>        John:
>        You are crowding this list with comments that some of us might
>find offensive.  I agree with Donna Cunningham completely.  And Missy.
>Do we have to continue to make the point about violence directed against
>women by pouring our hearts out with real life stories before you
>can be convinced that women are indeed victims?
 
AAAAAAaaaawwwwwwwww---right, folks, I've been sitting on the sidelines
here for almost 4 days, biting my feminine tongue for fear of being
decried as a "traitor" by members of my gender, but this has gotten
out of hand.  The point of discussion isn't to pound on the correct
drum....it's to present all sides of the story.  And contrary to the
comments that have made it seem otherwise lately, men ARE abused by
women.  This whole issue doesn't boil down to "men bad, women good."
The facts (yes, silly me, I never bought into the fuzzy-logic
tres fashionable postmodern 'there are no facts' school of thought)
are there, and they're undeniable.  Abuse is a two-way street in this
society, and all the media-screaming about poor, poor women and the big,
bad men who beat them isn't going to change that.
 
What appalls me about this whole discussion is this:  we don't seem to
be addressing the fact that there are PEOPLE getting hurt.  There
are WOMEN being abused, and MEN doing all the abusing, according to the
list.  And no matter how many times you say it, that just AIN'T SO|
Why is it OK to be concerned about the women, but not the men?  Why
are we concentrating on Males-As-Abusers and decrying all possessors of
Y-chromasomes without acknowledging that the same behaviors are
engaged in by women?
 
>        And what's with this idea of normality & facts?  Didn't anybody
>teach you that there are no facts per se but interpretations of facts?
>That the scientific knowledge you invoke can become dangerous when it
>innocents itself and therefore eludes scrutiny?  These are fairly simple
>concepts, of which I hoped that subscribers of this list would have a basic
>understanding.
 
This take on things is hopelessly relativistic and FAR from the
"accepted" paradigm.  It takes a good idea (don't believe everything you
read) and turns it into "don't believe anything you don't WANT to
believe," which is a FAR more dangerous thing.
 
>        Maybe the time has come to drop the subject altogether.
 
"Let's take our ball and go home and not play with John anymore, kids."
 
Good.  That's constructive.
 
Flame away, O members of my own gender who no doubt now think I watch
Rush Limbaugh and voted for Bush.  Neither, by the way, is the case.
 
Denise M. Bryson             [log in to unmask]
Language and Literature      Northeast Missouri State University
Kirksville, MO  63501
 
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::                        Meet The New Boss....                       ::
::                     Same as the Old Boss....     The Who           ::
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