Roger -
Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to
become the new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible)
ability/agility to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great
term by the way, unless it is just another way avoiding saying
"landscape";) or taking the oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's
tale of imposed social equality through handicapping everyone down
to a least common denominator.
Wow.
The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are
routinely subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence,
and violence; african american males spend their lives in prison while
privileged white males get slapped on the wrist for the same
infractions. So society currently imposes drastic, life threatening
handicaps on the disadvantaged.
The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose
handicaps on you, too? That would be an oppressive route?
No, what you read is my morbid fascination running off to an extrema, at
the nudging of Vonnegut when I was very young. And it was not and is
not restricted to SWMs by any means. I'm worried about knee jerk
reactions in *any* and all directions, not just toward SWMs.
While the status quo is only threatening to rape women and to lynch
people of color -- the majority of people in the world -- so it's okay?
Nope, it's far from OK... as I've said elsewhere, I have a wife, two
daughters and a granddaughter who I feel the need to protect (and
empower) personally and systemically from such things, and by extension
YOUR wife, daughters, grand-daughters, nieces and acquaintances and
*their* cousins, friends, mothers, sisters, etc. ad infinitum. Same
goes for my *many* friends whose melanin load is higher than mine... and
my *several* friends who prefer the sexual and romantic engagements of
their own gender, or in a few cases, their former or freshly minted gender.
On the other hand, in my proximity, these problems are not as acute as
the common story suggests, it probably is elsewhere and certainly was in
the past. I do know women (and at least one man) who have been raped,
more who have had such things attempted or threatened directly and
*many* who feel under the threat categorically. I know men and women
whose surnames, accents, skin color, professed religion, etc. may well
limit their options in the larger playing field, and I strive to relieve
that for them where I can without being condescending or accidentally
perpetuating it in some way. I intervene when and how I can when such
misbehaviour is underway in my presence.
Better a society where white men are free than a society where
everyone is oppressed? I'm sure it rings true to a lot of misogynist,
racist trolls, but that's not the way I want to roll.
No, you read me entirely wrong. I'm saying simply that by focusing on
the easily identifiable characteristics of the current or local dominant
culture (White/Hispanic Males in this region or
White/Black/Brown/Yellow/Red Males globally or ... ) as indicators for
who is doing the oppressing, we might consider the larger patterns that
not only lead to this oppression/inequality, but which would also
re-ignite the very same table-tipping IF we COULD or DID renormalize and
put a *different* group on top.
I even put out a stalking horse set of reasons why *White*
*Heterosexual* *Males* might be more predisposed to or more capable *of*
oppression than other groups. I'm not even denying that there might
very well be a positive correlation between those characteristics and
the tendency toward dominance/oppression/violence... I'm just asking the
question as to whether this is more of a *feature* of a *system* than it
is the specific details of the dominant "species" (SWMs).
North America (if not the entire world populated with humans) has fairly
recent examples of how ecosystems were crashed or at least distorted
badly by identifying and deleting the most obviously aggressive species
(e.g. Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and to a lesser extent Lynx, Fox, Coyote,
Ferret). I think most agree that villianizing the apex predators and
eliminating them turned out to be misguided. I'm just asking the
question of whether we might be making the same mistake when we focus on
the *white male straightness* rather than on the *niche* (dominant
oppressor) and try to understand the whole dynamic of such systems
rather than the specific characteristics of those (currently, locally)
filling the niche (SWM)?
Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men.
I'm not worried about whether white men are handicapped or not. I'm
worried about whether a possibly specious rhetoric which suggests that
identifying the *most obvious and/or locally evident* oppressors by
their superficial characteristics (gender, sexual orientation, melanin
concentration) actually leads us closer to changing the situation or
instead might actually take us *away from* resolving the inequalities by
simply shifting us from one basin of attraction to yet another.
I may be *dead wrong* in my assumption that other combinations of the
characteristics in question (sexual preference, gender, and melanin
load) are as capable of oppression as SWMs... maybe there *IS* only one
basin of attraction defined uniquely by these three qualities, but that
is not my intuition. At best, I suspect it is a *larger* basin
(characterized by SWM dominance) than those characterised by the other
features...
Go to the Stans or regions of the Middle East or Subsaharan Africa and
it will probably be evident that skin color is not what causes men to be
violently oppressive toward each other and toward women in particular.
On the other hand, except for the *mythical* example of the famed
Amazonian Warrioresses, we *don't* have many if any examples of *women*
being violent aggressive oppressors. So maybe matriarchal societies
which do not maintain hegemony through violence or oppression are
possible... and maybe homosexuals would make better statesmen and
leaders than heterosexuals.
I have it on good advice that HIllary will be running in 2016 and unless
something more bold (I'd prefer Chelsea, I'm tired of my generation
running things) happens, I will almost surely vote for her. But I
don't expect having a non SWM at the helm of our lumbering Titanic of a
ship to actually solve our most fundamental problems. I voted for Obama
twice (as much because of his relative youth as his Y chromasome or his
Melanin) and I'm disappointed in the results (not necessarily in the man).
In Vonnegut's cautionary tale for example, it was not about white males
being handicapped, it was about virtually *everyone* being
handicapped... pretty women being masked to hide their features,
graceful ballerinas having to perform with weights on their ankles,
etc. It is about not being able to separate symptom from disease.
If we agree that "white male heterosexuals" get all the goodies at the
expense of the non-SWM, do we simply assume it is the SWMness of the
victors which puts them in that position?
Their ancestors may have been rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and
thieves, they may hold the majority of wealth in the world, but let's
let bygones be bygones.
Or in contrast, "let the sins of the fathers be visited upon the
sons"? You were raised in roughly the same era I was. I'm very
thankful for the awareness that was stirred up during my youth on behalf
of non-male non-white non-heterosexuals... it allowed ME, for example to
NOT be trapped by (all of?) the mistakes of my fathers and
grandfathers. But I'm calling on a larger analysis, for *some of us*
to move on out of that local minima to a more global perspective. While
it might help to be a white, male, heterosexual, (protestant, raised in
wealth, good nutrition, straight teeth, twinkle in the eye, ???, ...) to
be an oppressor, I'm not sure it is necessary nor sufficient.
What is asked is that they stop treating non-straight, non-white,
non-males like slaves, and they stop allowing others to treat the
non-SWMs like slaves, and that they stop blaming the non-SWMs for all
the misery visited on them by SWMs as if the jerks would be really
nice bros if not provoked.
Yes, and this is a reasonable thing to ask of ourselves (especially
SWMs) and eachother... but if we insist on believing that it is the S,
the W and the M characteristics that uniquely and distinctly select for
this behaviour, I am suggesting it might not be that simple. Yes,
absolutely, let's not participate, perpetuate, nor tolerate that kind of
nonsense... and then let's acknowledge that *at best* it is a *good
start* and look a little deeper towards the problems we will *still*
have even if/when/as we unseat the SWM oppressors.
The ideal here, as I understood it, is a kind of meritocracy where
those who perform better are rewarded for their performance. Make it so.
I strive to do so at every opportunity myself, personally, and in my
dealings with institutions of all kinds. I have no interest in
maintaining a SWM hegemony even if it superficially benefits me (I know
too well that it does not benefit me beyond superficially when I put on
my most self-enlightened perspective). I was born into it and I
participated in the growing pains of a culture trying to shed that
hegemony and my daughters (and wife and sisters-in-law and many non SWF
friends) benefit from the progress already made.
My wife and her sisters fought their ways to the top of the pile
relatively successfully because of or in spite of that circumstance, two
of four are self-made millionaires, the other two are highly
accomplished (if not widely recognized) artists. My daughters both
found/created independent, successful places in the economy and social
strata because of that circumstance. And yet both of my daughters (and
I fear my granddaughter) are still on a tilted playing field, though it
has tilted in a strange askew way. They both have bounced off of glass
ceilings, but due to the momentum they were given by believing that
there were (or should not exist) glass ceilings, broke through them
eventually... though there will surely be more. Their *biggest*
challenge, however, is finding men in their generation who can meet and
keep up with them... too many of their generation's men are wallowing
in various holes... some clinging to the hegemony of their SWM (and in
many cases non-W) grandfathers but many cowering under the backlash
against that hegemony. I praise our progress, but it has not been
without a price and my daughters are paying that price by not having men
who can meet them well. One tried partnering with women but found it
really wasn't what she wanted, the other is trying the single parent
route now and is struggling with the obvious challenges that brings.
- SAS
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