Rebecca: You've misunderstood my posts so thoroughly that there would be
little profit in restating the points I was making. I suggest you read my
posts again.

You might also read the newspapers. As recently as today a woman who
starved one child to death and attempted to starve two others was captured
by the police. Is the difference that she didn't attempt suicide?

There's enough violence to go around, certainly.

I have also taught in community colleges.  My older female students were
often developing skills for post-grad divorces. They told me this. Not one
told me of a husband from whom they had to hide their books. But I suspect
that the dynamic was that he was suspicious of her motive for acquiring an
education. Altho there are enough motives to go around, too. Which is why I
limited myself to describing my clinical experience--I knew those women a
lot better.

Mark

At 03:12 PM 1/9/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Well, I've read with much interest from my distant view from the
>keys of this recent explosion on these various topics which seem
>to be,perhaps definable, by one common thread, the desire of
>women to define themselves in all complexity, while
>acknowledging that much complexity may remain undiscussed
>(merely because of the limited nature of the medium, for even a
>book may not be enough) in contrast to simplistic dicta in which
>particular expression is ignored in favor of some assessment of
>being.  For instance, I am surprised that Mark who began with
>"women choose to be suppressed" should follow with such
>interesting discussion of his work, whereby the argument seems
>to change to the acknowledgement  that women choose to be
>suppressed when the alternatives  offered are worse. This is
>surely the old is it better to be a slave or die argument? And if
>some women do remain or return to abusive situations, it is also
>because of hopelessness, in actuality, in indoctrination, and in
>lack of there being any more viable alternative. As a part-time
>teacher in a community college, I have had more than one
>middle-aged woman who returning to school must keep her
>books from her husband, because he has been infuriated
>to come home and see her reading, or the papers on the desk,
>etc.  It is common to hear on the news some story of a man who
>kills his wife, ex-lover, etc.often their children, and perhaps some
>unlucky friend or visiting relative,
>and then kills himself. It probably happens two to three times a
>week somewhere in the state. In thirty years, I can't remember
>having read a headline--woman kills husband, children, then self.
>And it seems to me that any discussion of the suppression of
>women cannot ignore the ways in which that suppression is often
>violent. It is useless to argue complexity against a fist. However,
>suppression is not merely a matter of one person unjustly
>suppressing the rights of another, but requires instititions, powers
>of court, and law, etc., all of which is where the complexity comes
>into it. If 50% of the women and children who are homeless in the
>U.S. have fled an abusive situation (and they have), then perhaps
>the woman who remains in that abusive situation finds it
>somewhat more empowering than being homeless, or sleeping
>with her children on the grate. The suppression of women has
>often been violent, but it cannot be too violent, since men do not
>wish to exterminate us, they'd like to keep us, dear things that we
>are, for any numbers of reasons. Accordingly, the suppression of
>women has been perhaps more accurately compared to the
>institutions of slavery, if only because in both there is a similar
>interest in keeping the subjected one alive. This is why for
>instance, the most dangerous time, in terms of actual violence, is
>the moment at which the woman flees the abusive relationship, for
>there is in a sense no reason to keep her alive.  Nor do I know why
>we should assume that the unwritten history of women, those
>farmwives, etc., in all other ages, was necessarily sanguine. The
>Wife of Bath is an interesting example, for it's quite possible to
>hear her argument with the social forces that attempted her to
>suppress her, her wiliness in evading the forces of society and
>religion, etc., how she takes a stance of being deliberately wicked,
>in order to travel about her world, freely, which already makes her
>exceptional among those farmwives. Apologies for any typos, I'm
>on an internet cafe machine
>
>Best,
>
>Rebecca
>
>www.thedrunkenboat.com