gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) (05/27/91)
I had an e-mail debate about "Against Our Will" (Cindy, you can press
"n" now). I tried to explain why the following paragraph angered me:
# Two bright young Nixon aides who plead guilty to Watergate offenses
#and know they face a jail sentence admit they are apprehensive about
#the possibility of a sexual assault.
#
#(The concern of the Nixon men, as a matter of fact, was exaggerated,
#since federal prisons hold the least violent criminals, those convicted
#largely of white-collar crimes. Prison rape is more typically a
#product of a state and city penal institutions, where those convicted
#of crimes of violence predominate.)
I start to explain to her that the fear was very real, the jail mangers
could send a quiet signal that these prisoners were "a legitimate target,"
that not every white collar person is not violent, that the fear of rape
is also a problem, etc.
Suddenly I realized that in the very same book Brownmiller explained
similar ideas with respect to women, she just had no knowledge
that men may feel that way. Just think about "standard" feminist
response to something like "your fears of rape are exaggerated", when
it is said to a *woman*, if you miss the point.
Other debates I have with feminists are in the same bucket.
The same feminists who explain for hours why women should have choice
because an un-wanted pregnancy can destroy a woman's life really have
no idea about the fear that a man feels when he suspects that there
was a birth control failure; especially when he realizes that he has
no legal choice. They really can't see why men should have any choice
if a condom breaks and he notifies the women five minutes *before*
the conception that he does not want to have a kid.
The same feminist who tells us that the neighbors did not hire her
to cut the grass when she was 14, and how unfair it was, goes next
to tell us what a wonderful thing affirmative action is and how it
does not hurt men unfairly.
The bottom line in all these examples is that I believe that in the
brain level men and women are quite similar. Quite a few feminists,
explicitly or implicitly, reject this claim. They just don't have
any *empathy* toward men because they believe that we are so different.
This claim was part of *early* feminism, but I don't remember seeing
it in any main-stream feminist literature (Pat Califia excluded) that
was written later.
Has anybody else seen the "men and women are very similar in brain
level" claim in main-stream feminist literature that has been
written after 1975?
Hillel gazit@cs.duke.edu
"I couldn't define "liberation" for women in terms that denied the sexual and
human reality of our need to love, and even sometimes to depend upon, a man.
What had to be changed was the obsolete feminine and masculine sex roles that
dehumanized sex, making it almost impossible for women and men to make love,
not war. How could we ever really know or love each other as long as we
played those roles that kept us from knowing or being ourselves? Weren't men
as well as women still locked in lonely isolation, alienation, no matter
how many sexual acrobatics they put their bodies through? Weren't men
dying too young, suppressing fears and tears and their own tenderness?
It seemed to me that men weren't really the enemy - they were
fellow victims, suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made
them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."
-- ("The Feminine Mystique", Betty Friedan)