From: rhb@world.std.com (Robert H Brueckner)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: >slamming Women's Bookstores
Followup-To: soc.feminism
Date: 1 Jan 1993 21:06:09 GMT
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1i07luINNj3r@agate.berkeley.edu> celeste%express@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov (Celeste) writes:

   You can only write about what you experience.
   Men can write about "womenness", but is typically inaccrate
   because the author lacks the experience. Women are very much
   better equiped in writing about the "woman's" experience because
   of the time they spend as a woman.

I think it is probably more accurate to say that they have a head
start. Being a woman and being able to write are two very different
things. I think that a writer who is truly sensitive can write from
the point of view of a member of the opposite sex. Without disparaging
the writers you chose, only one of whom I have read (Heinlein, not the
most sensitive of writers to be sure) I myself have read men who, I
felt, have accurately portrayed women and women who have accurately
portrayed men. But I'm not sure whether you intend to speak only of
writers who are attempting to *represent* a certain aspect of
woman-ness or man-ness, or to speak for that sex on all issues. If the
latter, then that is presumptuous to a high degree -- no being, not
even a member of the same sex, can presume to speak for another on all
issues. And that is not what is intended by literature. You may as
well say that I cannot paint a picture of a woman because I don't know
what it is to be a woman, or a cow because I do not know what it is to
be a cow. Yet the museums are full of paintings by and about both
sexes which are held by both sexes to be worthy of enshrinement for
the extent of their perspicacity. Which is a fancy way of saying men
and women do and can know very deep and intimate things about each
other -- often, I submit, greater than the subject itself can know
(and, of course, at the same time less). No one is omniscient, but you
don't need omniscience to produce art.

   I belive the key point is that our culture you are either
   a "man" or a "woman".

   You are not allowed to be a mixture of both or neither!!!!

   Everyone you meet insist on putting you in one box or the other!
   What is the first question about a new baby? "Is it a boy or a girl?"!
   (At that point, what does it matter!!!)

It matters a great deal. Not that one is better than the other, or to
be preferred, but the survival of our species depends on this
difference. And so does the continued diversity of our world.
Everything I've read on the subject shows that men's and women's
brains (not to mention their bodies) are very different. The fact is,
they are *not* interchangeable automata. Why can we not prize women
for being women and men for being men?

   This bipoler nature makes the experiences of men and women very
   distinct and very different!

To say the least. Sometimes I think that if aliens from another planet
came to visit earth, and they were men, I would have more in common
with them than with all the women on earth. And other times I think I
understand women much better than I understand men. Some things *are*
easier to see from the outside. But let us celebrate the difference,
not seek to condemn or eliminate it. Or perhaps I should say "differences";
there are many, after all, and if we look hard enough we might find a 
reason to cherish every one of them.

RB

-- 
|"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who  |
| have loved it." -- George Santayana  // Opinions expressed here, when |
| clear and persuasive, are my own. --Rob Brueckner (rhb@world.std.com) |



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