[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by Lioness

It now takes 2 incomes to support the average middle-class family, whereas before it was more of a choice for mom to work outside the home.

I did hear some stuff by the anti-feminists that sounded like it made sense in that respect. The Powers That Be take advantage of women being able to work to be able to exploit them, too, and exploit the totality of employees more overall.

In part this spills over into the problem of exploitation and brainwashing by employers and the System (tm). It's good that women have the power to work, though, and potentially their extra presence could help us overturn the unfair work situation once and for all. (We can hope).

The number of single mothers increased dramatically. The idea that mom can be a superwoman and do it all by herself.

This seems like quite an American thing, I've not seen it in Europe but I have seen it in my contact with America via the internet and other media. It sounds crazy, kind of like women are being expected to be BOTH the old ideal of a woman and the new ideal. Women should be what they want to be... no more, no less.

I also wanted to comment that being a single parent could be a good thing. Or at least having the potential to be a single parent. Before, women who wanted children were dependent on finding Mr. Right. Now, if they can't or don't want to find such a guy, they can work things out on their own, and that does seem very empowering to me. From .. I don't know if I should say a LOA perspective, it seems very wrong to put your dreams in the hands of another person such as in the case of expecting a man to come along and make it possible to have kids.

Chivalry is dead or dying.

I think that's a good thing, even though chivalry was something that was imbalanced *in favour* of women. I don't think women have any particular need to have their needs looked after to the expense of men; they should be considered equal. I mean we don't need to open doors for them, if they can do it themselves.

In the past women needed to be looked after especially for the survival of the species. One man can impregnate many women, and a woman can look after only a certain number of children. So men were those who fought in wars and so on. They were more expendable. This is where a large part of the code of chivalry came from. Humanity doesn't have a problem with underpopulation any more, so we don't need this stuff, and it's actually a sort of anti-male discrimination. Anti-female discrimination is worse, but anti-male discrimination does exist in our culture.

Men bust in front of elderly women and ladies with babies to board a bus first all the time.

This is more a gender-inspecific case of being an assh*le than anything to do with the code of chivalry. I haven't lived 60 years ago when men were men and everything was in black and white, but I do think that people were often assh*les too back then.

If you saw "Starship Troopers", there was a scene where male and female officers showered together without anyone batting an eye. I think we are becoming more jaded to differences between the sexes, and it will be a sad day when unisex showers appear in the name of equality and when a (straight) man looks at a nude lady and has no reaction at all.

Ever been to a nudist beach? I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to look at a naked lady and not consider it something shocking or out of this world. You can still later get excited about her body when you're in a more sexualised setting. It's not an either/or situation.

I also don't see how much longer we can justify an all-male military draft/registration. Not sure that's a good thing.

What's wrong with it? Seems like that anti-male discrimination again. Men don't have to be chivalrous knights who sacrifice everything for women. If we're going for equality, women should also be able to make those traditionally male sacrifices.

That said I HATE war and I totally and utterly disagree with obligatory drafting. I get what you're saying if you say it's a bad thing if obligatory drafting for women means twice as many people get drafted. We should abolish obligatory drafting everywhere and then let women have total equality in the military