Well, it seems I must respond to my dear sister. Let me first post her words below:

Grace:

I'm not sure who my sister associates with all the time so that she still thinks women are expected to be submissive and inferior. Maybe she really did just spend too much time in Mt. Pleasant. Really, though, why is that still an issue? It's done with. Finding a man is not the ultimate goal; that's stupid. You don't have to be a stereotypical female to find love. That's been established. She, of course, thinks it's stupid too, but apparently she still feels like she has resist the urging by society to conform to weird female standards before she can be loved, and furthermore, being loved by some guy is her implied life goal. I mean where does she get this? (sorry Lois, if you're reading this, but it's a message to everyone). That's such an archaic mindset on the part of people who enforce it. Here is the difference between me and her:

I don't think about the heinousness of women seeking men as a spiritual leader, life giver, master, commander, employer, and obvious superior.

I don't think about that at all. Because I don't doubt that it's stupid.

Who still thinks these things? I don't know anyone. Except maybe my uncle(s), and I don't pay attention to him. He laughs at my dreams of being a filmmaker. Really though, he's a great guy, just too anchored to the past. It doesn't bother me.

Yes, I sometimes get perturbed at the repeated adoration of ditzy cookie cutter girls by naive and typical and empty boys. But who wants naive typical and empty boys?

I've never experienced this alledged discrimination. (expect for maybe to a small extent in Tech I, but those were mostly just people being jerks and it faded quickly. No biggie)

Makes me wonder if it's not mostly just in her head.

Or, if not, if she's seriously just hanging out with the wrong people, because people are not like that the world-over.

If I felt as though I had to lower my IQ and turn into a ditz for Said Prince Charming, then who the hell wants that anyway?

SERiosly.

pssh

// pondered by Grace

Now, anyone who knows Grace or reads her work knows that she is a genius (much like her sisters) and when she has an opinion, one would be wise to engage it for it quite possibly might have pearls of wisdom or truth or reality or a combination of the three hidden in the crevices. So, I would like to respond first to Grace's question, "Who still thinks these things?" with this opening statement, coined so elegantly by my dear friend Anna Rapa...

"Hello Grace? This is Grand Rapids calling..."

Yes, sadly, the fact is the town/city I live in along with many, many others absolutely hold steadfast to "archaic" patriarchal beliefs. Of course there are many people in this town who agree with Grace and Anna and I about the equality of women. The issue at hand and the reason I write are the social structures in place in towns and cities across America that cause young girls and young boys to grow up accepting harmful lies without even knowing it.

I spoke to a very educated Christian gentleman the other day who is a licensed psychiatrist and is not from Grand Rapids. This is his conclusion about Grand Rapids: "This place is a freaking time warp!"

Now, to Grace and others, College Station, Texas may seem like a time warp, but I am here to tell you that it really is not. Yes, you may look over while driving down the street and see a beat-up truck with the confederate flag hanging in the window - let me assure you, I know Bubba is still there. But, ideologically College Station is quite commonplace among "college towns". The social structure that you have grown up in is far more "liberal" than ordinary towns in America, which incidentally, outnumber college towns significantly.

Furthermore, most seniors in high school have never applied for a job or tried for any position (economic or not) that requires much more than the ability to do rote mental or physical behaviors such as pushing buttons on a cash register or scooping up popcorn. There is nothing wrong with that! Be sure to understand that I, in no way, am looking down my 29 year old nose at seniors in high school. But let me assure you there are studies that show that women compose a very small minority of CEO's in America. They are only a very small minority of pastors in American. The compose 0% of the Presidents or Vice Presidents in our government. They make approximately 50% to 30% less in salary as compared to men. These studies are not hard to find, and should anyone challenge me on this issue, I am willing to locate these studies and others on the internet and post their sites.

But let me take one step further and say the opportunity for women to advance economically and even probably politically (Go Condi Rice! Go Hillary!) does exist in this country. For all its faults, the values the US was founded on are truly "a girl's best friend" in terms of women's rights. The problem, though, are the beliefs that women have in their heads about themselves, not the laws on the books. Opportunity exist, but many women do not step into it, not because they are not gifted. They do not step into it because their reality has been defined by the society they are living in and that they continue to create by agreeing with it. Poverty is the same. Poverty creates a reality in the heads of people who are raised in it. Yes, some come out of it, but most simply grow into their parents. Poverty is a generational curse. Sexism is a generational curse as well.

Grace, it seems, is completely liberated from these silly notions (I'm glad!), but certainly she cannot miss the ads and commercials! Certainly we cannot miss the obvious message of "sell by sex" ads, "You could have sex with a woman like this, if you buy our product." Do your own survey - how many commercials or banners in the mall say "You could have sex with a man like this..." In fact, the unspoken message to men is "you could have a sex object if you buy our stuff." The message to women is "you could be a sex object if you buy our products" which are, of course, really short skirts, low-cut shirts that are "sticky" or my personal favorite, sweatpants with words on the butt.

Let me just take a moment here. How many men have you seen wearing sweatpants or shorts that have "Varsity" tattooed across the butt? I haven't seen any. Women, though, wear them all the time. It is a male joke on women who are athletic, a perfect excuse to look at their butts. And for those who wear words on their butts and do not belong to the athletic crowd (where it started) does this not almost audibly say, "Look at my butt"? I wonder how many headbands you could sell that say "liberated" across the forehead? I'm guessing it would be a less popular trend. How short are guys shorts? Last time I looked, you were lucky to see knee. How many men wear high-heels, which make your legs look longer, but are incredibly uncomfortable? Look at the way we dress and tell me that we are not a society that holds firmly to the idea that the best women are sexy, not smart. Culture always produces clues of its values. Ask any anthropologist.

Furthermore, in response to Grace's assertion that "people are not like that [believing in the inequality of the sexes] the world over", I must respond that sadly, yes they are. See, the "world-over" is unquestionably sexist. In fact, taking in the world population and calculating the percentage of individuals who believe in the equality of the sexes would reduce Grace, Anna, myself and other fans of equality to about 2%, if we are lucky.

In unnamed countries (out of respect), women are used like beast of labor. They work all day in the fields, prepare meals, watch the children and live in danger of being beaten or experiencing that unfortunate phenomenon of "accidentally" catching on fire in the kitchen. For those who do not know what I am talking about, there is a practice in some countries of "wife burning". This happens when men get tired of their wives, so they wait until their wife is in the kitchen, walk in and throw gasoline and a lit match on her and leave. The next day, it is reported as an "accident" in the papers, if it gets reported at all.

The big question is, why do women stay in these situations? Why not raise themselves out of this mess? And the answer is: Beliefs. If all the women in these cultures decided they had enough and simply protested by withholding sex until they got their rights; they would get their rights.

And sexism is alive and well in America.

Just the other day I had a guy look at me and say, "But Lois, women were made to be men's helpers, it says so in the Bible." This is precisely what I am talking about. He was referring to Genesis 2, where God decides to make a "helper" for Adam. Because this man grew up in our society, he reads Genesis 2 as God looking for an administrative assistant for Adam, who needed some filing done because naming all the plants and animals got a little out of hand. The truth is, if you read it, God says it's not good for the man to be alone. Adam was lonely. So God brings all the animals to Adam and none of them can be intimate with him because none of them think like him, feel like him, experience like him, in other words, his equal. So God creates a "helper" for him. Now the word helper is used 21 times in the ancient Hebrew text that we more commonly know as the Old Testament (the New Testament was written in Greek). Twice "helper" is used to refer to the woman in Genesis 2. Twice it refers to a military ally and 17 times it refers to God. The word helper is anything but submissive. It is powerful. It is someone who rescues. Yet, this fair boy, raised in our culture reads into Genesis his society's beliefs and promotes them as biblical!.

My point, again, is that it is in the head.

And so, I think I have written quite enough - in fact too much - but I will end it here with one last thing. I emphatically deny that I am looking for a man. It was programmed into me by my younger years, but I have been totally released from it and it is amazingly freeing. It is this freedom I wish for all women, so that those who do marry may marry a person, not a dream.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/21/2004 07:43:00 PM