From: mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik)
Subject: Re: Movers Primer and Not (Re: How This Man/Boy Got Some)
Organization: (getting there)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 22:20:46 GMT


Tim Mohler said:
   >>>It's male privilege that animates and sustains sexism,
   >>>probably.

A couple of articles later, anderson@macc.wisc.edu
(Jess Anderson) responded to my:
  >>Ow.

 >Ow?  That hurt?  Where and why?
Because the task of picking apart the twisted and fragile threads of
reasoning in this area-- understanding the basis of sexism-- is
not a task I relish undertaking in newsgroups.

I'm deleting a lot of the discussion for that reason, although there
are a couple of points that I'll answer here.

 >You're right that ending sexism involves many changes in
 >women's habits, not just in men's. [ ... ] But would you say
 >that apart from this co-optation, women are themselves a
 >primary source of the dynamic that creates and continues
 >sexism in our society?  

I say that it is impossible to tell.  I also say that it's not apt
to be _men_ who have done the co-opting, but a system that involves
all of us, in which those positions that involve perceptible power
are traditionally held by men.  But there is enormous power to be
had in the rearing and educating of children, tasks that are more
often performed by women than by men.

Of course, the women performing those jobs have, for the most part,
been co-opted.  Any "non-co-opted" woman is competing with men for
jobs in medicine, law, engineering, politics, and the education of
adults.  Those are the jobs that we label "important."  And it is
women, as well as men, who make this argument.   Certainly men
contribute to it by their lack of proportional interest in competing
for jobs traditionally held by women.

 >Yes indeed.  I don't see the model as some sort of privilege
 >pie that just has to be shared more equally, though there's
 >no reason not to pursue that objective too.  Rather, the
 >idea of privilege *itself* seems a root source of the
 >problem, somehow.

The idea of finite privilege that must be split among competitors
is, I think, very close to the heart of the problem.

  >>But I don't like considerations of the topic that make it
  >>look as though sexism would vanish if only those nasty men
  >>would get a clue.  I wish it were that easy!

 >Well, I didn't see any suggestion to that effect in the
 >preceding.
That was probably a defensive knee-jerk reaction on my part to any
discussion of feminism on the net.  You now have a feminist on
record in this discussion has having made this point.  It often
seems to me that there are a lot of men who hear such statements as
Tim made and jump to the conclusion that they have been personally
attacked as villains of the piece.  

I continue to see Tim's assertions as reasonable, but highly
simplified statements of a problem that I would not express without
a great deal more hedging.  This, of course, is typical of how women
(as contrasted with men) express themselves.

(If you want to pursue this, email is fine with me.  I have been
engaged in a particularly stimulating discussion of feminism arising
from the dreadful thread on "inclusive pronouns" that spilled over
from soc.bi a little while ago.) 


-- 

  Mara Chibnik
  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Newsgroups: soc.motss