(Fwd) Re: enough is enough!

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

The following message was to have been posted to the list, but in my 
rush this morning I pressed the wrong sequence of buttons, I hope 
that it does not come too late to discourage the latest defection:

Vaska wags her digit:
> OK.  If you were any older, you'd have known that the use of certain words
> and expessions would inevitably [and justly] brand you as an unreconstructed
> misogynist, and I doubt that's what you'd love to have sitting on your chest
> for years to come.

Now, now. Absent a comprehensive list of such offensive terms, men 
might heretofore be left only with the terms woman, womyn, sister and 
mother. And truth be told, I've only known one other person who used 
the term "harridan", so I doubt it is recognized as part of any 
misogynists lexicon. But as I am soon turning 40, I guess I'll become 
a little smarter any day now. 

> the testosterone induced cockiness they're often driven to

If generalizing about hormonally induced behaviour is inappropriate 
for the gander.....


> it's not a bad idea to acknowledge the reality of them.  

Fact is that I was aware of the access problem suffered by one, and I 
had very recently been involved in a pleasant correspondence with 
another, beyond my recent flurry of notes to you. I don't deny that 
women may not get the attention men do in a classroom, but I can 
honestly say, that for any number of reasons, I have not seen it in 
my experience, and that it was definitely not a problem on the 
p-list. That is also not to suggest  that  women may not feel
intimidated, but as others have pointed out, EVERYONE seems to have 
had to overcome insecurity to post. Every time I put something up , 
and it took a few months to gather the courage, I expect to be 
slammed for some shortcoming or another. Instead, I have found the 
people on the list extremely courteous, responsive, engaging and 
nurturing. I was less concerned with speaking up for a gender, than I 
was with defending what we all agree to be the general feeling of 
cooperation here. There was also the issue of the anonymity of those 
who do not give their full names. It took me some time to figure out 
if Vaska was m/f, I still don't know about Heikki and I have made at 
least two other errors of this kind. If people are reluctant to post, 
I would argue that the evidence suggests a reason other than gender. 
MR. Harrison, a person whose contributions are far better use of 
bandwidth than my own, feels constrained, and the list loses. 

>and that a very large number of them exploit *that* physical
> difference in ways appalling to behold.  Let alone experience.  

At the risk of being reamed by Musikar for "pretense", I can only 
tell you that I have witnessed domestic violence up close, I have 
offered the use of my home to the local shelter system (but was 
declined because my girlfriend at the time was a counselor). It is an 
activity for which I have zero tolerance, but it doesn't stop me from 
recognizing that it is driven by power dynamics, NOT gender, as you 
graciously admit. 

> Well, and for the list as a whole: Andrew and I have exchanged some more
> words in private and all's well between Scotland and Canada.  He thinks it
> was foolish of me to make our correspondence fully public, I think it 

Now I can stop crying.

Vaska,
I believe that I can show you no greater respect than to take you on 
in argument. To ignore those issues with which I disagree for any 
reason of gender would be to patronize, and given the relative 
disparity of our qualifications, that would be patently ridiculous. 
You will notice that I do not take issue with your interpretation of 
other artists(like Rilke, another R that I haven't read) only with 
the premises underlying your interpretation of the text we are all 
sharing. I have rarely used the term that started this conflagration, 
and never to achieve the kind of purposes ascribed to me by some, it 
was utterly lacking in malice. That is a motivation that is 
remarkably absent from this group. 
love,
cfa