NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/bi/17240

Text File | 1992-12-23 | 2.3 KB | 50 lines

Newsgroups: soc.bi
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!ieunet!tcdcs!maths.tcd.ie!longvalley!cjmchale
From: [e-mail] (Ciaran McHale)
Subject: Re: Understanding
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
References: <[e-mail]>  <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>  <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 14:42:01 GMT
Lines: 39

In <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Graydon) writes:
>[offers some tactical advice]
>the word 'feminist' tends to make most men defensive. [...]
>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 find this interesting because it suggests that the men who view
feminism in this light think of feminism as being anti-male, as
distinct from it being anti-patriarchy. Indeed, some of the threads
here recently mentioned this distinction and the confusion over it.

I think an interesting parallel to this is the way sometimes the "moral
majority" somehow think (or at least proclaim) that the GLB movements
are anti-heterosexual as opposed to them being anti-heterosexist. This
idea crops up fairly often in the guise of "gays are trying to recruit
our children" (which, of course, also plays upon the "gays are child
molestors" stereotype) and also as "gays will destroy the institution
of marriage" (presumably by "recruiting" straight folk who otherwise
might have gotten married).

Two questions spring to mind about this:

1. Does anybody have further examples of non-X folk thinking that X-folk
are anti-(non-X), e.g., gays are against heterosexuality, feminism is
anti-male, blacks are anti-white? (I am wondering how widespread this
idea might be.)

2. Does anybody have any ideas about why such notions exist? Is it a
result of poor communication resulting in fundamental misunderstandings?
Or is it that the bigots are spreading misinformation to create fear of
change?


Ciaran.
--
---- Ciaran McHale ([e-mail])
\bi/ Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
 \/  Telephone: [phone] FAX: [phone]