brighid

Snatch,

I realize you have had a bad experience in your life, but come on now? It takes a man and a woman to create a child. No woman gets pregnant by her lonesome. The mommy track? Well, considering men can’t actually have children and women bare the sole responsibility of actually bringing forth new members of our species I am not sure how a woman is suppose to get around this catch 22. If a woman wants to succeed in a career she must completely put off having children, but a man does not have to make this choice. He may be a successful career man and a father, but all too often women cannot. Don’t mothers and fathers play equally pivotal roles in the lives of healthy, happy children?

Women who don’t have children still make on average 25 percent less then their male peers, even though she is equally qualified for that position. So the “mommy track” does not actually bear any sort of relevance to that growing group of women. It’s also pretty ignorant to say that career women, or working women in general are less committed to their careers and deserve less pay because they are also mothers. Are fathers less committed to their careers because they have children? Why should a mother be paid less because she has children? Is it because her attention is more likely to be diverted because of the love and care she has for her children? But a man is not distracted by his feelings of love and devotion for his children? What about those households that have stay at home fathers? Those women (in general) still make less for doing the same exact job, even though they are working their assess off and are the sole support of their household.

Thankfully, corporate America is learning that employees – both men and women are more productive when they are able to adequately balance work and family. They are healthier, more efficient and therefore more valuable to the longevity and profitability of the company. There is still a great disparity even amongst women who enjoy the privileges of a modern career and those who work on the “lower” level jobs and often these are women of color. Women deserve no less pay, recognition or advancement because they, along with their partner or husband, have chosen parenthood. A woman should not have to choose between a viable and productive career and children. Fathers don’t and mothers shouldn’t either. The roles of mothers and fathers are becoming more integrated and we are slowly getting away from the archaic and wrongfully imposed notions of distinct gender roles in parenting not only on the home front, but also in the workplace. We have a long way to go, perhaps one day we will have pro-family policies in place like that of our European neighbors.

Men who impregnate women, with full knowledge of the legal ramifications of fatherhood, who abandon and fail to financially (or otherwise) support their off spring are not put into indentured servitude. They are simply being held liable for the responsibility they must assume from having sex that resulted in the creation of a child. There are consequences for our action and the future health and fitness of our children is essential to the continuation of this country and the world. Therefore it is in the best interests of the state to compel absentee fathers to help with the financial and other responsibilities created from the existence of a child. The financial “penalties” a man faces are far fewer then a woman in most, if not all cases. Be thankful you aren’t a woman, having to support a child at least 31% ( 25% less pay for white women and a 6% penalty for having the child) less pay then your male counterparts. Imagine what that sort of “indentured servitude” must be like! Then couple that with a dead-beat father who refuses to pay child support – those men should consider themselves lucky by comparison, only having to contribute 20% of their pay (still leaves you 10% ahead), not having to deal with the daily responsibilities of parenthood etc. How terrible their plight is!

I suggest reading, “Executive Women & the Myth of Having it All,” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Harvard Business Review, April 2002 to gain a better insight into the situation, told in a manner much more precise then I can offer here.

Brighid

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: brighid ]</p>

snatchbalance

Brighid,

Well, one dosen't always get what they want in life. It's full of trade offs and compromises.

If a man or woman devotes him or herself to his or her profession, then the accompanying rewards should be comensurate. If a woman, or a man for that matter, takes time off to have children, thier career, and the associated rewards, must take a back seat. You seem to want to have your cake and eat to.

As far as reading material, I might suggest, "Stiffed", by Susan Faludi(one of your sisters) or "The Decline of Males", by Lionel Tiger.

I'll try to dig out my copy of "Guidelines to Child Support Payments", and get you some of the straight skinny on that topic.

sb

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

snatchbalance

This looks like bullshit to me. All large corps. and the Gov. use standard pay scales. If you hold the position, you get the $.

SB

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

snatchbalance

Like we've discussed in other threads, women always have the final say. The man is forced into fatherhood weather he wants it or not. Therein lies the difference. The woman is never indentured.

SB

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

brighid

Snatch,

Thank you for the reading suggestions. I will try and look into them when I return from vacation. I am VERY familiar with the Child Support and Family Court System, intimately familiar that is. The percentages vary from state to state and I believe on of the highest percentages that can be withheld per child is 20%. If you have subsequent children to support – say from different relationships the second child gets 20% of the remainder after the reduction from the 1st child. That is my experience. The father of my son had a daughter prior to fathering my son. I am certainly no expert on all the variations within different states, or what your experience has been in that regard. During my paralegal studies I found Family Law to be of keen interest and did some of my own research to keep my attorney fees down. Over the course of 4 years in court – all but the final course of action – was initiated by my son’s father – NEVER once did I pursue him. After telling me he would support any decision I made, and being active in his life for the 1st months (but paid NO child support) he abandoned his son for 2 years. Then when his new wife insisted he be a part of his child’s life we went to court to establish paternity, set support and visitation. After that all I can say is it was a nightmare. I was ROYALLY screwed over, and after about $50,000 in legal fees and 19 separate court visits in 1 friggin year – ALL initiated by him – I have a ground breaking Apellate case – but alas trying something like that simply isn’t worth the $$$. So, I am very aware of how it works.

Part of the problem you experience as a man is directly linked to the objectification of a women and how we have been seen and treated throughout history. We have been seen as entirely responsible for the care of children and we weren’t even allowed into the workforce because of it because the male establishment (along with far too many women) decided men aren’t capable of nurturing children and from this ideology the laws of custody were established. Although when women weren’t able to file for divorce this was not the case. So, you and I share a common thread in the oppression we have faced – specifically the archaic notions that distinct, separate and unchangeable gender roles. Sucks doesn’t it! Women would not have a monopoly (although they really don’t) if the responsibility for parenting was equally distributed and these attitudes were erased, as reflected in the laws. For now, and in general the woman bears the most responsibility in raising children. And as we have discussed before, there are many ways to prevent pregnancy and since the responsibility for this life WILL fall to both parents it is the responsibility of both partners to protect themselves from unwanted consequences.

Really, imagine the other end of this equation. If you REALLY think women (in general) make as much as men, or advance as far as men with equal qualifications and participation – really hon – you gotta get out more. In theory this is nice, but in reality it is very different. I can GUARANTEE you that within my company, a man doing MY exact job gets paid more and every other job I have held, the same has been true. This is anecdotal of course, but is more true then I would like it to be across the broad range of women I know – women in academia, women in top, leadership positions and women on the lower end of the spectrum – as I have been. The general explanation is that a man deserves to make more because he has to support a family and when a woman marries she need not worry as much about her salary. Shit you not – that is EXACTLY what a former employer told me. I was training my MALE replacement and he mentioned how much he was making. I went and spoke to the VP – who ran my division and that is what he said. Even though I took that division and made it profitable, when it was not prior to OR after me (with the new guy) and for this I was given a $.25 raise. Let me just say the disparity between my pay and the pay my replacement was given was greater than 25% - even though he was SINGLE and did not have half of my experience, and was hired internally.

I really do feel for you and I am sorry you have had such a shitty experience, and that other men have had similar experiences. The system isn’t exactly fair and the woman has the final say for VERY good reason. Until man evolves to the point where he can birth a child independently or jointly with a woman I don’t see how it can be different. It’s unfair in a sense, but we all make choices and as you know those choices have consequences and sometimes those consequences of those choices may be burdensome. That doesn’t make the responsibility any less real or necessary.

I will be gone for almost a week, so I will be unable to respond on this thread. Thank you for your input and hopefully we can educate each other about the pieces of the puzzle neither of us have experienced yet.

Brighid

snatchbalance

Brighid,

Bottom line:

1. To make blanket statements like, "women doing the same job make 25% less than a man", based on personnal experience only, is a little questionable in my book.

2. Wether you, or anyone else wants to admit it or not, a rank and file male is objectified, used, and misused by society as much, or more, than any female.

3. It is different for the Alphas of the species. Primates organise thier societies based on a hierarchy. Alpha males on top, beta males next, agressive and high ranking females after that, then everyone else. At least that is what most primate studies indicate. (You may want to think of your personnal experiences in this light, they may make more sence to you.)

4. If you're lucky, you can develope your own answers to the dillema of being human. If not, you will suffer greatly.

SB

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

luvluv

"An intelligent woman knows the strength of her femininity, and in a world dominated by men that woman knows how to use it to her advantage, without playing the “whore”. Patriarchal societies have simply robbed women of that power and freedom and repressed them to the point that they believe they are powerless and dirty for simply being."

I STRONGLY disagree. A patriarchal society is the only society in which a woman would even HAVE to resort to sexuality to gain power. The fact that women use their sexuality to attempt to wrest power from men is PREMISED upon a society that is dominated by males who perceive a woman's primary purpose is sexual. Absent such a society, the use of one's sexuality to gain power would be absurd. If a woman lived in a society where her talents and abilities were valued above her sexual attractiveness there would be no reason for her to resort to using her sexuality unless she was actually incompetent.

With all due respect, while I enjoy your posts you seem intent on lumping every form of oppression together into one pot and blaming "patriarchal religion" for the whole bag. Patriarchy is the ONLY social arrangement under which the type of sexuality you advocate (using your "femininity" to get what you want from men) would even exist. If you get rid of patriarchy, you get rid of this expression of sexuality. Patriarchy would not NEED to repress this kind of sexuality. If men are in a postion where women need to use their sexual ability to get somewhere in life, then I'd say in that society men have women right where they want them. I really cannot see how you think patriarchy would like to end the phenomenon of women using their sexuality to get ahead. That's exactly the goal of patriarchy. If you have to resort to sexuality then you are assuming a second-class position voluntarily.

In short, it makes no sense for you to say that pattriarchy repressed a system that it actually supports and benefits from. This is the paradox of feminism: many modern women under the influence of social programming can't quite seem to part with the idea of being able to attract sexual attention; and Patriarchy CANNOT be seriously challenged unless women understand that the desire for purely sexual attention is a SYMPTOM OF and a SUPPORT TO patriarchy. Beauty and self-respect can all be aspired to by women in a a post-patriarchal society, but the craven desire to "be sexy" will probably have to be done away with or put into more appropriate contexts.

(It is also evident to me in the way some of you keep reffering to sexuality in terms of its ability to secure your material success that the entire concept is simply a response to market pressures. As I said before we desire sexuality because it is a form of power and, potentially, profit; but if we lived in a non-patriarchal society where that was not the case there would be no logical reason why any man would desire purely sexual attention. The desire to be sexual attractive, as opposed to simply being thought beautiful and intelligent, is a socially conditioned desire based on the perceived benefits of the ability to attract sexual attention)

Beyond that, I think perhaps we are not discussing equal terms here. I've met the women you have described thus:

"The sexiest women are those who are confident in themselves, who carry themselves with strength and grace, who flow through a room as if on air, whose eyes gleam with vitality and intelligence and whose presence demands respect."

While these are the types of women I respect, these aren't the types of women I immediately consider sexy. Perhaps we should define the term. By sexy I mean an appearance that inspires sexual interest. To be blunt, to be sexy is for a woman to have an appearance that makes a man want to have the woman sexually, or at least makes him intrigued at the prospect. Woman who carry themselves the way you described above do not inspire sexual interest, they inspire respect. If I may, I think what you have just described is what women consider sexy in men. For men, a short skirt is going to get more attention than gleaming eyes any day of the week. Let's be realistic here. If you are trying to inspire sexual attention in men, then skin is precisely the way you do it. It is true that more mature men do look for something other than simple sexuality, but men are visual creatures. The scantily-clad girl will always get more sexual attention than the confident female C.E.O.

Unless you mean by sexy something other than the ability to attract sexual interest, then to desire to be sexy is to desire to be a sexual object. (Again, I'm assuming by sexy you mean other than beautiful)

"I refuse to desexualize myself."

Why not? Men do it. We don't walk around with our testicles hanging out, or with jeans on so tight we have to zip them up with pliers. We don't spend hours at the hair dresser or nail saloons, and we don't shave our legs or our underarms. In other words, we don't behave as if our entire function in life is to be LOOKED AT. And it is PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THIS that we do own our sexuality. Men are not the objects of someone else's desire, women trip over themselves competing to be the object of a man's desire. Can there be any doubt that in a patriarchal society, that this is not exactly what men want women to be doing? If to be desexualized means to not consider oneself a sexual object, even when there is potential to benefit from that illusion, then women must to that extent desexualize themselves. They won't lose any of their sexual freedom by refusing to be sexual objects. Men are not sexual objects and yet we seem to be in full possesion of our sexual identity.

"Those commercial entities you talk about are owned and controlled by the “conservative” and often time religious factions of the US."

That's just not true. Are you under the impression that Larry Flynt is a Christian?(anymore) Or Hugh Hefner? What about Hollywood executives? Is tinseltown a hotbed of family values? I doubt if you went up in any of the advertising agencies in New York city that you would be struck by their commitment to conservative religious values. I would have a lot more respect for your argument if you just dropped this point which we both know is so obviously untrue. I've had closre friends in advertising and in the film industry. Religious they ain't.

You seem to be saying that money = white men = conservative = religion. That's a very shaky and erroneous equation. Most of the people on Wall Street are FISCAL conservatives, meaning they favor low tax rates and beyond that anything (lucrative) goes. You are making the grave error of confusing all conservatives with religous conservatives. The monied conservatives are an entirely different species. We both know full well that there is nothing big business will not do for a buck. Period. There is nothing conservative or religious about Wall Street, Hollywood, and advertising agencies... and these are the PRIMARY forces exploiting sexuality. (I'm not a conservative by the way, but I know it's not fair to lump them all into the category of religious.)

"Religion is at the root of the problem and I knew this even while I was a theist and the treatment of women as only their for sexual pleasure and procreation is at the heart of the matter."

You really have not supported this at all except for an attempt to somehow equate the institutional media powers as being somehow religious, an assertion which a brief click through your television stations would render unsupportable. Other than certain feminist groups, religious groups are the primary groups opposing pornography and an overly-sexualized media. I would agree that certain religous communities repress their women, make them objects of domesticity, and seek to curb their ambition, but that is a different form of oppression from sexual objectification. It is not even the pretext of sexual objectification, sexual objectification proceeds from totally different grounds. No religion that I know of sees a woman's primary purpose as being sexual for sex's sake. They don't even necessarily see a woman's role as primarily domestic, but simply as supportive to the man. No religious concepts of a woman at all proceed to an idea of a woman as simply something to be lusted after. In point of fact, most religions express PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE, that women are expressly NOT things simply to be lusted after. Every religion I am aware of warns against lust. (I personally think that's a good thing, though many religious communities sought to enforce this by causing women to reject and be ashamed of their sexuality. That is a tactic used to remedy the issue of lust. The tactic was wrong, but that doesn't mean the desire to control lust was wrong.)

I'll ask you plainly, in what way does religion support, endorse, or promote the sexual objectification of women?

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Viti

Reports indicating gender based wage disparity

<a href="http://bush.tamu.edu/kmeier/teep/reports/report012.doc" target="_blank">Kenneth Meier</a>

<a href="http://www.usc.edu/academe/acsen/info_for_faculty/newsletter/0001v2n1/newsvol2no1article9.shtml" target="_blank">in academia</a>

<a href="http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf99338/access/c5/c5s2.htm#c5s2l7" target="_blank">in Science</a>

<a href="http://www.ewowfacts.com/wowfacts/pdfs/women/27genderequity.pdf" target="_blank">Working Mothers and general</a>

Do a search of "Gender salary inequity", that women make far less than men is well documented and well studied.

luvluv...okay...so I'll ask you what I ask my employees when they recognize a problem...what is your proposed solution. How to you think we can make men see us non-sexually. All of my jobs aside from dancing (I only danced for two years, I have been in management of various types for the other 10) I had to dress conservativly, no skin and I was still sexually harassed...so what is the answer?

luvluv

Briefly, I think the first step is for women to refuse personally to be sexual objects and furthermore they must organize to require that other women do the same.

Beyond that, we probably won't agree on how I would solve the problem and it's not worth getting into here.

bonduca

I think that men "own" their sexuality because women are lumped into "bad" and "good" girl categories...by men. Women are also at a disadvantage because many of them make less money than men and take the larger share of childcare and domestic duties. This makes them less independent and more vulnerable to a man's opinion of them.

luvluv, you never answered my previous questions about the "whore" image you feel men have about women who have sex for reasons other than love. If it would be helpful to you, I would be glad to cut and paste it for you.