Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ora!daemon
From: rshapiro@arris.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: feminism & simplification
Message-ID: <1991Jan2.155342.1414@arris.com>
Date: 2 Jan 91 15:53:42 GMT
References: <9012052040.AA03770@decpa.pa.dec.com>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: ARRIS Pharmaceutical, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37
Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <9012052040.AA03770@decpa.pa.dec.com> baranski@meridn.enet.dec.com writes:
>If we need to change our society, why should it be the feminists alone
>who should be redefining society?

Possibly because they have an interest in changing a social system
which subjugates women, whereas anti-feminists have an interest in
preserving that system? 

>Won't that simply replace the
>current situation where female roles are supposedly defined by men,
>with a society where feminists define male roles and oppress them?

Why should it?  Feminists are interested in understanding what goes
into a "female role" or a "male role", and understanding the methods
by which individuals assume these roles (of course, disregarding the
specious free-will argument that we simply "choose" them).  They're not
interested in prescribing what those roles should be, except to say
that neither should be intrinsically inferior to or less privileged
than the other.  Actually there are any number of male and female
roles, and any number of ways individuals relate to these various
roles.  The problem comes, not from one role being oppressive to
another, but from the fact that the amorphous complex of roles we call
"female" is a less privileged position than the amorphous complex of
roles we call "male".  That, ultimately, is what feminists want to
change.

>Isn't mere definition of a group's role from outside the group
>oppression?

I suppose it would be, but no group defines roles for another group.
Roles are defined as part of a overriding system that determines each
role within it, in just the same way that phonemes are defined by the
language of which they're a part.  No one sits down and decides what
they are; they evolve over time for reasons that have little to do
with anyone's specific intentions.

"feminism and simplification" indeed...