Thanks for the clarifications of your last post,
Alison. I've had mostly women bosses, heads of
departments, deans, but also supervisors in
non-academic jobs and didn't find any of them took on
the particular 'ideology sevenfold' but rather were
supportive of other women's work, usually aware of the
ways in which women had been previously disadvantaged,
and any number of writing opportunities and work I've
had were from women who might well have viewed
themselves as competitors. And similarly I have
published, helped to publication, by editing,
recommending, etc, any number of women. I've known
only one woman really who viewed all other women as
competition and I don't know as it had to do with
competing for male attention, or the issues of
patriarchy, as so much an issue she had with her own
mother, or so I came to think of it, which might just
be an erroneous conclusion on my part. On the other
hand, I do think that sometimes strong women clash,
that they have different viewpoints, perceptions, and
experiences, and tend to demonize each other.
best,
Rebecca
--- Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> With the absolute certainty that what I say will
> fall upon deaf ears,
> please note that "that deadly competitiveness that
> is a
> feature of women's relationships under patriarchy"
> isn't much use as
> thought unless you can bring forth an example of an
> industrial or
> post-industrial economy that isn't what you call
> "patriarchal."
>
> This is not a personal argument. If your views were
> only yours I
> wouldn't care much. But I'm aware that this bit of
> mythologizing is
> pervasive in much of feminist theory. I can also
> understand that it
> may have been a useful myth in the past. Now it
> seems to be a way of
> discrediting the very broad advances of women by
> claiming that
> they've only advanced by becoming like men or worse.
> The explicit
> implication is that none of this counts unless the
> souls of men and
> women change in a specific way. I sympathize with
> the motive, but it
> doesn't usually work, and I think we've seen more
> than enough
> attempts at engineering the soul in the past
> century. A lot of round
> pegs got permanently damaged by being forced into
> square holes.
>
> I agree very strongly with the rest of what you say.
> Your first
> paragraph doesn't add to its power as explanation.
>
> Mark
>
> PS. I'll be departing the list tomorrow night until
> April 19th--off
> to Scotland and parts south to pass some time with
> Carlos. I'll still
> be available b/c to any who wish to reach me,
> preferrably not about
> discussions on the list.
>
>
>
>
>
> >Women who adapt to the given mores of the workplace
> seem to take on the
> >ideology sevenfold. The worst, most extreme
> authoritarian bosses were always
> >those women who had to be three times as tough as
> men in order to get and
> >keep the job in that earlier generation. They often
> took it out on young
> >women in particular, and they had that deadly
> competitiveness that is a
> >feature of women's relationships under patriarchy
> honed to a bitter point:
> >any woman was competition, and had to be disabled
> or eliminated.
> >
> >The issue is probably more that the basic
> social/economic structures just
> >haven't shifted very much, despite appearances;
> those who think that
> >democratic western societies (Australia, Britain,
> the US) are heading
> >steadily towards various versions of corporate
> fascism might argue that
> >things are probably much worse than they were 20
> years ago, and not going to
> >get better any time soon.
> >
> >Our new IR and Terrorism laws, shunted in by
> gagging parliamentary debate
> >last December, change the balance of power
> radically in favour of the
> >centralist State. Even right wing employer groups
> are complaining about
> >them, because of their intrusive nature.
> Personally, I think these IR laws
> >are a culmination of a process that began in the
> 80s under a Labor
> >government, when the ACTU began to centralise its
> own power and got rid of
> >all the radical unions (I remember watching that
> happen as a young IR
> >reporter). It's rather desolating to see the French
> rioting over what is
> >comparatively speaking a much smaller change, while
> here the most radical
> >changes to workplace laws in 50 years, which remove
> protections for _all_
> >workers, have gone through with barely a peep, side
> by side with laws that
> >have serious implications for our freedoms. Aside
> from a few alarmed opinion
> >pieces and objections from lawyer groups and
> artists and media, nobody seems
> >to really have absorbed what these laws will mean.
> They make alarming
> >reading, I assure you.
> >
> >Women, especially women with family demands, won't
> do well under these laws,
> >in both official and de facto ways. Unions barely
> exist any more (a union
> >official in the paper the other day saying they
> can't take industrial action
> >any more, because they're not allowed - !). The
> fact that in many ways it's
> >the unions' fault doesn't make it any better.
> That's just how it goes.
> >Women's rights have always had lower priorities
> than other rights; when the
> >battle is about fair rights for anybody, women's
> specific concerns fall
> >below the general purview. Interesting times,
> indeed.
> >
> >All best
> >
> >A
> >
> >
> >Alison Croggon
> >
> >Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> >Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> >Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
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