestion that social liberalism is an accident of the advance of capitalism, and not fundamentally a leftist force at all. All that’s solid, etc.

On this view, we might argue that the motive “force” that you’re asking about came not from the left but from the right: capitalism needed more workers, lower family wages, and atomized competitive workers, and feminism was a good means to that. On this view, it’s also less surprising that any truly leftist goals of feminism (that is, feminism as a social goal, as human solidarity expressed through the solidarity of women of all colors and classes, rather than as individual freedom and fulfillment) would become less visible and popular as soon as the goals useful to capitalism were achieved.

It could also explain why feminism wasn’t coopted by the right as the civil rights movement was. It depends what you mean by the “right.” Maybe lean-in, CEO Barbie, power through the stripper pole feminism is cooption by the right in the larger sense.

Of course, the root of the whole conceptual problem might just be the weird American insistence on connecting “liberal” and “left.”

“in case you actually mean what you say…”

Hector may not know that his masquerade is a masquerade. That doesn’t make it any less so. “The costume is put on easily enough, but the plot has the last word.”

“Usually it’s described as some sort of combination of: the energy crisis, rising inflation, declining productivity, lower corporate profitability, and more international competition.”

Fred Block: “The Origins of International Economic Disorder” (1977) holds up pretty well.

Fred Block: “The Origins of International Economic Disorder” (1977) holds up pretty well.

Yes, it does. So does Armstrong, Glyn and harrison, Capitalism Since 1945 — for my money, still the best single economic history of the postwar period. Altho Gindin and Panitch, The Making of Global Capitalism, might displace it…

You really think so? I mean his posts just seem so calculated to annoy the broad CT audience that I find it easier to believe that what he is going for is the reaction.

There’s a consistency-of-thought that suggests it’s coming from some single, considered, deranged perspective: “it would be better if women do what I want”. We can read what’s written and work out the exact point things went wrong.

It’s possible to troll consistently, but… where’s the bonus in that? I mean, if you’re getting marked on style sure, and there are art trolls out there, but, well… there are insane people out there too, and in greater number.

[trolling-for-disruption — whether for fun, on a commercial basis or volunteer — is easier and more effective if you’re less consistent.]

burrittoboy @110,

Thank you. I found a blog that pointed to David Harvey’s (who i like) book on the rise of neo-liberalism , which looks at the crisis of the 70s and its effects, including on NY which the blogger ran through – likening some of the responses to a coup:

I guess perhaps this goes back to John Holbo’s question of why things that happened in the 60s stopped occurring to the same extent?

“The financial elites now in control of city finances “had first claim on city tax revenues in order to first pay off bondholders: whatever was left over went to essential services”. The effect, Harvey argues, “was to curb the aspriations of the city’s powerful municipal unions, to implement wage freezes and cutbacks in public employment and social provision (education, public health, transportation), and to impose user fees (tuition was introduced into the CUNY system for the first time). ”
…
Meanwhile, Gerald Ford’s Tresury Secretary, William Simon (a supporter of the military coup against Allende in Chile, and later a head of the super-conservative “Olin Foundation”) strongly advised the president to withhold federal support to the deep fiscal crisis in New York City. (“Ford to City: Drop Dead, was the headline in the New York Daily News”)…. any bailout must be made “so punitive, the overall experience so painful, that no city, no political subdivision would ever be tempted to go down the same road”.

“Working-class and immigrant New York was thrust into the shadows, to be ravaged by racism and a crack cocaine epidemic of epic proportions in the 1980s that left many young people either dead, incarcerated, or homeless, only to be bludgeoned by the AIDS epidemic that carried over into the 1990s.””

Anon @109
contra your view, “individual freedom and fulfillment” *is* a leftist goal, not necessarily in conflict w ‘solidarity’, and I’m sure I could dig up a quote or two from Marx to that effect, e.g. something about “the free development of each being the condition of the free development of all” (or something like that).

LFC, the linking of each with all seems to depart a bit from individual freedom – or at least what I would perceive to be a Brittish style liberal view of individual freedom – how would American style liberals negotiate that inherent tension?

122:Yeah. I was going to screed this but I have reading to do. Grin.

Neoliberalism and libertarianism are liberalisms-individualisms, and opposed from opposite poles by conservatism and socialism, communalisms or communitarianisms.

America got tricked into calling unionism and welfare capitalism “liberal” in ways that wouldn’t work overseas, with their actual labour and socialist movements.

And thus the confusion about individual empowerment as social justice. Obama really wasn’t a victory for all blacks.Etc

LFC @12o,

True, but it’s a matter of emphasis, and I think the emphasis in 60s and 70s liberalism moves decidedly toward personal fulfillment over solidarity. The 80s were not an accident.

The suggestion, then, is that American liberalism never really rejected the false dichotomy of personal and social freedom. Its motives were always largely that of an interest in and belief in the alternatives of personal against social interest, producing, during a moment of accidental coincidence of the two, the illusion of a sudden flourishing and disappearance of leftist momentum.

Anon @126:
yes, ok, concisely put, and I could probably buy that, to at least some extent.

Too true

“and I think the emphasis in 60s and 70s liberalism moves decidedly toward personal fulfillment over solidarity. The 80s were not an accident.”

That solidarity didint seem to extend to far beyond white working class males though.

I can’t speak for substance, but I wasn’t thinking of the Magna Carta as wholly good, only in parts. Baron is a fairly perjorative term here in Australia.

Watson Ladd, meet Hector_St_Clare, I’m sure the two of you have a lot in common…

MPA Victoria,

I assure you I’m for real. Also, i note you’ve been utterly unable to counteract my argument that evolution disproves Feminism (or as I prefer to call it, feminidiocy).

Also, i note you’ve been utterly unable to counteract my argument that evolution disproves Feminism (or as I prefer to call it, feminidiocy).

Here is the refutation: it doesn’t.

Substance,

Biology says otherwise. for example, women are more agreable, less competitive, less risk taking and less inclined towards social dominance then men. thus, we must expect political leadership roles to be mostly held by men.

“Also,i note you’ve been utterly unable to counteract my argument…”

Dunning – Kruger.

How’s that, Hector? I’ve “counteracted” your argument with a mere four syllables!

How about fembiciles or women’s liberacists? Or how about AngliCAN’Ts?

I’m having a thimble of fun.

OK I’m done.

Yes, yes… but can you vouch for Watson Ladd?

A few regular CTers may be interested to learn that, yes, Watson Ladd is real. I met him earlier this year.

I was at the Left Forum, discussing rent control with a couple friends. Out of nowhere, a large, loud young man comes up and says, “Rent control is what’s made New York the most unaffordable city in the country!” I looked at his name tag and, sure enough, it was Watson Ladd.

“Oh, you’re the Platypus guy,” I said. “I have a policy of not talking to people like you.”

“Explain your policy!”

But I just turned around and walked away. That was very rude, I admit, but it seemed like the right response at the time.

Bianca Steele at #27

“I think there’s a strand of thought that says what we have now is, and always was, common sense. Everybody knew it, so they didn’t need feminism. But there was a little group of holdouts who had to be shown to be ridiculous, or something, and their political power reduced. And once that happened, no one needed feminism anymore. . . . Except people who wanted to go against (supposed, as they supposed) common sense.”

I think this gets at it pretty directly. (Others have come close too.) And I think it comes down to a concerted effort to discount the presence of critical ideology in any supposed advance in American society, ever. So, Lincoln wasn’t an Abolitionist, he was charting a common sense path between the extremes of abolitionism and chattel slavery. Labor laws, including the forty hour week and the prohibition on child labor, were a result of common sense understanding of the needs and rights of working people. The civil rights movement was what common sense people like the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird bought into. And feminism was braless hairy legged lesbians, while the rest of us went about fixing some unfortunate imperfections in US economy and society.

That’s why people have to be reminded that John Brown did have something to do with the end of slavery, even if he was violent, and seemingly crazy. That’s why people have to be reminded that without violent clashes between management and labor, a whole host of workplace improvements wouldn’t have happened. That’s why women who want to become neurosurgeons deny that they’re feminists. And that’s why people can ignore the fact that Rosa Parks was a member of the NCAAP, not just tired, and can call John Lewis a “race hustler,” for saying pretty much the same things he was saying at the time.

My personal belief is this: most people in the US, on the political spectrum from the centrist wing of the Democratic party to the far right, can look at the advances (such as they are) that have been made and can think one of two things: “Common sense triumphed,” or, “my side lost.” We’re too self-regarding to choose the latter.

“Biology says otherwise. for example, women are more agreable, less competitive, less risk taking and less inclined towards social dominance then men.”

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Last line of Pete @84 —
amusing (well, by the standards of this thread, that is)

I’ve never met Watson Ladd or J W Mason – i don’t know what either of them are like in person – I don’t know how the exchange happened, I know that J W Mason decided to give a particularly worded public account of the meeting at the Left Forum to the people who read CT giving a certain impression of Watson Ladd. Even J W Mason said telling him he wouldn’t talk to him was rude. Before that people were just lightly teasing Watson and Hector. That’s how it comes across to me?????

Watson Ladd, meet Hector_St_Clare, I’m sure the two of you have a lot in common…

Nah. Each is his own special little snowflake.

I looked at his name tag and, sure enough, it was Watson Ladd.

His name can’t actually be Watson Ladd, can it? I mean, can it?

(And ZM: some of us have been on these threads for, oh, a while now. So unfortunately has Master Ladd. JWM’s response seems only appropriate.)

Re: rather than as a reaction to a Zeitgeist ad nullam.

Generally, Watson, when a man is forced to try and win an argument by deluging his opponents in incomprehensible Latin phrases, it’s a sign he knows he’s lost.

Arguments should be made in plain English (or mathematics, if it be a scientific argument), or they should not be made at all.

John Holbo: “But when I read about leftist student movements in the 60’s, or the New Left, or Women’s Lib, I have this very strong sense that this was just an asteroid strike. Where did this suddenly come from? I don’t really get it. The effects make sense, given the cause. But damned if I can get a grip on the cause itself.”

I think the “cause” is the Enlightenment project. We are still discovering, or inventing, the things which MUST proceed from the following philosophical statement: “All ‘men’ (human beings) are created equal”. This is our secular religion. There were long hiatuses caused by economic conditions, or wars, but then we always get right back to the project.

Feminism arose in the late 19th-early 20th century, for example, but then, two world wars made it take a “back seat” to more pressing politics. The U.S. Civil War ended slavery; then came 100 years to the Civil Rights Act; then 35 years to the first black President. The next U.S. President may well be a woman, despite the uninformed biological determinism of a few people who insist she that won’t be able to do it well.

“Feminism doesn’t get credit for it,” because most people do not think in terms of “isms” and indeed distrust “isms” as a sort of misplaced concreteness, even if they never read Whitehead. Indeed most people are not academics, nor do they read to get cultural information. “Feminism” never gained the currency of “communism vs. communism” among the “isms” because feminism has no lasting opposition and is continuing to make gains.

I think it is important to take a very long view of what is going on, because 200 years on these sorts of questions is really the blink of an eye.

Leftist student movements in the 1960’s were in my opinion the results of two factors: 1. war and injustice + 2. college teenagers with disposable income. The left has begun to resurge again after 40-50 years. It will be broader this time, due to “capital-biased technological change” causing more inequality and less-secure career paths, and the increasing need for a redistributive state. The mainstream media is in a much weaker position vs. the left, and won’t be able to cubbyhole it as a movement. But the left’s understanding of economics and ecology is still currently disorganized.

ZM: Can you imagine the Feminine Mystique without Mill? As Simon deBouvior writes, it was precisely eighteenth and nineteenth century liberalism that could conceive of women as equal to men. Questions of human freedom (not merely individual, but social, the ability of society to determine its own growth) drove the social movements we are talking about. A medieval peasant’s wife couldn’t conceive of demanding the same participation in society as her husband, because she would lack a notion of what it would mean to demand equal participation in society. Adorno critiques the student movement in Germany for patricide, turning its back on the thinkers who enable it to exist. This is not some alien view for the members of the movements themselves: Veterans of the SDS and RYM I and II who we interviewed for a forum in our publication all tied their New Leftism to their father’s Stalinism, clearly linked back to Marx and the crisis of liberalism.

The post-1973 moment is notable because people don’t conceive of politics today in those terms. Instead the dominant discourse is in terms of identities, and rights that people posses as members of identities. This makes it hard to understand past political moments: Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls, Kennedy was a hawk accusing Eisenhower of being weak on defence, etc, none of which makes sense unless you conceive of the politics of those periods as being fundamentally different from today.

And that brings us full circle to the OP: It’s hard to imagine the Student Movement because the sorts of demands they are making, and the reasons why they are making them, are now obscure. The solution is to look into the internal logic behind them: not the history, but the ideas.

ZM #166: “Domination, the humiliation and worse of indigenous peoples, the idea of the angel in the house, the separation of the public and the private spheres, and all those sort of things were also great parts of the Enlightenment.”

Because every evil wasn’t cured at once, therefore anything good that is happening now, cannot possibly be the continuation of attitudes established previously? Or is it because everyone who lived and designed coats of arms since the early days of the Enlightenment, must have been part of the project? I doubt either one.

Thanks to ZM for reminding me about that David Harvey book. Don’t have it, but the interview he gives about it was highly informative. A couple other American trends from the ’70s – busing controversies, and the beginning of modern income inequality (at least according to a few academics).

“The women are represented proportionally among the socioeconomic strata, and therefore, absent discrimination and gender-specific incentives (e.g. ‘maternal leave’ instead of ‘parental leave’, etc.), after a few generations those of our descendants who still care about this sort of thing will have plenty of empirical evidence.”

Is this a joke? “[R]epresented proportionally”?

Just want to say Substance has once again won the thread.

Watson Ladd @167

“Yes, I am fond of history.”
“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome:”
– Jane Austen, Northhangar Abbey (1803)

“ZM: As Simon deBouvior writes, it was precisely eighteenth and nineteenth century liberalism that could conceive of women as equal to men. … A medieval peasant’s wife couldn’t conceive of demanding the same participation in society as her husband, because she would lack a notion of what it would mean to demand equal participation in society.”

This seems to me to be an exceedingly dull way to understand or decide to draw a picture of people in history.
To make your account more vivid in the future, you might avail yourself of some readings:
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/women/womensbook.asp#Medieval%20Europe

The idea of “women as equal to men” is, funnily enough, contested. What do you mean by equal? That they are the same as and no different from men? That they are capable of being like men should they receive the right gradgrindian education? That you expect them to aspire to be like men, or a certain sort of man? That they are due the same legal rights, such as voting, education etc as men? That they should act in a “masculine” rather than “feminine” fashion? That they should be treated as a “fellow” human being? That there should be equal representation of women in parliament (I did read an anthropologist once suggest parliaments would be more fair if there were men’s houses and women’s houses, each with the same number of members/senators. I kind of like the idea.)? You really need to clarify your meaning.

Since I don’t really know when, there is also an idea of looking at gender and agency, basically the idea that within the various cultural structures that have existed women have been able to act with various degrees of agency, depending on the particular example. Such as wrapping cloths in Choson dynasty Korea for example.

As I’ve attempted to point out before – women have a range of experiences and desires and relations and so forth. Any sort of women’s movement would ave to recognise that not every woman wants to be the same as Simone de Beavoir. (Having said that, there’s an excellent book of essays by Sylvia Lawson called, from memory, The Day Simone de’Beavoir Died In Australia)

Lee A. Arnold
“Because every evil wasn’t cured at once, therefore anything good that is happening now, cannot possibly be the continuation of attitudes established previously? Or is it because everyone who lived and designed coats of arms since the early days of the Enlightenment, must have been part of the project? I doubt either one.”

I really just meant that the Enlightenment project involves a whole lot of awful things as well as, perhaps, some positives. I don’t think it necessarily tried to cure all ailments, but in some cases pursued the harm more. It’s not really a favourite period of mine, most of what I know about those times is in terms of imperial expansion and the further enclosure of the commons, mining, industrialisation, transportation etc, and a lot of the good of the times I’d associate with common people or romantics etc which I’d tend to think of as kind of separate from the project itself – you might have different associations?

On the other hand sometimes discoverers refused to take possession of islands, like La Perouse with Maui “This European practice is too utterly ridiculous, and philosophers must reflect with some sadness that, because one has muskets and canons, one looks upon 60,000 inhabitants as worth nothing, ignoring their rights over a land where for centuries their ancestors have been buried, which they have watered with their sweat, and whose fruits they pick to bring them as offerings to the so-called new landlords”

Hector_St_Clare,

How dumb can you possibly be? Do you know nothing about the difference between sex and gender?

And where are those citations proving the inherent inferiority of women you promised earlier?

Patrick, yes, women and men, in the forward-looking sense, do occupy similar socioeconomic positions today. A girl and a boy growing up in the same family have the same resources, go to the same school, etc. And your link, even though it includes inherited issues, doesn’t indicate a massive imbalance.

“But I just turned around and walked away. That was very rude, I admit, but it seemed like the right response at the time.”

This is brilliant. Normally you only hear the positive stories about ‘people who finally meet in the flesh after years of knowing eachother’, then they become friends, or fall in love..
This is so much better.
I wish I’d been there.

And feminism was braless hairy legged lesbians, while the rest of us went about fixing some unfortunate imperfections in US economy and society.

Well (and this thread is pretty funny), it’s entirely possible to say “feminism was educated white female politicians who got Title IX and EEOC passed and so on, and completed the project of the early feminists, but then the braless hairy legged lesbians got out of hand.” Just as it’s possible to say “the true civil rights movement was King and not Carmichael.”

In my opinion, someone who thought along the lines you suggest would not necessarily pretend social movements and ideological critiques don’t exist–in the past or in the present–and don’t play a real role in moving public opinion.

Hector St. Clare #139: i note you’ve been utterly unable to counteract my argument that evolution disproves Feminism (or as I prefer to call it, feminidiocy).”

“Counteracting” this argument is easy enough for any idiotic biological determinist to understand : evolution LED TO feminism.

@184 I’m not sure who has misunderstood whom here–I’m probably not tracking you very well. This matters to me because I think you’re largely right at #27 and I was trying to agree and extend. I think the initial feminist movement was composed of separatists, lesbians, white middle class women, and (not enough) poor women and (not enough) women of color. Back in the day, and today, they offer a critique of the foundations of the regime then and its slightly altered version now. It seems to me that turning away from “feminism” is precisely the reformist turn away from the critique of the foundations and a denial that the critique had anything to do with the alterations.

It also seems to me that people in the US (and I know this to be true of the privileged middle class students I teach) believe that they have no ideology, or rather their ideology is best described as “freedom and common sense.” To them, improvements derive from their non-ideology. I take this to be the guiding notion of most of the media and the mainstream political class in the US.

@180 The link suggests that women and men are born in comparable economic circumstances and that generally, women move downward. The percentages represent millions of people. Your “massive” and mine seem to diverge, but that doesn’t matter, because your initial claim wasn’t “There’s a difference, but it’s not massive,” it was, “There’s no difference.” Oh, and by the way, of course newborns are roughly equal. Absent selective abortion, which we don’t have, the only place the American economy doesn’t have a say in the numbers.

“From early comments, it’s pretty clear the post is going to be misunderstood – maybe because it’s badly written; maybe because that’s just how things go. Well, here goes. I’m not saying that feminism had no effects. It did. Per the post, it won huge victories. But 1) feminism weirdly doesn’t get credit for that. It’s like it somehow just happened without feminism’s help. Because all the victories seem normal. But feminism itself is this weird, dubious thing in most people’s eyes. 2) Even though these victories make cultural sense, given the causes; to me the causes themselves still seem a bit puzzling, culturally.”

To lizardbreath and John: how is it possible that “feminism” does not get broadly recognized? Who does not recognize this? Seriously – what woman working today does not understand that a series of actions taken by women before her enabled her to be in this position? Perhaps I’m older and was closer to the moment that great cultural divide was bridged – but I cannot comprehend that “feminism” is not credited or recognized for advances seen in women’s “liberation” from Friedan’s feminine mystique.

One of my early feminist role models was my father – a man who unexpectedly found himself raising three girls on his own after my mother died. He was proud of his wife’s accomplishments prior to marriage and hoped we would see similar accomplishments in our own career. And after he became sole caretaker of his children, he shifted his career priorities so that he could be home for dinner and attend the ultimate boring chore of parenthood – the swim meet. Family matters, as does the career – these were the lessons my father taught me.

If feminism is “culturally dubious” – in that there are few girls today who wish to be “feminists” – it’s in part due to hard-won advances of people like Hillary Clinton, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, et al. – we take it all for granted.

But it’s also due to the fact that feminism, in its true and honest form, is really a call for equality. So perhaps that’s where the confusion lies. Equal rights for all is not isolated to gender. But activism among feminism was instrumental in massive cultural changes we’ve experienced.

I’m going to go back and read the thread in a moment, so this may be redundant, but I think the answer to the OP’s confusion is that the 70s were a strange time in America. Society and culture went somewhere in a number of directions (e.g. feminism; end of empire) and it was largely reversed in the early 80s (culturally, if not legally). I use those two examples in particular because I suspect that the shifting gender norms in the 70s connects it all up.

Feminism was part of afternoon/evening in America – but then things went back to “Morning in America.”

“Mao Cheng Ji,

There is no doubt in your mind that ‘gender is a social construct’??

How dumb can you possibly be? Do you know anything about biology at all?”

Hector St Clare, my earlier comment is in moderation, but, in using English, Mai Chen Ji is correct.

Sex is taken to mean bodily, biological difference. Gender is mostly referring to cultural norms of behaviour etc that apply to/ are imposed on the sexes.

For example, a male does not biologically wear breeches. If you read, say, the Winters Tale, you find that the king dates recalls noting his gender difference when he was moved from being dressed in a very young children’s gown (like a christening gown) to being dressed in trousers.

I am sure you can think of some examples from your own life and from the lives of those around you.

As wealth becomes more polarized, and public services less available, the benefits of feminism become more polarized. They are available to those who can afford them. And for those who can’t the situation is worse then ever.

Good. This is how women get radicalized. Thanks buddy. Ms used to call these “click” moments. We roll along, everything seems so normal, and then some guy that you would have sworn knew better says/does something that is so clueless you have a ‘come to the goddess moment’. Also, I’m so pissed right now … yeesh. Also, as one of those wierd feminists, I remember an important lesson we learned in the 70s – leveraging this kind of thing to build community between women is what really matters here. Talking to dudes with an investment in complacency … not so much.

Male and female dress, at least with respect to the question of trousers vs. skirts, seems to derive from biological suitability… trousers are an impractical way for women to urinate outdoors. Not an important concern with modern lifestyles and toilet facilities, of course.

More to the point would be all those Afghan and Pakistani women in their salwar/kamis.

*Saville*

Next time you are on the highway, and some jerk in a 100,00o dollar sports car nearly hits you as they weave in and out of traffic at 90 MPH, note that “they” can just as easily be a woman as a man; surely that counts as a great victory for feminism ?

(although in the rich neighborhoods near me, the stereotype seems to be a blue rinse grandma in a mercedes SL500 AMG going ten miles an hour..go figure)

Hector St Clare, perhaps you could elucidate for us then what is to do with biology and what to do with culture and what to do with metaphysics (I understand you are a Christian)? For everyone’s benefit you could perform your analysis on some famous exemplary women – Joan of Arc, Sheryl Sandburg (if that’s her name), St Theresa, Henry Handel Richardson …

“men are more risk taking”

Even these results are likely to be culturally determined. The kinds of risk-taking that are studied are usually limited to measurable economic risks such as games and financial investments, and even so, the statistical differences are usually quite small. Areas of life where women take far greater risks than men (pregnancy, domestic violence) are almost universally ignored.

The effects of testosterone do not have to be measured by comparing men and women. In fact, this is the worst way to measure those effects, precisely because of cultural factors.

We can observe the effects of testosterone by injecting it into women, and also by comparing men who have normal testosterone levels with men who have low or no testosterone production (e.g., because of castration or chemical castration or various disorders).

We can also look at the spectrum of normal variance in testosterone levels. So, you compare the men who naturally produce the most testosterone to the men who produce the least, and see how their behavior differs.

Along somewhat similar lines (as the immediately preceding comments): Hector has failed to show how testosterone and its effects in males connect to issues like political leadership.

The fact that young male skateboarders take more risks in the presence of an attractive woman, due in part to elevated testosterone levels (per one article that came up in a quick search), would seem to have no bearing on much of anything, except perhaps to lead to the conclusion that one wouldn’t want to have one of those skateboarders making key political decisions. (Which is one reason it is prob. wise that the US Constitution, iirc, bars anyone under 40 from being President.)

Btw, there is a discussion of some aspects of testosterone, with citations to relevant lit., in J.S. Goldstein, War and Gender (2001), ch.3.

Hector is trolling. Why do you think he’s here? He’ll only prove something if he thinks it’s proof is the best way to rile people up.

But I’m sure he’ll point out that J. S. Goldstein, War and Gender (2001), is not a credible source on biology. And he’ll be right. Nothing against Goldstein; it’s just not his field.

There was a fascinating first-hand account of the effects of testosterone in a woman who took injections in the book Woman: An Intimate Geography. There’s a lot of material about testosterone, and other hormones, all very interesting. That’s “pop science,” and written by a “science journalist” (not a research scientist) but it includes citations to real biology research. And you can download it here: http://bookfi.org/book/1375860

FuKo@217
Goldstein, though not a biologist, is a credible source on biology, as a perusal of the book will indicate in fairly short order. That is, he draws on the biological literature and distills it, afaict, carefully, w/r/t the specific questions he’s addressing. War and Gender is loaded with, to use your words, “citations to real biology research.”

[Disclosure: He was my advisor, though my diss. had nothing to do with war/gender or the other topics on which he’s written. I usually don’t disclose personal details of this sort, but it does seem called for here, plus it’s so late in the thread, why the **** not. I do not agree w everything he has ever written by any means, but in terms of the quality of its documentation/research, War and Gender is good, imo. The arguments are not above criticism, of course, but then, few arguments are.]

Re: We can also look at the spectrum of normal variance in testosterone levels. So, you compare the men who naturally produce the most testosterone to the men who produce the least, and see how their behavior differs.

Exactly, Fu Ko. Also, whe can look at men who experienced more prenatal exposure to male hormones, and men who experienced less (again, at the prenatal stage). What do you think we see?

Wow, this whole thread is crazy! Kicked off by ruminations based on some book by the underemployed David Frum who is married to a woman whose entire career has been writing about the failure of feminism and how women should just stay home.

Anyone interested in learning more about the feminist movement in the US should check out this three hour documentary, “Makers, The Women who Made America”, which is available for free:
http://www.pbs.org/makers/home/

When I saw it, it just reminded me of just how badass and freaking cool the 1960s feminists were. I thought they were great then and I still think they are now. The credit card in my pocket, the bank account in my name, the job I was able to get and keep after marriage and kids, the track team I ran on, the graduate degree I got: I owe it all to them and I’m not listing the half of it.

ZM,

I didn’t say that men have always worn trousers. They haven’t.

Regarding women removing trousers, yes indeed this is possible. But it’s substantially less practical outdoors, especially when shoes are worn. Women today typically do not remove their trousers to urinate, but rely on toilets, which allow them to merely lower trousers to the ankles, leaving shoes on. Yet without the toilet for support this is not possible: there is both danger of losing balance (because the legs are held together, creating a less than sturdy squatting stance), and risk of soiling the trousers with the urine. Completely removing the shoes and trousers to urinate can be an extreme inconvenience too, though — especially when it is raining or the ground is wet.

(I do feel rather odd explaining such things…)

@this keyboard . . . Actually with a toilet we don’t have to lower our pants all the way to the ankles; down to just above the knees works just fine. In the woods I find freethinkers pretty reliable, and in the desert there is usually a helpful boulder. Really, being a woman is generally not all that inconvenient when it comes to urinating.

Yes indeedy keyboard man, all the rambling bush walking girls and out door ed girls wear ball gowns because they are more convenient than breeches.

there’s more surly girls than one, more surly girls than one, every town I ramble round, there’s more surly girls than one

“Curse the auto correct, it won’t let me type half the words I want to. Tree trunks. Not freethinkers.”

I was wondering what you had against freethinkers. ;-)

Yeah, Women pee in the woods like men (and women) sh*t in the woods – Pants down, squat, etc.. Not all that complicated.
More of a hassle is trying to keep a long skirt out of the way when relieving yourself.

To tie at least some of these things together: wasn’t there recently an astronaut (!) woman stalker (!) who drove from California to Florida wearing diapers (!), in order to abduct her lover, also a woman?

Thinking about trousers and skirts – does anyone else remember the 90s fashion of trousers and skirts worn together? It wouldn’t have just been in Australia, surely? I can’t remember the fashion that replaced it?

Then you would be a hermit – they often lived amongst the rocky outcrops. There was a hermit where I grew up, just a little before my time, and a famous philosopher’s father was friends with the hermit, or cared for him at least, and the famous philosopher wrote about the hermit in the book he wrote about his father. One of my parents’ friends knew the hermit, but he is gone now also.

This is the single most awesome thread derailment I’ve ever seen. Cheers!

I don’t really understand why it blossomed so suddenly at this particular point in time.

I sure wish I could bottle it, but as a historical materialist, I know it doesn’t work that way.

Gloria Steinem born 1934. Shulamith Firestone born 1945. The more I look back at the 60s, the more importance the generation born in that decade seems to gain. The boomers might have just been the receptive audience, but the boomers had money.

Re John Holbo @ 219

No, I don’t think MSM or anyone else is objecting to metaphors as such.

What several people are pointing to is that you seem stuck to an eccentric and rather sparse history of feminism. And rather than point to actual work on political or cultural history that might help us with these questions, you assert. In sweeping metaphors.

When you write “to me the causes themselves still seem a bit puzzling, culturally. It’s like there’s this sudden asteroid strike. … It still feels – to me – like this thing from out of nowhere.” you seem to be describing your own lack of knowledge and conceptual confusion.

But when people point out the eccentricity of your interpretation of history, you respond as though the question is not what actually happened in the real world, but how best to describe the Thought of John Holbo.

I actually think the OP asks an interesting question. Or rather it poses a few questions, most of them interesting but at least one, in my opinion, ill-formed:

1) Why do Republicans claim credit for civil rights victories but not for feminist victories, and count themselves on the side of the heirs of the civil rights movement (“properly understood”, of course), but not on the side of the feminist movement? And which pattern will same-sex marriage end up following?

I think this is ill-formed because Republicans do claim credit for the victories of the feminist movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, where they like the results: girls playing sports (if not Title IX), women in the professions (if not leaving their kids with people they’re not related to during the day), women having their own money to spend, and so on. (And just as I suspect there are Republicans who secretly wish to reclaim the term “liberal,” I suspect there are Republican women who consider themselves feminists (“properly understood,” of course).)

2) Why is feminism in as bad repute as communism?

But it isn’t. In the vast middle between people who don’t think girls should aspire to be neurosurgeons, and people who think of course girls should aspire to be neurosurgeons but at the same time not deviate from gender norms in any way, there are people who call themselves feminists, people who acknowledge the validity of feminist critiques of gender norms, and so on.

3) Why did feminism, like the New Left, suddenly appear and then disappear again?

a) But it didn’t. It’s fairly easy to trace a clear line from the blooming of feminism in the 1960s to (liberal, professional, non-separatist) women writing on feminist issues, and calling themselves feminists, in the 1950s. And see (2).

b) Rewrite this as, “why did the idea of feminism suddenly appeal to such a large number of people who wouldn’t seem to be activist types, who in a few years wouldn’t find feminism so appealing, and who probably didn’t take all of feminism (even in any one of its forms) onboard at the time, right then?” and it’s an interesting question.

c) However, rewrite it as, “why did the ‘centrist’ elite claim civil rights/anti-racism, feminism, and same-sex marriage as their own, at different times?” and it may still be interesting, but it’s a different question.

Well, I really wish someone remembered what fashion came after skirts and pants? And before anyone says its a thread jack, what’s good for the ganders are good for the gooses (I’m thinking of you Dick Hebdidge and your style book – thanks to you someone published an entire essay on “the spatial arrangement of indie music gigs” – no, I’m not kidding) I’m not totally fashionably minded – I just kind of remember that around about the time of the fashion for t-shirts with untranslated Asian words (i gave a friend one that said rice. later i was happy about this because i read an anthropology book about the meaning of rice. how did we go from there to the controversial and demeaning violence against women etc promoting tshirts of today?) we had departed from dresses and blundstones coexisting with certain other 90s clothing groups., through “Impossible Princess” and “Indie Kylie” and “Murder Ballads”, to the manufactured pop of the spice girls and Britney Spears, and then PJ Harvey put out Stories from the City Stories From The Sea, which was odd for her. And then fashions seemed to get put on repeat and there were those people who dressed like hipsters (what was the word for them at the time, the proto-hipsters? In the days of the proto-hipsters I actually met the only cool spotter I’ve ever met and she wore Issey Miyake sneakers but the only thing I remember her saying was coming up was body and three dimensions. This was a happy coinciedence because it was exactly what my friend had won the competition with. And body and three dimensions duly came to pass in productions and reproductions) – and then hipster was the worst insult of all. And Target started selling replicas of 1960s portable record players. And where are we now? And how did we get here?

I dont really remember skirts and pants being all that prevalent. Tights and pants maybe? X-works and Eclipse jeans, IIRC

Ronan(rf) – why did people wear tights and pants for fashion (I can understand if it was simply for winter cold)? I’ve no clue what the other two are?

I have a vague memory of something like that (I assume we’re not talking about tots with leggings), like a gauzy short skirt over jeans.

In the days of the proto-hipsters I actually met the only cool spotter I’ve ever met

Thought that said “spitter.” In the days when Sinead O’Connor played places like the Channel, I have on good authority, she would spit onstage into a bucket placed near the wings.

It seems to me that the distribution patterns re: feminism were quite striking. Not the same as those concerning civil rights, for example. Worth thinking about.

Fair enough. I guess I’m not totally convinced (e.g., something that could fairly be labeled the feminist part of the blogosphere is flourishing now at a fairly high profile, in a way that is not obviously true for civil rights). I do agree that the term ‘civil rights’ was coopted in a way that ‘feminism’ wasn’t, but I’m yet to see a reason to think that this is more than a superficial terminological matter.

Again unfortunately obliquely: if the content of what we now identify as ‘civil rights’ had instead come to be associated with ‘black power’, people would react to the latter term much as lots do to ‘feminism’ (while of course! endorsing voting rights for minorities—in the abstract). And on the other hand, no one would think to object to ‘women’s rights’ in the abstract.

John — for a much shorter book that includes an overview of broad shifts in the Supreme Court over the course of the 20th century, see “Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution,” by Evan Gerstmann.

Was it some crazy thing the hippies put in the water in 1967, or had this been building for a long time? The latter is obviously more plausible but I confess, if asked to defend that proposition, I’d be hard pressed to point to sufficient grounds for such seemingly quick shifts. But perhaps David Garrow knows better.

I read the book a long time ago, but I remember quite vividly the sense of surprise that many decades of work went into the contraceptive issue, with activists in Mass. and Connecticut shifting back and forth between legislatures and courts as they saw their chances or were roadblocked one way or another. At first glance what it looked like was that it took 70 or 80 years to for the Court to decide that contraceptives could be readily available, then only half a dozen for Roe v. Wade.

But of course, you can’t separate them that way. The first eighty years might have looked like it was about contraception, but it obviously wasn’t about contraception in isolation from everything else.

Since you like metaphors so much (and so do I, that and analogies), I’m thinking of dominoes falling or dams breaking. It takes a lot of work to get the first domino to fall, but then that first one does the rest of the work for you. There might be a small crack in a dam for a long time, a leak that seems barely to grow. But then when it has grown just enough, the whole thing gives way.

I’m also thinking of the way things can fester, and then blow up. You don’t see them, so then maybe you wonder where all the energy came from. It came from being pent up for so long…..

I am very happy to fetch some primary sources to look at words and the 60s/70s
For whatever reason, I choose the author Tom Robbins.

This is the first primary source on reading Another Roadside Attraction that I found with a quick google search. Next I will search for a source dealing with Jitterbug Perfume.

“All the characters are well-developed and interesting. There are militant monks, Vatican secrets, and FBI agents. The plotline is non-linear, but done well enough so that is wasn’t confusing. If you are old enough to remember the 60’s, you’ll find the mindsets in Another Roadside Attraction very nostalgic.

If you yearn to learn more about things like monarch butterflies, baboons, and 30-foot-long hot dogs, this book’s for you. Indeed, there’s scarcely a page where Tom Robbins doesn’t go off on one or more tangents.

The main tangent is religion, and I got the feeling that Robbins’ primary purpose in penning this was to give us his insightful and often caustic views on the subject. Each character has his own philosophical outlook. Marx is an agnostic; Plucky Purcell’s a skeptic, John Paul Ziller comes off as a stoic, and Amanda’s into the 60’s hippie-dippie stuff – worshipping the Earth Goddess, consulting the I Ching, and having trances.

The literary accoutrements are all well and good here; unfortunately something’s missing – a well-paced story. Oh, Plucky purloins an artifact from the Pope, but the book’s half over before this happens, and since the tale is told first-person and after-the-fact, there’s really no tension generated. The repercussions of the robbery impact our little roadside attraction, and it could’ve made for an exciting climax, but instead the book just sort of trudges along to the end.

If you’re into musing about God, religion, and the role of the church; this can be an enlightening read. But if you’re more storyline-oriented (like I am), you may become frustrated by all the tale-stifling divergences.

Kewlest New Word…
Twilit (adj.) : dimly illuminated by or as if by twilight. Synonym : Crepuscular

Excerpts…
“There are three things that I like,” Amanda exclaimed upon awakening from her first long trance. “These are: the butterfly, the cactus and the Infinite Goof.”
Later, she amended the list to include mushrooms and motorcycles. (pg. 4 )

“Our laws are sacred.”
“Aren’t our people sacred?”
“Until a law is removed legally from the statute books, it must be obeyed blindly by everybody if we want to continue to live in a democratic society and not slide back into anarchy. We’ve got to have laws and retribution. Ever since we crawled out of caves, retribution has followed wrongdoing as the night the day. When retribution ceases to follow evil, then the fabric of civilization begins to unravel.”
Amanda stirred the custard. “If we’ve always had retribution, how do you know what happens when we don’t have it?” she asked. (pg. 250)

“When following the spoor of the Mirror Eaters it is wise not to tread on their droppings.” (pg. 132)
I found ARA to be a bit rough around the edges, mostly because of the weak storytelling. A number of characters are introduced and developed, only to fade out and not return. The pacing was uneven, and after a while, I cringed as yet another tangent arose to slow things down.”

http://hammysbooks.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/another-roadside-attraction-tom-robbins.html

ZM-
Are you maybe an AI program?
JHolbo-
I don’t know what your take on the other main “movement” of the period , the anti-war “movement”, is, but my memory of that time is it got the shit kicked out of it.
Though that never showed up in the media after a little while of it coming down. Just the news of things faded away, while rumors of hellish confrontations and losses arced through still-forming communities.
People headed for the hills.
My sense is the official histories have it that things pretty much dissipated with the victory of Nixon’s withdrawal from Viet Nam. My memory of that time is the hammer fell some while before that.
The civil rights “movement” is like this thing with MLK at the head of it now, but the Panthers were a huge presence, briefly, in whatever that was. Again the media didn’t carry that once the violent smack down really started. Other things happened. The acceptable were accepted, the unacceptable were not.
I don’t think feminism got especially beat up or down, but most of the vital resistance to whatever it was those “movements” were moving to transcend did. Got beat up or bought off.
There were these interstitial cusps, where the edges of political and metaphysical and environmental and gender and nutrition and getting high and all of it moved toward something whole and healing, and were met instead with a ferocity that drove most into small-scale retreat. That ferocity was displayed behind a mask of ridicule.
I think that’s something like what happened to feminism. Just with less specifically overt violent suppression, more mediated, more subsumed in the Austin Powers hedonism of a culture that was only receiving images of those movements through its media.

You may call me GAL roy belmont, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

” That ferocity was displayed behind a mask of ridicule.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItVYkznnTc

What makes you conclude the discussion is about” “women’s lib”, not feminism” ? And what do you mean by “women’s lib” and by “feminism”?

OK, I confess I haven’t read the whole thread, giving up after around post #70 and maybe reading a few of the OP’s comments since. Still, my tuppence worth for nowt…

On the “where did that asteroid strike come from” question, my choice would be consumerism, demography (baby-boomers) and geopolitics (Vietnam war).

Taking the last first, the obvious question would be why the Vietnam war and not the Korean war? Two points, the much greater mediatisation of the Vietnam war compared to Korea, and the second is the demographic one, that the post-war baby-boom were still too young during the 1950s.

And that allows me to skip quickly past the demographic point that the post-war bulge generation came of age in the 1960s, so obviously the break from the culture and morality of the war generation was most likely to happen then. The baby-boomers, not brought up with the discipline of war service, the memory of depression-era or war-time deprivation, were already chafing at the strictures of old-fashioned morality in light of the possibilities opened up by the pill. Add to that a generation educated with the Nazis as ultimate evil, suddenly being faced with uniformed soldiers massacring Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians on the nightly news, it was no surprise that the moral deligitimation that had begun with the assasinations of the Kennedys, MLK, etc, finally tore. Kent State didn’t help.

But the area I want to focus on is the effect of consumer capitalism. I wrote something a (good) while back on ‘post-Fordism in 1921’ for lack of a better summary*. Basically looking at how GM’s Alfred P. Sloan transformed the automobile market that Ford had dominated up until through his concept of “breaking down the mass market into a mass class market”, segmenting the market into different lifestyle categories, the use of road-side billboards advertising different ranges of GM cars at different lifestyle identities, introduction of consumer finance, annual model change, built-in obsolence, yada, yada… I picked 1921 as the transformative “event” as this was the time when during a short but violent post-WW1 slump, all car manufacturers lost business, apart from those who made closed body cars – this after the engineers had decided amongst themselves that closed body designs were a “fad”. In other words, it was the move from an engineer-centric “any colour you like, so long as its black” approach to design, to a more consumer-focused one of “the customer is always right”. This shift, I argue, marks the move towards the segmentation of consumers through the promotion of proliferating identities and lifestyles. Of course the depression and the war intervened. But after the post-war austerity was overcome and business was to made again by selling new stuff to new consumer tribes, this formed a material and commercial basis for the famous “invention of the teenager” and the proliferation of the identities that eventually produced what cultural conservatives recoil from in horror as “identity politics”. In other words, despite what fuddy-headed reactionaries like Frum might think, it was less Ken Kesey and more the unreproachably right-wing and impeccably capitalist Alfred P. Sloan that is the true father of 1960s identity politics. It wuz capitalism what dun it…

* see here, if anyone’s interested

Re: Absent selective abortion, which we don’t have, the only place the American economy doesn’t have a say in the numbers.

Women’s bodies ‘naturally’ do some selection in favour of male or female fetuses, in response to environmental conditions. Poorer women, I believe, tend to have more girl children.

Re: Returning to Hector_St_Clare, I hope you don’t mind, but you blithely ignored my last query, so I quickly looked up your opinions on the age old question of nature or nurture:

ZM,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Discussing feminism on Crooked Timber is sort of like battleing the Lernean Hydra, as you deal with one silly remark two others pop up in its place, so I confess to having missed your query.

I don’t precisely know what biological determinism means- if it means anything in the strict sense then it’s a silly concept. As is ‘nature versus nurture’. Genetics, biochemistry and culture all interact with each other (as does, of course, free will), and each of them acts within constraints set by the others. Intelligence, for example, seems to have a heritability of around 50%, with another 20% of the variation being explained by prenatal environment, but if you take the baby of geniuses and raise him with wolves, he will end up severely retarded.

Of course culture and other environmental influences affect our personality and what we want. (In the case of gender roles specifically, a lot of that seems to be controlled by the mixture of hormones we are exposed to in the womb: men with lower prenatal exposure to testosterone, relative to estrogens, end up with a set of different personality traits than those with higher exposure, and vice bersa for women). Culture also plays a big role, of course, which is precisely why I argue about all this stuff: because culture matters. I want a culture and economy that encourages us to work with our natures rather than against them, and that makes it easy for men and women to fulfill traditional masculine and feminine gender roles if that’s what they like (and I suspect most of them will).

Of course there are going to be women who want to achieve high positions of power and influence as well. Probably not a whole lot, but they deserve the chance to rise as high as their talents and interests take them. I agree with equal rights for men and women: where I disagree with the feminists, is that I don’t expect, nor do I especially want, equal outcomes.

Hector_St_Clare, thanks for your reply.

Re: ” a lot of that seems to be controlled by the mixture of hormones we are exposed to in the womb: men with lower prenatal exposure to testosterone, relative to estrogens, end up with a set of different personality traits than those with higher exposure, and vice bersa for women”

I am not knowledgable, but I would have thought it possible that testosterone levels of women might be effected by the environment surrounding the woman – if, say, a woman felt threatened or other emotions – would that have an effect on hormone production?

Also, I am not sure you can account for things only by culture and biology, I think sometimes another kind of logic is at play.

I researched partly into the bhakhti saints and devotional poets of India once for an assignment, and I probably wouldn’t account for them by common culture (which they contested) and biology alone.

“The bhakti saints largely rejected the hereditary caste system and its emphasis on prescribed ritual, stressing instead the need for morality, purity of heart and an attitude of selfless service. They expressed their sentiments through song, poetry and music, often attracting thousands of followers. Their preference for the spirit of the law rather than its letter enabled many followers of apparently lower birth to participate. These include a number of famous women saints”

““Life without Hari is no life, friend,
And though my mother-in-law fights,
my sister-in-law teases,
the rana is angered,
A guard stationed on a stool outside,
and a lock is mounted on the door,
How can I abandon the love I have loved
In life after life?
Mira’s Lord is the clever Mountain Lifter:
Why would I want anyone else?”
(Caturvedi, no. 42)

I haven’t read all the posts (just got this on my RSS!), but here’s another conundrum. The late sixties and early seventies gave us riots and drugs as the punctuation to the idealism of the earlier sixties. It’s not clear to me what the punctuation was, though. It seemed as though that punctuation was a period, an ending, in some ways, but then in the seventies, some of the feminist goals were fulfilled. Semicolon?

The civil rights struggles took place earlier than that wave of feminism, which developed in response to the sexism of some of the civil rights and then leftist leaders (cf. the commentary here on the Port Huron statememt a few weeks back) and was ramping up during that riot-and-drug time.

So all that muddled feelings toward feminism, even for those of us who were there at the time, in a way that civil rights didn’t have to deal with. Why it kept on going was and is still a mystery to me.

I never said that “it’s unnatural for women to wear trousers” or anything like it. That is an outrageous caricature.

I was only claiming that there is a biological rationale here, since it was said that men “do not biologically wear trousers.” I also acknowledged from the beginning that (owing to modern bathrooms) this biological rationale is now mostly obsolete. However, it would still be a mistake to attribute this presently-waning gender distinction in dress to purely arbitrary social convention.

Fu Ko @201: Male and female dress, at least with respect to the question of trousers vs. skirts, seems to derive from biological suitability… trousers are an impractical way for women to urinate outdoors.

Fu Ko @289: I never said that “it’s unnatural for women to wear trousers” or anything like it. That is an outrageous caricature. (Emphasis added.)

Is it?

@ Mao Cheng Ji 11.14.13 at 2:02 pm
Almost, but the woman she was trying to threaten was the hypotenuse in a love triangle. (Sorry for the reference to TVTropes; it’s so quick to use.)

Roy Belmont takes the prize for the most awesome comment I’ve seen here yet.

@ Cheryl Rofer and the punctuation:
That’s the problem of philosophy generally, isn’t it? We know that there are distinctions, but trying to sort them into anything but a gigantic list of (in this case) “what happened” and conform them to the demands of a rule – that seems beyond us.

Slightly off topic, but you’ve explained why I’ve read 3 or 4 times lately on various conservative blogs that ‘by the 1970s, feminism was ubiquitous’. It certainly didn’t correspond with either my memory or my understanding of history, but it does fit nicely with the narrative that the damn liberals took over all the American institutions back in the day, thus causing the collapse of Decent Family Values.

The ideological ‘talking points’ that we keep being told are sent out by mythical party HQs may not exist, but occasional key phrases do tend to get picked up and adopted with amazing speed on the intertubes. See also ‘feckless’, a word which I thought had gone out of fashion along with referring to conquered people as ‘the natives’, but suddenly a few years ago (and no doubt entirely coincidentally) America had a feckless president, whose feckless actions and character were called out as feckless about 15 times a day in the conservative media.

Peter T @203 re the shalwar/kameez. Look, obviously I want this to revert to the peeing in woods discussion. Because that was awesome!

I’m not sure what the historical examples of women wearing trousers are supposed to prove. I think that if anybody bothered to actually spell out the reasoning there that it would be transparently bad.

Incidentally, I did discover that the given examples of historical societies where women wore trousers were societies where dress was heavily regulated socially as a class/caste marker. Indian women wore the Salwar because the Mongols invaded India, and it was their traditional court dress. Of course, emulating the leisure class trumps pragmatism when it comes to dress; c.f. the necktie (which, by the way, did originally serve a practical function).

“Also asteroid strikes aren’t random. Asteroids obey the laws just like everything else.”

I have read that scientific laws were misnamed. Scientists just report on observed patterns. Thank Henry for the ideas about the use of the power of the paradox of thrift.