From: zeborah@gmail.com   
      
   David Harmon  wrote:   
      
   > On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:56:54 +1200 in rec.arts.sf.misc,   
   > zeborah@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote,   
   > >I shall, if you like, rephrase my original sentence thus:   
   > >   
   > >Regardless of what other societies are like -- which, for the purposes   
   > >of this thread, I care not -- Western society is f*cked in the head   
   > >about sex and gender.   
   >   
   > Wait a minute, that's very different!  In comparison to what, if not   
   > in comparison to other societies?   
      
   In comparison to sanity.  In comparison to what it realistically could   
   be in the future.   
      
   That is, once you start really looking at what people are like, and   
   compare that to what people think people are like, and trying to work   
   out where the discrepancy comes from...   
      
   The thing is, I used to believe that we had achieved equality between   
   the sexes, that I lived in a perfectly enlightened society, and that   
   everything was hunkydory.  I grew up in an environment where it was easy   
   to believe this:  my parents treated us all pretty equally, New Zealand   
   has had a female prime minister since I was in primary school, and I   
   went to an all-girls high school where we were pushed to excel whether   
   in humanities or sciences, chorale or Young Enterprise, netball or rugby   
   (but mostly rowing).  I was happy to believe this, and wanted to keep   
   believing it.  I got really impatient with feminist books (actually many   
   of them I still do) and detested the idea of affirmative action (and   
   still think that if one's at all sloppy about its implementation it can   
   be very unjust on all sides).  I actively resisted believing that   
   anything was still wrong or needed to be improved...   
      
   ...but over time all the little tiny discrepencies started to add up and   
   niggle.  Any one of them I could explain away; any ten of them.  But not   
   a hundred, not a thousand, not ten thousand.   
      
   We have improved a heck of a lot.  And we're still improving now.  But   
   there's still somewhere for us to improve *to*.   
      
   Zeborah   
   --   
   Gravity is no joke.   
   http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/   
   rasfc FAQ:  http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)