This is a paper I wrote for my class, "Christianity and the Modern Mind" edited in a few places from the original version I handed in. It is in response to Linda Alcott's paper, "Cultural Feminism vs. Post-Structuralism." In this class we are asked to write response papers to the readings. The response papers are bsaically supposed to spend one or
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As far as the car goes, I don't really see anything particularly wrong with it, since this is essentially what they do already, although they keep it implicit. What I mean is that they already market things with a specific demographic in mind that may include race, socioeconomic status, and gender. For example, you'll probably see more women driving certain cars, more families with certain cars, etc. That has to do with marketing as well as practical reasons.
On the positive side, it indicates a shift in the auto industry that reflects a shift in buying power from mostly men to women now having a significant enough share of the market to be marketed to much more directly than ever. That, I think, is probably a good thing.
So as much as I am against the techniques of marketing and advertising in general, I don't quite see anything wrong with this specific idea. At least they're being honest about something that they've tried to capitalize on for quite some time.
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This is only partly on topic, but I've always marveled at this story. I remember in health class in like 7th grade we watched this video on gender equality and how men and women actually WERE different (biologically). Anyway, a bunch of women who wanted to be firefighters got a fire department (I don't remember if it was only one) to lower their standards for pushups, how much you could lift, running time, etc., because they felt the standards were too high for women, so they had to make separate standards for women so they could have women firefighters. All the male firefighters had to be able to lift people out of burning buildings, and the female firefighters were allowed to - I kid you not - drag people out of burning buildings, even if that be by their hair down the stairs. I always thought that was one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. No one said women couldn't be firefighters, but I'd want to make sure that whatever fireperson came to rescue me regardless of gender was capable of handling the job. That includes not pulling me down the stairs by my hair.
The only thing about the car that kinda struck me the wrong way was when they said "We wanted to have a door which was wide so you can load your stuff easily and it is easy to get in and out of the door." Like men never load stuff into a car?
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I agree that the design of the "car for women" probably reflects a whole lot of the weird and sexist bias in our culture. It will be interesting to see how well it does if/when they release it.
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