thread: 2006-04-10 : A problem for feminists/pro-feminists
On 2006-04-11, Ben Lehman wrote:
Hey, marginalia guys. I am not going to solve your issues with being a white male in modern American society. The best I could do is give you my issues with being a white male in modern American society—and trust me, you would rather have your issues than my issues.
Some of you, perhaps many of you, took umbrage with what I said to Vincent. This means one of the following:
1) You thought that my presentation of the feminist viewpoint was incorrect.
2) You thought that my presentation of the edge-gaming viewpoint was incorrect.
3) You would have rather that I lied, and said that these things match up.
4) You would rather that I had taken a specific side (I bet, since you're all men, you would have rather I taken the side against feminism. Just a hunch.)
And, if I was writing a critical essay, I might have taken any of these things into account.
But I'm not writing a critical essay. I'm giving advice to my friend, who is deeply committed to two ideologies, and finding them come into conflict. My goal in the conversation—my only goal in the conversation—is that I help him get some peace of mind. It is not to serve any political agenda. It is not to say what's right. It is not to advise him to do what he ends up doing (thereby being the guy who "wins" the advice competition). It is certainly not to make any of you happy about what I'm saying. It is simply to get him some peace of mind.
Understand this and everything becomes a little clearer, I hope. It doesn't matter whether I give good advice or bad advice. Or any advice at all. All that matters is that my advice helps Vincent make a decision about the trouble he's having.
And it did. And I feel fucking happy about that. I feel like I did a good job as a friend.
Nothing you guys say is going to take that away from me, or wish I said anything a word different.
yrs—
—Ben
This makes misuba go "Well done IMO"
I wish more people would start from, yeah, world = completely imperfect.
(But I do wonder about the tendency, which I've observed from a few folks both here and at the Forge, to post things in public fora and expect people to contextualize them as if they were private, one-to-one communications. Strikes me as odd. A topic for another time, perhaps.)
This makes BR go "I also have to wonder why I, and other, assumed Mitch was both straight and white."
Would it change the answers if he was a gay black man? The thing I liked about your answer Ben, is that it was pretty consistant across that gap.
