mangoe@cs.UMD.EDU (Charley Wingate) (10/10/89)
Vicki Powers asks: >But isn't ending discrimination against women in MEN's interest as well? >Wouldn't the world be a better place for most MEN if there were no >discrimination against women? In another article, Matt Crawford writes: >Some very competent factory owners and managers benefitted from discrimination >that enabled them to pay women less than men for doing the same work. This is part of what I was trying to get at earlier. Here we have the old problem that a man's interests don't have to have anything much to do with *men's* interests. Likewise, the interests of a woman don't have to have anything to do with those of women collectively. Also, there is the very real problem here that people's perceptions of their own interests are frequently irrational, or at the least not answerable to the reasons of others. And thus, it is frequently the case that pursuit of one's interests is hurtful to the supposed shared interests of whatever class one is lumped into. That's why I'm suspicious of advocacy. It has a strong tendency to turn into merely a battle of self-interest. In the case of feminism, there is at least the peril that, in turning from pursuit of gender equality to advocacy for the position of women, it will become the convenient political rhetoric of women who are acting in their own interests, at the expense of gender-equality and even at the expense of other women. Charley Wingate