EClark1894 opened this issue on Apr 16, 2014 · 474 posts
moriador posted Thu, 17 April 2014 at 12:09 PM
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Well thank the radical feminist's who have seized control of the Gender Role, media Narrative and...............oh dont get me started!!
Don't blame feminism. The entire point of radical feminism was to try to eliminate gender role expectations for BOTH sexes, freeing both men and women to do and be what they desired without feeling beholden to temporary and changing cultural stereotypes. To be sure, 100 years ago, the sense was that women were far less free than men in this regard, and a lot of energy was expended to rectify that. The result was largely successful: women can be doctors, astronauts, physicists, university professors. These are things we take for granted now, but would have been almost impossible 50 years ago.
We've also gone a long way toward making it socially acceptable for men to feel good about spending time with their children and taking part in raising those children in a much more direct way.
Feminism was never about redefining masculinity, except to give men more freedom to define it for themselves as individuals.
The fact that these idealistic goals haven't been met, and that there has been an enormous backlash isn't the fault of the philosophy itself.
The de-masculinization of men is much more likely the result of a corporate driven economy that relies on producing anxiety in people in order to get them to buy more and more and more things. You can't sell face cream and special shampoo that costs twice as much to a man who cares only about being clean. But if you can make him feel self-conscious because his skin is too rough or dry or wrinkled or hairy, you've opened up a whole new avenue of products for him.
Unfortunately, when you open up the possibility of individual freedom of personal expression (in appearance, in fashion, etc), Wall Street has a bad habit of stepping in and doing whatever it needs to in order to sell as much as it can most efficiently.
Don't blame radical feminism. Blame Unilever. Blame Proctor & Gamble. Blame Johnson & Johnson.
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