Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!ucsd!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!uci-ics!gateway From: amy@cs.washington.EDU (Amy Martindale) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: "Off Our Backs" magazine cover Message-ID: <12105@june.cs.washington.edu> Date: 1 Jun 90 23:44:13 GMT References: <265df9d5.1abd@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> Reply-To: Amy Martindale Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle Lines: 47 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu In article <265df9d5.1abd@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) writes: > >As evidence of the androcidal rhetoric that the feminist movement >feels free to use, and then deny when convenient -- I offer the >following: > > The cover illustration [of "Off Our Backs"]was a brick wall with the > following graffiti: DEAD MEN DON'T RAPE. >"[T]he verbal excesses [of radical feminism] also result in a rhetoric of > genocide every bit as single- and closed-minded as racial and ethnic pogroms > have been in the past." --Dan Dervin You're not serious? I find it somehow distressing that women are encouraged to overcome opression, just so long as they don't express any anger that they might be feeling. It's so, well, unfeminine. Especially if that anger might happen to be directed towards men. Heaven forfend we should view them as oppressors! Also, before becoming too incensed by the rhetoric, it is a good idea to look at the power-base of the source. When a white, male, upper-class, oh, say, President of the United States refuses to support AIDS research because it would be a jolly good thing if all those awful homosexuals died out anyway, I would be frightened. Especially if I were a gay male. The speaker has the power to enforce his (fallacious) "homo"-cidal opinions. But to imagine a minority group, however radical, to be capable of androcide is laughable. A pogrom implies persecution, and persecution implies possession of enough power to be unstoppable in carrying out that persecution. The use of angry rhetoric serves as a tool to rally support and to incite action, yes - but the action is unlikely to include mass-murder. Get real. amy amy@cs.washington.edu ------------- Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking what a swell world it would be, If the boys were all transported far beyond the Western Sea.