> >I, too found "Wood's" message patronizing and a major denial of what women
> >endure on a daily basis. My personal experience is that it IS intentional.
> >After decades of public discourse on this subject, NO ONE can seriously be
> >believed who claims that discrimination against women in colleges and the
> >workplace is anything but deliberate.
I'm not sure is it intentional. (White) Men have unconciously surfed the
wave of male privilege, supported by power structures and subordinates (women,
people of color, children), for eons. Yet, as someone (I lost you, who
were you) said (in effect), "ignorance is no excuse."
Our criminal code focuses on intention
("did you mean to kill children when you
leaked chlorine, DDT.? You didn't? Oh, okay...."). If we focus on
whether or no men *intend* to receive the
communication made by women, we can get
beyond knowlege. IMHO, they don't. Not
unless some element of coercion is
involved.
Working to understand and appreciate somenone different from yourself,
who is (due to our socioeconomy) in competition with you, entails
risking losing something. "Men" have
NOT wanted to give up male privilege and live on a limited planet with
partners...equals (but there are some individual men who are secure
enough to risk it). Especially in the workplace where
they have no structural committment (to love, honor, cherish,or not take
their job away) from the women they're involved with. Maybe if we
*promised* not to take their jobs or salaries or allowed our names to be
cited before theirs (when pigs fly).
I would suggest maybe we open discussion on male privilege, a concept
Wood appears to be woefully ignorant about. Or, to de-genderize (a
wimp-out, but I would participate) the privilege, we could look at
"white" privilege)
> > Well, I can full well believe that some people would intentionally
> use almost any means in a power struggle. It doesn't matter whether
> you're a man or a woman. May be the issue of discrimination against
> women is entirely a power issue, but it seems it may not be. Just
> that it gets tougher when coupled with questions of power.
Racism has been described as discrimination plus power. "Discrimination"
means being able to tell the difference (e.g., peas vs. potatoes).
What's going on in workplace communication and women being rendered
non-competitive due to different analytical methods - hence different
communications styles -is not mere discrimination. More apropos terms
are oppression, and marginalization, which is a form of oppression.
Barbara Bliss
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Apr 21 12:56:45 MDT 1995
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From: Carol Meeds WPB 407-433-2650 x 113 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: those mal-adjusted women
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I tried ignoring the radical religious right and they didn't go
away. <Maybe if I ignore them harder?> :-)
