"Backlash" again
Topics: Sexism
14 Feb 1994
From: ervan
I resolved to only regale you with one more horror story per
week (or something like that). It was a hard call. But in the interest
of making a different point than before, my candidate is this
claim: The backlash against the feminism of the 1880's and the crash
of 1893 were either cause and effect or caused by the same attitude(p.60+/-1).
Ha Ha! Why this stuck in my mind is I just finished reading Milton
Friedman's "Money Mischief" about, amonger other things, 19th
century U.S. monetary history. The crash of 1893 lasted about two
years. Faludi has very odd notions of social opinion if she thinks
it goes up and down on a two year cycle. Regardless, the crash
was caused by fears that the "Free Silver Democrats" would gain power
and inflate the currency by resumption of silver backing of currency
at the ratio of 1 to 16 (versus gold which was then the standard).
What this has to do with feminism I cannot imagine. I just thought
it was an amusing instance of wild hypothesizing that almost no one
would be in a position to check.
I'm still thinking about the democracy and schools issue. I'm
trying consdense and codify the essence of our discussion while
adding something useful. It may be impossible to reach all of those
goals.
---Ervan
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