A woman's perspective

Sixties Feminism is old school.

Trump's election wasn't about the creation and distribution of money. His election is about culture. American is divided over the status of race, religion, and gender. The culture is a-changing and not everyone is happy about it.

Times have changed

Trump exploited the backlash.

This blog has written about the ongoing evolution of feminist thinking over the past 50 years since I was in high school. I was a participant/observer in 2nd Wave Feminism of the late 1960s and 1970's during which American women fought for and achieved mass entry into the professions. The theme was equality. Anything a man can do a woman can do.

Helen Reddy sang "I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman."  Women wanted in, with equal admissions to graduate schools, equality on the sports field.

There is a new tone to modern feminism, with a more comprehensive critique of gender relations, observing inequality and oppression in a much wider array of behaviors, some of which seem innocuous and "simply tradition," but which embed traditional notions of feminine subservience or masculine ownership. It involves little things that are thought to be not really little, like holding a door for a woman, or the restaurant waiter placing the bill in front of the man. MeToo brought to light and condemnation male sexual advances and feminine consent. The ground rules of acceptable/tolerable behavior have shifted.

It isn't just the big things. It is a million little things. The culture oppresses women.

Helen Reddy: Hear her roar

As I learned at a Planned Parenthood training, a man paying for lunch for a woman employee is grounds for a sexual harassment complaint. It perpetuates male dominance and entitlement, and it was an aggression, not a courtesy. Male lawyers who greet a female law lawyer with a hug and not a handshake should know better on their own. They are creating a hostile environment. Another aggression. It was explained to me that this is the new understanding of modern feminism and I should absorb and integrate it. An element of this new thinking is that privileged white males of my age are likely irredeemably stuck in old ways of thinking, and it would be best if we kept quiet and listened to the women. https://peterwsage.blogspot.com/2018/03/progressive-puritanism-it-can-re-elect.html

Yet--simultaneously--Donald Trump has thrived.  This is not a coincidence.  He was elected having voiced and done things in flagrant opposition to this new feminist consciousness. Donald Trump said "phooey" and a great many people agreed. Even a majority of white women.

The pace of cultural change created a backlash. Too many people feel left behind, too many people feel scolded, too many people are deplorable, and too many people feel they need to walk on eggshells. Anything and everything can cause offense. 

Guest Comment: This blog received a comment from a woman who chooses to remain anonymous. She is a retired scientist who entered graduate schools and the professions just ahead of my own cohort of people, but also a woman of that time. 

Progressive Puritanism can re-elect Trump

Her comment was made in response to my earlier blog post which articulated my own concern about backlash from how the progressive left is handling the is messages on culture.

I have lightly edited her comment because her original comment was made in the context of the original post.

Guest Comment: 

I am a woman. I was in my 20s and early 30s when the Women's Movement came forward as part of the societal uprising on Civil Rights. One of the several themes that was a part of it all was RESPECT. Another was sensitivity. Another was action. 

Scientist, wife, mother

The edge of the Women's Movement in the 70s was anger -- against being bullied, held down, disrespected, undervalued and underestimated, pushed aside professionally, being taken for granted domestically, being objects of sexual aggression, etc. So, let me just say that none of those were fun to live and fight through. Yes, that is first person.  

Things have changed, a lot, even though I sometimes hear younger people say "nothing has changed." That is simply not true. Things are better now.

Yet within the progress we have made in advancing the equality of women I see a worrisome tone of judgement, seeing intimations of fault everywhere. So where is the respect? Did we gain respect only to feel entitled to disrespect others? For some reason, we are in a place of separating ourselves, parsing out more narrowly defined definitions of "what's wrong with them," micro-aggressions everywhere. And, I don't think that is just a gender-related phenomenon. If one is on the inside of a group (including organizations, no matter how small or large), there is a comfort of belonging and sharing an ethos and set of definitions. But does it advance any kind of common cause, daily human interactions, or basic understanding and empathy to throw up harsh and invisible force-fields? Must we be at perpetual war of opposing interests, women versus men, race versus race?

We have made social conventions and male-female dating behavior a mine field of potential offense. Is it really aggression or an affirmation of "rape culture" for one party or the other to offer to buy someone a cup of coffee? Should women, then, always be expected to make the generous offer--or does the same principle work in reverse, making her the "aggressor"? 

There is a perpetual need in our world for kindness. Kindness is outward-looking. Seeking to divide instead of seeking to find ways better to understand one another and to work together seems to me to be counter-productive.