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- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!usc!not-for-mail
- From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Subject: Dworkin as social-constructionist (was Re: what is a man-hater? (was Dworkin...)
- Date: 30 Dec 1992 15:57:00 -0800
- Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
- Lines: 48
- Message-ID: <1htd0cINNpd1@mizar.usc.edu>
- References: <gfEVIr_00VpKE1SnA8@andrew.cmu.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu
-
- In article <gfEVIr_00VpKE1SnA8@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Tom Lord <lord+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
-
- [ rehashed essentialist vs social-constructionist
- argument deleted ]
-
- > I think it is also fair to say (going way out on a wobbly limb) that
- > dworkin's anger extends, not only only to a set of identities, but to
- > those that promote and enact them; those who resist the destruction of
- > identities which her analysis convinces her are wrong-headed. One
- > name, commonly applied to a large group of such people, even if for
- > the wrong reasons, is `men'.
-
- The wrong reasons?! What, pray tell, does that mean?
-
- > Interestingly, males who are recognized
- > as not being defenders of the sex are often denied the name `man',
-
- Example, please?
-
- > so, there are larger forces than dworkin using the name `man' to refer to
- > a male that acts in a particular way.
-
- Oh puh-leeze.
-
- > If this group, call them `real men',
-
- Why? I thought we'd agreed to call them "men".
-
- > are defending and resisting the
- > correction of harmful social conditions, intentionally or not, then
- > they are an enemy to those who would bring change about.
-
- Well, you know Tom, I don't think the fact that I might enjoy
- watching gay porn is, 1) any of Andrea Dworkin's business, or
- 2) *is* violence against women, as Dworkin would have us
- believe. So if my resistance means that I'm given the name
- man for the wrong reasons, so be it.
-
- "Terror issues from the male, illuminates his essential
- nature and his basic purpose."
- -- Andrea Dworkin, _Pornography_, p. 16
-
- I don't know. It strikes me that Dworkin argues from
- an essentialist stance just as much as she does from
- an s-c stance.
-
- Arne
-