Hi all- Just to clarify-
>Yes, a quip it was. As you know, I wasn't equating women with terrorism. I >guess I agree about the inappropriate stereotype. I don't think that it was women being equated with terrorism, as much as the idea that to do something cowardly, whatever it is, is associated with being female. The implication is that it is not "manly" or man-like - and therefore is female-like - to do something cowardly (no matter what it is). >Can we also agree that "cyber-bully" is a better moniker than >"cyber-rapist", especially for one of our own JMDLers? I totally agree. I am bothered by the term "cyber-racist" here for two reasons. One is because of the implications of it for actual rape - not because the emails don't make one feel violated - they can, and words can be abusive - but because when we throw the word around so much it dilutes its meaning in the real world. I can imagine a variety of arguments here, such as "if the words are violating and abusive then it *is* equivalent to the violation of rape." Well, I can't pretend to know how those exchanges with Marcel felt to others who experienced them. I had some nasty exchanges with him myself during the election, which really upset me at the time, and though I am fortunate in that I have never been raped, I can say that based on my experiences in real life, a rape would be much more violating to me. Again, I don't presume to know how Marcel's emails felt to anyone else who was the recipient. The other reason that the use of the word "cyber-rapist" bothered me so is that it felt to me like cruelty. That, and some other comments made about Marcel at that time, really bothered me. Ok, he did some creep-y things (both creepy and behavior-of-a-creep), and I am not talking (in this paragraph) about how I feel about his banishment. But I think that our response to the conflict on the list, rather than simply choosing to support the person making the complaint (or not, as the case may be), was a real attack, fairly vicious, and that felt wrong to me. There were people (Ashara comes to mind) who made a clear point in a way that didn't feel abusive or hurtful. I totally respect that. But other things said felt really wrong, and that still bothers me. I don't know why I'm writing all this. I don't think anyone particularly wants to go back into this topic. But I feel like I should have said it then, so I said it now. :-) >p.s. Yael, don't you think, by extension that the original solution is also >insulting to women, implying as it does that living as a woman under the >Taliban is a worse fate than execution or living as a man in prison? What's >good for the gander is good for the goose, right? Mmm, interesting point. Yes, I didn't like the original "solution" either. It bugged me. Like living as a woman would be the worst possible punishment. You are right about that. It didn't quite inspire me to write in about it because women in Afghanistan, from all I can tell, really do live pretty crappy lives. Though I am sure that for a lot of them, that is simply their life, they have good days and bad days, and there is more to those women than their status as victims (as the documentaries, i'm sure, express, though i haven't seen them). But anyhow, back to my point - because we all sort of have this understanding that life as a woman in Afghanistan is crappy, "punishing" bin Laden by subjecting him to the restricted lifestyle that his allies helped create seems like a statement of "just desserts" (though I don't hold with such thinking). More than a statement of "it is worse to be a woman than to be dead." But that was just my first interpretation. What bothered me more about the original joke email is something I am having a harder time pinning down, but something about the joking nature of referring to sexual reassignment surgery - as if undergoing that (becoming a woman) makes one less of a person, somehow. I don't know. When I try to explain it here it doesn't come off much different than what I stated in the previous paragraph. But somehow, the fact that sexual assignment surgery - which is rare and done in cases where people's external trappings do not coincide with their deepest feelings about who they are - is so lightly used as a "punishment"... Yeah. Maybe someone else can explain this better. Anyone? I hope no one minds these off topic, sensitive-issue ramblings. OK I am going to bed. I am on digest, so if anyone responds to this and doesn't cc me, my responses will be delayed. hugs, Yael
