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From: gcf@mydog.uucp (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: feminism & simplification
Message-ID: <19910102.2@mydog.uucp>
Date: 3 Jan 91 17:14:52 GMT
References: <9012052040.AA03770@decpa.pa.dec.com>
Organization: Beauty in the Beast
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me:
|    "There have been several related threads in this newsgroup centering
|    around the question, "What is feminism?"  There are several answers to
|    the question, but the leading one as far as popularity goes is "to
|    secure equal rights for women."  This is generally called "reformist"
|    feminism, because it does not, _per_se_, question the status quo as a
|    whole, merely the position of women within it.  "Rethinking values
|    that have ...  caused ... damage" is not part of it.  In fact, if you
|    accept the reformist position generally, it's hard to say just what
|    this rethinking is to be called, politically speaking, since it's
|    excluded from feminism and all other equal-rights movements."

baranski@meridn.enet.dec.com:
| If we need to change our society, why should it be the feminists alone
| who should be redefining society?  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?
| Isn't mere definition of a group's role from outside the group
| oppression?

That depends on what you think feminism is.  If you adopt a reformist
or female-supremacist position, the answer is yes, in the sense of
taking part in the oppression/counter-oppression games played by
competing groups in a dominance system.  "The feminists" are just one
more group in the struggle for power; the struggle itself is
unquestioned.

The answer is no if you define feminism as a political, social, and
cultural critique of things-as-they-are, which happens to be
associated with femaleness by the fact that the domination structured
in things-as-they-are has been particularly visited upon women.

There has been a similar divergence of tendencies in, for example, the
Civil Rights / Black Liberation movement(s).  It's not unusual for
people to decide the existing state of things (in this case, social,
economic, and political domination of some groups by others) is okay
if they and theirs can only get on the right side of the screws.  This
is called "equality of opportunity."

| Yet, feminists cheerfully do this.

Some do.  Others don't: the radical or cultural feminists call for a
change in society, not merely a reshuffling of the elite.  However,
they have largely been excluded from public attention by the media,
partly because the media are directed by people who benefit from and
practice domination, and partly because the general public quickly
becomes bored with difficult or uncomfortable issues about which it
believs nothing can be done.

--
Gordon  |  gcf@mydog.uucp