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From: marla@lucerne.Eng.Sun.COM (Marla Parker)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Western Feminism Sounds More Like Antifeminism
Message-ID: <141003@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 20 Aug 90 23:05:08 GMT
References: <26c9e7d6.6b7f@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
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In article <26c9e7d6.6b7f@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) writes:
>Western Feminism Sounds More Like Antifeminsim
>by Cathy Young
>Washington Post, 20 May 1990

I enjoyed this posting VERY MUCH!  Thanks for typing it in.

>	Originally, feminism meant that we were all human beings
>first, men and women second.  

It would be interesting to know when exactly "Originally" was.  
The only thing that is clear to me about feminism is that what
it "means" evolves and changes over time.  

For instance,  Lucretia Mott is sort of the grandmother of the women's
rights movement in the US, yet when Elizabeth Cady Stanton at first
proposed they include the right to vote on the Declaration of
Sentiments she was shocked and said, "Thee will make fools of us!"  She
did come around on this point, though, and in any case, she was
unquestionably an active feminist (one of her half-dozen successful
careers...).

To me, every "feminist" group that promotes separatism and claims
"differences" between the sexes, actually deficiences in the opposite
sex, is a sort of living oxymoron.  Saying things like men reason and
women nurture but nurturing is Superior, so There! is almost too absurd
to take seriously.  Because we are still discriminated against, subtly
in some places and horribly in others, the thought that we are actually
superior after all is very seductive.  But it really is silly.

The quoted statement above, that we are all human beings first, men
and women second, is as important, absurd, and essential to civil
liberties as the statement that "all men are created equally".  Anyone
can see that all men are most certainly NOT created equally, yet
it is necessary to treat them all as if they are in fact equal because
we are incapable of divinely judging the "worth" of one man vs. another,
and because it would be morally reprehensible to even try.  We are
not in fact all equal, but we should guarantee an equal chance, i.e.
equal rights, to all.  

(Now if only our white, slave-holding, male founding fathers could
have said "All people are created equal"....but they did pretty well
for their time.)

--
Marla Parker		(415) 336-2538
marla@eng.sun.com