I think raising kids of each gender in a patriarchy presents interesting issues and would love to discuss this here sometime. “Beyond Dolls and Guns” I found interesting.

At that age, my daughter had brand new shiny shoes with a hard sole, and she was very proud of them. She saw a cricket on the sidewalk and STOMPED it.

Afterwards, she looked at the squished cricket for a good long while and then bent down and patted it, as though somehow that would make things all better.

She turned twenty-two yesterday. She rescues dogs and always has a foster or two around her house. My son turned out even gentler and captures bugs in the house to release them alive outside (and has been known to rescue drowning worms).

As I sit here in my warm comfortable home while mercenaries and economic conscripts protect my energy supply at the cost of thousand of lives, I’m guilty too, not “blessed.” I don’t believe in wasting energy on guilt, but it’s important to name things.

My evidence for the prediction that wealthy women in power do not consider poor women allies is all of history. I know you make a distinction between women who marry money and women who earn their own, but I have no reason to believe that women will give up economic advantage any more easily than men. After all, they have their children to protect; I would do the same under the current system.

I don’t have the big answer, but the economic system has to change or feminism will benefit only select women. And revolution doesn’t really happen from within, despite what Gloria Steinem would like to think.

I think it takes a platform to get a message out, and that the platform has to stem from two things. First, a groundswell of women on a grass roots level. Second, women who have access to whatever the centers of power are in the current system. To dismantle something, you need access to it, because there’s a reason it’s the current power structure: it’s fucking powerful. Grass roots rebellion, in and of itself, cannot shake the foundations of a structure without people supporting that rebellion inside.

If you think women in business, law, government, etc., isn’t a positive thing, do you think we were better before this was possible? Do you see an incremental change based on women’s entry into those areas?

And on a family scale, do you not agree that equal economic household power is the best way to alter the family balance? And, don’t you think this could have larger ramifications?

“Economically blessed” was an allusion to HP’s “economic privilege” argument that not everyone has the ability to even successfully subvert. Not that I believe it’s somehow an exalted state, or a corporate mantra. But yeah, being able to pay bills, pay for education etc. – that’s an advantage.

“Stature in the industry” was in reference to the prediction that my colleague was tottering on the brink of a reversal. Surely, you get that this is meant in refutation to that prediction. Pure and simple. Not a placement of her as businesswoman above women I know who are volunteers, educators, etc.

Let’s get our context straight before deciding who “gets it.”
That said, I guess we do seem to disagree here, and I appreciate your statement that you’d like to keep this on a civil footing.
I am curious to understand the foundation of your beliefs that women can’t change or possibly even demolish and rebuild an oppressive system by volume. How do you know this? Or, of possibly more relevance, do you think the system can be demolished by women on the outside without women on the inside in union with them?

Octa, could you please get my name right? It feels a little silly to make an issue of a whimsical B52’s reference I came up with late one night, but it’s roamaround not roomaround which is just nonsensical.

About the patience post, I agreed with HP about the system being inherently flawed. I was applauding that, not the demise of your pornaliciousness or your career or your marriage, which don’t concern me at all. From the mostly civilized tone of our debates, I hope you’d assume that I wouldn’t wish you ill. You and HP have agreed to disagree with me before, so don’t get so offended already.

I’m not attacking you personally, just so you know for sure, but I still think you don’t get it at all. You use terms like “economically blessed” and “stature in the industry” in a way that shows you admire the business world and the “successful” women in it. I have heard your comments about corruption and flaws in the system, but they are all “sure it’s bad, but…” remarks, reminiscent of “sure the Superdome was bad but those people were poor anyway.”

We disagree fundamentally: I believe the business world is parasitic and predicated on direct oppression and no number of women in it will change that. This is an important split (and not a new one) because I would not be willing to put energy in a feminist movement that saw more red power suits in the corridors of power as the goal. Sorry, but I don’t see women with money as feminist success stories, no matter how they made it. Like Mae said, goodness has nothing to do with it.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2303022.ece

I hear you on the subversion: Some critical mass could make a difference. Unfortunately we aren’t at critical mass. We’re not even close. I’m not despairing or desperate, just realistic about how little our petty and personal little subversions matter to the big picture. I’ve come to realize that feathering my daughter’s nest might be my one great feminist accomplishment. If even that!

That is just one damn fine sentence, saltyC.