(no subject)

Andrea Dworkin died. Up until yesterday, I never even heard the name before. I've gathered that if you were a feminist, you had, that she was an important, if controversial figure in feminism. That she had Beliefs (!) about pornography and equality in the bedroom.
I've never read her stuff. I've never read any feminist literature. I'm not sure what, if anything, that says about me.

I've come across as an arrogant asshole for at least 10 years of my life. I'm full of half-formed or ill-formed beliefs. If someone I respect or like has a belief, I tend to adopt it as my own, without ever thinking about it much. Or worse, especially my years in R.I.T., I developed beliefs based on projected anger at... these small stupid factions. I met the equivalent of Fluffy Wiccans in the feminist movement and the "Black Empowerment" movement and... fell into instant hate. And so therefore, feminists and blacks should shut their yap and stop bitching.

I recognize now that... college is a time of change. It's when we stop accepting every line our parents tell us and we try to start thinking for ourselves. We are swayed by new thoughts and new ideas. But... not all of us have the intelligence or the wisdom to really put our mind around some of these thoughts. Mostly, it seems like it becomes a chance to rage against the man (our parents) and what we felt they stood for.
College is the time for revolutions. We're young, we have the power, let's change the system! No more war, no more poverty, no more.. whatever.
Eventually we settle down, we get wiser, we begin to understand and accept others failings and that the system can move, but social movement is slow and revolutions come and go.

I've never really looked into some of these important social movements. I've never read Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or some of the important black leaders of the world. All I see is Chris Rock. I've never read Andrea Dworkin or Camille Paglia or... I honestly don't know who else. I wouldn't know.
I've always confined myself to the liberal.. middle-class white male way of thinking.
It wasn't purposeful. It was never "Fuck the women. What do they know?"

I think it's hard to read other's perspectives if I can't relate it to my own. I don't think I'd react any more positively to someone like Andrea Dworkin who I guess is popularly believed to have believed that all sex was rape than I would to anyone else who's telling the world how I am oppressing them.
I'm a number of things, but as far as *I* can tell, I'm not actively oppressing anyone. And I'm not sure I'm passively oppressing either as, when I vote, I always vote for more rights, for the more liberal viewpoint.
Unless supporting the system as stands and trying to change it from inside (the only way, I believe, to change the system is.. with the system itself) is passively oppressing someone.

Anyways....

I think I'm rambling again.

I think it would be right to try and read some new viewpoints, some new ways of viewing the world. Even if they aren't correct. But then I have no idea if they are correct or incorrect until I read it.

My mother once told me that Martin Luther King, nearly patron saint to a large number of people, before he died, started saying terrible things about jews. It was her supposition that MLK himself is one of the main reasons there's so much hatred between blacks and jews. I've never read those remarks (not really much of a shock. I don't imagine those are as easy to find as his "I have a dream" speech.) so I don't know if she's right and I don't know what I personally think about those comments.

I think that was the point to this post. I honestly don't know. If I'm being fair, I have.. no opinion on alot of important issues because I've never really done the research.
Maybe it's time to fix that.