🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <tta3o4mr4a@visix.com> amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>In article <58695@microsoft.UUCP> rodvan@microsoft.UUCP
>(Rod VAN MECHELEN) writes:
>>There is this silly idea that men "dominate" in our culture.  Not only
>>is this a feminist fiction, but a sexist slam against the female majority.
>
>Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ... ... ...
>
>You've got great deadpan delivery, but shouldn't this have been at least
>crossposted to rec.humor, if not posted there in the first place?

Much as it pains me to agree, he's right.

In this society (American, derived from English law and general European
custom) men have traditionally taken the leadership role, or have traditionally
been suckered into it, depending on one's point of view.  Nearly everybody
agrees this should be changed, and it is in fact being changed.  But the 
leadership role does not imply dominance, and like the dowagers of Asia, 
in their own characteristically feminine way, women have shaped this culture
roughly as much as men have and deserve roughly the same amount of credit and
blame as men for the state of things today.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having the leadership role.  The
main advantage is you get to pretend you control things, but this all stops
when you die, and most leaders have already died.  You also get to take 
credit for the good things that have been done.  The main disadvantage is that
you have to take the blame for all the bad things that have been done.

In the current political climate, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
When was the last time you heard men recieve the credit for public sanitation,
anesthesia, vaccinations, contraception, civil liberties?  Probably never--
even now I can almost hear the "ping" as the very idea bounces off thousands 
of skulls.  When was the last time you heard men get the blame for war, 
pollution, poverty?  Better ask, when was the last time you didn't have to 
listen to that?

An awful lot of feminist rhetoric amounts to a tunnel-vision of history,
empasizing all the awful things that men have done and strutting forth all
the great, wonderful things that women have done as examples of superior 
feminine culture cruelly suppressed by the dominant males.  It's easy.  Just
hold up Hitler and Florence Nightingale as archetypes.  What a different 
sort of equally biased history could be made of Queen Victory and Martin 
Luther King. 

-EMP