NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/bi/17160

Text File | 1992-12-22 | 2.8 KB | 54 lines

Newsgroups: soc.bi
Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!thelema!STella
From: [e-mail] (STella)
Subject: Re: Understanding
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 14:10:30 GMT
Lines: 43

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ciaran McHale) writes:
>BTW, I do *not* have a responsibility to educate every single Jo Soap
>who comes along about queer issues. I may *choose* to educate a person,
>but it is by no means a responsibility.

YES, exactly, and thank you.  I do spend a fair amount of time
offering clues.  But claiming that I have a responsibility to place
those clues into the mind and heart of another, rather than making
them accessible as I can and leaving the responsibility for clue
acquisition with those who consider themselves clue-short seems
bassackwards -- if you think I have a clue you need, you get off YOUR
ass and get yourself a copy.  I do not take responsibility for your
growth -- being responsible for my own is just about all I'm willing
to work.

And, after years of attempting to share my reality with men, to
explain what "women" are on about, I've come to the decision that one
individual woman's story, in general, will not have as much of an
effect on the average man as getting evidence that it's not just
rabid-STella but MOST WOMEN who feel what I'm feeling.  Or that I'm
NOT marching with he feminist pary line on this one, when that's the
case.

Yes, I've had the experience of talking one-on-one with a man, and
seeing dawn break over Marblehead as he suddenly realizes what I'm on
about.  It's great when it happens, but it's not the way the odds run.
But maybe it's just me, dancing on the tension between a cold reading
of society and my awareness that every man and every woman is a star.

I can, and sometimes do, spend a fair piece of time telling another
about my reality.  When the issue's not MY personal reality, but an
issue that seems to spring from male/female differential
socialization, however, it makes more sense to me to offer the ideas
of several women, rather than my own solitary case.  After you've
familiarized yourself with the general case, the common experience of
women, it may be a good use of my time to highlight the ways I
disagree with the generic women's-issue party line, or to cite some of
the ways the general has worked out in my life, but before you can
walk, I'm not going to give you a gift certificate to Arthur Murray's
-- that way lies frustration for BOTH of us.

[e-mail]    1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
[e-mail]    Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian!