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* • The Red and BlacH • Thursday, Way 24, 1990
OPINIONS
The Red & Black
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A/% «{ted«n; v» ipapt ’ •xot aFiiiolid uith iKt UmiAmty of Gtorgia
Charlene Smith/Editor-irvChief
Amy Bellew/Managing Editor
Hogai Nassery/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Who the hell
are you, dude?
Bart Simpson, America’s favorite little smart ass,
has come under increasing criticism from educators
who say his attitude sends the wrong message to kids.
Some principals have even banned Bart T-shirts from
I their schools.
A Kentucky elementary school principal says, “We
feel the Bart Simpson show does a lot of things that do
not help student self-esteem, such as saying it’s OK to
i be stupid.” This so-called educator refers to Bart’s
exclamation, “Underachiever: And proud of it, man.”
First of all, underachievers are not stupid and Bart
Simpson is a clever, witty child who learns a moral
lesson on each show. His example shows children that
it’s OK if they don’t make the honor roll every single
term.
If educators spent more time worrying about why
their students can’t find the United States on a map
and less time worrying about the cartoon characters
they wear on their clothes, maybe there would be no
underachievers.
If parents do not want their children to watch The
Simpsons or wear Bart T-shirts, it’s their perogative to
prohibit it. But school administrators should stay out of
it.
Hopefully, the Fox network won’t let the whining of
such school marms affect its decision to keep running
the show. Watching it, or purchasing Bartwear, is a
free choice and even children have rights to express
their individuality — a trait Bart expresses so well.
Dust to dust
Athens lost a piece of its history Wednesday. The
Hull-Snelling house, which was built in 1842 and
previously owned by the University, was demolished to
make room for a Holiday Inn parking lot.
Athens being a burgeoning convention town, one
can undertand the hotel’s need for expanded parking,
but it’s unacceptable that their growth had to come at
the expense of such a beautiful and storied landmark.
What makes the destruction of the Hull-Snelling
house even worse is that it could have been prevented.
If only a buyer for the property had been found by May
1, the Holiday Inn would have put aside its claims to it.
However, despite a valiant direct mail campaign by
Bertis Downs, president of the Athens-Clarke Heritage
Foundation, no purchaser surfaced. Many groups,
including the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce,
considered buying the property but were scared off by
the cost of renovation.
It’s true that at between $350,000 and $500,000,
fixing up the Hull-Snelling house would have been
pretty expensive. But it would not have been an
astronomical price to pay for preserving a relic that has
few rivals in this town of dwindling history.
It is depressing that no one in the Classic City
thought the Hull-Snelling house worth the investment
needed to keep it intact. It is unfortunate that the
antebellum structure was never designated a historical
landmark so it would be protected from demolition.
It is sad that the college so desperately needed
money for its academic programs that it was willing to
sell the house to the Holiday Inn, knowing that the
hotel would level the building to make room for its
parking lot.
But those who stand to lose the most by the
demolition of the Hull-Snelling house are the future
generations of Athens residents who will have one less
link with the past binding them to their history.
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"How well do they sleep at night?”
— Jennie Johnson, of Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, about
Christian College and the Holiday Inn on razing
the Hull-Snelling house.
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Feminists now target latent attitudes
As a feminist and an English faculty
member, I am distressed by the widespread
misunderstanding of the word “feminist”
among University students. Since none of them
argues that women should be denied the vote or
education or even equal pay, they are, unkno
wingly, feminists already (defined by “The
American Heritage Dictionary” as “advocating
or demanding for women the same rights
granted men.”)
But ignorance about the word’s meaning is
less striking than its power to evoke denial,
contempt, hostility. Apparently feminists are
often regarded as a “crazy,” “hysterical,* “mi
nority” of unattractive, man-hating neurotics
totally lacking a sense of humor.
Paradoxically, however, the intensity and ir
rationality of this response signals the pro
found importance of the debate feminists have
initiated. There is no single “feminist” position
or approach, but most of us feminists assume
that virtually everything we “know" about the
differences between women and men is “man
made,” and that this “knowledge” has func
tioned as an organizing principle of our culture.
It has shaped our language, our institutions,
ourselves.
Western patriarchy assumes that due to
their reproductive roles, male and female
human beings are essentially different. Mind (a
“masculine” principle) is equally distinct from
body, which is “female,” material. (The Latin
“mater” gives English both “matter” and
“mother.") Women are “closer to nature." Since
physical life inevitably brings death, maternity
is a deadly power which must be circumscribed
with rituals and taboos. The father must take
precedence over the mother, female sexuality
be controlled, female autonomy denied. In pa-
Anne
Williams
triarchy, cultural roles must be validated as ex
pressions of “natural" difference.
Yet research in many disciplines show that
most traditional ideas of “male” and “female”
primarily express men’s fantasies about them
selves in relation to the “other”-worn an. Inevi
tably any man’s experiences with women will
evoke contradictory responses. Western defi
nitions of what is “female” thus include both
wishful thinking (“women are naturally self-
sacrificing and really want to be dominated")
and fears about this “different” being who is so
necessary, so desirable, so impossible to regu
late. But these beliefs about women have been
expounded as “truths” through the centuries in
myth, philosophy, science, and poetry-modes of
expression from which women were more or
less excluded until around the 18th century.
Feminists are examining how these assump
tions about sexual difference function in our
history, our culture, our lives. Their study sug
gests that to order society on the basis of du
bious “natural” differences can tragically limit
both sexes. Misogyny is grounded in a percep
tion of difference and female inferiority.
Blaming Eve for the Fall of Man authorized
millennia of civil and educational discrimina
tion; only a century ago, doctors withheld
anaesthesia from women in labor, arguing that
her daughters would suffer the First Mother’s
punishment. Both rape and wife-beating are
still difficult to prosecute because of lingering
suspicions that the victims were either asking
for violence or deserved it.
Perhaps each sex does have some biological
predispositons to moral or intellectual qual
ities, but at this point we simply don’t know.
And if compassion, for instance, is more natural
to women, surely any system that categorizes
(and denigrates) it as “female” also deprives the
male of a valuable, perhaps vital, human ca
pacity.
Thus it is inevitable that feminism should
cause anxiety and bewilderment. It demands
that we re-examine our most fundamental
premises, those “realities” we all assumed we
could take for granted. This process can be both
painful and threatening. But intellectual hon
esty demands that it be done. Most important
of all, in recognizing that many problems are of
human origin, we also may be able to imagine
their solutions.
Within the university community, feminists
in various disciplines are examining the way
our institutions (such as law, religion, even the
study of literature) reflect, maintain, or under
mine a status quo that is often ur\just, some
times cruel, and possibly inimical to our
survival as a species. This new and exciting
mode of analysis offers fresh approaches to ola
and seemingly intractable human problems. A
good education should include acquaintance
with its premises and questions.
Anne Williams is an associate professor of En
glish and is currently teaching an intrxxiuction
to feminist literary theory.
Extremists jeopardize feminist cause
Few movements are as misguided as the fem
inist initiative of modern times. In an attempt
to focus differing concerns, activists have
looked to a common cause: women’s rights. Al
though this cause is legitimate, the general ef
fort has been overshadowed by extremist
positions which are advocated by a minority in
the feminist struggle. In many cases, this mi
nority has assumed a leadership role in femi
nist organizations, thereby enabling their
radical views to be misconstrued as “mains
tream” by the masses.
While this process has prevailed in some in
stances where the extremist leadership can
provide temporary focus and unity to their con
stituents, this same extremism causes the de
mise of many women’s rights achievements.
Put simply, when citizens are allowed to re-ex
amine the views to which they have subscribed,
and they discover that these views are radical
instead of mainstream, they will reject them al
together.
For example, the National Organization for
Women (NOW) is generally considered to be
"mainstream”, yet NOW’s unconditional pro-
choice stance on abortion doesn’t support this
notion. On the surface, feminists see tnis abor
tion issue as a “woman’s right-to-choose”, and
this slogan is easy to sell to women who believe
their liberties Eire limitless.
However, this extreme interpretation of
rights raises certain questions. For instance,
how can a women’s rights group support abor
tions that kill a female fetus just because the
parents want a male child? Extermination of a
female is not protecting women’s rights.
I doubt many Americans truly support such
vain reasoning for an abortion. Nevertheless, a
pro-choice California gubernatorial candidate
who opposed such gender-based abortions was
ridiculed for her stance. In fact, her opponent
claimed that this position contradicted a
“womEin’s right-to-choose” because she didn’t
favor abortions under all circumstances. When
the public recognizes such campaign fanati
cism, they will toss it and the candidate who es
pouses this garbage into the gutter.
In addition to the abortion stances, even
more ridiculous positions on different women’s
rights issues exist. One such instance concerns
social “conditioning".
According to the Feminist who revealed this
“threat" to me, such conditioning begins at the
infant stage when little girls are given dolls to
play with. Boys, on the other hand, are offered
more skill-and intelligence-oriented toys such
as blocks, thus developing valuable analytical
and creative skills. As a result, the Feminist ar
gues, such conditioning has fostered the
marked disparities between men and women in
professional life.
Even at first glance, this entire idea is com
ical. I suppose this fringe explanation accompa
nies some of the other left-wing reasons for
world problems. Perhaps a group of greedy bil
lionaires (all men) are really manipulating
global events and deliberately causing all our
troubles? This certainly fits the extremist mold,
and I’m sure many feminists would embrace it,
too.
Women’s rights are not an entirely reprehen
sible cause; after all, equality in every facet of
society is a worthy goal. However, extremist
concepts masquerading as mainstream ones
will not consistently fool the people, especially
sensible feminists who realize that such radi
calism is inherently flawed.
Scott Kelly is a senior pre law major.
Boggs: a sense of humor??
■ FORUM
□ Th« Red and Black welcomes letters to the editor and prints them In the Forum
column as space permits. AJI letters are subject to editing for length, style and li
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reason upon request. Letters can be sent by U.S. mail or brought in person to The Red
and Black's offices at 123 N. Jackon St. Athens, Ga.
Articles by Luke Boggs are al
ways good for a laugh, but the one
that appeared on May 16 was dif
ferent.
I don’t mean that it wasn’t good
for a laugh, it was. What I mean is
that for once my amusement was
due to a spark of genuine wit and
humor shown all too infrequently
in Mr. Boggs’ often callous, misin
formed, or otherwise insensitive
commentaries regarding the im
portant issues of the day. As a lib
eral with a sense of humor I would
like to read more of Mr. Boggs’
comic fiction, and less of his polit
ical and economic fiction.
Jose A. Mendez-Garcia
Junior, history
Williams did good
In response to Gene Williams’
editorial regarding the Miss Black
UGA pageant, I would like to say
thank you, Gene, for opening my
eyes!
At first I was apprehensive to
enter the Georgia room,where the
pageant was taking place, but by
the end of the evening I was forth
coming with the spirituality I had
absorbed from the event itself, and
the people around me However, I
also felt disillusionment at the
thought that countless other
whites still are refusing to examine
black culture (or any other culture,
for that matter).
The pageant does derive its
strength from black heritage. I
came to the realization that blacks
really have suffered and are still
suffering. There is a real need for
the acceptance of other cultures;
and I hope that others will attempt
to open their eyes at well.
I feel that The Red and Black
was negligent for printing an
unimpressvie article, which by no
means captured the flavor of the
event, on the third page. Why is it
that an interview with a student
attending the Miss USA pageant
received front page attention, but a
pageant on our own campus didn’t?
We have a long road to travel be
fore reaching unity or at least ac
ceptance of other cultures.
Laura Moorhead
sophomore, philosophy