>
> It can be read at:
> http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/
>
> Here is the intro.
>
>
> FROM MASCULINITY TO ANTI-MASCULINISM
> Analysing the social relations of sex from an
> oppressive social
> position.
>
>
>
> Biographical Note: Léo Thiers-Vidal is working on a
> PhD in philosophy on
> materialist feminism and its epistemological
> consequences for men
> wanting to do critical research on social relations
> of sex. Hes a 32
> years old, white, straight man who grew up in an
> upper social class
> family in Belgium. He has been involved in the
> anarchist movement in
> Belgium and France on issues as squatting,
> anti-speciesism,
> environmentalism and radical feminism till 1998. He
> then worked within a
> grassroots perspective on the issue of children
> sexually abused by their
> fathers and contributed to Mères en Lutte, a small
> self-support group
> with and for concerned mothers. He also worked
> within Cabiria, a
> community health and social rights group with and
> for prostitutes. Hes
> currently involved in fighting sexual harassment
> within higher
> education. He lives in Lyon, France.
> Summary: This article discusses the specific link
> between knowing
> subjects men and research object social relations
> of sex. The
> subjective structuring as oppressor related to the
> membership of the
> social group men is discussed as an obstacle to
> producing pertinent
> knowledge. Identifying male egocentrism and a
> disadvantaged
> epistemological condition as main obstacles, the
> author proposes leads
> of thought on the possible transformation of male
> subjectivity and the
> development of committed research, articulated
> around the elaboration of
> an anti-masculinist conscience.
> Originally published in Nouvelles Questions
> Féministes, a
> French-language radical feminist review, Vol. 21, n°
> 3, pp. 71-83,
> December 2002. It has been translated by Léo
> Thiers-Vidal and upgraded
> by Peter Claes and Rona Dragon.
> _____
>
> In this article, I propose to analyse the way male
> researchers committed
> to the struggle against womens oppression by men,
> can optimise their
> scientific and political efficiency when analysing
> social relations of
> sex[1] [1] . When these men want to produce
> non-biased and pertinent
> analyses, they are confronted with a double
> difficulty. On the one hand,
> to fully understand feminist analyses which point to
> their existence as
> a permanent source of womens oppression; on the
> other hand, to learn to
> manage the inner conflicts that come with it in
> order to be able to
> maintain a productive, involved and distanced look
> at their oppressive
> construction and behaviour.
> The study of social relations of sex
> insistently questions the
> link between knowing subject and research object.
> Due to the emotional,
> sexual, corporal and identity related anchorage
> produced by the specific
> organisation of social relations of sex, all
> theoretical and political
> questioning implies that committed male researchers
> should re-evaluate
> their personal construction and their life.
> As members of the oppressive group, they have
> to learn that their
> subjectivity is constructed/structured by the male
> position in society,
> i.e. the fact that they benefit from material
> wealth, social liberties,
> qualities of life and androcentric representations
> as far as they
> oppress women. In order for committed male
> researchers, to produce
> non-biased and pertinent analyses, they have to
> develop an
> anti-masculinist conscience[2] [2] : an awareness of
> the fact that, as
> oppressors, their subjectivity is
> constructed/structured in a particular
> way, as well as an awareness of the consequences of
> this construction in
> order to avoid masculinist bias.
> The central question which emerges from such
> an awareness is: in
> what way does a dominant position produced by
> oppressive behaviour
> construct/structure the epistemological relationship
> to the issue of
> social relations of sex? In other words, in what way
> are analyses of
> social relations of sex influenced, and even
> limited, by the fact that
> committed male researchers belong to the social
> group: men?
>
>
>
> _____
>
>
>
>
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