From: gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.men
Subject: Re: Philosophy for Gordon (Was Re: Choice for men)
Date: 28 Sep 92 05:27:15 GMT
Reply-To: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel)
Followup-To: alt.feminism
Organization: Nefolet shel nemushot (Fallout of Wimps)

In article <1992Sep28.002219.991@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

hg:
>| Is the following feminist analyses?
#War provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent
#to their contempt for women.  The very maleness of the military -
#the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual
#bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and
#orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command - confirms
#for men what they long suspect, that women are peripheral, irrelevant
#to the world that counts, passive spectators to the action in the
#center ring.
                -- ("Against Our Will", Susan Brownmiller)

>| What should I make with such "analyses" that contradicts so much
>| the way I felt in the army?  

>It depends what you're trying to do.  If you're looking for
>a stick to beat feminism with, you can focus on the apparent
>blanket condemnation of men in the first sentence.  

And if I try to look which feminists are worth talking with?

I posted the above paragraph in soc.feminism, and there was not
even one feminist who posted anything as "I don't agree with
Brownmiller," but quite a few articles about what a great book
"Against Our Will" is.  (You can find all the debate in Cindy's
archive if you don't believe me.)

>If you're looking for usable ideas, you'll probably find the
>passage superficial and look for something else.  

I divide feminists into two groups: those who agree with the claim
that men and women are pretty similar in brain level, and those
who don't.  The first groups' analysis may be useful, and I read
them every now and then (Carole Ashmore, Joanna Russ and Pat Califia
certainly had *useful* things to say), but the second group can't say 
anything useful, for me, about men violence, army etc.  

It is not *my* fault that the second group gives the tone in the
feminist movement, and someone like Brownmiller sales millions of
books, and I don't think that their analysis worth anything for me.

>Which do you want to do?

Looking for something else than main-stream feminism,
in some other place, works for me.

hg:
>| >| The feminists I agree with tend to be pro-freedom and not so much
>| >| anti-violence.  ...

gf:
>| >Freedom and violence are antithetical, millennia of
>| >propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding. 

hg:
>| Sometimes one has to use violence to defend his freedom.

>This is a restatement of the problem.  However, it contains
>the seed of violence-worship, which is, as I said, anti-
>thetical to freedom.  

Ha?

X should be done is not the same as worshiping X.

E.g. we all agree that garbage collecting should be done, but I
don't see so much worship for it.  

>It's very interesting that the
>opposite is what is culturally accepted, and maybe we can
>get into that.

Try...

hg:
>| The generation of people who were young in the 60's, had the big
>| dreams about changing the world, had the big opportunity to do 
>| that and *missed* it.   

>I've got news for you.  I'm not dead yet; in fact, I'll
>probably be around for quite awhile.  And as long as I'm
>around, I'm going to be trying to change the world, like
>everyone else.  

You failed when you are young and full with the *change* it attitude
of young people, and the Military Industrial Complex was in a bad shape
because it was so easy to see its stupidity with respect to Vietnam,
but you believe that you can do that today.

I wonder what you learned from the 60's...

>business about "generations"?  There's no such thing as a
>"generation" except for people who want to erect artificial
>barriers between people.

A child tends to believe that what he/she sees when he grows up 
is the *world* and that is the way it always was.  Different 
generations assume different things.

hg:
>| What is more important, being around and being powerful or changing
>| society in the way you want?  NOW is around, but what influence
>| does it have on society (I said "society" not "the political system")?  
>| What are its big successes in the 80's?

>Defense of abortion rights.  Mostly, though, the 80s were a
>matter of hanging tough while the electorate went through a
>tantrum about the problems of the contemporary world.  The
>80s seem to be over now; the next election will tell.

In the mid 70's NOW had a great chance of passing abortion rights law.
After WaterGate the democrats were the *majority* in Congress, and
Ford or Carter would not veto such bill.  In the 80's the republicans
put one anti-abortion judge after another in the Supreme Court and
NOW did almost nothing.

NOW was powerful (90% in Senate for ERA!), but it was not smart.
The ladies have never understood that there are no urgent things,
just things which were not done in time...

hg: 
>| I took a look and I have the following comments:
>| Tannen's "analyses" is the kind of "analyses" that 
>| feminism produces today.  It is a regression compared 
>| to "The Feminine Mystique" for example.

>It is the kind of analysis produced by the desire to sell
>books, in my opinion.  

"The Feminine Mystique" was sold quite well, in my opinion.
Dworkin sales very badly, in my opinion.

>However, I haven't read it closely because I can't stand the style.  

I tend to skip the style and look for the agenda.

>I think, though, that it's irrelevant to this discussion.

So why did you raise it?

gf (quoted from s.f article):
>| >Clearly, property is inspiring, because, I
>| >believe, it encapsulates violence.

hg:
>| The kibbutz system in Israel is pretty much violence free (murder
>| cases are *rare*), but people still want property.  The more time
>| pass, the more property they want; especially the kids who grew
>| up in the kibbutz and are not there because of ideology.

>| I wonder how this data fit to what you believe...

>Generally, I think we're going to be stuck with a
>fascination with property until further cultural and
>technological development takes place.  I don't think little
>islands of "enlightenment" can do much about it.  

Why?

Why can't you create your own commune, with people who believe in
that, and show us that it is *possible*.  The kibbutzs were one
such attempt, a famous song from Israel of the 30's was "Ain-Harod
ain sham kesef Klal" ("Ain Harod (a name of a kibbutz) there is no
money there") described the wonderful life in a money-free
society.  Almost nobody even remember this song today, that's the
fate of bad jokes...

Anyway, your insistence that you need a large scale model is a big
mistake.  It is much easier to debug a small model.

>But we
>might be able to do something about violence by dragging its
>sources out in the open and examining them.

We all know that property rights exist only with respect to some form
of government; there should be a court that can give an order to the
army (or police) to keep someone's property.

What you miss is that a property-free society also needs 
the police force to enforce the "no property" law.  

gf (quoted from s.f article):
>| >I think we need to do more thinking about violence, and I
>| >think it is good to start from a female perspective, since
>| >women, having less musculature and different myths, may see
>| >it more clearly than men, in general.  

hg:
>| Think for a minute about high school years, who were the popular
>| boys between the girls?  The anti-violence boys or the Macho boys?

>| One Golda gave me more than enough female perspective ....

>You're beginning your thought about this by erecting a
>barricade and saying, "See?  The girls are as bad as the
>boys!"  I've even seen the contention that violence is
>perpetuated among males entirely by the sort of sexual 
>preference you mention, as well as values given to male 
>children by their mothers.   Once you get the barricades 
>up, you can start slinging insults, which some seem to 
>think is lots of fun.

>However, if you had read my article and its predecessors
>carefully, you would have noticed that I said that the
>culture of violence affected both sexes.  In fact, one of
>the things I criticized in the first article in the thread
>was its blindness toward female participation in the culture
>of violence, although I didn't get into bad girls egging bad
>boys on.  I'm more interested in what happens when we take
>the barricades down and see what we have in common, 

But you insist that the thinking about violence should start from
*female* perspective; what a great way to take the barricades down...

You totally missed the reference to Golda that was more clueless
than the generals because she had no real experience with violence.
They knew what was right better than her, but she played super-macho
games and they could not be less macho from Golda.

> )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(

Hillel                                                 gazit@cs.duke.edu

"A world that guaranteed food, shelter, medical care, full employment,
literacy, day care, civil rights and democracy, but denied us sexual
license, would make us nothing but well-fed domestic animals with suffrage.
                              --  ("Macho Sluts", Pat Califia)