NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/feminism/6407

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 3.9 KB

Xref: sparky alt.feminism:6407 sci.skeptic:21616 soc.women:21820 soc.men:21664
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From: [e-mail] (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Dr. Goldberg Replies to "Patriarchy" Debate
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Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:16:03 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano) writes:
>>>>>>>Steven Goldberg (Dept. of Sociology, CUNY) writes:

[How Brian Siano is supposedly guilty of _ad hominem_ attacks on
Goldberg's _magnum opus_]

>     Here we go again. What I've been saying is that the matter of
>gender roles and power is a far more complex issue than Goldberg's
>'men are born to rule' hypothesis. ...

[How Goldberg's hypothesis is _very_ simplistic...]

... I've also
>written, at great length, the problems with Sheaffer's building
>Goldberg's book into the basis of a bizarre antifemale doctrine,
>something which provided ample reason for such concern.

[Brian Siano's research: matters are a lot more complicated than one
sex ruling the other; he notes that Goldberg's book has gone unmentioned]

    I think that this is where Goldberg starts to get slippery. He
concedes that women may have a lot of "autonomy", but after he has
done so, he acts as if he has never done so.

[On Sarah Blaffer Hrdy:]

... Sheaffer replied:

... The question is, what do the
>     PRIMATOLOGISTS say about Hrdy's claim (if  they can even
>     pronounce her name, given its obvious vowel-deficiency)?

    That's not very funny. The sound "r" is sometimes a vowel in
some languages, such as some Slavic ones (Czech, Slovak,
Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian [I think]). The Yugoslav version of the city
Trieste's name is "Trst", and there is someone from Czechoslovakia
named "Petr Beckmann". There is reportedly a Czech tongue-twister that
goes "Strch prst skrz krk" [Stick a finger in the throat]. English
itself also has an r-sound vowel (at least American does :-), only it
is usually spelled "er", and sometimes "ir" or "ur" or "or". To me,
this is just as in good taste as snickering about Japanese not having
the "l" sound and Japanese people making "r" instead.

    Well, I know I'll be accused of Political Correctness for
this, just like he accused his critics of Political Correctness when
he used the term "Wonga-Wongas"...

... If
>     books on primatology say something like, "Srh Hrdy upset our
>     previous assumptions about the sex roles of lngrs," then I
>     will agree that Brian has made his point.

    [A lot of Sheaffer's bashing of "Women's Studies" deleted...]

>     Most recently, shortly after Sheaffer posts a note on
>alt.feminism about how women are wimps who want to moderate the
>newsgroup because they can't take his penetrating and incisive
>questions-- he starts whining about how I'm ostensibly following
>him around to harass him.

    And my all time favorite Sheafferism:

    When I suggested that some interesting books were to be found
in San Francisco and Berkeley, he complained that these places are 50
miles away from San Jose, where he lives. I then suggested that he
ride the CalTrain commuter train to San Francisco, or BART (Bay Area
Rapid Transit) from Fremont to either San Francisco or Berkeley, and
he snickered about "Politically Correct Collective Transport". These
two alternatives I had suggested because they are a lot more pleasant
than over an hour on the road, IMO. The point was that first he
complained about how far it was, then he claimed that the alternatives
to over an hour of driving were ideologically unacceptable to him.

    After today, I almost certainly won't be on the net until Jan.
4 or so.
--
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/[e-mail]