Why don't people in politics understand the uselessness of being sexist?

Trump!..in politics is sexist or were you just born yesterday? Have you looked at riots in New York City and aspiring women politicians like Katy Tur. Trump is a misogynistic and edgy pig! This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at October 28, 2018 10:17 AM MDT

As a woman and a feminist I would not label President Trump as "sexist".   Or "misogynist"!  If women had not voted for him he would not have been elected.  I was born in 1957. 

BIGOT, RACIST ANTIGAY!!!.DONALD TRUMP GO AWAY!!!.. I never thought you were smart Officegrrr! Just the opposite! This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at November 7, 2018 5:40 PM MST

Well I have never claimed to be "smart"!  But I have been around long enough to know that respect goes much farther than hatred. 

This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at October 28, 2018 10:17 AM MDT

I think Officegirl is a devout Christian and a conservative and so strongly identified with these values that she would be unlikely to study or consider how or why others hold different points of view, I don't think it interests her.
I don't know what church she goes to - perhaps not one of the creationist or fundamentalist sects, but still one that is fairly literal in its interpretation of the Bible.
I think, with her values, she would always support Republican policies and representatives, irrespective of their personal attributes.
I would expect that, given the chance to choose between two Republican candidates, she would always choose the more conservative one.

I wonder if you think Trump isn’t a liar or a narcissist, either? 

From what I have read of your replies on issues concerning men and women, I have difficulty in understanding how you can claim to be a feminist. 

I understand that there are many kinds of feminism, many subsets of feminist theory and approaches to how to equalize the societal position of women. But so far, I've haven't seen anything written by you indicating what rights need to be won for women.

I would be interested to see how you define what feminism is, and what needs to change to achieve its goals.

Hi. Thank you for giving me the chance to share some of my background.  I became an adolescent at the time a lot was going on in the women's movement - Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem,  Betty Friedan, The Second Wave, Roe vs. Wade,  Our Bodies Ourselves, Mary Jane Sherfey, Camille Paglia, The Personal is Political, even Helen Reddy I am woman hear me roar.  So though I was very young I picked up on the fact that there was a lot going on and that even though I felt I was not able to fit into civilization in any meaningful way that because I was a woman that what I thought and did mattered, even if it was not much.  Perhaps it was natural that  I focused at first on my sexuality because that was one of the few things I enjoyed and made me feel good about myself.  I did not see why I had to be the sexual property of any one man but really wondered why I could not just be with whomever I chose to be with. Very naïve but that was what made sense to me in those days. I ran away from home and lived sort of a hippie life for a number of years where I picked up little bits of wisdom from girls older than me who were then active in the movement although  at the time I was mostly just trying to establish myself as a person and I did not become active in taking classes or going to demonstrations until the very end of the 70s and the early 80s.  We would get together and share how we felt we had been oppressed by society and men and also how we felt we had oppressed society and men ourselves! We learned about our capabilities and that we could achieve  anything if we wanted and were willing to do the work. Also we learned a lot about our history and various contributions that women had made most of whom we had been unaware of before.  I focused more of my activities on sexual assault  and we would publish lists of men who raped us and seek them out and expose them and even heckle them.  This was both in Berkeley and Boston where I lived alternately during those years. In those days it was very much about what we termed "reproductive rights", equal pay for equal work, and getting ourselves into avenues of work where women had traditionally been excluded. When I moved to Oregon I worked at a radio station where I produced and wrote in part a regular program on women's issues.  Later I came back east and took a part time job on a farm entirely run and worked by women where we had twice weekly seminars on mostly being ourselves and realizing our strengths and capabilities on our own and apart from men  so we could understand better what we are and how we worked instead of just against being with a man.  During that time I was taking secretarial and computer classes in order to better be able to get into some better paying jobs rather than just working low paying ones where I still had to depend upon the partial or more support of a man. 

Becoming a professional my perspective changed somewhat and I came to see the movement mostly in terms of our potential and tapping into our strengths.  As I came to realize that anything we had to ask or beg men for would never really  be ours.  So I became disenchanted with the politics which I thought too often prevented us from being everything we could be and prevented us from enjoying who we were. In other words I saw too much posturing for the sake of politics and hostility against those of us who chose what we thought best for ourselves rather than following the so-called "party line".  Lesbian feminists who felt they had to sneak around to enjoy their men in order to preserve their political standing and influence. 

Is weird to me that at the age of 61 my being a feminist is suddenly challenged by men as well as women! I am a feminist because I take seriously that I am a woman and have come to realize that if that is where perhaps some of my weaknesses lie it is also the source of many of most  of my strengths.  Rather similar to now being labelled a "racist"  because a certain kind of rhetoric that uses very restricted notions of what constitutes such.  

Now as far as subsets of feminist theory I am sure there are many  but I will leave them to those who enjoy and understand them more than I do. Perhaps like yourself?  As a woman I do not see myself, or any other women in my society, as unequal.   Simply many of us are unaware of all the possibilities out there for us  or are unwilling to do the work necessary for us to achieve them.  We are very ready to commiserate with one another's pain but  unwilling to celebrate one another's joys and achievements - which to me is very wrong.  So I try to help younger women with what I have learned from my experience is most likely to be successful from a practical rather than just a theoretical point of view.  If we require laws to protect and further us then we are as much as admitting that we are in fact NOT "equal".

The same with "rights" - why should we require a law to be passed just so we can be ourselves?  We are ourselves and we have value  because God loves us  which is where any so-called "rights" come from anyway.  I have never felt constrained in my life in any way because I am a woman  but I have also realized that to be myself I have to accept the personal responsibility for anything I do.  So you see I have come to look at personal responsibility as the key to  being ourselves. Which does not exclude but includes men as well! Now I know there are some things I will never be able to do but not because I am a woman but simply because they are not for me.  I have made my own goals and to the extent that I have achieved them I have made a victory for all of us. Others may choose to make other goals   for themselves or for others  but I only choose to follow them as long as I can see in share in their relevance for me as an individual and as far as I can see they will help other women and not just a small group of women. 

Thank you for such a beautifully rich and full reply.
Now that I understand your personal path through feminism, it's easy to see you as a feminist, but one with a unique way of expressing it - not wrong in any way, just different and equally valid.

I happen to differ on the issue of asking men to grant certain "rights" and protections. All changes and reforms in democracies have come from campaigns for reform.

• At the beginning of the Middle Ages in England, the king had a parliament of lords who were his advisors, but his rule was absolute by God-given Divine Right.
• In the 17th century, war broke out between King James II of England and Parliament. It ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This established a constitutional monarchy, which is a 'king-controlled-by-parliament,' meaning that the lords now operated as an oligarchy, but they were not elected. Their positions were hereditary.
• What we now regard as modern democracy began to evolve in the 19th Century as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the poverty of the many who were put out of work by mechanisation and mass production. In 1811-12 there was a widespread outbreak of machine breaking by hundreds of workers known as Luddites.
• In 1819 a mass meeting in St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, turned violent when militia drew their swords
• to clear a gathering of middle and working class workers and their families calling for voting reform and a free press.
• Magistrates deemed the reform illegal.
• By 1832 a reform of Parliament began and a number of acts of Parliament were passed giving the vote to a further 400,000 people. However, this was mostly just the middle classes.
• Britain did not become a democracy until the Representation of the People Acts of 1918.
• Women's right to vote was won via the campaigning of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Suffragettes. Had women not campaigned, it is unlikely men would have thought of giving it to them. So I think this is a good example of how people in power can veto or grant a reform, and how those with less power still have the power to educate and persuade.
• In 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act passed; it allowed qualified women to vote and be elected into Parliament -- about 8.4 million women.
• In 1928, all women received the vote on the same terms as men (all men and women over the age of 21) as a result of the Representation of the People Act.
• Imagine! It is not even 100 years since women gained the right to vote, and already we take it for granted! Is there not a touch of irony in that?

This post was edited by inky at October 31, 2018 7:37 AM MDT

Oh you are welcome.  I can appreciate your interest in history but as I wrote in response to Don Barzini  I am not responsible for history so why should I have to bear the weight of history?   There were always women practical enough or vibrant enough or smart or clever enough or simply ornery enough to live the lives they chose for themselves.  That they seldom got written into the histories is not their fault - doubtless I will never get into any histories either - most of which are written by men and reflect their own concerns.  Which does not mean I can't have a good life.  Or help others do the same.  Maybe I was born at the right time. I talk to women only ten years older and I hear that they were unable to even get their own credit cards without their husband signing them and that was as late as 1970- when I was 13. I hear what it was like to get an abortion in the 1960s and I have known and even worked with the first generation of women, only a few years older than myself who went into the work force and into jobs traditionally reserved for men in the early 1970s many of whom are now retired or at the top of their professions. Recently a man asked a question on here that implied that we "slept our way to the top" which at times I have been accused of as well by those who don't respect or care for me but you know I have been a corporate insider now for almost thirty years and I can tell you I have never seen that happen.  At all. Is much more mundane than many people would like to think. Hard work and politics and creativity but most of all the ability to increase the bottom line .  And so many of us were willing to sacrifice other parts of our lives to hard work and being available 24/7 and they are now the executives and often have had to pay a heavy personal price for it. I am not one of them because I leave my work at the office on weekends though I have done incredibly well for someone who at one time had no prospects or no skills at all just by learning how to do what I was assigned to do and eventually suggesting improvements at the right moments and in a way that my higher-ups (mostly men) could get the credit! They can have all the credit they want because I am able to live my life the way I have chosen to both because of them and in spite of them.  We can pass all the laws we want but they are not going to change people - we can only do that by personal influence.  Thank you for your response. 

Historically, the majority of women, irrespective of how practical, vibrant, intelligent or ornery they were, never got the chance to choose their lives for themselves.
For starters, women had no ability to control whether they got pregnant or how many children they had. This meant they could not choose their lives.
For most of human history, marriages were arranged for them without their consent. They could not own money or property. Their doweries went to their husbands. If they rebelled they were beaten or put into asylums. They had nowhere to run away to. Only those from extremely wealthy families with links to powerful men had some degree of freedom and privilege. Conditions varied depending on epoch, country, religion and class - but by and large, until very recently (the earliest changes began about two centuries ago) women were the property of men and the law enforced it.

The fact that women were rarely written into history does not mean that we don't know how they lived. There is a wealth of evidence in archaeology, literature, the arts, legal records, cemeteries etc.

No one would ever imply that you or any other woman is responsible for history; that would fly against logic.

Now is an ideal time to be a woman born into Western culture; there has never been another culture which had as much freedom, choice and opportunity to women. But it was not given to us. Our mothers, grandmothers and great gradmothers fought for every single right that we now take for granted. And some of the things they fought for have still not been achieved.

I have no doubt that you earned your current corporate position without sleeping with men above your station, and purely by being good at your job. I'm very sorry that such excessive hours are required by so many corporations. There is mounting evidence that this has extremely negative effects on health, life expectancy, and the children of such parents.
That someone here once implied that you slept your way to the top is a typical example of male chauvinism. It implies he believes that no woman could achieve success by honest work and being excellent at the job.
Statistical analysis by sociologists shows that the truth is the opposite. In the conventional business and professional worlds, women who sleep with bosses are less likely to get promoted because they are not respected. The few women who do get promoted to high rank achieve their positions because they far outstrip the performance of male applicants - the exception being in personnel departments, where women represent 90% or more of the workforce and are more likely to be promoted over the few men. A recent trend is women being promoted to CEO if a company is in deep financial trouble. There are two theories about this, neither yet proven. One is that women are perceived at being better at improving corporate culture; the other is that the men would rather it be seen that a woman was in charge when the ship went down. Catch 22 there.
Doesn't work that way in government bureaus and social services; there, even though 90% of the workforce are women, it is the 10% of men who get promoted through the echelons to the highest positions. The exceptions are still only 1%.

I have seen women get some advantages via the bedroom - but it had nothing to do with socially responsible work. Back when I was a B.A. student, there were two positions available for graduates from St Martin's School of Art to be accepted for the Masters course at the Royal Academy of Art (RCA).
In the following year, our head of department and deputy head were leaving St Martins to take up positions as head and tutor at the RCA.
Two women students had long been meeting the lecturers for drinks in the pub at the end of the day -- I've always hated pubs so was never there, but the women themselves told me about it. One of the women 24 years old, a blond beauty from an aristocratic family with a vast inheritance. The other was thirty years old, a Jewish bohemian, formerly a dancer in the New Ballet, who freely admitted to having used the casting couch all her life. From her point of view, it was the only possible way to get anywhere in the arts.
The blonde toff formed a relationship with the head of department, who left his wife and kids for her.
The ex-dancer formed a relationship with the deputy, who left his de-facto wife and son of thirty years.
Both men were in their sixites.on the Masters course at the RCA.
The fact that they were able to go to the RCA meant that their futures as artists on the British art scene were assured.
Today, over forty years later, both are well-known artists in Britain, with their work in the top public museums and in the top private collections.
None of the other students ever managed to rise out of obscurity, though most are still making art.
This tiny example does not mean that the only successful female artists are the ones who gain their recognition as a result of the men they connect with. These days, I think it is much easier for creative and brilliant women to succeed purely on the merit of their work.
But in the performance arts, there is still a massive problem with the casting couch. Part of the problem seems to be that there is an over-abundance of talented and fully-trained women wanting to be actors, dancers etc - and not enough places for them to fill. This means the men who cast them can reject those who refuse sex and still get top talent for the job. Some of the bosses wait till after the casting and then threaten the sack if the woman says no. This latter is the origin of the Me Too movement - women want the right to say no and still keep their jobs.

I think laws do change people. Or rather, individuals will remain much the same in their urges, but the law sets the standard of what is acceptable, and this strongly affects the behaviour of the majority of people.
The laws of slavery are a perfect example. Slavery still exists, even in the West, but the incidents are now minute in scale compared to the norms of our society.

I don't know about that. Tradition tells me to respect and depend upon men, my religion to honor and help them.  And why, even if I could, would I want to ignore them? 

Yet you don’t acknowledge the subjugated role that thinking places you and every woman like you in. 

Human traditions have long held women as property; property of their fathers, property of their husbands. Chattel. Fodder for reproduction. Secondary citizens.
You accept this (apparently) in your own life, if only in small measure.

In religion, you, a woman, are required to cover your head in churches, defer to a man’s judgement, while listening to (until relatively recently) exclusively male clergymen ”teach” these tenets from the pulpits. In many places, women are made to cover themselves completely, they must walk behind the men, eat in separate rooms, cannot leave the home absent male escort, cannot drive, vote, or hold outside employment. In some places in Islam, a husband may beat his wife to death, or a father can murder his daughter for “honor”, without fear of punishment from their Uber-paternalistic societies. 

Is any of this news to you?

This post was edited by Don Barzini at October 28, 2018 11:16 AM MDT

Not sure what your traditions or religion taught you, but I am not anyone's property, and my father would not have regarded me as anything like that at all. Nor do I feel in any way "secondary" but rather I am a free individual and responsible for myself same as any other person man or woman.  Nor do I understand the negative spin you seem to place on reproduction which suggests you are sexist as you don't seem to regard that as anything vital or important.  I was unable to carry any of my pregnancies to term thus I have NO children of my own so I am unable to look upon my barrenness as any cause for rejoicing.  Not have I ever covered my head at meeting  but I have no problem with those who wish to do so.  Nor do I eat in separate rooms or walk behind men unless they are faster than me! And I have been driving since age 14, voting since age 21, and holding various employments since age 14.  I gladly defer to my husband's judgment when I feel it is superior to my own. Because I know his judgment includes me (and if it did not he would hear from me!). 

Now you may choose to view me as "subjugated" if you wish but do you imagine that somehow that gives you the right to make my decisions for me?   I do not view myself as any such thing. Nor, if it even matters, does my husband.  

(Sigh) It seems I wasted an articulate answer on one ill-equipped to understand it. 

I was talking about HUMAN traditions, about religion IN GENERAL. Yet you cannot see anything beyond your closed little box, Officegirl. : /
If anything, my response was an outline of how women have been and continue to be oppressed by men; a summary of sexism —which I abhor—, yet you somehow construe I’m sexist. SMH. 

Nope, I agree, as you say, “smart” is not a claim for you. Feminist is a stretch as well. 


This post was edited by Don Barzini at November 7, 2018 9:58 PM MST

Not sure why being "smart" has suddenly become so important on this site. Someone else accused me of that earlier today! I have been on net chat sites for nine years and I cannot recall that any of the rules and regulations required that. I do not consider myself an extraordinary person at all. And yet I have been able to lead a quite happy and contented  life.  And successful in many ways. 

Now I guess my life is supposed to be my "closed little box". OK neither is my life anything extraordinary nor do I make any such claims.  All I would lay claim to is some sort of understanding gained through experience of the way things work in a practical sense. 

I cannot view myself as separate from men because we are in this together and we do not exist one without the other.  So I could never counsel a man to "oppress" women because in so doing he would be oppressing himself as well.  Nor am I able to stop all men from oppressing women if that is really what they choose to do. I don't have to tell you that exists in many places.  All I am able to do in my ordinary life is try to make a little positive difference where I can, of helping a little where I am able to. 

Since this thread has came to be about President Trump all I can say is that I have known and worked with men like him and he is no better or worse, only more successful.  Nor can I see him as any kind of threat to myself or to women in general.  Actually I don't know but he might be more a pussycat.  Anyway he upholds the value of the individual - man or woman - which is good enough for me.  

It took fourteen scrolls on my mouse to get down to this post of yours and read "(Sigh)."

I was at "(Sigh)" after two scrolls---LOL.