Thursday, April 12, 2001

About Feminism Being At Odds With Virtue, Self-Restraint, Self-Respect

There hovers an asinine, completely unfounded notion that professional success by necessity must be accompanied by whorishness.

The stupid, hysterical media has once again gotten it phenomenally, cosmically wrong.  They say crap like, “women are stronger and being more powerful in the work force.  “They are casting off the shackles of society's rules/stereotypes of being weak in work, therefore they must necessarily cast off society's rules of self-respect, decency, and decorum.  If women are forceful in work then they must be forceful aggressive with shoving their naked bodies into people's faces." sex.

But this makes no sense whatsoever.  I do not understand why people are struggling with this issue so much.  There is no significant reason for this non-conflict to cause so much inner turmoil, within anyone's own mind or anywhere within the ranks of feminism.  This has already been addressed, this has been tackled.  This has been dealt with in a comprehensive solution that neatly addresses all concerns.

But what is the correlation whatsoever?  Where in the world is any possible semblance of inter-relatedness betwixt being career-minded -and- being a slts?

Let me reiterate the Asian talking points once again.

Many, many of the Asian women I knew growing up are intelligent, capable women who have prestigious careers and college degrees.  They are close friends with my parents.  NONE of them, and I do mean NONE, had to be sutss to do it.  Not a single one of them had to put topless pictures of themselves on the internet to become educated women.  They magically somehow managed to be strong capable women in charge of their own life -- markedly *without* needing to resort to sluttery posing for "playboy."  They managed to have Bachelor degrees in their chosen fields, and many of them also managed to have Master degrees.  They managed to have prestigious, respectable careers.  And nowhere in there did they feel the necessity to show people where the sun don't shine.

Not a single, not one solitary movie sex scene among them.  They all magically managed to become successful professional women without allowing details of their personal private lives to leak into the public arena.

The media keeps saying gibberish like, "pp must be alsts in order to be a strong woman in charge of your own life.  Be a slttt because you are a strong career-minded career-driven girl power person.  Be a sltt because this is commendable and desirable and is mandatory on the way to self-expression."  Some rubbish like that.

Remember how I exposed and pointed out the seedy, nasty underbelly of extremist liberal males?  They are notorious perpetrators of this delinquent myth.  Mtv, rolling stone magazine, those girls gone wild trash.

(Ugh, I loathe mentioning them in the same essay as my Asian sisteren and brethren.)

First of all, this makes no sense whatsoever.  See above.  But also-- I am surprised that so many girls nowadays are so scared to plan realistic careers.  They seem totally unaware that it is very possible to be forward-thinking, progressive, and smart about planning for one's future -- without compromising core integrity and self-respect.

And they don't know what they want to plan as their careers.  Apparently they feel that they are being discouraged from studying the sciences.  In this day and age, really?

The reason I always knew I had to be something when I grew up was that, back in the '80s, we all had to plan to be something when we grew up.

I had tons of positive, strong, respectable female role models growing up.  Teachers were all girls.  All main characters in books were girls; many book authors were girls.  Beverly Cleary had all of her classics including Dear Mr. Henshaw.

We had the absolute best school supplies, too-- Trapper Keepers, Lisa Frank.  1980s was very encouraging of girls to have careers.  This was, astonishingly, NOTTtt because they were "feminists in charge of their own life."  Surprisingly, they did not bring up the subject of girl power or feminism at all.  You do not plan a career only because you are a girl who is empowered.

No.  You plan for your future because you are a human being who is of this world.  All people need to plan for their futures in a respectable, enlightened, optimistic manner.  This is what they imparted to all of us, girls and boys.  I feel like perhaps, in many ways, this is more powerful than constantly repeating and reminding everyone about feminism, or rebelling against the establishment, or rebelling against so-called "tradition," etc.  It has more impact, it is more solid a declaration. This directive can be taken more seriously if we impress upon everyone the importance of planning a future career.

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