Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!daemon From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: sex/gender Message-ID: <12728@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Date: 13 Jul 89 02:43:10 GMT References: <8907112038.AA14297@cattell.psych.upenn.edu> <12605@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <2308@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> Sender: ambar@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro) Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 39 Approved: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu In article <2308@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> Mikey writes: >In particular, she expresses one desire which I hold close to my heart: >>>We may not all agree on what these prescriptions [of feminism] should be, >>>but I'd >>>rather have us arguing over that than trying to re-describe the world >>>in a way that it isn't... The problem with this has been well explained in another posting. Description is hardly as objective as you make it out to be. These "facts" which you claim to be describing are constructions, and can be as sexist as any other social constructions; they're not "out there" waiting to be discovered by diligent social scientists. This whole prescription/description thing seems misguided to me for just this reason (rather like the nature/nurture dichotomy). >My right to live my life as I want is not dependant on how most men or >most women or most whatevers choose to live theirs. That is a >prescription which requires no detailed description of what others are >doing. This is naive in just the same way as the statements above. From what perspective do you imagine you can make this decision? The very concepts that you use to think about the problem are part of a framework which comes from the broader social context -- the same context you think you can ignore. There really is no "outside" to this, there's nowhere objective for you to stand and contemplate these kinds of issues. Individuals are NOT free in this way -- insofar as we're constituted as individuals at all, it's only within a particular social context, with its set of concepts, its particular facts and truths, its knowledge. There are 1001 questions to answer about how and why our particular context is sexist in the way that it is, how it got this way, whether it can be remade some other way etc etc. But we really have to leave the realm of the individual and the realm of empirical fact gathering -- all we'll find there are mirrors of what we already know. Feminism cannot be an empirical science if it expects to make the kinds of changes we probably all want.