From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: The Prejudice Against Men
Date: 7 Nov 92 05:40:47 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

| gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >Men, whether feminist or not, can make some real
| >contributions to the problem of homelessness, but not by
| >"educating" other people or pointing out their errors.
| >There's been plenty of that and is hasn't done a bit of
| >good.

schultz@unixg.ubc.ca (Stewart Schultz) writes:
| Um, isn't this precisely what you're attempting to do here?
| Educate the net about what the true reason for the bias is,
| and educate them about what should be done to correct it?

No.  Generally, I use the Net to engage in verbal 
play, or (and) to attempt to get a better understanding
of something.  And I like to put ideas into people's
heads; they sometimes crop up in strange places.  But
"educate"?  The usual meaning of that word has connotations
of taking another by the hand and leading them along (it's
derived from the Latin for "lead.")  There's certainly
an implication that the one who educates knows, and the 
ones who are educated do not -- a singularly inappropriate 
assumption for anyone in this company, as far as I can see.
Anyway, I'm not into it.

As for "what should be done", material posted on the Net 
seldom inspires activity (other than further verbiage), at 
least in my experience.  

However, in this particular case, I've also been blowing off
a bit of emotional steam.  I have been homeless for brief
periods myself, and I know that it would take only a small
accident, a stroke, say, to make me homeless again, as
miserable as any one of the people I step over in the
subway, in spite of having supported myself and others and
paid taxes for thirty-odd years.  We (in the U.S.) now live
in a virtually bottomless society whose form has little to 
do with gender attitudes, although it does seem to have 
been inspired by the tough guys and hard noses of an
extinct patriarchy.

I haven't seen much concern for the homeless in this 
thread; instead, I've seen a kind of maneuvering to use 
their existence as yet another stick to beat feminism with.  
Conceivably, as you said earlier, it is only a kind of cool 
interest in perceptual matters that obtains, and nothing was 
planned.  If so, good; although I may have to stay away from 
the discussion, lacking the necessary coolness.

And in case some low rhetorical maneuver _was_ planned --
not by present company, of course -- it will now be too 
embarrassing to carry out.  So much the better, wouldn't 
you say?

ss:
| I must say, this sounds a lot like a cheap rhetorical dig
| against Hillel Gazit and Garry King (and probably myself)
| rather than any real concern about the homeless.  I.e., 
| something along the lines of 'shit or get off the pot.'

Is that sort of thing a cheap rhetorical dig?  I think
it's a fairly cogent kind of argument.  One like it 
certainly ended the famous draft discussion.  We are 
talking about real human beings and real problems, aren't 
we?  Why is it a cheap rhetorical dig to ask what the 
talk is supposed to accomplish, or where it is going?

Incidentally, the vulgar proverb you want is not "Shit or
get off the pot" which applies to queuing problems, but 
"Put up or shut up."

And now, for one more round of "anything you can do, I
can do better" and the final point:

ss:
| If you believe what you're saying, how come you're not
| out there on the front lines?

As it happens I've done some work for a local outfit 
called Project Hospitality which has succeeded in 
sheltering dozens, maybe hundreds, of homeless people.  
That's how I came to notice that almost all the people 
involved in working for it and similar organizations as 
a regular practice were women, as I reported.  I hope
this explains my lack of _perspective_.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )