From: garry@rice.edu (Garry C. King)
Subject: Re: Women behind the scenes?
Followup-To: alt.feminism
Organization: Rice University
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 21:49:57 GMT


I can't do your response justice (I type incredibly slowly and think even
slower), but I'll have a go at a couple of points:

In article <JULIE.92Sep25171034@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu>,
julie@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Julie Wright) wrote:

> 	I'm not quite sure what you mean by my "peers" 
> It horrifies me to
> see the common perception on this and other newsgroups that we're a bunch
> of callous bitches who couldn't care less about men dying and suffering
> in wars.  I could be reading more into your question than you meant, but
> it seems to me you think my position would be controversial or rare among
> feminists.  

No, I was looking for an idea of its commoness amongst (young ?) women.

> 	You know, NOW talks (sometimes) about forming a feminist  
> political party, but part of the reason I wouldn't support such a party
> is that I think feminism works best as an *addition* to other politics.
> (Here, I'm talking about feminism as a political movement, not feminist
> literary criticism, etc.)  Already, it's hard enough for feminists
> to agree on issues that are definitely connected to feminism -- censorship
> of pornography, to give the most obvious example I can think of.  (*Please*
> don't think all feminists favor censorship of pornography!  This is a 
> heated argument at the moment, and plenty of feminists are against Dworkin-
> style censorship

It seems to me that a great deal of currently visible feminism is held
together by antipathy to things deemed to be male. Ten or even twenty (I
was a precocious kid) years ago, I'd have called myself a fem symp and my
wife would have called herself a feminist. Today, we along with large
numbers of what you might call equalitarians feel no support for the
movement.  I'm not totally sure why, except that there seems to be an
almost uncanny focus on fringe issues (and the "wrong" side of those issues
at that).  Dworkin and MacKinnon (If I was fighting a war, I'd want those
two up front. The other side would run in terror), Anita Hill as a vanguard
for sexual harassment, etc. It might just be that some of the major goals
have been and are being met, so that instead of withering away, as no power
structure ever does, it looks to justify its existence in new ways.  I'm
aware that plenty of feminists oppose censorship etc., but the "movement"
doesn't seem to, if you know what I mean.
If I may ask three possibly difficult questions:  What is feminism to you,
what holds it together and how does it differ from equalitarianism ? 

> Many feminists feel that *adding* women to the draft
> would merely be compounding an evil, and would be somewhat equivalent to 
> encouraging women to beat their husbands more often to equalize things.

Although, according to my reading of some long discussions on soc.men,
husband bashing is already not as uncommon as most of us are led to
believe.

> After a lot of coffee-fetching and being treated as sex toys there for
> the men's pleasure, many of these women -- who now had experience with
> political organization and activism, as well as a network with each other
> -- got pissed off, did a lot of thinking about what was going on, went 
> off and formed feminist groups, and took it from there.
> 	If I am correct, it puts a twist I haven't seen explored on
> this group onto the idea of the feminist movement's connection to the
> draft and modern war.
> 	
> ---Julie

Seems reasonable.  I do confess to a prejudice that a major (perhaps
dominant) component of anti-Vietnam War activity was the desire of middle
class men to save their own skins.  Not to diminish the involvement of
people with principled objections, but I think that they were in the
minority. As an aside, Vietnam marked the first war for which a draft was
instituted in Australia, which tends to support your view that (to date)
men will fight for a "good" reason.

The draft is a difficult question for an equalitarian. Pacifism sounds
nice, but avoids the issue of how to respond to attack, except to die
quietly, or flee while your neighbours die quietly. A volunteer army sounds
good too, but then it allows those who reap the most benefits from a
society to risk themselves least in its defense.  A draft is potentially
"fair" in terms of distributing the burden between classes (and potentially
sexes), but try telling that to a draftee.  A volunteer army with
substantial rewards for service would seem to be the least of several
evils.

Many thanks for a lengthy and considered post.


Garry.
Newsgroups: alt.feminism