13th-December-2005
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From the guestbook (Labyrus). | |
Quote:
Honestly, youre less of an idiot than I thought you would be when I saw youre link from Hugos site. Ill give you credit for being a step ahead of most anti-feminists.
Your FAQ sections sums up a number of fallacious arguments often used to (poorly) defend feminism. Its actually a pretty good reminder, I think, that a lot of folks forget, that sometimes people who disagree with you arent stupid, and they deserve the respect of a well-thought out, rational argument rather than recycled rhetoric.
On the other hand, some of your arguments seem to be "Shucks, why dont they just all think the same thing, itd be easier to disagree with that than to critique a bunch of different, nuanced, viewpoints". I think thats pretty idiotic. Feminism is more of an umbrella term than a specific ideologies, and a lot of the tendencies within it disagree about all sorts of things. Saying that someone whos trying to explain that to you is "cheating" in an argument is just plain stupid.
Your analysis of wage and work issues seems to be filled with factual and logical holes. From your site;"http://antifeminism.mathews.me.uk/my_responses.htm#stephanieabraham";
"Believe it or not, "womens work" was never exploited. Or at least Im not sure how it could have been."
A great deal of work traditionally performed by women remained unwaged when mens work became commodified in the midst of Europes mass industrialisation.
"Many people assume, based on feminist lies, that women were not allowed to work in the past."
They would certainly be wrong in that assumption. Women have always been allowed into the workforce, although its only in the last 40 years or so that the wages came close to being equal. The issue at hand, however, is that women (many of whom were in the workforce) were and are still doing a great deal of extra, unwaged work.
"And even though we know this to be untrue, it has always been men who were exploited where work is concerned both now and in the past. Unions came to be because so many men were being maimed or killed while working in unsafe conditions...conditions that women refused to work in."
That is simply not true. Unions came into being for a number of specific reasons, complaints about safety on the job was rarely one of them (except for miners). It takes an extremely lazy and unperceptive student of history to conclude that unsafe conditions were what started modern labour movements. Mostly it was felt to be a good way to wage class war by members of the First International. You obviously dont actually know much about labour history.
One of the most important strikes in American History was when 20,000 mostly female garment workers walked out in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. They were fighting primarily for wage, but also for job safety, as it also wasnt uncommon for women to die in the laundries of bleach or lead poisoning, Heat exhaustion (they were often much hotter than 100 degrees and they worked a 56-hour workweek) and fires, as often the buildings were unsafe, and the doors were frequently locked on the outside.
| I thought you might want to respond to this. Quote: |
The issue at hand, however, is that women (many of whom were in the workforce) were and are still doing a great deal of extra, unwaged work.
| This sounds like the old housework argument to me. It doesn't wash. Cleaning your own house doesn't really count as extra unpaid work, any more than mowing your own lawn, fixing your own car, or looking after your own baby.
Even if you do all the housework while your partner goes out to earn a wage, it's not unpaid work. Your partner is paying you in kind - by paying the mortgage/rent, bills, etc...
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