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There were good reasons for women to collectively rise up and challenge their American condition in the 1960s. At that time women were relegated to pink collar fields like teaching and nursing. They were not paid on a par with men since their income was considered "pin money" and not necessary to support a family. And in general women were viewed as the "weaker sex," which had to be protected from brutal realities.
By the 1990s all that had changed. All, that is, except the notion that women had to be protected from society's discourtesies. Ironically that agenda is still being promoted from an odd quarter: feminists.
Much of feminism today can be divided into two camps. There are First Amendment feminists who believe the First Amendment was the engine that drove the women's movement and any restrictions on expressive freedom can only be bad for women. And the so-called equality feminists who look toward government to protect women from anything "subordinating" (read sexual). This latter group is often associated with the messages of Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, both of whom believe that sexual messages are inherently degrading and dehumanizing to women. They seek government help in ridding society of all sexual images and language which objectify women.
First Amendment feminists like Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union who wrote the book: Defending Pornography: Free speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, understand that protecting freedom of speech in all its guises is fundamental to expanding women's equality.
Women's sexual and intellectual freedom is interwoven with everyone's right to speak freely on sexual matters. In the past, limitations on sexual speech put Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger in jail for attempting to educate women about contraception. And in Canada, which currently censors all books promoting "sexually demeaning" images and ideas, a number of Lesbian and Gay bookstores have been raided. No one is safe under a regime of censorship, no matter how noble the cause.
It is a blindness to history that makes equality feminists turn to the government to protect their interests. It was the government's laws, intended to guard the female's delicate nature, which protected women right out of the power to contract or hold certain jobs. The Mann Act which forbad the interstate transportation of women for "an immoral purpose," presumed that women were incapable of consenting to sex.
Nonetheless, whether the question is do women need to be protected from dirty pictures and sexual jokes in the workplace or should nude dance clubs and pornographic magazines be closed down so women can't work there anymore, the resounding answer from the equality feminists is "yes."
Pornography and clubs where women are admired for their sexuality must be closed, equality feminists demand, even though there are many women who work in the sex trades by choice. The call for such closings presumes that women in strip clubs have no will of their own. Equality feminists justify the hand of big brother government as protecting women from a degrading vocation, irrespective of the workers' desires.
The government, they say, must cleanse the workplace of anything sexual. Even though implicit in this demand is the canard that female sensibilities are too fragile to handle such offenses. It is the ultimate irony that these feminist are resurrecting Victorian notions of womanhood to advance their cause.
Even the legal profession has gotten into the act. The Florida Bar passed a rule of professional conduct last year which prohibits attorneys from having sexual contact with their clients. It was lobbied hard by women lawyers, who claimed female clients were too vulnerable to advances by their male attorneys. These clients would be emotionally coerced into sex, they said. What the rule implies is that women don't have the capacity to refuse sex when they are in an emotional situation. Adult women, the Bar maintains, have to be protected from consensual sex with their lawyers. Oh, Please!
Nothing is more antithetical to equality than the codification of every sexist stereotype about female delicacy. Yet that is precisely what equality feminists want.
In truth, these feminists have abandoned their quest for equality. They found equality lacking. Instead, their efforts now focus on the feminization of society. And in an odd alliance, they are actively enlisting the paternalism of government to reach their goal.
The reason for this retreat from an honest quest for women's equality is that for some it hasn't worked. Equality never promised to make women's lives easier, only fairer. Equal employment opportunities mean women are now free to compete with men in a work-a-day world that is demanding and often denigrating. Part of the equality equation is that women, like men, are assumed to be adult enough to handle whatever distasteful messages come their way. When that translates into working in an auto mechanic shop where pictures of nude women are posted on the walls, some women say "I didn't mean this equal."
Well few workplaces were tea parties before women entered, and government shouldn't be forcing them to start serving crumpets now.
If equality feminists want to change the culture of the workplace, they should be opening their own businesses and encouraging other women to do the same. Rather than seeking refuge from crassness on-the-job by asking the government to gag their co-workers, women can start businesses where they determine shop-talk decorum.
The owners get to set the rules. Women need to start thinking in terms of being owners. It would turn the victimology that equality feminists exalt, into a real strategy to further empower women. And it would protect the First Amendment from further erosion by the P.C. police.
True equality will be obtained only when women are presumed capable of working in an environment where dirty words are used; and only when they are presumed competent to choose their sex partners and money making endeavors. Now, if only the feminists would get out of their way.