Newsgroups: bit.listserv.xcult-l
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1992 13:44:42 -0500
From:         sluyter@XENO.LMIG.COM
Subject:      Re: CBS: Eng is the Best Language?!

zahir,

My request for more of your thoughts about women and men in our
society was not meant to be sarcastic.  I am a new X-CULTer, and
have lived a typically insulated life in the US.  Your assertion about
the feminine gender is something I've thought about a lot.  I sat
trying to organize my thoughts, and couldn't, so I hoped you might
set a course to respond to.

It's dificult for me to talk about because I have come across such a
small vocabulary to speak with.  Many of the ideas I have learned
from are the product of Feminism, and the Women's Rights
movement.  They hold fantastic potential for everyone, but it has
been so important for women to claim a distinct identity for
themselves, men have been consciously excluded.  I respect that, and
so hesitate crash the party.

I think my belief stems from [<-for you, Emmy] the experience of
having had a few close childhood friendships, and the desire to enjoy
the same as an adult man.  And it comes from disillusionment with
the obsessions of most American men of my acquaintance: property,
influence, and status.  American men, certainly, are not alone in
these obsessions. They're worth mentioning because I think they are
essential to understanding what so utterly distracts us from being
able to sustain healthy interaction with our children, our mates,
women and men.

I think my disillusionment with property, influence, and status
comes from poeple who moved in across the street from me as a kid.
The man was "on the fast track" in his career and almost never home.
The kids were unruly little brutes, and the wife stood on the front
lawn yelling all the time.  One day she crumbled on the grass, crying.
I thought, "These people have money, the man is going to be famous
as the best root beer salesman that ever lived!  But they're
miserable."  Later on I thought about my family, and we were the
same, except my father sold something else.

Meditation shapes us the way running water shapes stone.  And the
mantra hummed on our motorways, and slurred over our shopping
carts is "We are what we possess."

So zahir, I overgeneralize, and oversimplify, and don't really know
what I'm talking about.  But my hypothesis (borrowing profusely
from Simone de Beauvoir)  is this:  men judge their own worth and
believe themselves judged by other men according to the women,
children, homes, cars, etc in their possession, and their occupation
which is the means to those possessions.  These being the rules of
"the game", women and children are not so much persons as they are
inventory.  Other men are the competition, friendly and otherwise,
but you don't ever let your guard down for an instant.  You don't
want to loose the game!

So, a belated welcome, zahir, to the company of American men.
Again, I ask what are your thoughts, please.  By the way, you may
have heard some of us go into the woods to pound drums, paint
strange expressions on our faces, howl at the moon and then cry in
each others' arms...  Well, we aren't going to let Women have the only
movement are we?  :-)

Dave
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