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chapter seven Taming the Monster WORKSHOP ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF DEVIANT OUT-GROUPS / Having tried in all my years of teaching to do justice to the problem of “differences” among women and finding various approaches inadequate, I finally, in the 1980s, struck out in a new direction. Tired of merely describing the social construction of differences in society, I tried to find out why hierarchical governments everywhere constructed “deviant out-groups” and what ends they served. Perhaps, by understanding the system of “deviance-formation” one could learn how more effectively to interfere with its working. These questions led me to develop a lecture course and, later, a workshop on the subject. I tested out the workshop by teaching it twice at the University of Wisconsin–Madison to different groups of administrators and the staff of the Dean of Students Office. I taught it in New Zealand, where my students were Women’s Studies faculty from different universities ; in Dortmund,Germany, where the participants were graduate students and faculty ; in Salzburg, Austria, where the participants were graduate students and faculty in History, Sociology, German Studies, and Education; and at the University of Arizona, Tempe, where my students were Women’s Studies faculty and graduate students. The course described below has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding and learning to resist what I call “the Monster”—racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia , and all other categories of hating deviant out-groups. It is structured in ten units, following the usual three-hour seminar format. It can also be offered in a five-day format, with morning and afternoon sessions. Teachers wanting to adapt this course will have to select lecture topics and illustrative materials that fit their own specialization and knowledge . Theworkshop uses a combination of intellectual work and group exercises that mobilize the participants’ experiences and feelings. Changes in attitudes toward others cannot be accomplished solely by intellectual effort.The aim is to practice empathy based on one’s own experiences. The workshop is described in brief below. The detailed syllabus and exercises for the workshop can be found in Appendixes B and C respectively. Workshop on the Construction of Deviant Out-Groups 115 In all hierarchical societies there are groups that the dominant society considers “out-groups.” The outsiders may be conquered prisoners of war; they may be ethnic, racial, or religious minorities; they may be persons with a different lifestyle or sexual orientation. They may even represent half of the population, women. They become designated as being “the Other,” the group against which the society defines itself. From such a definition of “Otherness” it follows quickly that the out-group is regarded as deviant, separated from the main group and negatively defined against it. By looking at how the Other is created, why it is created, and what function this creation serves, we gain insight into the actual workings of state societies. We look at the subject of “discrimination” not from the standpoint of the victims, but from the point of view of the dominant group in society. The creation of deviant out-groups is an essential aspect of hierarchical states, which depend on it to form their identity, to cohere, and to keep their system of dominance intact. In the earliest days of societal development, men learned that it is possible to use existing differences among people to build systems of dominance and power. When men first made this discovery, they laid the ideological foundation for all systems of hierarchy, inequality, and exploitation . I have detailed the historic developments that led to the institutionalization of this process in the archaic states of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age.1 At the time of the formation of the archaic states nonslaveholding men accepted the bargain of being dominated and exploited in regard to resources by more powerful men of their own group, because they were simultaneously offered the chance to dominate and control the resources of others, the “different” others, namely the women and children of their own class. Even to men who did not themselves hold slaves, the existence of an underclass raised their own sense of status and made them accept their own relative inequality as a fair arrangement. Once the system of dominance and hierarchy is institutionalized in custom, law, and practice it is seen by the dominant as well as by the dominated as natural and just. People no longer question it, unless historical circumstances change very dramatically. The dominated, once the...

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