[LMB] [SPAM?] Re: OT: Gender

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "PAT MATHEWS" <mathews55 at msn.com>
adin

> >From: "Dusty Jackson" <dustyjackson at gmail.com>
>
>>Actually I can imagine that a great many people would try it.  I would do
>>it
>>in a heartbeat, if it was available without all the messy surgery.  I hate
>>being female.
>
> Second serious question - if you could escape being considered socially
> female - that is, be considered exempt from the need to wear makeup and 
> high
> heels and to look sexy even in businesswear and to flirt and to be subject

Eeeep, eeep, eeep....

That is not ":socially female" that is "Madison Avenue marketing campaign 
promoting consumerism boxing women into chattel" !!!!

Back when I worked at GTE Strategic Systems Division, an official memo went 
out at the Westborough MA facility I worked at telling women they should NOT 
be wearing high spike heels, they should be wearing boots with wafflestomper 
low heeled soles for being outside in....

Back when I was in college, one of my classmates saw me in a skirt one day; 
his reaction? He actually said, "You're in a skirt, that's DISGUSTING!  You 
should get back into your jeans!"

There was the say that I was at work at Los Angeles Air Force Station, I 
had -eye makeup- on.   That';s all, no lipstick, no foundation, no face 
powder, just eye makeup.  A mustang had-been-enlisted-Marine-in-Vietname 
coworker said to me, "You're wearing too much makeup."  So I stopped and 
nobody there every commented about me and makeup again....  and almost no 
one since in my work in high tech has said anything since. Sometimes female 
friends who are NOT in high tech have said things about makeup, but I can't 
remember the last time a man that I worked with made any sort of comment.... 
one or two older fellows MIGHT have when I was at GTE long ago, 
that's -might-.

When I was in the Air Force at LA Air Force Station, one of my commanders 
was an Aggie from Texas A&M, and his attitude regarding female officers' 
shoes was that anything that had a heel over an inch and a half was Too High 
and inappropriate--he pointed out the pumps shoes the female PR Officers was 
wearing, which were two inches higher and NOT spikes, as being inappropriate 
because they were too high.... He retired as a 3 star general I think, years 
after I'd left the Air Force.  (And his daughter was following in his 
footsteps in the cadet corps at Texas A&M, and he was very proud of having a 
daughter follow him there as a cadet.)

> to flirting - would that be enough? I can see a culture setting aside a

I think that there are a number of things going ong--Madison Avenue is 
trying to deliberately suppress women as having control over their own lives 
for choices as regarding clothing and such, because Madison Ave wants 
shopping addicts buying whatever CRAP and don't-let-the-consumer-have-any 
REAL control that the so-called "free market" is pushing... that is the 
manufacturers and PR types decide what the products are, what the Colors of 
the years and season are (that got aired on Making Light a few years back, 
there is a HUGE today about color selection for the upcoming year and its 
seasons, with the consumer getting only the choice of refusal of whatever 
colors least appeal to them....), what the characteristics of the products 
are....

The supermarket checkout stand magazines make their money on ad revenue from 
companies pushing sales and the trend of the week in fashion.... they want 
volume and quanity not quality, and certainly not consumers who own their 
OWN decision making rather than follow slavishly whatever the fashion 
moneyhungry industry is pushing this week....

> class of women who are recognized as women, but are considered Out of the
> Game - once it's clear to them and to all around them that they have no
> interest in men. Well, at least not that way.
>
> Pat, who royally dislikes the entire set of requirements for 'looking like 
> a
> woman" and would actually give up men to escape it if need be.