From: gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Forward to the Past: Quote Choice for Men Unquote
Date: 11 Sep 92 04:03:38 GMT
Reply-To: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel)
Organization: The Piranha Club

In article<1992Sep10.205056.26551@panix.com>gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>This is the third or fourth go-'round for this subject.
>It has been, as I recall, in soc.women, alt.flame, maybe
>talk.politics.misc, and soc.feminism.

It is getting better, from my point of view, every time.
First time I presented the idea I was *flamed*, and almost everybody
on the net sounded like the Virginia man.  Now most people who 
participate in the debate present a different view (see the change in 
Muffy's position for example).  I may lose the next election, but win 
the next generation.

>Just to set the record straight, I opposed Hillel's "choice
>for men", not because I thought it was unjust, but because I

Most feminists don't care why someone is against "choice for women."
His objection is enough of a litmus test.  I think that "choice for
men" is a good litmus test for equality my style.

You've certainly failed this test.

>thought, and think, that (a) it's not very bright, and (b)
>it's politically impossible anyway.  It's silly to discuss it.  

Did you believe in 1964 that EEO for women would pass?
The point was that republicans stuck EEO for women into the
EEO for blacks proposal, and the democrats could not find
any way out that would not blow their cover.

What will happen if the feminists in Congress will try to pass a
choice-for-women law and the republicans will stick choice-for-
men into it?  Will they let it be known, on prime-time news, that
they are hypocrites and risk losing a vote of choice-for-women, 
or swallow the bitter pill and let pass?

That's just one possible scenario, but my point is that if you 
prepare yourself for the right opportunity, it might occur.
Having public support for my idea of choice-for-men is my
way to prepare myself to such opportunity.

>The problem is that women get pregnant, and have children,
>and the children have to be supported, 

The ones who supports her should have some say about what she does.
If to quote from Carole's article about the alternatives:

#A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a pretty damn 
#libertarian society: cold, cruel, Dickensian by our present standards.
#People were responsible for taking care of themselves and their
#children.  There was no guaranteed governmental safety net.  If you
#fell upon bad times you asked for help from friends, relatives, or
#private charities.  The problem here was that all these sources of aid
#pretty much had an agenda, a set of rules they insisted you follow in
#order to be a recipient of their (usually grudging) charity.  If you
#lost your job you might be able to move in with your parents, but you
#suddenly got stuck with a curfew and no loud rock music and your
#girlfriend couldn't spend the night and . . . well, you know how
#parents are.  If you got pregnant and couldn't support the baby
#yourself and the man wouldn't help and your parents wouldn't take you 
#in you could go to the Catholic home for unwed mothers.  You'd be taken 
#care of, your baby would be adopted into a good home, but boy did *they* 
#have an agenda.  Listening to the nuns go on about your sinful past wasn't 
#half of it.  Everybody tried *real* hard not to fall upon bad times, 
#and kept their insurance premiums paid up; because, while nobody much
#actually starved, the alternatives sometimes didn't look all that much
#better.

You decided that the above alternatives are bad, and that your brand 
of socialism is good and you did not even bother to state it as an
assumption; you preferred to present it as the only possible truth.

>and the impregnators
>don't always want to participate.  There are several possible 
>ways to deal with this.  Here are some of them:

You, of course, ignored the possibility of forced adoption of newborns
for the sake of the children.  Again you assumed that women's rights
are more important than children's rights and you did not even
bother yourself to state it explicitly.

>The point I made was that, when a man starts to have vaginal
>sex with a woman, Plan #1 is written before him, as in words 
>of fire, not because God or the feminists made it that way,
>but because the American voters made it that way.  

If the American voters (or the Utah voters) will 
decided that choice for women is bad, will you just 
shrug it off in the same way?

>It is the 
>rule of the game.  The man is not forced to have sex; there 
>are lots of other things he can do, like take a cold shower.

I'm sure that the Utah voters will be happy to say the same 
thing to every single woman in Utah...

>(This way of looking at things goes back to the glory days 
>of patriarchy, by the way, when men were men, by God, and
>responsible for their actions.  Can you imagine John Wayne
>or Abraham wimping out on their get?)

Can you imagine a RadFem who rejects a traditional myth about *men*?  

Once upon a time, when feminism was a real revolutionary movement,
it certainly happened, but today you just became a part of the
establishment that lost its ability to *think*.

That's the real reason why you can't develop your 
philosophy in a pro-feminist mailing list.

>the top of the list.  The American voters, for the most
>part, think that single motherhood is a problem, 

When a NJ-style welfare reform will cross the bridge to NY, 
will you just shrug it off as "that's what the voters want"?

>fetuses.  So the Hillel plan has the chance of a snowball 
>in hell on a warm day in August.

I like the challenge of proving you wrong.

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

Hillel                                   gazit@cs.duke.edu

"Because public silence to public bigotry condones it -- whether one
intends to or not."  --  Clay Bond
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