mangoe@cs.UMD.EDU (Charley Wingate) (10/04/89)
If there is one issue here that seems inevitably polarizing, it is divorce and child custody. In particular, the Morgan/Foretich case. To some extent, I would count myself as one of Dr. Morgan's partisans; I freely admit this as a *prejudice* of mine, and I won't make any attempt to argue one side of the case or the other. What I find instructive, though, is the fire fight about this issue in soc.men. Here there is not even a pretext of equal rights. People argue passionately on one side of the case or the other, often from personal experience. And the most dubious sorts of arguments float out. We have polygraph testimony-- which is known to be unreliable. We have Foretich's other ex-wives-- as though this testimony is free of bias, something which the passion of the argument would seem to deny. And moreover, there is a sharp division here along gender lines. This case is, at least on the net, a rallying point for some quite partisan viewpoints. And personal experience plays a major role in this. Several people are arguing opposite sides of the argument, arguing from their own experience. Well, to me at least it seems that personal experience is valid almost by definition; the truth must encompass all of it. In the Morgan/Foretich case ther are two quite separate issues: the legal issues surrounding contempt, and the truth of Hilary's situation. As far as the latter is concerned, our personal experiences are not the truth about Hilary. This may seem trivial, but the tendency is always to act as if our own experience is THE Experience. And this seems to me to be a problem that pervades "solutions" to social problems. There is always a tension between generalization and treatment of individual cases as individuals. Advocacy groups, by their nature, tend to prefer the former to the latter. It is particularly tempting to characature those who, for whatever reason, find themselves in opposition to the group. And the natural response is for all the opponents to band together. The end result is that truth gives way to politics. "Feminism" and "anti-feminism" come to have the same truth content as "democrat" and "republican". Now, I've exaggerated this somewhat. At the same time, however, my point remains: insofar as "feminism" means "gender equality", it cannot mean "advocacy for women". Such advocacy must be reined in by attention to the complaints of men. When all the women's complaints are on one side, and all the men's are on the other, what we have is not gender equality, but simply two political parties. Charley Wingate
matt@oddjob.uchicago.EDU (Matt Crawford) (10/05/89)
Charley Wingate says: ) the unearned prejudice [against women] does not benefit any man who is ) competant, THEREFORE we do not support it. Some very competant factory owners and managers benefited from discrimination that enabled them to pay women less than men for doing the same work. They supported and fought to preserve the system that allowed this. ________________________________________________________ Matt Crawford matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu
Keith_Iluvitar_Weiner@mts.rpi.EDU (10/18/89)
>) the unearned prejudice [against women] does not benefit any man who is >) competant, THEREFORE we do not support it. > >Some very competant factory owners and managers benefited from >discrimination that enabled them to pay women less than men for >doing the same work. They supported and fought to preserve the >system that allowed this. The ideology which advocates that government's role is to control people, because they are inherently evil or "selfish" is collectivism/altruism/mysticism. This is not to say that Anarchy is the way to go. There _is_ a proper purpose for govt. Mandating the whims of the majority is _not_ its proper purpose. Protecting the inalienable rights of the individual _is_ its proper purpose. "Wait", you say. "Dont people have a right to live free from discrimination?" That depends on several things which are not distinguished by the current system, but which are very important. If a man refuses to hire woman, then she does _not_ have a right to that job. Thats _his_ money he wont givy her, and no one has any moral claim otherwise. If, on the other hand, a man told a woman to quit her job (as his coworker) or else he would "get her", then he threatens the use of physical force, which _should_ be illegal. Likewise if the govt itself were to discriminate, it would necessitate the use of physical force (as a somewhat more complicated corollary which I assume is not argued). So what I advocate for govt's role is to protect its citizens from the _initiation_ of physical force/fraud from domestic and foreign criminals. Its purpose is _not_ to attempt to impose "egalitarian" measures (again, what if people are _not_ equal?) "An elective despotism is NOT what we fought this war for!" - T Jefferson -- mi gloria es vivir tan libre / como el pajaro del cielo; | no hago nido en este suelo / donde hay tanto que sufrir, | Cindy Tittle y nadie me ha de seguir / cuando yo remonto el vuelo. | tittle@ics.uci.edu