From SYP2634@utarlg.uta.eduThu Jun 15 00:27:14 1995 Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 19:30:34 -0500 (CDT) From: SYP2634@utarlg.uta.edu To: laolit@tuddy.cc.monash.edu.au To: laolit@tuddy.cc.monash.edu.au Subject: SatJaDham's: The Gender Crisis. For this article I had to be a little more serious, and less melodramatic. As it has been with my experience as a guy, and having survived the war back home that I have found it interesting to note how our revered ancestors have shaped our culture and our traditions. Concerning the subject of the roles of pu sai and pu ying in our society, I have concluded that in the past, it has been the product of the social and environmental conditions that our people were faced with. Pu sai were workers of the fields or soldiers in the war. Pu ying were busy tending to the children or cooking the meals at home. Under such conditions, and in that place and time, it would seem logical that such behaviors are expected. In the modern era and under such a developed nation as America, we can afford to be more flexible in our ways and thinking. Women go to work just as the men do. I commend these acts to show pu ying's step beyond the role at home. It is both productive and uplifting. Many of the jobs in the working environment today can be just as easily and well accomplished by either sex. The problems that we face today in our new foundation is that in this new land, is that some of us still hold those values that persist to enslave ourselves or to keep us from accepting this new way. As mentioned earlier by my internet friends, some men do still hold those views that women belong in the kitchen, and men should be treated better just because they are men. Even the women are not immune to this thought. It is one persistent view that seems to keep pu ying khon Lao from reaching any higher status. It is the thought that her role is to learn to cook, raise a child and support her husband. She deserves better than this, and to be enslaved into a single role of submission like that is both demoralizing and makes not but a stalemate. So what is the solution? Perhaps the lean towards an equilibrium of roles, that both pu ying and pu sai can learn to help each other instead of having roles that are so independent that either person would simply be left in a stand still situation without the other. You don't have to be a marriage counselor to realize that if the husband always expects the wife to cook, and the wife expects the husband to always understand her feelings, both would be sorely disappointed, and if those buffers of self-sufficiency were not there to hold us down, Lord would only knows what's next for us. Yai Pranivong syp2634@utarlg.uta.edu PS My views are no more thoughts than what you already know. They are also neither incontestable nor infallible. For your comments and personal views, please write to: Laotian Association On Social Thoughts And Developmental Establishment at: laolit@tuddy.cc.monash.edu.au FOR A MORE ENLIGHTENING AND GUARANTEED LOTS MORE EXCITEMENT, READ MY NEXT ARTICLE ON: Cooking? Who's complaining about the cook?