Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucla-cs!uci-ics!gateway
From: Gordon Fitch
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: AA, continued
Message-ID: <8910300440.AA23901@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 30 Oct 89 18:22:50 GMT
References: <6561@columbia.edu>
Sender: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle)
Reply-To: uunet!hombre!mydog!gcf
Organization: Beauty in the Beast
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(Travis Lee Winfrey):
}>...[complains that some people use AA to portray]
}>"feminists" as technicians of inequality, as if AA programs were all that
}>they did or cared about.

gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit):
}Please count the political achievements of feminism in the last 15 years.
}AA is in the top of the list, but of course it's not important...

(Travis Lee Winfrey):
}>Presumably you mean actions other than feminist analyses of social
}>structures, e.g., [...cites a lot of books...]

gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit):
}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 "Against Our Will":
}
}"War provides men with the perfect psychologic backdrop to give vent to 
} their ... [etc. etc.]"
}
}Brownmiller says very clear that men enjoy being in army 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.

Not long ago, I said that quotations were taken from individual
feminist authors, generally out of context, and used to represent the
whole movement, so that it could be attacked.  This is an example.
There is no attempt to understand either the movement as a whole, or
even the author quoted.  All other authors are simply hand-waved.

}I tell you that what she said is feminist Cow-Shit and her understanding
}of men in army is somewhere near zero (*I* have first hand experience).
}If you want to debate about the *text* and not just to drop names feel 
}free to do it, but I prefer a non-moderated group (soc.men).

It seems to me if one prefers the style of soc.men, one should read
and post there, and not here.  In that group I asked for some
specifics about AA, and there was silence.  I'll try it in
soc.feminism.

If people really want to talk about affirmative action as an actual
practice, and not a theory, they should "quote some facts."  It's been
said that AA was a major effort of feminists.  I doubt this, but go
ahead: define "feminists" and "effort" and show that the greatest
effort of the set of people called "feminists" went into pressure for
AA programs, as opposed to other aspects of equal opportunity, and all
the non-employment related things (such as reproductive freedom).  By
the way, I'm defining AA as "weighting employment and promotion
opportunities to balance representation of categories of workers in a
given work force."

I think AA is a buyout to avoid more serious changes, and I don't
think it's theoretically significant, but if people are really hot
about it, I think we should start with some facts relating feminism to
AA.  

-- Gordon Fitch || uunet!hombre!mydog!gcf