From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Men and Feminism (was Re: Liberty)
Date: 21 Dec 92 04:06:07 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <BzKx7n.9Aq@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>
dbshapco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Brad Shapcott) writes:

>[Tim Pierce, of Melinda Shore:]

>>However, she has observed that the most clueless,
>>inappropriate, and nonsensical suggestions are proposed
>>almost exclusively by men.

>So?  Do you educate them or slap them around?

Some of one, some of the other.  You gave some good
examples, I thought, of the ways some men wall out being
educated; if they're as resistant as all that, maybe
slapping around is worth a try.  The time-honored implement
is a 2x4, though I like the resounding smack of the open
hand, myself. :-)

>Going into personal mode here,

>[Examples of ugly past]

>So what?  Well, hopefully I'm not as apparently clueless
>these days.  So what's the difference?

Rather than spend energy assessing where we are on the scale
of cluelessness, perhaps the thing to do is keep forging
ahead as best we can.  All of us, in every regard, are
nearly *completely* clueless when compared to what there is
to be known about the universe we inhabit.  Everything we
know, not in any way to dismiss it, is provisional,
temporary, ad hoc.

So I would observe, based on what you've said, that you
probably have a good heart and that you've learned some
things that are useful pertaining to the topic.  But it's a
context in which "enough" doesn't apply; there will always
be "more."

>[differences real and perceived]

>It's not complete.  I didn't wake up one morning a feminist
>and still wouldn't call myself one because I haven't yet
>learned enough (a feminist wannabee?).

As I say, the day of enough will be long in coming.

>I find myself making stupid comments that I am immediately
>dumbfounded by and regret the instant I make them.  I'm sure
>I do other things I don't clue in to.

In this you're like lots of people, then.

>I gather insights, and I wrestle with concepts (like gender
>in language).  I'm clumsy and sophomoric at times.  Possibly
>appearing downright stupid to others.  But, I'm trying to
>learn and grow, and statements like Melinda's whether they
>were aimed where I'm standing or not, sting me.

Please take one step back from the edge, Brad.  I would hope
you could then see that by refusing to take the information
*in the form* it's delivered in, you are shutting your mind
to possibly useful insights.  A little stinging doesn't so
overwhelm the senses that no further thought is possible.

In another posting, you talk about Melinda's anger as though
she weren't fully justified in it, because that anger
apparently has an unsettling effect on you.  Right there you
get off the track of useful insights again.  Melinda
(fortunately not alone, but nevertheless in her own unique
way) *is* angry, and she has every right to be.  Fortunately
again, it's not her only perspective, but it's an important
one, to her (and incidentally to me).

>[...]

>I can't *see* the point of feminism if it isn't to clue in
>the type of person I used to be, and then to continue
>educating the type of person I've become.

Free clue: one very significant dimension (I have this
strong feeling it's the main one) of feminism is that it has
nothing to do with you at all, nor with the kind of person
you were or are, nor with educating *any* men.

From this point of view, feminism is by, for, and about
women, for women themselves, *without reference* to men.  A
man who claims to or aspires to support feminism needs to
know what's happened in women's lives historically that makes
it necessary to get free of all that mind-bending garbage
before they can make progress finding out what *else* may be
the case for them, before they can discover themselves *for*
themselves, many if not most for the very first time in
their lives.  It is hardly possible, I expect, to overstate
the release this engenders, on both personal and social
levels.  At the same time, it is anything but easy, and it
can be (often is) very daunting, after a couple decades or
more of being conditioned by men and a partiarchal society,
by ineluctably being immersed in male privilege.

A concerned man can be there when asked to be there for
women.  But in the preponderant majority of cases, the best
thing men can do is butt right *out*!  File your diamonds,
tend your orchards, read a book, talk to anyone you can get
to talk to you about it, but don't tell women they're (too)
angry, don't demand that they in any way divert their
energies toward educating you.

>[good intentions expressed]

>If feminsim really doesn't want men on board, I see it as a
>mistake, but having clearly gotten this message, would
>personally stop chasing the bandwagon.

The wrong kind of either/or tack, I would say.  It's not a
matter of on board or of a bandwagon; those concepts
themselves are not appropriate to the context.

>If anyone thinks to reply to anything less than this full
>post, I won't even think of responding.  I'm just a bit
>tired at the egotistical posturing masquerading as insight,
>righteousness and witticisms that seems to have taken over
>parts of this group (not thinking of anyone in particular).

>And while I'm reigning in my ego, 

You see, Brad, gawd watches over all these proceedings with
a very careful eye, and just as you take it into your mind
to berate the ego of others, gawd makes you write the wrong
word.  It's Fate, which leads the willing and drags the
unwilling.  You meant "reining in," of course, but you spoke
the truth.

>that does mean that people can use what I've said to really
>damage me, and destroy my enjoyment of the 'space' this
>group has created.  If you don't feel yourself above preying
>on that vulnerability, sit on your hands.

You may give little lectures to the universe on how it is to
behave until you're blue in the face; I assure you, the
universe will go on in its own fashion nevertheless.

>In other words, I've put my neck out so far and made it so
>easy to twist what I have said, I doubt I'd be able to
>defend myself from a well put together attack.

Perhaps the entire rhetoric of "defending oneself" is
suspect, or at least revealing.

>I can't really respect the things said by the last three
>people under this banner, despite my respect for the people.
>Maybe if we could see 'stupid' as 'unlearned', 'clumsy' as
>'untried', 'sophomoric' as 'incomplete', and an automatic
>ascription of humanity and inherent worth in talking with
>each other, we could start a dialogue with a future, rather
>than one obsessed with the wrong and hurtful words of the
>past.  (I can't be the only one on this group who is trying
>earnestly to learn and perhaps not showing it well.)

Respect is a mutual matter, not a one-way matter.  At a
number of key points in the whole series of postings, you
have tried to redefine for others what would have been
"better," one way or another, for them to have done or said.
Such a paradigm is inherently disrespectful, of course.
It's fine to say what you think, including what you don't
like and why.  And you need accept nothing as holy.  I think
a reasoned critique of what people say and do is a useful
activity, but that analysis should rest, I think, on what
they *do* say and do, not on what they might have said or
done.  You can't change people; you can present alternatives,
but they must do the changing themselves.

<> [In .sig:] Gay and proud of it!
<> -- Dave Beals (beals@cis.umassd.edu)
<> After a few years when perhaps, maybe, you have swallowed
<> some of your pride you may come to realize being proudly
<> gay does not make you identical in either gayness or pride.
<> Gay is an attribute, not a whole.
<> -- Ken Dykes (kgdykes@thinkage.on.ca)
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
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