Where the Boys Are

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>G'day Kel,
>
>>One day last September, there were two back-to-back events in adjacent
>>rooms at the Na-tional Press Club in Washington, D.C. "Beyond the ‘Gender
>>Wars,’" a symposium organized by the American Association of University
>  >Women (AAUW), was followed by a rejoinder from the Independent Women’s
>  >Forum (IWF), "The XY Files: The Truth Is Out There
About the Differences
>>Between Boys and Girls." Each event largely followed a predictable script.
>>On the AAUW side, there was verbiage about "gender, race, and class" and
>>hand-wringing about the "conservative backlash"; despite an occasional nod
>>to innate sex differences, "gender equity" was pointedly defined as "equal
>>outcomes." On the IWF side, there were affirmations of vive la différence
>>and warnings about the perils of trying to engineer androgyny; despite some
>>acknowledgment that there are not only differences between the sexes but
>>much overlap, the old-fashioned wisdom about men and women was treated as
>>timeless truth. And yet both discussions shared one major theme: the
>>suddenly hot issue of boys—to be more specific, boys as the victimized sex
>>in American education and culture
>
>Well, every conference needs a theme.  Reckon feminism is the best place to
>go right now for quality thinking about gender - and there is shit
>happening to and within boys right now that feminists seem in a better
>position to diagnose and treat than anyone else.  I don't think we need
>read into this that there's an implicit 'well, that's girls fixed' subtext,
>at all (if that's what you're thinking).
>
>Anyway, sex and gender is hard - no matter how confident people sound about
>these things, it always seems to me we're still groping in the proverbial
>on this stuff.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.

You, being an Australian, may not be aware of what the Independent 
Women's Forum stands for.  Visit the IWF website at 
<http://www.iwf.org/>.  It's a pseudo-feminist cultural-front group 
of the Right.  Here's the IWF mission statement:

*****   Mission Statement

The Mission of the Independent Women's Forum is to affirm women's 
participation in and contributions to a free, self-governing society.

The Independent Women's Forum speaks for those who:

Believe in individual liberty and responsibility for self-governance, 
the superiority of the market economy, and the imperative of equal 
opportunity for all.

Respect and appreciate the differences between, and the complementary 
nature of, the two sexes.

Affirm the family as the foundation of society.

Believe women are capable of defining and asserting their interests 
and concerns in private and public life, and reject the false view 
that women are the victims of oppression.

Believe political differences are best resolved at the ballot box, 
and therefore oppose court imposition of what the democratic process 
rejects.

Endorse individual recognition and reward based on work and merit, 
without regard to group membership or classification.

<http://www.iwf.org/about/mission.shtml>   *****

Yoshie