Well, this discussion opened with the Athena-figure of Condaleeza Rice,
straight out of Zeus' forehead that one, springing fully armed from a
headache.  Whoever said these things were simple?

A

>Where, for that matter, is Maggie Thatcher? Overcome with grief for the
>Irish dead? for the dead in the Falklands? Or Golda Meir? Or Indira Gandhi?
>or Mary and Elizabeth Tudor? Women armed with a state for a weapon give men
>a run for their money. We'll see if the world becomes more peaceful as
>women assume the throne with more regularity. Our humanness, for better or
>worse, tends to trump our gender in the long run. Or so I think.
>
>Mark
>
>
>At 10:45 PM 10/2/2001 +0100, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>>> Hell, most of us at one time or another are guilty of some form of
>>violence
>>> and we only partially understand our own motives. To seek them out in
>>> others as if following clues in a detective story isn't very helpful.
>>> Dostoievsky might be a better guide
>>
>>
>>Yes, indeed, Mark, he might!
>>
>>And yes, women are perfectly capable of violence on a +domestic+ scale, and
>>too will seek to use alliances and words and gestures as physically indirect
>>means of aggression (my favoured and indisputably unprovable theory is
>>standing backstage there) but the broad truth remains that organised social
>>violence is overwhelmingly male. Wars, wars, and wars. (As are most
>>individual acts of public violence.)
>>
>>I dunno, where's Euripides when you need him?!
>>
>>Best
>>
>>Dave
>>
>>
>>David Bircumshaw
>>
>>Leicester, England
>>
>>A Chide's Alphabet
>>www.chidesplay.8m.com
>>
>>Painting Without Numbers
>>www.paintstuff.20m.com/default.htm
>>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/default.htm
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 9:49 PM
>>Subject: Re: back to front
>>
>>
>>> A few more thoughts.
>>>
>>> It's unkikely that most of the terrorists were sociopaths, if only because
>>> sociopaths are so difficult to organize, especially over time. There are
>>> very few Dr. Moriartys. And speculation about their emotional makeup is
>>> indulgence in the psychoanalysis of the dead, which almost always
>>> demonstrates what one assumed it would.
>>>
>>> But it's probably safe to assume that, unlike the US pilot in my last
>>post,
>>> most of them must have reduced their victims to simple, sub-human
>>> paradigms. Otherwise, whatever their political motivations, the terrorists
>>> would have been reduced to inactivity by overwhelming grief.
>>>
>>> On the subject of gender and violence:
>>>
>>> As a student, teacher and practitioner of family therapy for many years I
>>> encountered as much female as male violence. What was gendered was the
>>> choice of weapons. There are women who routinely attack men physically,
>>but
>>> for obvious reasons of relative size and strength most violent women use
>>> words and gestures, build alliances within and outside the family, and use
>>> their children. A couple of examples:
>>>
>>> The husband in one couple had been an alcoholic since early adolescence.
>>> His wife constantly complained about his drinking. When he at last and
>>with
>>> great difficulty tried to stop she bought a bottle of scotch and sat in
>>> their livingroom drinking. She didn't get drunk, she just had a couple.
>>> Just because he had a drinking problem didn't mean she had to refrain, she
>>> said. She had never done this before.
>>>
>>> In another couple the man was also an alcoholic. The woman decided to end
>>> her marriage--she had taken up with someone else. But she decided to do so
>>> in such a way that it would be his fault. So when he had gone to bed after
>>> a drinking bout she instructed her 14 year old daughter (his stepdaughter)
>>> to crawl into bed with him. He woke up fondling her.
>>>
>>> Both of these accounts were agreed to by both parties in the marriage.
>>>
>>> While women tend not to attack men physically, they seem much less
>>> inhibited towards children. They do, at least in the US, choose different
>>> weapons--women are less likely than men to shoot their children and more
>>> likely to drown them.
>>>
>>> As a therapist I had the special privilege of seeing what happened behind
>>> the locked doors. I assume that the same happens to one degree or another
>>> behind many of the other locked doors--we almost never know much about the
>>> intimate lives of the folks in the next house or apartment, let alone
>>their
>>> motives.
>>>
>>> Hell, most of us at one time or another are guilty of some form of
>>violence
>>> and we only partially understand our own motives. To seek them out in
>>> others as if following clues in a detective story isn't very helpful.
>>> Dostoievsky might be a better guide.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>




Alison Croggon

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