NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/bi/17198

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 3.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!ames!agate!agate!muffy
From: [e-mail] (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: Understanding
Date: 22 Dec 92 11:10:50
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
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NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: Graydon's message of Tue, 22 Dec 1992 11:06:44 EST

In article <[e-mail]> Graydon <[e-mail]> writes:
>If I may follow up Stella's nifty posting with a little tiny instance of
>tactical advice; the word 'feminist' tends to make most men defensive.
>Why this should be so is a long essay, but - talk about fairness and
>pain - most folks is for fairness and against pain - rather than 'feminism',
>if you don't want the guy to turtle.

While I'm at it, why don't I stop using "bisexual," as well, since that
bothers many people (I know someone who just came out to her brother as
bi: he asked her to stay away from his children)?  Instead, I can just
talk about letting him watch me and another woman fool around, prior to
both concentrating on him.  That's unlikely to scare him off.

I would rather try to change people's negative (and, IMO, incorrect)
views of feminism than to disassociate myself with what I consider to be
an important and valuable philosophy.

>There's a certain element of the male experience of feminist philosphy
>that goes 'this is going to tell me I'm deficent in painful detail - ack!';
>I, for one, am very resitant to being told I'm any more deficent than
>the next person over.

This came up in a conversation I had with a woman the other night.  It
seemed to both of us that men take statements about "men" a lot more
personally than women take statements about "women."  That is (grossly
generalizing here), if you say "all men are scum," a man is likely to
respond "why are you saying I'm scum."  If you say "women can't do
math," a woman is likely to say "what a ridiculous stereotype."  Given
that this is the case (and it could certainly be argued that it is
not...*smile*), it seems to me that what might be going on is that men
have a stronger identification with "being male," because that is
something to be proud of in our society.  More than that, some men base
their entire self-worth on "being a man."  In this case, an attack on
"men" (being the societal standard for being male) *is* more of a
personal attack.  It would be pretty silly for women to base their
self-image on "being female," since society's view of women is rather
negative.  Of course, there *are* female supremacists who do this, but
there are relatively few of them.

To bring this back to bi-relevance:  note the parallel between this and
sexuality issues.  How many of us take comments about bisexuals as
personal attacks, as opposed to regarding the speaker as misled, stupid,
clueless, etc.?

(Note that all of this is a recent theory; I'd be happy to hear problems
with it, or other ideas.)

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                      | ~Can you tell me how much bleeding/it
[e-mail]            |  takes to fill a word with meaning and/
"amorous inclinations"? Aha! I'm   |  how much how much death it takes/to give
not "not straight," I'm *inclined*.|  a slogan breath?~ - Bruce Cockburn