Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    Carla,
    
    Go ahead! Right on! Good for you!  I think you made the right choice
    but there's something you ought to know (you probably already do).
    Be prepared for people to call you names - the one I have in mind is
    "sanctamonious", 'scuse my spelling.  I have never, well almost never,
    nobody's perfect, let pass without challenge any ethnic slur.  Against
    anybody.  It was one of the best things about my upbringing: no overt
    racism, and little covert.  So when someone tells a *foo* ethnic joke,
    I object.  When someone says 'gyp', 'jew the price down', 'that's white
    of you', 'what a fairy', 'how many pollacks...', they hear from me.
    
    So be prepared to be told you have no sense of humor, to lighten up,
    not to be holier-than-thou, aw c'mon I wasn't serious; also to succeed
    sometimes and receive an apology.  And sometimes you make a mistake;
    once I called some folks at another caf lunchtable, only to find out
    they were discussing someone's reprehensible behavior.  Good thing I
    had been polite about it...
    
    and btw, that isn't just feminism -- it's the right thing to do!

    
    I find ethnic humor to be disquieting, uncomfortable, tasteless,
    offensive.   But I am not so sure that voicing my opinion on hearing an
    off-color joke is really doing any good (of course, that never stopped
    me).  I admire you, and so do many others.  However the people you
    speak to (the man in the bar, for instance) don't hear what you have to
    say.   They only "hear" that you are some kind of nutso, womens' libber
    and/or homo who overeacts to a good joke (and they will relate your
    reaction as part of the joke the next time they tell it).
    
    But if enough of us speak up, who knows what can happen?
    
    
    -m
    
    p.s.  Interesting that you specified that the person was a white
    middle-class male.   How could you tell?
    
    -m

    Here's a whole other area to interrupt:  jokes and comments about fat
    women (comments are often disguised as a false concern about
    health/fitness).
    
    There's an anecdote in Susan Kano's book "Making Peace with Food," that
    gives two different ways to respond to cruel comments about fat people:
    
    	"Suppose a friend of yours notices an obese person on the street
    	and says, "Look at that, isn't it disgusting?"  What would you say?
    	My instinctive reply is, "No 'it' isn't, and the person you just
    	insulted isn't an it -- he/she is a human being!"
    
    	Or try one of my workshop participant's suggestions:  "I wonder
    	who's inside?  Don't you?"
    
    Briana

    
    Madeline,
    
    It was fairly easy to tell he was a white male.  =8-)  I knew
    he was middle-class because he had mentioned his boat and his 
    new sportscar to the bartender.
    
    Carla
    

    Hm, I thought boats and sports cars put you beyond the middle
    class.
    
    --bonnie

    re .3, when the person said that "it" was disgusting, that's probably
    exactly what he/she meant.  They meant "it" (the fat) was disgusting to
    *them.*  They probably didn't mean that the human being who was fat was
    disgusting to them.  
    
    I really don't think that comments about the appearance of other people
    are on the same level of offensiveness as ethic jokes or jokes that put
    down women.  *Jokes* about fat people are on the same level.  But, not
    comments.  I think we have to accept the fact that people are, at
    times, going to turn to their friends and make comments about the
    appearance of other people.
    
    re .5, Bonnie, don't you think there are various levels to what
    constitutes the "middle class" in America.  I could say to you, for
    example, that I wish I were part of the middle class who can afford to
    take my family to Europe on a vacation. ;^)
    
    re .0, I admire you for speaking up Carla.  
    
    Lorna
    

	RE: boats and sportscars


	I always considered myself "middle class", but I can't seem
	to afford either!

	kath_who_drives_a_4_banger_that_LOOKS_like_a_sportscar

    I learned long ago that being true to myself would not always go
    hand-in-hand with being popular or "easy going".  When someone
    asks me if I am thus-and-such a national origin, or such-and-thus 
    a religious affiliation, I ask why.  If they say they want to tell
    me a joke, but do not want to offend me - in case I belong to the
    group being ridiculed - I quite simply inform them that they have 
    *already* offended me.  Sometimes they think I am joking; I seem to
    have something of a crediblity problem (*8.  Often, I will get the
    "No.  Come on.  I'm serious.  Sheesh! don't give me a hard time."
    At that point I will inform them that I am quite serious, and that I
    deny humour that is based on stereotypes.  I have been known, on *many*
    occasions to walk away if the person persists in telling the joke.
    
    I hear the rationale all the time about "it's only a *joke*!  There 
    isn't any HARM in it!"  I repudiate this entirely!  The simple fact
    that there are people who believe this shows that there *is* harm in
    racial/sexual/ethnic jokes.  When we hold any group up to ridicule,
    which is exactly what is done with these jokes, we dehumanize and
    objectify *all* group members.  Not only that, but the people who 
    laugh at the jokes are also being dehumanized.  I simply cannot stand
    silently by and let this go unconfronted.  I may not be capable of 
    changing the world; that doesn't mean I shouldn't speak out to my
    little corner of that world.
    
    There are few areas in my life in which I have found the capability to 
    be truly assertive - confrontation is an area (arena? (*8) with which 
    I still have much trouble and feel much trepidation.  When the rights 
    of human beings to *be* human beings - unique and special - are
    impinged however, I can not sit idly by, else I become the impinger.
    
    E Grace 
    

    
    how about jokes that are based on regional rivalries?
    
    i have younger cousins who used to delight in telling me
    about: "10,000 Swedes ran through the weeds
            at the battle of Copenhagen
            10,000 Swedes ran through the weeds
            chased by one Norwegian"
    
    then i would be forced to inform them that they had just
    as much swedish blood in them as i did................
    
    ditto when they tried to tell me irish jokes.
    
    anyways..........my favorite story (following the basenote) is not
    from personal experience, but from hollywood.  i think the movie
    was called "Soulman", and in it....
    
    time for a spoiler warning, in case any of you would rather rush
    out and see this for yourself.....
    
    
    
    okay, in the movie, the protagonist grows personally by taking
    certain chemicals changing his skin color so that he may get a
    scholarship reserved for black people.  at a couple of points,
    he happens to overhear two white students telling jokes aimed
    at blacks, they notice him and plead "No offense".
    
    at the end of the movie, he is back to his original color, and
    encounter the two students again....they tell another joke, he
    finally blows up and decks the two of them, then offers as a
    consolation"No offense..."
    
    that had me standing up and cheering.  (not that i really support
    violence, but that was just hollywood, right?)
    

      My wife gave me this story. It was given out in a course she took re-
      cently. It's author is anonymous.

      As an old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young man ahead
      of him picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea. Finally catch-
      ing up with the youth, he asked him why he was doing this. The answer
      was that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun.

      "But the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of starfish,"
      countered the other. "How can your effort make any difference?"

      The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to
      safety in the waves. "It makes a difference to this one," he said.

		REALITY GETS DOSE OF DREAM

					DERRICK Z. JACKSON



LAST CHRISTMAS - 
Kwanza, I gave my best friend the book "I Dream a World: 
Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America." In the book, 
dancer Katherine Dunham, 81, said, "I like to avoid confrontations 
if I can.  But if I cannot, I want to be totally prepared to 
solve them or eliminate them."

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, 57, a former congresswoman, said:"If we 
had waited to change the hearts and minds of the people, it would 
have taken two more generations.  We don't have time....You have 
to change the law."

The book was published last year.  The publishers should have 
waited a few more months.  They could have included my best 
friend.

A year ago, my friend and her 3-year-old son were bicycling 
through Waitsfied, pop. 1,400, in central Vermont.  The son said 
he had to use the toilet.  Mother and son went to a convenience 
store.  A clerk said the toilet was broken.  My friend said the 
clerk suggested in a hostile tone that no other store would let 
her use a toilet.

My friend and her son used a toilet a half-block away.

This made my friend suspicious. She is African-American. She just 
happened to be cycling with a white friend and her 2-year old son. 
My friend asked her friend to take her son into the store and 
ask to use the bathroom.

The white mother and son were shown a working toilet.

My best friend became angry.  Accompanied by her husband, she 
went back into the store to confront the clerk. The clerk, with a 
look as hard as granite, said:
	"I can let anybody use the bathroom that I want".

My best friend had had enough.  Her husband called the State 
Police. A trooper arrived. He was stunned at the claim of such a 
primitive form of racism. He went into the store.

As my friend stayed outside, the clerk told the trooper, "Why 
don't they go back where they came from?" The owner of the store 
told the trooper, "Why don't they go back on the bus they came on?
...We don't need their kind around here." The owner later said he 
was talking only about tourists, not African-Americans. That is 
still an odd statement, since tourism is the lifeblood of the 
Sugarbush ski area.

The state took my friend's case.  It was herstoric. It was the 
first criminal prosecution under Vermont's 3-year-old law 
prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations.

A year passed. Just before the trial, two local African-Americans 
agreed to testify for the defense that they had used the store's 
toilet with no problem.

My friend was unfazed. She told her state attorney that the case 
had nothing to do with proving that the clerk, store or town were 
racist by character. She said assault defendants can trot in as 
many friends as they want who can say the defendants never hit 
them, but it does not mean the defendants did not hit anyone else.

The trial was held 10 days ago in Barre. A defense witness hinted 
that my friend was oversensitive because she lives near Boston, 
which he said is a "racial area".

The jury was so sensitized, it deliberated only one hour.  The 
clerk was found guilty. Of a maximum fine of $1,000, she was 
fined $750. The judge said, "I don't know how you can call it 
anything but a clear case of discrimination."

The victory was a shared one. State trooper William Harkness had 
shown courage by making sure the words of the clerk and the owner 
made it into the courtroom. State attorney Phil Keller pored over 
civil rights law despite having an infant daughter who was born 
three months premature. An all-white jury in Barre gave an 
outsider full justice, resisting the temptation to protect the 
reputation of a local peer.

Courage belonged to Martha Katz and her son, George, the white 
friends who tested the clerk. Without them, my friend's claim 
would have been laughed at.  Instead, many Waitsfield residents 
were sympathetic to my friend's case.

Courage most belonged to my best friend. Because of her, the 
convicted woman will never discriminate like that again.  Though 
Waitsfield's Chamber of Commerce denies the case had anything to 
do with it, the town, which had long considered public toilets, 
now suddenly has them.

"I Dream a World" is now on exhibit at the Massachusetts College 
of Art. Rachel Robinson, wife of the late Jackie Robinson, said 
her motto is "Fight back."

In Vermont, my friend said, "Fighting back helps me regain the 
part of my dignity that was viotated." She wanted to be an 
example for her son, to make him aware of his rights and his 
"power to use them."

My best friend, the fighter, is Michelle Holmes.  She is my wife. 
Her son, Omar is my son. Out of a bad dream, Michelle changed a 
small corner of America.

    Charles,
    
    What a fabulous story, and one that should be told over and over and
    over again.!
    
    
    Kuddos to Michelle, and to Omar, and to their friends and the
    trooper...it seems that one person can change the face of things to
    come.
    
    Thanks so much for sharing that story....I needed a little bit of
    "racial hope" instead of racism this morning!
    
    Jill
    

As a native Vermonter, I felt both shame and pride when I
read that....

Thanks for entering it, Charles.

Kathy

    We allow discrimination to continue every time we tune into most
    commercial television programs or allow our children to watch (and for
    some of adults out there) cartoons.  The commercials, NOT the programs,
    are discriminatory - in the case of the cartoons??  I'd say both.
    
    How many times how you caught a television commercial where the focus
    is on the up lift of a woman's skirt, her cleavage, etc, in order to
    sell a product???  How many times have you or your children tuned into
    a cartoon where more than one character was *off-white*??  Where the
    commercials weren't based on war oriented toys for boys or 10 year
    old girls dressed in make-up??  How about a commercial for Bubble Yumm
    bubble gum which apparently got pulled from the air waves .. the one
    with a 10 year old girl in more make-up than I wear stating that all
    there is in life is boys and malls???  Enough is enough folks .... I
    have friends who are screaming censorship but that's not the answer.
    
    We, you and I, allow this to go on by buying the products or just
    sitting back and watching this pass in front of our eyes without
    blinking or flinching.  I'm not calling for prayer or burning books -
    just simple acts of protest by exercising our rights. Write a letter
    to the culprite (company) and voice your opposition.  Young men are
    receiving bad vibes about woman, have a common lack of respect, and 
    think sex is meant for their enjoyment - not caring how (forcibly)
    they get it either!! 
                                        
    
    I may have gone off the beaten path (ie topic) but I blew up the
    day I saw a concert t-shirt for Guns & Roses which pictured a woman
    sitting in an alley way, with her knees bent, panties pulled down to
    her ankles, something whitish in coloring (you know the area!), smoking a
    cigarette with the caption 'Guns and Roses was here'.  I'm tired
    of seeing every crime known to Hollywood to be some sort of crime
    against women - rape, incest, beatings - and every other TV movie
    based on it not always educating the public in all counts but to get some
    of the air time away from rival networks.  It hasn't been a complete 
    turn around toward this, it's been ever so subtle in the past couple
    for years (ie Reagan era).  
    
    It's happening in DEC, in HUMOR.  I keep bringing it up because I'm
    appalled at the ignorance of those individuals who participate or
    revel in it.  A topic was discussed (SOAPBOX)on what type of clothing 
    men find women attractive in YET it turned to outfits that one could
    cop some cleavage, etc etc etc.  Over 1/2 of the descriptions were outfits 
    that jurors in many states have deemed *suggestive*, placing the 
    blame on the woman, and the attacker receives a slap on the wrist.  Others
    told me to calm down, not to take it so personally but I can't.  I'm
    going to say my piece in these conferences JUST as I have done to those
    outside (bars/clubs) who have offended me.  In some of the cases the 
    perpetrator was trying to pick me up!!!!  Is this (ie offensive jokes)
    the way men behave in the Northeast??  
    
    Am I the only one who's fed up????
    
    
    /gail

    
    
    >>Am I the only one who's fed up????
    
    No.
    
    I long ago stopped buying products that were sold in -- to me -- an
    offensive manner.  People laugh at me; they say "So-and-so doesn't
    *care* if one person doesn't buy their product!"  Maybe, maybe not.  I
    don't care, *I* care if I buy their products.
    
    I was thinking of this the other night.  I was watching television, and
    an ad came on for a deodorant.  A deodorant designed specifically for
    women; you know, it's in a *pink* container.  I hate pink!  The woman
    in the ad was wearing a terrycloth robe.  Nothing too bad about that.
    However, she was reclining in a very sensuous manner, the robe was open 
    to her breasts, had "fallen" down off one shoulder, and was quite
    obviously *not* being worn over a nightgown.  
    
    sigh.
    
    Do these advertisers really think that I need to have some young
    woman's bare chest stuffed down my throat -- figuratively speaking --
    to believe that their client company's deodorant works?  Do they really
    think that I believe that if I would just use THEIR PRODUCT, I, too,
    could have robes falling off my shoulder?
    
    Double sigh.
    
    Yeah, they probably do.
    
    Another product to add to the list.
    
    E Grace
    

	RE: .15 /gail

    
>    How many times how you caught a television commercial where the focus
>    is on the up lift of a woman's skirt, her cleavage, etc, in order to
>    sell a product???

	A large portion of those tv commercials are selling products to
	women.  If women are BUYING the products, does this mean that the
	advertising works and/or they agree with the portrayal of women
	this way?


>   How many times have you or your children tuned into
>    a cartoon where more than one character was *off-white*??

	Actually, many of the ones that I watch (that actually portray
	"people") do have a variety of people from ethnic backgrounds.
	However, most of them have little bears and flying horses these
	days....  Some examples off the top of my head are Pee Wee's
	PlayHouse, Fat Albert, Gem, Ghostbusters, and many of the
	Superhero ones have many different characters from many different
	ethnic backgrounds.

>    Where the
>    commercials weren't based on war oriented toys for boys or 10 year
>    old girls dressed in make-up??

	Sad, but true.  However, I DID see a Nintendo commercial with
	a little girl in it, and a new outside race-car-thingie with
	lots of little girls AND boys in it.

>    We, you and I, allow this to go on by buying the products or just
>    sitting back and watching this pass in front of our eyes without
>    blinking or flinching.


	I have a point here, really!  :-)  My point is that 10 years
	ago you wouldn't have seen ANY of the things I just mentioned
	about to counter your points.  We're beginning to see a change
	and that is GOOD.  It is NOT going to happen over night.  You're
	right, /gail, we DO need to voice our opinions to those in charge
	of the airwaves........

	but we also need to applaud and point out the advances that have
	already BEEN made.



	kath