From: wolfe@wolves.uucp (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Women, men, scum, and wicca . . .
Date: 24 Jul 92 03:00:00 GMT
Reply-To: wolfe@wolves.durham.nc.us
Followup-To: alt.pagan
Organization: Red Wolfe @ The Wolves Den
X-Md4-Signature: fddd1f1b50b1a3a40463dfcdd3619c4f

In article <2A6B36DE.16386@noiro.acs.uci.edu> [The Net.Goddess]
cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>
>In article <1992Jul20.124556.6599@ac.dal.ca> jblain@ac.dal.ca writes:
>>I wasn't going to respond to all this stuff. I spend my life doing sociology
>>of gender, and alt.pagan is (was) a break from it, but here goes anyway.
>[Jenny's excellent post deleted for bandwidth]
>
>  It reminds me of the men in my
>department who complained of my getting a fellowship and talked about
>how unfair it was.  They only bitched and complained when I was tossed a
>bone; when they look up and see all the examples of oppression that I
>got daily everywhere else EXCEPTING the fellowship check, they didn't
>yell at all.
>
>When I see a man posting about his anger and outrage at what women go
>through, that's when I'll start taking seriously their yells about how
>sick they are of being made to feel guilty about being oppressors.  Poor
>you.  Most sit back and watch black people called foul names and joked
>about, most don't get angry at rape statistics, most don't scream bloody
>murder when you hear about South Africa on the news 

Then you aren't listening very hard.

I have to agree more with Jenny's second sentence.  I don't read
alt.pagan to see the shit that I can see in soc.men, soc.women,
soc.feminism, alt.politics.homosexuality (and even soc.history) all the
time.

There is damned little toleration in some corners and no respect, for
the *mere* males who do get off their asses and do some significant work
in support of individual enpowerment.

What do you expect, the feminist males to appear upon demand and to
punish the idiots that inflict harrassment right then and there?  Shall
I carry a gun so that the idiots will learn that they picked on the
wrong person?  (VERY HEAVY SARCASM IN THE VOICE)

In 1973, I presented a workshop at the 2nd Southeastern (Lesbian) and
Gay Conference on "The Leather Lifestyle - Discrimination within the Gay
Movement."  A rather rough topic for that time and place.  Several women
came to my workshop and listened and made interesting contributions to
the understanding of the participants.  Then, they turned around and
organized a workshop on "Women and Leather - A Lesbian response" and
then *closed the workshop to men*   What was reported to me about that
workshop was that they ended up arguing among themselves about the
political correctness of women admiting to having "leatherish"
tendancies at all!

Is this relevant?  Not really, its taken out of context and only
reported from one point of view.  Its an anecdote, simply an
illustration of the way that people interact.

This, IMnsHO, is what we are getting into here with the political
squabbling about sexism and discrimination.  A lot of hot air, and
expressing pain, grief and anger about the way the current culture
treats individuals not in the mainstream of the society.

It reminds me of the arguments that occasionally erupt in some circles
about men and women in pagan leadership roles.  Lots of noise and hurled
accusations and pained feelings, and no light or celebration or unity.

Am I bitter here?  You bet!  I have personally laid my ass on the line
time after time in support of all sorts of causes, only to hear the
stereotypes and stilted dialectic responses of "men hate women,"  "all
men are rapists,"  and "all 'pornography' is degrading to women."

Of course, there  is no way for someone meeting me only in a casual
context (such as netnews) to know that I am "different" from "all those
other men" by being an activist.  So why am I ranting?

My FIRST principle is the inherent worth and dignity of the human
person.  I expect people to be basically decent, and I'm seldom truly
disappointed.  (There are, of course, some classes of situations where I
expect less than optimum bahaviour, I'm experienced enough to not
"trust" a politician or "used-car salesperson") [Yes, the dissonance is
obvious.]

I'm *not* jumping on Janice or anyone else in particular here, I'm
ranting about the stereotyping that is being hurled around while
complaining about the sterotyping that is being hurled around!  (Yeah, a
meta-rant!  Shall we add another level of recursion?  Nah.)

I find it very interesting that the best thread to show up on alt.pagan
in a while (about the trees and our relations to the earth) is occurring
at the same time this pointless political posturing is occurring.  From
the sublime to the ridiculous is only the matter of a few articles.

				Wolfe

[ I know I'm in a foul mood!  It's my time of the month (not yet to
payday) and the office has been more outrageous than usual, and I've got
a touch of dysentery, etc. etc. etc.  I'll be over it in about three
days.  Monday I'll try to write about what went right over the
weekend.]
-- 
G. Wolfe Woodbury @ The Wolves Den UNIX, Durham NC         [use the maps!]
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    Above all, we celebrate.   Celebrate the Circle Statement of Purpose
Newsgroups: alt.pagan