I get it. No women were involved, so you twisted yourself in knots trying to make it about women and gender.

As Marx says...

The Constitutional Feminist is a new creature. Germaine Greer was not a Constitutional Feminist, for she could be relied upon to provide opinions that caught you by surprise, or no opinions at all on matters involving women which she believed to be insignificant issues. She didn’t cheapen her beliefs by bringing them to bear in silly barneys between mangy cats and backyard dogs. By contrast, the Constitional Feminist feels it her duty to stick her stupid beak in wherever a woman is so much as a bit player in the game.

(Or not even a player at all here it seems.)

Routinely passing herself off as a "researcher", an "academic"� with a "special interest"� (that special interest being “women"), she is much the same as a horny teenage boy - just not interested unless there are girls involved. Had she been moved to write anything at all on, say, the events of September 11, it would probably have been a lament for all the dead women, along with a wag of the finger at al Qaeda for not trusting females to carry out the hijackings. She views the tale of humanity as nothing more grand than Adam vs Eve

R0bert,

Man you're funny. That sounds like....

'I feel really offended by that, but I don't want to be labelled a misogynist by the powerful feminist posters. Please pelican and Fractelle validate my opinion. I really want to please.'

SJF,

Not being funny, I would humbly like you to attempt to spell it out for me how a racial incident between 2 men is all about gender.

Or what the meaning robert's missing is? Or how the use of sexist stereotypes is fair play in this case?

Or why you and robert are fighting and you're not giving him the validation and affirmation he so obviously needs? Don't be shy.

I felt quite exhausted reading this piece. It is not that I don’t get the main thrust of the author’s meaning (I think) but keeping together all the threads in the article, to make sense of them left me exhaling one big breath when I finally reached the conclusion.

The story the author refers as much as I can glean, is the arrest of African American Professor Gates by white police officer, Crowley. Police had responded to a call about a break-in and on arriving had observed the Professor in the foyer. The Professor had jimmied his own door open to gain entry to his house. What ensued was a heated exchange of words where the Professor had accused Crowley of racial bias. Crowley arrested the Professor for disorderly conduct in what appears to have become a pi**ng contest between the two.

If it were two women the outcome might have been different but put two different men in the scenario and the outcome may also have been different. Men might become aggressive in the face of humiliation or disrespect . This is reflected equally as well in street gang behaviour but here the author’s argument about economic privilege comes into play and the greater the economic privilege the least likely aggression is to occur.

Women, as nurturers do in general try and seek the middle ground or win-win but in the field I work in so do men with only one or two exceptions and I could probably find one or two female exceptions as well if I looked hard enough in my male dominated work environment.

You cannot blame the white officer for doing his job as much as you cannot blame the Professor’s natural assumption of racial profiling given that nation’s history.

I think this case is more a matter of personalities and a situation once snowballing is difficult to go back to finding some common ground.

SJF no silent treatment. I'd quoted one of your posts elsewhere (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9225#147838) which I really liked. I did notice late last night that I'd missed one of your out of context misrepresentations of my posting re ChazP's anti father stance. I decided that it was so far back in the thread and really unlikely to help the discussion so I left it alone.
I don't like the way you misrepresent me but no deliberate silent treatment on my part.

I agree that I think some of the standard claims about power and privilege made by feminists are either fundamentally wrong or miss big parts of the picture in a way. I don't see how that makes the plain meaning of the quotes I listed any less sexist.

The question still stands, if you know another menaing I will make a genuine attempt and try to understand it?

Houellebecq, I asked two feminists who I have a lot of respect for their opinions about the quotes. I'll also be interested in SJF's opinion if she cares to try and explain the alternate meaning. I chose to try and not create offense by the way I phrased it. You may prefer conflict and strife, I don't.

R0bert

Houllebecq

‘I would humbly like you to attempt to spell it out for me how a racial incident between 2 men is all about gender.’

Because, when power is distributed vertically, people settle into positions on the hierarchy according to various horizontal demarcation lines – the most common being gender, class and race. Because two men occupy the same gender status, they then defer to either class or race to establish superiority.

And BTW … You? ‘Humbly’? … Gimme a break.

Antiseptic

‘SJF:"There's a whole other meaning that you're missing." What is it?’

I explained it in my post to R0bert, but only in brief. When you are in denial that a patriarchy of any form exists, all gender discussions by and with feminists can only be perceived as a personal interaction between men and women. In the mind of a patriarchy denier, any feminist analysis of power distribution based on gender automatically morphs into a perceived personal attack on men, which then double-morphs into a personal attack on women as a defence against a perceived attack on men.

The inability to distinguish between gender relations and gender politics is the major stumbling block on virtually all of these gender threads.

Now go away and laugh yourself into even more exquisite patriarchy denial ... and take Hooley-Dooley with you.

SJF:"these gender threads."

erm...where was the gender issue in the original article? The only link with feminism I can see is that it's about the abuse of power by a petty bureaucrat acting on preconceived notions informed by misdirected resentment. Is that what you're referring to?

The article was interesting in that it brought up all the issues of race, gender and class all at once.

The author did not seek to have a go at men, but merely wondered what would have happened if it was 2 women instead of the male professor and the male policeman.

I don't believe it was a case of racial tension, but rather a case of male ego and too much testosterone in the air!
The professor was angrily saying he shouldn't even be queried about a possible breakin, given he was a professor at Harvard and therefore above all that.
The policeman bristled at that and angrily asserted that he will arrest someone no matter what their standing in the community.

If the professor was a woman, she probably wouldn't have thought to jimmy the door open. She would have had a spare key somewhere!