Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!spool2.mu.edu!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon From: jdravk@speech2.cs.cmu.edu (Jeanette Dravk) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: sexist space Message-ID: <1991Jan5.044751.19198@ora.com> Date: 5 Jan 91 04:47:51 GMT References: <9012052040.AA03835@decpa.pa.dec.com> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Barbie's Dream Dungeon Lines: 97 Approved: ambar@ora.com Hi Jim! Wow, two in a row, ah well ... you make interesting comments that I like to bounce ideas off of. In article <9012052040.AA03835@decpa.pa.dec.com> you wrote: >Now, we have women only activities from which men are excluded. Well, >there are some things going on in women only activites which I find >*very* interesting, and *I* feel *I* am missing out. Yet, feminists >proclaim their *right* to keep me out??? >I can understand that women might want to be free of any harrassment. >Yet, I mean no harrassment. I merely want to be there, perhaps to >spectate, perhaps to participate as I feel moved to, as any woman >would be able to, yet I can't. I'd like to give you a counter-example and see where it goes. Imagine if you will a child who has not had the benefit of being exposed to most of the common social surivial skills that most people learn, i.e. unable to communicate effectively, extreme recluse/shyness, inability to take an agressive part in school and to use the opportunities there to their fullest extent. Now suppose the school decides to allow the parents to take this child out of school and put him/her in a class for socially traumatized children. Would you complain to the school saying they had no right to allow this child to be in a space where your children were not allowed? (This is a class that's for socially traumatized children *only*). If your complaints suceed, and the child is returned, and the class is abolished, then will you claim responsibility for the child's lost opportunity to be in an environment which could have helped his/her undernourished psyche to develop to a point where the child might have been able to return to the public school? Do you have a *right* to deny this based on the fact that your children would be missing out on all of that extra attention that might also be interesting and beneficial to them too? Many women (not all) lack the social adjustment that men have. There are countless studies on how women are trained to a certain social mould and men to another -- and that in general this "female mould" is a lot less effective in allowing the woman to interact on an equal level with men. Now, the question is, do women with these problems, or do they not, have the right to form groups where they can attempt (by themselves or with qualified professionals) to overcome these barriers? Does the fact that these people are grown adult women give you the right to possibly inhibit their own recoveries just because it might be interesting? I think that a lot of "women space" is protected for just this reason. Not all of course, but quite a bit if the meetings I've attended are any indication. >The reason that these women gather, and exclude men, is not because of >what men who might be interested in participating in them might be >like, but because of the fear in the women. Is this supposedly a Good >Thing??? I think the fear is the fear in the women of falling back into that same old social reflexive behavior around men that they are trying to get rid of. If a person is trying to recover from alcoholism, you don't take them to a bar every night do you? If a man or a woman decides to divorce their spouse, you don't force them to live next to that ex-spouse do you? >will be many events which I will certainly not be interested in >because of their extremism, and they can have that space to >themselves, 'cause I sure won't want it! But there will be some which ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Is it right that a person's wants should define what other people are allowed to have or, in some cases, need very desperately? >will be a common ground, and I believe that is where our hope lies. I think hope lies in respecting individual needs, and groups which attempt to support that. I am firmly convinced in the validity of both "women space" and "men space" -- both of which do as a matter of fact exist. I think that, at this time, our society is in no way ready to deal with equality on a realistic scale and that achieving that does not require any "let's all agree to toe the line of equality and eliminate privacy simply because it's sexist." Needs, like people, vary, and cannot be firmly agreed upon. j- -- #*#*#*#*#*# Transient Creature of the Wide, Wild World #*#*#*#*#*#*#* "Time is not linear to me, it is a nebulous web of existential freedom."