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From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: conformity/nonconformity
Message-ID: <2479@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-May-85 23:51:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.2479
Posted: Mon May 13 23:51:10 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 17-May-85 00:37:52 EDT
References: <716@drume.UUCP> <967@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 56

> 1. True individualism is an unexploitable phenonemon in marketing.

>       ...  A true individualist wouldn't choose
> 	to do things based on what one crowd did/didn't do.  He/she would pick
>       and choose what he/she liked.

``True individualism'' also does not exist.  No one is individual enough
to speak their own language, or write all their own books and other
media, or live their lives without having to conform at least partially
to other people's expectations.

At least in some feminist circles this whole issue is regarded as an
artifact of the extreme fragmentalism inherent in a patriarchal (i.e.
male-centered) belief system, and even one of the means that patriarchy
uses to maintain itself.  The theory is that this belief system allows
individuals to subjugate groups by preventing the binding of group-
members into a strongly-interconnected entity.  Thus the concept of
individual action has becomes a element in the mythology that
maintains male dominance.  If this mythology is shed, the theory goes,
female superiority at group interaction would eventually result in
female leadership and dominance.  Male hierarchies (and hierarchies
themselves are considered mostly a patriarchal concept) require a great
deal of energy just in terms of self-maintenence, and are inherently
unstable.

No, I'm not saying I believe this theory, at least not in any complete
way.  But like many radical ideas, it has some insights into the flaws
of the status quo, even though it might be mistaken about causes or the
result of changes.

>       If a modern woman wants to shave her
> 	legs and wear high heels, or if a modern man wants to shave his face,
> 	who is any of us to claim that it's "politically incorrect" to do so?
> 	This notion of "political incorrectness" sounds like another
> 	manipulative marketing scheme to me.   I digress...

As a matter of fact, it the very idea of dividing people up into groups,
because of what they do or do not do, that the theory I stated above
attacks.  Only it sounds like you mean to allow division despite
similarity, rather than permit cohesion despite differences.


> "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
>  to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
>  being can fight and never stop fighting."  - e. e. cummings

Cummings hardly accomplished this; he never forsook the New England
Transcendentalism of his background, though he certainly stretched
its boundries quite a bit.  There is a big difference between
individualism and free creative expression; I think perhaps Cummings,
at least in this quote, mistakes one for the other.

> 	Rich Rosen	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall