Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!usc!ucla-cs!uci-ics!tittle From: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: gender-blindness and equality Message-ID: <46465@bbn.COM> Date: 4 Oct 89 16:24:16 GMT References: <8910041344.AA27103@mimsy.UMD.EDU> Sender: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle) Reply-To: Richard Shapiro Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 22 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu In article <8910041344.AA27103@mimsy.UMD.EDU> mangoe@cs.UMD.EDU (Charley Wingate) writes: >Now, I've exaggerated this somewhat. At the same time, however, my >point remains: insofar as "feminism" means "gender equality", it >cannot mean "advocacy for women". I don't understand why people keep making this point. It's simply incorrect. Non-advocacy (or gender-blindness) means maintaining the status quo, and if that status quo discriminates against women, than non-advocacy means discriminating against women. Is this really so hard to understand? Treating unequals equally preserves the initial inequality. If gender inequality is an unacceptable state, then gender-blindness or non-advocacy CANNOT be a legitimate course of action. As for what feminism "means", that's a harder question. To me, feminism is the study of political and social gender. It's a way to understand gender inequality: where it appears, how it appears, why it appears, where it derives from, how we might end it. That, at least, is its theoretical component. But insofar as it's an activist political point of view, "advocacy for women" seems like a legitimate paraphrase. And this position is wholly consistent with a general belief in justice and equality.