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The double standard has returned. Not the old Victorian double standard of sexual morality, wherein it was considered acceptable for men to cat around, but women were expected to remain virtuous. Instead, we have a new double standard, one which holds men to a higher standard than women in what they say.
This first struck me about a year ago, when I chanced
across some advertisements for some line of
International Coffees.
The ads featured several
women sitting at a table, discussing men they had known.
The published dialogue offered sparkling lines like No.
14 -- he really was just a number.
Now, suppose that the Macho Brewing Company issued a
series of advertisements which showed men sitting around a
table, guzzling Macho Premium Lager, and saying things like
No. 14 -- ugly as a mud fence, but great in the
sack.
The instant that that sort of sexist, demeaning, disgusting advertising appeared, so also would the pickets in front of the offices of the Macho Brewing Co. The brewery would be loudly denounced and boycotts would be organized.
Apparently it is clever and sophisticated for women to sit around and sip coffee while comparing notes, but men are being oppressive and beastly if they do the same thing. The coffee-sipping women are presented to us as mature women of the world; beer-guzzling men who talk that way are acting like immature jerks in a fraternity house.
Just this past Sunday, I read a woman columnist who
mentioned discussions among bright, educated 40-year-old
women, and how one of this group had discovered a man who
was trainable.
Precisely what he should be trained for is open to speculation, but that's not a word which indicates any acceptance or respect for the characters, personalities, skills, habits, lifestyles, etc., of half the human race.
If a man had mentioned that he had just found a woman
whom he could mold, shape and train
to his
specifications, he would be rightly reviled as an
insensitive chauvinist bent on destroying the precious
individuality of the woman in question.
Jeanne Elliot has every reason to carry a grudge against Gerald Utesch. He's the Aurora police officer who shot her four times in a courtroom where Elliot, as an attorney, was representing his ex-wife.
A year ago, at a rally, she announced that men were the
enemies,
and proclaimed that We are not nice
girls today. We are women warriors. We recognize our enemy.
We will do everything in our power to defeat them.
She's entitled to her opinion. But she was just named a referee -- a quasi-judge -- for the Denver County Court.
It's impossible to imagine that an embittered man would have received such an appointment if he had said that women were an enemy, that he was a warrior, and it was imperative to do everything in his power to defeat them. And even if he did get such an appointment, it would be quickly withdrawn on account of a flood of protest. After all, men in public life have lost their positions just for stupid sexist jokes, let alone a declaration of war.
If hostility, aggression, dominance and treating people like numbers instead of individuals are wrong for men, then I can't see how those actions and attitudes could be right for women.
But apparently, in the late 1980s, we have two standards of what's acceptable -- one for women and a very different one for men.
That isn't what I thought would happen with the Women's Movement, 20 years ago when I first heard of it and thought it was a great idea. I naively believed the goal was to make sure that all people were judged by what they did, by the same standards, so that women didn't get paid less for doing the same jobs, so that there was fair access to credit, etc.
Like those pioneer liberationists twenty years ago, I'd
like to be judged by something other than my body. I'd like
to be accepted as an individual, not as a mindless creature
in need of training. I don't want to be lumped into some
generalized enemy
class when I've never shot at
anybody, male or female.
I would imagine a lot of people feel the same way -- that the currently acceptable female chauvinist piggery doesn't offer an iota of improvement on the old male variety.
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