Before we all mess up the opposite sex even worse, what about this olden practice. A few generations back, when all schools were gender segregated, everyone was formally taught in a rigid fashion, how to behave and speak with the opposite sex. Both casually and within a marriage. Now that the divorce rate is 50 % in most countries, and both sexes blame/revange the other for all kinds of things that are not bad, only made bad by attitude, a formal tuition of behavior in regular middle school curriculum would help a lot. (I guess.) This would normalize everyone's expectation of the other, it would eliminate cluelessness, and most importantly, it would replace most of the false ideas we all learn from all places with a few ones that work to make everyone happy. This is/was very powerful. E.g. consider that in some movies, the roughest western gun slinger lifted his hat in front of a woman. Today, women themselves would laugh at formalities of respect. What's your opinion? Would it make sense to put such a class in middle schools?
It's weird. Most of the old folks I know stayed married to their first spouses and lived together til they died. Most of the young folk I know are already divorced. Not sure if your suggestion would work, but it does get you thinking.
There is a severe lack of respect in today's society, both within relationships and just generally in society. That is why I chose to live in the Southeast US all my life, instead of up north or out west where common courtesy is not valued or practiced generally.
I don't think it would hurt at all, but in my humble opinion we should do away with all the "diversity" training and "sensitivity" training, and replace it all with a message of respect for others and the benefits of basic courtesy and the golden rule.
Women had little economic opportunity and were generally stuck regardless of the happiness in the marriage.. and many died young worn out from childbirth ... Its a mistake to romanticize the "olden days".
So true...I have to laugh when I see someone romanticizing the 1950's. Believe me, it wasn't so great then.
Nice try at a diversion, but the facts are the facts. WOmen are more unhappy than they have ever been today.
Sure divorce almost always results in the woman being put is a worse financial state, yet "feminists" with their hate mongering against men convince them that they don't need a man and men are evil.
Answer the question! Do you have evidence that women are unhappier now? While divorce DOES almost always result in the woman being put in a worse financial state, that, in itself, doesn't say ANYTHING about her state of happiness. You apparently don't understand "feminism" at all. Feminists don't "hate monger" against men or declare that men are evil. Feminists do work toward the goal of women not needing men for financial support, and hurrah for that. Men should be pleased about that too, and the only men who aren't, are those who fear no woman will have them without the money they can provide.
http://www.elle.com/Beauty/Health-F...omen-Are-Unhappier-Than-They-ve-Been-in-Years "One failure of feminism you hear a lot about is the so-called second shift, or the burden of housework and child care that working women face because men aren’t doing their fair share. However, this turns out not to be totally true. Stevenson and Wolfers point to numerous studies showing that women’s and men’s total work hours (paid plus unpaid) have been declining since 1965—both sexes have more leisure time than in the past—and men are, in fact, doing more housework than ever before" http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2009/ca20091016_302039.htm "Yet the biggest surprise would have come if you had asked her just one more question: Given all the evidence of women running corporations and universities, hospitals, media empires, branches of government and countries, do you think women in the future will be happier? Of course they will be happy, she would have said. With all this choice and opportunity, how could they not be? Well, as it turns out: too easily. Each year since 1972, the U.S. General Social Survey has asked men and women: "How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being very happy, and 1 being not too happy?" This survey includes a representative sample of men and women of all ages, education levels, income levels, and marital statuses—1,500 per year for a total of almost 50,000 individuals thus far—so it gives us a most reliable picture of what's happened to men's and women's happiness over the last few decades. " "First, since 1972 women's overall level of happiness has dropped, both relative to where they were 40 years ago and relative to men's. You find this drop in happiness in women regardless of whether they have kids; how many kids they have; how much money they make; how healthy they are; what job they hold; whether they are married, single, or divorced; how old they are; or what race they are. (The one and only exception: African American women are now slightly happier than they were back in 1972—though they remain less happy than African American men.) And in case you're wondering, this finding is neither unique to this study, nor is it unique to the U.S. In the last couple of years, results from six major studies of happiness have been released: • The United States General Social Survey (46,000 people, from 1972 to 2007) • The Virginia Slims Survey of American Women (26,000 people, from 1972 to 2000) • The Monitoring the Future survey (430,000 U.S. 12th graders, from 1976 to 2005) • The British Household Panel Study (121,000 people, from 1991 to 2004) • The Eurobarometer analysis (636,000 people, from 1973 to 2002, covering 15 countries) • The International Social Survey Program (97,462 people, from 1991 to 2001, covering 35 developed countries) All told, more than 1.3 million men and women have been surveyed over the last 30 years. Wherever researchers have been able to collect reliable data on happiness, the finding is always the same: Greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women as compared with men. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/l22dowd.html "At the same time, nothing we have discovered in our modern experience prevents confrontations with the big issues — fear, uncertainty, disappointment and loss. But I don’t know too many who, given the option, would cut the kids out of their life in order to be happier. Indeed, I am not sure how I would answer a survey about happiness. I know that I am grateful for a life that is full, complex, challenging and real." http://articles.courant.com/2010-03...4.artmar14_1_emotional-lives-research-happier ""Discovery" is what men believe leads to a firmer grasp of the understanding of our lives and the lives of others. Which explains why men can't speak to each other about anything except sports, TV, cars, weather and the occasional breast. And shock of shocks, now that women are doing research into the lives of women, they are discovering that women are not so happy. Imagine that!" Need more?
the finding is always the same: Greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women as compared with men. It's not hard to see how you would solve this problem, just keep women uneducated and in the kitchen, not to mention barefoot and pregnant, and all women will be in a state of ecstasy. LOL. There is plenty of room to create more equality between the sexes in the world today, and it is true that when women see what COULD be, they will likely be unhappy with what IS. You might keep in mind that when mama ain't happy, nobody's happy.
Maybe this is why women are unhappy, because some react with emotional hysteria and irrational nonsense whenever they hear something they don't like. The fact is that many women want the traditional role of wife and mother, but feel pressure from idiot "feminists" to act like the traditional male role. So they do, then they are miserable. Why can't women just support other women's personal goals? Petty jealousy? Control freak nature? What? BTW, there were 6 separate studies that reached the same conclusion, so are you saying the findings are flawed or incorrect?
Margot, your words are usually important. But now you have totally missed my point. I know few movies about the 1950's (hippy/grandfather time?), but there are plenty that are set in the 1890's. I think the milennia old formalities of respect were already missing in the 1950's because by that time feminism had already achieved (important) goals, AT the price of destroying respect.
May I add that women don't respect each other's anything, by default? A hot girl, knowing that I am in a relationship, came to speak with me. We men don't usually go up to another man's woman, for us, there is always the next one. Women clearly are a different type of thinkers.
Are you saying that women are only "respected" when they have no rights? When they must work at home, cooking, cleaning, caring for children, and perpetually pregnant? Some "respect."
Don't forget we have to toss out the right to vote, something that I have been doing since the moment I turned 18, which was an extremely important part of the feminism movement. But I guess it's disrespectful for women to choose who they want to have in office and to help make huge decisions that affect this country and their's and their family's lives.
Many women do want the traditional role of wife and mother, but ideas of what those traditional roles comprise have changed. Few modern women realize the powerlessness of women in the past, those women who had to rely on men to provide for their families. Most modern women do realize the benefits of having their own incomes even when they wish they could devote full time to mothering. Their is no pressure from feminists to assume a male role, feminists support women having choices in their roles. Why can't men as well support women's personal goals? Some men do, pity those who don't. They're questionable, since the studies must rely on self-reporting, one's judge of one's own happiness is difficult to compare to a previous time.
Where in my text did I disqualify the achievements of 20th century feminism??? Now the 21st century feminism is an ENTIRELY different game. But, back to topic, however unfair it may have been, the 19th century saw the woman-man relationship in the color of supporter-fighter. I agree that this potentially puts the supporter (woman) into a disadvantage, but this also generates its very well working respect model, at least in theory. When 20th century feminism (which I support) transformed this color into a competitor-competitor relationship, the respect model broke down. However, nobody came to design a new respect model that could be applied and make the new woman-man system happy. Then, worse, 21st century feminism came, and now even the thought of designing a respect model is becoming impossible. There must be something though that can be formulated that works in the 21st century, like there was something that worked out a type of respect that was appropriate to the colors of the 19th century.
How do you prove that 19th century men ON AVERAGE took their women for nothing more than these items you are listng? (Propaganda?)
That was the accepted practice at the time. If you think women will ever go back to the practice of being dependent upon men, you don't know many women. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wmarriage.htm The laws in Britain were based on the idea that women would get married and that their husbands would take care of them. Before the passing of the 1882 Married Property Act, when a woman got married her wealth was passed to her husband. If a woman worked after marriage, her earnings also belonged to her husband. The idea was that upper and middle class women had to stay dependent on a man: first as a daughter and later as a wife. Once married, it was extremely difficult for a woman to obtain a divorce. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 gave men the right to divorce their wives on the grounds of adultery. However, married women were not able to obtain a divorce if they discovered that their husbands had been unfaithful. Once divorced, the children became the man's property and the mother could be prevented from seeing her children.
Your last statement is a blatant lie. Most women understand that women's rights were suppressed in the past, and yet they are still less happy now than women were then. This is a clear indication that "feminism" has failed women miserably! I knew this was coming. Every time a lefty's silly notion is trashed by actual data, you get some stupidity like this as a response. So you think there is a better measure of happiness than someone's own feeling of happiness or lack thereof?
This is about women respecting themselves. They don't respect themselves when they buy into the modern "feminist" nonsense.
Wow, thanks for bringing this information. I can't even imagine why those 2 anti-women legislations were introduced. But, I must ask, how do these legislations prove that men on average wanted to mistreat their women, person-to-person? (And it is interesting to see that these 19th century anti-women legislations are of similar nature as 21st century anti-men legislations are.)
The laws at the time existed because that was the common perception. It wasn't viewed as "mistreating" their women at all, it was the commonly accepted practice. Please give us some examples of "anti-men legislation." We'll wait.
