You know how you hear a lot about ‘global warming’, ‘forest clearing’, ‘habitat destruction’, ‘over fishing’ of the oceans and waterways, the list goes on…
Well in among all of this gloom and doom is a bit of good news. According to media reports, women are not participating in these environmental atrocities. Apparently it’s all the fault of ‘mankind’, or that’s what the media imply when they say “mankind have destroyed the…”
That’s right! Since the media are using the gender typical term, ‘mankind’, instead of humanity, it can be argued that women are freed from responsibility for all disasters, environmental catastrophes, forest fires… everything.
Are you thinking “What is this rant?!?”? I shall explain.
In the 1970s there was a world wide movement called Feminism. Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities, and equal rights for women. It is a movement advocating social change to create a political, social and ethical environment where women are not represented or perceived as ‘lacking’ anything for not being male.
(Every time I write “lack” I think of Freud who wrote many great texts yet had the curious belief that because a woman has a vagina and not a penis she must have some kind of ‘lack’. Freud would have been better served to apply rigorous science, as opposed to spatial propaganda to his studies. An inward space, as in the case of the vagina, is no different to the cylindrical interior of the outward space, as in the case of the penis.
Leaving the ghost of long-dead psycho-analyst to ponder his own ‘lack’…)
There were many different ways in which societies attempted to achieve the social changes associated with feminism. One of them was the use of non-gender specific language. This means that all words that had “man” or “men” as part of the word should have been replaced by more inclusive words like ‘people’ and ‘officer’.
As this quote demonstrates the use of gendered-language, such has mankind, excludes women from being represented in the communication. Gender-neutral Language Matters
In 1972... some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like "Social Man'', "Industrial Man'', and "Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like "Society'', "Industrial Life'', and "Political Behaviour''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes’ use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females.... The authors concluded, "This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female" ([Miller et al. 1980, pages 19-20], quoted by Spertus) (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/style/gender.html).
If one applies the points made in this quote, it becomes obvious that whenever ‘mankind’ is used by news media – and it’s a LOT – women are not included and, therefore, not involved… and therefore not responsible either.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Just Call Me
Do you ever feel as if you are the only woman who does anything to help people … and that everyone else’s needs come before your’s?
Yes?
Recently I worked from home. “Great”, you might say. “Good, if you can arrange it,” you might think.
No, you’re so wrong!
It blurred the domestic and professional spaces and everything got mixed up.
There I was focussing on work, having a wonderful time, working on my own computer, my music playing… It was all going well until the telephone rang.
A friend – for whom I am something of a cross between a health attorney and foster carer – said, “Centrelink are going to cut me off because I wouldn’t take a job in a bar”. He, of course, was hiding his addiction to alcohol from both Centrelink and his job network provider – hoping to slip quietly from New Start to the Old Age Pension before too long. Or perhaps he is waiting for a doctor and/or psychologist to recognise his Korsakoff's syndrome?
Well, that’s not likely! Doctors could not recognise that my hips were crumbling and needed replacing. That took 4 years of investigations until I said, “I want to see an orthopaedic surgeon!!!”… but I digress. My point is that doctors are not likely to diagnose a problem when the only way to really diagnose it is to know the person and ‘understand’ their level of dysfunction.
Off I ran to meet him at Centrelink and talk to them with him. This involved telling him to “be honest and tell them what was really happening”.
I got home feeling slightly angry at having to leave my work to, once again, rescue the hopeless. It might help if I mentioned that we used live together and he was always disturbing my work then…by being drunk, hopeless and needing rescuing. Now, I look at him and am repulsed. But, as I’m his health attorney, and somewhat, compelled to prevent homelessness, poverty, starvation… You know, those “nasties” into which the hopeless slide as they claw at the sides of the moss, fungal covered, drain before being subsumed by the oozing mess of society’s repositories.
The next day I thought, “Yeah, no interruptions: work, finish early, go and collect dog at the airport”.
I did say ‘thought’.
The phone, again.
“Hello, it’s your dog’s mother here. I didn’t get the money for your dog’s flight and I can’t send her without it. Can you go to the bank and deposit the money?”
Not like I was doing anything!
Off I go and get money from my account and put it into her’s. The dog has to fly that day.
What’s happening to the money my partner transferred for the dog’s flight?
“Last time it took awhile to show. If you give me your bank details, I’ll refund it as soon as I get it.”
Yes, and I’ll just continue leaving my work to fix up after other people.
After this week, I value being AT work. I hear myself saying, “Gee, I’m AT work, I can’t help”.
Next time there’s a crisis it might not be a good idea to call me, I might be at work!
Yes?
Recently I worked from home. “Great”, you might say. “Good, if you can arrange it,” you might think.
No, you’re so wrong!
It blurred the domestic and professional spaces and everything got mixed up.
There I was focussing on work, having a wonderful time, working on my own computer, my music playing… It was all going well until the telephone rang.
A friend – for whom I am something of a cross between a health attorney and foster carer – said, “Centrelink are going to cut me off because I wouldn’t take a job in a bar”. He, of course, was hiding his addiction to alcohol from both Centrelink and his job network provider – hoping to slip quietly from New Start to the Old Age Pension before too long. Or perhaps he is waiting for a doctor and/or psychologist to recognise his Korsakoff's syndrome?
Well, that’s not likely! Doctors could not recognise that my hips were crumbling and needed replacing. That took 4 years of investigations until I said, “I want to see an orthopaedic surgeon!!!”… but I digress. My point is that doctors are not likely to diagnose a problem when the only way to really diagnose it is to know the person and ‘understand’ their level of dysfunction.
Off I ran to meet him at Centrelink and talk to them with him. This involved telling him to “be honest and tell them what was really happening”.
I got home feeling slightly angry at having to leave my work to, once again, rescue the hopeless. It might help if I mentioned that we used live together and he was always disturbing my work then…by being drunk, hopeless and needing rescuing. Now, I look at him and am repulsed. But, as I’m his health attorney, and somewhat, compelled to prevent homelessness, poverty, starvation… You know, those “nasties” into which the hopeless slide as they claw at the sides of the moss, fungal covered, drain before being subsumed by the oozing mess of society’s repositories.
The next day I thought, “Yeah, no interruptions: work, finish early, go and collect dog at the airport”.
I did say ‘thought’.
The phone, again.
“Hello, it’s your dog’s mother here. I didn’t get the money for your dog’s flight and I can’t send her without it. Can you go to the bank and deposit the money?”
Not like I was doing anything!
Off I go and get money from my account and put it into her’s. The dog has to fly that day.
What’s happening to the money my partner transferred for the dog’s flight?
“Last time it took awhile to show. If you give me your bank details, I’ll refund it as soon as I get it.”
Yes, and I’ll just continue leaving my work to fix up after other people.
After this week, I value being AT work. I hear myself saying, “Gee, I’m AT work, I can’t help”.
Next time there’s a crisis it might not be a good idea to call me, I might be at work!
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