From: muffy@anableps.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: At the Barricades (was: Re: Catharine MacKinnon, Playboy and feminist propaganda)
Date: 9 Oct 92 10:52:53
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<MUFFY.92Oct8142838@remarque.berkeley.edu>
	<1992Oct9.163804.11031@javelin.sim.es.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: anableps.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com's message of Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:38:04 GMT

In article <1992Oct9.163804.11031@javelin.sim.es.com> biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>>I'm not sure how my comments on society not being a conspiracy come in,
>>though.  Just because it is not the case that the majority in society is
>>conspiring against women, people with alternative sexualities, etc.,
>>does not mean that their views are right, or that their views cannot be
>>changed.  How do *you* think this (my comment on conspiracy) relates to
>>your question?

>Your comment implies an innate response - human nature - that is beyond
>simple manipulation and control.

I see.  Well, that was not at all what I intended to imply.  I do not
equate society to human nature.  I believe that it is human nature to
take a lot of your views *from* your society, but that, in fact, makes
it *very* subject to manipulation and control.  Change the societal
attitudes and the people will change with it.

In fact, I saw a really amazing demonstration of this in the newspaper.
Unfortunately, I don't have the citation or the details of the survey,
so this will just have to be anecdotal.  However, apparently 10-20 years
ago, a survey was done to determine what people's ideas about drugs
were.  Something like 70% of them said that it was okay if people wanted
to use drugs.  The same survey was done recently (in the last couple of
years), with the same general group of people (i.e. they added the 10-20
years to the original age group).  Now, something like 80% of them said
that using drugs was simply wrong, and most of those people claimed that
they had *never* thought that using drugs was okay.  Now, this *could*
be completely inaccurate, but it certainly fits how I see people behave.
Societal styles change, and people change right along with them.

>Suppose that men innately responded to visual stimuli more intensely,
>and more sexually than women. Then the price for watching Cindy strut 
>her stuff, or for seeing Big Momma do hers with a dildo, would be
>an increase in unwanted sexual advances, if not assaults, by men.

Why?  Just because they respond to the stimulus (which is fine) doesn't
mean that they have to be obnoxious.  When I'm out at dinner and I'm
hungry, I respond to the stimulus of a tasty plate of food being
delivered to the next table (and I think you would agree that eating is
another basic behavior of people, like sex), but I don't feel that it's
necessary for me to grab the plate off their table, go over and just
sort of drool at them, or otherwise disturb them, even though they're
provoking me by having food in front of me when I'm hungry.

>Different societies could respond in different ways, from censorship
>to the shadora. Or the society could collectively decide that the cost
>of increased sexual violence is worth the benefit of a more open
>society. The one thing it could *not* do, given the putative link
>between exposure and sexual response, is to accept the one without
>expecting the other.

That really isn't true, though.  We do, in fact, expect people to
control all sorts of impulses.  For example, even if I just love my
SPARCstation at work, my employers expect me not to walk off with it, no
matter how much I might want it at home.  I do not think it is
unreasonable to expect people in a society to treat each other with
respect, even if there is some sort of sexual display involved.  I guess
I think sufficiently well of men to think that they do not *have* to be
controlled by their bodies rather than their minds.  Perhaps that is too
optimistic of me, but I'd rather try it and find out than just give up
on improving society's view of sexuality.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                               muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~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
Newsgroups: alt.feminism