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From: rberlin%birdlandEng@sun.COM (Rich Berlin)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Why I Am Not a Feminist
Message-ID: <12083@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 23 Apr 91 22:37:15 GMT
References: <2805efd1.34d0@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> <1991Apr14.222759.13730@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <14423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
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In article <14423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, farmerl@handel.CS.ColoState.Edu (lisa ann farmer) writes:

|> Reading this thread and having dealt with this issue in some depth I
|> see an attitude that does not please me.  All these people criticize
|> the works of feminists - especially if they are at all tinged with
|>"man-hating".  Has anyone heard of process?  Do people really think
|> that before someone can write a book and have it printed they _must_
|> know the meaning of life and all those things that fall inbetween?
|> All I need to do is to look back at my journal from two years ago - I
|> understand where I was but most of the time I have grown to look at
|> the same situation differently.
|>
|> Women are/were angry.  The literature that has come out of that anger
|> is (o no) angry too.  I think that women's studies should allow the
|> anger along with the loving.  Literature needs to be read with its
|> context in mind.  Reading a work from the 70's is going to have, in
|> most cases, a different focus than that of the 90's.  But the process
|> of how and what makes feminism of today is important in understanding
|> feminism.
|>
|> We all have to remember that those that are supposed to "enlighten" us
|> are also growing at the same time.  Just because someone is a
|> professor or an author does not mean they have the "absolute" truth
|> (no one does or should) and the most important thing is that we have
|> to accept this of them.
|>
|> Lisa farmerl@handel.cs.colostate.edu

You're very right about the issues of evolving perspective, Lisa.
Lots of people come to criticize *their own* older work as having a
perspective they no longer hold, and anticipating this phenomenon is
helpful.  What works best for me when reading an author whose
perspective is extremely different from mine is to look for the grains
of truth rather than wasting my energy defending my own perspective.
That doesn't mean I'm obliged to share the author's view and it
doesn't necessarily mean refraining from criticism, either, but it
demands that I value and accept the unique subjectivity of the author.

My best intentions notwithstanding, I find that accepting an author's
radical view can be extremely difficult when the material is highly
personal.  As a man who, for example, has read much of Andrea
Dworkin's work, I experience the level of anger as alienating.  I
cannot relate acceptingly to Andrea Dworkin, even though I see truth
in what she writes, because she relates to me as her enemy.  I think
many of us men can accept feminism as an "equal rights" doctrine but
have no means of accepting or supporting a vituperative feminist work
when we feel "that anger is personally directed towards me!"  (A male
friend whom I consider pretty enlightened once observed that I was
reading "Women Hating" and asked whether a direct form of
self-flaggelation wouldn't be more efficient.)

I often worry about the process that is affecting feminism right now.
Perhaps I've said this before, but [RADICALISM ALERT :-)] I think a
lot of women's nascent anger is being encouraged and then co-opted by
powermongers who know how to use that anger and dissatisfaction to
manipulate the angry and dissatisfied.  Instead of a feeling which is
being heard and resolved, I'm afraid that "women's anger" has become a
state of being.  There's an enormous difference between someone who
*feels* angry and someone who *lives* angry.  The latter is neither
free nor autonomous.

-- Rich