I don't know if women were actually
"oppressed" or not. If they were, I think
men were just as oppressed because they were not (and
still are not) permitted to act in
"traditionally feminine" ways. It was just
like everyone was stuck in his/her particular gender
role, and no one was allowed or accepted to do
anything else. I think there might have been some
negative impressions that women had to deal with -
for example, maybe people didn't realize they were
*intelligent* enough to do the same things men were
doing, and they were treated as simpletons. And it's
true that, in history, women were considered lesser,
because they weren't even allowed to vote, and the
law used to say that a husband actually
"owned" his wife. So it was kind of like
slavery in that sense. But most of that changed long
ago, quite a while before the 60s, so the
"Liberation" thing really did not have to
do with becoming "free." For some reason,
women got the weird idea that anything men were doing
had to be good and worth doing, so they decided to do
it too. (Promiscuity? Sure ! That's a good idea !)
Of course the irony is that in all their rushing
toward "female empowerment" (hmm...) they
basically *dumped* what made them feminine, and
glorified masculinity even more by imitating it. It
seems to me like now women have claimed that for
themselves, and now men are in some weird in-between
- not allowed to act like "traditional
men," and also (STILL) not really allowed to
have feminine characteristics. It's like everybody's
trying to be everything, sort of. Meanwhile, everyone
is promiscuous, half the kids out there are
accidents, and there are no families anymore because
everybody's too busy having fun to raise kids
properly.
I really don't know what the gender roles are anymore
(Does anyone?) but I know that women have really put
themselves into a bind. Now they have to be providers
*and* beautiful sex objects, but they may still be
considered "sluts," and modesty and
virginity are no longer options, because that makes
them "prudes." I don't know what the male
situation is, but I'd suspect it is similarly
confused.
I still hear them complain now and then, but I do not
think oppression is such a big topic now. More than
anything now, I hear women complaining *ceaselessly*
about sexual attitudes toward them and how they are
treated like objects or "meat" instead of
human beings. Kinda puts the whole misguided
"liberation" thing into perspective.
On a related but different topic, I have noticed that
the media seems to portray men as oafs and
simpletons, especially in commercials. It's not
unusual to see scenes where men are just lying around
while the women do all the housework, or they're
incapable of cooking for themselves or cleaning up
after themselves, and especially they are seen as
incompetent around children. I am not sure what that
is about or how it started, but it seems pretty
sexist and unfair to me. If they showed women in a
similarly incompetent light, people would probably
complain. I am sure there is some material like that
(About women being incapable around cars/machinery
and such) but the ones about men seem a lot more
common. Another example would be Disney films (my
thing!) where the fathers are often half-witted as
parents (Belle's father, Jasmine's father) or too
stern and not quite sensible (Ariel's father) and
there are never mothers around for very long. They
are always taken out of the stories early on because
"they will solve all the problems too
quickly." Basically, there has to be a bumbling
idiot parent around that the story will take a long
time to resolve, and Disney does not like to portray
women as idiots, so the idiot is always the dad.
Pretty interesting . . .
