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From: apa@PROOF.CS.CMU.EDU (Penny Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: definition of feminism, can a man be a feminist?
Message-ID: <17419@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 89 21:09:12 GMT
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In article <16898@paris.ics.uci.edu> drc@beach.cis.ufl.EDU (David Cabana) writes:

>If one accepts the position that a man cannot be a feminist, then
>one accepts the position that a person's gender can render that person
>incapable of holding (even perhaps understanding) certain beliefs.
>This is sexism, pure and simple.  Similarly, the claim that a person is
>incapable of understanding something because of that person's race is
>racism, pure and simple.

While I don't accept the position that a man can't be a feminist, I
can't let this pass unchallenged.  I've heard this so many times, yet
it seems an obvious distortion of a commonsense observation: a person
who has never experienced something cannot understand it as well as
one who has.  It is not racism to say that, because I am "white", I
don't understand the experience of "nonwhite" people very well.  My
lack of understanding is all the greater because there is so little
public expression of nonwhite experience.  I'm quite willing to
believe that members of minority groups understand my experience far
better than I understand theirs, because the "white" point of view
saturates both the mass media and the fine arts.  Middle-class people
of European descent are constantly explaining themselves to the world
in books, films, you name it -- we dominate it in this country.

It's the same with men and women: women have been voiceless for a long
time, so of course men have difficulty understanding our experience.
We have trouble too, because it's not enough to *have* the experience;
one has to communicate it to give it meaning.

This issue is especially important for the politics of women and men,
because the mechanisms that exclude women from power, autonomy, and
wealth are so informal and subtle, and we women ourselves are
constantly being manipulated (by circumstances, guys, not some male
Illuminati) into abetting them.  One of these mechanisms is the
assumption that a man has the right and capability, by virtue of his
objectivity, to define any situation.  This is a terribly difficult
assumption to eliminate, and the importance and difficulty of doing so
are ample justification to me for excluding men from *some* feminist
discussions.

[This came to me as a forwarded mail message containing a bounced
message; I hope I have the attributions correct.  Let me know if I
don't. -- Cindy]