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When I was in grammar school, we learned that America was superior to the Soviet Union because women suffered full equality under the godless commies. Russian women were coal miners and truck drivers. American women, thanks to the prosperity produced by benevolent capitalist enterprises, could devote themselves to higher things, like having milk and cookies ready for us when we got off the schoolbus.
Then a wave of feminism swept across the Republic. In those days, truck driving and coal mining often provided good union wages with decent fringe benefits.
These careers looked good when compared to the other work offered to college graduates when Baby Boomer BAs flooded the market: waiting tables, thinning sugar beets, stocking shelves.
So women sought the better jobs, and their argument made
perfect sense: Give us a chance and judge us as
individuals. We can do the work and fit right in.
The result now seems rather idyllic. Since I worked for
small newspapers -- shops with low pay and meager benefits
-- I worked around many women. Most were more talented than
my male colleagues at being one of the guys.
They
swore fluently, told raunchy jokes well, met demanding
deadlines, and greeted last call at the local saloon with
boos and catcalls.
Today, alas, such a pleasant office would be a
hostile workplace environment
which tolerated a
culture of sexual harassment
that inflicted
permanent emotional trauma upon the plaintiff in this
action.
Certainly there's no excuse for forced sexual contact, but that's not the issue here. I'm just talking about daily banter, and it appears that feminism has moved back several waves, to Victorian times.
Although there were no legal penalties, there were
severe social penalties for uttering the wrong words in the
hearing of ladies. Thus we still refer to white meat
and dark meat
when eating chicken or turkey, because
a century ago, you didn't utter breast
or
thigh
in mixed company.
Since leg
was a forbidden word, you said
limb,
and pianos were often adorned with crocheted
pantalettes around their limbs
so that no lady would
suffer emotional trauma from glancing at a nude upright in
the parlor and then experiencing stress because the word
leg
entered her delicate nervous system.
Around Cripple Creek, they may still tell the story of
the proper woman who arrived in the rough mining camp and
inquired of a local prominence, Bull Hill. After hearing
that, and then being revived by smelling salts, she
insisted that the mound was in fact Gentleman Cow
Hill.
The result of all this prudery? Women were assumed to be too fragile to endure daily society. Early telephone companies wouldn't hire female operators because they might inadvertently overhear terms that would make them blush or worse.
Is that what people want today? I hope not, but the more
you see arguments for censorship (pornography is
rape
) and the equation of a bawdy joke with a true
horror like Tailhook, the more it appears that want it or
not, that's what we're getting: a return to the full flower
of Victorian delicacy.
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