Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    This is a fabulous topic and you have presented an insight vital
    to women's freedom and equality.  This issue is one that I believe 
    will be addressed more and more as the trappings of "traditionalism"
    fall away and we find ourselves clinging to shadows and grasping
    at straws to define why are doing so.
    
    I think no one will argue with you that dominant power is absolutely 
    dependent on meek submission for its existence.
    
    I contend that it's biology that has forced women into the meek
    submission that has resulted in the present-day imbalance of power.
    I don't think men created submissive women but pregnancy and
    child-rearing did, and men were simply opportunistic.  If women
    were destined to get pregnant, then all men had to do was tie up
    their value to women in that pregnancy and all of a sudden men were as
    necessary and important to women as pregnancy was certain!
    
    Reliable birth control has freed women from the bondage of their
    bodies and everyone is suddenly finding out that the it was the
    threat and the reality of pregnancy that men have traditionally
    used to keep themselves in power relative to women.  We've removed
    unexpected pregnancy as an issue and are now left with an unsupported
    power imbalance that we have to actively and consciously support for
    it to continue.
    
    When the pill removed uncertainty and gave a woman control over her
    life, it took away men's control over it.
    
    What troubles me, and I've always been a bottom-line kind of person,
    is that lots of women, (and nearly every hetersexual guy), are
    continuing opposite sex interactions AS IF the reasons for the
    power imbalance still existed!  Women didn't need to knuckle under
    to a man's appraisal one day after downing her first pill but many
    still do.
    
    Men have always known the impact of their appraisals on keeping their 
    women in line and as they feel their power slip away, they react with 
    stronger and stronger appraisals hoping to shame women into silence
    and back into the lower ranks.  
    
    But pregnancy doesn't "tame" us anymore.  "Then what will?" men wonder
    in fear.  It is a fact that the young woman getting her first job
    today earns less of a percentage of a young man's first paycheck
    than she did in 1970.  I read that statistic last night.  For the
    young, the discrimination gap appears to be widening.  Why?  Might
    it be this desperate male need to cling to control now that impending
    pregancy no longer hands it to him on a silver platter?  I believe
    that fear is some of the reason.  
    
    But many women of our generation still turn themselves into pretzels 
    trying to keep the guy.  They know they no longer need a man to feed
    them and their offspring but many still cling to their men, (and
    their men's appraisals of them),  and accept treatment from them that 
    they would accept from no other human being.  Why?  Shadows.  Their
    mothers' generation was filled with stoic, "good" women, standing by 
    their man, (who could be good, bad, or whatever), and it looked for
    all the world as if they were "just that way".
    
    In truth, they were pregnant and dependent and LEARNED how to get along
    with the man who fed them and their children because the alternative
    was bleak indeed.
    
    Oh yes, power needs to be redefined but more important we need to
    change our knee-jerk reactions to the idea of male supremacy and stop
    fashioning our behavior as if we and our children would starve
    penniless, lonely and shamed unless we work always to attract, land
    and keep a guy. It just ain't so, anymore.
    
    We need to hold up our heads and smirk at the men who would be our 
    oppressors because they are copying the "older" generations which
    COULD call the shots in women's lives.
    
    As long as we continue to search men's words and faces for, (above
    all), a positive appraisal of us, and continue to deny our own wants
    and desisres in order to always please our men, we will continue to
    send the message that we depend on their good graces and desperately
    want their approval.  No one is NOT going to feel a little superior
    in the face of all this solicitousness!
    
    Don't play out your mother's role.  She had to, you don't.
    

    Reply to .1, Sandy,
    
    Then you'd agree that women have or should realize their sexual
    liberation as an integral part of discovering their own power? 
    
    What I find distressing is that women have to _battle_ partriarchal
    power structure before they discover their liberation. In fighting
    something we give power to that which we fight. There should be
    a way to get around this "giving away of power".     
    
    I'm really hoping that women can ignore the power structure,
    considering it irrelevant to life and concentrate their full energies
    toward making their lives more positive, more rewarding. That's
    kinda' hard in the present framework but becoming more possible
    everyday.
                                                      
    In womens power is the ability to reject some mode of thought, some way
    of life without having to give the opposite sex an excuse or reason
    for that decision.  And in not giving their power away to discussions
    and debates of so-called "wo/man" haters they can develop their power,
    personally, individually and powerfully. 
    
    I think that there will always be a dominant power among the sexes
    individually. Whether its a man over a woman or a woman over a man. I'm
    hoping that we can all feel that we can express our personal power in
    series. For instance, during one short period of time a woman should
    lead in the relationship with her lovers or friends because it is her
    time to lead. And at other times she should feel that she can follow
    (trust?) the lead of her lovers or friends. Perhaps I'm confusing
    different issues here. Any person can isolate themselves and develop
    their power. That isolation should not last a lifetime, though some
    will disagree with me, and power needs positive expression. I can
    exercise my mucles by myself but it seems much more rewarding to take
    that new power and put it to some athletic, positive, pluralistic ends. 
    
    Being a verbose person perhaps I should summarize and say that there
    is a time for isloation to develop power, but power unspent towards
    positive ends is a waste of that power.  Also endless debates with
    the "power overs" will only result in a difussion of that power.
    Power comes from within, power within. Power over seems to be
    destructive in our current situation. I think everyone involved
    in the effort to bring the sexes into partnership should be one
    step ahead and one level smarter that their everyday peers.

    
    	I want to attempt to better distinguish between the two forms
    of power, perhaps giving them names so that we can avoid the confusion
    inherent in simply saying "power"
    
    	The first, which I call "dominant power" is that which exists
    only by virtue of ascription by and at the expense of those "submissives"
    over which it is exercised.  For example, a dictator exacts heavy
    taxes from his people.  His power is built on the collective consent
    of his people to that power, and a belief on their part that they
    have no choice.
    
    	The second, which I shall call "impersonal power" for lack of
    a better term, benefits both its "wielder" and those who populate
    her world.  An example of this is a good teacher.  Both teacher
    and student gain from her exercise of "impersonal power" over what
    was until then the incomprehesible subject being taught.  This exploits
    noone, and has potential gain for everyone.
    
    	On a daily basis, we all confront dominators and submissives,
    both in the guise of men and women, and generally respond to them
    automatically by adopting the opposite role.  Those of us who have begun
    to learn to stand alone must learn to recognize the signs of both of 
    these interpersonal approaches to others, and to refuse to provide them
    with the types of responses they are expecting.  This of course
    requires a certain amount of lucid self-confidence, so that we are
    not automatically swept up "into battle" with the other.  The key
    is to begin to examine your own reactions to the interpersonal
    encounter, to notice the techniques of domination and submission,
    and to eradicate the fears which are the bases for many of our
    interactions.
    
    	Previous ethnic underdog groups that have come to power have
    always done it with both guns blazing: they merely mapped the dominant
    framework they were familiar with in the context of family living
    onto the larger societal setting in which they are oppressed.
    Women are coming to power without such an inglorious history of
    dominating someone.  It is my dream that they do so without ever adopting
    the dominant techniques.  But this entails the enormous effort of
    fully understanding the bases for dominant power in order to constantly
    defuse it at every encounter.  
                                                                  
    Jim Sullivan
    

    Its not so very difficult Jim.  All one needs to do is to tell the
    truth.
    Mary

RE: .0

I recognize that idea/theory/* of 'power of submission'.  When ordered by a
court to do something unjust, I would feel an obligation to disobey because by
my acquiescing to the court's demands, I support their oppressive power.

RE: .1

"What troubles me, and I've always been a bottom-line kind of person, is that
lots of women, (and nearly every hetersexual guy), are continuing opposite sex
interactions AS IF the reasons for the power imbalance still existed!  Women
didn't need to knuckle under to a man's appraisal one day after downing her
first pill but many still do."

And many women still demand to be supported and cared for and pampered by men. 
You start off pretty well, but then only show the one side...

"It is a fact that the young woman getting her first job today earns less of a
percentage of a young man's first paycheck than she did in 1970.  I read that
statistic last night."
    
Do you have any more information on this statistic?

"Might it be this desperate male need to cling to control now that impending
pregancy no longer hands it to him on a silver platter?  I believe that fear is
some of the reason."

I seriously doubt it...

"Their mothers' generation was filled with stoic, "good" women, standing by
their man, (who could be good, bad, or whatever), and it looked for all the
world as if they were "just that way". 
    
In truth, they were pregnant and dependent and LEARNED how to get along with the
man who fed them and their children because the alternative was bleak indeed."

My, aren't we omniscient?

"stop fashioning our behavior as if we and our children would starve penniless,
lonely and shamed unless we work always to attract, land and keep a guy. It just
ain't so, anymore."

Hasn't been for a long time... women have existed, and some even prospered
without a man.

"We need to hold up our heads and smirk at the men who would be our oppressors"

Ok, yea, that will accomplish a lot... make you feel real good won't it?

RE: .3

I don't really see the difference between the two types of power you describe,
except for the results...  Could you explain a bit more?

Funny, I would have called the teacher's power 'personal', and the king's
power 'impersonal'...

I also don't see the difference between ethnic struggles for equality, and
women's struggle...  Is there more to that also?

Jim.

    I think that in order to redefine power, we must go back to the
    source/cause/whatever of power.
    
    Power derives from authority.  If Authority says, "Goest thou thither."
    then thou SHALT go thither, or thou wilt get crumpt.  Authority
    does not have to personally crump either, because Authority can
    say to Another, "Crumpest thou that one there, who did not go."
    and Another will do the crumping.
    
    The *reason* Authority has power is because Authority is responsible
    for Doing Things That Must Be Done.  This may be plowing, sowing,
    irrigating, reaping, threshing and storing.  This may be removing
    a malignant tumor from a child's brain, or clearing out clogged
    drains on a city's main thoroughfares.  Work must be done -- by
    someone -- if any humans are to live.  In any community of any size,
    it must be decided -- somehow -- what work is to be done when and
    by whom or what.
    
    It may be decided by consensus, as we do it in MCFI, or by pawing
    through cow guts, as has been done Elsewhere, or by the Leader
    declaring it, either with or without consulting experts, as has
    been done more times that you can shake a stick at.  However it
    is determined, a decision MUST be enforcable or -- and this is the
    biggie -- there is no "community".
    
    The trick is to have people in authority concentrate on their
    *responsibility* to always do all the right things in the best ways
    and to do nothing that is not, and yet have these same people be,
    well, not "unaware of", but more "unfixated on" the power that they
    must necessarily have.
    
    							Ann B.

    No, you don't need leadership.
    
    That sounds odd, doesn't it?
    
    A "strong system" is necessary; but it does not HAVE to include
    a leadership position.  It must include a method of studying problems
    (and other situations), a technique for reaching decisions, and
    a method for implementing them, but it doesn't need a *leader*.
    
    Believe me.  I belong to a clade of organizations which operate
    on a consensus basis, with no real leaders, and it works so well
    that we are notorious for our non-contentious, tight-knit, and
    massively efficient operation.
    
    							Ann B.
    
    P.S.  We're co-ed; MIT and Harvard folk allowed.

    Nope.  Nothing less than four initials.  And I'm not Icelandic.
    
    						Cryptically, Ann B.

    I'm sorry; I did not mean to give you the impression that a
    leader was unlikely or non-functional -- just that it was not
    a sine-qua-non-type necessity.
    
    							Ann B.

    In 1917, in Ukrainia, an anarchic republic was created, while the
    rest of Russia was living its revolution.
    
    Anarchy, if my Greek's not too rusty, is from "an" without and
    "archos" government. Contrary to what lots of people think, Anarchy
    is not equivalent to turmoil, chaos and nihilism.
    
    Anarchy takes the stand that people are able to govern themselves.
    
    The experiment in Ukrainia was successful, and because this success
    was incompatible with the standards established by the Russian
    Revolution (the idea of doing away with government was just too
    revolutionary, I guess), was bloodily crushed.
                                                  
    This autonomous Republic of Ukrainia lasted about two years (I can't
    recollect the dates, but will look them up if somebody is interested).
    Several historians have testified that it was a success, though,
    as it was cut short, we cannot use it to make global statement about
    the validity of anarchy.
    
    If anybody is interested in the above, I will dig up my history
    books, but I'll be on vacation next week, so don't count on prompt
    replies. 

     I don't contend that societal organization and therefore (sometimes 
but not always) authority is necessary; it is and will continue 
to be, probably in some rough proportion to size or centralization 
of organization.  The sort of power and authority granted as a sort of 
division of labor or for organizing purposes is not necessarily dominant 
power, except in certain cases.  But that is another topic, with more 
subtleties and complexities.

     My point is that in all matters of power, we must demystify and 
question it, simply because dominant power gets much of its seemingly 
magical force from never being questioned.  And since this force is often 
eventually backed up with militia and iron bars and such on the societal 
level, I am trying to focus on its genesis in the interpersonal 
encounter: Do we approach others with teeth bared, or belly up, or something 
beyond all that?  To reduce this "something beyond" to 'love', or 'telling the 
truth', still allows the possibility of domination/submission.  Although 
love is often intertwined with paternal domination or supplicating 
submission, it is a perversion of its meaning to identify the two.  Love is 
an attitude toward another which can manifest itself through various forms 
of power, or through closeness, or through work (not speaking of the paid 
variety), or various other expressions which don't necessarily have anything
to do with exerting a force on something.(However, love often progresses 
thru a dialectic which parallels the one I'm speaking of in reference to power, 
proceeding from the selfish to the selfless.)  And 'telling the truth' for 
the happy submissive person means that their dominator's power is some sort
of god-given right, being unable within the scope of their "truth" to see
that their submission is the fundamental support for the stick that hovers
over their heads. Truth IS its own becoming. 

     I gave this "something beyond" the name "impersonal power" in the 
sense of being motivated by no strictly personal reasons, selfless (not 
"impersonal" in the sense of cold and calculating and mechanistic). 
Rather, its sphere of advantage is expanded from a single person to a group
of humans or humanity in general.  And this does not imply self-sacrifice--
that is just another form of submission; instead, "self-interest" is expanded 
to include the others in the self's community.  One's power works to create 
and recreate the type of world she would like to live in.  For example, a
dominant type would immediately opportunize on someones lost wallet.  A 
submissive type would be tempted, but out of a self-sacraficial set of 
moral "shoulds" would not touch it, to her loss.  The impersonal power
holder would immediately think from the perspective of the other,i.e. that it 
could be her own wallet that is lost, and return it.  Although this is not 
a good example for defining power, it exemplifies the moral outlook of 
expanded self-interest necessary to develop impersonal power.  This is 
somewhat of an abstract point, but I'm being as clear as I can.

Jim Sullivan
                                    

    Men are emotionally blackmailed by men, first by their fathers,
    then by their peers.  As a child, a man becomes addicted to paternal
    praise; as an adult, he marries a woman who will maintain this
    addiction to paternal approval as well as enhance it by gratifying
    his own desire to provide paternal approval.  This is teh relationship
    commonly called 'Love'.

    	No dissertation, Russ, just the Abstract--stay tuned!
    
    	"Blackmailed" (.. women by men, men by women) ---brings to mind
    cloaked conspirators sitting in smoky backrooms rubbing their hands
    with delight over their schemes.  While some of this probably does
    occur, most of our social problems arise somewhere outside the personal
    conscious level of basically well-intentioned people.  The point
    is to understand how these good intentions go astray in order to
    change them. 
          
    	Instead the language of this topic has degenerated to finger-
    pointing.  Spare me.
    
    Jim S.

From  Plato's Republic (translated by Paul Shorey, from _Plato_The_Collected
_Dialogues_, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton University
Press)
    
    
How, then, said I, might we contrive one of those opportune falsehoods of
which we were just now speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if 
possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?
 
What kind of a fiction do you mean?  said he.
 
Nothing unprecedented, said I, but a sort of Phoenician tale, something that
has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have
induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be
likely to happen in out day and demanding no little persuasion to make it
believable.
 
You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought, he said.
 
You will think that I have right good reason for shrinking when I have told,
I said.
 
Say on, said he, and don't be afraid.
 
Very well, I will.  And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words
to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers
and then the rest of the city that in good sooth all or training and educating 
of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were
in a dream, but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth 
being molded and fostered themselves while their weapons and the rest of their 
equipment were being fashioned.  And when they were quite finished the earth
as being their mother delivered them, and now as if their land were their 
mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her 
against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and 
children of the selfsame earth.
 
It is not for nothing, he said, that you were so bashful about coming out with
your lie.
 
It was quite natural that I should be, I said, but all the same hear the rest
of the story.  While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our 
tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled
gold in their generation, for which reason they are the most precious--but in
the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. 
And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your
kinds, it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son
and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire and that the rest 
would in like manner be born of one another.  So that the first and chief
injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else are they 
to be such careful guardians and so intently observant as of the intermixture
of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them
with an infusion of brass or iron they shall by no means give way to pity in
their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature
and thrust them out among the artisans or the farmers.  And again, if from 
these there are born sons with unexpected gold or silver in their composition
they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of 
guardian, so to the assistantship, alleging that there is an oracle that the 
state shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian.
Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale?
 
No , not these themselves, he said, but I do their sons and successors and the 
rest of mankind who come after.
 
Well, said I, even that would have a good effect in making them more inclined
to care for the state and one another.  For I think I apprehend your meaning.
And this shall fall out as tradition guides.  But let us arm these sons of
earth and conduct them under the leadership of their rulers.  And when they 
have arrived they must look out for the fairest site in the city for their 
encampment, a position from which they could best hold down rebellion against
the laws from within and repel aggression from without as of a wolf against
the fold.  And after they have encamped and sacrificed to the proper gods they 
must make their lairs, must they not?
 
Yes, he said.
 
And these must be of a character to keep out the cold in winter and be 
sufficient in summer?
 
Of course.  For I presume you are speaking of their houses.
 
Yes, said I, the houses of soldiers, not of money-makers.
 
What distinction do you intend by that? he said.
 
I will try to tell you, I said.  It is surely the most monstrous and shameful
thing in the world for shepherds to breed the dogs who are to help them with 
their flocks in such wise and of such a nature that from indiscipline or hunger
or some other evil condition the dogs themselves shall attack the sheep and
injure them and be likened to wolves instead of dogs.
 
A terrible thing, indeed, he said.
 
Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers' 
treating the citizens in any such way and, because they are the stronger,
converting themselves from benign assistants into savage masters?
 
We must, he said.
 
And would they not have been provided with the chief safeguard if their
education has really been a good one?
 
But it surely has, he said.
 
That, said I, dear Glaucon, we may not properly affirm, but what we were just
now saying we may, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if
they are to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to 
their charges.
 
That is right, he said.
 
In addition, moreover, to such an education a thoughtful man would affirm
that their houses and the possessions provided for them ought to be such as 
not to interfere with the best performance of their won work as guardians and
not to incite them to wrong the other citizens.
 
He will rightly affirm that.
 
Consider then, said I, whether, if that is to be their character, their 
habitations and ways of life must not be something after this fashion.  In the
first place, none must possess any private property save the indispensable.
Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure house which is not open 
for all to enter at will.  Their food, in such quantities as are needful for
athletes of war sober and brave, they must receive as an agreed stipend from
the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there
shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack.  And
resorting to a common mess like soldiers on campaign they will live together.
Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the
gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does
holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with 
the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about
the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied.  
But for these only of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle
gold and silver and to touch them nor yet to come under the same roof with 
them, nor to hang them as ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver
and gold.  So living they would save themselves and save their city.  But 
whenever they shall acquire for themselves land of their own and houses and 
coin, they will be householders and farmers instead of guardians, and will be
transformed from the helpers of their fellow citizens to their enemies and 
masters, and so in hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against,
they will pass their days fearing far more and rather the townsmen within than
the foemen without--and then even then laying the course of near shipwreck for
themselves and the state.  For all these reasons, said I, let us declare that
such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging and other respects and
so legislate.  Shall we not?
 
By all means, said Glaucon.
    

RE: .22

Wow!  That's a lot of typing... do you have any commentary to go with it? If you
had a specific point, I missed it...

Jim.