[MD] NYT: The Feminine Critique

[MarshaV]

At 03:40 AM 11/5/2007, you wrote:
>I didn't find time to read the whole article. But I can say, about the
>gender role debate, is that women do have certain roles to play in society
>that men shouldn't and just can't.
>
>In articles like these, I find that attempts are made to overcategorise
>gender roles -- there is a wide range of roles, but stereotypes such as "men
>are more intelligent than women" do arise occasionally.
>
>To be sure, the gender roles are founded in biological patterns of static
>quality. Reproduction is one obvious example. But, if you observe the
>continuum of mammalia, you notice that almost always the female is engaged
>in bringing up the child, maintaining the home, etc. while the male goes out
>to hunt. They are both necessary and complementary roles (ref. Yin and Yang
>complementarity), without which the world cannot be sustained.
>
>In modern times, there are all these feminist groups who, simply don't
>understand the Law and want to make blind rebellion, and want freedom from
>their traditional roles and want to do what the male is supposed to do. One
>example is working mothers. My personal opinion is that they have to make a
>choice: either they work or either they raise the children -- you can't do
>both together, because obviously the raising children part is compromised.
>Society cannot be held together by that kind of compromise. The most
>immediate and appropriate example is the lack of culture found in most of
>modern American teenagers. American parents, and grandparents, will not
>agree with me when I say that, but I'm sure that with the cultural framework
>that America has, it is doomed to break down sooner than later, unlike
>Eastern traditions. European culture, in comparison, is far more civilised
>and upholding of righteousness.
>
>Akshay
>

Akshay,

Wow!  Just another flavor of stereotyping!.  There are men filled 
with compassion, and there are women filled with courage.  It sounds 
to me like the Eastern traditions are as sick as those in the 
West.  That Yin-Yang symbol is spinning in each individual.  (And you 
left out gathering.  Without that gathering, there would certainly 
have been starvation.)  It's just that Yin has been distorted in 
favor of "rational" talky-talk.  What man on this earth has the right 
to speak for women, when women have lost the ability to speak for 
themselves?

It would seem to me that both men and women have betrayed Kali Ma.

Marsha