96 Unit 06 | All men are created equal Read this article by Naomi Alderman about her idea of forming a gender-equal society. Some parts are missing. Choose the correct part (A–M) for each gap (1–10). There are two extra parts that you should not use. Write your answers in the boxes provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. READING 20 Utopian thinking: How to build a truly feminist society by Naomi Alderman Sometimes over the past few decades it’s seemed as if we’re slowly, inch by inch, getting closer to a gender-equal utopia. And sometimes, as for instance with the election of a ‘pussy-grabbing’, women’s-hotness-rating misogynist as ‘the leader of the free world’, it does (0) in a feminist paradise. So it might be good to think about where we’re hoping to get to. Here’s what a feminist utopia is for me: a world where your genitals, hormonal arrangements or gender identification matter not a whit. Where no emotions are gendered: everyone gets to be both vulnerable and tough, aggressive and nurturing, effortlessly confident and inclusively consensus-building, compassionate and dominant. Each by turn, just as it exists in us: no part of our rich, human selves (1) . It’s a world where there are no ‘boys’ toys’ and ‘girls’ toys’. No women’s jobs and men’s jobs. No insistent drumbeat of culture keeping us in order. No one kicking us if we step out of our assigned lines. What I want is a world where neither gender nor sex are destiny. Where no child is ever (2) , “because you’re a boy” or “because you’re a girl”. It’s not a world where anything is ‘taken’ from anyone – it’s one where everyone’s possibilities are enlarged. We are very far from that world today. So how do we get from here to there? A million steps, large and small. But here are a few ideas. We urgently need to address the assumption bound up in our employment laws and custody arrangements that women are the ‘natural child carers’ and men don’t really want much to do with their children. If we (3) – and I do –, we must ring-fence time for both parents to spend with their children: at least three months for each parent. Of course, the father might choose not to use it, but then it’d be lost, not just shunted over to the mother. Employers would then have even less reason to (4) who might be about to start a family – and more of a reason to apply the same thinking to men, improving the gender pay gap. While we’re on that subject, let’s introduce public gender pay audits for larger companies (say, those with over 50 or 100 staff), not revealing individual salaries but aggregating salaries of similar jobs. Then let the conversation surrounding those pay audits do its work. In discussions in homes across the nation, when perfectly reasonable people (5) to be there for pick-up after school, that perfectly reasonable conversation will – if women are paid 86% of men’s salaries – go one way almost every time. So men are deprived of time with their children; women are deprived of economic independence. In the UK, men are about 22 times more likely to be sent to prison than women are. Men (6) to both perpetrate, and be a victim of, violence. I don’t happen to think men are ‘naturally’ more criminal or violent. But even if there are some hormonal differences involved, I think we’re failing boys and men: failing to teach them that there are answers that don’t involve violence, that violence says nothing about how ‘manly’ you are, that aggression isn’t the best answer to most situations. We need to change our cultural conversation around that, quickly. Let’s teach boys at school the personally and economically valuable skills of self-expression and emotional intelligence, of mediation and problem-solving. It would (7) , not a half-brick to the head. Men are more often the victims of male violence; sorting this out would benefit more men than women. Nur zu Prüfzw cken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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