From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Movers Primer and Not (Re: How This Man/Boy Got Some)
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 93 14:49:23 GMT


In article <C0LAJn.JGo@panix.com> mara@panix.com (Mara
Chibnik) writes:

Me:

>>It's male privilege that animates and sustains sexism,
>>probably.

>Ow.

Ow?  That hurt?  Where and why?

>Yes and no.  It is very difficult to change habits of
>thought as deeply engrained in a culture as those that
>govern gender proprieties.  Women as well as men have formed
>these habits, and women as well as men need to re-form (!)
>them.

Admittedly in a not very organized fashion, I was trying to
identify not the *only* source of the problem, but the
_primus inter pares_.  Tim Mohler's point was that it isn't
so much that men are clueless, but rather than they
knowingly ignore the clues, seeing them as undermining their
privilege.

You're right that ending sexism involves many changes in
women's habits, not just in men's.  But when I said
"animates and sustains," I was positing that the primary
source, both for creating and for continuing sexism, was
male privilege, interests so large and so vested as to
foster and further what you called deeply engrained habits.
I assume you're pointing out that women are 
co-opted in a variety of ways.  But would you say that
apart from this co-optation, women are themselves a
primary source of the dynamic that creates and continues
sexism in our society?  

I emphasize the word "primary" here; my reason for that is
chiefly that if one could pull out the foundation-stone of
sexism, the edifice would weaken and eventually crumble.  To
be sure, that would not necessarily lead directly to
something better.

>Male privilege is a very significant aspect of our notions
>of gender propriety, but so are male responsibility and
>female dependency.  They all work together in the culture to
>produce a stabilizing mix -- [...]

But I see those as consequences, not as sources, of the
problem.

>Of course, male privilege is what has encouraged women to
>look for equality and to try to clear out some of the
>attitudes that all of us held nearly unexamined for all
>those generations.  Women tend to see the potential effect
>of reducing sexism as an increase in privilege, men as a
>reduction in privilege.

>Of course there's more to it than that.  

Yes indeed.  I don't see the model as some sort of privilege
pie that just has to be shared more equally, though there's
no reason not to pursue that objective too.  Rather, the
idea of privilege *itself* seems a root source of the
problem, somehow.

>But I don't like considerations of the topic that make it
>look as though sexism would vanish if only those nasty men
>would get a clue.  I wish it were that easy!

Well, I didn't see any suggestion to that effect in the
preceding.  Apart from its grosser outward effects, perhaps
we don't know that much about what sexism is, and less yet
about what it derives from.  For example, perhaps it comes
from capitalist economics, or even (don't get too excited,
Owen) from primate biology.  I see those more as mitigating
factors than as root causes, however.

The motivating idea behind searching for root causes, where
sexism is concerned, is as I see it to go beyond what I see
as mostly partial, palliative solutions (more women in
Positions of Power, that is, sharing privilege, etc.), and
to so alter the foundations of sexism that the present
edifice cannot stand.  To be sure, such a collapse would
leave a barrier consisting of rubble in place of one
consisting of a wall.  And as you say, it isn't that easy.
But it would be a start.  The consequences are admittedly
rather hard to divine.

<> The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes
<> longer. -- Edward R. Murrow
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
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