Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: uunet!mtxinu!ed@ncar.ucar.EDU (Ed Gould) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Sex and Cards Message-ID: <1357@mtxinu.UUCP> Date: 20 Sep 90 18:01:32 GMT References: <12619962177008@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu> <9009190945.AA00092@uunet.uu.net> Reply-To: Ed Gould Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley Lines: 35 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu >>... "adult" magazine or baseball cards. The older men >>bought the magazines and the small kids concentrated on the cards. As >>I sat, I thought about the comparisons between the two. Kids buy >>these cards so that they can "own" a certain person - say Pete Rose. >> ... They learn that people are commodities. Later in life, >>they will treat women the same way, as commodities.... >>Does any of this make sense??? >It makes sense, but I think it's wrong. I'm not so sure it is wrong. Several men have written in defence of (at least) collecting baseball cards. If this were done in the context of true equality between the sexes - including a true power balance - then I might agree. But the world we live in is not, in fact, an egalatarian one. I think the observation of ownership - both of baseball cards and girlie magazines - is quite inciteful. Collecting and trading images of people *does* give one a sense of power over them. Especially within the context of professional atheletes, whose lives are, to a *very* large extent, contractually owned by the teams for which they play. People (not necessarily youngsters) make up fantasy baseball and football teams, comprised of players from the professional leagues, and win "games" against other fantasy team owners, based on the real performance of the players on each fantasy team. There is, to my mind, a definite power relationship involved in this practice. (As well as gambling. That's the usual purpose of these fantasy teams in my experience.) -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 USA ed@mtxinu.COM +1 415 644 0146 "I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady. I'll fight them as an engineer."