Posts by Jackie Clark
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Let's get this right, shall we Michael? Deborah has never said all men are rapists. I remember the slogan because I used it. I was a Unifem in the mid 80's and we were still using it then. It's not about the fact that every man rapes a woman. Patently they do not. It was, as Danielle has so correctly stated, about the patriachal society that seemed to condone rape at the time - rape in marriage was not yet illegal, rape was very hard to prove in court, rape crisis was underfunded, stranger rapes were on the increase - being a society that by and large gave you huge amounts of mana simply by dint of having a penis. Penis = power. That was the basis of it. Other feminists of the time may argue with me on that, but in the Auckland University Feminists thinking, that was the logic. And if you were a young woman at that time, it wasn't an entirely unreasonable conclusion to draw, I might add. Women at the time, of my acquaintance and in my experience, were less empowered than they are today. Some of us were more political, some of us were not. Not all young men frightened us, but some did. I can think of countless examples of parties where young men used their "power" and our silliness to their advantage. I'm afraid, Michael, that no really didn't mean no. Which is why I spent hours, along with my Unifem mates and others, chanting that exact slogan in marches up and down the city. Would welleducated women in their early twenties let that stuff happen to them nowadays? Not from what I hear from my acquaintances of that age. This is what irks me so. There are young women who take for granted that young men respect their wishes, that they should be able to flash their tits around, and it's all just good fun. That they have immense sexual power over young men, if not all men. T'wasn't always so.
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Not the coalface, Michael. The coal face is the children we don't get to see.
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It does look pretty lame, Russell, and it was, you're right. We have come such a long way, and that's what concerns me. That we're about to lose a large chunk of it.
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my concern is not, russell, about how many girls are dressing to fit the raunch culture image. it's about how that culture is effecting their self-esteem, their choices, and their ability to achieve. i'm not interested in their moral state; i'm interested in their physical and mental well-being.
Once again, someone else says it better than me. Ta Anjum! I feel it because I teach in Mangere where most of the parents of the children I teach are very young, and very, very into some of the more "gangsta" and gangster stuff, with all the attendant misongynistic BS that goes with it. I have wee boys that come to me to tell me they're in the Mongrel Mob. That's who some of them glorify . That's a whole other story. These little girls are growing up with these little boys, and the cycle perpetuates.
For example, I love Jay-Z's '99 Problems'. But the chorus, 'I got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one' isn't really something that a right-on third-wave feminist like myself wants to, um, 'reclaim' in any meaningful sense. Sigh.
Love the tune, hate the lyrics? Bit of a bummer, I can see that. But sometimes you have to be black and white about stuff you believe in. These days, that's kind of frowned on, I know. But not everything is okay. If girl children are wearing cutesy slogans on tshirts that are completely inappropriate, that's not okay to me. If women call themselves girls, that's not okay to me. If my niece thinks that only eating lowfat yoghurt is okay, because that's what Granny eats, then I tell her it's not. If women take off their clothes to titillate others, and it's not burlesque, that's not okay to me. There are alot of things about gender politics that people tell me to chill out on, and I guess they tell alot of the women on this site the same thing. But I'm not going to because while I still teach little girls, little Pasifika girls, who are getting thousands of, what I view as, destructive messages each day, it's my job to be at least one of the people in their lives that stands up and speaks the opposing view.
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I should have said - why are generalisations such a bad thing in a context where one is talking about gobal concepts - eg gender and sexual politics
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I have to agree with Deborah, on this one, Russell. She has made very valid points, none of which have been generalisations. I certainly may have made generalisations, but then no-one has ever explained to me, after 43 years on this planet, and having spent 41 of them arguing vehemently sometimes just for the sake of it, why exactly generalisations are such a bad thing. I even went and had a look just to see exactly what the word means. This is what thesaurus.com has to say about it
So which of the three definitions are we looking at? An idea or conclusion having general application? I still don't get it. Someone help me out here. Why is generalisation a bad thing? -
we now have this weird mishmash that's neither oppression nor enlightenment
I've spent two days rambling when this is all I really wanted to say. Thank you, Heather.
does that mean that all this "empowerment" is so much hot air?
Ditto, Che
so you could argue that women or men have all kinds of choices, but that argument always overlooks that the range of choices is extremely limited. usually we're given the impression of freedom of choice, but in fact...
Ditto, ditto, Che
It took me a long, long time to realise that my mother nagged me about my weight because she really thought I would be happier thin, and because she had her own body image problems
I hear you, Emma, but in my case it took no time at all for me to figure it out. I love the woman, but why would you tell a 14 yr old "If you were skinny, I'd buy you any clothes you liked." Luckily, I was far too in love with myself to let stuff like that sink in too far. It irks her greatly, even now, and she's mellowed hugely, that I could be happy with as much body fat content as I have. She's always trying to shut me up around my two nieces when I go on about fat facism etc. And I just laugh at her when we're all having a naked female only swim, and she tells me the girls don't want to see a fat body naked. Ah, the battle is large, but there are more ways to win the war than the traditional ones, eh?
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and women do it even more.....
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And then again, I may be overstating the case...............
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I like those Dove ads - and the pisstake is a good one. If you're making billions from beauty products, at least be honest about it. Wonderful. Or am I wearing rosetinted glasses on this one?