From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU (Lenore Levine)
Subject: Version Five -- I better shut up!
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Date: 23 Dec 92 18:10:59 GMT

[Several versions of this article have been sent in.  I believe I
posted version 2 inadavertantly, this one appears to be the final
version.  ----CTM]

Many of the posters on soc.feminism's evil twin, alt.feminism, are
antifeminist men, who are often willing to use very strong and
confrontational language. These posters remind me of the deformed
and utterly damned souls in C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," who journey
to Paradise just to gibber and mock at the inhabitants.

But Lewis reminded us that such souls may be closer to being saved,
than the equivocal creatures in Purgatory. And I am not a high
church Episcopalian, or even a Christian, but Lewis' metaphors do seem
to have some universal application. That is, when I read the postings of
these entities, I wonder: Who are they? Is there anything of value in
what they say? Is there any way to reach them?

I think these posters can be divided into four categories. Three of
them are pretty obvious. There are the individuals with psychological
problems; as a matter of fact, there's one outstanding example on
alt.feminism. There are the men who use women, and wish to continue
doing so. Such men, however, are more common in print than
on the net; there's little of any practical worth to be gained from
writing postings.

To me, the quintessential user is P.J. O'Rourke. I enjoyed his
thoughtful right-wing humor in "Holidays in Hell"; but I've lost respect
for his later books. It seems, wherever I open them, he is attacking
some cause, movement or organization he doesn't like, by mocking the
unattractiveness of its women. (Can't he think up some more sophisticated
jokes?) Don't you think he enjoys having the little chickies line
up, to receive his famous-writer sperm? Don't you think he'd feel threatened,
if women no longer lived in fear about their appearance? If they would
not cater to his fantasies?

The third category is people undergoing a genuine paradigm shift. Some
of these individuals are from other cultures; and they are not that
difficult to understand. For those of us who are baby boomers or older,
imagine being given all the tenets of a sensible 1990s feminism, in 1963.
Wouldn't some of them be a little hard to swallow (even if we were
feminists then)? And individuals new to the net may have legitimate
misconceptions about net feminists. (I know I did.)

Let me hope, that people expressing thoughtful criticisms of feminism not
be dismissed out of hand. Even if we disagree with their basic ideas, they
still may have something to teach us; and we to teach them.

I think the fourth category of antifeminist posters is not as obvious.
I suspect that many of the male posters, complaining how they
have been mistreated (on the job, in academia, or in the courts),
actually have been. They are wrong only when they attribute this
mistreatment to women (in general), affirmative action, or feminism.

Now, let's take a fast rewind back to Victorian times. We find a
society in which race, religion, class and gender -- that is, birth --
is immeasurably more important. But we also find a society a little more
tolerant of eccentricities in personality and appearance -- in,
of course, those individuals who hit the right random number in the
birth lottery.

Fast forwarding back to 1992, we find a society that uses the random
number generator a lot less. Who you are born to counts a lot less, and
what you are a lot more. But often the "what you are" that people are
valued for -- promoted on the job, given academic appointments, or custody
of their children -- is not intelligence, integrity, competence or
depth of character. It is the ability to convey these virtues, in a
15-second sound byte.

But this insight is not available to many individuals. Thus, when a
young man is passed over for a deserved promotion, in favor of a
socially manipulative predator, he will know something is wrong. But he
won't know what is wrong. And if the social predator is a woman, and
our guy has been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh -- presto, bingo,
another "Feminazi" posting!

The sad thing is that a *woman* who is thus mistreated, will not usually
blame others, but herself. How many women in such a position would not
even write a nasty letter -- but get a nose job, or a new psychiatrist?

In conclusion, I would like to suggest two New Year's resolutions, for
myself and the readers of soc.feminism. The one is to *pay attention* to
people's true characters -- to try to figure out what's going on behind
the mask. The other is, not to thrust daggers of unwarranted blame into
ourselves, when we should be blaming society.

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