enough is enough!

[Vaska]

Dear P-Listers:

As recently as two days ago I never imagined that I would become the object
of a series of harrassing, offensive, bad-faith comminications which have
been taking up a great deal of my time.  However tasteless this might
appear, and whatever list decorum I may be transgressing, I've decided to go
public with it and no longer protect the identity of the person who's taken
the liberty to inflict this series of one-upmanship games on me. This person
elected to do so offlist, where such a barrage of snide attacks,
masquerading as intellectual debate, can act to intimidate me from making
any other public statements myself [to avoid more of this kind of stuff]
precisely because they are carefully screened from the eyes of the rest of
P-list members.  Enough is enough.

So here it goes, my infamous and by now exhaustingly tiresome correspondence
with Andrew Dinn.  In all its original glory:

Vaska, [offline]
> How come Andrew's long post of a moment ago, as well as Charles's of
> yesterday, had nothing to say about any "special pleading" on the part of
> the *male* P-listers I'd mentioned and quoted?  

Andrew:
My line was that sexism is a red herring in the arguments for or
against moderation. 

Vaska:
My original posts on this did not have anything to do with sexism as such --
please do check them again, Andrew.  They did bring up *a* point which needs
to be considered when we debate the pros and cons of having a list "pointsman."

Andrew: 
As such? So, your line is that women are intimidated about posting but
that this [perceived or real] intimidation is to do with something
other than sexism? Uhuh? I'll take that under advisement.

Andrew:
Why do I have to attack the inanities of male
posters to establish this point? If you can show how this `failure'
breaks the thread of my argument please do so. If not then what is the
problem.

Vaska:
I do not think those men are inane or stupid or inarticulate.  

Andrew:
Nor do I. But your response criticised me and Charles for not replying
to the inanities of male posters. And I find your leap of logic here
somewhat baffling. People can write inanities without thereby
automatically being worthy of the label inane.

Vaska:
Harrison very bravely, in my view, posted a message on the list saying that
the very debate has already had a stifling effect on him.  That, I think, is
a problem worth giving some thought to.  

Andrew:
I am not particularly unhappy about this fact. I wish other male
posters would do the same. This is a public space where people come
and park their minds in the hope of enlightnment and enjoyment. If
posters feel little or no responsibility when they fill that space
then we get pollution. I have been giving this precise argument `some
thought' for all the years I have been participating on the list.


> How come these men were neither defined nor defended as no "shrinking
> violets" indeed?  

Andrew:
Because in most cases such a statement would be vacuously true. Most
men are not shrinking violets, a fortiori most male posters are not (a
fortiori, since it requires, inter alia, a certain amount of ego to
post). I did not intend the term to be offensive. I usually regard it
as high praise when applied to a woman since it connotes a certain
level of victory over almost universal forces of repression.

Vaska:
It is a mightily insulting expression to use in reference to those women
[since you doubt that men can be such -- or would probably go for something
like "wimps" instead] who for reasons I don't think you can begin to
appreciate let alone fathom have not managed to overcome the repression
they've known [in many cases] since literally babyhood.

Andrew:
You presume to know much of my personal history. That's both foolish
and pointless. Foolish because it undermines the effect of your
arguments and pointless because it gets us nowhere. Perhaps, when you
are more intimately acquainted with my personal circumstances you
might be in a position to draw pertinent and useful conclusions
regarding my experience and its effect on my judgement. Until then
maybe you should try to argue against the judgements themselves.

How do you know that I am not, for example, gay and therefore subject
to gross repression `since literally babyhood'? How do you know that I
have not been physically abused or raped? How do you know that my
history does not involve put-downs, dismissals, rejections and all the
other machinery of intellectual and emotional subsidence. How do you
know that women with whom I am intimately related have not been
subject to these same abuses. You don't and your speculation clouds
your judgement.

Vaska:
Your posts give sufficient evidence of a truly remarkable insensitivity to
the male as well as the female psyche.  This may indeed be the effect of any
number of traumas, childhood or otherwise: the etiology of your problem is
quite irrelevant to the point I made above.

Andrew:
Like I said, they [the women on the list] practise self-moderation and look
at the beneficial consequences for the level of their discourse. No denial
here and not a bad thing, all told. Now if only we could concentrate on
getting the
men to do the same.

Vaska:
You're deliberately, and for the second time in a row, ignoring the fact
that for at least those women who have contacted me privately their silence
has not been a matter of self-moderation.  *They* do not think that the
intimidation they feel [in my view justifiably] has had any beneficial
effects on their ability to contribute to the list.

Andrew:
I did not ignore it. I contrasted it with the lack of concern with
which most male posters dispatch trivia and suggested that more
timidity all round might not be such a bad thing (if sauce does not go
down well with the goose then one might expect it to taste as bad with
the gander). I certainly did not recommend indiscriminate abuse of
posters, nor did I suggest that people should not be encouraged to
post relevant comments, whether sophisticated or naive. Hell, I could
hardly do so given that I myself am an amateur Pynchonologist. If you
inferred otherwise well you misunderstood me. I'll try to be clearer
next time.

> Methinks the gentlemen do protest too much....

Andrew:
You can think what you like but I posted because I did not want to see
the argument about moderation - a subject about which I am deeply
concerned - hijacked by what I considered irrelevant and potentially
highly charged arguments about sexism - a subject about which I am
equally deeply concerned. And your remark above is nice easy rhetoric
but I'd like to know exactly *how* you consider my response betrays a
problem. In detail. Otherwise it's just a cheap slur.

Vaska:
Please see my comments and responses above.

Andrew:
Yeah, well as you can tell I wasn't very impressed by the response.

Vaska:
I'm crushed.