Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!jarthur!uci-ics!gateway From: era1987@violet.Berkeley.EDU Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Gender? Do we need it? Summary: The curtain comes down! Message-ID: <1989Nov25.080406.19293@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 28 Nov 89 06:39:58 GMT References: <255E038F.11686@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Sender: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle) Reply-To: Mark Ethan Smith Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 40 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu More than anything else, fascists and racists want to maintain racial purity and the traditional roles of the sexes. War hawks worry when a capitalist country introduces a social welfare program, or a Communist country introduces democratic reforms. If you blur the distinctions between idologies and nations, people begin to recognize each other as human, as having similar problems, and are much less willing to destroy each other. We'll probably always have those who are violently opposed to peace, progress, and equality. In some ways (nuclear weapons, for example), I'd like to turn the clock back myself. We cannot change nature. Whenever it is necessary for nondiscriminatory reasons to know a person's sex, that person will be happy to make their sex known or it will be obvious. If two people are compatible and attracted to each other, I'm sure they'll reveal their biological status to each other so as to find out if intercourse might involve reproductive possibilities. If a person is in need of medical help, the physician can simply examine them. Some people are going to hate it when the wall comes down. Most of us will weep with joy. We should pity those who fear equality, because they will not share in our happiness when the wall of sexism finally falls. The Jews have a curtain called a mehitzah that the Orthodox use in their synagogues to separate the men from the women, the clean from the unclean, those who have a personal Covenant with God from those who are mere chattels and have no right to hold the Torah. When women pray at the Wailing Wall in Israel, Orthodox Jewish men attack them violently. So far, unlike the German border guards prior to the recent events, there have been no shootings. But some people never want to see the walls of discrimination come down. It is for them we must pray, for those who value rocks and bricks more than people. The curtains will fall, the walls will come down, and someday, whether I live to see it or not, reason, justice and equality will prevail. And all the King's horses and all the King's men, will never put Humpty Dumpty together again. --Mark Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com