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Officecat, Iâve said this before, but feminist =/= hating men. Iâm an feminist and I like men very much. :)
I will say that I donât think that Lynn is an feminist at all. She has Liz be an teacher which is typically an female-dominated job, and she had her first child very soon after marriage, which is very traditional. Out of all her friends, we see Candace the most as an adult, but we donât even know if she did become an psychologist!
For Deanna, Mikeâs wife, she was an pharmacist, but she was never shown on the job, and she was always shown at home parenting and cleaning while Mike worked on his book. In addition to that, Lynn had Deanna quit her high-paying job and open an sewing school, which practically demands that Mike support her on his writing instead of the other way around, which would have made more sense. Mike was almost never shown doing any housework. He was there to be the fun parent, however. With the wife and girlfriend of Mikeâs two friends, Tracey was an SAHM and Carleen worked for her boyfriend. No outside of the home stimulation for those two.
Elly was an SAHM who ventured out sometimes to have an job. One was non-paying, and the other was the bookstore her husband bought for her. She was also always shown doing all of the housework, and instead of asking/making the others help her, she complains. With Ellyâs friends, Annie was an stay at home mother who chose to stay with an cheating husband instead of divorcing him. Connie was an single mother and a radiologist, but never brought her work home with her. She never had any complaints/complements about people on the job or how she was being paid, etc. She was, however shown as a desperate man-chaser when the storyline focused on her. Otherwise she was only there to listen to Elly complain over coffee.
Not to leave April out, but she, aside from Candace, probably has the least feminine job, but since she was still an teenager when the strip ended, we only have one line to support that. I will end this with the fact that the one female character who did have the drive to climb to the top was the âevilâ character, Anthonyâs wife, Therese.
Lynn had an exciting life (an cartoonist married to an flying dentist), she couldnât let her female characters have some excitement too? I still think her worst mistake was making Liz move home from Mtigwaki, to an boring suburban life.
I do think you are right though, Lynn doesnât like men. Sheâs jealous of them, and hates them for the wrongs they have done to her, being cheated on twice will do that to someone, I guess.
I think the difference between the silent treatment and staying quiet so you donât say things youâll regret is the fact that an mature person would say, âIâm too angry to talk to you right now. I want to be left alone. Weâll talk about this later.â or something similar to that, instead of walking about in an huff, refusing to say a word. Not throwing anything would be a definite plus!
I also agree, that while John screwed up big time, it wasnât all on him to get his family out of it. If Elly had any suspicions about the hovel they stayed in not being Tedâs nice cabin, she would have taken some incentive and asked the store owner about it or asked to use his phone. But neither of them had any suspicions at all, preferring to make jokes at Tedâs expense.
If I was writing this comic strip, I would have had Elly call Ted, and then when they got to the nice cabin, she tells John that itâs his turn to cook and clean and that she was going to get into the sauna. Or, they could have gone to the right cabin in the first place, and discovered that it had been flooded very recently. That would make sure there was a lot of wacky hijinks without the toxic family relationships.
I donât blame John for coming up with that zingerâŚthe silent treatment is something an grown up woman shouldnât do. Throwing things too? How old is Elly supposed to be? Sheâs the only one who ever throws things in this strip as far as I can remember. If John threw something at Elly, it would be called abuse.
Oh pleaseâŚthis is nothing! I used to do this with my brother and friends all of the time when I was a kid, and we didnât break anything. My mom was probably very happy that we could amuse ourselves very easily while she did other stuff she needed to do. Elly is such a lightweight!
As for boys being boys and girls being girlsâŚI was a well rounded girl. I liked to read and play barbies and in the mud, ride dirt bikes, play video games and do my hair and make up. I donât see why little kids have to be shoved into his and hers boxes. Itâs sad to see that there are people who think this should still happen. Let your kids be kids!
I canât do without my phone and texting. But I donât have my phone attached to my hands 24/7. If I donât want to be bothered at a certain time, I either donât answer if itâs unimportant, or tell the person that Iâm busy and will answer better later. Everyone I know respects that rule. It isnât hard to enforce.
I think one of the troubles with people being apathetic about womenâs rights now is that they donât realize what life really was like before women got the rights they have now, that there were so many small and large limitations on women. Like wearing pants or having your own credit card. Those two issues are such an non-issue now that itâs hard to wrap your head around the fact that they were very big issues only 50 years ago.
Lew, raising a child until they are old enough to go to school is not a âfive year vacationâ. You should know better than to say something like that.
Some people want to work 100 hour weeks, others donât. Itâs never divided down gender lines.
Thanks for backing me up, Celtic, Lindz and Teresa! Youâre right, we have come a good ways since the 70s (I wasnât even born yet) but still have a while to go, judging by some of the comments on here in 2010.
OkayâŚwhy are women accepting that the word âfeministâ is now a dirty word? One that they wonât touch because theyâre not one of THOSEâŚa man-hater. That really bothers me, especially in a world where every minority is taking back all of their identity-names that has become âdirtyâ, Black, Deaf, Brown, GayâŚetc. Even the really dirty ones, like the N-word.
Being a feminist never meant hating men, it meant equalityâŚin all areas of life, for both men and women. And yes, I would like to see more women recruited for the military. It would bring more balance to military life.
I think this really means that John b-b-qs only once or twice a year, which is not often enough to improve his technique. This is pretty much like me and bowling. I go bowling once a year and have very dismal scores every time. So, John has to relearn every time, and that means the burgers go from hunks of charcoal to slightly overdone by the time John is finished, and since he is last, he gets the best burgers.
I can get Mikeâs complaints here. No one wants the burnt-to-a-crisp burgers so they get palmed off to the kids. Though in this case, they really should have gone to the dog, and the kids get the next batch of burgers which is slightly less worse.
Officecat, Iâve said this before, but feminist =/= hating men. Iâm an feminist and I like men very much. :)
I will say that I donât think that Lynn is an feminist at all. She has Liz be an teacher which is typically an female-dominated job, and she had her first child very soon after marriage, which is very traditional. Out of all her friends, we see Candace the most as an adult, but we donât even know if she did become an psychologist!
For Deanna, Mikeâs wife, she was an pharmacist, but she was never shown on the job, and she was always shown at home parenting and cleaning while Mike worked on his book. In addition to that, Lynn had Deanna quit her high-paying job and open an sewing school, which practically demands that Mike support her on his writing instead of the other way around, which would have made more sense. Mike was almost never shown doing any housework. He was there to be the fun parent, however. With the wife and girlfriend of Mikeâs two friends, Tracey was an SAHM and Carleen worked for her boyfriend. No outside of the home stimulation for those two.
Elly was an SAHM who ventured out sometimes to have an job. One was non-paying, and the other was the bookstore her husband bought for her. She was also always shown doing all of the housework, and instead of asking/making the others help her, she complains. With Ellyâs friends, Annie was an stay at home mother who chose to stay with an cheating husband instead of divorcing him. Connie was an single mother and a radiologist, but never brought her work home with her. She never had any complaints/complements about people on the job or how she was being paid, etc. She was, however shown as a desperate man-chaser when the storyline focused on her. Otherwise she was only there to listen to Elly complain over coffee.
Not to leave April out, but she, aside from Candace, probably has the least feminine job, but since she was still an teenager when the strip ended, we only have one line to support that. I will end this with the fact that the one female character who did have the drive to climb to the top was the âevilâ character, Anthonyâs wife, Therese.
Lynn had an exciting life (an cartoonist married to an flying dentist), she couldnât let her female characters have some excitement too? I still think her worst mistake was making Liz move home from Mtigwaki, to an boring suburban life.
I do think you are right though, Lynn doesnât like men. Sheâs jealous of them, and hates them for the wrongs they have done to her, being cheated on twice will do that to someone, I guess.