From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: stereotypes - and a request
Date: 22 Jul 92 01:17:56 GMT
	<fP8NKIC@quack.sac.ca.us> <1992Jul21.162311.1@fnalo.fnal.gov>

In article <1992Jul21.162311.1@fnalo.fnal.gov> 
holzman@fnalo.fnal.gov (Daniel B. Holzman) writes:
>Barbara Jordan has gone on record making anti-male (not anti-sexist or
>anti-patriarchy, but anti-male) statements.

Do you have any examples of this? I have heard this accusation. I suspect her
anti-male statements are much less in number than the anti-female statements
from any of the male congressional reps. I suspect a lot of this is just
that a lot of people want the oppressed to act like Martin Luther King and
instead they act like Malcolm X. It's an interesting dilema. One thing is
for sure though, both of those leaders were shot dead. And the more you
try and push people into a cage with no options, the more they start
thinking like Malcolm X. Makes sense to me.

>I am suspicious of Faludi's attack on Bly in her book.

She did have some interesting things to say about Bly but I understand that
they have been verified by others. I suspect that she may have overreacted
to the guy, but in my opinion he's just a poet. The whole drum beating,
wilding stuff is interesting. I can't see much in it, if others do, that's
OK, to a point.

>Have you read any of the works of Barbara Walker?  In _Skeptical Feminist_,
>she calls for a matriarchal society in which social and political power is
>placed in the hands of women, and in which Goddess worship is used as a social
>control to keep men under the control of women.

Yeah, but do you really think this would happen? Some of this goes back to
the days of kings and subjects. Subjects could say "kill the king" because any
good king knew it was a joke. But the king couldn't say kill the subjects,
because that wasn't a joke. That was real, see what I'm saying? If there is
equality, then things are different, but there isn't equality now, is there?
On a related issue, some people have speculated that early Greece was
matriarchal and the men were forced to worship the Goddess and consult the
elder matriarch for important decisions like who to marry. The theory goes
that the men got sick of this and subverted the Goddess by turning her into
a Goddess of war and the rest was HIStory, as he says. Who knows, maybe women 
do have a vicious side and have just been pretending to be sweet all these 
years, I just don't see it.

>Have you read Z. Budapest's _Holy Book of Woman's Mysteries_?  She equates men
>with death, women with life, and then says that as death must be in service to
>life, men must be in service to women, and proposes this as a model for
>societal structure.

Haven't read it. Can't say as I see it as a serious threat. The concept of
men=death and women=life goes back to the Paleolithic and I can see some
sense in it, but to say that justifies who is master and who is slave is
silly. The bottom line is that women make our children, but they need us, or
at least our sperm to become mothers. And I suspect we can lend a hand in
the child rearing process. We need each other. This master/slave stuff is
really sickening to me, in any form, with the exception of electronic.

>Have you seen the latest issue of Green Egg?  A fellow by the name of Bird
>Brother has called for men to surrender all policy making power to women.

I don't know the details but would that be like having a woman for President?
Or a woman for a boss?

>Lets see... men can expect to give up:
>-ability or "right" to rape, especially in marriage (actually, I would like to
>see rape fade from our minds as a concept, but that's somewhat farther off.)
>-the easier career world that the glass ceiling makes.
>-Once again, we can go on forever, but I think this gives a representative

Yeah, I think I hear you. I agree, but I'm not so sure so many men are
prepared to give up things like the glass ceiling. The bottom line is that
there is a lot for men to give up. I don't think a lot of men are
interested in that kind of deal. Isn't that like admiting defeat? Wouldn't
that be weak? Isn't it easier to yell reverse descrimination?

>Men should refuse to give up:
>- Any right women claim for themselves.

Well, besides the obvious like abortion and female things?

>> Where should the battle lines be drawn? 
>Where rights are not equal.

I like it. But we've got a long way to go, don't we? And I'm not to crazy
about the war analogy, but some things you just have to fight for, that's
what Malcolm X would say.

>> What rights are we most likely to lose first? 
>Judging from the writers I cite above, the vote.

Yeah, but that's very unlikely, isn't it? I could see the possibility of
having representatives that don't represent us and can't balance a budget,
but that's what we have now, right? I suppose we could have a VP who bakes
cookies instead of plays golf all the time.

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