If Shirley Chisholm had not regarded gender as important, she would not have gone to teach at Mount Holyoke College, which is the oldest surviving women's college in the country.

I was wondering if someone would post that quote (so I wouldn't have to Google on it and post it myself).

We were honored by her presence and her acumen. Holyoke has a tradition of women in government, such as Frances Perkins, the first woman to be a cabinet member, and Elaine Chao (okay, okay), but she's in Bush's cabinet. And that reminds me: when alumna Ella Grasso ran for governor, people were nice enough to say that they didn't want a "governess." I always thought that neatly anticipated the current libertarian denunciations of the Nanny State.

What I'm reading here from the anonymi convinces me that I it's not yet time to go to the Great Dino Dying Place. There's a need for us yet.

While we're doing ideological paleontology, it seems to me that Mark Rudd and Stokely Carmichael were both pieces of work. I heard Rudd's sexism at Holyoke for myself.

What's the revisionist thought on Stokely's "The only position for women in the Movement is prone"?

Yes, I realize that's all old news. The New Generation doesn't hear it. I suppose I would be wasting its time by quoting Santayana, who lived several generations before I did, and who said "those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it."

It's too easy to dismiss that as Women's Studies 101. Or American Studies 101 -- gender-free.

I'm impressed by your comment to Ruth Alice. Your example of how you and others in your generation see young Latino males replacing women as waitstaff and short-order cooks is well taken, but perhaps limited by geography and city size. In NYC, where I live, it works just fine. I don't know if it would work as well, say, in a state that was primarily rural.

The point is that these are not desirable jobs and that people who hold them do need an opportunity to turn them over as they educate themselves and rise in the world. This needs to be made possible by access to education and healthcare.

I will be interested in watching to see how compensation is doled out for the generation of men and women in which more women enter college than men. I am not optimistic, but I've been wrong before. It's gotten much better. It can get better yet. The charge that feminism is an elite white women's movement was with us in the 1970s and seems to be with us now -- notwithstanding "foremothers" like Sojourner Truth.

I think it's too easy. I think it's a version of the mommy wars, designed to be divisive. As such, -I- think it's unnecessary.

Do you?

It's not my cup of tea - in fact, it seems curiously retro to me -- but if it causes just one woman to get a mammogram and have breast cancer diagnosed in time to cure her, it'll be worthwhile.

If I've got your name wrong, I apologize: I just got home from the office.

A couple of points. You don't sound traitorous, you sound sensible, and you're talking about areas in which I'm not well-schooled. I went to a women's college. It was -all- ours, and the feeling of being the -main- reason for something, rather than a "coed" add-on was empowering. When I applied for graduate school, I wasn't aware of a men's file and a women's file: I -did- learn the history of female scholars in my field, suspected that I got low-balled on various funding, but got enough to get through, so WTF. That was a long time ago.

I've never had the "it's our turn now" mentality, except about the sorts of Queen Bee Mommies who tried to make single and/or child-free women feel like pariahs. Unfortunately, that pitted woman against woman, which I regret. Your reaction that you and your female classmates have more available resources than male classmates is interesting, and I mean that.

Does it mean that you are at parity, but that you see parity as having more? That horrid chestnut -- when I was your age -- WILL fall off the tree: divesting people of a superfluity that they should not have is GOING to appear like deprivation. Are your male colleagues legitimately deprivileged, or has the ground been leveled?

And will that be the same in five years? Ten? Twenty? Keep your eye on it.

I'm profoundly impressed, however, by your apparent willingness to protest what you see as having more than your share. In fact, I think that's one of the most moral statements I've heard come out of the Movement, and it makes me proud.

Thank you.

I think there's a point when anyone gets onto the Nets that s/he gets into flamewars. Maybe you didn't start the fight, but you don't feel like backing down, you do feel like finishing it, and you try to pursue it to its logical conclusion.

Some of these -are- flames. Some are just very vehement and make people who prefer a ratio of less noise to signal call them flames in the hope that a sysop (do people still use that term?) will shut them down.

I liked the definition of the troll posted by that former moderator (apologies: pre-caffeine, I've forgotten your name). That's the classic troll. The idea isn't to discuss, the idea is to insult as badly as possible, or at the very least distract people from the topic at hand onto the troll while denying it's a classic ploy for attention.

Some of them are pathetic, some are vicious, and some are downright scary.

If you're trolling because you want a good fight, you may simply be a flamewar artist. Personally, systematic trolling of a rightwing board strikes me as painful and potentially risky. Systematic trolling of a leftwing board? We see it here, and it's a PITA.