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From: travis@douglass.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Blast Off
Message-ID: <6585@columbia.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 89 04:58:43 GMT
References: <6561@columbia.edu> <15872@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.ora.com
Organization: Columbia University
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Approved: ambar@ora.com

[ Hi all, sorry, even longer, and I cut out half.  But there are book
  references...] 

In article <15872@duke.cs.duke.edu> gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) writes:
>In article <6561@columbia.edu> (Travis Lee Winfrey) writes:
>> [many things, to which Hillel responded:]
>
>I see that you're quite good in name dropping and you just can't see
>what wrong in the feminist literature, so here is a small "spelling
>out":
>
>From [Susan Brownmiller's] "Against Our Will":
>"War provides men with the perfect psychologic backdrop to give vent to their
>contempt for women.  The very maleness of the military - the brute power of
>weaponry exclusive in their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the
>manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the
>hierarchical command - confirms for men what they long suspect, that women
>are peripheral, irrelevant to the world that counts, passive spectators to
>the action in the center ring."
>
>Brownmiller says very clear [sic] that men enjoy being in army [sic]
>and all the jazz around it.  Some simple questions like "if men enjoy
>being in war so much, why there is a need to draft them?" are high
>above her feminist head.
>
>I tell you that what she said is feminist Cow-Shit and her
>understanding of men in army [sic] is somewhere near zero (*I* have
>first hand experience).

It's good that you brought this example up, because it is a clearer example
than most of your method of mis-reading of a text.  My exasperated claim
last time was that feminists are concerned with much more than Affirmative
Action.  Your initial point demolished, you then asserted a list of feminist
books concern with other things is meaningless because I cannot see "what
wrong" in the feminist literature.

The quotation you give is intended to show many things.  In your
discussion, you claim:
  1) Brownmiller claims that men enjoy war and being in the army.
  2) Brownmiller's quotation is "feminist Cow-shit", which charming
     epithet we will take to mean "irrational, unsupported by facts or
     deduction." 
  3) This paragraph is typical of the lack of reasoning in feminist
     books, and hence discredits all feminist books and all feminists.
     Further, Brownmiller is incapable of understanding simple
     questions, and indeed, all "men in army."
  4) Your undetailed personal experiences, presumably unpleasant ones
     in the Israeli Army, outweighs the analysis given.
  5) This reasoning is sufficiently bad that it outweighs other
     arguments that Susan Brownmiller makes in the book.  Not only is
     her reasoning bad, but it is so bad that a few sentences of yours
     serve to demolish its book-length assertions.  You say, "War is
     Hell," and we are all supposed to understand what you mean in the
     context of her statements.

Quite the bristling bundle of assertions you've made!  The most
important ones are the generic attacks on her ability to reason,
because attacking anyone's ability to reason undermines all their
arguments.  However, the fact that intended this particular quotation
to be devastating rebuttal to what I said shows *how* you're reading
her book: with the intention of finding mistakes, evidence for your
arguments.  You read a book the intention of proving it wrong, and
it's no surprise that you found passages to quibble with.

The saddest thing about this type of reading is that her other
argument apparently passed through the mistake-filter you were using
without making any impression.  This was a discussion of rape in war,
Hillel.  Let's presume for a moment that your response overwhelmingly
convinces me and the other readers that you are right and she is
wrong.  So what?  Did you notice the parts of the same chapter
documenting the frequency of rape in past wars?  Do you remember the
parts detailing how accusations of rape are routinely flung at the
other side as a means of propagandizing one's own people during a war?
Did any of the numbing details in the the other chapters -- repeated,
hideous violations of women throughout the centuries -- make any sense
to you?  Did they make any impression on you??  Why is your only
discussion of the book that of a single passage you found
objectionable?  Does your objection to this passage also mean that you
don't agree with her evidence for rapes as a common element in wars?

Beyond Brownmiller's book, why do you think that a successful attack
on her book would lead anyone to reject any feminist book, or any
other opinion of Susan Brownmiller herself?  What does this book have
to do with any other?  I gave it as one of a list of books united only
under the common theme "feminism," but you seem to think they are
united in much more.  Do you think all feminists go to politically
correct summer camp, and decide what they think about everything?  Can
you explain in more detail why you find her thinking typical -- or
typically bad?  Does this mean that you agree with everything said by
authors or thinkers you find more understandable?  Does it mean that
because you disagree with me on these topics, you couldn't agree with
me on anything else?

Perhaps your haste to find fault in her book explains why you mistook
her meaning so completely.  She never says anything about enjoying
war; she says it provides a backdrop for displaying a preexistent
hatred of women.  She is attempting to analyze the essence of being
joined together in a hierarchy, joined with other men in battle, and
claiming that women are perceived by the men as passive spectators to
this manly spectacle.  The explanatory use of these well-known
psychological factors as a "psychological backdrop" to rape is neither
new nor surprising.  A pre-existent "contempt" for women is her most
debatable assertion, but you miss the chance to attack it altogether,
preferring to battle with straw men.

Whether or not you liked the army, many men do, and always have.  The
draft is necessary to create an army, but it is not necessary to create
career soldiers, or soldiers who re-enlist for extra tours.  There
have always been men who get off on the danger and excitement.  "War
is hell", as General Sherman said, but General Patton is said to have
continued, "... but God, I love it so!"  

Also, whether or not any men have liked the army, many men have found
their male identity in military service.  What Brownmiller has done is
to declare that the proud, all-male tradition naturally enhances a
natural misogyny.  (Actually armies are only "all-male" in their
image, since women have always fought in wars at some level.)  The
initiation of bootcamp, for instance, intends to break down the young
men, then rebuild them into a coordinated fighting unit.  This purpose
will not change with an integrated-gender army, but the soldier will
not be called "women," "girls," "pussies," or "cunts," as they have
been in the past, insulting names that give the soldiers the negation
of what they are to be.  They are *never* to be effeminate, emotional,
weak; they are *always* to be masculine, strong, powerful.  Men are
strong; women are weak.  This becomes their identity, the negation of
women.

Since Graeco-Roman times, and probably before, soldiers have been
poured from this masculine mold.  What Brownmiller has argued, and you
have failed to address, is that this attitude necessarily leads to a
dehumanization and devaluation of women.  "Women" are seamlessly
merged in with the enemy as inhuman objects of desire and revulsion.
In other words, it is arguably a foundation, a cause of rape, that
allows men who are otherwise ordinary people to brutalize other human
beings.  If this ritualized dehumanization is not a cause of rape in
wartime, then you must explain the terrible frequency through some
other means, which you have not done, and do not appear prepared to do.

A few references:

  Richard Holmes in "Acts of War" (Free Press: NY, 1985) outlines in
  great detail the mind of a soldier, expanding on what I've given
  here in bare outline.

  Klaus Theweleit in "Male Fantasies" (Polity Press: NY, 1987) writes
  about the fiction and poetry published by the Freikorps, a group of
  ex-soldiers who ran death squads in post-WWI Germany.  Part 2 (it's
  actually his thesis) was just published, I believe. 

  Joan Smith in "Misogynies" (Faber & Faber: London, 1989) has an
  essay discussing poems written by USAF pilots, and published before
  a startled Air Force command had the book pulled.  Some of these
  poems are amazingly crude, especially "I Fucked A Dead Whore."  I
  thought about including it here, but I'd have to rotate-13 the
  entire article.  She also discusses the Theweleit book.

>So quote some facts, show some theory, develop an idea.  I know that
>something is *wrong* in our society, what you don't know is that
>Eighties' feminism is a part of the *problem*.  Presenting men as
>creatures who enjoy to give and obey orders is a part of the problem.

>Got that, or should I *spell* it for your feminist mind?

Oh, whip me, beat me, make me write articles about Affirmative Action.
Hillel, you manly stud, spell it out for my feminist mind.

>>- Rape.  
>>- Incest.
>>- Wife Abuse.
>>- Abortion
>>- Sexual Harassment at work or at school, Ogling or fondling on the street.
>>- Clitoridectomies, Infibulation, Forced Sterilization, 
>>- Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, Makeup, Plastic Surgery, Liposuction,
>>- Child Care
>>- Gender Roles
>>- Pornography.
>>- Prostitution.
>>- Homosexuality.
>>- Patriarchal Roles & Models.

>Would you mind to summarize what the feminist movement did about the above
>problems, and how much the situation has improved in the last 15 years?

Why?  You want me to give you details on things you didn't know about
or haven't thought about, just so you can give me a report card on how
well feminism has solved them?  Uh, sure, I'll bite.

I think the situation has changed for the better in a number of these areas,
even when the only change in the situation is in the consciousness of the
women involved.  Awareness of Rape, Incest, Wife Abuse, and Sexual
Harrassment is much higher than it was in the 60's.  Counseling centers and
safe houses exist that simply weren't there over a decade ago.  Permissive
rape laws have been changed all across the country to permit new levels of
evidence, to deny harrassing questions, to allow rape charges to be pressed
against husbands, and to permit new charges of sexual abuse, e.g., abuse of
someone's genitals.  (Many laws previously specified that non-consenting
penile penetration of a vagina was rape, which disallowed prosecuting
someone for, say, fingering a little girl.)  Sexual Harrassment was not even
a crime in the past; now it is, one reconfirmed this decade by a
conservative Supreme Court.  As for the barely understood causes of these
crimes, they will go away very slowly.  Though they may never go away, I am
comforted that victimizers may now be punished, and survivors appropriately
comforted.

Clitoridectomies and Infibulation are ongoing problems in Northern Africa,
and the Gulf States (and in emigrant populations from these areas).  There
is some awareness of the problem, a few relevant organizations and UN
councils; but but little change has occurred.  I don't know what more to
expect in this area.  The same may be said of Infanticide and Bridal Dowries
in China, India, and other Asian countries.  These women and girls are going
to die for cultural reasons that we in the West cannot change instantly, any
more than we can quickly alter problems resulting from our own culture,
e.g., Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, etc.

Gender Roles change, albeit slowly.  As with cultural issues, it's easier to
decide to, say, help your wife with the dishes than it is to show your
emotions.  Men are told by a million voices in their culture that they are
in charge, that they are responsible, and these voices are hard to ignore.

Pornography and Prostitution are ongoing controversies with feminists
on both sides of the more/less question.  Some scapegoating of
prostitutes for AIDS has been headed off by activists, which is good.
Good or bad, the abolition of laws against prostitution will not
happen in the US in a decade's time.

Laws and attitudes against homosexuality are happily falling by the
wayside, not that many feminists qua feminists are responsible.  There
is some progress, despite the AIDS crisis, and little regress.  I was
really asking you to think about gender roles from a sexual viewpoint
with those questions.

>>- Pornography.
>>  Why do you think pornography is so popular?  

>Shortage in sex for men.

What does that mean?  The relative number of men and women is constant, and
social mores have changed in the last thirties so that premarital sex is a
given.  Aren't men getting more sex?  Why isn't pornography made for the
women who also having a "shortage in sex"?  Is pornography just a substitute
for sex?  Do men want sex more than women?

Also, is this five-word answer a substitute for a more lengthy analysis?  Or
are you really saying that this is all that need be said about the subject:
there is a shortage in sex, men need sex, ergo men use pornography.  From
someone who seems quite literally tireless in his voluble crusade against
Affirmative action, this terseness seems to imply that pornography is
understood, is unremarkable, and is unworthy of further analysis.  Is that
what you wanted to say, or don't you know what to say?

>>Does it implicitly express any particular role for women?  

>The same role it expresses for men, sex machines.  If you don't believe me you
>can close your politically correct books and go to 42 street and see some
>porno material (I did it.  I try to find the raw data.)

Your thirst for scientific knowledge is fervently admired in these quarters.
If the same roles for men and women are expressed in these movies, then why
aren't the same number of men and women purchasing pornography?

>>  Never mind, I'm way too tired to fill this one in.  Here's where I
>>give up.  I haven't even gotten to literature, suffrage, marxism &
>>feminism, madonna/whore dichotomies, passive roles, aggression/war,
>>divorce, teen pregnancy, beauty contests, mommy worship, breast
>>fetishization, bride dowry, female infanticide, or youth-obsessed cultures.  

>I agree with you that there are problems, but I can't see your solutions.
>Why don't you tell us about them?

I fail to see the slightest advantage in doing so, since you've shown an
inability to read and understand a very straightforward, readable,
mass-market book such as Susan Brownmiller's book on rape.  Perhaps you
could try reading Marilyn French's "Beyond Power."  You won't understand it
either, but at least it will keep you off the net for a while.

t

Arpa:	travis@cs.columbia.edu	Usenet: rutgers!columbia!travis