Harrison Butker | Commencement Address 2024

[Dill]

(06-05-2024, 07:16 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Good Point about kids responding to messages from authority figures, except these aren't kids. 
Again, he said SOME will have successful careers, which means they have a choice in how they live their lives.
There will always be backlash at something, No one or situation is ever perfect. How is it a backlash to being a mother? 
Being a Mother or Father is way more important than any accolade i could get from working. 

So OMike, back to our business.

Women DO have a choice nowdays. But no thanks to Butker or the traditionalists he represents. 

Apropos kids responding to messages--so do adults, throughout their lives. Let me add a bit to your thunbnail history of women's rights.

You remember Rosie the Riveter, right? During WWII, as men went off to war, women went into the work force and performed very well. Society reflected this message from a number of points, including government. My mother-in-law was a riveter in Seattle, building bombers for Boeing, expanding the range of work for which women could be recognized, and their by their potential gender roles.



Apropos your "backlash" comment above, after the war, as the men came home, there was a concerted effort amongst many different persons and institutions to get women back into the home, and back into their traditional roles. We see it partly in areas like heavy industry and education, but it is especially clear in advertising and popular culture. Women were routinely represented as less competent than men, as in this 1953 Alcoa Aluminum ad.


Women's magazines took the lead in this, outlining the role of housewife for young married women. Notice how man-centric that role is in this 1955 piece below from Housekeeping Monthly: listen to him, make the evening is his, don't ask why he is late or question his judgment-- and KNOW YOUR PLACE.  In university admissions as well as the job market, this image of woman's REAL role choked off access. Wages and the law reflected this assumption about the real place of women.

The feminist revolution of the '60s and 70s was a backlash against public affirmation of this traditional role. Those who value women's equality should recognize who won it and from whom. And now, in Butker's speech and the Daily Mail link you provided we are seeing a backlash to feminism and the advance of women's rights. But thanks to feminism, blatant submission is less acceptable. But the underlying message is the same--woman's place is in the home, serving her man as wife and mother. And if enough people agree, access--choice--will close off again.

So that's why I'm not happy to hear of a surge in sales of Butker's jersey. If, as you say, there will always be a backlash to something, we have the power of deciding to which backlash we contribute. I choose to contest this one.