Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!rshapiro@BBN.COM
From: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: How feminism has failed me
Message-ID: <48667@bbn.COM>
Date: 22 Nov 89 15:19:38 GMT
References: <48390@bbn.COM> <1989Nov21.225322.25204@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: Richard Shapiro <rshapiro@BBN.COM>
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
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Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Status: R


In article <1989Nov21.225322.25204@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu> geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>Feminism, like any ism, can become a
>tyrany applied to stifle the individual when it starts to specify how
>we must live or be ostracized...
>I'd like to see a society where everyone can
>choose their own way without constraints put on them by other people


But, Gordon, you don't *really* believe we're as autonmous as all
that, do you?  That's one of the major lessons of feminism: that much
of what we are comes from outside any particular individual.  The
tyranny isn't "isms"; the tyranny is the ideology we all live in, the
social forces that we don't even see ordinarily because they're so
much a part of what makes each of us who we are.

We will ALWAYS live and "choose our own way" within the "constraints"
of the social context (other people, if you like). This is what it
means to live as social animals. Feminism has simply made visible and
explicit some of what was previously hidden and implicit. It allows
some other options which weren't there before -- it provides the hint
of a path to another, less discriminatory ideology. It's never easy or
comfortable to lose one's social moorings; but it's a necessary first
step.


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