tron@fluke.UUCP (Peter Barbee) (06/19/85)
I pulled this from an article Nancy Parsons wrote concerning Affirmative Action to illustrate a perceived paradox. My observation has little to do with AA though. I'm not in any way picking on Nancy, this is just an example to illustrate my point. >It is unfortunate, but true, that, however much we may try to treat people >as individuals, we invariably bring a whole raft of preconceived notions >(e.g., women are emotional, not rational) with us at a subconscious level >when evaluating the qualifications of people. > My question is; why in the above paragraph is it implied that women are as rational as men (contrary to the traditional stereotypes) but it is still "accepted" that women have many of the old stereotypical attributes, like sensitivity, etc. I thought that many of these values and traits are in kind of a ying and yang situation - and that it may therefore be impossible to be both sensitive and aggresive for instance. I guess I'm reacting to my perception that many women are effectivley saying "I can be anything I want, and I'll be as good or better at it than men". I think there are some tradeoffs. In my (possibly limited) understanding most of the elements of our traditional roles are essentially complementary (women are taught to "weak" so that men will appear strong, for instance), and therefore I don't think the average person can possess both qualities. Isn't our social revolution leading to where women and men will draw forom the same set of attributes rather than women becoming like men (heaven forbid!) or men becoming like women (not much better but perhaps more peaceful)? This article is written as a question, not as a judgement. Sincerely, Peter B