Some Things Don't Change, Like Feminism

This is an article about the Titanic, written shortly after the incident itself. The main issue was the presence of chivalry (namely "Women and Children First") during its sinking.

SUFFRAGETTES DENY CHIVALRY ON TITANIC, which may be a partly misleading title, shows the diversity of opinion within contemporary feminism: while you did have some honorable feminists noting the heroism of the men who sacrificed their lives without applauding the institution itself, the rest either tried to concoct rationalizations as to why such a double standard ought to exist, or even to equate the death of the men with the suffering the women went through having to watch their husbands drown.

It's interesting to note that chivalry hasn't changed much in the past century, though there's been improvement. Men are still frequently expected to be the ones to ask a woman on a date, to pay for the date, to open doors for women, to carry their things around, and so forth. On the other hand, there certainly has been a lot of change in women's favor since then, so what's the difference? The main issue seems to be that there's no cohesive men's movement along with feminism.

Feminism, from the beginning, has done more than its share to keep men out of the gender debate, with the end result that most modern commentary comes from women's perspective, and there's very little political pressure to further issues pertinent to men. Feminism has operated as, for the most part, a women's interest group - which is all well and good, since women most certainly have important interests that need to be advocated. The problem is when feminists pretend this is about equality, not women's interests. This is not equality, or men would have been granted equal representation in feminist organizations, at least to provide some counter-bias. Equality this is not, and until men create our own organizations (or, even better, organizations that are truly egalitarian), the gender debate will continue to be dominated by one gender to the detriment of all others.

One final link: Top Ten Feminist Myths