Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!aero-c!nadel
From: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexism vs. Men's Oppression
Message-ID: <282f3194.17a3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 14 May 91 00:38:44 GMT
References: <1991May13.194337.3494@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@aero.org
Organization: Manumission: The Campus Men's Forum
Lines: 76
Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Originator: nadel@aerospace.aero.org



According to obermark@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Jon Obermark):
	<overall a good summary of arguments about sexism & oppression>

>        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 oppression creates "handles" that allow men to be used as efficient, 
>dispassionate, expendable tools without any obligation of actual human contact 
>on the users part.  But these handles are open to male hands as easily as to 
>female hands, and men tend to abuse them more often than women do.  

	Here I start to disagree with you.  If you take, for example,
	the use of men as military pawns, often (in the case of the
	draft) against their will, I would argue that women *as a
	class* do benefit from having men be the only ones on the
	front lines.  In an egalitarian society, a good chunk of
	the infantry would be women, so in this non-egalitarian
	society, their places on the front lines and therefore in
	Arlington National Cemetary are being taken by men.  A woman,
	because she is a woman, knows that she has no risk under our
	current system of being drafted, and furthermore she knows
	that should she decide to join the military she will not be
	assigned to a combat position (this may change soon) 

>        The oppression of women is of a different order.  It creates a 
>definite privilege state for men and works largely, though not exclusively, 
>through male hands. 

	Saying that the few people who benefit from the oppression of
	men and women happen to be mostly men is a lot different from
	saying that there is "a definite privilege state for men."

>        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.  So I use "sexism" only in the sense of the oppression of women by 
>men, because this form involves the creation of a power imbalance between the 
>sexes, parallel to the power imbalance racism creates between races.  And I 
>understand feminism to be concerned only with sexism in this definition. 

	There are those of us who sincerely believe that the popular
	feminist comparison between the subjugation of women and the
	subjugation of blacks just doesn't hold water.

	Many of us are men who don't hold any particular power in
	society, and look around to see that the vast majority of our
	brothers do not hold any power either.

	You can look at Congress, or the White House, or the CEOs of
	the Fortune 500, and see a whole lot of male faces there.  It
	is fundamentally inaccurate, however, to reverse the statement
	"most of the powerful are men" into "most of the men are
	powerful."  It just doesn't work that way.

>        My position is that men are oppressed, but that that is a separate 
>issue from feminism.  Feminists should not contribute to this oppression, but 
>they need not confuse it with their own goals, or allow it to side-track 
>their thinking.  Women have no obligation to deal with men's problems or to 
>purposely skirt issues that may cause conflicts with men.  On the other hand, 
>actively insisting that women are "the ones oppressed" and that men's 
>oppression is either self-inflicted or trivial is buying into the oppression 
>of men, which is just as real as sexism.

	My position is that sex roles are oppressive, and that feminism
	ought to consider this fact the absolute root of their movement.
	Feminists should neither contribute to this oppression, nor deny
	inconvenient aspects of it.  Women have no obligation to deal with
	men's problems, nor vice versa, but people who are concerned with
	ending oppressive sex roles should take on this task nonetheless.


-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"The reemphasis on feminine values...led to a shift in the mode of argument 
 for feminist goals.  Instead of arguing for justice or social equality, much
 feminist polemic now claims a female moral superiority."  -- Gayle Rubin