hearing a female voice (was Re: **MD/GR-- or, Christ! Not again!)

[Christine Karatnytsky]

Quoth Dana:

>Oh Charles, I believe I have been flamed for the first time...sort of 
>like losing my virginity:  a little painful but basically
inconsequential.

Dana, why is the female anatomy always--literally and metaphorically--up
for grabs?  I'm serious.

Does being flamed for the first time always call to mind a woman's spread
legs?  And why, I wonder, would someone feel so comfortable to use this
metaphor on the p-list?

Heavy sigh, Dana:

You're going to have to explain to me why *your* turn of phrase is a
permissible use of the female body as a language tool--and Paul's isn't. 
Do me a favor, though, and please don't pull a Vaska on me and tell me
that it's OK because you're a woman--a member of the oppressed class, in
other words, and somehow privileged.  This, to me, is not a
justification.

While the use of "queer" and "nigger" may arguably empower the relevant
speaker by breaking a language taboo, it just doesn't work for me.  Call
me a retrograde feminist, but I don't bond through transgressions like
these.  I won't wink knowingly if one of our sisterhood calls another a
"bitch,"  and,  in case, you weren't around for the last specious gender
war, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version:  Vaska, a likeable,
intelligent, articulate scholar who intimidates the shit out of me,
insisted in the midst of yet another gender language conflagration that
her use of the phrase "nanny time" to derogate the idea of a list
moderator wasn't sexist.  Please don't do this, OK?  I'm not buying.     

In fact, let me tell you that I'm a little offended by your poorly-chosen
simile.  It isn't right.  Paul's was of much better quality, infinitely
more suitable for the likes of the p-list.  Losing *my* virginity was
such an auspicious event in my young life that I revisted it, at the
instigation of your heartless and demeaning comment, to recall with what
warmth, what desperation, what fear, what longing I was ushered into the
realm of physical love.

I was 13, baby doll; he was 23.  He kept his shirt on, but we used the
top bunk.  If the details of this slightly painful but highly
consequential recollection isn't cause enough for me to crack open a
bottle of champagne in retroactive celebration, I don't know what is. 
Did I become  hypnotized by the black light shining its violet trickery
on the velvet Led Zeppelin poster?  Did I swoon in his arms when he lit
that stick of, was it, musk incense?  Excuse me a minute, I'm having a
Proustian rush.  In fact--and this is terrible because I hate being so
mean--but I'll tell you, this feeling is so intense that I'm about to
have a Mittelwerk moment.  Hang on:  If becoming sexually active had been
more meaningful to you, maybe your rhetoric would be better.

Dana, I apologize for being unkind.  You have happened to light into a
person who I consider one of the kindest, most intelligent souls I have
met here, based on some misconstrued idea you've gotten into your head. 
You do a great disservice to Paul, I assure you.  

These gender language tussles have happened a couple of times in my
tenure on the list.  While there may be issues, miscommunications, and
arguments, in general, the list is not a misongynist environment.  As a
card-carrying woman, you can take my word for it, along with my support
in the war.  Nevertheless,  you have picked the wrong battle, the wrong
battlefield.


Chris, who must really get back to finishing her openers for the MDMD