From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexism: Defined
Date: 8 Sep 92 21:17:33
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<=7qn#w-.payner@netcom.com> <1992Sep8.153043.22075@news.acns.nwu.edu>
	<mxrnslk.payner@netcom.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: payner@netcom.com's message of Tue, 08 Sep 92 18:30:13 GMT

In article <mxrnslk.payner@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
>In article <1992Sep8.153043.22075@news.acns.nwu.edu> Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde) writes:
>All arguments you mentioned have been put forth by feminists, some of them
>long ago. Are you claiming that they got their ideas from you? :^)

Clearly not.  However, people *can* come up with ideas on their own.  In
fact, I have come up with several ideas which, when I tell them to my
more well-read feminist friends, I am told have already been expressed
quite well by some feminist author.  Conversely, if I read something, I
accept certain ideas or arguments and reject others.  The ones I accept
I then work into my personal philosopy, at which point I feel that,
while they are certainly still the other person's, they are also mine.

>If the major effect of
>the feminist movement is achieved by a few extremists, how then can it
>be claimed that the feminist movement is not extremist?

Well, if most of the people who are feminists are not extremists, then I
think you can certainly claim that "the movement" (I would say that
there is not just one, since I see feminism as a viewpoint and way of
thinking, which has spawned several different movements) is also not
extremist.  Similarly, just because, for example, some extreme
Republicans start wars does not mean that starting wars is necessarily
the point of the Republican party.  You seem to be looking at the
"effects" of feminists in order to determine what the goals of "the
movement" are.  There are two problems with this.

First, you are focusing rather narrowly.  Feminism has had many other
effects besides Dworkin's (so far, not very effective, fortunately)
anti-pornography laws.  For example, education for women, the vote for
women, the change in parenting/housekeeping roles so that both men and
women have more choice in what role they play, the change in how the
institution of marriage is viewed, etc.  Perhaps Gordon, who is much
more of a feminist scholar than I am, can point out more of the effects
of feminism.  (Note that I am not saying that any of this was solely the
work of feminism, but it certainly had a hand in all of this.)

Second, there are many things that feminists are working for which have
not yet been fully achieved, such as the ERA (no discrimination on the
basis of gender), abortion (both pro and con...*grin*), female-oriented
pornography (yes, some of us are very pro-porn), encouraging women to
study science (against societal beliefs that women just aren't good at
science and math), accessible/affordable child care, etc.  Again, as I
am not really involved politically, I have probably missed a lot of
things.

Sure, the media *loves* people like Andrea Dworkin, so you hear a lot
about the effects that she has had, but that doesn't mean that those are
by any means the major effects or efforts of feminism.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy | muffy@mica.berkeley.edu | wi.4636@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn