"In the 1960's, women told men that in order to get sex, they would have to be kind, understanding and equal. Men very quickly learned to fake kindness, understanding and equality."
The women who are fooled that we are equal at the minute are pretty stupid.
I don't ask for a man to understand me per se; I admit that I am unlikely to ever understand him, so it wouldn't really be fair to ask him to understand every nuance of my personality. I would like him to undrestand that I'm a human being, though. Kindness is either in your nature or it's not, and it's not really top of my priority list. Equality, however, is. Not in the sense of equal pay and equal treatment at work, because I recognise that that is a total pipe dream for the foreseeable future, but in a relationship...
Equality in a relationship, to me, means that you both have equal footing when it comes to negotiating what is and is not acceptable in terms of the relationship. And any man who says he will treat me equally in that respect, but only pretends to do so, will be seen through and dumped before sex ever becomes an option... But I recognise that not all women will think the same way, or even want to.
Perhaps this is just me being ultra-sensitive, as what is now euphemistically termed "a domestic violence survivor" - i.e. I once had a boyfriend who for various reasons beat seven shades of shit out of me on a regular basis - but is this really an appropriate subject for smug, self-congratulatory joking about?
Or shall I just remove myself from your f-list now, because the horrors of that experience have given me a sense of humour bypass on that particular subject?
If you look back through human history, most of day to day life must have been so frightful that I reckon humans must have evolved a sense of humour for exactly the reason that, as sensitive intelligent beings, we needed some mechanism to cope with plagues, pestilence, insane dictators, the vagaries of fate and so on without going completely mad. Gallows humour. And violent men ought to be mocked and satirised, as much as possible, by as many people as possible. It's much more likely to discourage them than silence and fear. So, yes, I'd argue that this was definitely appropriate subject matter for joking. Otherwise it becomes like the Mohammed cartoons, a hushed minefield of other people's sensibilities with no prospect of closure in sight.
I have personal experience of the fact that violent men, when laughed at, become more violent towards their victim, while appearing to get the joke in public. It doesn't discourage them from being violent to mock them and belittle them, it merely encourages them to take greater steps to hide it.
As David quite rightly pointed out with regard to the flying spaghetti monster, if you mock and belittle people they are most unlikely to then want to listen to your pronouncements on how they should behave and what they should believe.
I am aware that gallows humour is a welcome and useful mechanism, but there's a line between laughing at something to diffuse tension and laughing at the victims of something and thereby condoning the abhorrent behaviour. I don't, personally, think that line was crossed above, but felt that perhaps it needed mentioning that the line is there.
* shrug *
You may, of course, feel free to disagree with me.
Well, I can't speak for the past, obvuiously, but as for the current thread, the chances are that the anonymous poster is my brother John. In which case, I can advise you, without demur, that you are much more likely to secure the equality which is your stated objective in your post (1) if you reply with something like "mental cruelty from you would be like being stabbed with an overripe banana, fat boy."
Oddly enough I have seen a very interesting 'alternative response' to domestic violence. Groups of armed men would find the offender. They would at gunpoint bundle him into a car. They would take him somewhere isolated.
They would mock anhd humiliate the domestic abuser. They would occasionally torture them. They would certainly trumatise them. And above all, at some point a gun WOULD be placed into either their mouth or anal passage and they would be told in NO uncertain terms that if they did it again, they would be shot.
Occsionally they would follow this up with the gun being placed to the back of the knee cap and a single bullet being discharged into the mans leg.
It was beyond mockery. It was an extreme zero tolerance approach towards domestic violence. The domestic violence was met by a much more serious wave of violence- an escalation designed specifically to terrify the perpetuator into a state of submission. Simply put- get over your feelings of rage and anger or die.
Did it work? I cannot really say. Some communities keep secrets for a long long time and hide them very well. But I do know that there were reasons why communities supported the IRA even when they disagreed with the politics of the campaign.
I mention this to mention one other factor- in that community- you did NOT joke about domestic abuse. Simply did not. A whisper that it was going on led to it being 'reported'. Child abuse was treated much the same.
Please do NOT think for one second I am painting certain terrorist groups in noble colours- they have NO noble colours.
Might I point you at my reply to snapesbabe's recent post in her own LJ?
I found the Anon commenter's reply tasteless because domestic violence is common enough that he/she could be a culprit. I'll laugh along with jokes about large-scale tragedies, serial killers and the like because, as you say, it's a way of dealing with the subject, and it's unlikely that any of the people making the jokes would ever take part in those acts.
Also, when it comes to domestic violence, I doubt the aggressors are the sort of people who'll pay any attention to people who mocck them. Having friends say "That's unacceptable" and cut contact until their behaviour changed might, at a pinch, but pointing & laughing is more lkely to make them more aggressive.
Hi Jenny, long time no speak. Nice to hear from you. I hope you are well.
It's a bit off-topic, but I've got a late birthday present in the flat that I still have to post to you (belated payback for all the Lush products). I've tried to email you, but your old email is defunct. Can you drop me a line either at the farm or the flat to let me have an address for postage? Thanks a lot,
Well, if I've caused inadvertent offense, no offence was intended to any readers. If you read back my reply, I hope you'll realsei that I was attempting to pour alkali on the acid of the original, rather unpleasant, anonymous post.
I know, hon, which is why I posted something rather than just removing you from my F-list; which I would have done if I thought you were being malicious.
Men and women are no different - women can be just as shallow, thoughtless and cruel and discriminating as men can, in fact often they can be worse (women tend to murder by predetermined means, men tend to act on 'passion'). Men in turn can be as kind, understanding and equal as women, if not more so.
Not that equality truly exists, nor will it, nor should it. A business man of high standing once said that no small company would employ a woman of child baring age if they thought they could get away with it - and to be fair he has a point. Things such as maternity leave and school holiday cover cripple a small firm. I'm not saying that women should be prevented from working - being an employed woman of child baring age I'm grateful that we're currently in the position we're in.
But gender discrimination aside - while we as humans are different in our build and capabilities, there will ALWAYS be inequality.
In the sixties women began to see they had the possibility for economic independence and so marriage, or the equivalent, became optional. Before that, most women needed a man in their lives in order to survive.
So, it is entirely possible that what women saw as being in a position to be more selective about the men in their life, men saw as a demand for them to have to pretend to be something they were not in order to have sex.
Not the first time men have thought with their gonads. Won't be the last.
Don't know if this thread was prompted by the following article in today's Grauniad (the quote doesn't appear to come from it), but anyway, thought I would link to this, as it's about 'Male feminists': http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1838741,00.html
I have two points to note on the above:
Isn't it interesting how we still assume that sex is something that (only) men want and that they have to make a special effort to persuade women to provide it?
These days, it's awfully easy for a lot of women to assume the 'battle of the sexes' is won because we can be financially self-reliant (BTW, as I earn a lot more than 'my' man, does that mean we're not equal?). But there's more than one kind of equality, and certainly a lot more than one kind of inequality. An equal chance for the world to screw you over comes in so many variants - besides the gender thing, there's race, class, religious heritage, 'size' (height or weight), intelligence and health. Ask a white, middle-class woman if she often feels sexually discriminated against, and she may well say she's doing fine. Some of the working-class, Asian girls I taught in Birmingham, however, had very different life chances to mine, no matter how bright and able they were.
Isn't it interesting how we still assume that sex is something that (only) men want and that they have to make a special effort to persuade women to provide it?
Yes, that IS an interesting assumption...
I think men and women DO think about sex very differently, but that doesn't necessarily mean that men want MORE sex than women.
The quote is something of a paraphrase from Germaine Greer - I know I got it wrong, but I tend to like Greer as she ages and develops a sense of humour. What's been most interesting to me in this threat is just how seriously everyone seems to have taken it when the original quote was said by someone in jest.
Perhaps it's because people with opinions they know will be controversial often present those opinions within jokes to distance themselve from those views a little. 'Many a true word spoke in jest' and all that.
Q- How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? A- That's not funny.
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The women who are fooled that we are equal at the minute are pretty stupid.
I don't ask for a man to understand me per se; I admit that I am unlikely to ever understand him, so it wouldn't really be fair to ask him to understand every nuance of my personality. I would like him to undrestand that I'm a human being, though. Kindness is either in your nature or it's not, and it's not really top of my priority list. Equality, however, is. Not in the sense of equal pay and equal treatment at work, because I recognise that that is a total pipe dream for the foreseeable future, but in a relationship...
Equality in a relationship, to me, means that you both have equal footing when it comes to negotiating what is and is not acceptable in terms of the relationship. And any man who says he will treat me equally in that respect, but only pretends to do so, will be seen through and dumped before sex ever becomes an option... But I recognise that not all women will think the same way, or even want to.
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(Anonymous) 2006-08-07 10:13 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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Or shall I just remove myself from your f-list now, because the horrors of that experience have given me a sense of humour bypass on that particular subject?
SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-07 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)H
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
As David quite rightly pointed out with regard to the flying spaghetti monster, if you mock and belittle people they are most unlikely to then want to listen to your pronouncements on how they should behave and what they should believe.
I am aware that gallows humour is a welcome and useful mechanism, but there's a line between laughing at something to diffuse tension and laughing at the victims of something and thereby condoning the abhorrent behaviour. I don't, personally, think that line was crossed above, but felt that perhaps it needed mentioning that the line is there.
* shrug *
You may, of course, feel free to disagree with me.
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-08 08:30 am (UTC)(link)H
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-08 08:54 am (UTC)(link)Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-08 08:57 am (UTC)(link)Huggggzzzz
H
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-09 09:20 am (UTC)(link)Oooh yeah!
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-09 09:23 am (UTC)(link)*donkey rubs*
H
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-09 09:38 am (UTC)(link)Either that or male pattern baldness, but why should I take responsibility myself when I can point and whine?
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
Groups of armed men would find the offender.
They would at gunpoint bundle him into a car.
They would take him somewhere isolated.
They would mock anhd humiliate the domestic abuser.
They would occasionally torture them.
They would certainly trumatise them.
And above all, at some point a gun WOULD be placed into either their mouth or anal passage and they would be told in NO uncertain terms that if they did it again, they would be shot.
Occsionally they would follow this up with the gun being placed to the back of the knee cap and a single bullet being discharged into the mans leg.
It was beyond mockery. It was an extreme zero tolerance approach towards domestic violence.
The domestic violence was met by a much more serious wave of violence- an escalation designed specifically to terrify the perpetuator into a state of submission.
Simply put- get over your feelings of rage and anger or die.
Did it work? I cannot really say. Some communities keep secrets for a long long time and hide them very well. But I do know that there were reasons why communities supported the IRA even when they disagreed with the politics of the campaign.
I mention this to mention one other factor- in that community- you did NOT joke about domestic abuse. Simply did not. A whisper that it was going on led to it being 'reported'. Child abuse was treated much the same.
Please do NOT think for one second I am painting certain terrorist groups in noble colours- they have NO noble colours.
Just 2p worth...
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-08 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)H
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
I found the Anon commenter's reply tasteless because domestic violence is common enough that he/she could be a culprit. I'll laugh along with jokes about large-scale tragedies, serial killers and the like because, as you say, it's a way of dealing with the subject, and it's unlikely that any of the people making the jokes would ever take part in those acts.
Also, when it comes to domestic violence, I doubt the aggressors are the sort of people who'll pay any attention to people who mocck them. Having friends say "That's unacceptable" and cut contact until their behaviour changed might, at a pinch, but pointing & laughing is more lkely to make them more aggressive.
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
(Anonymous) 2006-08-08 08:25 am (UTC)(link)It's a bit off-topic, but I've got a late birthday present in the flat that I still have to post to you (belated payback for all the Lush products). I've tried to email you, but your old email is defunct. Can you drop me a line either at the farm or the flat to let me have an address for postage? Thanks a lot,
Hilary
Re: SOH - the body's natural defence
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If you read back my reply, I hope you'll realsei that I was attempting to pour alkali on the acid of the original, rather unpleasant, anonymous post.
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I know, hon, which is why I posted something rather than just removing you from my F-list; which I would have done if I thought you were being malicious.
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Not that equality truly exists, nor will it, nor should it. A business man of high standing once said that no small company would employ a woman of child baring age if they thought they could get away with it - and to be fair he has a point. Things such as maternity leave and school holiday cover cripple a small firm. I'm not saying that women should be prevented from working - being an employed woman of child baring age I'm grateful that we're currently in the position we're in.
But gender discrimination aside - while we as humans are different in our build and capabilities, there will ALWAYS be inequality.
no subject
So, it is entirely possible that what women saw as being in a position to be more selective about the men in their life, men saw as a demand for them to have to pretend to be something they were not in order to have sex.
Not the first time men have thought with their gonads. Won't be the last.
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no subject
(Anonymous) 2006-08-07 11:58 am (UTC)(link)H
no subject
I have two points to note on the above:
Isn't it interesting how we still assume that sex is something that (only) men want and that they have to make a special effort to persuade women to provide it?
These days, it's awfully easy for a lot of women to assume the 'battle of the sexes' is won because we can be financially self-reliant (BTW, as I earn a lot more than 'my' man, does that mean we're not equal?). But there's more than one kind of equality, and certainly a lot more than one kind of inequality. An equal chance for the world to screw you over comes in so many variants - besides the gender thing, there's race, class, religious heritage, 'size' (height or weight), intelligence and health. Ask a white, middle-class woman if she often feels sexually discriminated against, and she may well say she's doing fine. Some of the working-class, Asian girls I taught in Birmingham, however, had very different life chances to mine, no matter how bright and able they were.
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Yes, that IS an interesting assumption...
I think men and women DO think about sex very differently, but that doesn't necessarily mean that men want MORE sex than women.
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What's been most interesting to me in this threat is just how seriously everyone seems to have taken it when the original quote was said by someone in jest.
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Q- How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A- That's not funny.
;)