echo wrote:I also completely disagree with the 'traditional' roles that women should not be career focused. Many of us actually DO want to be career focused and do NOT want to have a family, but feel that society expects us to produce babies and take care of the house and husband.
Sure... I'm sure in the 1950's there were lots of women who would have made great doctors, lawyers, etc. but settled for a life of domesticity (or chose it because they really wanted this life). That's an element of modern society that is better... women have a choice now. Think about it-- if a women is inclined towards a professional career, she is encouraged. If she chooses a life of domesticity, she's encou... well, actually, society doesn't exactly encourage this anymore, now that I think of it.
In a way, it's the opposite of 1950... a modern woman is expected to work in the same way a woman of the 1950's was expected to stay at home. That's great for the modern-day women who don't want kids.... not so good for the more traditional women who does want kids.
That's a challenge that my wife faces now. She's going to school to become a pharmacist, which I fully encourage (and pay for!) because when she did housewife stuff, she felt like she was wasting her Biotechnology degree... even though she was pretty content. Well, now that she's taking these crazy complicated classes and has the pressure of school again, she longs for those dreamy relaxed days where her biggest responsibility was washing the dishes and she was there to give me a kiss when I came home from work.
echo wrote:I would like to know exactly which cultures HAVE sorted out this problem properly? In MOST of the cultures, it's still the man that's dominant. There are a couple of countries (Scandinavia) where it's pretty equal, a few where women are dominant (Netherlands)... Even in the far east, I would be hard pressed to say that women are on "equal footing" there. And as a woman, I would much rather be in a culture where I was independent and alone, rather than together and stepped on. I don't see that as a flaw but as a plus. By the way, less promiscuous usually means more social pressure on the woman, not the man!
That's a good question but there's a little confusion here. I was talking about courtship, and the problems brought on by living in a culture where having your heart broken 20 times by the age of 25 is de rigeur... I was not talking about equality of the sexes. To be specific, I was thinking of my wife's culture in Taiwan, where it is common for people to not have a boyfriend or girlfriend until they're 20 or older. Many of my wife's friends did not go on their first dates until they had already graduated. Much of this comes from the insane pressure put on students in Taiwan, which leaves little time for a social life or the emotional complexities of love. The upshot is that teenagers hormonal insanities are not made more complicated by sex and love. They start to engage in romantic relationships when they're more emotionally ready to handle it. That rarely, if ever happens here... (well, it happened with me, more or less). I'll admit it... having never dated until I was 18, I felt like a bit of a freak. But in Taiwan, I would have been just one of many. The stigma's not the same, and without that peer pressure, love is made a little more managable (and the divorce rate is much lower than in the US).
echo wrote:I'm not sure I follow your logic that " And while they claim they want a guy who respects them, they themselves do not respect those same men who have the capacity to do the same. " Are you talking about the "pretty girls who were really obnoxious in their teens and 20's but always could get a date because of their beauty are finding that there are fewer and fewer guys willing to put up with the same adolescent crap from a 35 year old. " ?
No, I was talking about the professional women who focus on their careers more than their partnership with their spouse. In my experience, that same male aggressiveness that helps women to succeed in modern business allows women to then contrast their own aggressiveness with the men they meet, and size them up, much in the same way that women size men up by their height. I know a lot of great women who ordinarily are not superficial, who just can't date a guy who is shorter than them. It's an unfair reality. In the same way, I think a woman who has been trained to be aggressive in the workforce looks down on guys who are not as agressive as them. That whittles down the vast majority of your nice guys.
(Full disclosure: I am 6'1" so this is not coming from a place of personal bitterness... just observation. Also, I absolutely put my wife before my job, and my bosses know it. This is not a case of my wife sacrificing her career for me. This is about knowing what the focus of your life is, and for me the focus of my life is my wife-- not my career.)
echo wrote:Expecting us to not be career oriented means that we have to depend on a man to provide for us until that age. And in this world, being aggressive is an inherent part of getting ahead - I find nothing wrong with that if that's what you want.
I have to respectfully disagree here. It's not a matter of what women want... we are not a blank page with infinite options. Our society and culture dictates that our options are A, B or C. If A, B and C all represent varying degrees of heartbreak, aggression and de-feminization, you may pick the one best suited to your character but in the end, you're still a product of A, B or C. In another country, another culture, you can choose from 4, 5 or 6, in which traits of male aggression are minimized. Granted, 4, 5 and 6 have their own set of social moires and problems.. I would never argue any other way. I am just pointing out that there may well be an american woman whose natural disposition relates best to "5" but is stuck with "C" because she has no idea that "5" even exists.
Adam
