Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!ames!elroy!aero!gazit@lear.cs.duke.edu
From: gazit@lear.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: umm...silly question, but...
Message-ID: <14673@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 7 Jun 89 04:02:35 GMT
References: <16683@paris.ics.uci.edu> <11866@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Sender: news@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Lines: 27
Approved: nadel@aspen.aero.org

In article <11866@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> annmh@blake.acs.washington.edu (Ann Harrington) writes:

>You men, always talking about power and control!  :)

What *exactly* do you try to tell us?  Do you try to induce guilt feelings?

[I think what Ann was getting at is that power and control are not necessarily
the only issues and that a viewpoint which doesn't focus on struggles for
dominance may be more productive. - MHN]

>just one as an "oppressor" is likewise narrow-sighted.  Over and over it
>has been shown that placing blame is all well and good for making people
>feel righteous and just, but it doesn't get any changes made.

Placing blame is a powerful tool to manipulate people.  Do you think that you
(feminists) could achieve AA without inducing guilt feeling on men?

>   It is often easier to blame it all on outside forces, "other" groups,
>but we also have to change  ourselves, and that is often harder.    

You got it right, but you got it too late.  By looking inside the feminist
movement will lose some of the power it has, and it's not going to do it.

No matter what you say/do, you're 10 to 20 years too late...

[Too late for what?  Feminism has changed considerably since its inception
in the 1700's.  Changes in the past 20 years have been more rapid but so
have societal changes in general.  Can opponents of feminism learn to
judge people by what they believe now rather than what they believed 20
years ago in a radically different world? - MHN]

Hillel                                  gazit@cs.duke.edu

"Morgan opens a window of thought and action that lets us move out of a
male-centered politics of Thanatos - the romance of death - into a feminist
politics of Eros, a loving life force." ---  Ms. magazine, March 1989