Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!aero-c!nadel
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexism vs. Men's Oppression
Summary: The issue is not so clear cut.
	 (Also: plug for Marilyn French.)
Message-ID: <19895@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 13 May 91 21:20:52 GMT
References: <1991May13.194337.3494@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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In article <1991May13.194337.3494@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> obermark@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Jon Obermark) writes:
> Men are in fact needlessly hurt by our society in ways that women, 
> in general, are not. ...

Notably absent from Mr Obermark's list are the facts that men are
expected to be the family provider, the chief family intermediary
with the economic world, and that in the area of romance they are
expected to be the pursuer who must "prove his worthiness" to
have a sexual relationship.  These would provide some challenge to
his conclusion:

> But if you investigate men's oppression you note that seldom 
> are women its source.  And though individual women can use it
> to their advantage, so can individual men.  So that women *as
> a class* gain nothing from its existence. ...

The above items are ways that men are oppressed for the benefit
of women, not other men.  It would be fair to say that the ways 
men as a class benefit from the sexism in our society is greater
than the ways women as a class benefit from it, and that (in
general) it works to give men greater social status.  But it is
NOT the all and nothing division that Mr Obermark paints.  I
think some of the posts to which Mr Obermark reacts were written
by people who were reacting to precisely this inaccurate picture. 

> Using a definition of sexism which lumps these two together 
> creates major problems by hiding the completely different 
> natures of the two styles of oppression. ...

By Mr Obermark's own definition, men also suffer from the kind
of oppression which he thinks deserves the label "sexism".

> On the other hand, the problem *does* exist.  And feminist 
> writers often disbelieve in the oppression of men as a class. ...

Most feminist writers I have read have been quite sympathetic
to this oppression (providing the reader is sympathetic in
interpreting their writings).  Some emphasize the asymmetry
between the sexes in the results and amount of sexism that
oppresses them, but I think there is good reason they do so.
One can consistently (and accurately) point out that men also
suffer from sexism, but that women have gotten the short end
of the stick.

> ... The only feminists I have read who think men are hurt at
> all by the division of the sexes label men's oppression as a
> side effect of the oppressor role, denying that men can be
> hurt as a class other than by themselves. (Sorry, I just thought 
> of an exception -- Barbara Deming. ...

Let me herald another exception: Marilyn French.  No one reading
"Beyond Power" can doubt that she is concerned with both sexes,
and that she condemns aspects of our social system rather than
either gender.

Russell