From: bickis@skmath2.pa.dec.com (M. Bickis)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women warriors and male myths (WAS: Military Quote)
Date: 4 Oct 1992 15:26:24 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1ad7drINNjj5@agate.berkeley.edu> blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
writes in reply to me:
>|> If I strip the concept of gender down to its
>|> essentials, I find a nurture vs. protection dichotomy.  To be feminine
>|> is to be nurturing, nourishing and *non-threatening*.  To be masculine
>|> is to be protective and agressive.  (This is the attribute that I
>|> believe Bly calls "fierceness".)  These attributes are naturally
>|> linked to one's biology, and are found throughout the animal kingdom,
>|> almost universally among mammals.
>
>This is the same type of argument that we women have heard for years
>and years and years.  This is what is "feminine".  It is biologically
>this way; therefore, you women must accept it because you cannot
>change biology.  I'm sorry, but I don't buy this.  
              [ ... ]
>What is "feminine"
>and "masculine" is what we have been socially pressured to think,
>not a fact of nature.  

Why does it have to be one or the other?  It's quite clear that gender is a
social construct.  But IMHO it is far-fetched to think that it has no
biological basis.  Note that I said "linked to one's biology", not
*defined* by it.

>In fact, this comment is insulting to men
>as well.  I.E. Men are masculine, and therefore must be aggressive.
>All you passive men out there must have something wrong with
>your biology, I suppose.

Or maybe our upbringing.
 
>If a person has "masculine" characteristics, yet is biologically
>a woman, then would they not be *her* characteristics?  If she
>is a woman, then whatever characteristics she has must be
>feminine.  Vice versa for men.  (I seem to remember a similar
>discussion here from another newsgroup I read).

You are confusing categories here.  (Dark skin is an "African"
characteristic.  De Klerk is an African yet his skin is white. 
Therefore white skin must be an African characteristic[?])
A characteristic is termed "feminine" not because it is possessed by
some women, nor even because it is possessed only by women (that would
be a "female" characteristic).  A trait is "feminine" if

1)  If it is more commonly found among women or
2)  is believed by society to be appropriate for women
or,
3)  if it is believed to derive from the woman's sex.

1) and 3) can (in principle) be empirically tested, 2) is a value
judgment about which one could argue endlessly.  1) and 2) are socially
dependent, whereas 3) is biological.  The various traits labelled by
various people at various times as "feminine" could encompass varying
mixtures  of these components.

It is of course naive to believe that all "feminine" characteristics are
biological.  But it is equally naive to postulate that sex and gender
are independent.

>|>I maintain that society,
>|> and consequently all of us, will be better served if these myths are
>|> *promoted* rather than derided. 
>
>Tell that to all those women who died in the witch persecutions for
>4 centuries.  They died for some other person's ideal (or myth if
>you prefer).  Tell that to all women who now are living with such
>low self-esteem, or get beaten, battered, and broken for not living
>up to someone else's ideal.

I did not suggest that *any* person's ideal or myth is a good or positive
thing.  I was talking about a particular gender myth---that men are to
be courageous and protective whereas women are to be nurturing and
nonthreatening.  Burned "witches" and battered wives are not the
consequence of this myth.

>From my experience, the more these ideals/myths/whatever are promoted,
>the more pain they cause people.  

Can you give some examples that relate to the myths that I was talking about?

>It may be one thing if women made
>up those things that are women, but we've hardly had that chance.
>We've always had these ideal myths made up for us.

I'm not sure about that.  These myths go way back into prehistory.  Who
knows who first made them up?  It's true enough that men have often bent
these myths to their advantage, since they had the political power.  But
is it not true that much of folklore is matrilineal?

>I would love to see men trying to reevaluate what it is that is
>"manly", but at the same time I, as a woman, do not want them to
>reevaluate what it is to be "womanly".  

I should not presume to do that.  I believe that women should 
define themselves.  (Isn't that what feminism is all about?) I only
suggest that this reevaluation not be done in a vacuum.  One must look
into history and tradition not only for evidence of oppression, but also
for indications of what is positive.  I think much of what I have said
concurs with the "cultural feminist" perspective.  And much of my belief
of what is "womanly" stems from my mother. 

>|>I don't want a world in
>|> which men are encouraged to be brutal towards women.
>
>I don't either, but that's the world in which we're now living.

Maybe I don't watch the right movies, but I don't see that in this world
men are encouraged to be *brutal* towards women.  Exploiting and
condescending perhaps, but *brutal*?  I can, however, see this world
heading in that direction, and making soldiers out of women will
accelerate rather than arrest the process.

>First, I don't accept that violence is unavoidable.  

Tell that to the inhabitants of Bosnia.

>The more people make passive victims out of themselves, the more they
>get abused.  Therefore with such violence, we will see a continuation
>of the males being the dominators and the women being the victims.

There are two views on this, (and although they are contrary, I can't
dismiss either one).  The view that you seem to be espousing is that
unless you act tough, people will walk all over you.  Women have *not*
been tough, and that is why they have always been abused.  The cure lies
in teaching women to be tough, including being soldiers.  This attitude
(for *men*) is deeply ingrained in American culture.  It is exemplified
by the western movie, has led to the arms race during the cold war, and
is reflected in American action in Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait, (but not,
mysteriously, in Yugoslavia.)

The other view is that violence breeds violence, and the cure is to
*submit* to violence and appeal to people's moral natures to bring about
change.  This is the view espoused by Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.  From this perspective, abuse of women
is achieved not by teaching women to protect themselves (e.g., by giving
them guns), but by teaching men that abusing women is wrong.  On a
broader perspective, the gains that women have made in the last two
decades have been IMHO due no less to men's sense of justice than to any
power plays that women's groups have made.

>|>   Lack of courage can be forgiven in a woman
>|> because she has other burdens to bear.  This is one of the few perks
>|> that women have traditionally had.  Don't knock it.
>
>I'm not knocking.  I'm kicking and punching.  Don't men have any
>other burdens?  

We all have many burdens, but there are some that are peculiarly female.
Expecting courage in a man redresses the balance, IMHO.

>And I am personally capable of commending men
>for such "lack of courage" as lack of stupidity in most cases.

If self-preservation is the highest good, then courage can be considered
stupidity.  But I believe that I live for more than just myself.  If I
didn't believe that, why would I be interested in women's issues at all?
As long as I'm in control, why should I care?

>|>And if both I and a
>|> woman were in danger, and someone came to save us, I would expect that
>|> the woman would be helped first.
>
>Even if the woman looked like Arnold Schwarzeneggar?  
>Even if you were
>hurt very seriously while she had nary a scratch?  
>What if she was keeping cool and calm while you were in hysterics?
>Be real here.  Personally, I would first help the one who needed it
>most, and that person is not always the woman.

Again, you are interpreting my general guidline into a categorical
statement.  Of course it would depend on the situation.  I was thinking
of the case where we were both in similar circumstances.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>bickis@math.usask.ca<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mik Bickis       \,,,       .*#*.  \    University of Saskatchewan
Department of        \,,,  ^\\|//^  ```\   Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mathematics & Statistics \   )|(        ```\   Canada      S7N 0W0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<S|A|S|K|A|T|C|H|E|W|A|N|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



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