Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: equality by regression?
From: briand@anasaz (Brian Douglass)
Date: 26 Aug 92 07:44:11 GMT
Distribution: alt.feminism
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.  Phoenix, Az

In article <OSIRIS.92Aug25122821@trane.mit.edu> osiris@athena.mit.edu writes:
>
> People have been talking about how women favor opressing men.  Well,
>there is a flaw.  Women ARE oppressed.  Andrea Dworkin made a
>wonderful speech (I want a 24 hour truce) about how you will find NO
>women saying (and really believing) that if women went out and raped
>men every three minutes then everything would be alright.  As long as
>women have the threat of rape as a form of sexual slavery, they can 
>not be equal.  As long as men are taught that men have to be dominant
>in a relationship, there can be no equality.  

All men have a mother.  So who teaches men they have to be dominant in a
relationship?  (end rhetoricism).

>As long as men think it
>acceptable to make comments about a woman they do not know, there can
>be no equality.  The ERA amendment would force men to reconsider the
>status that women are relegated to in our society.  It would not bring
>the equality that is necessary.

Like women don't?  Very naive.  

If walked up to you and said, "That's a wonderful dress you're wearing.  It
brings out the beautiful color of your eyes."  And then turned and walked away,
would that be banned by the ERA?  Or what if I said, "Yo, babe!  Dat dress
is too haat.  Owww"  how would my right to free speech be trambled on by
the ERA?

If women were "relegated" to a specific status in society, you wouldn't
have the opportunity to attend college, vote, or walk outside unescorted.

The truth is every generation reexamines the values and morals of their
parents and decide for themselves what they will retain and what they will
discard.  And as the generations have passed, and society has changed from
the "barbaric" to the "civilized", women have obtained and will continue to
obtain positions in life based more on intelligence and less on gender
stereotyping.  Passing laws to socially reegineer the population's value set
only bury's the issues (look at Sarajevo) that generations brutality
fostered.  The only real solution is education, of both sexes.  Not all
women are nymphomaniacs "begging for it."  While not all men are rapists
seeking sexual conquests.

>It does no good to say "it happens to men too."  That is not the
>issue.  Rather, what should be done is to say "it happens" and do
>something about it.

About what?  Rape is not a sexual crime.  It is a crime of violence, regardless,
of perpertrator or victim.  What purpose is served to intertwine such a
heinous act in gender bashing?  The motivations of a rapist has nothing
to do with "men ... taught that men have to be dominant in a relationship",
nor is "the threat of rape as a form of sexual slavery."  It is an act of
violence not passion, usually by a person with a lack of self control or
self destiny in their daily life.  From such control deprivation they seek
control over another individual's life to substitute for their own.

People in rape crisis counseling have tried for years to educate people
that rape is not about sex, or passion, or gender.  That women "do not ask
to be raped", because of the clothes they wear, or where they choose to
walk.  To now politicize rape into the final atrocity perpertrated on women
by men in the battle of the sexes, is to set back rape education 20 years.

>Pushing for education in '92
>-marcel
>  
>--
>--+  I am, therefore I am a target.		osiris@athena.mit.edu
>--+  Anonymous email:			 wi.5559@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
>--+  I would include a disclaimer, but that would imply that my 
>--+  employer cared.


-- 
"... For I have sworn upon the alter of god, eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man."  Thomas Jefferson
Brian Douglass		briand@anasazi.com 	602-870-3330 X657