Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!daemon
From: bevans@jarthur.claremont.edu
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: understanding from the outside
Message-ID: <13096@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 29 Jul 89 00:54:17 GMT
References: <12870@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <15081@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Sender: ambar@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: bevans@jarthur.claremont.edu (Brian Evans)
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli
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Approved: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu

The problem with saying that the oppressor defines the problem is that
the oppressor doesn't think there IS a problem.  Just because a person
is a member of a group that has shown that it can be bigotted, doesn't
mean that said person is bigotted.

There is a point saying that a person who hasn't experienced a certain
experience does not have the same perceptions as one who has had the
experience.  But that is what research is for.  If I am trying to write
a paper about what it means to be a woman, I'm going to go ask women.
I'm also going to go ask men (to get another viewpoint).  While Shere
Hite had a horrid method in gathering her material (apparently, she had
a terrible return rate, like 5%, for her questionaires in her last
report yet she went ahead with her report), she had a very good form of
her report.  That is, she published the responses she received and based
her conclusions on those responses.

--
Brian Evans                         "It has been scientifically proven
bevans@hmcvax.bitnet                 that scientists cause cancer in
bevans@jarthur.claremont.edu         laboratory rats."
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