On 18/2/05 3:24 AM, "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It has been and remains one of the mightier labours of feminism to
> denormalise sexual aggression among human males, to get rid of the
> "metaphysics of force" that says that using force is just part of what
> sex is for males and that being subject to force is just part of what
> sex is for females. If you didn't spot the Andrea Dworkin reference
> coming, you weren't paying attention. She's all about that
> "metaphysics of force", and the need to elaborate an ethic/aesthetic
> that doesn't enshrine violent coercion at the very heart of sex.
_Some_ feminisms. (Does Camille Paglia count as a feminist? She must...)
Interesting though watching my oldest boy grow up. He's not that unusual, I
don't think; but he does have a real distaste for male aggression, although
he can be aggressive himself, if only as a smartarse. His friends are
similar. Luckily he's tall, and unlikely to be picked on (I remember that
young men are much more likely to suffer from some kind of aggressive
violence than young women). He seems such a delicate flower (though how he
would hate my saying that!) compared to the tough girls he's surrounded by.
Might I say, much more emotionally honest, and more gentle. He values girls
as friends, and has a lot of female mates (as we say here). His sister, on
the other hand, complains about boys who won't be friends with her once she
rejects them as potential boyfriends; only one boy has insisted on remaining
friends. This bothers her; she likes to have boys as friends, and refuses
to have boyfriends because they get all proprietal (wish I had been so
hardnosed at her age). Anecdotal empirical observations, of course, and
therefore fairly useless in any general sense; but it does confirm my
feeling that the socialisation of teens is heavily conditioned by their
immediate environments. Some boys just have trouble regarding girls as
fellow human beings, and that attitude, which depends on their interactions
during their childhoods and teen years, would, I suggest, have a lot of to
with the "metaphysics of force".
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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