Women's Talk
Frankly, public discourse makes too much of gender.
I grew up in a society that treated women like children, controlling their presence in the workplace and preventing them from working outside the home with social controls known as
the "marriage ban". I feel no need to find links to this pernicious practice.
Like the bizarre practice of putting every well written book in Western Literature
on a banned index, this historical fact is just that... history.
I did not take the society I grew up in particularly seriously.
I just waited for it to change... and it did.
Things, despite climate change, fiscal stimulation and general hysteria in the workplace,
seem much more pleasant these day.
I grew up in a society that treated women like children, controlling their presence in the workplace and preventing them from working outside the home with social controls known as
the "marriage ban". I feel no need to find links to this pernicious practice.
Like the bizarre practice of putting every well written book in Western Literature
on a banned index, this historical fact is just that... history.
I did not take the society I grew up in particularly seriously.
I just waited for it to change... and it did.
Things, despite climate change, fiscal stimulation and general hysteria in the workplace,
seem much more pleasant these day.
posted by Tales from the Birch Wood. at
12:20
4 Comments:
When I was in high school, I refused to learn typing (a mistake), shorthand or any of those low-level office skills. In college, I avoided education, social work and nursing. Wound up as a journalist, which worked out quite well, even tho in the early days, a business lunch required hat, gloves and girdle, not to mention nylons. My daughter thought that typing was cool, so she did a course on tape & is now a whiz. Whenever the IT biz slows down, she fudges her background and quickly finds secretarial work.
Public discourse may not have any knowledge of gender: that's part of the beauty of the internet, and part of the sad loss of the new video technologies, bringing it all back....
I can type like a frenzy, thanks to the fact that all the teachers in the country went on strike for several weeks in the late 1960's and I spent the time practising.
I know what you mean about the secretarial syndrome, however.
Fearful that I would end my days being dictated to, I made sure to get onto a literature and language degree course.
The irony that it took decades to bring the dreams of the Sufragettes into the real world is probably best expressed by G.K. Chesterton...
"Ten thousand women marched through the streets of London saying 'we will not be dictated to,' and then went off to become stenographers."
As for the new video technologies, I doubt that you spend hours, Davimack, preparing for online video-conferencing. Happily, most people seem to still think I'm some sort of ageless old retainer of indeterminate gender, given the fact that this is what a gardener is supposed to be.
Of course anyone who reads my blog knows better...
Thank you both for such
Gardeners are always ageless and of indeterminate gender, aren't they? ;)
Nope - no hours of preparation whatsoever. Of course, I'm not actually doing paid work at the moment, either. :)
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