Almost one hundred white, male, middle class, heterosexual racists met just over a week ago for a weekend of flagellation and self flagellation at Massey University.

The weekend was held in place of May Council 1981, which had to be postponed at the last minute because delegates felt they had to come to terms with their role of oppressors of women and racial minorities first. No date has been set for May Council to take place. It may have to be cancelled.

This is perfectly understandable because the problems delegates were facing cannot be solved overnight. In fact, it would seem they cannot be solved at all.

You see, there are some things that you just can't change. Like, if you're a man you are naturally an oppressor of women. It's all tied up with having a cock. That's why feminists sing about "Free castration on demand". Progressive men who understand about this cock-thing smile and clap.

At council dinner they did a mime about domestic violence and showed a mock castration on a man. His wife was really angry because he'd been getting on her wick for ages. Then she read this book called Womannuel about being liberated and everything and when her husband pulled out this candle she chopped it off. We all know that castration is the answer to domestic violence.

The Double Oppressors

Another thing you can't change is the colour of your skin. What we have to learn is that because we are white we are naturally oppressors of Maoris and Polynesians. It has nothing to do with class or economic exploitation. Racism is purely an emotional issue. We must admit we are guilty. We must recognise that gravity is racist. And so is counting up to ten.

To help us do this, they have these NPR groups - New Perspectives on Racism. Everyone plays power games which are designed to make you say racist things and it takes you three days to get over the trauma. They sound really neat.

They set up one of these groups at Massey for Maori and Pakeha students. But after a while they found it just didn't work with both races so they set up two groups - one for the Maoris, one for the Pakehas.

They called the Pakeha group Fair Fight Against Institutionalised Racism.

We all felt pretty guilty about being heterosexual too, so quite a lot of us wore "We are everywhere" triangles as a token of our support and a sign of our guilt.

About the only thing we didn't feel guilty about was being middle class. Class awareness isn't 'in' this season. That's because there is something you can do about class oppression. Just ask any Vic delegate.

The lonely minority who just couldn't get into self flagellation were said to be guilty of "wallowing in cynicism". When they claimed that what was being discussed during the weekend just wasn't relevant to the average student, they were quickly pooh-poohed by the majority. At times, it got quite oppressive. And why should we feel guilty if it wasn't relevant to the average student? They're all white, male, middle-class heterosexuals anyway.

Michele A'Court