mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (10/10/89)
Gordon Fitch says: >This particular thread started, I believe, as another attack on feminism >in soc.men or soc.women. In any case, the attacks on feminism connected >with the thread in these groups were as I have noted: quotations from >radicals are used to embarrass reformists. Well, lest I state the obvious here, it seems to me that there are at least two different dynamics on each "side" here. On the "anti-feminist" side, there are some people who very much do seem to have an axe to grind, as illustrated vividly in the arguments around divorce. But there is a second strain which has some doubts about what feminism is really all about. I'm steadily coming to the conclusion that feminism is a grab bag of more or less unlike positions/whatever which all start from the perspective of the relatively poor condition of women in our society. Some of these positions are extreme to the point of providing a certain comfort to their opponents, as Mr. Fitch rightly notes. I've noted my reservations about other strains elsewhere. Mr. Fitch continues: >Today, after fifteen or twenty years of vigorous and successful >counterrevolution, it seems a bit much to ask that radical feminism >be successful in the streets. Yet success in academia or the therapies >of the upper middle class is not going to be enough. Last year, the >median wage fell about 1/2 of 1 percent in the U.S. -- as it has >during most years since 1970. -- and we have the "capitalism is failing" spiel. I do not know Mr. Fitch's age, but having lived through all of this, I have to say that I am not surprised by this ages failings, even though I find much of it reprehensible. The failings of this decade follow naturally from the failings of the previous decades; the radicalism of the late-60s/early-70s is, in my opinion, one of the reasons we have such a backlash now. It is certainly clear that things are going wrong; social forces of all kinds are powerfully negative now, and in almost every measure we are losing ground. I've left the poor white male standing in the wings for several articles now, but it is time for his entrance. Who shall be his advocate? Does he need an advocate? This is where I find things troublesome. If we all stand around arguing like lawyers or lobbyists for our clients, people are going to be hurt-- and this is the natural direction our political system takes. That's what bothers me about feminism as advocacy for women; how is it to avoid this? Extremist feminism, indeed, seems to have outflanked this position to the point of acting just like any political party, complete with mythology and sacred cows. Feminism is not simply rebuilding society; let us have more respect for the language. Perhaps its position in this is to keep women from being forgotten; and yet the problems of men should not be forgotten either. Suffering is suffering, and it is not to be belittled. C. Wingate + "Our God, to whom we turn when weary with illusion, + whose stars serenely burn above this earth's confusion, mangoe@cs.umd.edu + thine is the mightly plan, the steadfast order sure mimsy!mangoe + in which the world began, endures, and shall endure."