Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!aero!rshapiro@BBN.COM From: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: gender-blindness and equality Message-ID: <46585@bbn.COM> Date: 6 Oct 89 02:12:19 GMT References: <8910041344.AA27103@mimsy.UMD.EDU> <46465@bbn.COM> <8910051922.AA07504@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu> Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Reply-To: Richard Shapiro Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 31 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R In article <8910051922.AA07504@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu> geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes: >In article <46465@bbn.COM> Richard Shapiro writes: >> >>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? > >Apparently so, since you have just made a logical contradiction. If >the status quo discriminates against women, then ipso facto it >*cannot* be gender-blind, now can it? You're confusing the state of things, the status quo, with subsequent actions that people may or may not take. Advocacy (or non-advocacy) refers to those actions, not to the situation. Thus gender-blindness refers to one kind of action we might take, given an existing situation. I was never talking about gender-blindness within the current situation itself (it's not even clear to me how a situation can be either "blind" or "sighted"; these are attributes of people and their actions, not of situations). There's no contradiction here, logical or otherwise. >If you are gender-blind, there >is no basis for discriminating. Which is exactly why it's a contradictory and unacceptable form of action. Its intent (non-discrimination) and its actual effects (preservation of the discriminatory status quo) are opposites. Gender-blindness can only make sense given a situation in which discrimination has *already* been eliminated, which is obviously not our situation.