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From: erspert@athena.mit.EDU ("Ellen R. Spertus")
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: How [Some] Men React to Women who Speak Up
Summary: My previous message could have been clearer
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.022806.5068@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 91 18:51:58 GMT
References: <9106061733.AA01252@e40-008-6.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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I would like to clarify several points I made in a previous message to
soc.feminism.  I received several email responses as a result of not
writing my original message more carefully.

First off, I deserved more than the one complaint I got for the title
of my post:

> Subject: How Men React to Women who Speak Up

Anyone who read my article to the end would have seen that I did not
mean to condemn all men:

> Three cheers for the men I've dealt with in the past!

Still, my face is red over the poor choice of subject line.

From the email I received, I discovered the purpose of my post was not
entirely clear, so let me describe where I'm coming from a little
better.  When I took a women's studies class, the professor referred
to how women are mistreated when they join a previously primarily-male
group.  I had never seen the phenomenon and was skeptical.  I think my
treatment in alt.peeves was a textbook example of this phenomenon.

Let me make clear that I don't think only men act vicious to members
of the opposite sex.  Nevertheless, I think that the ways that one sex
mistreats the other are not identical.

Someone else wrote that I should not be surprised to be flamed in
alt.peeves.  I disagree, because I have never seen someone flamed in
the manner I was: The person I criticized posted several flames in
reply, each with sexist insults.  Additionally, several alt.peeves
readers sent me sympathetic notes, calling the poster a bozo,
neanderthal, etc.  Something different was going on in my case, and,
I am guessing, my sex was the cause.

Of course, there is always the question of whether someone is being
sexist if they make what sounds like a sexist remark.  As Mary Rowe
observed in one of her papers on discrimination:

	`General' harassment often takes a specifically sexist form
	when applied to women, a racist form when applied to
	African-Americans, and so on.  Instead of saying to some
	average white male, `Your work on this project has been
	inexcusably sloppy, you blinking idiot; you'll never make it
	that way!,' the remark may come out, `My God, you think no
	better than my wife; why don't you go home and have babies!,'
	or, `We will never be able to make up for the generations of
	Southern schools that produced you!'

Despite this phenomenon, I suspect that the attack on me was
sex-based, not merely an attack that would have been expressed
differently if I had been male, although I suppose I will have no way
of knowing.

And, oh yes, in response to the person who wrote that my original
complaint was wrong because women can have wives, I actually had
considered that point and sent my message only after thinking about
this issue and that I had not heard lesbians using the term "wife".  I
guess I was wrong.  With this phenomenon of assuming everyone is male,
one would think that all women are lesbians.  Think of the
anthropologist who, while ostensibly using "man" for both men and
women, wrote, "Of primary importance to man are food, shelter, and
access to females." :-)

And, as for the person who thought my posting was a bid to get people
to flame the person who flamed me, for which I should get my net
access removed, that was not my intent.  If I had wanted revenge, I
would have sent the flames to the poster's employer.  This experience
has been an education for me and one that I thought relevant to
readers of soc.feminism.

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify my original post.

					Ellen Spertus