🚀 go-pugleaf

larryc@teleport.com (Larry Caldwell) writes:

>Christopher Mountford <cjmount@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> wrote:

>>There are some feminists which are very familiar with your view, 
>>which is very common. I think that the very problem which Rosie
>>was trying to address was the fact that 'expressing an opinion'
>>specifically one which challenges the underlying structures of
>>thought, patriarchal structures, will 'make you look like a 
>>whining petulant nobody'. That's the very problem. She knows it 
>>and doesn't need you to point it out. Not only that but you have
>>failed to see that the point is to be able to challenge authority. 

>What rosie did was to post a piece of *private* e-mail publicly and then 
>whine about its content.  She felt compelled to publicly refute a private 
>conversation, which is a much grosser breach of common human decency than 
>a couple of four letter words.

We are not talking in the main about saying FUCK! Understand this.
Reread the above you quoted to me. 

>Second, the content of the letter was not particularly abusive, the 
>writer did not call her names or attack her, and she was given full 
>opportunity to defend her views if she wished.  

We are not talking about abusive content. We are talking about 
abusive context. How can she defend her views to people who wont
take her seriously? You dismiss her as a whiner. That's convenient
for you since you don't have to actually think. You just repeat
the accepted dogma. She is trying to address that and it's a pity
you wont accept the possible legitimacy of her agenda. Not just her
opinions but her agenda.

>Sometimes a whine is just a whine.
>-- 
>Larry Caldwell  larryc@teleport.com

Sometimes perhaps. But not now.


On alt.cyberpunk, people know that challenging underlying
structurally ingrained ideology is all the more hard when those
who you are challenging don't realise that these boundaries exist,
let alone a dismissal that what is on the other side is worth anything.
But a tangential danger could also be, with the fragmentation of
internet, marginalisation of almost every ideology, as opposed to 
merely the 'fringe' whacko's is what could contribute to the making 
invisible the boundaries of the mind which separate them. Maybe 
the action is in the other way. Maybe things are getting better for
the ease with which marginal groups can peep nextdoor.

alt.cyberpunk is, to be honest, a haven for ideas which could not 
be developed outside without constant need to justify every word.
This common situation could have negative consequences apart from 
the more obvious positive ones of incubating progressive thought.

I think the question for electronic communities is how to preserve
the broad spectrum of ideas, their legitimacy and the tolerance 
shown between them. Politics drawn on national boundaries is 
more and more difficult to justify with cultural exchange making
those boundaries meaningless.

Think globally and act locally.

Engine.