as long as you talking to the already converted....
>The reality is that most men are
>actually hurt by sexism not only because of its culturally/psychologically
>warping effects, but "materially" because it serves as a linchpin of a
>system that oppresses most men, too.
in order to get people to here, you have to do more than assert that hetero/sexism, ablism, racism, and so forth are linchpins of capitlist exploitation and oppression. I know you already know this, but there imagery here bothers me. It evokes the sense that heterosexist, ablist, racist oppression are secondary -- that perhaps the only reason we might, as leftists, care about these issues is because they stand in the way to true solidarity. It's as if it's just not important enough to examine hetero/sexist systems of oppression unless it's stamped with The Leftist Authetic Class Analysis Label.
I'm not an extremist here. I spent a couple of years criticizing "race, class, gender" analyses because, in the end, they never examined class as anything more than an identity that you can take on and off like a pair of overalls.
It's not, IOW, that I disagree with what you say. The imagery just grates, especially when we've heard more than a few times in this forum that worrying about things like gender oppression, hetero/sexism, etc. are just soooooo secondary to the real, macho stuff: class analysis.
And, anyway, my first point is that, if you're going to talk to reg'lar folk, I suspect that you do have to get into the nitty gritty of exactly _how_ men suffer -- and not merely because they are workers. They need to understand how their very identity, life choices, etc. etc. are delimited by systems of oppression.
Kelley
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling