Forwarded: Sexism

Lief M. Hendrickson (hendrick@NOSC.MIL)
Tue, 3 Jan 1995 21:01:42 PST

On Jan 3, John Ford wrote:

>Amongst other things Lief M. Hendrickson writes:
>
>"Hey guys! The sun has gone down, and it's a bit chilly in this
>lair. How 'bout some nice Ruby hot flames to warm the air!"
>
>This is the sort of ant-intellectualism that serves to legitimate
>inequalities to which Ruby and others object. And so do I.
>
>The object in Lief's words is to portray women as emotional subjects and
>therefore irrational. This serves to marginalise women while empowering
>"guys". It is a form of violence.
------------
Aw gee, John that wasn't very hot. Barely warm. You even missed
the point. There has been no attempt on my part to promote
inequality. I don't care who delivers the mail; male or female
postal person. Read back. The issue was- cutting off someone's
ideas off for their exercise of free speech; namely their choice
to use the word "mankind" in a gender-inclusive sense. Have you
missed the fact there's even a respected anthropological journal
titled, "Man". Would you read it?

Don't lump all women together. Disagreeing with the tactics of
one person who happens to be a woman is certainly not an attack
on all women. I think you have a loose screw, but that doesn't
mean I think all men are crazy!


>Bruce Kapferer, (1989) is concerned with understanding how the experiential
>world is c omprehended in everyday practice and beliefs - how nationalism
>in a particularly ideological form contains within it the potential for
>racially orientated violenc e. Elsewhere, Kapferer expands on his use of
>the word violence. Violence is not r estricted and "covers a range of
>phenomena from killing to the violence of racial intolerance and other modes
> of oppression" (Kapferer, 1990: 75). His argument can extend to sexism.
-------------
Re-read this part of your own contribution. See the word
"oppression". That's what I've been opposing.


>I object to being 'classified' as one of the 'guys'.
-------------
It's already been agreed that "guys" nowadays is gender-
inclusive. So how shall we classify you? As one of the ants? I
didn't know there was an intellectualism of ants until you
brought it up as "ant-intellectualism" in the first part of your
post (see above). Now that you mention it, gender in ant
colonies is an interesting issue, but let's save it for another
day.