Intro to Humanities II Mar 2

Today our topic was Feminism. We looked briefly at my link: http://afwsj.uaa.alaska.edu/fem.htm I took a very conservative tack - usually a good move to start a lively discussion, but discovered for the most part the class seemed in agreement! When asked who felt as though they were feminists only one person raised a hand. There was agreement that most of the goals of the first and second waves of feminism were achieved! In fact today it seems that males are in decline for lots of reasons. Lionel Tiger's book "The Decline of Males" was mentioned as were current problems with employment for males. There was agreement that males are more often the care givers for their children. We then moved to address the art of the Northern European Renaissance in light of the feminist interpretation of art. I suggested after looking especially at music from southern European opera - Monteverdi through Andrew Weber that music in southern European Catholic culture is sexy! But Northern European music is much more restrained as is the art. Is this true? Could we argue that feminism would only have developed in a culture dominated by Northern European Puritans? We ran out of time to discuss this further! We should pick it up next class.