Alison,
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
I'm sorry for having posted those three posts yesterday, I wasn't paying enough attention to the thread, as I was involved with a translation project, an all-day reading and visit to an honors class, etc., and so missed your request for back channeling. I was mostly thinking of the obligation to reply to Dave's demand for evidence from his poems and posts, a request I had said I would answer at the beginning of the week and hadn't been able to accomodate and which Dave was interpreting as my having no evidence. In any case, I regret having given the impression that I was aware of your request and just ignored it.
As I said in my two short posts this morning to Dave, I don't intend to say anything further on this matter, even though a good number of posts have appeared from Dave since and even though many of those posts are aimed at me personally.
Thanks too for noting the impersonality and non-condemnatory nature of my remarks.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
wwww.thedrunkenboat.com
------Original Message-------
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/09/03 03:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: resignations
>
> David, Rebecca
I feel I have to say something here. My request was simply out of a
sense of courtesy: this list's membership consists of around 300
people who might be a little bored by this wrangle, which I felt
might be more properly conducted b/c. As is the arguer's right,
since it was a request, they have ignored it! I quite understand
that Rebecca felt she had to post some response, despite my request,
since David had claimed she was "evading" his challenge to back up
what she has said. I hope any further discussion will be civilised,
in the best sense.
I was made very uncomfortable by David's assertion that because
Rebecca was a "paid professional" she had no right to comment on the
sexism she perceived in David's posts. Unlike Rebecca's postings,
which on the whole have been scrupulously _impersonal_, that to me
smacked of resentment. And like Rebecca, I thought it was of the
same ilk as posts he made about Carol Ann Duffy and others, which
were out of order.
J am sorry, David: I agree with many of Rebecca's points about
sexism. I think they perceptively illuminate its mechanisms, which
are subtle and various, and they avoid, despite your over-reactions
to and exaggerations of what she said, being condemnatory.
This is and has always been a list which specifically asks that
sexism be avoided in posts. If it means that list members have to
think before they post, I think that might be a good thing. Before
any outraged member rushes in with a bunch of complaints about
censorship, or PC thought police, I say "crap": a little bit of
awareness in a list which is primarily about poetry won't hurt
anyone. It will certainly be less hurtful than the actual devaluing
of women is to women.
At 12:39 PM -0500 4/9/03, Geoffrey Gatza wrote:
if you stop this we all might be able to enjoy this list much more.
I wonder, Geoffrey, why you target Rebecca, when it seems to me that
David is at least as responsible for continuing the argument.
Best
Alison
--
Alison Croggon
Editor
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