Re: Angel's rough draft -
Katherine Brown (kbrown who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Wed, 11 Sep 1996 09:51:13 -0700 (PDT)
Responding to Philip White's comments on Angels paper, in which he raises the
very interesting issue of status abdication---
I have always looked for ways to present the area for discussion wherein
male privelege can be looked at for its darksides. Surely there are many
reasons for men to support their own departure from scenarios wherein
they understand themselves to be a)hated or b)feared c)dependent on the
whims of scions of even more powerful men then themselves--men who are
whiter, male-r straighter richer, tougher, stronger, etc. than themselves.
I have seen on the other hand, many cases where people get close to opening
discussion on these doublebinds of masculinity and femininity as both
empowering and disempowering at different moments in time, with inflections
of race and class mediating them....and then discussion becomes too scary,
and the topic is dropped.
In the current economic climate of the U.S., and in a defacto political
clikmate in which "both political parties have abandoned the poor" (NYT)
It is hard to find anything like a visible public sphere current of encouragement
for status abdication in the name of social justice.
The closest thing to it I have seen is in the few books like "The End Of Work"
that have received national attention (ok, so its on PBS or NPR) that promote
the idea that people might look at the dissappearance of large sectors of
the labor market (permanently) as an invitation to re-value social and community
work that was traditionally provides quietly, invisibly by women and old people
and others who were outside of the public waged sphere. This call for
making lemonade out of lemons sort of thing...very interesting. Lots of
people stand to lose lots of forms of privelege--many basic assumptions about
what one might expect to have locked down by the time they were 30 or 40,
a job, a reasonable grip on debt, health insurance, an income, etc. Are in grave
doubt, though. I just wonder then, how to talk about what counts as status
and privelege, (if people are not even sure they have it), and how to aks
ask people to take seriously the idea that the worse things get, the more
we all need each other.
I guess I am raving here...
Katherine Brown
LCHC