Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway
From: jyacc!mydog!gcf@uunet.UU.NET
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Why I Am Not a Feminist
Message-ID: <9105080245.AA03734@relay1.UU.NET>
Date: 8 May 91 06:00:11 GMT
References: uci.edu> <672612764@lime.cs.duke.edu> <9104270827.14195@mydog.UUCP> <673367721@lear.cs.duke.edu>
Lines: 64
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu

gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit):
| | There is the following process on the net:
| | 1) X expresses some feminist anti-male position Y.
| | 2) Non-feminists debate with X, feminist stay out of the debate.
| | 3) *After* the debate someone says "the feminist position is Y".
| | 4) The same feminists who stayed out of the previous debate make a big
| |    debate because they claim that the feminist position is not Y.
| | As long as you are not willing to debate other feminists about
| | anti-male positions, "you're not one of the feminists that count."

(Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >In order to play this game properly, however, you have to inform all
| >the players that they are in it, and when it starts.

(Hillel Gazit):
| Why?
|
| In *my* opinion what people do when they think that "it
| does not count" shows more about what they really are.

If you are going to draw a conclusion about a population, you
must first define the population by criteria not involved in
your conclusion.  (Otherwise it's circular.)  Then you must
ensure that each member of the population receives the same
stimulus under reasonably similar conditions.  You must also
prescribe the criteria for results in advance; you can't wait
for some undifferentiated mass of outcomes, and then pick and
choose from it to support your argument.  This is elementary
stuff.  You have not done any of these things; therefore, you
can't draw any conclusions about "feminists" -- or rather, you
can draw any conclusions you like; they will all be equally
unsupported.

| Last time that I complained about "Against Our Will", in soc.feminism,
| the feminist response was a strong support.  Read Cindy's archive if
| you don't believe.  I don't see any reason to play the game once again,
| it is rather obvious that the men-bashing just did not bother enough
| any feminist, but the "Against Our Will" bashing was quite irritating
| for several of them.

The Poisson distribution ensures that, for random events
occurring in series, such as pro- and anti-Brownmiller articles,
there will be clumping.  If you move an arbitrary time-frame
arbitrarily along such a series, you can probably find any kind
of population distribution you want.

| Since the play, in the net, is for the audience
| it was enough to show my point.

Propaganda is useful to draw attention to an idea, but if the
idea has no other support its effect is transitory, and you will
wind up preaching to the converted.  In fact, there may be a
reaction against the idea as a result.  For example, suppose you
tell a naif that all feminists support the reprehensible fascist
Brownmiller, and the naif later meets a feminist who opposes and
denounces Brownmiller (by name).  He will then conclude that you
were deceiving him, and that all your ideas are bad.

Actually, I've hardly ever seen anyone's mind change as a result
of participating in these discussions.  Apparently it takes
an unusual degree of intelligence, or perhaps moral courage, to
question one's own ideas.

Gordon Fitch