🚀 go-pugleaf

trx140@xmission.com (theurgy) writes:

>zjohnsto@scu.edu.au (Zebee Johnstone) writes:

>>...  My anecdotal evidence indicates that harassment is
>>more likely to be for ideas and style, not gender.  Plenty of
>>men get harassed too.

>Well put. Unfortunately it is all too common and easy for someone who 
>posts in a style that plainly shows bias to react to the resulting 
>criticism and flames defensively. The usual defense is "I'm being 
>attacked for being female/gay/black/jewish/(insert favorite minority)."

I'm posting again because I think there is a specific need. You are
absolutely correct in one respect. People of oppressed groups post
and get dismissed/flamed/abused, but this is *NOT* because they are
actually from those groups, it is becuase they use thought structures
particular to those groups, and the mainstream (majority?) reject
them as lunatic ravings which don't adhere to the 'ettiquette' and 
style and whatever. This is a problem. When you live the life of a 
<insert favourite minority> you are prone to understand problems in
a way that could be very difficult to understand to someone who 
doesn't get faced with an issue of their legitimate place in the 
world at every turn. I have no hope of understanding feminine
living but I can accept that feminist perspectives be given a 
legitimacy and not dismissed out of hand. This requires some hard
work because it is assumed that treating the physical (or cyber?)
entity, the person, in a way that is not particular to their 
being part of a <insert favourite minority> is enough.
In fact this misconception causes many people to think that,
apart from the lag, the problem of opression of 'different' 
groups has been solved. This is bullshit. There's a lot of
ontological baggage which comes with mainstream ideology, and
unless you are faced with being a part of some oppressed group
you are likely not to be able to see it.

>It is ever so much harder to admit to oneself that the reason one 
>receives negative comments is that one posts foolishly, or offensively.

I think it is easier. When people of minority and oppressed groups
and women are *not* a minority in RL, when they relate to people 
they quite find the issue of their 'difference' irrelevant to much
of the discussion, or at least they don't feel different all the time.
They just feel like a person. It is my own experience that these 
people thrive on the net ... except when they are constantly abused
OUT OF HAND. 

>Some people see "oppression" everywhere, and their mindset invites even 
>more negative responses than they would garner purely on the basis of 
>what they post. 

Yes and this is not their problem. I am abused for supporting 
feminist ideologies and I know I am not being abused for being
a woman. Hence the truth in your first point. There is something
more. We must look beyond the PoliticallyCorrect behaviour set
and the language which is important to a degree but which fails
to address the ideology mismatch which only the fringe recognise.

>Others are so reflexively defensive of certain groups that their posts are
>highly predictable. Farthing, for example, cannot let any post expressing
>criticism of women go by without rebuttal, unless its author is in his
>killfile. Men, on the other hand, are usually the villains in his posts.

I wouldn't say men are the villains. They are victims too and they often
act out of ignorance. This is something they can greatly help to change 
if they free their mind of the boys club mentality. Believe me life with
women is better without it; and after all living together on this little
planet is what we are talking about!


>Other posters are angry at women, and post whenever they can find something
>negative to say about them. 

Yes this is a different problem, not so invisible.

>Felicitations,
>              M.

If I could take up just a little more bandwidth:

Real women are oppressed *directly*. Everyone is aware of this and fewer
and fewer people these days find this acceptable. This is the same for
all oppressed groups. But there also an indirect action. The base ideology
which springs from a real physical life living everyday as a woman/etc
is rejected out of hand by the established order which cannot realise that
their own ideology is only one way of thinking. And this indirect opression

of ideology does have bad effects on actual people as Rosie has expressed.

We are not just talking about opinions we are talking about agendas and 
ontologies. Be open not just to fair play within the bounds of the game 
but to attempts to change the rules.

Engine.