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From: bloch@thor.ucsd.EDU (Steve Bloch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: gender roles (SORTA LONG)
Message-ID: <15617@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 15 Jan 91 18:48:48 GMT
References: <1991Jan5.142726.5081@arris.com> <15414@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <9101141810.AA16898@rutgers.edu>
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jdravk@speech2.cs.cmu.edu (Jeanette Dravk) quotes me (addressing
Richard Shapiro):
>&OK, you're defining "oppressed" as "on the losing end of an
>&inequality", while I was using something more like "unnecessarily
>&restricted in freedom".  By your definition, certainly, it's
>&mathematically impossible for everybody to be oppressed simultaneously
>&(at least on the same dimension).  By mine, it's quite possible.

and responds:

>By this definition, isn't it not only possible for everyone to be
>oppressed but impossible for everyone to *not* be?  I'm restricted
>from killing the next person I meet (by law and the current definition
>of a person), however, I would never kill someone.  So for me, the
>murder restriction of my freedom is unnecessary and I am therefore
>oppressed.

Flip answer:
If you "would never kill someone", then the laws against murder are
not only unnecessary in your case but not a restriction of your
freedom.

Somewhat more meaningful, but off the subject, answer:
There's a saying among libertarians that "laws kill morality".  To
wit, the more your behavior is circumscribed by positive and negative
reinforcement from the legal system, the less opportunity you have to
exercise (and develop) your moral sense and behave as a human being.
In this sense, yes, that law blocks you in your journey of self-
actualization, robbing you of the opportunity to seriously consider
WHY you "would never kill someone", or to find exceptions to that
rule, and thus oppresses you.

However, I'm not actually that much of a libertarian.

>But is it oppression?  Society demands that everyone be restricted in
>some way so that we can all co-exist as peacefully as possible.  Hence
>the need for restrictions such as the Constitution and the Bill of
>Rights wherein the acceptable parameters of our behavior are defined
>and limited.
>
>So maybe what's needed here is a re-tuning of your model so that it
>can give something a bit more useful.  A model which demands that
>*all* people must be oppressed is not very helpful when trying to
>decide where and how oppression exists in our society.

I think you have a point here.  I did say "UNNECESSARILY restricted in
freedom," but this begs the question of whence the necessity is
derived.  The criterion "so that we can all co-exist as peacefully as
possible" frightens me, as the worlds of _Fahrenheit_451_ and
_Brave_New_World_ are peaceful indeed.  I think I cannot give an
absolute answer to this; my immediate reaction is to say "necessary
under predominant social mores here and now in order to avoid
significantly more bloodshed and suffering than are now present."  In
other words, the status quo, with a good helping of precognition.

I'll work on it.

--
"I'm nobody's savior, and nobody's mine either..." -- Ferron

Steve Bloch
bloch@cs.ucsd.edu