Harrison Butker | Commencement Address 2024

[Dill]

(05-30-2024, 03:36 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: How does a defense of gender equality = "shaming women for staying at home"? 
It does not. 

I posted in my previous post, that they are frowned up on because they will be reliant upon the Husband to provide for them financially. That 100% flies in the face of modern feminism that says no woman should be dependent upon a man. 

"Modern feminism" says a lot of things, but mainly that men and women should be treated equally, women should be thought of as equals. E.g., Betty Friedan made it clear enough that men and women want to live with each other and bear children, and could find many ways to do that. She, not Butker, was someone who saw "equal" options for women.

"No woman should be dependent upon a man" generally means women should not be economically trapped in relationships. Plenty of feminists are fine with women choosing to be homemakers. They just don't want that to be an only option or a trap. It should be a choice, like whether to go to college or not, whether to work in a factory or teach school or drive a truck. Feminists get their back up when men like Butker (and some women) say women are born to support men, and men are born to have careers and all the choices that go with that. 

So what is "frowned upon" is the cultural environment in which parents and extended family and teachers and ministers and the law take for granted that marriage and children are a woman's "real" role and manage incentives and choices and laws to achieve that end. 

(05-30-2024, 03:36 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: My quarrel is with the assumption that men and women are UNEQUAL. Why isn't that "shaming" women??? 

No where does he say,  your wife is your pet. In fact, he's praising her for putting family first. 
*sighs, Males and Females are NOT anatomically equal, and they never will be. that is not a shame, that's a fact. 
That has nothing to do treating each other as an equal in all matters. 

I never said that he said "your wife is your pet." 

Not sure what you mean by "anatomically equal." But I am referring to socially constructed roles, not anatomy.

I agree that anatomy should have nothing to do with husbands and wives treating each other equally in all matters.
That means women should have an equal right to a career, and not be disparaged for choosing one outside the home.

(05-30-2024, 03:36 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I'd say "traditional moms" are on the rise in Egypt too. Women there have gone back to the hijab. Globally there is a
backlash against women's rights. Buckner's speech was just one point of darkness among many.

WTF? You just compared being a SAHM to being forced to wear a hijab and other global women's rights issues? Do the women in the US have those same issues? very likely not. What you are describing is likely more cultural related than anything else and has nothing to do with Harrison's speech. It's just your attempt to make them look equally as bad. 

Umm no. I'm making an partial analogy to the US. The Egyptian women I am speaking of were not "forced" to wear the hijab. They were pretty much freed from it under Nasser and the push for modernization. You look at pictures of Egyptian women on the streets in the 1950s-70s and they've got western hairstyles and dresses. Now even on the University of Cairo Campus they're all wearing hijabs as part of a conservative return to their roots (or at least they were a decade ago; haven't been there recently). That has to do with unsettling economic and political stresses more than anything. 

We have culture too, and people also feel threatened by modernization, globalization (see SSF on that topic) and the social changes that come with it. In response many people want to reassert traditional hierarchies and go back to traditional religion.  I think Butker's preaching traditionalism and "Making America Great Again" are instances of that in the US. This is a world wide phenomenon. I could have used India as an example as well. Or interwar Europe for a historical example. This is just sociology.

(05-30-2024, 03:36 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Your second link argues that women's EDUCATION plays an important role in children's success--an education that feminists fought for in previous generations. "Fought for"? My gosh, whom would they be fighting against?  That would be people who thought feminists and "leftists" were spreading "diabolical lies." 

In the past, Yes they had to fight for rights, Right to own land in 1848, Right to vote. As far as I can tell for US Laws, they are granted just about every right i can think of that men have. And before you hit me with some exceptions yes there's always azzholes out there that don't respect anyone. And not all are worth pursuing legally as it takes time and money to fight them and that's not a man only thing. 

And one of those rights was the right to choose to have an abortion, and to choose whether and what kind of birth control. Those rights are being rolled back. As in my Egyptian example, or the Indian one I could have used, modern and modernizing societies do generate a backlash, a desire to return to the security of traditional social boundaries.