--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "feste37" <feste37@> 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*.
>From yesterday's post by Anglachel, the same woman who wrote the "screed" Feste couldn't finish reading: "I have been raped more than once, always in my own home, always by someone I knew. I am lucky that the only man who threatened to kill me decided to batter holes in the wall beside my head while screaming how he would kill me instead of doing the deed. I am also lucky that I was able to leave that situation behind." http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/10/room-of-ones-own.html (She's mentioned this before in passing, but she's never harped on it.) <snip> > 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. Also for the record, Anglachel writes about many things, not just feminism-related topics. She decided to do a series of posts on violence against women; it's by no means her sole topic. > 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. And for the record again, becoming so paranoid that one winds up in an institution is not caused by involvement in feminism (or in anything else), even by obsessive involvement. Paranoia that requires institutionalization is an endogenous mental illness; the specific content is incidental. <snip> > 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. Yes, many decent human beings who have not themselves been victimized by oppression or other hardship do empathize and identify with the real victims. The civil rights movement, for instance, had a substantial component of white people, as did abolitionism before that. There are innumerable other examples of a positive answer to the old question, "Am I my brother's--or sister's--keeper?" Whether such human beings are motivated by ego or by the purest altruism is an interesting theoretical discussion but not very relevant to the practical reality of the attempt to improve the conditions of people's lives. (One might even suggest it's a matter of what's called enlightened self-interest: The conditions of my life will improve if those of my neighbor's life do as well.) <snip> > What I'm saying is that Raunchydog's rants here smack > of *imagined* abuse, not real abuse. Oddly enough, Barry appears to have forgotten his (correct) assertion above that none of the stories raunchydog has posted were *hers*. 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." However, as we also all know (at least those of us who have been paying attention), raunchydog doesn't post exclusively about the abuse of women. It's just one of her concerns (and I'd guess she's been a feminist for some time; she supported Hillary *because* she's a feminist, her feminism wasn't newly inspired by Hillary). The concern about abuse of women has been heightened recently among many, many women because of the misogyny unleashed by the candidacies of Hillary and Palin, which, as we've seen, has been repeatedly echoed on this forum, by Barry in particular. And that concern does tend to become intensified when it's not taken seriously, when it's brushed off and dismissed and trivialized, when the messenger is attacked for having brought the message--as Barry, who is one of those most guilty of misogyny on FFL, is doing now. > 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. Again, as Barry himself asserted above, raunchydog hasn't claimed to have been abused, so there isn't anything to be disbelieved in her own "rants." Barry is free, of course, to disbelieve the testimony of the other women raunchydog has posted and toss it all into that Egyptian river. If he thinks that will discourage or intimidate her, or me, from pressing our concerns about misogyny, however, he's got quite another think coming.
