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- From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Subject: Re: Men Not Getting It
- Message-ID: <1992Nov15.194546.14342@macc.wisc.edu>
- Date: 15 Nov 92 19:45:46 GMT
- References: <1992Nov11.173952.8562@cbnewsh.cb.att.com> <1992Nov14.150859.8271@panix.com> <1992Nov15.160349.4486@macc.wisc.edu> <1992Nov15.165152.23276@tc.cornell.edu>
- Sender: news@macc.wisc.edu (USENET News System)
- Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
- Lines: 121
-
-
- In article <1992Nov15.165152.23276@tc.cornell.edu>
- shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
-
- >In article <1992Nov15.160349.4486@macc.wisc.edu>
- >anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
-
- >>How can one *not* see that all these oppressions are linked
- >>together in myriad ways? How can anyone *not* see that
- >>these linked oppressions form an interlocking network of
- >>steel bonds penetrating all facets of our society? How can
- >>anyone *not* see that our common "enemy" is this tendency to
- >>create and maintain power relationships that seek personal
- >>gain through causing others to lose? How, really, can
- >>anyone not "get it?"
-
- >Good question. I'm coming to believe that the people (not
- >just men) who do get it are ones who have had some direct
- >experience with institutionalized oppression.
-
- Sometimes I get worried by the high degree of similarity in
- our turns of mind. It could be a threat to one or both of
- us! :-)
-
- This morning I was thinking about this "not getting it"
- business, in the context of radical politics. Up popped the
- very same image, that those who get it have been radicalized
- not by rhetoric (or what we might call common sense), but by
- some direct and fairly dramatic (to them) conjuncture with
- things as they are.
-
- >That's largely true of the people I know personally. I've
- >been getting a lot of email recently about Colorado, and in
- >the supportive mail has been a lot of testifying. One of
- >the most striking was from a man whose son was shot (but not
- >killed) in a gaybashing incident in California. He's lived
- >through a particularly frightening example of just where
- >group hatred can lead.
-
- Indeed, this sort of testifying -- even where it's
- considerably less horrifying than that -- is something I
- regard as very important for stimulating others to consider
- the real implications of the experiences some people have in
- getting through life. I was very disheartened by the
- postings about the guy in Colorado who suicided soon after
- the election that essentially discounted his experience.
- One of the things that radicalizes me is the persistent lack
- of compassion I see out there in the world, especially when
- it's exhibited by people who ought to be able to see
- suffering all around them.
-
- Maybe it's in part psychic numbing, to use Helen Caldicott's
- phrase for those desensitized to the threat of nuclear
- annihilation. It seems that otherwise well-intentioned
- people can manage somehow to turn down the level of their
- susceptibilities to the griefs of others, which I experience
- as a shocking example of opting for moral blindness.
-
- >In my own case, I was sort of vaguely liberal (anti-war,
- >believed that racism was icky, etc.) when I was much
- >younger. Coming from an affluent family and being white and
- >educated I figured that I was pretty much safe, and that
- >institutionalized oppression was simply not my problem.
-
- >When my place of employment did their gay purge, however, it
- >provided the wakeup call that I needed, and I'd like to
- >think that my awareness has evolved (and will continue to
- >evolve) since that time. It raises all sorts of questions
- >about the nature of altruism, doesn't it?
-
- Maybe questions about the nature of altruism need to be
- raised, again and again, until we as a society can rise
- above our personal self-aggrandizements enough to make an
- effort -- *and* to succeed! -- in guaranteeing a certain
- level of what we call life, liberty, and the pursuit of
- happiness for everyone on earth who wants it. To be sure,
- this involves us in all sorts of thorny issues like cultural
- imperialism, population control that doesn't amount to
- cultural genocide, balancing the environmental equations,
- and so forth. But each of these things seems to me to be
- but one more radicalizing input, raising the stakes,
- increasing a sense of urgency, underscoring the impending
- cataclysm if we continue on in the present directions.
-
- Significant problems arise, I think, as the more one becomes
- radicalized, the more one ineluctably becomes a moralist.
- To be radical is to want to get to the root of things (hence
- the word) so they can be changed. But there are of course
- many dangers in becoming a moralist, the chiefest of them,
- perhaps, being to see only one root where there are in fact
- many.
-
- There are many radicalizing forces. Ones I have not
- experienced directly include poverty, hunger, homelessness,
- lovelessness, and unemployment. Though my economic origins
- are working-class and lower middle-income, though I have
- worn tattered clothes to school in an age when it bore
- painful social liabilities, I've seldom missed a meal, I've
- slept in a warm bed with a roof over my head anytime I chose
- to, I've loved and been loved far beyond the normal
- allotment, and I've been continuously employed since I was
- 10.
-
- But the reason I find so much empathy for poverty,
- homelessness, hunger, emotional deprivation, and
- unemployment is that I have indeed had direct experience
- with gross violence, with bigotries of racism, sexism,
- homophobia and religious intolerance, with the tendency of
- governments to be corrupt, with the intentional forced
- subjugation of the human spirit by greed, power-madness, and
- brute strength.
-
- My personal mantra is "a path is formed by walking on it,"
- but my social and political call to action is "for heaven
- sakes, wake up, wake up, can't you see what's happening?"
-
- --
- Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
- Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
- Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888
- <> <> <> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <> <> <>
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