At 08:52 PM 11/06/1999 -0800, you wrote:
>Responses to serveral posts in one :)
>
>Re: Jens response
>Personaly I thought of this list as a learning experince... where I could
>come in and say "hey, I'm dumb about this issue... here is what little I
>know or belive I know.... how does how my brain sees things fit within
>your mental picture... and for those people (not just men, but possibly
>women viewing the world in rose tinted glasses) who don't see
>it or haven't seen it.." hopefuly gain insight.. anyone who knows me well,
>knows I love to explore and understand everything :)
>moo
>
>I confess I'm a stupid male.. I don't have a firm grasp of life from a
>woman's perspective.. nor do I nessarly belive I'll ever gain such a thing
>untill I perfect the vulcan mind meld....
>
Is that as opposed to a smart male? (I know quite a few of those....) I
consider myself a smart female (although my cat has her doubts), but don't
think that includes understanding life from a man's perspective, in part
because I do not think a single, monolithic "man's" perspective exists --
anymore than a single monolithic woman's perspective does. If it did, I
(as a fairly smart woman) would not find some of the patent foof published
in modern Women's Studies academe so bleeding silly.....
Setting aside the issue of the Man's Perspective, how can one set of
precepts or a single point of view include everyone from the Yoruba
grandmother through the middle-aged, childless career woman in Ottawa to
the young, single welfare mother in Harlem to the little girl running from
a civil war in the Caucasus? IMHO, pas possible.
Just through personal observation (and, no the plural of anecdote is not
*necessarily* data, but data is simply the statistical manifestation of a
piling up of carefully constructed anecdote) of about 5 quite different
cultures, there *is* a certain commonality in most women's lives -- it
revolves around the having and raising of children while still making a
major economic contribution to the group. The Yoruba grandmother who
assists her daughters(-in-law) with childcare so they can do more gathering
or farming work does have common ground with the Japanese office worker who
is trying to earn extra to pay for her one child's cram school or the
welfare mom trying to eke out a decent life on insufficient funds or.....
the theme is maximising benefit for the children. But, how does that apply
to me, the middle-aged, childless career woman, or to the teenage refugee
from civil war? I guess the money I put toward my nephew's education funds
is a fairly advanced, capitalist version of caring for the kids, but,
afaics, it is really rather removed......
Then, one can, as I saw an otherwise reputable Canadian newspaper do
recently, reduce the entire issue of the woman's perspective to dealing
with male violence. Well, it is quite true, I have done that on more
occassions than I care to think about, but is it all I have in common with
the other women of the world? And, how does that touch my perspective as
woman in dealing with the males close to me, none of whom are even remotely
violent, and some of whom have, in fact, been the recipients (I hate the
word "victim") of male, and even ocassionally female, violence? It is a
rare woman in this, or any, culture that has not been threatened, slapped,
raped, pummelled, whatever at some point in her life: but, it is also a
rare man who has not been threatened, beaten up or whatever, at some point
in his. Rape is definitely most commonly experienced by women, and has
long been recognised that this is an issue of power and control rather than
sex. But men are also constantly subjected to violence as power/control --
ocassionally, they are even raped.
The original spark for this thread was a list of the 13 things a man can do
to help women deal with socially constructed discrimination, and some male
person asking why he should cross the street if he saw a lone woman out
walking at night. (Did you ever get an answer?) It struck me at the time
that the original list was very North American -- I suspect that the women
I have known in other cultures would find much of it incomprehensible.
Watching the subsequent developments has only deepened my suspicion that
there is not now, and probably never has been, a common "woman's
perspective", although there are clearly some issues that touch women's
lives more directly than others -- from local issues like street safety to
regional ones, like pay equity (region being a big chunk of the world
there) to a few international ones, like the economics of child-rearing.
Does it make me any less a feminist to acknowledge the mulitplicity of
perspectives among women, generational, cultural, historical? Personally,
I don't think so. In fact, I think it makes me a more effective feminist,
because it enables me to look at what particular women care about/need, and
how on might best advance those interests, instead of imposing a vast
Platonic scheme of What Women Want that has no relevance to the lives of
the vast majority of women presntly alive.
But, then, what can you expect of an admirer of Aristotlianism, mmmm?
So, curious, maybe it will be easier to understand "the woman's
perspective" if you define what women you are curious about -- oh, and
remember that one woman's cake is another woman's poison --
Rather, I think, like men in that regard, ne?
Janus
intelligent discussion welcomed
flames filtered to /dev/null
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