--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "feste37" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > As is clear from the context of my post, this lady's screed was > painful to read because she was wallowing in anger and resentment, > determined to be a victim.
I would asy determined to pose as a victim. You will notice that none of the sad, sad stories being posted are *hers*. One of the things that seems to happen to older women who are exposed to radical feminist ideas late in life is that they hear so many horror stories about victims that they start to imagine that they are victims, too. I saw this all too often in Rama's women students, who would suddenly shift from being happy, ful- filled women to being "monotopical" on the subject of the mistreatment of women. The more that they read the radicals of the feminist movement (like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon), the less balanced and more monotopical they became in their conversations. They began to try to turn *every* conversation, in *every* context, towards "women as victims" and "men as oppressors." It got so that even their women friends wrote them off and refused to have anything to do with them. Some got over this, and "passed through" this silly phase of becoming aware of feminist principles and settled on a more balanced view. Others literally became so paranoid that they wound up in institutions. It was a sad thing to see, especially because some of the women who went this route were my friends. So while this particular rap may not have any statis- tical or scientific basis, and is based solely on my observations of about 30 women and what they went through, here is my theory of what happened to them, and what seems to be happening to Raunchydog. 1. They began to assume a "victim mentality" because being a victim (while in *every* case they had never been victimized themselves) and identifying with the victims of *real* abuse and *real* misogyny boosted their egos and made them feel more important, as if by empathizing with the real victims emotionally they had become victims themselves. 2. Many of them began to display "false memory" syn- drome and practice "revisionist history," claiming abuse of themselves to friends who knew from first- hand experience that none of it was true. For example, one woman began to claim that she wound up in the hospital because her boyfriend beat her up. In reality, the two women she was claiming this to *had been present* when the woman tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, putting *herself* in the hospital as a result. The woman in question kept claiming that No, her boyfriend had done it all, and then began claiming that her women friends were lying to cover up for him. 3. Their careers and "real life" began to suffer. Many of these women began feeling so sorry for themselves (again, with no cause that was evident to relatives, friends and roommates) that they started skipping work, and eventually got fired. When this happened, naturally they blamed having been fired on misogyny, not on not showing up for work. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. I am NOT trying to say that misogyny does not exist, or that bad things don't happen to good women, at the hands of men who deserve to have the shit beaten out of them in a back alley by other men who don't share their attitudes toward women. That, sadly, DOES happen. What I'm saying is that Raunchydog's rants here smack of *imagined* abuse, not real abuse. I think she lost it over Hillary's loss, and has gotten involved with a bunch of women who think like Dworkin and MacKinnon and are essentially monotopical in their focus on misogyny. They can't see anything ELSE; they can't FOCUS on anything else. And, as we all know, "What you focus on, you become." Bottom line is that Raunchydog's rants are so off the wall and out of balance that I don't believe a word of them. I think she's mood-made herself into a very, very dark place that has very little to do with reality, hers or anyone else's. She doesn't even WRITE most of the angry, single-focus garbage she posts here...she just forwards the words of women even more angry and deranged than she is. And I feel for her. I'd love for something to happen that allows her to see more than misogyny in the world. I'd like to see her "pass through" this preadolescent phase of discovering feminism and segue to more adult and balanced feminist positions. But honestly, I don't see that happening. I think that if she has been unable to break this mono-focus fake victim routine by now, she's not going to be able to do so in the future. It's more likely that she'll wind up in an institution somewhere, as several of the women I saw go through this did. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > > > > > Feste inadvertently gives the game away: > > > > "It's painful to read (I couldn't get through > > even half of it)." > > > > Yes, sometimes the truth hurts. > > > > And when it does, all too often a river in > > Egypt is enlisted to wash it away. > > >
