Re: [Fwd: Re: 1900 House]

[bon moun <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

At 06:24 PM 6/28/00 +1200, you wrote:
>Hey, I don't mop my own floors either!  There's a company called "Hire a
Hubby"
>here in NZ that does all that stuff - for a price of course.  Am I wrong to
>employ them?
>
>- Confused

I suspect perhaps Peggy has tongue planted securely in cheek.  Can't tell,
for sure, because in these virtual conversations we can't see one another
to get all the para-linguisitc signals.

And I find myself taking responsibility again for what has high a
distraction potential, by blurting out What?! in response to the term
servants, in a cavalier fit of slightly sanctimonious point-taking.

A couple years ago, I upset a young person by being shorter than I needed
to be in reply to her question... Aren't we all exploiters so long as we
continue to participate in the system, watch TV, drive autos, take a
moment's leisure, while others are still cast down into misery?  Aren't
white people all still racists so long as they enjoy white privilege?

You see the line of questioning in this paraphrase.

No, I asserted, again more punitively than was necessary, we can't pretend
we are outside the system, and we can't build the unity necessary to
confront it based on white liberal guilt.  She was--I told her--falling
into the trap of accepting the premises of the prevailing concept of
morality which was built directly upon the prevailing system, and this was
leading her into a blind alley of self-recrimination that displaces
dispassionate analysis/strategic action and ultimately paralyzes us.

Wel... I still think I was right... in the content of my assertion... and I
was wrong... in the tenor of its delivery.  She seemed defeated and hurt,
and that was not necessary or helpful.  And afterwards I felt like a bully.

There's a lesson here--for me, at least.  It's not enough to accept the
conclusions of either marxism or feminism (based on one's definition of
either), or to be able to employ those conclusions effectively along with
their premises to either engage other progressives or do ideological batle
with the right... if we have divested of the intellectual baggage of our
opposites, but retained their competitive,individualistic, macho style of
argument and deployed it against our comrades.  It's never enough just to
be right... or to be sure one is right (whether that conforms to reality or
not (-:).

As we say in the 12-step programs when we confess, thanks for letting me
share.


Stan



"If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."

			-Vo Nguyen Giap



"Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
processes that are generally hidden from easy view."

			-Eleanor Burke Leacock



"Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation."

			-Ernesto "Che" Guevara