OT gender (was: spring 2004 wise traditions mag - disappointed with a few comments)

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> Re: Re: spring 2004 wise traditions mag - disappointed

>with a few comments

>

>

>

>>I don't know why you would be so disturbed by this. Everyone wants to

>>know why something is the way it is.

>

>I think when something gets more mainstream, it's easier

>to talk about without offending folks. Back in the 70's all

>us women libbers got offended when someone implied

>we maybe couldn't drive a backhoe as well as a guy.

As an Archbishop of the Orthodox Church has said, historically, relative

value has been placed on the roles of men and women, with men's roles

typically being assigned a higher value. That's why, IMO, feminists of the

70's were offended when it was suggested they couldn't do the work of

" higher value " (typical men's work). When I was much younger, I too bought

into the " men's work is more valuable " paradigm and did mostly " men's work "

in my 20's and did it well as a means to get the respect and sense of self

worth that it seemed men are accustomed to. It was only later that I

realized that I bought into a paradigm with a false premise, and that was

simply flat out wrong. I realized that the undervaluing of womens' work

wasn't because it was inherantly less valuable than men's work, but because,

as the Archbishop said, it was falsely construed to be so by my society.

THAT was a very important lesson that I learned the hard way.

there are broad differences

>between the sexes but they don't necessarily apply to individuals.

That is my observation as well, based on the people I've known and come into

contact with my whole life. Within each gender, there's a BROAD spectrum of

qualities, skills, gifts despite an underlying shared gender experience.

>

>Personally I think diet etc. has a lot to do with how sexuality

>plays out in a person ... the PH of the mother's uterus seems

>to help determine whether the X or Y sperm survive, for

>starters. I think it's all very interesting.

Along those lines, someone posted some info to the amalgam list recently

about a study that found that mothers who had high levels of PCB tended to

have offspring that didn't engage in stereotypical gender play. IOW, girls

engaged in less girl-type play and boys engaged in less boy-type play. I

always thought it was mostly nurture. I wasn't nurtured to be girly or

non-girly and my play ran a spectrum from playing with my friend's Barbie

dolls to playing smash up derby that I asked for on a birthday or x-mas. My

parents gave me the freedom to choose the type of play *I* was interested

in, not the type THEY thought was most fitting for me (other than not

allowing me to have Barbie dolls. Other dolls were fine). And I enjoyed all

of it! LOL. Is it because my mom was contaminated with PCBs? I have no idea,

and I don't really care. I yam who I yam, as Popeye would say :-) Aside from

that, most of my friends were just like me in their play, and their parents

had similar parenting beliefs as mine did. I suspect we played as we did due

to the freedom our parents gave us, not because OUR moms were contaminated

with PCBs and the neighbors, who made an effort to raise their girls

" girly " , weren't. But when I first readabout this, it occurred to me that

this is similar to the " margerine may cause homosexuality " issue. It could

well be a sensitive subject too.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

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" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

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