At 06:24 PM 10/4/2001 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote:
>Not responding to your post at all, Candice, but to Tim's, and to various
>implied or explicit accusations that feminist perspectives are
>reductionist, ridiculous, over simplistic, irrelevant or whatever...


Perhaps there is more than one feminist perspective.


>Specific contextuality is, I agree, important.  Nevertheless, Geraldine's
>pointing out that the wtc terrorists were, without exception, male (if not
>necessarily young or impoverished, except maybe on the West Bank) - and I
>haven't yet heard of any al Quaeda members who are women, though no doubt
>someone can enlighten me on that - and of the overwhelmingly male component
>of the Powers That Run Our Lives - seems to be dismissed with scorn, as if
>it's of no significance at all.  And not seeing that reminds me of Brecht's
>and Benjamin's admonition, which I have always liked, on the importance of
>"crude thinking".


It's not a question of whether it's significant, but of what it signifies.


>Of course women can be warlike.  I have never been a pacifist, because I
>couldn't without hypocrisy.  And there are say the Tamil Tigers, many of
>whom are girls - but their training videos are Rambo movies - untangle that
>one.
>
>But there seems to be some confusion about whether we are talking about
>verities of human nature or certain kinds of socialisations, which can lead
>to certain kinds of behaviour and aggressions (including rape).  Nobody's
>saying - or at least I wasn't - that humanity is a single-issue business;
>but I always thought a primary function of feminist critique was to examine
>the socialisations - whenever political theorists (de Toqueville, for
>example) worried about the implications of revolution being taken up by
>uppity women, they just reverted to "human nature", specifically "female
>nature", women having smaller brains and soft edges and so on; and of
>course the popularisations of genetic theory are very prone to this, with
>all their talk of "hard wiring".  And I find the very ready and almost
>triumphalist dismissal of any such critique (back in your boxes, girls!
>there's a war on!) very depressing indeed.


You seemed to me to be stating a universal, very close to a "verity of
human nature," which is why I got into this discussion. I agree with you
that we're talking about socialization, and that there's no "single issue."

Tim's point that the causes of violence and the organized violence of war
are likely very different is I think important. I don't think that the
latter is the former writ large. But there is a similarity. Bear with me
for a couple of sentences. I think it would be difficult to deny that
women, like men, commit acts of horrific personal violence daily. The
argument from difference in size is an argument that women would commit
even more physical violence if only they were large enough (and conversely
men would commit less if they were smaller). So it's a question of
opportunity.

Modern technology has rendered size irrelevant in cases of premeditated
violence, of which war and terrorism are examples. So the balance of
opportunity has changed. And in societies where women are granted a degree
of cultural opportunity they are increasingly granted the opportunity for
organized violence in the form of membership in military and terrorist
groups. But there are no such societies in the Moslem world. Inshallah
someday there will be more female Moslem terrorists. A question of
opportunity. Sorry, I'm feeling pessimistic these decades--we're more
likely to evolve towards universal equality of organized violence than
towards universal peace.

Here's a paleolithic fantasy. Posit a small group of hunters and gatherers.
Within the group, altho there are of course expressions of individuality,
individuality is suppressed relative to awareness of oneself as a member of
a group. Otherwise only the best hunters would get any animal protein, and
while the women supply most of the calories through the gathering of plants
the animal protein supplied by the men greatly increases the women's
chances of bringing babies to term, thereby increasing the likelihood that
the group will survive. Now posit an environmental change. Our group of
hunters and gatherers finds itself faced with starvation. Nearby is a group
whose territory overflows with fish, mammals and plants. Group A sees no
way to survive other than taking over group B's turf. Group B aren't really
"like us," Group A says, "we have no committment to their survival. B is a
different organism." So the men of A go off to risk injury and death so
that A may survive. A can survive, and even grow, with fewer men, but the
women once lost there's no more A.

Now change the scenario to modern Australia, Western Europe, the US or
Canada. The members of the group have so few realistic fears that the group
will survive that they see themselves only on rare occasions as members of
a group rather than individuals with individual survival needs. The women
are equally adept at bringing home protein. There are so many babies that
the group in fact has taken measures to limit their future numbers.

But organized violence continues.

These scenarios may be totally irrelevant to the discussion. I frankly
forgot where I was going with them. But there they are. Maybe someone else
can figure it out.

Mark


>Best
>
>A
>
>
>At 3:20 AM -0400 4/10/2001, Candice Ward wrote:
>>Before you disappear down that burrow....
>>
>>And not sure how much of my post you're responding to here, I do want to
>>assure you that I didn't find your last reply to one of mine simple,
>>illegal, stupid, or a waste of time. There was much to interrogate in it,
>>though, along broad cultural and narrow gender lines, which was the problem
>>in a way because I wanted to stay with the narrower, more specifically
>>defined cultural context while keep the perspective wider than gender so as
>>to accommodate the city, the bureaucracy, the warzone, each of which
>>contextualized the rape issue in a particular, Afghan/Taliban-determined
>>sense.
>>
>>It's the other side of the coin of what we need to understand and come to
>>terms with--not just how American history has led us to this moment, but how
>>those other forces with their own historical trajectories and imperatives
>>have converged with ours. I think we already recognize some of the larger
>>implications that your broadening terms entail even if we differ on the
>>ideological or analytic-powerful implications. (I'm wary of calling rape
>>gendered aggression, for example, as opposed to a sex crime, which probably
>>seems hairsplitting to many others, but it marks an important distinction
>>for me and maintains it when the aggression is war--because I'm not so sure
>>it's all that _necessarily_ masculinist, although it certainly is
>>traditionally and contingently.)
>>
>>Maybe that's enough to indicate how I'd have taken up your terms and
>>concerns if I hadn't already set off in another direction. At the very
>>least, I hope it remedies whatever indignity your thoughts may have suffered
>>in the exchange, if you felt they got the brush-off. There was no lack of
>>respect for your point of view even where I knew I'd disagree with it if we
>>actually got down to terms once mine had been followed out a little further.
>>
>>Thanks for sticking your head up--and your neck out--again, Alison!
>>
>>Candice
>
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
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