From: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women warriors and male myths (WAS: Military Quote)
Date: 9 Oct 1992 19:14:22 GMT
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Distribution: world
Reply-To: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1an2f0INNdlm@agate.berkeley.edu>, bickis@skmath2.pa.dec.com (M. Bickis) writes:
|> In article <1ad7drINNjj5@agate.berkeley.edu> blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
|> writes in reply:
|> 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.

A trait is feminine if it is possessed by a female.  Period.  Oh I know,
you'll probably go running off to old Webster's Dictionary and state:
"The word feminine means...."  I am not talking about some dictionary-
defined term here.  Those definitions are outdated.  They are
not defined by us as women.  As a woman, I vote for my definition
above.

|> >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.

Oh?  Perhaps they are not the consequence of your own personal myth in
your own imagination.  But they are a consequence of the real gender
myths that are floating around nowadays.  Answer this question:  Why
do men who are batterers batter?  How do they view their victims and 
what makes them think so?  Why did the inquisitors (who were largely
male) burn "witches" (who were largely female) even to the extent
that the entire population of villages were devoid of women?  Find out
the answers to these questions and then you may see more clearly why
I believe that such "ideal gender myths" do cause such things as
burned witches and battered wives.
 
|> >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?

I can give examples like the ones stated above, but I cannot give examples
relating to your myths because they are yours and only exist for you.
My examples above do not follow from your personal gender ideals, but
>from other people's gender ideals that have caused torment and pain to
people because they were forced upon those people.  And we are still
living through some of those things today.
 
|> >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 go even further in saying that men have not "bent" the myths to
their advantage, but made up many of their own to try to stamp out
any vestige of power a woman might possess.  I do not believe that there
is one big universal myth that our society has possessed since day
one, or whatever.  The myths have changed according to whoever is in
power in the society.  Right now, we are still living under male-
defined gender myths.  Many of us are trying to change that so that
we as women can define our *own* myths of what our gender is.  I will
emphasise again that the problem with these "ideal gender myths"
pertaining to women have been defined by men and have been forced
upon us.  Whenever we've tried to rebel, we've been put down as
"unfeminine" by the gender rules we didn't necessarily make up.
 
|> >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. 

Ah, we have a connection here!  Yet, what seems positive to one person
does not always seem positive to another.  So much of our history
has been written by the dominant group in our societies that much that
does not seem positive to that dominant group has been left out and
intentionally forgotten.
 
||> 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.

I don't have to watch movies to see that men seem to be encouraged
to be brutal towards women.  It's all over.  It's not just one movie,
or one TV ad, or one magazine, or whatever.  It's all those things
put together.  Why are many men so brutal to women?  Many men are,
or there wouldn't be so much violence done against us.  Every day
I'll look in the newspaper and see that a woman was gang-raped, or
raped, killed, and stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car.  I see
this *every day*.

I don't see how "making soldiers out of women" will make women brutal.
Being a soldier is not a prerequisite for being brutal, and brutality
is not always the consequence of being a soldier.
  
|> We all have many burdens, but there are some that are peculiarly female.
|> Expecting courage in a man redresses the balance, IMHO.

Please elaborate on these many burdens that are particularly female.
Pregnancy  is the only one I can think of that is biologically sound
that requires courage from a woman.  Does your statement of "redressing
the balance" imply that men are afraid that women will seem more 
courageous than they are if men don't hurry up and find areas to
"prove" themselves courageous to make up?  And by doing so, will these
men further attempt to force  women to keep our courage only to
pregnancy so that we won't win the courage game by having more cases
of courage than the men do?  And then, will the men decide that they
want all the courage for themselves by trivializing the ordeal of
pregancy, and in fact, take it over as much as possible by having
the pregnant woman a passive participant in the one area of courage
that she is now allowed to have.  If this sounds ridiculous to you,
then good!  But I propose (based on my own readings and investigations)
that this type of situation did occur in our history and we are still
facing the effects.  Why should courage be treated as a competitive
sport between males and females?  Shouldn't we just try to respect
what qualities we each have as individuals, regardless of gender?
-- 

Bekki Lyn

************************************************************
"Today is within my reach, and tomorrow is so illusive
 But I'm still chasing time through increasing disillusion
 Forever living for the future of an illusion."

 -- FATES WARNING-- "Perfect Symmetry"
************************************************************


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