Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!uunet!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar From: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: theory and action Message-ID: <46886@bbn.COM> Date: 13 Oct 89 15:55:38 GMT References: <8910130354.AA03023@mimsy.UMD.EDU> Sender: ambar@ora.ora.com Reply-To: Richard Shapiro Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 91 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <8910130354.AA03023@mimsy.UMD.EDU> mangoe@cs.UMD.EDU (Charley Wingate) writes: >Richard Shapiro's article illustrates a lot of reasons why I do not trust >"radical" social theory. He writes: > [my writing deleted] >Something else is being illustrated here: the tendency to a sort of >polarization; the inability to see middle ground. I'm interested in examining the "poles" because the positions are most clearly defined there. People live at the poles; the "middle ground" is an abstraction. One is *either* male or female, and the social consequences of that distinction affect everyone. In theory, there's a middle ground; in practice, everyone goes through one door or the other (in Lacan's famous drawing). > In this sort of issue, >there is a tension between the fact that the actors *are* individuals, and >the tendency of the actors to see themselves and others in terms of these >classes. This begins to become too general of an argument to really belong on soc.feminism. In my thinking (lessons learned from feminism), the most productive way to understand social phenomena like gender is to look at individuals as secondary creations, as products of various larger classes. Social classes determine individual subjectivity (for example, "masculine" and "feminine"), not vice versa. The relevant actors are social, not individual. It's a comforting illusion to imagine that each individual is fully autonomous and self-willed; but it's nothing more than an illusion. Individuals (me, you, anyone) are artifacts of the various social contexts which form them. >The very revealing comment is made that > >>We've been seeing this again and again in the anti-feminist "affirmative >>action is sexism" nonsense. It requires constant attention to keep from >>drifting into this lazy "natural" way of thinking. > >Well, the problem here is simply abuse of the language. Affirmative action >IS discriminatory-- it does involve making decisions on the basis of sex. >This is simply a factual observation, not a moral judgement. The question >which matters is: is it right? Is it desirable? Actually I said "sexist", not "discriminatory". But the two are more or less equivalent in this context. You can pretend that calling an action "discriminatory" is factual and not moral, but this is disingenuous, to say the least. This is actually very much in keeping with your voluntarist perspective. It's as if discourse were completely up to each individual speaker, rather than being a social construction. OF COURSE it's a moral judgement to call an action "discriminatory"; OF COURSE that's much more than a "simple factual observation". As a single speaker of English, you don't have the power to write out the connotations of a particular choice of words. I'm not sure what abuse of language you're accusing me of; but here, clearly, is an abuse. >other side. The problem is that these responses are not neutral at all; >rational people will use their class membership to whatever advantage they >may in an obviously discriminatory situation. Who says neutrality is a desirable thing? As explained before, neutrality has the effect of keeping things as they are. In actual practice, neutrality is never neutral, unless the situation as given is already itself neutral. Feminists have no rational basis for preferring this kind of pseudo-neutrality. Quite the contrary, in fact; they might well regard it as one of their functions to expose the lie which underlies "neutrality". >The whole question of social action issues out of suffering. But the >problem is, classes do not suffer. People suffer. Women "suffer" BECAUSE they're women; blacks suffer BECAUSE they're black. There is nothing specific to any given individual which underlies this, it is a group phenomenon. We end the suffering of particular woman by ending discrimination against women AS A CLASS. No other course of action makes sense. >someone else's cause. To put it bluntly, redneck males aren't going to vote >for feminism as long as feminism presents itself as an assault on them. So let's appease the redneck males? Is that your suggestion? Anything for a vote? Feminism IS an assault on male advantage. If "redneck males" actively or passively support these advantages, feminism is an assualt on them. Anti-apartheid groups don't get the votes of right wing Afrikaaners. Does that make them wrong, either morally or tactically? Of course people cling to their privileges, of course they're likely to resist those who seem to threaten those privileges. What's your point in raising this at all? There's a real conflict here -- we all know that. Not everyone supports the goals of feminism and some people (men and women) will actively work against those goals. Other people want privileges AND they want to make noise about equality. There's the "middle ground". Personally, I don't find it very tempting...