From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Men Not Getting It
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 18:19:12 GMT


In article <michaelh.721908622@Xenon.Stanford.EDU>
michaelh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Mike Hennahane) writes:

>anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>>*So* much seems to rest on men not "getting it," doesn't it?
>>I've always been somewhat at a loss to understand to
>>understand why more men, indeed all men, don't get it.

>well read on, jess.  i have the answer.  :-) btw, i think
>that some *women* don't get it, either.  amazing, but true.

Despite the smiley, I think your account makes quite a lot
of sense, actually.

>>But even with all that, one would expect more men to have
>>seen pictures from the concentration camps, or to have read
>>a few accounts of lynchings or gay-bashing, or to have done
>>*something*, to raise their consciousnesses about prejudice
>>and oppression out of the subbasement.  I mean, it's not
>>like they'd have to be rocket scientists or anything too
>>taxing.

It's this step, isn't it, where the solution, such as it is,
seems to lie?  Getting there *somehow*, that's the ticket.

>my model of human behaviour separates emotional and
>intellectual understanding of issues like racism, sexism, or
>homophobia.  take homophobia as an example; i claim this is a
>reasonable model of the stages many people go through
>(albeit the whirlwind description):

Rather as an aside, this disintegration between thinking and
feeling is itself possibly a source of the problem.  My bias
is that it's somehow unnatural, that "by nature" (yeah, I
know) emotional and intellectual whatevers are so highly
integrated that neither is definable or discernable in the
absence of the other.  I wonder if something in our early
lives doesn't cause a major rupture, to our profound loss.

>i grow up all through my white guy middle class life seeing
>descrimination, or pictures from concentration camps, or
>reading gay bashing accounts (from a comfortable white guy
>middle class distance).  this instills the obvious opinion
>that these are bad things.  this is an intellectual
>position, based on lots of evidence, but i have no real
>stake in the matter, so it doesn't necessarily change the
>way i act.  after all, it's not happening to me, and it
>won't happen to me.

Sounds pretty typical.  Makes me wonder how we get so fixed
on ourselves that "this has nothing to do with me" ever
gets formed in our minds.  All that's obvious, I guess, is
that it does.  It's as though the infantile "I'm the center
oif the universe" never completely withers.

>next, i come out to myself, but i'm not gay, right?  i start
>noticing more and more how often _those_ gay people keep
>getting harrassed.  now i am actually reading all those
>articles that i just skimmed the headlines of before.  it
>still won't happen to me, because i'm not *obvious*.  i'm
>not like _those_ gay people.  it's the offensive ones that
>get in trouble, who are asking for it.  white guy middle
>class complacency?

There are lots of queer folks who are right there, right
now, I think, not all white, not all middle-class, and
probably not all male, either.  This is the straight-acting,
gay-bashing sort of LGB person.  The personal becomes
anti-political, the sense of connectedness overtly or
covertly walled out.  The phobia in homophobia within
us at that stage?

>finally, i start to identify more as gay, and _those_ gay
>people becomes _we_ gay people.  i have a stake in the
>matter.  an attack on gays is an attack on me.  *i could be
>next*!  anti-gay things make my guts hurt.

This stage attained, one maybe quits hiding, comes out more
publicly, gets involved in LGB community things, starts
giving up the fictional safety net that leads back to the
closet, and stuff like that.  The personal becomes
political?

>i would say that it is only now that i "get it." i am
>emotionally vested and finally have an understanding of what
>homophobia is about (what it feels like).  i think *emotion*
>makes people do more than *intellectual* understanding does.

To me, it seems the intellectual aspects prepare a sort of
model, but the emotional aspects fill the model with the
stuff of life.  This too I relate to coming out, in the
sense that after you're well and truly out (many people
report this) you're somehow in a position to discover the
*real* you at last.  Part of "getting it," I think.

>disappointingly few people can abstract this out and make
>the connection to other forms of discrimination, though.

But at least some can, which is good.  I too saw the
MacNeill Lehrer segment the other night about lifting the
military ban.  As Kate Gregory (I think) reported, her
partner was shocked by the venom of that parking-lot
bigotry.  It was pretty awful, right on the edge of violence.
Similarly on (I think) "Street Stories" a week or two
before, there was a segment showing some young bigot-boyz
and others spewing hate.  One would hope a lot of eyes
opened a little extra-wide around the country, upon seeing
these things.

>in short, until it becomes personal, i don't think anyone
>"gets it."

I think it can be made personal not only by *being* LGB, but
by seeing what hate is really like on one's TV or in the
streets.  It seems kind of awful to say it, but if we're
going to get harassed and bashed anyway, it's useful if the
cameras are there.  That can help a few people get it whose
risk of being bashed themselves is much further down the
line (if the Robertson goons make headway, for example).

>ps-yes, this implies that non-women can never "get it" wrt
>to what it's *really* like to be a woman (and that's it's
>horribly condescending for a man to say to a woman, "oh, i
>know exactly how you feel..." about anything
>woman-specific).  empathy is great, but i think that we have
>to be aware of its limitations.  (ditto on race issues)

While I agree there are limitations, I think men can "get"
what women are talking about wrt sexual harassment, white
people can "get" what effects racism wreaks for people of
color, etc., as you say within limitations.  We may well
never *really really* know, but we can get it much more than
lots of people who never break out of their cocoons do.

It seems to me like opening a door into another chamber,
which once opened presents your consciousness with greatly
expanded opportunities for understanding or empathy or just
"getting it."

What comes to mind just now in the this connection is that
during the televised Clarence Thomas hearings, I thought,
especially in the Anita Hill portion, that I was getting
most of it.  A year later I start reading dozens of essays
sparked by the hearings, and there was *so* much more I
didn't get earlier.  Each new chamber has a door leading to
yet another chamber, etc.

I tell ya, I don't know a greater truth than this: a path is
formed by walking on it.

-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
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