Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: 32BT on November 15, 2018, 07:46:53 am
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Not really sure about the reference to the male taste, but there are enough links to keep the nostalgic mind occupied for a while...
https://www.thelist.com/105405/surprising-things-men-found-attractive-50-years-ago/
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First to note is that this link is written from an American perspective. Mostly, they do it and see it differently over there.
It's also important to realise that the surprise expressed by the writer at the way women lived in the 50s and 60s is also an American take, and though I have no way of knowing (deep fake news, old photograph of gorgeous lady?), it strikes me she is not of first-hand familiarity with those decades, at least not as an adult woman.
I could give reams of first-hand home truths about all of this, but suffice to say that the world was not full of weeping, conflicted women desirous of spending their days in an office or on a factory floor (or an office one, come to think lf it), which the writer must imagine was the case.
Higher education has almost always been dependent on family financial possibilities, and I know people who scorned my wife's education as a waste of parental money because she'd just end up as somebody's wife etc. but fortunately for me, her parents thought otherwise, and so we met. Education is never wasted - up to a point - but it doesn't have to be the only thing in life for which to strive. Likewise work. There are all sorts of desires, ambitions and interest centres that people desire for themselves. For every female executive I am sure there is the perfectly content woman who simply wants to bring up her children and provide a comfortable family home. I see bugger all wrong with that. That's exactly the stability that has helped many people find the possibility of building up a business, and when the woman at home has the education that allows her to be perfectly confident when dealing with some of the jerks that the husband is pretty much forced to bring around for drinks or dinner, then her role is even more important.
As for forcing women onto companies via the "quotas" concept, people should be free to hire whoever the hell they want to hire. There are as many men who feel left out, disadvantaged, overlooked, unpopular etc. etc. as there are women who feel the same. The reality is that life has nothing to do with fairness, with something being your turn, or even your divine right; you have to accept that you don't rule the world and that almost everybody else thinks they should have your job if yours is better than theirs. Putting on a skirt does not mean you are putting on special privileges, though of course, I do think you should be able to expect respect as a person, exactly in the same manner as anybody else.
As I said, I could write a novel on this topic but have no such intentions, you'll all be pleased to realise.
:-)
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First to note is that this link is written from an American perspective. Mostly, they do it and see it differently over there.
:-)
Indeed, here in Portugal in the 1960's, there were a lot of poor people, who were part of the huge emigration wave to France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. No time or money to pay attention to those other "issues". We were invaded by the Beatle mania though:)
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... it strikes me she is not of first-hand familiarity with those decades, at least not as an adult woman...
Someone coined a phrase "generational chauvinism" to describe the habit of applying today's norms to prior generations. In its extreme, the whole Western Civilization is then seen as just one giant racist, misogynistic, bigoted crime against humanity.
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Well said, Slobodan. We used to look at the past through the lens of history. Current complainers haven't a clue what history means.
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As for education, I do not know the history of admission policies of American Universities, but I do know that Mileva Marić-Einstein, the Serbian wife of Albert Einstein, studied with him in Zurich, Switzerland, in the late 1890s. In those same years, Marie Curie, Polish-born, studied physics in Paris. Just like every generation thinks they invented sex, the latest one thinks they invented education for women too.
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My mom worked as a blueprint machine operator after she came to the US, which is how she met my dad. He was an engineer who needed frequent blueprints made of his design work. :) After they got married she quit her job, and was most happy to do so. But rather than become a typical housewife she set up her own business, as a seamstress, and ran it out of their house. After I came along mom continued her seamstress work, stopping only after she became too ill (leukemia) to continue. My dad, being an easy-going guy who believed people should be able to do what they enjoyed and were good at, was a-okay with this. He helped plenty with cooking & cleaning too…growing up in a single-parent home (his mother died of ovarian cancer at a fairly young age) he was used to that stuff. Even after my Aunt Anna came to live with us my dad carried his weight cooking- & cleaning-wise. I don't think he was even particularly aware of the expected gender roles of the time.
-Dave-
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As for education, I do not know the history of admission policies of American Universities, but I do know that Mileva Marić-Einstein, the Serbian wife of Albert Einstein, studied with him in Zurich, Switzerland, in the late 1890s. In those same years, Marie Curie, Polish-born, studied physics in Paris. Just like every generation thinks they invented sex, the latest one thinks they invented education for women too.
Brilliant scientists, yet neither was allowed to vote in their lifetime by laws written by men.
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Someone coined a phrase "generational chauvinism" to describe the habit of applying today's norms to prior generations. In its extreme, the whole Western Civilization is then seen as just one giant racist, misogynistic, bigoted crime against humanity.
So, slavery was ok then? ;)
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So, slavery was ok then? ;)
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As for education, I do not know the history of admission policies of American Universities, ...
Prestigious private universities like Columbia and Harvard were slow to fully admit women—apart from younger and more progressive Cornell (which admitted women almost from the start), the next Ivy League school to admit women was Harvard in 1977—too late for me, if I were an American woman! Harvard and Columbia did add smaller separate "women's auxiliaries" (Radcliffe and Barnard respectively) in the late 1800's and there were a number of private women-only undergraduate colleges, if your family had the money. On the other hand the public university where I work admitted women only from 1918 [and only white students till the late 1960s!]. Access for women to post-graduate studies was limited for longer—for example, one of my most talented professors, Cathleen Morawetz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_Synge_Morawetz), winner of the National Medal of Science, was frustrated by being barred from various choices of graduate school in the mid 20th century due to their male-only admission policies.
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There should be a distinction drawn between what pop culture proclaims the norm somewhere, and how people actually behave within their homes.
The pub culture that many think governs male (and, now apparently alas, also female) behaviour does not mean that the same idiotic mannerisms are also carried through at home. I'm sure some people are the same boors both in and out of the house, but I am as sure that much of it is bravado reflecting self-doubts. Maybe the time guys spend in pubs is a measure of how little they have at home?
Personally speaking, after spending a long day in the darkroom, my hands freezing from the wash tank, the last thing I wanted to do was go back out somewhere and drink myself stupid talking about football, somebody's car, imaginary women and conquests. How much more pleasant to sink into a comfortable chair, have a drink and some crisps and watch tv with the wife and kids until their bedtimes, then maybe put on some music and just chat about the first thing that came into our minds. Which sure wasn't photography, though it might have been business.
My wife had her individual life too; she drove her own car, and her days were a mixture of keeping the home going in top condition, visiting her mother and going out with her, going to swim or play tennis with her friends; her external life was what she cared to make it and she seemed as happy to be at home in the evenings with us as a group as was I. I suppose it would be rather perverse to marry but desire something other than a home life instead.
As for sharing chores in the kitchen: I never could cook, and most of the time she wanted me to keep the hell out of the way in there. It wasn't until we came out to live in Spain that she slowed down and let me run a secondary service in the kitchen, washing the utensils as she no longer needed them. Sometimes, another person isn't a help at all. I understand that now. When my family come to visit, they all offer to help with the few dishes (we lunch out every day) that remain in the kitchen from having tea or coffee or snacks, or whatever, but the realty is that I rather they just leave me alone to do it by myself because I have my own ways and know exactly where I want everything to go when it's dried. I even like the coffee mugs to sit in a definite, colour-coded manner on the shelf, any departure from which jars.
Real life is - or should - be run by the things that matter to you, the individual and immediate family, not those that the tribe pretends to want and prescribes as being correct.
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The Stepford Wives (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFGkZblCgmY)
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There should be a distinction drawn between what pop culture proclaims the norm somewhere, and how people actually behave within their homes.
The pub culture that many think governs male (and, now apparently alas, also female) behaviour does not mean that the same idiotic mannerisms are also carried through at home. I'm sure some people are the same boors both in and out of the house, but I am as sure that much of it is bravado reflecting self-doubts. Maybe the time guys spend in pubs is a measure of how little they have at home?
Personally speaking, after spending a long day in the darkroom, my hands freezing from the wash tank, the last thing I wanted to do was go back out somewhere and drink myself stupid talking about football, somebody's car, imaginary women and conquests. How much more pleasant to sink into a comfortable chair, have a drink and some crisps and watch tv with the wife and kids until their bedtimes, then maybe put on some music and just chat about the first thing that came into our minds. Which sure wasn't photography, though it might have been business.
My wife had her individual life too; she drove her own car, and her days were a mixture of keeping the home going in top condition, visiting her mother and going out with her, going to swim or play tennis with her friends; her external life was what she cared to make it and she seemed as happy to be at home in the evenings with us as a group as was I. I suppose it would be rather perverse to marry but desire something other than a home life instead.
As for sharing chores in the kitchen: I never could cook, and most of the time she wanted me to keep the hell out of the way in there. It wasn't until we came out to live in Spain that she slowed down and let me run a secondary service in the kitchen, washing the utensils as she no longer needed them. Sometimes, another person isn't a help at all. I understand that now. When my family come to visit, they all offer to help with the few dishes (we lunch out every day) that remain in the kitchen from having tea or coffee or snacks, or whatever, but the realty is that I rather they just leave me alone to do it by myself because I have my own ways and know exactly where I want everything to go when it's dried. I even like the coffee mugs to sit in a definite, colour-coded manner on the shelf, any departure from which jars.
Real life is - or should - be run by the things that matter to you, the individual and immediate family, not those that the tribe pretends to want and prescribes as being correct.
Perhaps your stereotypes relate to certain periods within your life and in certain locations but I don't recognise them. You seem to want to categorise people, their interests and the places they frequent in much the same way as you do with images: put into neat little packages.
My family on my father's side were folk from the East End of London, the men and women had to work and were proud to do so. My family on my mothers side were reasonably well-to-do Londoners, the men and women chose to work and chose their work. My wife's family, men and women, had to work, many in service.
Both my father and I escaped from our backgrounds to become artists, he thanks to a inborn, unexplainable talent and I thanks to a more explainable talent and education. My wife's mother similarly escaped from her background thanks to education to become an optician and my wife thanks to education and talent to become an art therapist. All the above escapees had fulfilling and rewarding careers by choice.
I've always admired strong, independent women. That said, thankfully we are all different, what a desperately dull world it would be if we were not.
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1. Perhaps your stereotypes relate to certain periods within your life and in certain locations but I don't recognise them. You seem to want to categorise people, their interests and the places they frequent in much the same way as you do with images: put into neat little packages.
2. I've always admired strong, independent women. That said, thankfully we are all different, what a desperately dull world it would be if we were not.
1. Absolutely; I've come to realize over the years that everybody has their personality comfort niche, and can't really move into another with a great deal of success. I guess like wine, maybe we don't travel well in that sense. We are what we are.
2. I have had no other type in my family but strong. Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave. People get their kicks from all sorts of interests. The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. Not that anyone here seems to be claming that it is, of course.
Strikes me that any idea that running a home is an easy way out is perhaps a certain type of feminists's credo that permits some women a kind of superiority status - in their own mind - at the expense of women with an entirely different set of needs and desires. My wife took the urge to return to laboratory work after the kids were old enough to survive school lunches and/or I was able to come home to feed them something, simply because she reached the point where she wondered whether or not she could still hack it out there. So she did find that job. She realised that she still had the mind, but that the costs of doing it was just too great for the family good. Yep, the extra bread came in useful, but on balance, and especially after we cloosed the rented studio and built our own alongside the house, it was fantastic, and we had so much quality time together. Flat days with no work were excuses for living a life. How nice no longer to have to go off to a cold studio! An extra mug of tea never tasted so good as when returning home from dropping off the kids at school.
I still have lots of mugs of tea; now it tastes like shit.
Just by accident* today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjF7SD3S-tE
Rob
*Maybe no accident: maybe Big Brother Google has us all taped, even though no self-inflicted Alexa-type babe at home to spy on me.
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As for education, I do not know the history of admission policies of American Universities, but I do know that Mileva Marić-Einstein, the Serbian wife of Albert Einstein, studied with him in Zurich, Switzerland, in the late 1890s. In those same years, Marie Curie, Polish-born, studied physics in Paris. Just like every generation thinks they invented sex, the latest one thinks they invented education for women too.
True.
That said, the contraceptive pill empowered women and did wonders for a 17 year old male school leaver about to start a four year course at art college which happily just happened to coincide with "The Summer of Love". Sex was in the air. Oral sex, came from under the table to, well, anyone, anywhere.
Sex wasn't invented in the 60s but it sure was a blast and altered attitudes for a lifetime. Hehe.
;-)
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1. Absolutely; I've come to realize over the years that everybody has their personality comfort niche, and can't really move into another with a great deal of success. I guess like wine, maybe we don't travel well in that sense. We are what we are.
2. I have had no other type in my family but strong. Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave. People get their kicks from all sorts of interests. The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. Not that anyone here seems to be claming that it is, of course.
Strikes me that any idea that running a home is an easy way out is perhaps a certain type of feminists's credo that permits some women a kind of superiority status - in their own mind - at the expense of women with an entirely different set of needs and desires. My wife took the urge to return to laboratory work after the kids were old enough to survive school lunches and/or I was able to come home to feed them something, simply because she reached the point where she wondered whether or not she could still hack it out there. So she did find that job. She realised that she still had the mind, but that the costs of doing it was just too great for the family good. Yep, the extra bread came in useful, but on balance, and especially after we cloosed the rented studio and built our own alongside the house, it was fantastic, and we had so much quality time together. Flat days with no work were excuses for living a life. How nice no longer to have to go off to a cold studio! An extra mug of tea never tasted so good as when returning home from dropping off the kids at school.
I still have lots of mugs of tea; now it tastes like shit.
Just by accident* today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjF7SD3S-tE
Rob
*Maybe no accident: maybe Big Brother Google has us all taped, even though no self-inflicted Alexa-type babe at home to spy on me.
I certainly didn't imply anything of the sort.
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I certainly didn't imply anything of the sort.
As I mentioned three sentences later, at the end of the paragraph.
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1. Absolutely; I've come to realize over the years that everybody has their personality comfort niche, and can't really move into another with a great deal of success. I guess like wine, maybe we don't travel well in that sense. We are what we are.
2. I have had no other type in my family but strong. Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave. People get their kicks from all sorts of interests. The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. Not that anyone here seems to be claming that it is, of course.
Strikes me that any idea that running a home is an easy way out is perhaps a certain type of feminists's credo that permits some women a kind of superiority status - in their own mind - at the expense of women with an entirely different set of needs and desires. My wife took the urge to return to laboratory work after the kids were old enough to survive school lunches and/or I was able to come home to feed them something, simply because she reached the point where she wondered whether or not she could still hack it out there. So she did find that job. She realised that she still had the mind, but that the costs of doing it was just too great for the family good. Yep, the extra bread came in useful, but on balance, and especially after we cloosed the rented studio and built our own alongside the house, it was fantastic, and we had so much quality time together. Flat days with no work were excuses for living a life. How nice no longer to have to go off to a cold studio! An extra mug of tea never tasted so good as when returning home from dropping off the kids at school.
I still have lots of mugs of tea; now it tastes like shit.
Just by accident* today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjF7SD3S-tE
Rob
*Maybe no accident: maybe Big Brother Google has us all taped, even though no self-inflicted Alexa-type babe at home to spy on me.
I thought that applied to The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. rather than Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave.
;-)
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I thought that applied to The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. rather than Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave.
;-)
As it does, and to the entire paragraph - I hope. It's all one sentiment and concept.
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1. Absolutely; I've come to realize over the years that everybody has their personality comfort niche, and can't really move into another with a great deal of success. I guess like wine, maybe we don't travel well in that sense. We are what we are.
2. I have had no other type in my family but strong. Being strong does not have to imply a desire to beaver away in a factory, in an office or anywhere else as a wage-slave. People get their kicks from all sorts of interests. The strength to hold together a family, year after year, coaching kids with their homework, putting meals together to suit timetables outwith family control, is no mean feat and certainly no easy option. Not that anyone here seems to be claming that it is, of course.
Strikes me that any idea that running a home is an easy way out is perhaps a certain type of feminists's credo that permits some women a kind of superiority status - in their own mind - at the expense of women with an entirely different set of needs and desires. My wife took the urge to return to laboratory work after the kids were old enough to survive school lunches and/or I was able to come home to feed them something, simply because she reached the point where she wondered whether or not she could still hack it out there. So she did find that job. She realised that she still had the mind, but that the costs of doing it was just too great for the family good. Yep, the extra bread came in useful, but on balance, and especially after we cloosed the rented studio and built our own alongside the house, it was fantastic, and we had so much quality time together. Flat days with no work were excuses for living a life. How nice no longer to have to go off to a cold studio! An extra mug of tea never tasted so good as when returning home from dropping off the kids at school.
I still have lots of mugs of tea; now it tastes like shit.
Just by accident* today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjF7SD3S-tE
Rob
*Maybe no accident: maybe Big Brother Google has us all taped, even though no self-inflicted Alexa-type babe at home to spy on me.
It was never a question of one way of life being greater or lesser than another, it was only ever about choice. Pointing out the great work of Madame Curie or talking about how women worked very hard to maintain families is all true and all utterly beside the point. It's distraction.
As of the 1950s or 1960s, women could not get bank loans without a man around. There was no good reason for that and that kind of thinking limits choice. It's dissembling to suggest that there wasn't a problem with that or that we should not criticize it because "times were different" then. Times were different then for a reason, it didn't just happen, and it was a bogus reason or we wouldn't see the need to change it.
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... As of the 1950s or 1960s, women could not get bank loans without a man around. There was no good reason for that ...
Of course there was a good reason. Bank loans require a collateral or steady income stream. With most women housewives then, which collateral or income stream would they offer for a loan? Even today, as a man, I can not get a loan without employment.
... it was a bogus reason or we wouldn't see the need to change it.
Typical retarded liberal claptrap. We did not change it because the reason was "bogus," but because things evolve over time.
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Women getting or not getting loans or credit cards without "a man around" would, from the bank's point of view, have made perfect sense.
The lone woman would perhaps not have a job that was particularly stable; if she did have that, what happened if she owed money that she was well able to return because she was working, then suddenly found herself pregnant and eventually unable to work?
Gender makes a helluva lot of difference now, as ever. The woman can do many things, but she can't run away from her own body.
There could be all sorts of reasons for rejection, especially at a time when banks were not as greedy as they eventually grew to become, right until they screwed one another with their reckless loans to the very people who, like my poor imaginary example, found themselves unable to stump up. Strikes me as morally preferable to stay tight and not allow the vulnerable to become victims on top of that vulnerability.
I can't tell you why particular banks did as they did, but it seems highly unlikely they hadn't thought it through and weighed up the risks to their bottom line.
All that aside, the much vaunted choice to which you referred is as elusive to men as to women: we all run up against limitations either our own or imposed from without. Nobody gets it all.
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All that aside, the much vaunted choice to which you referred is as elusive to men as to women: we all run up against limitations either our own or imposed from without. Nobody gets it all.
Thankfully many women have far more choice now over relationships, child bearing, employment, finances, sexuality...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjF7SD3S-tE
Thanks for the link,.
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... far more choice now...
Google "the curse of choice" to see what psychologists and economists think of too much choice (and why more is often less).
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Google "the curse of choice" to see what psychologists and economists think of too much choice (and why more is often less).
Nah, thanks all the same but I'll take my chance with more choice.
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Typical retarded liberal claptrap. We did not change it because the reason was "bogus," but because things evolve over time.
Things evolve over time because we change them.
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Women getting or not getting loans or credit cards without "a man around" would, from the bank's point of view, have made perfect sense.
In that narrow context, of course it did. And it was wrong that things should have been thus. And many people got together to change it. And many people didn't like the change for all the usual reasons.
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Typical retarded liberal claptrap.
And by the way, are you not able to engage in a discussion without resorting to inane and irrelevant identity attacks? Did some "trigger" make you feel uneasy? Is this not a safe enough space for you?
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Nah, thanks all the same but I'll take my chance with more choice.
Ha! Yes, everybody here has to agree. I mean, as men, we're naturally entitled.
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Ha! Yes, everybody here has to agree. I mean, as men, we're naturally entitled.
It really is a great pity that everybody almost everybody here is male, but given the attitude of many of the contributors that is no great surprise.
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It really is a great pity that everybody almost everybody here is male, but given the attitude of many of the contributors that is no great surprise.
Agree, though the problem is pervasive(photo community.)
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In that narrow context, of course it did. And it was wrong that things should have been thus...
Of course it did.
And of course it was not wrong. It simply was. Commonsensical even. Many things that happened had a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Was feudalism, with its serfdom, wrong? Was the Roman Empire, with its gladiator fights to death, constant conquests and enslavement, wrong? Etc.
It simply was.
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And by the way, are you not able to engage in a discussion without resorting to inane and irrelevant identity attacks?..
When you bring something original to the debate, I will be more than happy to attack you personally, rather than the larger group you identify with and regurgitate talking points from ;)
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The problem is that none of us lives long enough to be able to give a proper evaluation of history, especially near-history, and so perspective is always an issue.
The only kind of reliable evidence one has to which to cling comes from personal experience, and as that is as varied as the number of people sharing Earth at the same time, the chances of a happy consensus is fairly remote.
I experienced one reality and even my kids another as they grew into adults. What was my norm was one thing, but I'm perfectly sure that it wasn't anyone else's normality. Even my job put me into singular territory as far as anybody else we knew saw normality. If my wife ever developed one stock reply in her life, it was to women friends who asked her if she was upset at my photographing delightful women: she always retorted that well, their husbands had secretaries around them at work all day, every day, didn't they?
So really, the idea of right and wrong as a sort of popular reality of how "it should be" is nothing more than compromise on all sides, the adopting of stances and the projection of one person's way onto another. It's why we have the usual problem of children rebelling agaist everything for which they think their parents stand, only eventually to come to broadly similar attitudes themselves when they age sufficiently to have been bruised a little bit and have tried to make their own way in life. It's the basis of the old one about "if you're not a Socialist at eighteen there may be something wrong with you, but if you are still one at forty, then you know there is something wrong with you" joke.
Rob
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Gender makes a helluva lot of difference now, as ever. The woman can do many things, but she can't run away from her own body.
No-one can run away from their body.
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No-one can run away from their body.
Whhheeeew!
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The 50s image of a woman as a housewife was a relatively brief episode. As late as 1880, almost three-quarters of Americans lived in rural areas, and I suspect that number would be higher in most Western European countries, and *far* higher in Asia. Does anyone think that a farm wife didn't (and doesn't now) have to work like a dog? Or that her contribution wasn't widely acknowledged?
The actual push to create a "housewife" was a *liberal* impulse intended to remove cheap labor from the factory labor market to push wages higher for men, so that one man could support a family while the wife stayed home with children. This was expected to mostly benefit families with several children where it was impossible for the women to work.
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The 50s image of a woman as a housewife was a relatively brief episode. As late as 1880, almost three-quarters of Americans lived in rural areas, and I suspect that number would be higher in most Western European countries, and *far* higher in Asia. Does anyone think that a farm wife didn't (and doesn't now) have to work like a dog? Or that her contribution wasn't widely acknowledged?
The actual push to create a "housewife" was a *liberal* impulse intended to remove cheap labor from the factory labor market to push wages higher for men, so that one man could support a family while the wife stayed home with children. This was expected to mostly benefit families with several children where it was impossible for the women to work.
That's an interesting theory - is there any sociological scholarship built around that?
Certainly there was the "need" to reintegrate men into the workforce in the postwar era, but I'm not sure I'd label that a "liberal" or "conservative" impulse, but rather one driven by practicality, with a hedge toward deference shown to the men returning from war even if it need be at the expense of the women who were critical to the wartime economy.
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Perhaps political labels don't matter in this instance. I believe that there can be little valid argument, beyond the purely financial one of need, that having the wife remain at home to bring up the kids and hold the fort while the husband is out earning the family's keep makes sound sense. There's little doubt in my mind of the veracity of the belief that behind many a successful man not born to millions, there's an even greater woman. The power of a stable home behind one cannot be overemphasised.
Once that belief is broken, all sorts of aberrations come out to play, perhaps the greatest being the belief that everybody can have it all. I don't believe that anyone can, male or female.
If people want to have children, then they owe it to those children to be there for them, not send in a substitute, an in loco parentis figure who may be entirely unsuited to the task. Alternatives? Yes, keep your pants on at all times. If a couple wants to, but can't have children for whatever reason, that's unfortunate, but it releases them from some responsibilties and opens them to yet other opportunities as compensation.
I can understand the lure of work for people of either gender if they have great qualifications to exploit and enjoy; there is no doubt that a two-pronged income source offers greater wealth and financial stability if it lasts, and that the work itself, for those so qualified, often brings its own reward in the doing, money quite apart. However, does that hold for the grunt worker? I seriously doubt that. That person's need to have both partners work to assure survival is a far remove fom the rosy, cosy world of self-fulfilment of the highly educated.
I spent maybe ten years in a factory before being able to cut loose, four of them on the shop floor and the rest in the company's photo-unit. In both places, that five o'clock bell was the doorway to heaven. Talk about love of work doesn't travel downwards. It sounds terribly on-message for management, but that's where the pretence ends. And I can vouch that the working women that I saw on those shop floors were as far from the ideals of femininity as you can find: they were brutalised into male competitors, running the gamut from being foul-mouthed to sexually predatory. The office girls, however, were sweethearts.
Women forced to work and exist in some dehumanising, male-dominated circumstances seem able to survive only by competing on their terms and scaring the hell out of them.
So yeah, I think that having both partners working has led to two main things: kids are growing up estranged and a little more wild than they would have been; financially, not a thing has been gained, because the market drives prices up to meet the available spending money. In '74 my brand new Humber cost me around £ 1200; today, the cheapest Mini I could buy in Spain costs € 17,900
https://www.mini.es/es_ES/home.html
which, at todays Brexit-inspìred collapse in sterling, at an exchange rate of 1 : 1.12, would cost me £ 15,982. At the time of my Humber, the Mini cost about half the price of the Humber. In '72 my Submariner was listed at circa £ 100 and today, on the Intenet, you can see it for about 12-and-a-bit grand. The bloody replacement strap runs in at € 1200, which I refuse to pay. If that doesn't prove to anyone that price rises to meet available cash supply, then possibly nothing ever will.
That nice period of stay-at-home wife and working husband had one helluva lot going for it.
In some ways I look upon the 60s as a great period of optimism and possibilities, but it also ushered in a huge wave of discontent and confusion that has never gone away.
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First to note is that this link is written from an American perspective. Mostly, they do it and see it differently over there.
It's also important to realise that the surprise expressed by the writer at the way women lived in the 50s and 60s is also an American take, and though I have no way of knowing (deep fake news, old photograph of gorgeous lady?), it strikes me she is not of first-hand familiarity with those decades, at least not as an adult woman.
I could give reams of first-hand home truths about all of this, but suffice to say that the world was not full of weeping, conflicted women desirous of spending their days in an office or on a factory floor (or an office one, come to think lf it), which the writer must imagine was the case.
Higher education has almost always been dependent on family financial possibilities, and I know people who scorned my wife's education as a waste of parental money because she'd just end up as somebody's wife etc. but fortunately for me, her parents thought otherwise, and so we met. Education is never wasted - up to a point - but it doesn't have to be the only thing in life for which to strive. Likewise work. There are all sorts of desires, ambitions and interest centres that people desire for themselves. For every female executive I am sure there is the perfectly content woman who simply wants to bring up her children and provide a comfortable family home. I see bugger all wrong with that. That's exactly the stability that has helped many people find the possibility of building up a business, and when the woman at home has the education that allows her to be perfectly confident when dealing with some of the jerks that the husband is pretty much forced to bring around for drinks or dinner, then her role is even more important.
As for forcing women onto companies via the "quotas" concept, people should be free to hire whoever the hell they want to hire. There are as many men who feel left out, disadvantaged, overlooked, unpopular etc. etc. as there are women who feel the same. The reality is that life has nothing to do with fairness, with something being your turn, or even your divine right; you have to accept that you don't rule the world and that almost everybody else thinks they should have your job if yours is better than theirs. Putting on a skirt does not mean you are putting on special privileges, though of course, I do think you should be able to expect respect as a person, exactly in the same manner as anybody else.
As I said, I could write a novel on this topic but have no such intentions, you'll all be pleased to realise.
:-)
Had a change of heart, then?
;-)
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Had a change of heart, then?
;-)
Nah, the novel remains locked away in Possibility Land!
:-)
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Nah, the novel remains locked away in Possibility Land!
:-)
Better that than to end up on the liberal Index Librorum Prohibitorum ;)
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Better that than to end up on the liberal Index Librorum Prohibitorum ;)
Publication of the list ceased in 1966.
Yeah, another result for the 60s!
;-)
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Perhaps political labels don't matter in this instance. I believe that there can be little valid argument, beyond the purely financial one of need, that having the wife remain at home to bring up the kids and hold the fort while the husband is out earning the family's keep makes sound sense. There's little doubt in my mind of the veracity of the belief that behind many a successful man not born to millions, there's an even greater woman. The power of a stable home behind one cannot be overemphasised.
Once that belief is broken, all sorts of aberrations come out to play, perhaps the greatest being the belief that everybody can have it all. I don't believe that anyone can, male or female.
If people want to have children, then they owe it to those children to be there for them, not send in a substitute, an in loco parentis figure who may be entirely unsuited to the task. Alternatives? Yes, keep your pants on at all times. If a couple wants to, but can't have children for whatever reason, that's unfortunate, but it releases them from some responsibilties and opens them to yet other opportunities as compensation.
I can understand the lure of work for people of either gender if they have great qualifications to exploit and enjoy; there is no doubt that a two-pronged income source offers greater wealth and financial stability if it lasts, and that the work itself, for those so qualified, often brings its own reward in the doing, money quite apart. However, does that hold for the grunt worker? I seriously doubt that. That person's need to have both partners work to assure survival is a far remove fom the rosy, cosy world of self-fulfilment of the highly educated.
I spent maybe ten years in a factory before being able to cut loose, four of them on the shop floor and the rest in the company's photo-unit. In both places, that five o'clock bell was the doorway to heaven. Talk about love of work doesn't travel downwards. It sounds terribly on-message for management, but that's where the pretence ends. And I can vouch that the working women that I saw on those shop floors were as far from the ideals of femininity as you can find: they were brutalised into male competitors, running the gamut from being foul-mouthed to sexually predatory. The office girls, however, were sweethearts.
Women forced to work and exist in some dehumanising, male-dominated circumstances seem able to survive only by competing on their terms and scaring the hell out of them.
So yeah, I think that having both partners working has led to two main things: kids are growing up estranged and a little more wild than they would have been; financially, not a thing has been gained, because the market drives prices up to meet the available spending money. In '74 my brand new Humber cost me around £ 1200; today, the cheapest Mini I could buy in Spain costs € 17,900
https://www.mini.es/es_ES/home.html
which, at todays Brexit-inspìred collapse in sterling, at an exchange rate of 1 : 1.12, would cost me £ 15,982. At the time of my Humber, the Mini cost about half the price of the Humber. In '72 my Submariner was listed at circa £ 100 and today, on the Intenet, you can see it for about 12-and-a-bit grand. The bloody replacement strap runs in at € 1200, which I refuse to pay. If that doesn't prove to anyone that price rises to meet available cash supply, then possibly nothing ever will.
That nice period of stay-at-home wife and working husband had one helluva lot going for it.
In some ways I look upon the 60s as a great period of optimism and possibilities, but it also ushered in a huge wave of discontent and confusion that has never gone away.
Beautifully said, Rob, and right on the money. My wife, Autumn and I both thank God that she was able to stay home and bring up our four sons while I was bouncing from war to war. Then, when the four were flown, she put together an art gallery from scratch and did remarkably well at it. After that she became a successful desktop publisher. Nowadays she does all sorts of word-oriented work here in our retirement community.
The final chapter of the success story: My oldest is a successful software engineer doing development work for whomever he chooses to do it for. Next comes an attorney who, after spending several years as a partner in one of Denver’s largest firms, put together his own, now very successful, multi-lawyer firm in Colorado Springs. Third, a now retired businessman who, with a partner, put together a company dealing with hospital finances that finally sold for a bundle. Fourth, a now retired engineer who built a large environmental engineering firm in Colorado Springs with a yard full of trucks and projects up and down the length of Colorado and into Wyoming and New Mexico. He finally shut down the company, found jobs for all his employees, and sold off the company’s assets because he didn’t want the company’s reputation to suffer under an uncertain buyer.
I’m not sure you can do this kind of thing nowadays. Most of my grandkids have two-worker families. There’s just no way around it, and the down side is obvious even though my seventeen great-grands are being cared for properly in a physical sense. Kids need a mom – a mom who’s there for them – and our Western society now suffers from a possibly fatal lack of that connection.
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I wouldn't dream of suggesting what camera a woman should use let alone suggesting the career path or child raising path she should pursue.
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[email][/email]
I wouldn't dream of suggesting what camera a woman should use let alone suggesting the career path or child raising path she should pursue.
Fair enough... and a personal choice.
However, haven't women done exactly that throughout history? Suggesting career paths or family-issues paths for men? And mostly quite forcibly and successfully.
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Fair enough... and a personal choice.
However, haven't women done exactly that throughout history? Suggesting career paths or family-issues paths for men? And mostly quite forcibly and successfully.
I dare say they have but that doesn't change my position in the slightest.
I'm not conceited enough to think that my subjective opinions are fact, which, I admit, could well qualify me and my opinions as unsuited to forum discussion.
;-)
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That's an interesting theory - is there any sociological scholarship built around that?
Certainly there was the "need" to reintegrate men into the workforce in the postwar era, but I'm not sure I'd label that a "liberal" or "conservative" impulse, but rather one driven by practicality, with a hedge toward deference shown to the men returning from war even if it need be at the expense of the women who were critical to the wartime economy.
Yes, there's a lot of scholarship around it, but it wasn't post World War II, it was during the labor organizing era in the 19th and early 20th century. In the 19th century, many former farm women were working in factories (especially fabric factories of various kinds -- weavers and so on) along with many children. The resulting child labor laws and the push to get women out of factories specifically came from the left -- the labor unions -- which were fighting the endless supply of cheap labor in the later 19th century. Another reaction (from middle and upper middle class women) was the rise of the so-called "Cult of Domesticity" in the 19th century which glorified the role of homemaker as the person who held a family together. That was a reaction of the corporate push to get more women into factories. There was still a strong sexist element in all of this, of course -- women were cheaper than men, and in mechanized factories, just as efficient.
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[email][/email]
Fair enough... and a personal choice.
However, haven't women done exactly that throughout history? Suggesting career paths or family-issues paths for men? And mostly quite forcibly and successfully.
Such pressures were partly why my last few years of secondary education had me abandon art as a subject, where it had previously been one of my stronger and favoured ones.
I do understand the school and parental points of view, that art was most unlikely to offer a successful career to anyone. The limitations and prospects were almost always going to be those of becoming an art teacher, whereas engineering, law, medicine etc, had a much greater and more realistic potential of leading to a comfortable and successful professional life.
That understood, it becomes impossible to blame family and school for their, at the time, decisive inputs, because they were as they were for the pupil's greater good as well as for the school's public relations appeal with high numbers of public exam passers in the "right" subjects.
What I would add, though, is that geography plays one helluva big part in all of this: had Glasgow, the entirety of northern Britain, for that matter, been able to support the magazine and advertising industry that London and her surrounds did and does, then opportunity would not have been lacking nor photography such an unknown occupation beyond the visible manifestation of it as chronicler of hatches, matches and dispatches, hardly an attractive choice for a creative mind. The few non-social photography studios that did exist were an almost guarded secret, and pretty hard to discover. Once discovered, the money propects for an employee bore out the school's misgivings! The only way out of poverty employment was going to be self-employment, and an even more difficult route to survival.
Yet, how can one dispute the logic of centralisation of such industries as press and advertising? One can't. It is what it is because it works.
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Such pressures were partly why my last few years of secondary education had me abandon art as a subject, where it had previously been one of my stronger and favoured ones.
I do understand the school and parental points of view, that art was most unlikely to offer a successful career to anyone. The limitations and prospects were almost always going to be those of becoming an art teacher, whereas engineering, law, medicine etc, had a much greater and more realistic potential of leading to a comfortable and successful professional life.
That understood, it becomes impossible to blame family and school for their, at the time, decisive inputs, because they were as they were for the pupil's greater good as well as for the school's public relations appeal with high numbers of public exam passers in the "right" subjects.
What I would add, though, is that geography plays one helluva big part in all of this: had Glasgow, the entirety of northern Britain, for that matter, been able to support the magazine and advertising industry that London and her surrounds did and does, then opportunity would not have been lacking nor photography such an unknown occupation beyond the visible manifestation of it as chronicler of hatches, matches and dispatches, hardly an attractive choice for a creative mind. The few non-social photography studios that did exist were an almost guarded secret, and pretty hard to discover. Once discovered, the money propects for an employee bore out the school's misgivings! The only way out of poverty employment was going to be self-employment, and an even more difficult route to survival.
Yet, how can one dispute the logic of centralisation of such industries as press and advertising? One can't. It is what it is because it works.
As an illustrator my agent was loathe to have any artist on his books who wasn't within one hour commute from central London.
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chronicler of hatches, matches and dispatches
:) :D ;D
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Three pages so far and I don't think I've seen a post from a woman. Echo chamber anyone? ;)
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Three pages so far and I don't think I've seen a post from a woman. Echo chamber anyone? ;)
You know, God created women purposefully different than men. For the purpose of this discussion, it means women are much less gearheads when it comes to photography, or interested in measurbating, two activities that are bread and butter of this site. Besides, they are smarter and know how fruitless are these discussions we men are so happy (or stupid) to waste our time on.
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You know, God created women purposefully different than men. For the purpose of this discussion, it means women are much less gearheads when it comes to photography, or interested in measurbating, two activities that are bread and butter of this site. Besides, they are smarter and know how fruitless are these discussions we men are so happy (or stupid) to waste our time on.
Slobodan, you've made a couple of good points there, but have you stopped to consider that, without nipples, boobs too would be pointless?
It behoves us to be grateful for such mercies and protect women from the nonsense that happens in the marketing sections of all enterprises. To illustrate: my wife and I were down in England getting a calendar through print, and the printer's rep who was handling our print commission plus another chap from the company hosted us to dinner. As we sat there, getting more and more pissed, I noticed that my wife was getting more and more amused. Eventually, the two hosts cut through the small talk and propositioned me with a calendar photography project they wanted to quote for to another of their clients.
When the evening was over, I asked my wife why she'd been having such a tough time looking serious; she told me that men were so bloody obvious, that the entire night had been a lead up to asking me to do something, and why in hell is it so hard for men to take the straight route and just ask, without all the nonsense? I suppose they just wanted to have dinner on the company...
We need more briliant women doing important things. Today, peeling me a grape would be a good start.
;-)
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It'd be nice if Western societies could stop see-sawing between extremes and recognize both that 1) women tend to be better than men at raising children, in terms of both skills and temperament, and 2) many women are best suited for, and interested in, life tasks other than child rearing. Our desire to enforce conformity where variety is the natural state of things is both counterproductive and futile.
-Dave-
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Amen, Dave.
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It'd be nice if Western societies could stop see-sawing between extremes and recognize both that 1) women tend to be better than men at raising children, in terms of both skills and temperament, and 2) many women are best suited for, and interested in, life tasks other than child rearing. Our desire to enforce conformity where variety is the natural state of things is both counterproductive and futile.
-Dave-
Nailed it.
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No question about it, but it ain't gonna happen.
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Common sense hasn't a chance against political correctness, simply because common sense is a private conviction whereas political correctness a shrill, public stance where resistence provokes attack few are able or willing to countenance.
Given the spread of so-called social media, where kids are exposed to the alternative reality (I was going to write faux reality, but sadly, it turns into real-life beatings and even suicide) 24/24, there is no escape from the beginning of life.
Recent Sky News reports tell that child psychological problems are today vastly higher than they ever were. Surpise, surprise. Ban all cellphones from school, and in a few years things may revert to a more acceptable level of normal, life anxiety.
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Common sense hasn't a chance against political correctness, simply because common sense is a private conviction whereas political correctness a shrill, public stance where resistence provokes attack few are able or willing to countenance.
Given the spread of so-called social media, where kids are exposed to the alternative reality (I was going to write faux reality, but sadly, it turns into real-life beatings and even suicide) 24/24, there is no escape from the beginning of life.
Recent Sky News reports tell that child psychological problems are today vastly higher than they ever were. Surpise, surprise. Ban all cellphones from school, and in a few years things may revert to a more acceptable level of normal, life anxiety.
At the risk of going wildly off-topic, I think that explaining away long-term societal trends by too obvious proximate causes like social media or phones alone might miss the larger picture. Some food for thought on this topic in this longish (nearly 2 hour) podcast: https://samharris.org/podcasts/142-addiction-depression-meaningful-life/ (https://samharris.org/podcasts/142-addiction-depression-meaningful-life/). To save some of you some time, the person being interviewed is a lefty, so it might be a waste of time for you to listen, since they obviously cannot possibly have anything intelligent to say to you. For others, have a listen, see if any of it rings true.
But further, one thing we did wrong that sent the universe reeling downhill to hell in a handcart was school buses. We were way better off walking uphill 5 miles to school and back, where mom was waiting for us instead of working at some job that she stole from a guy. But all that is beside the real point. Things started to go off the rails when we let in a non-Italian pope, what a mistake that was. It never comes to any good when you screw with history. (Sorry, just having some fun.)
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I think "social media" is just the latest in a series of technology-driven *disruptions that people are initially knocked off-kilter by but eventually adjust to. The adjustment period could be anything from fairly short-lived, with less extreme long-term consequences, to drawn out over a long period (decades or more) with major societal upheaval & reorganization as a result.
-Dave-
*Which is to say, tech developments of the sort that bring people into closer and more frequent contact with the opinions & beliefs of other people. This has been periodically freaking us out ever since Gutenberg.
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... the person being interviewed is a lefty... they obviously cannot possibly have anything intelligent to say...
You finally said something we can agree on.
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You finally said something we can agree on.
You're becoming predictable. :)
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So, slavery was ok then? ;)
Obviously not. Nearly half a million people of that generation died trying to end it.
Kent in SD
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Obviously not. Nearly half a million people of that generation died trying to end it.