Are men responsible?

Just a quickie for my first substantive post. (I have something more meaty in the works) Really this is no more than a comment in reply to Ampersand, but it’s a bit off-topic, and I don’t want to hijack his thread.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect anyone to focus on fighting homophobia in particular, when the world is so full of evils to oppose, and the fact that there’s a finite amount of time forces us to focus our efforts. So it’s perfectly reasonable, in my view, to say “I’m on the record against A, B and C, but I’m going to focus my energies on issue D, because I don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This appears to contradict what he said on another occasion

Although not all men perpetuate sexism, virtually all men benefit from sexism. Virtually all men have in some way gotten gains that we don’t deserve, at the expense of women. And that means that even though we’re not to blame, all men have a special responsibility to support feminism and fight sexism – because we owe women for our unjust gains.

(Ditto, by the way, for White people and anti-racism).

I’d be interested to see how he reconciles these two statements.

Introducing Daran

Thanks to ampersand and the others for the invite, though in Amp’s case I suspect that it’s part of a cunning plan to get rid of me from Alas…

About me? Ho, hum, well I’m 41 years old. I was born in England, but moved to Scotland sixteen years ago. Politically I’m a liberal, which means different things on different sides of the Atlantic, but both hats fit. My interests are eclectic, but I am particularly interested in gender issues, where I often find myself opposed to both feminist and antifeminist schools of thought.

My hobbies are drumming, juggling, and riding the unicyle. I don’t do any of them very well.

Well, here I am

Hopefully this will bear some fruit, but right now, I’m alone in my little “group blog” to be.

Onward, to find people as addicted to this hobby as I!