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meristem | 3 years ago

Maybe the problem starts with talking about grown women using "girls".

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LorenPechtel|3 years ago

I've noticed multiple female hikers doing this. "Girl" referring to anyone who still leads a physically active life, "woman" to those who no longer do.

zackmorris|3 years ago

Thank you.

My parents were involved in stuff like the National Organization for Women (NOW) while women's rights around abortion and equal pay etc were being attacked under the Reagan administration in the 80s. So I grew up having strong feminist role models all around me. I was taught to treat everyone as an equal, and to speak respectfully. Using terms like police officer instead of policeman, fire fighter instead of fireman, and so on. Think how quaint that sounds today!

I'm appalled that pretty much all of that seems to have died since the 90s. Grown women on reality TV call themselves girls. Traditional gender roles seem to be cemented in place by marketing. I see the most chauvinistic, repulsive men being rewarded for being an "alpha".

So I dunno, to me it feels like it's over. I don't see a way back to progress when half the population subscribes to gender stereotypes. I feel like I was prepared for an egalitarian world that never came to be.

And not just feminism. All of the social justice causes I'm most passionate about, beginning with the destruction of wealth inequality, seem to have fallen by the wayside. It's just all bad news all the time on every front. Maybe there's a silver lining there that it's all fake. Maybe we can shift out of this false reality and manifest a better one. That thought is about all that's keeping me going anymore.

vlod|3 years ago

>Grown women on reality TV...

It is worth being careful about judging the present state of society based on social media/marketing (so you buy stuff you don't need) verses reality. i.e. a lot of people are normal IRL but rabid animals on twitter/fb.

Nobody with an ounce of IQ should be watching reality TV (it's just grown up (barely) high school drama). In fact watching TV (in general), makes you dumber and angrier.

I think there are still a lot of people that care about 'stuff'. Maybe other sources of input would be recommended. e.g. ACLU has regular meetings in big cities. Earth-Justice is big (although not sure about meetups).

inkcapmushroom|3 years ago

Not that I've been on this world very long, but from what I've learned of history I think these things ebb and flow. No culture is naturally permanently fixed towards being "traditional" or "progressive" or whatever label, but cultures are always moving in different directions based on the forces of the day which I certainly won't claim to know.