From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Too straight looking
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 16:46:06 GMT


In article <vanyel.715159519@camelot>
vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams) writes:

>Okay, then I won't discriminate against psychopaths,
>rapists, anti-feminists, or anyone else.  There's a great
>difference between discrimination and the choice of people
>with whom you hang around.  I don't hang around with heavy
>drug users.  Would you call that discrimination?  I don't
>hang around with known child molesters.  Is *that*
>discrimination?  I don't think you'd say either case is.

I think the issue of who you hang out with is a canard.
I don't hang out with anybody (I like being alone) but
that does not imply that I discriminate against anyone
(other things do, but that doesn't).

Preferences and prejudices are quite different animals, I
think.  What we're really talking about is how to make useful
distinctions and then to do something about the prejudices,
especially where the prejudices clearly injure others or
ourselves.

>Well, I don't generally hang around with "nelly" or "butch"
>types, either, but that doesn't mean I refuse to speak with
>them if they ask me a question--and that also doesn't mean I
>refuse to stand up for their rights to be who they are.  I
>don't consider that discrimination.

I think that needs to be examined more deeply.

>Maybe you think this is a cut-and-dried matter, Jess,

You know better! :-)

>and that it's solely my responsibility because I somehow
>lack some cultured, sophisticated enlightenment.  I don't
>think so.

Well, I do think your inner states are solely your
responsibility, and those states are part of the discussion.
I don't see any of it as a matter of sophistication of
the sort you mention here.  But, far from cut-and-dried,
the complex underpinnings of prejudice clearly arise in
what we think, in how we think about people for whom (for
whatever reason) we experience a distaste.

Is it prejudice to punish a murderer or a rapist or a child
molester ("child molester" is something of a canard, too;
really, it's just a particular kind of sexual assault)?
The society as a whole (I think with good reason) treats
these people as criminals.

But some would deny their civil rights.  I would not.
Some would condone their execution.  I would not.  But
the issue of hanging out with them doesn't arise, for
they're in jail.

As to psychopaths, as to drug users, the issues are quite
different.  If we define psychopaths as people who are
unable to be allowed to be at liberty, hanging out with
them doesn't arise.  If the drug users who are criminals
(many are not, though most people disagree with that)
are where they belong (in treatment or locked up, to take
the easy line), we don't fraternize with them either.

Prejudice, however, is about something else, isn't it?  It's
about whether we think drug users as a class are low-life.
It's about whether we think psychopaths are beyond all hope
of being helped.  It's about whether queens and
leatherpeople are (as Sarver claims) "outrageous."

>I think this is one of those fuzzy issues: Where does one
>draw the line between a personal preference and blind
>discrimination?  I draw it at whether you're willing to
>defend the rights of the people for whom you express a
>personal dislike.  Maybe you draw it elsewhere.

I agree it's very fuzzy.  We might easily agree there is *a*
line, but argue at length about there it lies.  But ...

>What you see as "prejudice," Jess, I see as a part of my
>personal set of likes and dislikes.

...  I can't let that one pass.  I don't think I've mixed up
your prejudices with your dislikes, but there's some
evidence you have.  I admit this is not a completely fair
statement, but I say it to scrub out the line so it can be
redrawn more nearly where it probably should be.

>I don't like especially promiscuous people because they
>endanger their health, but I don't wish that any of those
>people would get AIDS.  I'm not especially fond of "nelly"
>behavior because my *personal experiences* have left me with
>a bad impression of them; that doesn't mean I think all
>"nelly" people need some kind of personality transplant.

Prejudice is forming a class judgment on the basis of
instances.  You can dislike Joe, who did you dirt on some
occasion, but it's prejudice for you to use Joe's incidental
nelliness as the basis for being "not especially fond of
'nelly' behavior." Even if there are 10 or 10,000 Joes, even
if *every* nelly person you ever met was a Joe clone.

Your point about "promiscuous" people is *much* more
blatantly prejudiced, and in several ways.  How, we leave to
you to work out.

>Where's the line, Jess?

It's inside our heads.  It's where we ask outselves, again
and again, if what we style as our likes and dislikes are in
fact class judgments based on instances.  Probably 90% of
statements of the form "I don't like <x>" express
prejudices, rather than tastes.  

So you'll have to do better than you have to divorce the
association between your prejudices and Sarver's, I think.
And "I don't like <x>" isn't going to cut it in the
overwhelming majority of cases.

<> It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain
<> a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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