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From: mangoe@cs.UMD.EDU (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: how to bash feminism without really trying
Message-ID: <8910190115.AA18025@mimsy.UMD.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 89 19:47:34 GMT
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Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
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Status: R

I only focus on affirmative action because it seems to me to be a relatively
"pure" example.  It is unabashedly an attempt to tilt the scales.  Of course
it is an easy target, and yet it did not go undefended, did it?

As I have said, I am opposed to this treatment of people as if they were
only classes.  Affirmative action is a pure example of this, but it is a
tendency felt throughout feminism.  It's the natural result of the
unquestioning acceptance of the language of sociology.

I don't think there is any great mystery here.  Mr. Shapiro for one is
evidently aware of the significance of affirmative action as a type of
gender-based action.  If there were no real contention here, then such
programs would have been disavowed at the beginning of the discussion,
rather than at the end.

Finally, Mr. Shapiro's demand for alternatives is question-begging.  His
demand is only of interest if it can be shown that affirmative action is
effective, AND that we can live with the undesirable side effects.  It seems
that these little questions are dispensed with too easily, especially in the
light of considerable evidence that lower class white males are being shat
upon, and persistence of dislocation even where AA prevails.

The beauty of class-based action is that it allows us privileged types to
justfiy our callous dismissal of the problems of the less fortunate.  Here,
Mr. Shapiro's feminism is part of a larger pattern of insensitivity among
the privileged-- and oddly justified as sensitivity, of a sort.






-- 
C. Wingate          + "Our God, to whom we turn when weary with illusion,
                    + whose stars serenely burn above this earth's confusion,
mangoe@cs.umd.edu   + thine is the mightly plan, the steadfast order sure
mimsy!mangoe        + in which the world began, endures, and shall endure."