[5180] in Central_America
Re: New quotes for Fri Nov 19
sorokin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sorokin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Nov 19 19:24:33 1993
Seth:
Far be it from me to deny that the problems mentioned in that article
are real and uncool and all that. (For some interesting criticisms along
those lines see /mit/sorokin/Public/womens-studies, sorry about the
formatting at the beginning.)
But that's *not* what I'm trying to talk about. You see, what lies
behind the extremism and bad scholarship and generalizations that do
exist in feminism and in women's studies is something very simple, and
it is this:
We are dying.
(When I say 'we' here I mean women, because that is the group to which I
feel most strongly attached, and for which I feel I am most able to
speak.)
Do you understand this at all?
We are dying in mind, from seeing that our intelligence is often a
liability; from seeing that we are less important, less real, less
likely to be listened to, taken seriously, respected, paid, promoted,
published, elected.
We are dying in body from finding that we are taken more seriously and
respected more if we wear makeup like facepaint to hide ourselves, if we
wear shoes that damage our feet and out legs, have plastic surgery that
is expensive and painful and all for someone else's benefit, get breast
implants that are made of untested toxic materials. In case we thought
we had a choice, we are told that small breasts are a *deformity*.
We die in spirit from having ourselves and our concerns trivialized,
reduced to abstract cases, our passions and emotions put down to PMS and
uppityness, and from being told and shown that we are not people, we are
objects for the sexual and visual gratification of others.
And we die very literally because we are being killed. We are beaten,
abused, raped, murdered *all* *the* *time*. Do you understand what it's
like to live like that?
Your points are certainly valid, Seth, but what it comes down to is that
this country is still run by white, heterosexual upper/middleclass men,
and while I would certainly not assert that all such men are oppressive
(or <insert your favorite term here>) I am quite frankly less interested
in talking about how you feel about people making incorrect
generalizations about you, than about the fact that people are dying.
Nine out of ten women are killed by men; half are killed by their
domestic partners (husband, lover, boyfriend, what have you...). In
Massachusetts one woman or child has died as a result of domestic
violence every nine days.
You can say it's sexist, racist, bigoted. But I care more about the
lives that are being lost than about whether you think I'm sterotying
you unfairly. This is not an academic or philosophical question for me.
We are fighting for our lives here, and all too often we are losing.
Don't tell me you feel oppressed. Go do something to make my life as a
woman less painful and hazardous, less likely to be fatal. You want to
be innocent until proven guilty. Fine. In many situations I assume men
to be guilty until proven innocent because I know too many women who
didn't, and who were beaten or raped or killed because of it. Change
that for me, and I'll change for you.
