Wednesday, May 14, 2008

I'm offended...and a little bummed

Yesterday there was a post on Brazen Careerist that got my blood boiling. The basic jist of the article was that chicks rule and dudes drool. A Gen Y woman wrote the piece and when I posted my disdained she responded by saying that the GenerationXpert misunderstood.

I say I do not misunderstand. I say that we have swung from, "men are superior" to "women are superior." And I hate it. Men and women are definitely different, but neither is superior.

I sent the link to most of my friends, and only Kristina went to the site and expressed her disdain for this rhetoric. That's why I was kind of bummed. My husband said he was too busy drooling to post.

Here's the thing: we are dissing the men and boys in our lives and we shouldn't. I'm old enough to remember a bit of sexism (I tried to be an alter boy and was thrown out of the alter boy meeting when I was in 4th grade). But you can't have it both ways. You can be down on men and not want men to be down on women.

So here's what I think: equal means equal - it does not mean I am superior.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was definitely a lame post. Brings to my mind the saying that it's better to say nothing and have people think that you're an idiot than open your mouth and erase all doubt.

But that post combined with your last one effectively got this X'er over my frustration with Gen Y. Yes, they think everything is about them. Yes, at least some of them think Gen Y women are leaders - and superior to men - and in other generations women weren't. Yes, they think they're going to inherit the earth from Boomers. But we X'ers can go on quietly saving the galaxy as we've been doing for the past 20 years. We don't need their recognition because we just do it.

Anonymous said...

I had no idea that post would cause such an uproar, particularly when I put little of my own opinion in it and just reported opinions and research from other sources.

And perhaps that's where the problem lies. I should have said more of what I thought. Which I tried to do in the comments - it's funny to me that I said almost exactly "men and women are definitely different, but neither is superior," and you still believe I said something else.

It's great that we're all able to express what we feel, even if we don't agree with each other. That is, in fact, the beauty of blogging. I don't think it means that we have to pit up against each other though.

I talked to "Hercules" about the issue the night after I posted it, we had a very heated discussion and then we continued happily on with our night. Why we can't have the same type of meaningful dialogue online baffles me.

We need to talk about the problems and issues that both men and women face in order to move forward effectively.