mokhtar@ubc-vision.CDN (Farzin Mokhtarian) (04/05/84)
I feel that I should make my remarks about `feminism and power' clearer. It wasn't an intent of that article to encourage women to initiate more often. I used the `apple' example to show that sticking to social roles could severely limit one's freedom, but the question of social roles is far more general than `who initiates first?'. Although the case of a woman initiating first could possibly indicate that she does not feel as bound by social roles, it could also simply mean the adoption of a new social role, namely, the new role of women as initiators. That does not necessarily make things any better. Roles can stay with people for all of their lives whether they initiate first or not. It is the existence of roles that I believe takes away one's freedom and individuality. This may seem like a very subtle, perhaps even non-existent problem to you. I believe that's because they are so ingrained in the daily life that their presence is not even felt by many. But remember that next time you expect someone to live up to a social role, you might be pressuring them to let go of their individuality to be accepted. It only seemed that this could have been a more important concern for feminism since it struggles for `freedom' and freedom is lost when roles imposed.