Women do not have equal rights as citizens in the USA.

Does that surprise you?

It's true.

Women are second class citizens.

Women may legally be discriminated against by law, and they have zero recourse to remedy that discrimination.

Long ago (starting in 1921), many good people sought to remedy that horrific state of affairs. They proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would have forever made Women the equal of Men in the USA.

It read;



So, why wasn't this extremely sensible and utterly correct Amendment passed? The Right Wing created a horrific smear machine against it. The very people who are in power in this country today worked as soldiers for that smear machine. They even had otherwise sensible people believing that the text of the Amendment (quoted in whole above) actually had explicit language requiring unisex toilets and mandatory state raising of children! The din of their spin was so loud that when you quoted the actual text of the Amendment to people, they called you a liar!

Well, these same evil people are at work TODAY in Washington DC, trying to actually write discrimination into the US Constitution in the form of the Marriage Amendment.

I call upon all of you to stop this in its tracks. Phone the Senate. Jam the switchboards. Call talk shows. Do what ever it takes to defeat this EVIL.

And when we have won that fight, as I know we shall, please let us return to the REAL fight, and get the ERA passed into the Constitution of this country for our sakes and the sakes of our posterity.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/ <--- Click it!

or was it Yoko? "Woman is the nigger of the world". It is true unfortunately. Things have not changed a whole hell of a lot for women in society; in fact now here in the USA they are in fact worse. No birth control, no abortions, right-to-life movement, etc., etc.

I'd really hoped for so very much more. I cannot blame women for this. I blame the white fat cat men out there more than anything for making sure that women (of all races) continue to be repressed.

:dem: :kick:

Marriage horse crap has.

What's the matter Rethugliturds? Hate women?...

And the states wouldn't ratify it? Or maybe I'm getting the process backwords.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

And I believe that it still could be ratified. Even though the Bill that proposed it set a deadline date, the Constitution does not recognize such deadlines, and some Constitutional Scholars say that ratification by the remaining states would likely be sufficient.

When one stops to think this represents at least half
of the total population and it was as difficult as it
was to keep it under consideration.

*nods head*

I have to conclude... At best, the GOP thinks of women
as chattel and the worst is they hate them.

(This is part of what I remember of the events.)

The IA legislature ratified the amendment in the late 70s with little discussion and little opposition. Then the RW went on a national crusade against the ERA, and it
was put on the ballot by referendum in the 1980 elections.

I had friends speaking around IA in favor of the ERA and coming back totally confused by the extreme anger against the amendment. It was in the right's campaign vs the ERA that many of us first heard of the 'evil agenda of secular humanism.'

It was also during the national and local campaign vs the ERA that the Mormon church funded several front groups opposing the ERA. One of the local Mormons spear-heading the anti-ERA movement was a woman with whom I had worked on different projects over several years. Her 'unveiling' came as a big surprise.

One of the nastiest campaign tactics was an anti-ERA ad that had pictures of a gay pride parade in San Francisco with shots carefully chosen to upset midwesterners of the 70s. The voice-over said over and over 'is this what we want in IA?? vote NO on the ERA.' I talked to several neighbor women who KNEW a vote for the ERA was a vote APPROVING homosexuality.

It was very upsetting to precinct walk (ie, remind those who hadn't yet voted to be sure and vote) on election day in IA in 1980 KNOWING that many of the registered democrats were voting FOR Reagan and AGAINST IA passing the ERA.

After Reagan's win and the defeat of the IA approval of the ERA, local talk shows (this was when local talk shows were REALLY local) began to get callers demanding the repeal of women's right to vote.

The 1980 election was a disaster and a major step toward what we now have for a federal government.

joke

If you want to know why the ERA didn't pass, you can blame it on one person.

Phyllis Schlaffly.

The ERA was sailing to confirmation in the 3/4 states needed without organized opposition when Phyllis Schlaffly got involved and organized religious groups against it. That movement turned into the Religious Right which made the reagan presidency possible.

I think Phyllis Schlaffly is quite possibly the mostinfluential woman of the last 50 years.

Guess that's what you call right-wing hypocrisy.

such fokkin' hypocrites.

mandatory birth control, and other bullshit. It played well with backwoods, backwards states whose legislatures thought along those same lines--and this was back in 1980!

basically dropped from her spokesperson roll. Women owe a debt of gratitude to them for going after her.

the gay marriage amendment has thus far gone exactly nowhere. the equal rights amendment missed becoming law by the hair on the chinny chin chin of one george ryan of illinois. (soon to receive his kharmic reward, likely to die in prison for his corruption as governor.) had illinois ratified it, it would have become law. it passed in congress and had been ratified by one short of the necessary 2/3 of the states. the only remaining state likely to support it was illinois. indeed, it had the votes. by george ryan was the floor leader, and he kowtowed to phyllis schafly, and her bunch of female impersonators, and refused to let it out of committee.

when there was a lot of talk about an Equal Rights Amendment. That is when that text, above, was proposed as a constitutional amendement. The smears were vicious. If you were a feminist you were presumed to be evil. You were out to destroy marrages and families. Pat Robertson was one of the most outspoken and vicious attackers.

I'm pretty sure it was the 70s. My grandmother told my mother to vote against it and my mother later confided in me that she had voted for it. The thing I remember hearing the most was the nonsense about unisex bathrooms.

If I recall correctly, one or more states that had ratified it later rescinded their ratification. I recall some people raising the question of whether or not they could legally do that. I'm not sure if that question ever went to the courts or not. It may have been that there wouldn't have been enough states anyway.

Was she a member of the state legislature? That would be cool. My mom was a bank teller.

Everyone got to vote on it.

Because I want to mop up the blood caused when Santorum and Frist's heads explode because their piece of shit amendment doesnt pass.

This is a "Hail Mary pass" attempting to get the jibbering idiots that vote for them in line for the elections in November.

I should have figured it out! Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! :silly:

Gotta rile up the sheeple! :sheepdrinkingkoolaid:

I'm totally pissed at having to fight roe v wade all over again!

this time around I'm like an Akita after a wild boar. no holds barred. no backing down.

I am 100% in support of a federal ERA.

However:

Federal laws do provide recourse for women who are discriminated against on the job and in housing.

Some individual states have equal right written into their constitutions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#State_ERAs

I agree that it's inadequate, but please don't use falsehoods like "zero recourse." It diminishes your case.

(The effectiveness of said recourse is of varying quality, but don't expect for one minute it would be any different with a federal ERA. See amendments pertaining to voting rights, and how they're enforced, for example.)

And you have NO recourse. That is what I refer to. You can be discriminated against BY LAW.

legal challenge.

It's a case by case basis.

It's a hidden means of prohibiting any litigation.

And the right to play sports in school, and some other things, state-by-state. I have recourse. It may not result in an outcome I'd like -- but putting it in the constitution wouldn't guarantee that either.

Voting is in the constitution, so it would take a lot more than "a whim" to get that one rolled back. And I do think it would take more than just a whim to cancel EEO and housing laws -- it would be political suicide to suggest something so bold. Sure, there are legislators who would like nothing more than to do just that -- but they know it'll never pass wholesale. Yeah, these laws probably will get chipped away absent an ERA. I'm not arguing with the basic premise that an ERA would be a good thing.

Just your premise that I can, right now, be discriminated against and have NO RECOURSE.

Even if it was totally legal to deny me housing based on sex...I'd still have recourse. There are more women than men in this country (and when you add supportive men and get rid of the backwards women, there's still more of us than there are of them), and screaming and hollering is still recourse. We're not powerless, even if the law says otherwise (which, RIGHT NOW, it doesn't).

I'm quibbling with your language, not with your main point.

And you cannot stop them, and would have no recourse.

What you have now is not a RIGHT, it is a PRIVILEGE, which can be revoked.

Its just a scale of grey, and even in the european nations where women "are equal", patriarchy reigns.

The failure to ratify the ERA is the tragedy of our generation. Our world would be right different
had that passed, nothing would have become like this. It was an opportunity missed and lost.

Womens rights are just being shredded across the planet as we comment, a new race to the bottom.

My God, at one point they even passed a law, the Edmonds-Tucker(?) specifically to disenfranchise women after some western states thought it was OK to let them vote! It is an outrage the ERA hasn't been law for 80 years. I really didn't realize the ERA had been lingering since 1921, it is even worse than I had thought & that is really hard to imagine...

of the women's suffrage amendment

http://www.npg.si.edu/col/seneca/senfalls1.htm


The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, the conference that refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from America because of their sex. Stanton, the young bride of an antislavery agent, and Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran of reform, talked then of calling a convention to address the condition of women. Eight years later, it came about as a spontaneous event.

In July 1848, Mott was visiting her sister, Martha C. Wright, in Waterloo, New York. Stanton, now the restless mother of three small sons, was living in nearby Seneca Falls. A social visit brought together Mott, Stanton, Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt. All except Stanton were Quakers, a sect that afforded women some measure of equality, and all five were well acquainted with antislavery and temperance meetings. Fresh in their minds was the April passage of the long-deliberated New York Married Woman's Property Rights Act, a significant but far from comprehensive piece of legislation. The time had come, Stanton argued, for women's wrongs to be laid before the public, and women themselves must shoulder the responsibility. Before the afternoon was out, the women decided on a call for a convention "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman."

To Stanton fell the task of drawing up the Declaration of Sentiments that would define the meeting. Taking the Declaration of Independence as her guide, Stanton submitted that "all men and women had been created equal" and went on to list eighteen "injuries and usurpations" -the same number of charges leveled against the King of England-"on the part of man toward woman."

....

The convention, to take place in five days' time, on July 19 and 20 at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, was publicized only by a small, unsigned notice placed in the Seneca County Courier. "The convention will not be so large as it otherwise might be, owing to the busy time with the farmers," Mott told Stanton, "but it will be a beginning."

A crowd of about three hundred people, including forty men, came from five miles round. No woman felt capable of presiding; the task was undertaken by Lucretia's husband, James Mott. All of the resolutions were passed unanimously except for woman suffrage, a strange idea and scarcely a concept designed to appeal to the predominantly Quaker audience, whose male contingent commonly declined to vote. The eloquent Frederick Douglass, a former slave and now editor of the Rochester North Star, however, swayed the gathering into agreeing to the resolution. At the closing session, Lucretia Mott won approval of a final resolve "for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce." One hundred women and men signed the Seneca Falls Declaration-although subsequent criticism caused some of them to remove their names.

....

Stanton, thirty-two years old at the time of the Seneca Falls Convention, grew gray in the cause. In 1851 she met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony, and shortly the two would be joined in the long struggle to secure the vote for women. When national victory came in 1920, seventy-two years after the first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration-Charlotte Woodward, a young worker in a glove manufactory -had lived long enough to cast her ballot.

*****

It took me a long time to accept the fact that one of the main reasons the 19th amendment was finally ratified was because white women repeatedly asked white male legislators why white women could not vote but Negro and naturalized foreign men could. IOW, an appeal to racism. Ironic, since the drive for women's right to vote came from the fact that women working for abolition were refused seats at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London because they were women.

Congress is only interested in passing laws that restrict freedoms and rights (gay marriage).

What part of the ERA is not covered by the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment?

I'm not anti-ERA (I even wear the button sometimes, though "Failure is Impossible" turned out to be false), but what protections does it offer that isn't already offered by the 14th amendment?

And if patriarchists will walk over the 14th amendment (which they are), why wouldn't they walk over the ERA also?

You need to be an equal citizen. The Constitution does not explicitly recognize Women as such.

Amendment 14:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Not "all men"; "all persons"

Women were clearly granted citizenship and equal protection by the 14th amendment. If patriarchists ignored it in the 14th amendment, why wouldn't they ignore it in the 28th?

They were not officially persons in the language of the law.

Nor are they now.

See, judges like Justices Alito and Scalia would say that we have to use the definition of the word at the time it was written, which meant it only referred to men and not women. That's why we need the ERA--they hide their bigotry behind the flag and the founding fathers (totally ignoring the mothers).

right women have is the right to vote!!!! It was reported in a Madison newspaper.

I cannot find the Capitol Times story where I read this on-line. But here's another source

http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/2001/april01/scalia.html

....

According to the Capital Times coverage, Scalia hinted that he would not find a constitutional right to women's suffrage under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, saying only the 19th amendment passed in 1920 provided that right. Scalia added:

"If you don't like the white males, persuade the people and lead a revolution. And you'll get beat, too."

Scalia calls himself an "originalist" or "textualist," saying judges must preserve the original meaning of the two-centuries-old Constitution. The Constitution provides no right to die, no right to an abortion, and no ban on the death penalty, he said. By implication he appears to believe there is no constitutional right to contraception.

"The death penalty--that's a laugher. Right to die--forget about it. Right to abortion--the same thing," according to Wisconsin State Journal coverage of the speech.

Scalia seemed to dismiss the broad liberties provided in the Bill of Rights: "The majority wins. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in democracy."

more....

remember, back then, only males over 21 years of age could vote, and that's on a state by state basis. It wasn't until 1920's that Women were included in this, and if you want to be exact, the 14th amendment ONLY covers discrimination based on race, national origin, or religion, NOT SEX.

"All persons born within the United States" were citizens according to the 14th amendment, not "all men".

The amdendment then goes on to protect the voting rights of male citizens, which does suck that they left it at that.

Anyways, I don't want to harp on this because I'm pro-ERA, but I just don't get what good it will do given how much people have trampled the 14th amendment.

up UNTIL the 14th Amendment, it was left up to states, mostly, to define who was or wasn't a citizen, women, as a general rule, weren't really citizens at all, if you want to get technical. The 14th Amendment then made "American by Birth" the standard for natural born citizens. Other than that, as you said, it only covers the rights of men for equal protection.

The 14th amendment does cover women but I too am not anti-ERA.

It is like the fact that it covers gay people who want to get married even though it doesn't specifically say so. Which is why the republicans want an amendment against it since they know what the courts must rule when it comes before them.

Instead of making them subject to the whims of Congress and the Executive Branch.

It also makes it easier for women who have been victims of discrimination to access legal remedy , ie to sue to protect their rights. The current system of going to court if you've been discriminated against is very lengthy, expensive and complicated.

of the glaringly obvious. :) If you watch the way some allegedly liberal men act toward women around here...it becomes easier to understand why women don't have equal rights under law as of yet.

High. School. Football.

When I was in high school, we had a girl fight to join the JV team. The school fought it for safety reasons, but she could run and throw, so she eventually garnered a huge amount of support and the school was forced to relent. Care to guess what happened? During her VERY FIRST GAME she was hit and one of her vertebrae was crushed. Her family tried to argue that she was deliberately taken out because she was a girl, but when the video was reviewed by both sides, everyone realized that she hadn't been hit any harder than anyone else in the game. When a 220 pound halfback wearing all of his equipment gets up to full speed and drives all of that weight into a 150lb girl, that girl is screwed. Simple physics.

The school responded by promptly passing a rule that banned females from all male contact sports, and they've stood on it ever since. The ERA would make that rule illegal and expose both the school and other players to lawsuits.

I've said for years that I'll support an ERA type law when someone figures out how to guarantee equal rights while still allowing the legal permissibility of laws and rules designed to accommodate the legitimate physical differences between the sexes. I have no interest in using same sex bathrooms, I'm not particularly interested in seeing girls getting tackled on football fields, and personally, I'm pretty damned happy that my wifes employer (a local government agency) offers way more paid maternity leave than they're required to. That doesn't make me a conservative, it makes me practical.

There were plenty of 150# quarterbacks playing when I was a Tackle in High School.

I broke several ribs on one, too. He was SERIOUSLY hurting.

And I knew a woman back then who weighed #200 and could out-lift anybody on our team.

Geez, remember all those stories about passing the ERA and women having to go into combat? Oh wait, that happened already, even without the ERA.

Too bad those women in Iraq don't have Constitutionally guaranteed equal rights in the US.

Women fought for the ERA for years and conservatives honed their smearing, ridiculing technique on it. Radio host gasbags helped fan the flames. One of the conservative's favorite memes was "If the ERA is passed, women will have to go into combat". Well,well. (They used the same meme for the formation of HMO's, as I recall; "If we don't have HMO's, medical care will become too expensive". Well, well.

Football is just one example, and it's obviously one that can be argued. But the ERA would effectively force the erasure of ALL gender based policies. Do we really want 15 year old girls being forced to undress for PE in locker rooms full of 15 year old boys? Separating them would become discriminatory if the ERA were to pass, and we would either have to integrate the locker rooms or eliminate PE and HS sports altogether.

How about maternity leave? The ERA is written as a gender neutral law, so a male could easily have maternity leave banned by arguing that it discriminates against him based on gender. Laws mandating the availability of maternity leave for women would instantly become unconstitutional and unenforceable.

And golf? If the ERA were to pass, it would become illegal to keep men out of the LPGA. Since men consistently out-drive women in golf (not discriminatory there, the numbers are pretty solid), men could take the league over and drive women out of a professional sport that was specifically made for them.

Academics? Government programs designed to help women enter traditionally male fields could also be challenged as an unconstitutional discrimination against men. After all, the ERA does remove the ability of government to address anything in a gender specific manner. Any law passed to benefit women would have to benefit men as well, or the law would be struck as unconstitutional.

I could sit here and cite dozens of potentially negative side-effects of the ERA, but I think you get my point.

I have NO PROBLEM with the spirit of the ERA and the goals that ERA supporters hope to gain. My problem is that the ERA, as it was written, would have created a landslide of side effects that would have been detrimental to both men and women. Some people might think that we live in a utopia where these things would never happen, but I inhabit a nation filled with lawyers who would jump at the chance to exploit an open law like the ERA in order to make a name for themselves. Rewrite the ERA to accommodate these issues and I'll be at every rally to support it, for the sake of my wife and my daughters.

Unisex locker rooms? Seriously, what have you been smoking. Did you even READ the text of the ERA???

Men should get maternity leave. They do in many countries.

The LPGA thing is a strawman, and you totally know it. As is the academic thing. Affirmative action, etc.

I can't believe you are saying this sexist, totally circa-1980 GOP spin.

She said we would have unisex bathrooms, etc.

Baloney.

We're arguing a legal point here. Calling my opinion baloney and comparing me to a conservative religious freak does nothing for the conversation.

You think my opinion is incorrect? Show me.

"SECTION 1 - Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

The text is simple and straightforward. It says that men==women, and as a result ANY law, policy, or rule granting rights or privileges, or restricting the rights or privileges, of any individual would be unconstitutional. Since the Constitution overrides every state law, local ordinance, federal law, and presidential directive ever written, the ratification of the ERA would immediately invalidate every state and federal law and program created to help either one sex or the other with ANYTHING. The Supreme Court has ruled elsewhere that "separate but equal" isn't a legally viable way out of anti-discrimination laws, so yes, that DOES translate to unisex bathrooms and locker rooms.

Instead of attacking me, SHOW ME WHERE I'M WRONG. If my legal understanding is faulty, I will happily eat my words and knock off my opposition here. Right at this moment, however, I can't see any fault in the argument. Your argument (and the arguments of others here) seems to be that because a 'Thug once said it, it must be wrong. I hope you can see the flaw in that logic.

BTW, this entire argument could be settled by appending a simple exception to the amendment accommodating legitimate physical differences.

If the equal rights amendment passed, that wouldn't mean that men=women. That logic doesn't follow. Because (at least in the eyes of the law, if not necessarily always in practice) blacks and whites have equal rights, does that mean that now black people and white people are totally the same? Have there ceased to be black organizations like the NAACP or even entertainment sources like BET? Of course not. Equal rights under the law does not erase differences between groups of people, nor does it attempt to do so. It just means that one group of people can no longer be discriminated against.

I don't believe at all that an equal rights amendment would mean that men and women would have to be treated as if they were exactly the same. That doesn't even make sense.

Another reason that I think the unisex bathrooms issue is a red herring: the "separate but equal" ruling came about because blacks wanted access to institutions (usually colleges) when there were no alternatives available to them. It was prohibitively expensive to build black colleges for each person who challenged the "separate but equal" ruling. Women would have to fight for the right to unisex bathrooms, which is pretty unlikely to happen in the first place. And they would likely not win the case because separate facilities DO exist. The reason women want an equal rights amendment isn't for the right to share bathrooms with men :eyes: but because they want rights for such "ridiculous" things as equal pay. For example, more women are graduating with PhDs in many fields, and yet more men get full professorship positions, which pay better. Without an equal rights amendment, how will such situations ever be fixed?

the ERA fight. I was in high school then, and this is exactly what our priest spoke about.

Practical?

I swear women are their own worst enemy.

I have a special name for all these women. Serena Joy.

Serena Joy is the character in "Handmaid's Tale" that was a fundamentalist activist until the fundies won. They made her live by the same rules she was espousing loudly for other women and when applied to herself, she was miserable.

All these Serena Joys are vocal in trumpeting their view that women should back off and go home and give up their careers, give up their autonomy if married, let the man make all the decisions in a marriage, be subject to their fathers (if unmarried) or husbands (if married), do all the scut work around the house, treat their husbands like a lord and master instead of an equal partner whom they love enough to spend the rest of their days with.

Meanwhile, Serena Joy is berating other women on radio talk shows, writing books about the above, going on speaking tours against granting women equal pay for doing the same job and having the same experience as a man.

In short, the Serena Joys of the world want every OTHER woman to live by those restrictive rules, but they feel perfectly free to go out and have careers. Even Tim LeHaye changed his own child's diapers and cooked dinner once in a while when Beverly LeHaye plied her own career. (Source: Backlash, by Susan Faludi. She met them in their home. Tim LeHaye is a VERY attentive daddy to his kid, despite yammering that childcare is not something men should do or be good at.)

we need it now more than ever.

We need to bring back discussions of women in the workplace...equal pay... equal opportunity...equal promotions.

Men still have not understood that it is not enough to utter platitudes about supporting women in the workplace without demanding actions that ensure that there are 50% female participation in the workplace at all levels.

No kidding.

I have been overwhelmingly depressed about my second class status for as long as I can remember. I'm 40.

When I was a little girl in the 70s I was promised equality, fairness, and justice.

When I was a high school student in the early 80s a school teacher made fun of me in front of my classmates because I said I supported the Equal Rights Amendment. He said I probably didn't even know what it was. I recited it word for word right there in front of everyone. He changed the subject.

Here I am planning my daughter's 18th bday this summer. Nothing has changed. No progress. Seriously.

It's depressing.

The ERA is seen as "unnecessary" by so many. A poster above mentioned Phyllis Schafly. She WAS instrumental in it's defeat. If you want to read a puke making celebration of Ms Schafly and the ERA and the connection with Gay rights/marriage hold your nose and read this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/lopez/lopez200602080754.asp

to clarify that for me. OH, THANK GOD, I WAS SO IGNORANT BEFORE. I HAD NO idea! How relieved I am to be informed.

if you're ever faced with discrimination based on your gender and have to go to court. It will be a very quick lesson and I'm sure you'll be thinking "I never thought this would happen to me".

Good thing your not one of them high-strung women who are feminists "just take offense to every little thing"

I hope that in the future, you will consider the impact that your comments can have before just throwing around carelessly phrased statements.

one of the issues that was flogged hard in those days was- if the era is passed, abortion on demand will be legal everywhere. now, to me, i found this to be an admission that denying the right to an abortion was denying women their rigths. no?

I see it everyday. You just have to be man enough to look for it and see it. Then the hardest part, is doing something about it. Consaervative men, most will claim there in no racism nor sexism because they just don't give a damn or are too weak to do anything about it.

Seriously. You're a good man!

I get shit for it by other guys I know and I'm sick of it.

The other guys ragging you? They aren't men. They're boys.


:hug:

in real life. I don't know if it is just my geographic region (northern jersey) or what, but all the women I know are treated perfectly fine and I can't think of any I've known that would say they were discriminated against. I know years ago this problem was extremely prevalent but I just don't really see it common anymore. In what ways are they treated as 2nd class citizens where you are?

:sarcasm:

... I hope.

I'm not being provocative or snarky, I'm actually commenting sincerely. I haven't really seen it with any real degree and am just curious as to what others have experienced that would be characterized as them being treated like 2nd class citizens and discriminated against. I'm sure there are many stories, I just haven't personally seen them with my own eyes or experience at all. So I'm just curious.

The "feminists" area has many threads regarding this.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=341

NOW (National organization for Women) www.now.org

Feminist Majority Foundation http://www.feminist.org/

Feminist.Com http://www.feminist.com/

I would suggest reading though many of the testimonies and other stories on these sites. You can see it comes from many women, not just me and other feminists (which can also be men. I'm married to a feminist- who is male.)

"The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities."

What a radical concept; that 52% of the population should have the same rights as the other 48%! :eyes:.

It's amazing that the gap still remains that large, but I consider that to be more due to being able to get away with it then regarding women as 2nd class citizens. I think many businesses (greedy as they are) know they can offer a salary on the lower end of the sliding range to a female applicant, merely because they know they can. I think there is no excuse for not giving equal pay for truly equal work. Though the plethora of articles available readily show this gap to be true, I really haven't seen it much in my area. All the women at my job get equal pay for equal work, and my wife makes more than I do. I'm sure businesses in my area do in fact violate the equal pay concept, and I agree it should be stopped.

But aside from the payscale argument, which I agree is legitimate, I really still haven't seen other ways in which women are regarded as 2nd class citizens. In fact, I don't know one man that would say he considered women to be second class citizens. Actually, my wife is right next to me, and when I just asked her if she has ever felt like society ever treated her like a 2nd class citizen, she looked at me like I was nuts and gave a resounding "No, not at all".

So yes, still not getting equal pay is utter bullshit and I agree that alone is enough to legitimize this thread. But aside from that I'm not sure there's much else.

For example, I mentioned pay earlier because I consider not making equal pay quite demeaning. From there, I draw a connection to second class citizen.

There is a predominate thought in the Christian church, although clearly not felt by some, that women are there to serve the men. Being that the overwhelming majority of Americans are Christian, there is a prevailing thought that women serve. Groups like Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family and all the other nutcase groups propel this theory. And women like phylis shafly use that concept to manipulate, in hopes of being more respected among those who would keep her down.

Is this second-class citizenry as obvious and prevalent as it was in the past? No. We can vote, run for office, hold various jobs and not need a husband's signature to have a bank account. These things are true. But what it is now is ingrained behaviors and ideas that are so deeply in the thought process of people, it seems almost impossible to get over.

I think the war on choice is another example. Let's face it, NOW has it right when they say "If men could get an abortion, it would be a sacrament." Women tend to be pro-choice and the overwhelming people who are "pro-birth" are men. Most of the leading anti-choice zealots are men. These particular men have this concept that they want to control our bodies- thereby controlling women.

The second-class citizenry I feel is not as blatant as it was during the Second Wave. They fought many of the good and hard battles for me. What I have to contend with now are little girls who think the women's movement was all about the right to dress provocatively and be objectified by leering, horney men. What I have to contend with are young ladies who think women's liberation was about giving their high school boyfriend a blow job in the bathroom during passing period.

Because the second-class citizenry isn't as obvious is what makes it so terrifying.

I am glad to hear, however, that your wife doesn't fell like a second-class citizen. That means that you treat her as a complete equal. Thank you for that.

I've worked in the corporate world of the United States of America for 22 years, and the battle for equal pay and treatment is nonstop. I've worked on projects for a large American corporation where, at completion, all the men were given bonus checks while we women were denied them because the management didn't feel that we worked "as hard" as the men (we had, and then some). I've been told by employers that I could just go off and get married and have a man support me, and that was why the men were getting paid more ("they have families to support, plus men need more stuff"). When I told them that my sister and I were RAISED BY A SINGLE WOMAN, not a man, and that I didn't anticipate getting married anytime soon, I was told "you're young and pretty, just don't be so picky". Equal pay for equal work? Not in the real world-and not in the world's most powerful corporations. Sexism is often quite blatant; early in my career I kept applying for an art internship but was always turned down. My professors told me to make my portfolio "gender neutral" and to use only my first two initials in my application. Sure enough, I got the internship right away-but when the corporation that offered it found out that I am a woman they withdrew their offer and gave it to one of my male classmates "we just don't have the housing for women" they contended. I told them that I would be contacting the National Organization for Women on the matter and they admitted me into their next internship without debate-though they bullied me incessantly while I worked for them.

And don't even get me started on sexual harassment in the workplace. :grr:

There are many good reasons why I remain SELF employed today!

If you hadn't preceeded it with your patronizing garbage.

I think you pulled the wrong cliche out of your handy dandy 'cliche on demand' kit.

Cause I haven't posted anything patronizing that would consitute being comparable to your lead comment, with all due respect. :hi:

After all, you've decided women are treated perfectly fine, so no further action needed.

Maybe you should stop being so, you know, sensitive.

Must be a 'guy' thing. :rofl:

Everything you say is absolutely true, I put up with it for 15 years, then got out and now run my own business.

Last I heard, there were more women than men in the USA. Yet, they are still classified as a "Minority"!

My math teachers would have a problem with that. As do I, and as every woman should.

Phyliss Schlafly scared everybody off the ERA with the unisex bathroom threat, and women in combat. Women are now dying in combat so...

Guess all that's left is to get over the bathroom thing. It's gonna be tough though. I mean how many people are willing to use a unisex bathroom. My God, man do you know...

Oh... thats right. I have one in my house. It has a door, which comes with a lock.

NOW WHAT SAY YOU, PHYLLIS???

:shrug:

And it's the darnest thing, but we have a lock on that door just like you! Lucky thing the ERA didn't pass. We'd all have to watch each other pee at the urinal (since being equal means we all have to pee the same way... :shrug: )

:rofl:

:rofl::bounce::rofl:

Seriously, I think the company that made it sold about a dozen of them, one of which was in a gas station in Chicago. It had a lip or trough that was such that a woman could hike her skirts and pee in it. As if women routinely did not wear underwear, or routinely did not wear slacks! It had blue lettering on the top near the plumbing announcing its status as a revolutionary unisex urinal, or I would have been left wondering what the fuck it was.

And that was one mighty interesting place!

then expect to get second class treatment somewhere down the line.

:cry: :hug: