But then I was never a "liberal" feminist or an activist feminist.  The women's studies university programs always seemed to me to be over the top.  I always and still think that not utilizing 51% of the population in a even-handed manner in the workplace was and is just plain dumb. 

Wages should be gender and color blind.

Benefits should be gender and color blind.  (This includes family leave and related benefits.)

Politics should be gender and color blind.

Life decisions should be gender and color blind.

As for working and having it all - I just want to work.  I have been main support of my little family for over 10 years now.  When the boys were at home, and my husband was working full time, I made more than he did.  (Which is more and more common.)  I went back to work when my oldest son was two weeks old.  I took a break for four years when he was three, another break to complete college when the said oldest was in high school, and have worked pretty much straight until just this last year. 

I don't agree with a lot of women on both sides of the coin.  I'm hanging out on the edge of the coin with the rest of us middle-roaders.  I think it is great that they are active and involved in their communities regardless of their views.  And I hope they are all making the same amount of money as their male peers.  Which is what I thought feminism was all about from the start.

Quotas were put in place because dead white men refused to hire minorities or women.  I was there.  I heard the arguments - "they won't fit in", "they don't have technical/mathematical abilities", "they will only get upset about all the swearing", "they will only get pregnant and want to leave", ad nauseum.  They had to be forced to hire, thus the quotas.  I'm thinking lately that it is time for the quotas to go away.  Seems to me they have served their purpose.

The wage gap is calculated by comparing people of both genders in the same job with the exact same description and the exact same seniority.  If Joe has 20 years experience  and an exemplary record and makes $500,000 a year and Mary has 20 years experience and an exemplary record and makes $350,000 a year in the exact same career, industry and job --- how is this reasonable or fair?  How would Joe feel if their positions were reversed? 

Fair is important in the work place and elsewhere.  I saw reference to a study with monkeys not too long ago where the monkeys would give food to another monkey who had no food.  They shared voluntarily.  If you feel you are not getting a fair shake, your productivity will decline.  And this is bad for everyone - you, your team mates, your bosses.

So, EXC, my advice to you is to examine your career choices and your aptitudes and abilities.  You sure sound like you are not happy where you are.

I never considered myself that radical.  But then, they had a lot further to go than I did.  I was sometimes the first female IT person and/or the first female engineer my companies had hired.  Maybe as a token, but I never paid attention and it wasn't long before no one else was noticing, either.  Now, there is progress.  No one notices -- that is a good thing.

I was fortunate in the women in my life.  My great-grandfather started a trucking (dray) business.  When my grandfather died, my uncle didn't want to take on the business just then.  So my grandmother owned and operated a trucking company from when I was 5 1/2 until I was 14.  My mother and father worked at the company as well.  I have no idea how to be a stay at home wife or mother.  What did they do all day?  I'm bored to tears being unemployed.

When I was in high school, the advanced math teacher had a PhD in mathematics.  High school trig was the only position she could get when she graduated.  The physics/chemistry teacher was hysterical.  A wizened up old lady, she had a PhD in both subjects.  She liked to tell the story that she got 99% on her doctoral finals because she correctly translated the French word for filament as in that context it was not thread as the examiners claimed.  Funny old bird.  She had taught high school all her career and had moved to Yuma because that was the only high school that would hire her.  But at least I had concrete examples that women could do very well in the math and sciences.

I didn't say I liked them or that I "celebrated" them.  I said it is good that they can speak their minds and they don't have to stay home and wash dishes all day. 

Equality is achieved when we no longer ask the question about men and women, white-black-brown-purple-with-pink-polka-dots.  When "they" are just "us".  We have a long way to go.  But I still feel we have made big strides in my lifetime.

I have met women who want to stay home, who think it is their "highest calling" to keep house, raise children, and go to church.  They are vastly in the minority.  And I will defend their right to do so.  If their husband can afford all those children and a stay at home wife, who am I to get in the middle of their lives? 

When I talk to a woman about these far right speakers, I point out that they are not at home cleaning house.  They are on talk shows, book tours, radio and podcasts.  They are not greeting hubby with a drink dressed only in Saran (tm) wrap.  Someone else is cleaning house and dealing with children.  Hubby gets to tell the cook what he wants for dinner.  Most are sensible - they laugh and agree it is nothing more than wishful thinking.

There is a danger in the fundamentalist movement.  I just finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Allowing those kinds of religions - not just Islam - to take over our governments would be a huge problem.  It has happened in some countries, I realize that.  I don't believe it will happen in the US because such a large part of the work force is female, married, with children.

I'm in.  Where do I sign?  As long as we don't have to speak to each other more than once a year or so, it should work okay.

I have long wondered why Swedish men and women willingly accept the welfare state with benefits like state subsidized year long maternity and paternity leave. All of the issues that mainstream feminism have clamored for are realities in Scandinavia. The Swedes gladly accept high income tax to subsidize government programs geared towards equality. Americans do not. Why? Are Swedish men less sexist than American men? Or does it really have anything to do with sexism at all?

An easy scapegoat among mainstream liberal feminists for a lot of womens' woes is the evil "patriarchy" that seems to have vanished in ABBA land. Rather than blame men, American feminists have yet to look inwards to realize why a lot of their goals are not achieved ie. LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, sexual freedom, etc.. American feminists have the basic flaw that all Americans share. They're AMERICANS!!!!! The 3 greatest roadblocks for liberal feminists in US today have nothing to do with male domination. They are the 3 key  coveted components of American culture which are religion, distrust and fear.

Americans distrust government, corporate CEOs, doctors, lawyers, car dealerships and practically any facet of American culture you can think of. And this distrust is not unfounded. So many Americans put faith in Obama as a leader for change and he like Bush, he bailed out the banks. And Americans will not collectively put faith in a small clique of women who say they fight for womens' rights but once in office, they'll pull a Hillary and support the Iraq war.

And with distrust comes fear. There's constant fear of terrorism, the government, corporations, etc.. And with fear and distrust, who do people turn to. Yes, Americans turn to Jesus. Oh yes, cum on my face with your holy semen Jesus! That is why mainstream feminism will not transform American society. Instead they will end up being just another group that pursue self interests and once in power couldn't really give a tinkers tit about women's rights or anyone's rights for that matter.

Contrast this with the Swedes who generally trust each other and thus not suprisingly trust women in power to do the right thing. A Swede will help his/her fellow Swede for year long maternity and paternity leave. And they trust each other to not massively procreate like Jon and Kate Gosselin and exploit the welfare system. Even the most die hard Andrea Dworkin lovin' radical American feminist would never, NEVER be willing to shell out more than half her salary towards taxes to provide Swedish-styled state sponsored child support for all the Jon and Kates in the US.

Meh, I don't see the point of this OP.

Any movement of such huge proportions, like the anti-slavery movement (which the women's suffrage movements fought alongside, even though they got burned in the end by not acquiring the right to vote), takes... for lack of a better word, balls. People have to be iconoclasts, and have to go a bit further to achieve a moderate outcome. Preaching moderation is wonderful, but I don't think our brains can handle the persuasive power of... compromise, lol. Usually, a fierce battle is fought either figuratively or literally, and eventually after the dust has settled there is a change in mindset on a macro level. That was achieved with feminism, and that means it won some battles. Saying it's a post-feminist society is as dumb as labeling some great band "post-punk." It really does a disservice to everyone involved. Feminism is no longer really an issue at the national level, and it would take the work of a lot of people to get exposure on whatever issues they have. In that sense, we have definitely moved on.

As for far right-wing women of high social status, that is nothing new. It is not the product of feminism. Their political ability (that is, the ceiling they can hit) has of course been facilitated by feminism, but the women you pointed out are not products of feminism at all. It has been in the US for centuries, and pre-dates the modern feminist movement, and possibly even the reaaaaal old temperance movements that women were the forefront of. Just look at Philis Schlafly. Her mindset is no different than the matrons in the South for hundreds of years.

In the end, you are decrying one ideology while tacitly endorsing another. This is how silly little false dichotomies arise. The solution is to not adhere to an ideology, but seek out logic and evidence to form a rational position.

The one-off about Sweden was another non sequitur and a nice last display of ignorance.

I already pointed to it in my last post. They [the pictures in your OP, or Schlafly, etc.] are not products of feminism. Only the ceiling they can attain was created by feminism, nothing else. Do you dispute this? Because then you would be contradicting yourself in your first post. So... you either admit you were wrong and just wanted to create a silly forum thread, or you continue to engage in this game at grasping at straws.

As for Sweden, different cultures evolve differently. This shouldn't be surprising considering the vast space and decidedly different modern history our two countries have endured. If you can go through the hundreds, even thousands of years of history and articulate what exact historical event prompted which specific change in the zeitgeist, you can make that attempt. But something tells me in this regard we are both wholly incapable of explaining why X is so in one country, and Y is so in the U.S. It probably involves vague references to "Western Culture" and Nazis. No thanks.

Also not sure why you lump in Norway and especially Denmark in with Sweden. Sigh.

Nope, just a common idiot.

I completely concur, my OP is totally consistent with your statement. It is logical to state that Stalin was a product of socialism, Napoleon was a product of Animalism even though they completely twisted and flushed those ideals down the toilet. Indeed Sarah Palin would not have reached the ceiling heights were it not for the tireless work of feminists ie. a product. You say tomaato, I say tomauto.....

And I am not blaming feminists. I am blaming a highly distrustful and hyperreligious culture that is the ceiling and not the actions of evil men. We're at a time when the majority of Americans do not accept evolution, atheists are the most despised group and 33% believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. The only American feminists with the balls to challenge theocracy and irrationalism are Wendy Kaminer and Susan Jacoby. And if the majority of feminists are like them, then I would argue that the good life can be achieved.

The proof is in the pudding:

The Islamization of Earth — starting with Sweden

You're Islamisists best friend, telling us how wonderful the European welfare state is while it becomes Islamisized in a few decades.

 *cackle*

What's hysterically funny to me is the (ostensible) reality that in Whacky, Far Left Europe there is little-to-no practical meaning to the words/phrases "foreign", "invasion", "nativism", "unwelcome vistors", "sovereign state", "closed borders", "human vermin", and (my favorite part of it) "personal responsibility".

So, because Europe's politicians have no concept of preserving the dignity of their own homeland and keeping the riff-raff of other nations out, their women get to look forward to wearing burkas in a few decades while everyone will be living under Shari-Ya Law.

Ain't socialism great?

The Islamo-fascists know that keeping your women in line and keeping them as breeding machines works as a means to take over a country. Especially when you have a leftist-dominated host that supports unrestricted welfare benefits, immigration and family size.

They're already succeeding.