From: chrz@tellabs.com (Peter Chrzanowski)
Subject: Re: thinking that numbers are God(tm)
Summary: Women's Reality
Organization: Tellabs, Inc.
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 00:35:48 GMT

[Moderator's note -- included text trimmed, since this is basically
about the Shaef book -- pw]
In article <1jmig5$ep4@agate.berkeley.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
> To follow up someone else's quote about how women don't like it when men
> use numbers because they don't like it when they aren't right -- read
> Schaef's _Women's Reality_.  I realize most of you probably won't,
> despite the fact that asking for hard references seems to be a major
> pastime for most of you.

The book is,

Women's Reality
An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society
 by	Anne Wilson Schaef (Harper and Row, 1981)

 The book's thesis is

THE FIRST MYTH is that the White Male System is the only thing that exists...

THE SECOND MYTH is that the White Male System is innately superior... 

THE THIRD MYTH is that the White Male System knows and understands everything...

THE FOURTH MYTH is that it is possible to be totally logical, rational, and
objective."


In the edition I read, the following appeared in a blurb on the bacover:

"Once a woman is helped to see that her
 perceptions are valid and that it is all
 right to want to blame and feel like a
 victim, she can begin moving into the     
 rage stage..."


The idea that someone could take this book seriously is frightening to me.

I thought the book could easily be classified as hate literature in that
it offers a grand, all-encompassing system (all the world's divided into
The White Male System and The Emerging Female System) in which most of
the world's evils are blamed on those of a particular race and gender.
The phrase "White Male System" appears DOZENS of times on practically
every page of this book.  

In addition to being hate literature, I think the book can also be said 
to be demeaning to women in that not all women are, or would wish to be,
the irrational, temperamental, illogical creatures presented in the
book as characteristic of the "Emerging Female System."

The author seems to glorify irrationality; after all, sweet reason is
part of that White Male System, and mere rationality may be dismissed 
should it contradict A Woman's Feelings.  

It supports the some of the oldest gender cliches.  Women are warm, nurturing,
and form communities based on consensus.  Men are cold, power-driven,
and form hierarchical commumities.

The author's grand System of Systems seems simplistic.  Where, for 
example, do non-white men fit -- are they part of the White Male System,
or are they part of the Emerging Female?  The author doesn't say.

In summary, I found this book not only hateful but also incredibly bad.
I agree that it should stand on its own merits, however, and urge
people to read it.  I found a copy in a public library.

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