Following up on Elsa's post, I hope I don't start a riot here....but do you think the feminist movement has anything to do with this?  I was just thinking how much things have changed as far as women claiming their sexuality and serving it on a hot platter and the sassiness that goes a long with it.  Do you think it's possible that we've (as a whole) rubbed that attitude onto little girls? 

I really hope I don't offend anyone, especially anyone who has contributed to women's rights.  I'm just concerned we took it and ran with it, to our own detriment.  I'm just basing this on my own personal observations around me. 

I don't know. Certainly there was marketed "girl power" which seemed to mostly involve looking sexy. Women are more open about being sexual, but the increasingly sexualized culture can't be all feminism. Hip-hop songs talking about a woman's booty aren't exactly feminist manifestos. (But "sex-postive" feminists are less likely to say anything bad about cultural things like that, so who knows?)

We've come a long way from sexual repression to overexposure, but I think more people are beginning to realize that. Maybe we'll see a great backlash against feminism(s) with Saturn in Libra?

(sorry this isn't more helpful. As for the article- ewwww.)

I consider myself a humanist feminist.

I find it interesting that people slam Freud but he was one of the first (the first?) to talk about women's sexuality. That was many years ago, and women had other struggles the Movement at large was concerned with before open expression of sexuality. Ie. the right to vote, for one...

In consideration of this I don't believe that this specifically has to do with women's right specifically. To me is seems more to do with erosion of the familial unit, which some people argue has to do with the mother leaving the home and going to work...my parents definitely thought this, but times have changed and not a lot of families can support themselves with one income.

I think there are a lot of complex reasons why the familial unit has eroded in the way it has. But whenever I think of it I remember this conversation I overheard between my friend (who is 40) and her mother:

"Mum were you happy being a mother?"

"Women your age are so concerned whether or not you're happy...we never thought about things like that."

It just made me think about how things really are, for all of us. A large percentage of women on these boards would not have had the luxury of sitting down and chatting away to each other with the frequency we do. Once in a while, sure--if we were within a larger family unit, yes, but chances are it was done over household work. We'd fit our time together in between tasks that were for the purpose of the entire family's well-being.

I don't believe that the sexualization of children is anything new. But I think the proliferation and level of commodification of it IS new. These are new ways of expressing the dark side of humanity and the Internet has provided many people who may not have even looked before, to look. I mean, I don't watch TV...how would I have seen that if not for the Internet and people talking about it? So I see this image, and yes maybe 10 years ago this little girl would be dressed up like this for Hallowe'en (anyone grow up when Madonna was starting out) but we would not be seeing it everywhere and therefore making a weird subconscious decision that it was the "New Normal."

ANYWAY blather blather blather!

Thanks for the topic...not offened you wondered about this in the least. Equality for anyone can't happen without dialogue

Not sure what feminism has to do with women thinking of themselves as sex-objects.  I thought that was the opposite of feminism.  Young girls wanting to be appreciated only as a sex-toy, the adults in their life did a piss-poor job of instilling any self-respect. Raising our girls to believe in themselves, look forward to their futures, that is more my idea of feminism.  

Good question. IMHO, I don't think it would be fair to lay this at the feet of feminism. I think that this has to do with the much larger cultural and sexual revolution that started in the 1960s, of which feminism is a small subset.

I think most things tend to swing from one side to the other. When we are near the end of a pendulum swing, like I think we are now, we tend to demonize the near end and glorify the other end of the pole. Nowadays, a lot of people have had it with the free love, anything goes philosophy (and rightly so), and tend to want to go back to the perceived good old days of the 50s.

Back in the 50s, people had had it with repression (and rightly so, especially for anyone who didn't "fit the mold"), and tended to glorify a world where anything goes and there are no rules.

Ironically, when people (myself included) get outraged, we often throw the baby out with the bathwater, thus ensuring another strong swing of the pendulum will ensue (with other bad results in another 30-40 years). I guess that's just human nature.

I don't think, personally, that either extreme end of the spectrum is healthy. And I think Elsa's post that you quoted would seem to support the idea that we have reached the extreme, "anything goes" end of the spectrum.

Just my opinion, at any rate.

PS: Saturn Uranus, anyone?

shell, as I told a friend the other day, we used to have men supporting us with our children, we could work if we wanted and we had dick.

Now we have no choice but to work, we raise our kids alone and we have no dick.

Now it that isn't ground lost, I don't know what is.

individualist

PS, no we have not reached the extreme but we probably will. Keep going the way we are and women are going to be treated like dogs. Many women already are but don't seem to realize it.

shell, as I told a friend the other day, we used to have men supporting us with our children, we could work if we wanted and we had dick.

Now we have no choice but to work, we raise our kids alone and we have no dick.

Now it that isn't ground lost, I don't know what is.

ACHHH, TOOO TRUE.

Hmm, so how to go about reversing the pendulum? That's the question. Or is it beyond one person's abilities?

 (well, I mean, beyond not dressing your daughter up as a tart.)

It has to get worse before it gets better. :(

We could work in a very small range of fields and only on the lower levels, if we wanted to. And if our husbands met someone else they liked better, they could kick us to the curb with no marketable skills. I've got nothing against the stay at home mom situation at all, but it wasn't all rosy.

true, user.

In reality life is never "rosy" for long, nor is is fair.

 Oops, I wrote something that could be considered sarcastic. I didn't mean it like that.

It's just that I'm only now starting to consider- what if feminism is not good for society and the costs to the individual woman are not as great as the cost to the family.

I don't have any resolution to this question. I will say that if it hadn't of happened then, it would've happened now. The fight for equality is inevitable, regardless of if its mislead, or if it ends up becoming a negative move. I think the next step now that women have stopped feeling caged, exhibited their freedom, and yada yada is that they're going to make the choice to recreate the nuclear family. Straight women I mean. So it'll come back around, IMO. How soon? Who knows.

I don't think it's feminism.. i think like forever it's the exploitation of women.. under the guise that this is where feminism has led us. Prostitution and exploitation has been around forever and ever and woah there it is again. 

Agreed it shows a need to scale back and fix our values once again. Doubt going back to before the 50s would help. Moving forward with new understanding will. 

I belive Elsa post on the little 9 years old girl relates to the topic of bad parenting,

since she does not have herself the atonomy to express counshously her own sexuality,

she is just involved in a bounderless attitude toward sexuality.

I belive feminism istself makes no sense if the point is to have power over men, I'm libra and I go for equality.

And sexuality IS and INDIVIDUALISTIC TOPIC and not collective.

So I do not approve a sexual culture, where sex turns in to a leding power.

Elsa says " we used to have men supporting us with our children, we could work if we wanted and we had dick. "

that is when the socierty held the "couple" as a value.

And that has changed.

Now we have to just stand for ourself, and in this contest some women feel free to get power/money trough theyr sex, as it's definetly easy (expecially when you are detached).

I belive if there's ever a time to realize how important is to protect couple values (saturn in libra), this is it.

Of course uranus in aries is pointing out self sufficiency and indipendence as something that will never work with the saturn in libra values.

I hope this will give us a chance to decide what to stand for.

"Now we have to just stand for ourself, and in this contest some women feel free to get power/money trough theyr sex, as it's definetly easy (expecially when you are detached)."

It depends on what you consider "power".

I'm talkin about material power,

 since materials (economy, politics and as consequence social matters) is leading a whole culture on his own.

I talking about social and not personal power.

Liz says "Doubt going back to before the 50s will help. Moving forward with new understanding will".

That's just it. Yes, the values that seem to be lost (are they really lost, clearly looking around these boards they still exist) should be cultivated again, but not in the same old way they were, otherwise you're in a never-ending loop of bullshit. If we never learn from our mistakes, we're bound to repeat them, right?