Really, it's not a fact that class is irrelevant
to issues of domestic violence--obviously there
is domestic violence in all classes, but common
doesn't mean as common, and the solutions
available to the women vary according to class.
Check out the statistics on urban Aborigines.

Judges do sometimes try to prejudice juries about
women who have been rape victims--women judges as
well as male judges have been censored for this,
tho male judges more frequently. But the problem
remains that most rape is committed, in private,
by people who know the victim. If there's no
beating involved, the only evidence is the
woman's testimony, which the man's lawyer is
duty-bound to try to discredit. Within the rule
of law I see no solution to this.

I doubt I called you irrational. I may have called an argument irrational.

I'm willing to let this drop--more heat than
light. And I don't think our discussion is at
this point very useful to the list. If we do continue, maybe it should be b/c.

Mark




At 02:00 PM 3/31/2006, you wrote:
>Mark, whatever else it is, my feminism is not naïve. And you did call me
>irrational, although the latter may have been in a b/c (the man-hating
>accusation came from different quarters).
>
>I thought I made it very clear that I was totally aware that prejudice
>against women exists in a context of many other social forces. One that
>hasn't been mentioned is race; I learned the shocking fact recently, for
>example, that black female academics in the US have the lowest life
>expectancy of practically any profession there (around mid-50, if I remember
>rightly). And the fact remains that class is pretty irrelevant to issues
>like domestic violence, which is as common in middle class homes as anywhere
>else.
>
>If judges would stop making comments about women who indulge in
>"provocative" sexual behaviour and so, silly girls, get what's coming to
>them, it might make a difference to the judicial system which, as you know,
>in Britain and Australia operates on a common law system of precedent. Law
>is, after all, administered by human beings, and as things are they are
>presently mainly men. What is changing the law is its administration by
>more women.
>
>On 31/3/06 1:17 PM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > In my city it's not hard to find tabloids with pictures of men in dog
> > collars and worse, and it's also pretty easy to find specialized
> > leather shops geared to men. There's one on 18th Street between 6th
> > and 7th, for instance, that instead of a name on the window has a
> > scarlet neon noose. Very elegant. It also was pretty easy in
> > more-conservative San Diego: I can think of three on the main drag of
> > a very fashionable neighborhood. I did have to explain these things
> > to Carlos, and to warn him not to go into those places by himself.
> > Only a small number of men and women find these things arousing,
> > despite the tabloids. But is your point that men tend to like to look
> > at sexually provocative images of women? Sure. This may be one of
> > those facts of life that we have to learn to deal with--it's been
> > around long enough (think about the Venus of Willendorf), and it's
> > certainly not going away.
>
>My point was not that this image was available, but that it was acceptable
>to post it outside a newsagent, along with the headlines of daily
>newspapers. You see how you have changed my argument into something like
>puritan distaste for desire and sexuality, when it is actually about
>publicly acceptable images of degradation. There are also those lad
>magazines being fed to young boys that are becoming more and more popular,
>and which suggest thing like that if a woman says no, you just have to get
>her drunk and ask again, and which reinforce bullshit ideas about
>masculinity and how to "deal" with women. I am not at all sure that the
>Venus of Willendorf has anything to do with this; it may have been an image
>as much for women as for men, and is a symbol of potency rather than
>otherwise.
>
>I am not a rape victim, in case you think this is a personal crusade.
>
>All best
>
>A
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com