When life was simpler

[Arkan]

A humorous thread turned into an uninteresting travesty

[Aristes]

heh It was never humorous. The cartoon looked like a fake. If it's genuine, then that wouldn't be funny. It would be sad.

[LadyCrimson]

heh It was never humorous. The cartoon looked like a fake. If it's genuine, then that wouldn't be funny. It would be sad.

That cartoon looked really familiar so of course I had to Google.

 

It's a real cartoon, from a book called "I'm Glad I'm a Boy, I'm Glad I'm a Girl," drawn/written by humorist Whitney Darrow. He did cartoons for the New Yorker, among other things. It was supposed to be satire, but not everyone saw it/realized it as such. Edit: It's interesting how most articles written about his death focus on collections of his NYorker cartoons and don't mention this book. I suspect it wasn't published for long, it's supposedly really rare.

 

Some background story from a blog:

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/04/02/b...d-things-fixed/

 

Buy it for $270 on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Im-glad-boy-girl/dp/0671665286

Edited April 10, 2009 by LadyCrimson

[Trenitay]

Only $270?! What a bargain!

[Tigranes]

Thank you LC.

 

I'm surprised it took people so long.

[Aristes]

I suppose, instead of saying "fake," I should have used the word satire. It is exactly what I thought it was. The cartoonist did not genuinely carry the convictions depicted in the cartoon. He was trying to use his strip as a way to attack the sexist views he perceived in society.

 

I stand by my original post:

 

"Looks more like self-congratulatory auto-eroticism than real social commentary. Go pat yourself on the back."

 

I also stand by my assertion that the strip is fake, since it depicts views that the cartoonist does not hold. That's actually what I meant all along. Folks who saw the cartoon and thought that it really was "from a 1970s children's book" might have taken it at face value, which makes the original post misleading as well.

 

"Commenter Jennifer says Whitney Darrow was a humorist, and that this book was intended as a satire of gender roles:

 

'Whitney Darrow was a cartoonist. The images are not propaganda. They are not indoctrination.'

 

She

Edited April 10, 2009 by Aristes

[Tigranes]

.....

[kirottu]

Yeah Tiggy, I hope you have learned your lesson! Posting something fun on the internets... What where you thinking? Sheesh!

[Cycloneman]

Here is a graph that paints a picture wherein the only culprit is discrimination:

 

I win! Your previous suggestions are now IRRELEVANT to this graph. Women who leave the workforce aren't counted. Women who worked less are shown with men who worked less. They work the same job, with the same degree.

[alanschu]

I have heard the phrase "Gender is just social construct" several times during my university-years. However, i can't understand how biological differences can be a form of a social construct.

 

 

Because you're confusing sex and gender.

[alanschu]

Looks more like self-congratulatory auto-eroticism than real social commentary. Go pat yourself on the back. Yeah, women in western society are beaten and downtrodden. If only I could force myself to use the roll-eyes smiley.

 

Women have the freedom to pursue their own agendas and, as Kaftan says, whether in complete irony or not, they tend to pursue different interests than men. Does that mean their cerebral hard-wiring is different? I don't know. What I do know is that the fastest way to be tarred and feathered is to suggest the possibility to most feminists. In fact, I've heard feminists who insist that women do anything as well as men, except for those things they do better, such as nurturing and caring. Heh. "We can fight as well as any man, but we're nurturing too!" It's the new and improved female population. Kind of like they're a different species almost.

 

Yes, I think that men can be sexist. Fair enough. But I also think that many women prefer feminine things. Should we despise a woman who decides that her family is more important than her career? Hell, maybe we should wonder why more men don't put their families before their career instead of wondering why more women don't. Should we make fun of a girl who likes a frilly pink dress more than blue jeans? Frankly, having been a teacher, I can say that I've known schoolgirls with a house full of brothers and a tomboy mom who prefer dresses to pants. The societal pressures on girls to dress like "girls" is FAR less than the societal pressures on boys to act like "boys." A girl wearing jeans and a masculine shirt is not going to suffer playground torture. A boy coming to school with a dollie (that is a doll without a weapon of some sort in its hand) is almost certainly going to draw comment from other boys. Not the nice comments, either.

 

Yeah, more men beat their wives than wives beat husbands. No doubt. ...But strong and aggressive men are more likely to use violence, either in threat or deed, against weaker and more docile men. And men are naturally stronger and more aggressive than women. Don't blame me for that. Take it up with God... or Darwin... or crappy fate. I don't care, just don't kill the messenger.

 

Speaking of which, maybe the idea that we should all be the same is why tv shows have increasingly depicted female lead characters are physically violent. How is that better? Hey, women are just as good as men. They can beat the crap out of men and each other just as much as any guy! Haha See how far we've come as a society?

 

So, yeah, great use of irony, Tig. Let me add sarcasm to the mix. We'll proceed with bitter recriminations and end up exactly where we were when we started.

 

 

This is grossly simplifying the problem.

 

Women and men do not inherently prefer different types of activities (or any activity at all). There IS biological predispositions that can provide barriers (strength is the most obvious), but the desire to do certain things is, in fact, a social construct set in a sociological context. A sociological context is unique to a particular TIME in a culture (i.e. cultures are not static). Men and women in our culture tend to prefer different types of activities specifically because they are raised in different ways. This is specific to cultures. What is feminine/masculine may not be in a different culture. The Etoro tribe in New Guinea is particularly homosexual, and in fact considers the ingestion of male **** to be a necessary act for sexual maturity. I have a feeling you'd be hard pressed to convince young men in our society to start drinking ****. But in their society it's normal and accepted, so society functions. It's like this with any culture.

 

 

 

Should we despise a woman who decides that her family is more important than her career?

 

No, and no one is saying that. You do get some stupid ass feminists that get upset because they feel these people hurt their causes, but for the most part no one has any problem with people that choose that type of lifestyle. If our society had women okay with that type of role, and they all did that type of role, then there'd be no problem. The issue is that there is a problem with the role. And that's where the struggles and issues start to arise. There is systemic discrimination and it's so ingrained into our cultural psyche that it's so easy to overlook. Then you get people who say "well maybe women are just geared to be that type of individual." Of course, because it makes it easy and helps ensure the status quo.

 

 

Should we make fun of a girl who likes a frilly pink dress more than blue jeans? Frankly, having been a teacher, I can say that I've known schoolgirls with a house full of brothers and a tomboy mom who prefer dresses to pants. The societal pressures on girls to dress like "girls" is FAR less than the societal pressures on boys to act like "boys." A girl wearing jeans and a masculine shirt is not going to suffer playground torture. A boy coming to school with a dollie (that is a doll without a weapon of some sort in its hand) is almost certainly going to draw comment from other boys. Not the nice comments, either.

 

Of course. Now you see this as being a problem for boys though, right? Women are free to choose whatever, whereas little boys are not. The funny thing about this is that the main reason for this is our society's cultural heritage IS patriarchal, holding our standard male archetypes as ideals. Women are okay to act more like men, because the underlying desire to possess those traits is highly sought after. The idea that little boys would NOT want to embrace the idea of a man's man is SCARY to many people. It's seen as abnormal and people spend thousands of dollars investigating why their little boy would rather be feminine (this is where gender differs from sex) and do "girly" things. Male homosexuality is seen as more dysfunctional than female homosexuality.

 

But there's still lines. Women that are perceived as promiscuous do get ostracized. Young men getting into physical altercations are seen as "boys being boys" but women getting into fights are more likely to actually be incarcerated for it. In fact, if they are seen as sexually promiscuous (aka sexually deviant), historically they are even MORE likely to receive harsh penalties in the legal system. But I digress.

 

 

The systemic discrimination part of it is that many (I'd wager most) of the higher paying jobs have been dominated by men. You can, perhaps even rightly, state that it's because women have not been interested in these jobs. Taks briefly touches on this when discussing engineering, and it's true. Much of that is due to the gender roles that society placed on people. Women weren't expected to be professionals. However, this doesn't go back THAT far in history. In fact, prior to the industrial revolution, women were actually much more active in the marketplace. Women ended up getting most of the shaft with the industrial revolution, for really two reasons as far as I can tell. First, their jobs were often the ones replaced by machinery. This is unfortunately, and I don't really feel bad about it, in that I don't think it was a conspiracy to remove women from the work force. Not only were their jobs being replaced by the loom and whatnot, but the unfortunate situation that this equipment was in fact quite heavy did give men a leg up in using it. This is a form of "institutional discrimination" (nobody is meaning to be discriminatory, extra circumstances just make it so and there's not much that can be done about it aside from making equipment lighter...not an option back then). The unfortunate thing is that in many places, male dominated unions took up position in these occupations, and then restricted access for women.

 

According to Joyce Burnett (Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain), gender ideology did play key roles in restricting access for women in job that did not require strength, but were not subject to a competitive market (the white collar jobs). Tailoring, however, utilized women to undercut men labour union wage demands and ensured a competitive market. In Burnett's perspective (one that minimizes the influence of gender ideology), competitive labour markets helped women maintain employment in said markets.

 

Another symptom of the era was that gender roles were being redefined. The ideal of the Victorian woman was a role that was seeing increased social status. This is where the cultural context is important. In this sense, with women seeking increased status by adopting the Victorian image for how a woman should behave. During this time, we saw women becoming less likely to enter the labor market because greater status could be obtained elsewhere. Not much of an issue for the time (a modern feminist would disagree, but she's looking at it in today's context), but it has led to "problems" for women in the job market the past century. It allowed men to become more entrenched in the labor market.

 

 

This is getting long, but I'll fast forward to today. Thanks in part to WW2 and the competitive labour market, more women are in the workforce. However, the white collar jobs still have limited penetration by women. Much of this is from gender role expectation (women shouldn't be doctors, they should be nurses). This is why that annoying feminist that we all hate spouts forth all of her rhetoric about how women can do whatever they want. The discrimination is two fold as well. You DO have people that think that women are, in fact, inferior doctors. It's all a part of the gender ideology that men are doctors. As much as people hate it, this is the ideal behind affirmative action. Because if you put people in a situation where they have to be treated by a female doctor and things go well, the stereotypes will start to break down. Furthermore, people will start to SEE people in these professions, hold them to new ideals, and you'll start to see an increase in enrollment in these fields (such as what taks mentioned).

 

But there are indeed still walls that are still up. It might not be a "global conspiracy" to keep down women, but there are people that resist the changes to the status quo (this is inevitable). Heck, I know in Canada the mere idea that a husband could rape his wife was laughed out of the House of Commons initially. It wasn't until I believe the 1980s that it actually got recognized that spousal rape can and does occur. The **** aspect of it for them is that, until recently, women were most likely to have to deal with the double shift. The "pink collar ghetto" meant that women were working in the workforce, and the primary workers at home. Fortunately this seems to be changing. But women don't just tend to gravitate to certain jobs. Societal expectations WILL make some jobs more appealing, because it's socially acceptable (nursing for instance has a huge barrier to MEN), but I just don't buy that through sheer coincidence, women tend to gravitate to lower level jobs that typically don't pay as well.

 

 

Cultures change, and with them their gender roles.

[Tigranes]

As recently as a century ago, pink was widely regarded as a man's colour, as a subset of red, and blue for girls.

[taks]

keep in mind, alanschu, there is a very large biological difference between women and men in regards to one specific area: hormones. women and men have completely different body chemistry, which does effect both their brain and body functions.

 

taks

[Asol]

An individual can get anywhere they want or need to with the proper motivation talent and other determinants. Always could, always will.

 

However said individual's social interest group is just a stationary target looking for a handout, and a source of energy for leaders and various other exploiters.

Only thing you can do in a flock or a herd is get sheared or get slaughtered.

 

Being born 'poor' is being born to irresponsible people, being born 'rich' the opposite, the focus then should be having and assuming responsibility to future generations. The point of that statement is to discourage squeaky wheel approach to social change which is inherently lazy and greedy, tantamount to begging... Find it broke? Try fixing it!

 

Growing up in Alaska I used to lament how the natives got such a raw deal from 'us' (whatever qualified that...). I went back a couple years ago though and I couldn't find evidence of any G-men who's job it was to ducttape these guys to the curb and poor scotch all over them.

Edited April 10, 2009 by Asol

[Aristes]

My point isn't that women don't suffer from discrimination. ...And I respect your post in this regard, alan. Especially since it touches on points I was actually trying to make. The loom, for instance. Men are stronger than women. There are physical differences. To accuse me of sexism for pointing out an unavoidable fact doesn't change it. Pointing out that this specific woman over here is stronger than that specific man over there doesn't change the general rule either. So, discrimination exists, but it works in a variety of ways. Ways we don't even understand. Ways we will probably never understand.

 

As for the "patriarchal" society message of your post: yes. That was my point. The same mores that have a hand in keeping women down are also the same ones that force men to act like idiots. My point wasn't that women didn't suffer from discrimination. It was that "manly" values are so pervasive that women in movies, television, and literature have become men with curves and boobs. They have to be hawt. They have to be strong. ...And they have to beat down folks who get in their way.

 

As for your graph, Cyclone, it is certainly instructive. I don't concede that the sole cause for those discrepancies is discrimination, but it's certainly in there.

 

Finally, as for you Tig, you're a great guy. I've enjoyed your views on games and politics. Your pictures of Korea bring back memories of my days there when I was younger. I'm sorry that I didn't take pleasure in the rolling off your chair, guffaw inducing original post, but I'm sure I've offended you more at this point than the cartoon offended me.

[taks]

...And they have to beat down folks who get in their way.

except in horror flicks. they're always too stupid to live except jamie lee curtis, and i think she lived in spite of being stupid running around screaming like a moron. the men in horror flicks are stupid, too, for that matter, so i guess horror flicks are a wash and not material to this discussion.

 

taks

[Gorgon]

In Japanese horror flicks the ghost is always a giant hairball attached to a girl. It's a rule now, after 'ringu'. People are no smarter about examining that strange noise after half their party has mysteriously disappeared though.

 

I welcome a chance to go off topic, too much text makes Jack a dull boy.

Edited April 10, 2009 by Gorgon

[taks]

In Japanese horror flicks the ghost is always a giant hairball attached to a girl. It's a rule now, after 'ringu'. People are no smarter about examining that strange noise after half their party has mysteriously disappeared though.

 

I welcome a chance to go off topic, too much text makes Jack a dull boy.

well, it is sort of a light-hearted rant thread...

 

eddy murphy did it best:

 

ghost: "get out!"

eddie: "too bad we can't stay"

 

taks

[Aristes]

Yeah, everyone is stupid in a horror movie. I mean, if the ghosts want it that bad, I say let them have it. Time to get the hell out of Dodge. Either that or call the Scooby crew.

[taks]

i'm pretty sure i know what scooby snacks are, btw.

 

taks

[ShadySands]

Delicious?

[taks]

depends on how they're made, but they generally taste even better about a half an hour after you've already had a few.

 

taks

[kirottu]

they're always too stupid to live except jamie lee curtis, and i think she lived in spite of being stupid running around screaming like a moron.

 

taks

 

Ah, Jamie Lee Curtis. She has awesome pair of lungs so she can run around and scream. Awesome pair.

[Arkan]

Magic brownies....er...Scooby Snacks FTW!

[Arkan]

they're always too stupid to live except jamie lee curtis, and i think she lived in spite of being stupid running around screaming like a moron.

 

taks

 

Ah, Jamie Lee Curtis. She has awesome pair of lungs so she can run around and scream. Awesome pair.

 

 

Does Jamie Lee Curtis count as both a man and woman in this instance?