It may feel like pissing in the wind, but I'm pretty well convinced that at some point, most people are going to look back on this whole thing as being as weird as people 100 years ago who thought all kinds of whacky things, like you can determine personality by lumps in the skull (phrenology) or bleeding out bad humours.
You know what finally snapped me out of it? When I heard finally for the umpteenth time, "We KNOW now that rape isn't about sex, it's about violent domination." That word, "KNOW," grated on me one too many times. And instead of repeating it like a shibboleth, I said, "okay, how exactly do we KNOW that?" Because you know, if we were to test that empirically, I'd assume that we could find a similar number of men who hold knives to women's throats, pin them down, and say, "kiss my foot!!!" and then run away as those who sexually violate them.
Right?
And it cascaded from there. We KNOW men are more violent then women, right? Well clearly we know men are bigger and stronger so when they hit with their hands they're more likely to do serious damage, if you look into the research everything backs that up, but if you look harder it turns out that women are *far* more likely to physically abuse children and helpless old people, AND, in spousal abuse situations, they're far more likely to use *weapons* and to do things like wait until their spouse/partner is asleep to do their damage than men are.
Which is not to say women are worse, because they certainly are not. But it's amazing, once you question one thing you are told by society (not scripture, not "the wisdom of the ages," not even experience, just what "everybody knows"), you start to question a whole bunch of things.
And that's a good thing. Or at least I always thought it was a good thing. It's amazing how often since then I've been accused of being a misogynist, an "anti-feminist," AND a "flaming liberal" for any of this.
I increasingly believe rational thought in this area is simply beyond most people, but I think also that perhaps every generation has a collective handful of insanities that they can't shake, and it changes from generation to generation is all.
I personally take it a little different than that. The issue is not whether the research on the issue is or isn't biased, or even is or isn't wrong. The fundamental point is that even if all the bad things about men are true, it still doesn't change the fact that men are also abused and the laws, (and even moreso) the DV shelters and establishments are currently set up to preclude even the possibility of helping those men.
well that's a no-bullsh*t cut-to-the chase attitude, Zach, and I respect that.
The only thing I'd do is take it one step further: what is *actually* heping the kids involved? Without getting preachy, but rather empirical: what is *actually* going to help the kids, let alone the moms and the dads?
Let's take what seems to me a rather stereotypical case:
Screaming mom hurls regular verbal abuse at a failure husband. Failure husband angrily lashes out in response, maybe physically and maybe with just cruel words. Maybe mom ridicules him as a failure. Maybe mom even goes further and smacks him with a heavy iron kitchen pot, and ridicules his manhood.
Young children see and hear all that and are scarred.
Is there an actual "victim" here besides the kids? Does this family need more than just labeling who's right and who's wrong? Should someone be arrested in this scenario, while someone else labeled the hero/heroine/victim/oppressor? Or do they all need some help toward more functional behavior, better options, and maybe sane reconciliation?
I'm amazed that anyone considers those "liberal" or "conservative" questions. Libral to whom? Conservative to whom? Right-wing or left-wing to whom?
Even let's go to extremes: he once threw a punch at his wife and hurt her. Or, she once in a fit of rage cut him with a knife or hit him with a softball bat while he was asleep. Does that end it? Does it stop right there and end in divorce and eternal separation and The End?
When do men and women start treating each other like equals, even in dire cases like this? When do adult women and men take responsibility for their behavior and figure out between them what is and is not responsible behavior?
Playing the "who's the victim?" game is probably the least productive game you possibly can play, in most circumstances. Yeah in some cases it's obviously clear cut and unquestionable but do we allow such extremes to drive our entire point of view?
Dude, I grew up watching my (very young) old man beat the crap out of my (even younger) mom. These memories are seared into me from the age of 3 or 4. Fast forward 35 years, and at one point, suffering from insomnia, my doctor gave me a drug called Ambien, and while I have no memory of it whatsoever, my wife remembers me behaving in some very inappropriate behavior while on it. I have zero memory of this--zero. When my wife informed me about them, at first I thought she was crazy, then I burst into tears and never took the drug again. I'm still haunted by the "memory" of that, most important being, I have no actual memory of it *at all* yet I know my wife and son would never lie about something like that.
And that was two years ago. I won't dealve further than that, and other things have happened between us that do not need public airing even though thank God we still try to deal with our problems like sane adults. What did we need in those times? State intervention, with someone locked up and someone nurtured like a child-victim? Or help and support from understanding and mature people?
God damn it, until we get past this "person X is the victim, person Y is the perpetrator" mentality--which is maybe true 5% of the time, but is not true 95% of the time--we're going to keep making really stupid mistakes. Not just as a society but, worse, in a clumsy government-run civil service system.
"Man abuses woman. Woman takes it until someone like the state saves her." Is that the paradigm we really all have in our heads? It seems to be. Is that really right most of the time?
Yep, the idea that all these self-appointed people have decided they "know" better than anybody else what DV is all about, oh that gets me!
When you get right down to it, what you find from talking to people who have been visited by the scourge of DV, is that most of it is mutual, and there is no clear victim or abuser.
If only we could somehow remove the people from it, and anybody's preconceived notions of what one or the other was intending, I think we'd discover that often it's a product of some people's inability to communicate. I'm sure that sounds very strange, but there you have it.
There are so many variables, and so many different manifestations of the problem, it's purely ridiculous to have only one way to approach it.
The saddest thing for me is that so many people have bought the marketing strategy and go to shelters, etc, expecting help, and find there just isn't any. Rather like going to an ER with a broken arm, only to find all they do is amputate, so they can sell you a brand-new Dextrous 3000 prosthesis. And if you don't like it, tough, live with the broken arm or fix it yourself, if you can figure out how.
10.23.2007 2:05am
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
You know what finally snapped me out of it? When I heard finally for the umpteenth time, "We KNOW now that rape isn't about sex, it's about violent domination." That word, "KNOW," grated on me one too many times. And instead of repeating it like a shibboleth, I said, "okay, how exactly do we KNOW that?" Because you know, if we were to test that empirically, I'd assume that we could find a similar number of men who hold knives to women's throats, pin them down, and say, "kiss my foot!!!" and then run away as those who sexually violate them.
Right?
And it cascaded from there. We KNOW men are more violent then women, right? Well clearly we know men are bigger and stronger so when they hit with their hands they're more likely to do serious damage, if you look into the research everything backs that up, but if you look harder it turns out that women are *far* more likely to physically abuse children and helpless old people, AND, in spousal abuse situations, they're far more likely to use *weapons* and to do things like wait until their spouse/partner is asleep to do their damage than men are.
Which is not to say women are worse, because they certainly are not. But it's amazing, once you question one thing you are told by society (not scripture, not "the wisdom of the ages," not even experience, just what "everybody knows"), you start to question a whole bunch of things.
And that's a good thing. Or at least I always thought it was a good thing. It's amazing how often since then I've been accused of being a misogynist, an "anti-feminist," AND a "flaming liberal" for any of this.
I increasingly believe rational thought in this area is simply beyond most people, but I think also that perhaps every generation has a collective handful of insanities that they can't shake, and it changes from generation to generation is all.
I personally take it a little different than that. The issue is not whether the research on the issue is or isn't biased, or even is or isn't wrong. The fundamental point is that even if all the bad things about men are true, it still doesn't change the fact that men are also abused and the laws, (and even moreso) the DV shelters and establishments are currently set up to preclude even the possibility of helping those men.
The only thing I'd do is take it one step further: what is *actually* heping the kids involved? Without getting preachy, but rather empirical: what is *actually* going to help the kids, let alone the moms and the dads?
Let's take what seems to me a rather stereotypical case:
Screaming mom hurls regular verbal abuse at a failure husband. Failure husband angrily lashes out in response, maybe physically and maybe with just cruel words. Maybe mom ridicules him as a failure. Maybe mom even goes further and smacks him with a heavy iron kitchen pot, and ridicules his manhood.
Young children see and hear all that and are scarred.
Is there an actual "victim" here besides the kids? Does this family need more than just labeling who's right and who's wrong? Should someone be arrested in this scenario, while someone else labeled the hero/heroine/victim/oppressor? Or do they all need some help toward more functional behavior, better options, and maybe sane reconciliation?
I'm amazed that anyone considers those "liberal" or "conservative" questions. Libral to whom? Conservative to whom? Right-wing or left-wing to whom?
Even let's go to extremes: he once threw a punch at his wife and hurt her. Or, she once in a fit of rage cut him with a knife or hit him with a softball bat while he was asleep. Does that end it? Does it stop right there and end in divorce and eternal separation and The End?
When do men and women start treating each other like equals, even in dire cases like this? When do adult women and men take responsibility for their behavior and figure out between them what is and is not responsible behavior?
Playing the "who's the victim?" game is probably the least productive game you possibly can play, in most circumstances. Yeah in some cases it's obviously clear cut and unquestionable but do we allow such extremes to drive our entire point of view?
Dude, I grew up watching my (very young) old man beat the crap out of my (even younger) mom. These memories are seared into me from the age of 3 or 4. Fast forward 35 years, and at one point, suffering from insomnia, my doctor gave me a drug called Ambien, and while I have no memory of it whatsoever, my wife remembers me behaving in some very inappropriate behavior while on it. I have zero memory of this--zero. When my wife informed me about them, at first I thought she was crazy, then I burst into tears and never took the drug again. I'm still haunted by the "memory" of that, most important being, I have no actual memory of it *at all* yet I know my wife and son would never lie about something like that.
And that was two years ago. I won't dealve further than that, and other things have happened between us that do not need public airing even though thank God we still try to deal with our problems like sane adults. What did we need in those times? State intervention, with someone locked up and someone nurtured like a child-victim? Or help and support from understanding and mature people?
God damn it, until we get past this "person X is the victim, person Y is the perpetrator" mentality--which is maybe true 5% of the time, but is not true 95% of the time--we're going to keep making really stupid mistakes. Not just as a society but, worse, in a clumsy government-run civil service system.
"Man abuses woman. Woman takes it until someone like the state saves her." Is that the paradigm we really all have in our heads? It seems to be. Is that really right most of the time?
When you get right down to it, what you find from talking to people who have been visited by the scourge of DV, is that most of it is mutual, and there is no clear victim or abuser.
If only we could somehow remove the people from it, and anybody's preconceived notions of what one or the other was intending, I think we'd discover that often it's a product of some people's inability to communicate. I'm sure that sounds very strange, but there you have it.
There are so many variables, and so many different manifestations of the problem, it's purely ridiculous to have only one way to approach it.
The saddest thing for me is that so many people have bought the marketing strategy and go to shelters, etc, expecting help, and find there just isn't any. Rather like going to an ER with a broken arm, only to find all they do is amputate, so they can sell you a brand-new Dextrous 3000 prosthesis. And if you don't like it, tough, live with the broken arm or fix it yourself, if you can figure out how.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.