Conference turris::womannotes-v3

Many times while reading this conference I have noticed the amount of
bickering that occurs between people who appear to have very similar beliefs. 
While the bickering has many causes, it is distressing to see people who could
be working together to improve the situation, instead caught up in fighting
over the minor differences between them.

As I said in the base note, these disagreements made me think of Holly's
Unity song.  I hope you will agree that the song is a very powerful call to
peaceful cooperation (and it sounds better than it reads).

While reading these words, please try and help me answer two questions:

    1) Why can't we, the members of the =wn= community, learn to work
    together, in a coalition, to support each other, to understand and value
    the differences between us, and to work towards ensuring equal rights,
    rather than getting bogged down over our relatively minor (IMHO) 
    differences?

	and

    2) What can each of us do to help encourage the kind of warm and friendly
    environment that we would like =wn= to be, and to help minimize the
    squabbling that it has all too frequently become?

Note - I am not asking for an explanation of the various differences - I
believe that that belongs in the respective notes.  Nor am I asking for how to
eliminate differences - they are inevitable.  What I'm looking for is help
understanding why many of us tend to lose sight of our common goals and
similar beliefs, and instead resort to emphasizing our differences.  And what
can we do to minimize this problem in the future?

I know that learning to accept the words "I guess we will have to just agree
to disagree" was very hard for me.  I always thought that by continuing the
"discussion" we would eventually be able to come to a common understanding and
agreement (and needless to say I thought the agreement would be with my
viewpoint - ;^)}).  But I have slowly learned that many views are equally
valid, for different people, from different backgrounds.  For many questions
it appears that looking for the answer which is "less wrong" may be a better
choice.

So, how can we start working together, accepting that the other person's ideas
and opinions are right for them, instead of trying to convince each other that
we have a monopoly on the truth?

John

John:

  I believe that bickering occurs {in this file|In local politics|
  everywhere in life} because deep down, all of us *DON'T* agree
  on the fundamental principals, no matter how similar our surface
  beliefs may seem on a limited range of issues.

  I consider myself a feminist.  Probably, most people noting in
  this file consider themselves to be feminists.  But this is just
  a "surface" agreement.  I guarantee you I'm at the opposite end
  of the world from some of the people in this file on many other
  issues.  And we bicker when that comes out.

  When it gets to deep principals, many of the people noting in
  this file would seem to me to be my mortal enemy.

                                   Atlant

    	Discussion of differing political viewpoints (even among people
    	who share some/many views on issues) is healthy.
    
    	We can't agree on every single thing that comes up (at all times)
    	- nor should we expect this of ourselves as a community.
    
    	We are diverse, which is inevitable among thinking people.

    People can arrive at the same viewpoint from vastly different
    premises. My reasons for ecological activism are entirely
    opposite many peoples', and we'd probably get into shouting
    matches over means and ends. Ditto politics - my reasons for 
    supporting, for instance, Bill Weld are _not_ the same reasons
    as most Republicans (or most Democrats.)
    
    The question is, can we work towards a common goal while we
    argue about fundamentals ? Should we ? ("Politics makes strange
    bedfellows" fer shure.)

    <1) Why can't we, the members of the =wn= community, learn to work
    <together, in a coalition, to support each other, to understand and value
    <the differences between us, and to work towards ensuring equal rights,
    
    After participating in this conference for a year+, I no longer believe
    that the goal of several of the most vocal members is to value
    differences or to understand.
    
    Rather, I believe their implicit goal is to exacerbate and exploit
    differences and engage in terrorist activities based on models of
    people that are so simplistic that they are in fact false.
    
    I also believe that a number of participants choose to ferret out
    differences and to react to *them* with what they believe is
    justifiable indignance and hostility. 
    
    I appreciate your efforts, John. In my opinion, this conference has
    shown itself not to be worth it.
    It is not an opinion that I offer lightly.
    
    By the way, in many ways one should have been able to predict the
    hostility. In my opinion it is inevitable in a conference which has as
    one of its *implicit* goals, providing an opportunity for women to
    address matters about men that upset them.
    
    Just as one hears many shrill voices on both sides of the war effort
    and precious little in between, the loud combative voices on both sides
    of male/female 'issues' drown out those who would seek
    understanding.				
    I believe it is sophmoric to think that such matters can be explored
    publicly temperately.
    
    
    				herb

    At the risk of misinterpreting John's intention:
    
    	I have been a read only member of this conference for quite some
    time. And for a while stopped reading because it seemed that many notes
    got bogged down in nits, and 'you said that I said that you said that I
    said that you said' discussions (if you can call that a discussion).
    Looking at it from an outsiders perspective, everyone was within
    a hare's breath of agreement; it may have been a matter of semantics.
    But some insisted on carrying on the disagreement aspects to the nth
    degree.
      
    	I don't think that John (nor Holly's song) is asking all of us to
    agree on everything. Yes, diversity is healthy. And a 'group think'
    environment is boring. But let's all cut each other a little slack now
    and then, and carry on with the journey.   

  But ultimately, everything is connected to everything else and while I
  may agree with someone on one particular topic (e.g. whether all humans
  should be paid equally for equal work), I may find that I disagree with
  the person on other related topics (e.g., whether all humans should be
  eligible to participate in a particular field of work; whether all humans
  can be *REQUIRED* to participate in a particular field of "work").

  The two of us can collectively work to advance issue A but you can bet
  we'll eventually get around to disagreeing over (in my example) issues
  B and C as we explore further.

                                   Atlant


  Disclaimer: The particular issues I've raised are simply for the
  purposes of illustration.  Any number of other issues could have
  been substituted.  This note does not express or imply the author's
  opinions on any of these issues.

    	Humans disagree.  It's part of the package.
    	
    	It isn't any more shrill when women disagree on political viewpoints
    	than it is when a group of men disagree.
    
    	It's no big deal.

I've thought about this a lot. It really bothers me. The problem is that at a 
certain level there can be no compromise. If your belief is that peace at any
cost is better than war, then you can not accept *any* war. If you believe that
abortion for any reason is murder, then you can accpet no reason for abortion.
How do you work a compromise? 

I've heard interviews with Palastinians who say they will not be satisfied until
every Jew is dead. That no middle way is acceptable. There are Jews who feel the
same way in the other direction. They want the exact same piece of earth to
stand on. 

I don't know how to deal with this bottom line. liesl

    Sometimes 'compromise' is impossible. (I happen to think it's
    over-rated.) If, for instance, I want to have sex with someone,
    but they don't, what 'compromise' is possible ? (Maybe we do
    it 'til _one_ of us has an orgasm?) If you can't compromise
    with someone, and you have made the evaluation that what they 
    want is wrong, you have to ensure that what they want does _not_
    come to pass. Doing so may involve force, up to and including
    deadly force. Of course there is an alternative - surrender.
    For most people that simply isn't practical or possible. I don't
    think 'inability to surrender' is a 'macho' tendency, more like
    an ingrained survival trait. (For instance, I doubt that Saddam
    Hussein will ever surrender, not because of machismo, but for
    fear of the consequences. Likewise George Bush.) 

    Sometimes the alternative to compromise is to find new, creative
    solutions.  The trick is in overcoming our limitations when we seek
    those solutions, and to reject an either-or approach.  That is the
    basis of the Quaker tradition of consensus decision making.
    
    -- Mike

> If, for instance, I want to have sex with someone, but they don't, what
> 'compromise' is possible ?

Many. Assuming you are talking about penetrative genital intercourse, there are
MANY other ways of being sexual, even "having sex", that might be suitable.
However, sometimes there is no room for compromise - even for people who like
each other, agree with each other, and are working for a win-win. Life is like
that. However, those occasions are few and could be fewer.

	-- Charles

    > What can each of us do to help encourage the kind of warm and friendly
    > environment that we would like =wn= to be, and to help minimize the
    > squabbling that it has all too frequently become?
    
    Don't shoot me folks, but what's *wrong* with the bickering.  One thing
    I've come to value about =wn= is that it is a community of people
    behaving pretty much like people behave in the real world.  Its a place
    where I can watch how people communicate and miscommunicate and learn
    something from it.  Here in =wn= I can find love and hate and fear and
    anger and fighting and peacemaking.  This is the stuff that life is
    made of.  For me =wn= is a safe place to practice my life skills.
    
    Making =wn= into a "warm and friendly" place would be making it a place
    to escape reality.  The desire to do so, IMHO, comes from a desire to
    control the behavior of others.  If you don't want to bicker, don't.
    But, why the need to stop others from doing it?  (BTW I'm guilty of
    this myself, but its a question I am exploring for myself.)
    
    What can each of us do?  Each of us can work to change ourselves to be
    what we want and we can use =wn= to help us do that.  Or we can decide
    not to change ourselves.  But, we cannot decide to "improve" each other.
    
    I love =wn= for what it is, warts and all.
    
    -Mary

    Oh, bravo Mary!
    
    E Grace

	Well said, Mary

	Heather

Re: .13

I agree with you that there is nothing inherently wrong with bickering (ask
anyone who knows me - I do it enough).  My concern is that there are times
when it appears that we agree on the outcome, but disagree with the other
persons motives, and then fight over that, instead of working together
towards our common goal.

Atlant said in .2 (taken somewhat out of context):

  When it gets to deep principals, many of the people noting in
  this file would seem to me to be my mortal enemy.

But what's wrong with working together with someone who has different
principals, if you are both trying to achieve the same result?  Why do we
have to agree on "why" we are doing something?

As was mentioned in an .4, Politics do make strange bedfellows.  But what's
wrong with that, given that everyone is getting what they want out of it?

Certainly there are cases where it is impossible to work together, but I
believe that most of these situations occur when the different sides do not
share common goals.  That's not the problem I trying to address.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in the base note, but I'm not trying to
control anyone.  I'm just asking how can we work together, given that we
share common goals, but disagree on some of the details or motives.

And to make it perfectly clear, I hope this doesn't come across as a
hollier-than-thou attitude.  I have just as much trouble with this some
others.

Perhaps a quote from Holly Near's autobiography (Fire in the Rain...Singer
in the Storm) will help.  Unfortunately it takes quite a bit of text to set
up the context here, so please bear with it until the end.  My apologies
for the length.

From pages 227-229:

    In 1983, I was invited to Belgium by the Women's International
    League for Peace and Freedom to protest NATO's seemingly endless
    obsession with nuclear weapons.  I like this organization of "gray
    hairs."  They are tough, energetic, and tired of messing around
    with arrogance and destruction.  They like having young
    whippersnappers like me around.  We are physical assurance that
    their work will not end when they are gone.  I marched down the
    streets of Brussels arm in arm with a lovely actress/peace-friend,
    Julie Christie.  Thousands of women and men from dozens of
    countries had gathered, singing and calling out in all our
    languages.

    The day before the march, I sang at the women's peace conference. 
    Right before I was to go on, some women from the Greenham Common
    Peace Encampment proposed to the conference that a delegation of
    women lead off the march, since it was a women's march for peace. 
    It sounded reasonable to me, but an instant after it was said,
    tension shot through the hall like the bullet we had come to
    protest.  Someone stood up in a fury and said she would not
    participate in a march that was separatist, that she had traveled
    a long way to this march with her husband and found the proposal
    horrendous.  Another woman tried to calm her and said that no one
    had said she had to march without her husband.  Only that the
    first delegation be women.  Well, then everyone wanted to talk and
    did, all at the same time.

    A woman from Greenham Common came to where I was standing and said
    they had not meant to trigger such a conflict.  They were so used
    to the idea of women doing things together that it had not occurred
    to them the proposal would delineate a war zone.  She asked if
    there was anything I could do to calm people down.

    Sometimes I think people shouldn't be calmed down, that it's good
    for everything to fall apart because when once put back together,
    the new union is wiser  [part of .13's point - JFW].  But I agreed
    to say something after my first song.

    "How can groups of people who feel differently work together? 
    Coalition work may be the hardest thing any of us will ever do. 
    What about the issue of women leading the march?  Let's not try
    for agreement.  Let's try for understanding.

    "First I want to talk about the perspective of those women who
    would like to walk hand in hand with the men in their lives.  We
    are not taking sides, remember?  We are practicing coalition.  We
    are trying to appreciate each other.  If we can't do that, we
    can't successfully work together.

    "There are women who, throughout their lives, have fought fascism
    with their comrades in Europe and in the U.S.A., and we are proud
    and honored by how many older women there are in this
    organization.  They have survived sectarianism and red-baiting and
    grand juries.  They have worked with their husbands in the labor
    movement, in the civil rights movement, in the peace movement, and
    now invite their husbands to work with them in the women's
    movement.  And at a march as important as the one tomorrow, who of
    us would not want our loved one standing next to us?

    "Now I want to talk about those who want to have women lead the
    march tomorrow.  It is hard to have one's woman-ness constantly
    put on the back burner as being less important than our other
    identities.

    "Salvadorans often lead demonstrations to protest U.S.
    intervention.  It would be appropriate for black civil rights
    leaders to lead a civil rights march.  In another situation,
    perhaps the children should lead, or Native Americans.  So why not
    women?  The women who made the announcement only wanted to say
    this is how we feel about women who work for peace and is this not
    a good time to honor and celebrate.

    "I value both of these perspectives.  However this is a coalition
    gathered to protest military madness.  So I think we must not
    argue at this moment.  Tomorrow, you will each decide where you
    stand and there will be no one policing your conclusion.

    Then I sang "Unity."

    [words omitted here - JFW]

    Later that day, some of the women who had wanted to lead the march
    thanked me for trying to cool things out, but there was a look of
    sadness in their eyes.  I recognized the matriarchy of long ago
    looking at me through these windstung faces.  Other women, who had
    opposed the idea, came up to me and thanked me saying, "I can't
    believe those separatists wanted to take over the march.  But you
    handled it beautifully.  The perfect diplomat."  Oh dear, they had
    missed the point.  And the sad look I had seen in the feminists'
    eyes came into my own.

Her point, I believe, was that everyone was there to work for peace. 
They all shared that goal.  But they almost refused to work together
because of issues which were unrelated to their common goal and reason for
being there.

How can we solve that problem?  How do we learn to temporarily put aside
our differences so that we can benefit from the synergy of our
similarities?

As Holly said, "Coalition work may be the hardest thing any of us will ever
do."  But isn't the result worth the effort?
 
John (certified Holly Near groupie)

    John,
    
    I think I see better what you are saying, now, and we probably are more
    in agreement than disagreement.
    
    > How can we solve that problem?  How do we learn to temporarily put
    > aside our differences so that we can benefit from the synergy of our
    > similarities?
    
    What I was saying is that you can work to solve the problem for *you*,
    but you cannot work to solve it for others.  Perhaps its just the way
    you use the word "we" that communicates something different to me.
    
    Given that you and another both wish to work together without agreeing
    on why, then learning the basic skills of negotiation and communication
    will help.  I can't say that I've learned them myself, but just
    observing what goes on in =wn= is a good place to start.  Watch what
    you and others do that works and learn to do it.  Watch what you and
    others do that doesn't work and avoid that.  Actually, I've been
    kicking around the idea of starting a topic on interpersonal conflict
    and peacemaking.
    
    Making peace *is* a lot harder work than fighting.  If it weren't so,
    who would fight?  And while peace is peaceful, making peace is not
    peaceful, because making peace brings you into conflict with the
    conflict itself.  Gosh, am I getting philosophical or what?
    
    Mary