but where is the cheese?
I used myspace.com blogs for the past few years for my randomly-spaced blogging. Therefore, I am jumpstarting my blog here with most of those blogs, lightly edited.
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Original posting: Sunday, February 26, 2006, 3:30 PM
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"We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever." --Susan B. Anthony, 19th- and early 20th-century leader of the Women's Movement
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings." --Cheris Kramerae, author of A Feminist Dictionary, 1996
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." --Rev. Pat Robertson, 1992 Republican Convention
[The previous 3 quotes are from http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~elk/feminismquotes.html.]
From my AIM screen name profile (it was on there for about a week):
Feminism should die. Now, before all you radical feminists go all crazy and catty on me, hear me out. Feminism was all good and dandy when current feminist trends emerged in the 1950s and '60s in response to the depressed housewife "problem." (Women, in that day, were basically conditioned from childhood that women's role in society was to be a good mother and wife. However, when women came of age and achieved what society wanted them to become, housewives were still depressed for some reason.) Nowadays, women do have the opportunities to do virtually whatever they want. The only detracting factor would be ingrained gender discrimination from stubborn people from past (and even present) generations. But it is now common belief that men and women have (for the most part) equal opportunities. Today, feminists scream "Discrimination!" at the most minute things (because what else can they focus on nowadays?), such as when that Harvard president offhandedly said that men are generally more suited to the fields of math and science than women are. Yes, I personally believe that men and women are differ in talents and that this guy's comment holds some truth, but I also think that men and women, on the whole, are equal--but unequal in individual categories.
Now, I will continue this train of thought for it has not yet crashed off an extremely high bridge into a rapid river that eventually pours off a waterfall into a distant destination faaar below. The continuation:
American housewives in mid-20th century were unhappy because they apparently felt unfulfilled by the role of a wife and mother. Granted, some women do feel accomplished and happy with such a commendable position. However, there is simply just much more in the world than being the center of the home.
A semi-ultimate culmination of this backward American ideology (that women were centers of the home) occurred in the 1961 Supreme Court case Hoyt v. Florida. Gwendolyn Hoyt was an unhappy housewife. It didn't help that she had a horrible husband as well. She was brought over the edge when she found out her husband was cheating on her. Probably overcome with anger (I say "probably" as I don't know the exact details of this case), Hoyt killed her husband with a baseball bat.
When brought to the court, she was found guilty of first-degree murder. I think she was in jail when she brought her case up to the Supreme Court. Her case to the Supreme Court was that she did not have an impartial jury of her peers. Her jury consisted of only white men. She argued that if there were women on her jury, she may have gotten off on a lighter charge such as manslaughter.
In the end, the Supreme Court ruled not in her favor because it said that the women's place was in the home as they were the "center of home and family life." It wasn't that women couldn't serve on juries back in the '60s; it was that they didn't have to. Men were automatically on the list of potential people to be called for jury duty. Women, on the other hand, had to actually register to be on this list; and then, if called, they could choose not to.
Eventually, this decision was overturned, but I don't know exactly when.
Anyway, as I was saying, housewives were unhappy. To sum things up so I can move on, women eventually got together and formed a reaction movement--I call it a "reaction movement," but more credible sources may just say that this is a continuation of the feminism that originated with women not having the vote and whatnot--to this housewife problem and current feminism came about. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963 helped a lot to pave the way.
The name of the Harvard President who created a major controversy around December 2004-January 2005 is Lawrence H. Summers. He was at a conference that was designed to be off-the-record, so participants could discuss topics candidly without fear of public misunderstanding or disclosure later.
(The source for this information about Summers is a newspaper article I found online: Dillon, Sam. "Harvard Chief Defends His Talk on Women." Nytimes.com. 18 January 2005. 20 February 2006.
Summer on his comment: "I was trying to provoke discussion, and I certainly believe that there's been some move in the research away from believing that all these things are shaped only by socialization."
Dr. Richard Freeman, an economics professor at Harvard: "Men are taller than women, that comes from biology, and Larry's view was that perhaps the dispersion in test scores could also come from biology."
And commentary from unoffended female Paula E. Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University: "I think if you come to participate in a research conference, you should expect speakers to present hypotheses that you may not agree with and then discuss them on the basis of research findings."
And from--in my opinion--an overreacting colleague, Dr. Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill. Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive automobiles."
Look, the way I see it is that men and women are generally different mentally. In general, men can get from point A to point B with a map easier than with just left or right directions. In general, women may simply prefer directions that state "turn right at this street" and "turn left at that street." For example, when my parents ask me to print them directions from mapquest.com, my mom doesn't really want the accompanying map while my dad usually does. Yes, scant example, but it's not like I'm writing a fully-supported essay or something.
Therefore, I think that there is definitely a mental difference between the genders just as there are the obvious physical differences (males tend to have more muscle mass, etc.). Of course, the aptitude test score difference between males and females isn't completely originated by this mental difference. I think it can be mostly credited to societal pressures to further the gap between the genders.
But nowadays, I--cautiously--can state that it is general knowledge in America that men and women should have equal opportunities and such. Sexual discrimination is frowned upon. The feminism that grew out of the '50s and '60s has, I think, pretty much accomplished its goal.
Currently, even tiny things such as the Harvard President's comments irrationally overly outrage "feminists." There isn't any significant thing that feminism can change now, so the smallest things are blown out of proportion so that feminism can live another month, another day, another minute even.
Current feminism is outdated.
That is all for now. Thank you for reading!!! 
... Although I don't think I accomplished what I meant to accomplish in this Rant.... Oh well....
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