Dreams and Political Will

[wyld_dandelyon]

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who read the Sunday comics, and laughed at Dick Tracy's two-way video communicator watch. Heck, he got better reception than the TV, and never needed to whack the thing to clear up the picture. It was quite obviously fantasy

Comments

[ideealisme]

Answer: We stop allowing men to outsource all the caring duties to us for free.

[wyld_dandelyon]

There are a lot of highly-skilled jobs out there that are underpaid or not paid at all because they're "only" caring for our next generation of grownups.

It's not the only area where we seriously undervalue skilled work (economically, anyway), but it is an important one.

[catsittingstill]

I think we are making progress

[wyld_dandelyon]

Women made a lot of progress before gays even got started. I wonder if it's hard to change society on more than one front at once. I also wonder if it's not just that "gay" is short that led to the word for male homosexuals being used as the umbrella term by most people not part of the QUILTBAG community.

I wonder how much, to change society, you need to catch the attention of lots of young people. How many YA authors are reimagining society?

[catsittingstill]

Yes, we did. For that matter the argument can be made that we started from a better place; we might have been seen as hysterical and incompetent, but at least we weren't seen as unnatural (mostly).

But still I see so much change in attitudes on that front (with, obviously, far to go yet) and without wanting to detract from any other struggle for fairness, I wonder, why not us too? It reminds me somewhat of the campaigns to get people of color and women the vote--eventually women's voting rights got set aside and men of color got (if in some places only nominally) the vote fifty years or more before women did, which lead to some understandable bitterness.

No, I don't think it's just the relative shortness of "gay" that is why it's used as a shorthand for both genders either.

YA fiction... interesting. Maybe I should check out some more of that. I know there's some good stuff out there but I hadn't thought of it in terms of re-imagining a fairer society.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I do see a lot of changes from when I was a kid to now, but many of those (like the advances for queerfolk) weren't even on my radar at the time, while women's equality was actively advancing at the time, and then stalled.

I am personally vested in both fights for equality, of course. I don't want to see one advance at the expense of the other!

This topic connects in so many obvious and not-obvious ways to many things I care about!

[lb_lee]

Because it's easier to change our toys than it is to change our minds?

--Miranda/Gigi

[wyld_dandelyon]

LOL! That response would even fit in a tweet.

:-D

I think it's also pretty accurate.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I've really enjoyed some of your recent posts, btw, and just not had time and energy to comment.

[lb_lee]

No problem! From what we've seen, you certainly have had enough on your plate!

--Rogan

[bogwitch64]

It is a fact that we humans evolve faster technologically than we do sociologically. Our brains can't keep up with our own brains! But progress has been made, and will continue even though it seems the men are still running things. The difference is, each generation is being raised by more equality-minded women than they had been raised with. Each generation gives us more men who WANT equality for women. All? No, but more and more. And, let's face it, while they're "in charge" we need them on our side. The idiots making problems for us right now are those generally born in that era wherein MAN was GOD and women (whether wives or mothers) were there to serve them. That breed can't last forever, but the female half of the human race isn't going anywhere. :)

[wyld_dandelyon]

I know what you mean. I know that I am more hesitant with men who are a certain amount older than me to hold a door for them--at a certain generation, they interpret it as meaning I think they are infirm! For most men younger than me, the same rule as for another woman applies--whoever gets there first or whoever is less burdened holds the door as a courtesy human-to-human.

[deep_time]

I worry that the pendulum is swinging the wrong way already. Social regressives seem more prominent and vocal than they did twenty years ago. Maybe I'm wrong -- no doubt I have rose-colored memories of the '90s. Or maybe social conservatism is enjoying a temporary resurgence with the general rightward shift of American attitudes after 9/11, and will subside as religious extremists continue to overreach themselves and alienate the wider population. The war on birth control, in particular, seems bound to disabuse many of the saner religious types.

Despite those possibilities, I can't shake this paranoia that we're losing hard-fought ground to the Bronze Age social systems we had only begun to leave behind. The next twenty or thirty years will see significant social change parallel to massive reorganization of the Western economic system. Profitable male-dominated industries, like manufacturing and construction, will continue to decline. It's anyone's guess how that will affect relative social and economic power in the future.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I worry too. One of my friends predicted (accurately) that the election of George W would give social conservatives a lot more courage to speak out more loudly and more stridently, and that they would be much more pushy in demanding demand that others should live according to their (conservative) beliefs rather than their own beliefs.

It started before 911, though the process was accelerated and emphasized by 911.

There's always some pendulum effect, though the middle ground shifts, and sometimes shifts dramatically. The conservatives have been working hard to shift it in their direction, complaining about "left wing media" for anything that isn't far-right, and the like.

The forces behind this push to keep Americans afraid of change and afraid of (fill in the blank) have a lot of money to spend on public relations and spin campaigns. So I think there's reason to be concerned about this issue.