From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Men Not Getting It
Date: 15 Nov 92 19:45:46 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Nov15.165152.23276@tc.cornell.edu>
shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:

>In article <1992Nov15.160349.4486@macc.wisc.edu>
>anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>>How can one *not* see that all these oppressions are linked
>>together in myriad ways?  How can anyone *not* see that
>>these linked oppressions form an interlocking network of
>>steel bonds penetrating all facets of our society?  How can
>>anyone *not* see that our common "enemy" is this tendency to
>>create and maintain power relationships that seek personal
>>gain through causing others to lose?  How, really, can
>>anyone not "get it?"

>Good question.  I'm coming to believe that the people (not
>just men) who do get it are ones who have had some direct
>experience with institutionalized oppression.

Sometimes I get worried by the high degree of similarity in
our turns of mind.  It could be a threat to one or both of
us! :-)

This morning I was thinking about this "not getting it"
business, in the context of radical politics.  Up popped the
very same image, that those who get it have been radicalized
not by rhetoric (or what we might call common sense), but by
some direct and fairly dramatic (to them) conjuncture with
things as they are.

>That's largely true of the people I know personally.  I've
>been getting a lot of email recently about Colorado, and in
>the supportive mail has been a lot of testifying.  One of
>the most striking was from a man whose son was shot (but not
>killed) in a gaybashing incident in California.  He's lived
>through a particularly frightening example of just where
>group hatred can lead.

Indeed, this sort of testifying -- even where it's
considerably less horrifying than that -- is something I
regard as very important for stimulating others to consider
the real implications of the experiences some people have in
getting through life.  I was very disheartened by the
postings about the guy in Colorado who suicided soon after
the election that essentially discounted his experience.
One of the things that radicalizes me is the persistent lack
of compassion I see out there in the world, especially when
it's exhibited by people who ought to be able to see
suffering all around them.

Maybe it's in part psychic numbing, to use Helen Caldicott's
phrase for those desensitized to the threat of nuclear
annihilation.  It seems that otherwise well-intentioned
people can manage somehow to turn down the level of their
susceptibilities to the griefs of others, which I experience
as a shocking example of opting for moral blindness.

>In my own case, I was sort of vaguely liberal (anti-war,
>believed that racism was icky, etc.) when I was much
>younger.  Coming from an affluent family and being white and
>educated I figured that I was pretty much safe, and that
>institutionalized oppression was simply not my problem.

>When my place of employment did their gay purge, however, it
>provided the wakeup call that I needed, and I'd like to
>think that my awareness has evolved (and will continue to
>evolve) since that time.  It raises all sorts of questions
>about the nature of altruism, doesn't it?

Maybe questions about the nature of altruism need to be
raised, again and again, until we as a society can rise
above our personal self-aggrandizements enough to make an
effort -- *and* to succeed!  -- in guaranteeing a certain
level of what we call life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness for everyone on earth who wants it.  To be sure,
this involves us in all sorts of thorny issues like cultural
imperialism, population control that doesn't amount to
cultural genocide, balancing the environmental equations,
and so forth.  But each of these things seems to me to be
but one more radicalizing input, raising the stakes,
increasing a sense of urgency, underscoring the impending
cataclysm if we continue on in the present directions.

Significant problems arise, I think, as the more one becomes
radicalized, the more one ineluctably becomes a moralist.
To be radical is to want to get to the root of things (hence
the word) so they can be changed.  But there are of course
many dangers in becoming a moralist, the chiefest of them,
perhaps, being to see only one root where there are in fact
many.

There are many radicalizing forces.  Ones I have not
experienced directly include poverty, hunger, homelessness,
lovelessness, and unemployment.  Though my economic origins
are working-class and lower middle-income, though I have
worn tattered clothes to school in an age when it bore
painful social liabilities, I've seldom missed a meal, I've
slept in a warm bed with a roof over my head anytime I chose
to, I've loved and been loved far beyond the normal
allotment, and I've been continuously employed since I was
10.

But the reason I find so much empathy for poverty,
homelessness, hunger, emotional deprivation, and
unemployment is that I have indeed had direct experience
with gross violence, with bigotries of racism, sexism,
homophobia and religious intolerance, with the tendency of
governments to be corrupt, with the intentional forced
subjugation of the human spirit by greed, power-madness, and
brute strength.

My personal mantra is "a path is formed by walking on it,"
but my social and political call to action is "for heaven
sakes, wake up, wake up, can't you see what's happening?"

-- 
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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