I happened to be driving by the Cambridge Common on Saturday just as a “women’s march” was officially starting. Attendance was limited, with crowd covering only about one third of the Common (so the local media used a tight shot to make it look like it was jammed; see boston.com for example). I assumed that there was a big march over in Boston proper (on the vastly larger Boston Common) and that this was just a local march for people insufficiently outraged to ride a few stops on the Red Line. But it turned out that Cambridge was the official location for anyone #Resisting in the Boston area.
The boston.com story is interesting because it says that a top state official, Maura Healey, “wore a T-shirt that read The Future is Female.'” I understand that the majority of voters are women, but I wonder what would happen if a politician anywhere in the U.S. had worn a T-shirt reading “The Future is Male.”
[Separately, Healey “referenced the many lawsuits her office has filed against the Republican president’s administration over the past year.” (no mention that Massachusetts taxpayers get to pay for legal fees on both sides of any such lawsuit!).]
Here’s an image from a Facebook friend in Manhattan. It seems that marchers in New York were more cash-oriented…
… though maybe not one particular marcher: “Just saw a chihuahua in a pussy hat.” (update from NYC at 1:40 pm)
[She posted a photo of herself in front of a cardboard sign painted “RESIST!” and the comments from her friends were kind of interesting. 3 out of 4 of the female-named commenters (of course I can’t know their true gender IDs!) mentioned her appearance, e.g., “Too cute!”, “You are beautiful.”, “super cute”. Isn’t one of the complaints that #Resisting women have voiced that they don’t want to be judged based on their physical appearance?]
Readers: What did you see in terms of a Women’s March in your area?
Related:
“Fuck You” then “Pay Me” = world’s oldest commercial sequence
I don’t think they realize that stuff like this makes most sane men (who aren’t woke) want keep a decent distance from women at work because one just can’t take chances ending up working with one of these activists. The proverbial 77 cents on the dollar (if one believe Obama who can’t do math) aren’t worth the potential hassle.
I think if you would have a sign that says the future is male people would be upset!
For every American woman marching and demanding more cash there are multiple Asian women earning it by studying working and achieving results.
I’m curious as to whether Ms. Healey wishes to see men exterminated in the future, or merely enslaved. What exactly is her final solution to the male problem?
«I wonder what would happen if a politician anywhere in the U.S. had worn a T-shirt reading “The Future is Male.”»
You know exactly what would happen, so the question is not an innocent one. It would happen the same that happens every time there’s a historical asymmetrical power balance.
Black people can use a shirt saying “Black Power”, but white *can’t* use one saying “White Power”. Jews can use a t-shirt with a sexy Hitler to make fun of him, but a third-generation Italian-American running for office *can’t* use a t-shirt saying “100% Native American” even if this person and their parents never ever left the USA. The swastika is an aesthetically interesting symbol with meaning in eastern religions, and even if you’d convert to Hinduism, I doubt you’d wear it on t-shirt over there in Boston.
Why? Because these are charged topics. Because historically they have been symbols and expressions of asymmetrical power balances by some groups, some of which victimised smaller weaker groups. This doesn’t mean conversations can’t be had. This doesn’t mean if you’d wear a “future is male” or a t-shirt with a swastika you’re necessarily a misogynist or Jew hating Nazi. But memories are too fresh about recent associations with these symbols or expressions.
Politically correct shouldn’t be used to shut down speech or prevent conversations, but to mederate and tame bullying. I fully agree there’s too much fundamentalism on one side of political correctness. But pretending not knowing why «The Future is Male» is problematic and «The Future is Female» is not, is simply being disingenuous.
Ken Hagler – another example of being disingenuous. No one is arguing for that, it’s merely a symbol of a fight against a historical power imbalance that, demonstrably, hasn’t yet been solved.
Also, as a historic note, from somewhere on the internet:
«The original “The Future Is Female” T-shirt design was made for Labyris Books, the first women’s bookstore in New York City, which was opened in 1972 by Jane Lurie and Marizel Rios. The photographer Liza Cowan took a picture of musician Alix Dobkin, her girlfriend at the time, wearing it in 1975. The photograph was done for a slide show she was working on called: “What the Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear.” » [1]
40 years gone by. I don’t think men have been flooding therapists, gravely offended and traumatised by the slogan.
[1] – https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/fashion/a-feminist-t-shirt-resurfaces-from-the-70s.html
LMFTFY “The Future is Female Whining”
@Francisco
Have you been checked for autism?
—
> Isn’t one of the complaints that #Resisting women have voiced that they don’t want to be judged based on their physical appearance?
Well they don’t want to be judged negatively on their physical appearance.
Francisco: You assert that there has been, at least up until Saturday’s march, “a historical asymmetrical power balance” between men and women (whatever those categories might mean in today’s world of flexible gender ID). That makes it okay to attack men as a category, but not okay to attack women.
I’m not sure that this is true, first of all. The Chinese will soon be the world’s most powerful country (as they were for most of history). Will it then be open season on Chinese people?
But let’s say that it is true that a power advantage for one gender = license to attack. Why is it obvious that American men were more powerful than American women in 2017?
Let’s look at what is important to most Americans. They put a lot of time into either working, collecting welfare, or coming up with some other way to get money. From this it seems reasonable to infer that spending power is important. Another big category is having children. Americans often put extra hours into their kids. Finally there is health care. Americans want to be healthy and are apparently willing to hand over 90 percent of their money to the health care industry.
Let’s start with spending power. Are you sure that women don’t have a higher spending power? I looked at this in
http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/01/12/gender-equity-should-be-measured-by-consumption-not-income/
and
http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/06/13/feminist-focus-on-w-2-wages-instead-of-spending-power/
How about children? The trend in the U.S. is toward out-of-wedlock childbirth so let’s look at the situation of a woman who has sex with a man she meets on Tinder. If she becomes pregnant she can hire a private investigator to establish the father’s income. At that point, depending on the man’s income level, she can decide to (a) continue the pregnancy and have a child so as to qualify for taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, smartphone, etc., (b) have an abortion, possible in exchange for a payment from the father, or (c) have a baby and harvest tax-free child support for up to 23 years. See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage If power = options, what power does the man have in this situation?
Finally let’s look at health care. https://www.ssa.gov/planners/lifeexpectancy.html says that women can expect to live 2.3 years longer than men in the U.S. (and collect pension or Social Security checks for 2.3 more years on the same contribution!).
So if women have more spending power, control over whether to have children and how much cash they will receive in exchange for those children, and superior health translated into longer lives, why is it obvious that men have more “power”? If men do have more “power,” why don’t they use it to (a) grab spending power for themselves, (b) take control of child production and the revenue streams associated with children, and (c) cut back on working hours so that they can be more relaxed and healthier and live longer?
I attended the one in Raleigh with my two daughters (age 9 &7). There are a lot of issues about women on the table right now, like equal pay, sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, etc, so people come to these marches with all different messages and views. I’m sure that not all of us agree 100% with one another on every single issue. For instance, I agree with you that saying that the future is female is just the wrong message. However, based on the many comments and allegations made by our president about women, we stand for a more objective and respectful way of seeing and treating women. I personally feel that a lot of positive and much needed change will be happening for women in the next few years and I want my daughters to grow up in a better world.
Francisco, just stop your mansplaining of women’s concerns, check your male privilege and step out of the way of women.
Not to alarm you, but you should probably quit your job or take a demotion, because you are taking up room that should go to someone else.
I have had comments quashed which were much more innocuous than “Have you been checked for autism?”
Just saying.
Neal: Agreed.
Folks: Please look at http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/comment-moderation-policy/
It isn’t helpful to attack some other reader as a pinhead, autistic, etc.
A comment such as Francisco’s is helpful to me for understanding how it is that the majority of Massachusetts voters (I assume, otherwise the politician wouldn’t do it) are okay with a state official who advocates “The Future is Female”. I am not sure that his assumptions are supported by facts, but it is still interesting to see the thought process.
[I do think it is fair to point out to white men who assert that white men have too much privilege that they can do their part to rectify the situation by giving up their jobs, houses, cars, etc. to a woman of color. Just as the other day on Facebook a California friend decried the hard-hearted citizens of Kentucky for wanting to scale back a welfare program. I offered to pay for one-way airline tickets for as many Kentucky welfare recipients as he wanted to host in his neighborhood and help get onto the California welfare system (by definition fair and compassionate!). So far he has not taken me up on this offer.]
“I am not sure that his assumptions are supported by facts”
Francisco’s point was that because society’s treatment of men and women was different in the past, the meaning of “The Future is Female” is not some kind of inverse of “The Future is Male”. That is, “The Future is Female” expresses a demand for equality (which did not exist in the past) whereas “The Future is Male” expresses a demand for a return to inequality (which did exist in the past). The “facts” presented in comment #10 may or may not be relevant to a discussion of inequality in the present day, but they are certainly not relevant to Francisco’s point.
Francisco’s point also seems difficult to square with our age of flexible gender ID. If identifying as “male” confers a huge advantage, why are there any Americans who identify as “female”? Why voluntarily belong to an oppressed class?
[If the argument is that in 17th century Colonial America women were somehow oppressed, why march in 2018?]
“Why voluntarily belong to an oppressed class?”
Really? Does the fact that individuals can convert to Christianity justify discrimination against Jews?
“If the argument is that in 17th century Colonial America women were somehow oppressed, why march in 2018?”
Francisco’s comment #6 post did not claim to explain the reasons for marching in 2018. Thus, this comment looks like an evasion of the actual point made in comment #6 rather than a rebuttal of it.
Also, perhaps I’m wrong (and I don’t really want to discuss it now), but I suspect we could probably find evidence for post 17th century systemic sexism.
“That is, “The Future is Female” expresses a demand for equality (which did not exist in the past) whereas “The Future is Male” expresses a demand for a return to inequality (which did exist in the past).”
I find this viewpoint to be interesting. To me a reading of “The future is Female” as a statement of equality takes a very creative interpretation of the English language. Regardless of what the people saying that “actually mean.” And to be clear, personally i think what they actually mean is that women deserve a turn at the helm since men had had theirs. I also believe that they’ll get it, given the current political climate and momentum.
@Dingus: Any reading of “The future is Female” takes a very creative interpretation of the English language. Read literally, the statement is plainly nonsense.
@Neal
And yet both you and Francisco are able to define “The future is Male” as clearly problematic, while “The future is Female,” as clearly not. I agree you with that the former runs afoul of a lot of emotional and historical baggage. But, if ““The Future is Male” expresses a demand for a return to inequality (which did exist in the past),” then it has to be said that “the future is female” advocates progress into a different sort of inequality, the “just” kind.
“I agree you with that the former runs afoul of a lot of emotional and historical baggage.”
I am agreeing with what I understood Francisco to be saying: that the meaning imputed to “The Future is Female” is different than “The Future is Male” precisely because the emotional and historical baggage is different because the actual history is different.
wonder if any guys went up to the “Fuck You Pay Me” chicks to ask how much
Dingus: I do take your point. Perhaps my comment “expresses a demand for equality” was too generous. However, I think one could say that because of the emotional and historical baggage we both agree is present, “The Future is Female” expresses the desire for a future which is at least arguably in the same direction as equality relative to the past (if not the present) whereas “The Future is Male” clearly expresses a desire to move away from equality. That is, the asymmetry produced by the emotional and historical baggage looks like:
F = Female domination
E = Equality
M = Male domination
P = Society’s position in the recent past
F——-E–P—-M
Direction Suggested by “The Future is Male” (away from equality)
This asymmetry is why it is more PC to say one than the other.
Sigh:
F======E==P===M
Direction Suggested by “The Future is Male” (away from equality)
In #23 I accidentally created an html comment with my arrows.
Sigh:
F======E==P===M
<==: Direction Suggested by “The Future is Female” (toward equality)
==>: Direction Suggested by “The Future is Male” (away from equality)
The TFIF arrow originates under “P” and points to the left.
The TFIM arrow originates under “P” and points to the right.
F======E==P===M
: Direction Suggested by “The Future is Male” (away from equality)
I’m afraid my knowledge of this site’s pseudo-html is just not up to the task.
@Neal:
““The Future is Female” expresses the desire for a future which is at least arguably in the same direction as equality relative to the past (if not the present) whereas “The Future is Male” clearly expresses a desire to move away from equality.”
I guess this is where the issue arises for me, simply because a phrase has a different emotional impact, doesn’t mean an analogous phrase can have a different meaning. If one of these statements is clearly and obviously a power statement rather than an equality statement, than so must be the other!
““The Future is Female” expresses the desire for a future which is at least arguably in the same direction as equality relative to the past (if not the present)”
I think the language of the modern feminism reveals it as a power movement rather than an equality movement.
But i will certainly agree with you that the two statements FEEL very different. And certainly, one is more PC than the other. But I submit that if it’s not really ok to say one, maybe the other one isn’t so great either.
@Dingus: At a minimum I think we’ve demonstrated that our actual difference on the subject is not as great as our initial rhetorical positions indicated.
The Future is Female is just stating the facts for the USA. Women may not hold much wealth on the global scale, but in the USA they already control the majority of the wealth in the and make up the vast majority of the consumption of goods and services.
http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-women-control-the-money-in-america-2012-2?IR=T
Now they just need political hegemony the it’s game over for the men.
Most of the women I know like men, am I that out of touch?
The equal pay meme is a non-starter as far as I am concerned, the median income in the US is somewhere around $50,000 per year, very difficult to live on in eastern Massachusetts, with true equality in pay, everyone in the US would make around $50,000 per year, it will never happen, so equality of pay is another unobtainable progressive goal.
This march is backlash from sexual revolution. Women used to get paid to have sex as wives or hookers. They started giving it away and now it is cheap online hookups. Women are stupid bec took them 50 years to figure out that paid sex is better than free sex. Now they’re pissed.
I never want to hear from or work with a woman again. Why would any man in his right mind hire or marry a woman? How could it possibly end well?
Obviously Neal’s struggles with HTML formatting are yet another instance of the patriarchy*’s pervasive persecution preferences, as it is unclear, unwielding, and downright unusable when it comes to pointing the arrow of justice the correct way.
The fact that the crude arrow Neal sketched looks like it’s pointing left just adds to the irony.
* — HTML was invented by an individual who, as far as the preponderence of available evidence shows, identified as male at the time.
By now everyone’s gone from this post, I presume, but I can’t be as prolific as a commenter as philg is as writer. In any case, I leave my thoughts here.
>Philg: «Francisco: You assert that there has been, at least up until Saturday’s march, “a historical asymmetrical power balance” between men and women (whatever those categories might mean in today’s world of flexible gender ID). That makes it okay to attack men as a category, but not okay to attack women.»
You say that I’m saying that it’s ok for women to attack men. I say no, it’s not ok. But I don’t consider “The Future is Female” as an attack. I certainly don’t feel attacked and in my opinion, if men feel attacked, I would consider it an overreaction. And for people that complain about Politically Correct snowflakes, I feel that any man taking offence with this is rather… a snowflake.
If, however, someone goes to a demonstration saying “the future is male”, then, yes, I do think this can be construed as an attack. Why? Because words aren’t mere words and have a historical baggage. That was my point, as well as Neal’s, in subsequent comments. I go back to “White Power” versus “Black Power”. Word by word, there’s no formal difference on the syntactic expression. But the weight the words carry is totally different. “White Power” is undeniably connected to white xenophobic behaviour, while “Black Power” is associated with a type of African-American civil rights fight. You can’t dissociate the words from the historical context. Does wearing beige khakis and white polos make you a neo-nazi? No. But if you happen to walk along similarly dressed people shouting “Jews will not replace us”, well, it doesn’t bode well for how you’ll be perceived.
“The Future is Female” is not the same as “Strip Men of All Power”. As I previously pointed out, it also has an artistic and historic connotation. If you see women marching with slogans saying that they want to deny men of their jobs/positions/etc. in favour of women, then I will agree and say it’s an attack.
> Philg: «I’m not sure that this is true, first of all. The Chinese will soon be the world’s most powerful country (as they were for most of history). Will it then be open season on Chinese people?»
Well, Trump already says America First, why can’t women say they will put themselves ahead of the others? Nevertheless, I still don’t consider “The Future is Female” as an attack
> Philg: «But let’s say that it is true that a power advantage for one gender = license to attack. Why is it obvious that American men were more powerful than American women in 2017?»
You are an expert in divorce and making money out of it, and assert that women are (or can be) prime candidates in milking money out of their sex partners. I won’t debate you on that, and take for granted what you say, as you have studied it in great depth. If the laws are unfair, you should push for them to be changed. However, you never seem to show (at least to my knowledge) how widespread these actions are. The same way you ask me «If identifying as “male” confers a huge advantage, why are there any Americans who identify as “female”? Why voluntarily belong to an oppressed class?», I ask you, why are not all women milking men for child support? Why not even adopt and collect child support after (avoiding the risk of STDs)? Why aren’t all atheists adopting a fake religion to get time off? Why weren’t all Vietnam combatants suddenly developing bone spurs? Just because the option is there it doesn’t mean that everyone is comfortable/capable/willing to use it, especially if one doesn’t value the outcome with the same weight you seem to do.
The power advantage asymmetry isn’t a switch you can flip. And it’s not just a matter of economical power either. Historically, the the asymmetry is pretty obvious, no? As a minor example, did you know that wife beating «was not made illegal in every state until 1920. In the eighteenth century, William Blackstone codified the right to wife beating in his authoritative commentaries on the common law. He stated that because the husband “is to answer for [his wife’s] misbehavior, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement.”» [1]. And victims of domestic violence continue to be overwhelmingly women. So, it was not just in 17th Century America (as Neal pointed out). By the way, why is it that there are women that are continued victims of domestic abuse? They can just leave and ask for a divorce, no? «Why voluntarily belong to an oppressed class?» It’s not that simple.
> Philg: «So if women have more spending power, control over whether to have children and how much cash they will receive in exchange for those children, and superior health translated into longer lives, why is it obvious that men have more “power”? If men do have more “power,” why don’t they use it to (a) grab spending power for themselves, (b) take control of child production and the revenue streams associated with children, and (c) cut back on working hours so that they can be more relaxed and healthier and live longer?»
(a) Regarding the spending power, could you enlighten me on where that spending power comes from? Because if you’re just deciding what to shop at the home, based on your husband’s salary (and his permission), is that real power? Do you need to go have someone’s child to have that spending power? Is marriage the way of accession to power? If that’s your definition of power balance, I don’t know what to say. The laws may be conferring women too much of an economical benefit to those who take care of children, extracting that benefit from men – which may very well be an unfair state of affairs, I don’t really know – but is the source of American women’s power just the fact that they can bear children combined with (potentially unfair) child support laws? So women that choose to not have kids, or to stay single, are immediately ruled out? By the way, I’m not making this a strictly American problem. Systemic sexism exists not only where child support laws are generous to women.
(b) Who enacted child protection laws? And they may be unfair, maybe they swerved too much to the other side, I don’t know, but do you recognise that before, for centuries, men could dump kids on women and not provide a single cent for support? Also, in the case of a child within marriage and a subsequent divorce, sure, men haven’t much control, but, as you point out, «the trend in the U.S. is toward out-of-wedlock childbirth»; except for the Virgin Mary (allegedly) and by divine coincidence, her mother (allegedly), women don’t conceive by themselves. So it’s not that men have no «control of child production».
(c) It’s quite selective (and revealing) of your part to say that female longer life expectancy is attributed to women working less and relaxation. First, it indicates that you don’t consider taking care of children/housekeeping work, at least as deleterious to your health as men’s “outside of the home work”. Maybe your neighbours have nannies and house keepers, but many women that opt not to work and raise their children still have to change diapers, wash the clothes and cook dinner. For the guy selling gum at the corner store, the bank clerk, or the postman, are they really cutting their life expectancy shorter comparing to their wives? And what about alcoholism [2]? Reckless driving [3]? Stupid shit leading to fatal accidents, like drowning [4], or dying in the Grand Canyon [5]? Men are much better at cutting their lives shorter by drinking, crashing their cars and doing idiotic stunts, among other things – are men not in control of all these thing either? Sure testosterone may need to be declared a controlled substance for unfairly putting men in dangerous situations, but women had to risk their lives every time they gave birth during most of humanity’s existence, so, boo-hoo, tough luck.
Finally, if men are so oppressed, let me rewrite your last comment:
«If identifying as “female” confers a huge advantage, why are there any Americans who identify as “male”? Why voluntarily belong to an oppressed class?» Sure, men can’t bear children, but they certainly can adopt. Real World Divorce does not say much about adopted children, but at least in a few states, to my knowledge, child custody and support laws, «refer to both “natural” and adopted children as though they are interchangeable in the eyes of the law», like in North Carolina
> Philg: «I do think it is fair to point out to white men who assert that white men have too much privilege that they can do their part to rectify the situation by giving up their jobs, houses, cars, etc. to a woman of color.»
This means you can’t discuss famines in Africa before moving to an all bread and water diet? Or that we can’t have a Space Program until we solve homelessness? The fact that you are against some injustice doesn’t automatically mean you need to become a saint. And the fact that you defend social justice, doesn’t mean you need to give up all you have for the ones being treated unjustly. If you do absolutely nothing but talk, that’s one thing, I will concede that, but a fairer society *should not* mean we need to all become Mother Theresas.
[1] – https://www.thefreelibrary.com/No-drop+prosecution+of+domestic+violence%3A+just+good+policy,+or+equal…-a058511048
[2] – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844334/
[3] – http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/gender
[4] – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380371/?page=4
[5] – http://azdailysun.com/news/local/canyon-deaths-and-counting/article_ba588a05-e816-55be-87f6-80f15b76f744.html