Noticed a little phenomenon the other day. I was having a meeting with some student thing I'm doing where we're trying to set up a small convention in may about Islam and how it's doing in Europe (not so well). But since I know nothing about Islam or about any of the great thinkers we're considering inviting I most of the time sit there make notes, and try to look even remotely pretty.
Anyhoo. One of the problems is that we were really trying to come up with at least ONE good female guest. But after going through all our options and picking our top 5 it turned out no women were even in our top 10. All the guys present thought it was a shame and we went through the list again trying to find a suitable candidate. One of the girls present (a lesbian I might add, not because it adds something to the story... though I think it should) then said "Let's not get a woman and certainly not one to talk about women's issues, that just narrows it all down so much". To his credit the guy who runs the group did earn feminist points by pointing out that women take up 50% of the population so we wouldn't be narrowing it down but we did let go of the idea of inviting women (and he later lost his feminist credits when he questioned the sexuality of Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali).
That thing reminded me of something that happened a few weeks before that; for my Academic English course we had to summarize an article that had appeared in the New York Times. The article was about comments made by someone at Harvard University who had said that "MAYBE" the reason why women aren't as succesful in science as men had to do PARTLY with biology. The man was, of course, lambasted.
In the article several points of view were pointed out including one from a female professor at Harvard who said that even though biological differences were present between male and female brains the biggest point was still discrimination against women. Part of the assignment was to check your article with someone else and I worked with an Israeli girl who studies Arabic. When checking eachothers work it turned out that I spent one paragraph pointing out the discrimination point while she used only one sentence (granted that one sentence was "Men are all pigs and should burn in hell"(1) but still only one sentence!).
THAT then reminded me of something a friend of mine said last year. We were having a class somewhere in one of the University of Amsterdam buildings but they double booked it and so a group of students with their teacher were standing outside demanding we'd leave. Since we all already sat down and didn't feel like moving we decided to mock them (starting with the teacher and then moving on to the students) though not too loudly because I've come to the conclusion that in the end everybody can kick my ass. My friend, also a 20 something girl, after a while said that "you just knew that the course these students were following HAD to be worthless" because there were only girls following it (which was true).
All of that (and this part needs to be spoken out loud in a Sarah Jessica Parker/ Sex in the City voice over sort of way) brought up some questions to me. Are 20 something girls losing interest in feminism? Is my generation of guys so politically correct that they don't need to be anymore? What kind of Turkish takeaway will I be buying tonight? (2)........
1) no it wasnt
2) no it didn't
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2 comments:
He might have been a department president, not the president of the entire thing, but you might be right. But the interesting thing (and I swear I'm not just being a "filthy male pig" here.... ok maybe a little) is that there ARE differences between the male and the female brain so he wasn't completely out of line. Heard they fired him though.
Did they fire him? Shame if they did, as I don't think he said anything out of line.
I am a (beginning) feminist. I frequent a forum for feminist parents. I think it's horrendous that within my lifetime (I was born in 1970) there has had to be legislation to ensure that women get the same pay for doing the same job as men. But I don't think men and women are the same. Equal, but not the same. There are some things that, on average, men are better at than women, and vice versa, but that is not to say that no women should be allowed to do the first and no men the latter.
Am I making any sense?
I will be bringing up my daughter to be a feminist - as I understand it, that means equality of rights and opportunity for men and women, not superiority of one or the other. I will be bringing up my son likewise, which is probably more relevant.
Had another dig around about the Harvard president thing, and found this pseudo feminist trial of Larry Summers which I think covers it pretty well.
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