In today's post, Tom Tucker says:
>If "we" are to reach our mutual nirvana, we must each play every role, hackles
>relaxed.
>>That is: if you can't _be_ the other side, we're nicked.
That touches the point of my post: we _cannot_ play one another's roles. We
are all placed in our gender by an accident of birth; but one gender happens
to be privileged in our society, and privilege cannot be _played_. Just as
humans cannot possibly know what it is like to be a dolphin, so men and women
cannot exchange places in any fruitful kind of fashion.
Even if male privilege were to be somehow _assumed_ by a woman for the sake of
some discussion or other, it would always be in her consciousness that the
privilege was only _lent_ and not _hers_. So I again eschew the validity of
the privileged class, whatever it is, pontificating to the oppressed class on
propriety of behavior.
J. Harper
jharper at itsa.ucsf.edu
