Many years ago we invited to our home the author of the Pedegogy of the
Oppressed.Paulo Friere, a radical scholar who made an enormous impact
back in the 1970s by saying education in third world countries should give
power back to the people that were being educated rather than to teach them
to obey orders from the ruling elite.
At that time our family home in Melbourne was also the home for about 35
Aboriginal people. We jointly challenged the organisers of his lecture tour
for only making him available to the middle class elite. We wanted to hear
him too - so they agreed that he would deliver a lecture at our home to
Aborigines.
He came and argued during his talk that Aboriginal people were so few in
numbers that they needed to join forces with working people if society were
to be changed.
One of the Aborigines then responded that what the author was proposing
would mean that Aborigines would be nothing more than the currents in a
fruit loaf. No, he continued, they could not seek their liberation
initially by joining with white workers.. Instead Aborigines had to seek
their salvation separately as a people, and, when they had won recognition
as a people, would then be able to join with workers as equals to work
with them as partners to construct a free society.
Women are also in danger of becoming simply the currents in the loaf. The
major institutions of our society have only nominal numbers of women. This
is all that is planned. No more fundamental revision of our institutions is
planned. We are told that the appointment of some women to these
institutions ends institutional sexism. The plan is that the basic shape
of our institutions will remain as they were constructed by males during
the years of oppression.
It could be that we have something to learn from Aboriginal society in
Central Australia. (For a fuller description of this
click here.) There both women and men traditionally have separate
assemblies and only old people with grey hair sit jointly. Perhaps we need
for a while to have a separate women's assembly to examine how female
values could be incorporated in reshaped insitutions. While this process is
happening, there could be separate Lower Houses or Houses of
Representatives. The US Senate or the UK House of Lords could become the
house of elected grey haired elders of either gender.
I can imagine some of the other changes that would be made. The House of
Commens and the US Congress would stop being pits where males strut in
packs and hoot at each other. Instead the anti-trust laws would be extended
so that it would be illegal for our representatives to combine in groups of
more than, say, 15 members. Marshalling by whips of armies of MPS in mock
warfare with no regard to individual conviction would be replaced by values
of co-operation and voting according to reason, conscience and individual
conviction. Free votes of conscience would be the rule rather than the
exception. Party politics as we know it would be ended. Enough people have
surely been scandalised by televised parliamentary debates to want to see
the back of the current system. Instead our representatives would be
elected for their personal qualities . Female values of co-operation,
mutual support and working for the public good would be fundamental to
the structures of the new demasculinised parliament.
As for Foreign Affairs, a different set of priorities would determine who
are our allies. In no way would we be allied to Saudi Arabia where women
are not even permitted to drive cars. We would be friendlier to Libya where
women have much more freedom. Our absolute priority would be to build a
world based on co-operation rather than on military alliances and secret
arms deals. Thisis supposed to be the current policy but too often
militiary plans and private profits subvert the public policy.
Time to stop playing a male game. The wrong questions have been asked. The
principal question for debate is not whether or not a woman's place is in
the home. It is - have men proved themselves fit to control the
legislature?
To return to the Christians who helped bring Western
Sexism
To the Front Page of the Web Inquirer ->
<- Click to return to the Library Entrance.