I share Allison Keiley’s sentiments concerning feminism (“If women ruled the world, I’d be really tired all the time,” March 29, pg. 7), but I think she missed some major points of the documentary, If Women Ruled the World.
The title tells you right away that this film isn’t about men and women sharing power roles, or else it would be called If Men and Women (for the sake of this letter, and vice versa of course) Ruled the World. I certainly didn’t expect to find any male presence at their dinner, and I definitely wasn’t surprised that the topic of conversation would be about female struggle in the workplace.
Concerning the lack of testosterone, I know many women who would feel very uncomfortable talking about their confrontations with sexism in front of men. It may not be idealistic in terms of moving forward, but that should only tell you how far we’ve actually come. What you may see as “blah, blah, blah” only proves to me that feminism is still an ongoing movement. Issues like balancing a career along with a family life and the failure to accept a fully independent woman are still just that – issues we have not completely dealt with. You also claim that we should be striving for equality between the sexes, but should the differences just be disregarded for the sake of the ends? There is a school of feminists who believe that women should celebrate these differences and that forsaking them would be giving into qualifications set by a male-dominated society. I think their viewpoint merits some credit.
So by all means, throw your own party and invite the boys. But please don’t boo and hiss the girls next door. Don’t forget, we’re all headed for the same goal, just in different ways.
Linda Tan
CAS ’06