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- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!uwm.edu!zazen!anderson
- From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
- Subject: Re: Men Not Getting It (was Re: Twice Fucked)
- Message-ID: <1992Nov16.035502.7584@macc.wisc.edu>
- Sender: news@macc.wisc.edu (USENET News System)
- Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
- References: <1992Nov15.160349.4486@macc.wisc.edu> <1992Nov15.165152.23276@tc.cornell.edu> <RHAYDEN.92Nov15180010@hqsun2.oracle.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 03:55:02 GMT
- Lines: 45
-
-
- In article <RHAYDEN.92Nov15180010@hqsun2.oracle.com>
- rhayden@oracle.com (Ronald Hayden) writes:
-
- >In article <1992Nov15.165152.23276@tc.cornell.edu>
- >shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
-
- >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.
-
- >If you're confident of your own sexuality, you're less likely to be
- >bothered by others. If you're confident of your place in male/female
- >interactions, you're less likely to have a problem with women. And
-
- Those two make a pretty strong case, I think.
-
- >further, you're more likely to be sympathetic to the plight of others
- >if you're confident of your place in the world.
-
- This one I find less persuasive. It's not that it couldn't
- be exactly as you suggest; rather, it's that some of the
- worst oppressors are uncommonly secure in and confident of
- their places in the world. For example, wrt homophobia, if
- we want civil rights, we have a mighty large enemy to go up
- against; those who don't want us to have civil rights have
- quite a few more assets than we do in the struggle. Wrt to
- sexism, the absolute numbers are undoubtedly different, but
- the weight or inertia of the long hegemony of patriarchy and
- the pervasiveness of male privilege enable those who don't
- "get it" to be fairly secure that their place in the world
- will not be serously destabilized any time soon.
-
- I don't think this undermines your general point too much,
- because I agree that secure people are probably less likely
- to interpret change as threatening to them personally, or at
- least not to the same degree as less secure people would.
- The exception I note, however, seems to me a bit like
- another sharp edge of the same security.
-
- --
- [Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
- [Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
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