Hey, Kylie, welcome back! I remember being sorry when you logged off several m
months back. And yes, you're giving Jason a pretty harsh tongue-lashing. Jason,
while I feel for you, I have to admit that I agree with pretty much everything
Kylie said. I frankly was put off from carefully considering your argument
because your rhetoric was so patronizing, both in your response with Kylie and in your
reply about the (imo vapid) lyric. No one everver
really hears a preacher. For example, at the end of your response to Kylie,
you suggested and then provided the entire text of an essay. An equal
suggests a title; an assumed superior hands it to us like homework. Just
think about your persona a little; that's all.
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Aug 25 04:07:15 1996
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 05:05:31 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (j griffith)
Subject: its turtles all the way down...
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I dont really know where to start, but i do believe that i will be able to
clearly explain my position and speak a little regarding the past few
posts. i've toned down my rhetoric. granted, it may turn some of you off.
i'd rather you listen.
When i presented a piece of literature that i found valuable, i was called
patronizing, even though the woman whom i was responding to had taken it
upon herself to define feminisms for me. When i make a comment, i am
condescending. When my respondent attempts to educate me regarding what
feminism "IS" and suggests that if i am not part of 'feminism' that i do
not belong on the listserv, she is just happily commenting. i do not
understand the reason for this, nor do i understand why this has not been
noticed.
If i were to call someone a racist, i would justify that claim. Its
implications are harsh and to some a degradation far worse than others. In
a similar sense, being called a sexist, an oppressor, or a 'typical male'
(a reference which makes the underlying accusation that one is an oppressor
or patriarch) is a level of accusation that i would rather not be
flagrantly associated with. if my rhetoric is sexist, i beg you to tell
me. however, if i attempt to make a point and you answer that by saying,
yes, but you're a white male, i am offended deeply. i take comments like
that really seriously. probably more seriously than any. i believe that
certain rhetoric can be oppressive. rhetoric that reifies social
distinctions and that constructs metaphorical oppression i would agree is
often oppressive as is euphemistic discourse (in certain circumstances -
nuclear numbing, etc, sarcasm witheld). etymological discourse on the
other hand does not oppress, just some offensive 'foul' language is
rejected by an academic heirarchy does not mean that it is violent or
oppressive.
My situation is simple. I was originally writing from a point of view
valuing feminism as a movement (which i see myself an active part of) and
as a school of thought (which evolves as each of us speak). I was
reprimanded for defending feminism and before i knew it i was a sexist
oppressor.
As for my rhetoric, i dislike instances where language usually considered
unacceptable by a certain heirarchy of thought or discourse is rejected as
'violent' without proper explanation of why this is. i realize that the
last time i made this challenge, to justify one's assertion - i was treated
like a child, told that maybe my educational background was lacking, but i
never did get an answer. maybe one of you can explain this. assuming a
violent tone or slant to my writing is just that, an assumption. however,
i was likened to "men [who] blame women when they rape them; bash them,
leave them to starve." I use no rhetoric so violent. additionally, you
can't see my face or my expression as i type. the words i used in a
grammatical sense are not metaphorically degrading. most of the instances
of such rhetoric in my writing were used as exclamation not as any kind of
demeaning psycholinguistic device. if it was taken that way, i do
apologize.
i do however ask for a reciprocal apology. being likened to a rapist or
even a class-a sexist who uses words like 'congressman' or phrases like
'when you go to court, talk to the judge about the trees over the stop
sign. HE'll probably give you some leeway.' i try my best to avoid sexist
rhetoric, and i do my best to correct others when they use it. i will
conceed the fact that sexist rhetoric is oppressive and that it should be
avoided. i however used no such rhetoric.
I tried to be a part of the movement. I raise my hand in protest to the
outright rejection of a school of feminist thought, and i am called a
sexist? i'm offended, my tolerance threshold for any form of discussion
has been crossed and i seriously question the beliefs and motivations of
those who have focused on my non-sexist rhetoric in order to reify the
belief that because i am male, i oppress, and that my point to be made is
worthless because of the way i present it. it seems to me that the
inclusive nature of a group of people has turned to exclusion. the
abrasive qualities of my writing are rejected just as quick as the
foundations of scientific thought and rationality by many feminists.
now, i beg you to read the attached file. i'm not your high school algebra
teacher. i found the document in an archive on the internet. its very
interesting and enlightening. if you cant understand why i'm doing this,
i'll offer a simple explanation: i spend fourty plus hours a week simply
working on collegiate debate research. i do it because i love it and
because i learn things that i never would have without the activity. if i
weren't involved in debate, i would have never discovered feminism. i
would probably see feminism as the latest gloria steinem book at the local
bookstore. but i've listened to what anyone can tell me, i've read and
i've learned. i am passing this along to share with anyone willing to read
the passage and experience the same feelings and emotions that i have felt
as a member of this listserv. if you have come this far in my message, i
think you owe it to yourself to read what daphne patai has to say. read it
and ponder.
jason
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Patai in 92 (Daphne, Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 5)
On October 30, 1991, I published a commentary in these pages on "surplus
visibility" and the stigma of minority status. In November, as responses to
the article came in, I discovered that my argument apparently had led some
people to assume that I must be black. Thus, I received a letter requesting
that I contribute a brief life story to a book on blacks who had "made it"
in academe. At the same time, in my own Women's Studies Program at the
University of Massachusetts, I found myself called a racist because, as
acting director, I had been unable to come up with extra money for an
elective course on indigenous women proposed by two Native American graduate
students. Simultaneously, I had used the last bit of money in our budget to
finance a required course on the intellectual foundations of feminism, to be
taught by a teaching assistant who happened to be white.
The same error was being made in both cases: identity politics--the
assumption that a person's racial or ethnic identity and views are one and
the same. If people found what I said sympathetic or useful to blacks, I
must be black. If minority women were frustrated or disappointed by an
administrative decision, I, in my white skin, must be racist.
The consequences of these two cases of mistaken identity were, however,
vastly different. In the first case, I merely wrote to explain that I was
white and hence not an appropriate candidate for a book on black academics.
In the latter case, I tried to explain that "racism" had nothing to do with
the events in question. This simple denial brought a storm down upon my
head. I was told by a young black colleague that when a woman of color says
she has experienced racism, she is the authority on that experience and
cannot be challenged. More protests on my part--that this made any kind of
discussion impossible--only made the situation worse, as memos and charges
came from every direction. Every direction but one: not one of my colleagues
who clearly believed that the charges were absurd (and told me so privately)
was willing to say so publicly.
I began to realize that we were confronting a new dogma sanctifying a
reversal of privilege: instead of the old privileges accompanying the status
of "white," truth, righteousness, and automatic justification in the world
of women's studies now reside with "women of color." As if in compensation
for past oppression, no one now can challenge or gainsay their version of
reality. What can be said for such a turnabout, of course, is that it
spreads racial misery around, and this may serve some larger plan of
justice, sub specie aeternitatis.
Among my other offenses was an expression of concern at the way some of our
students were using the term "Eurocentric" as a new slur: by dismissing an
entire culture as "racist," they relieved themselves of the burden of
learning anything about it. An administrator at my university told me of a
student activist who heatedly said: "Do you know who's teaching Spanish in
the Spanish Department? Spaniards!" Nor do I take this merely as a joke; I
have often wondered how soon it will be before someone suggests that my
"identity" (North American) should cause me to cease teaching classes in one
of my areas of research, Brazilian women.
The situation that I describe is, alas, hardly unique. What adds to my
distress is that it is not usually discussed. For another dogma of women's
studies seems to be that our problems must not be aired. There are some good
reasons for this reluctance, of course, given the eagerness with which
opponents of women's studies might seize on any disagreements. But the
consequences are nonetheless dreadful: a kind of siege mentality, in which
demands for loyalty thrive and very little fresh air gets in. What does
flourish in this confined atmosphere is a flaunting of correct postures,
which everyone rushes to embrace, perhaps in an effort to compensate for
sexual, racial, or other identities that have been called into question.
Thus, students in my course on utopian fiction by women wrote papers this
past semester displaying attitudes that they apparently had learned were the
appropriate ones in their women's studies classes. A young white woman too
shy to speak in class wrote repeatedly of having to come to terms with her
status as a "white oppressor." A young man wrote that a novel we had read
taught him that his relationship with Mother Earth was one of rape and
pillage; he now saw his rock collection in a new light. I wondered whether
he had intended this as parody--which would have been a more original
response.
An extremely articulate student wrote eloquently (and without any apparent
irony) about how, as a woman, she was silenced and lacked a language. And a
white student who criticized a black writer's metaphorical use of the word
"slavery" to describe a casual labor exchange was coldly told by another
white student that it was not appropriate for a white person to criticize a
black writer's metaphors. It is true, of course, that white society has
historically oppressed black people, men have damaged the environment, and
women indeed have been silenced, but these facts do not mean that everyone
today inherits a simple identity or is personally guilty of everything her
or his predecessors did.
Identity politics is a dead end. We are neither right nor wrong because of
"who we are," but only, as the feminist scholar Jenny Bourne wrote in an
essay several years ago, because of what we do.
But why should identity politics not serve as another weapon for faculty
members in a scarce job market and poor economy? Why not use this, too, in
the scramble for the goodies of our profession--jobs, tenure, legitimacy?
What is distressing is that this tactic is no feminist departure from the
bad old ways of "white patriarchal hegemony," but a replication of those
ways, pure and simple. Old forms, new contents. What feminism adds to it,
however, is its own tone of moral superiority. Part of what makes conflicts
within feminist groups so unpleasant is surely the sense of fraud that
accompanies familiar old ambitions dressed up in appropriate ideology.
Feminism has played a major role in questioning canonical knowledge and
standards. Should we be surprised, then, when, on a women's studies search
committee, one group's view that a particular candidate is poorly qualified
is met by attacks on the very concepts of "qualifications," "standards," and
"knowledge"? Feminism itself has provided the weapons to unleash this sort
of self-destructive attack, which can be pursued ad infinitum. While
particular criteria have been used in academe in the past to exclude certain
groups, you cannot have a university without making judgments about people's
expertise. The intellectual and political questions posed by feminism were
developed to challenge unfair stereotyping and exclusion of women, not to
exempt them from evaluation.
Perhaps "identity" must fill all the gaps left if such attacks prevail,
however. For, as I have written previously, feminists today often engage in
rhetorical maneuvers that are rapidly acquiring the status of incantations:
"As a white working-class heterosexual" or "As a black feminist activist."
Such tropes, which do nothing to change the world, carry their own aura of
self-righteousness, whether offered as an apology or (as is more often the
case) deployed as a badge. In their worst form, they lead to a veritable
oppression sweepstakes. And it is not uncommon, in women's studies programs,
to hear someone's claim to identity in one category negated by a slur in
another-- as when a colleague commented to me disparagingly that a student
in our program, although she was Latin American, was "upper class."
Where will it end? My fear is that the search--and demand --for feminist
purity (of both attitudes and identity) will eventually result in a massive
rejection of the very important things that feminism, broadly speaking, aims
to achieve. Today, feminists who have the temerity to criticize negative
tendencies within feminism risk being automatically placed in the enemy
camp, thus seeming to swell the ranks of opponents of progressive
scholarship, a conservative group that may actually represent only a small
number of people. Marginalizing friendly critics will not advance the
credibility of women's studies or other revisionist scholarship.
Unfortunately, the situation I've described is not the first time that rigid
factionalism has splintered leftist politics. The entire history of the left
is replete with purges and divisions. What is more banal than that the
powerless should turn against one another? Whom else can they effectively
trounce?
Feminism is hurting itself with identity politics. Those of us who are
feminists but who do not accept this simplistic stereotyping and ideological
policing must speak up--in defense of feminism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daphne Patai is a professor of women's studies and of Portuguese
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is co-editor of
Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (Routledge,
1991). [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mens Issues Page Men's Issues Bibliographies
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-------
Feminism is hurting itself with identity politics. Those of us who are
feminists but who do not accept this simplistic stereotyping and ideological
policing must speak up--in defense of feminism.
Daphne Patai is a professor of women's studies and of Portuguese
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
--========================_14187532==_--
