Can We Make Boys and Girls Alike?
Stanley Kurtz

QuoteFrom either a biological or cultural point of view, then, the feminist project of androgyny is ultimately doomed. But that doesn't mean that it can't do harm in the meantime. In America, many boys are slipping behind in school; their sisters are significantly more likely to go on to college. Yet thanks largely to the influence of academic feminists, legal and educational resources still flow disproportionately to supposedly victimized girls. In the end, gender won't disappear, whatever the mavens of women's studies hope, but the careers of some bright young men probably will.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_2_boys_girls.html

But, unlike many believers in hardwired sex differences, he goes on to argue that we can triumph over biology through single-sex education. If we teach boys and girls separately and in sync with their biologically based learning styles, he claims, they will perform equally well in all academics,

I can see our TS friends loving that one.

I guess I've just had my head buried in the sand for too long. 

I always thought the general view of the femminist movement (not the hard-core radicals) was for equality of opportunity (and pay), not for everyone to look and act the same.  Whether the differences are entirely physical (hardwired in the brain), entirely cultural, or a combination the two, it is obvious to most that men and women are not the same.

I, for one, do not want to live in an entirely androgynous society.  I like the diversity.  (OK, I like the clothes...there, you made me say it.)  I just want to live in an accepting (or at least tolerating) society where one is free to express their gender regardless of what it is.

.......Laurry   

it seems to be that generally androgynous is synonymous with homogeneous. i don't think it is.

Yes, the overall goal of feminism is equality, and that is what we should aim at. However, there are different ways to get there, and the route our society is taking may not be the best one. The world we live in is indeed much more egalitarian than that of our grandparents, or even parents, but the gender equality is a little one-sided. It's much more acceptable for women to adopt masculine traits than for men to adopt feminine ones (although I guess it's not necessary to point this out on this forum  ), and this has rather deep social implications. While women in traditionally male occupations have problems with glass ceilings and related discrimination, it's even more difficult for men to make a career in traditionally female occupations -- there, even making the attempt is labelled as 'weak' instead of 'courageous but futile'. As teaching becomes more and more a female occupation, we get even less male teachers, which in turn means less understanding and role models for teenage boys, which in turn means more high school drop-outs.

Of course I know I'm making a gross oversimplification here, but factors like this do seem to have an effect. Also, I'm not blaming feminism, as the problem is not really there but rather in the interaction between feminist values and cultural inertia. Come to think of it, in a sense the GLBT community can be seen as a balancing power, the only group that actually cares about the right of men to show their femininity.

  Nfr

Its even worse in a sense since the glass ceiling is about to fail in a spectacular way as more and more women with experience are accumulating in middle management and its getting more and more difficult to hold them down there. In 20 years, corporate america will look much much more female, mark my word and the glass ceiling will be history.

Quote from: Keira on July 26, 2007, 03:07:32 PM

Its even worse in a sense since the glass ceiling is about to fail in a spectacular way as more and more women with experience are accumulating in middle management and its getting more and more difficult to hold them down there. In 20 years, corporate america will look much much more female, mark my word and the glass ceiling will be history.

   There is also the phenomenon of greater numbers of women starting their own businesses, where 'The Man' can't tell them what to earn. The numbers are high enough that these women will definitely make a difference by either offering an alternative work place for talented women or else pressuring traditional organizations into leveling the playing field in order to keep their highly qualified women.

Just my opinion.  I think it supports Keira's.

Stanley Kurtz, the author of the article, is a fellow at the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank.  He has written a number of articles defending the "traditional family" and attacking the political and social agenda of feminists.  The thrust of this article is that feminist arguments for equal treatment of women are based on what in his view is a mistaken theory about the nature of gender.  In his argument, if nature (not society) makes men and women different, then social reforms aimed at equality between men and women are bound to fail.

Kurtz is correct in observing that modern feminism (the feminism of the last part of the twentieth century, as distinct from the earlier "liberal feminism" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) has as one of its central themes the notion that gender is primarily a social-political construct, not a biological given.  From the feminist perspective, the oppression of women is the result of the patriarchal structure of society which defines male roles as dominant and female roles as subordinate.  These feminists argue that it is not merely sufficient to have equal laws for men and women, but it is necessary to change the structure of society to have genuine equality for women.  One of the changes that is most necessary is changing the structure of the family, since the the traditional family structure is the source of gender differentiation and is also one of the more oppressive institutions (in the view of these post-modern feminists).

While I agree with Kurtz that eliminating all gender differences is not just undesirable but impossible, I cannot agree with the unstated but implied assumption that all gender differences are natural, that the structure of gender roles in our society is natural and unchangeable, and that social changes to promote equality of women are unnecessary.  In arguing against androgyny, he is arguing in favor of the status quo regarding the social and political inequality of women.

The truth is, gender is partially natural and partially social.  In this, gender is like language.  It is natural for human beings to speak, but the particular language we do speak is the product of our social environment.  There are natural differences between men and women, but these differences are distributed over a wide spectrum of individuals (for example, men on average are taller than women, but an individual woman may be taller than an individual man).  Gender roles, however, are largely the result not of natural differences but are due to the way in which boys and girls are socialized.  The kibbutz experiment which Kurtz cites as evidence for the failure of androgyny, may not have eliminated gender differences, but it did contribute to the redefinition of gender roles in a more egalitarian way.

Androgyny is connected with the ideal of gender equality.  Central to the notion of androgyny is the rejection of the idea that either masculine or feminine is "higher" or "better" than the other.