Mark
or Catherine the Great etc. But, aside from the questions about such
individuals being freak exceptions to the social norms of their societies,
I'm really not thinking in terms of women being somehow 'better' than men ,
but rather that the specific problems of large-scale social violence, wars,
terrorism etc, are +largely+ a product of generalised forms of male
aggression, not the feminine kind. And these 'problems' are in part rooted
in the imbalances built into gender relations, again, at a level of
considerable generality, but events like wars exist at such a level of
generality, in a wantonly indiscriminate wide-reach, with horrifyingly
specific and individual and intimate effects.
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 11:14 PM
Subject: Re: back to front
> 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
> >>
> >
>
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