From: Kathryn Aegis (k_aegis@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu Sep 16 1999 - 13:25:55 MDT
This is in reponse to the past few postings on this thread, although I will
only quote one:
Edgar Swank writes:
>But in some important areas, neutrality has been overrun and
>female superiority reigns. For example, reproductive freedom.
I was not speaking of a balance of power when I spoke of 'neutrality'. I
was, rather, referring to an absence of the importance of biological
factors. When humans are carrying out their daily errands, or going to an
office to work, their biological aspects have little relevance to the tasks
at hand. And, yet, only fifty years ago, one half of the population was
deemed too fragile to take on those tasks.
>From a medical standpoint, neither men nor women exercise full control over
reproduction, because our present methods of birth control are fallable,
and our present methods of artificial conception are expensive and
difficult. The male pill, presently in testing, is already recognized as
an important advance in obtaining more control.
>From a societal standpoint, in at least 50% of the of world cultures, women
do not exercise full reproductive choice, or even a choice in whether to
have or not have sex. For that matter, men also have little reproductive
choice, because of cultural expectations to produce children. Full bodily
autonomy has become an important issue in human rights as we move into the
21st c.
Furthermore, I think that we have to move beyond a perception of a struggle
between men and women for some sort of supremacy. An entire cottage
industry of self-help books is based on the false notion that men and women
are of different species and will never truly get along. If you are racing
to web sites about 'men's rights', then you are playing into a very cynical
and entropic game of 'who has the power', and much valuable energy will go
into pursuing an ephemeral goal of 'we win'. The true progress, in the
future, is to be made by those willing to stand up for the common interests
of all genders.
What bliss! A hurricane rages outside, and I have nothing better to do
than to write....!
Kathryn Aegis
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