Posted on 04/07/2002 7:15:37 PM PDT by The Giant Apricots
The university professor began the first class of the semester by announcing that she was an "anti-imperialist, anti-heterosexist Marxist-feminist." She read us the famous quote from Robin Morgan, the leading feminist and former editor of Ms. Magazine, who said "kill your fathers, not your mothers." Seeing the students' shocked faces, she added "Kill is too strong. Hate your fathers, not your mothers." I guess she was a moderate.
One of the male students in the class, obviously feeling chastised, said the defense I've heard young men say hundreds of times--"don't blame us for what happened to women in the past--blame our fathers and grandfathers."
I've ruminated darkly over those words many times, and when thinking of my father and grandfather, I can't help but be struck by the special burdens they shouldered as men, because they were men, and how these special burdens have now become a blank space in our history.
Hate my grandfather? My grandfather was a milkman. A young immigrant who enlisted to fight in World War I out of gratitude to the country which had allowed him to escape Russian Czarist tyranny. A man who, wounded in the decisive Battle of the Argonne Forest in 1918, received the Purple Heart and the French Croix de Guerre. A tender father who stayed up half the night stroking the fevered brow of his sickly youngest daughter--a "daddy's girl"-- before going to work at three in the morning. A man who put his safety and even his life on the line during the violent union strikes and battles of the 1930s, because he believed that workers have the right to decent wages and living conditions.
Hate my father? The man who worked six days a week for 25 years yet somehow always had time to spend with me? Who never once let me down? Who worked 12 hour days when my sister and I were toddlers so he could ensure that we would be provided for? Who recalls sadly as he looks at his little granddaughter that he doesn't even remember what we looked like at that age, because he was rarely able to be home?
The successful feminist re-writing of the pre-feminist past as a virtual dark ages where men lived like nobles and women were their serfs is at the core of the "hate your father" idea. Tens of millions of (male) blue collar workers--who put their bodies on the line in the coal mines and steel mills so their wives and children could live in safety and comfort--have been turned into oppressors. Their wives and children, for whom these men sacrificed so much, have been turned into their victims.
Edited out of our history are the tragedies of millions of American men who were killed or maimed on what early trade unionists called the "battlefield of labor." The miners who died in cave-ins, explosions, or of black lung disease. The sailors and fisherman who died at sea. The oil refinery workers killed in explosions. The factory workers killed in industrial accidents. The construction workers who died carving train tracks and then highways through majestic mountain cliffs or the scorching desert. The construction workers who died building our bridges, dams, high rises, stadiums, and apartments.
All of them have been forgotten, in part because there is no natural constituency which would like to remember them--the right generally does not dwell on yesterday's struggling blue collar workers and heroic union men, and the left is beholden to the feminists, for whom any mention of men as special contributors or as victims is strictly forbidden.
The only credit left for men is the military, and even this has been partially hijacked. We now speak of "the men and women who fought and died in our wars" as if even one percent of our military casualties were ever suffered by women, or as if women were ever conscripted the way men were.
Feminists once excoriated our society--correctly--for ignoring the massive, hidden contributions of women in child-rearing and housework. They asked new and important questions like "Who cooked the last supper?" and, even better, "Who washed the dishes afterwards?" But we have now come full circle--men's special and unique contributions (hazardous jobs, long work hours, long commutes, time away from the family, etc.) are ignored, and any reference to them as a male burden is "sexism."
I thought of this recently when I took my young son to a large model train exhibition, one rich in 1940s and 1950s Americana. Looking at the huge displays of trains cutting through mountain peaks, of bridges and railroad trusses towering hundreds of feet above canyons and rivers, of towns and their factories and coal mines, of the sheer industrial might of the old America, I felt torn inside. I know that this was a world where many Americans were terribly mistreated--blacks, Latinos, some women, and often the working-class and the poor. Yet I couldn't also help but feel a tug of nostalgia as I looked at a world which men--through their ingenuity, strength, and raw physical courage--had carved out of wilderness. Men of my generation have endured relentless criticism, and even the best of us must struggle just to attain the moral status automatically granted to women. Yet in this older world, it seems, there was respect for men and the special sacrifices they made.
And perhaps someday, the professor's dictum "hate your father" aside, there will be some respect for the sacrifices my father and grandfather made, the uniquely male sacrifices they made. Hate my father? No ma'am!
(Reprinted with the permission of SheThinks.org, a publication of the Independent Women's Forum)
I'd rephrase that to say that the baby-boomer right rather than the right in general.
This right does -- maybe more rights should.
I agree. In principle, and due to pragmatism: with all the RINO demands that Republicans should go hard-left on moral issues, appealing to average-joe worker interests would draw a lot more votes. The Republican Party lets it self be cast as the party of Ivy League elitists.
Is that the same as a "Bull dike commie whore traitor?"
Consider though that they are incubating a new phalanx of feminazi ideologues in the schools/colleges...
I'd suggest that the so-called "professor" take a "sabatical" at a neighborhood mental health facility, and learn to deal with whatever the hell it is that has her panties in a wad. Failing that, I'm more than willing to help her relocate to a place that would be more conforming to her outlook, such as Saudi Arabia.
(Reprinted with the permission of SheThinks.org, a publication of the Independent Women's Forum)
Shouldn't that read; a publication of the Ignorant COMMUNIST Women's Forum
Those evil business men that created jobs for people to earn money at the risk of their lives should have been shot!
Those Robber Barons giving people the ability to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads in exchange for
the possibility they could die on the job instead of death from Tuberculosis or Yellow Fever or Dysentery or even Starvation from lack of work. Who did they think they were!
</sarcasm>
Noble Builders of Human Civilization!
Now, now, that's not very Christian of you; Jesus wants you to hate your mother, too.
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)"I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." (Matthew 10:35-36)
When I was a graduate student, I needed a great deal of repetitious glasswork done for my thesis research. We had one glassblower for the entire college and just enough work to keep him busy. My work would not justify hiring a second glassblower, but it would take much of his time. Furthermore, waiting for him to do my work delayed my experiments.
At one point, he offered to show me how to do the work myself. This arrangement was great for both of us. It kept him from having to do a boring repetitious job. It allowed him to keep his other customers happy because he wasn't delayed with my work. It allowed me to have my samples done more quickly. It also provided an opportunity for me to enhance my education with some hands-on work with the glass-blowing equipment. The situation was a win/win situation.
Unfortunately, someone in the union complained. The union idiot said that it violated some rule for me to be allowed to use the tools in the glass shop. While I could almost understand this concern if I were endangering a union job, I wasn't endangering anyone's job. I was simply getting things accomplished.
I've heard similar stories from others. There have been cases where a light bulb burnt out in someone's office and the union light bulb changer didn't change it for several days. When the person in the office bought a bulb and changed it himself, the union filed a grievance. Expecting someone to sit in the dark until some union idiot has time to change a light bulb is not reasonable.
Undoubtedly, the blue-collar men of the past faced tremendous challenges and bore heavy burdens to make this country strong and get things accomplished. Reforms to improve their situations were warranted. However, there are many people today hiding their own laziness and lack of initiative in union rules that don't allow their employers to fire them or even to reward other workers who are willing to work hard and accomplish things.
Maybe we can't protect ourselves against every lazy idiot who gets on the board of directors and receives huge compensation for doing nothing. However, adding the burden of thousands of lazy idiots who take the lowest union jobs and still receive compensation for doing nothing only increases the burden of the modern worker both union and non-union. The good blue-collar workers would find more friends on the right if they would help us to escape the burden of bad union workers. Likewise, if they know how to help us escape the burden of white-collar lazy idiots without instituting socialism, we are with them.
WFTR
Bill
I've thought the same thing. The thing is, they'd better watch it, as the stupid things they continue to do will affect their Social Security retirement. Either indirectly or as just desserts.
Congressman Billybob
Opps. I forget God is not allowed in the public schools. Never mind. Satan controls that area.
My point is that Republicans are perceived as upper-class white-collar workers, and often act as such. It's time to rework that image, but certainly not by coddling unions.
That's one heck of a way of saying lesbian! *L*
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