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Hi, Mairian, I value your perspective and I enjoy ideas and conflict up to a point - I believe a lot of the conflicts that we are currently having are structurally caused - the requirement that we are on an academic list, and therefore we must confine ourselves to reason and the exchange of information is fine as long as we personally dont feel under attack in the places where we have been hurt. As soon as that happens, on an academic list, explosive tension begin to build up - everyone is afraid of saying what they really think, for fear that someone much smarter than they are will critique them. No-one wants to be critiqued when they're trying to say something about the places where they have been hurt. So the anger goes into more "theorising" - everyone can see the anger behind the recourse to what various "leading theorists" have to say but since its never acknowledged, it can never be addressed, so the tension builds. What comes out is often very little common-sense. I know you have a background in counselling, so I'm sure you're aware as much as I am that there is a severe intellectual-emotional split here that's causing the very emotionality it's trying to distance itself from. And feminist theory, I'm sure, would endorse what I'm saying - this is not a comfortable list as soon as women's issues/ women's oppression as parents comes up, (and you dont have to be a woman to experience parent's oppression for the benefit of the fathers on the list) - all of a sudden, the very structure of the list sets us against each other. I'm aware that this is an academic list, and that like any club - it has a right to do things the way its members feel most comfortable with. I'm wondering if, since I'm the instigator of a lot of the conflict, whether I should try and set up my own club - built around the intellectual-emotional mix that best empowers me - I have begun to investigate setting up such a list - and how I can make it work so that people can have have a respectful space for their emotional lapses from rationality, as well as for their rational/ theoretical self-reflection and interaction. Too late in the night to launch into critiques of Habermas and the rational public sphere - but I dont think what I'm saying is new - > I think it's also > important, however, to accept that I have limits to my own knowledge and > experience, though I do try hard to move into other domains and listen to > what others say and write. Well, let me say that I've always found you very fair and open - so I plead the above structural causes for getting stuck into you- > Sure, I often talk about deaf people, but the > reason for that is because the list often seems to think about deafness as > if it were a *physical* impairment and believe me, I *do* think deafness > problematises the social model. But I don't think I'm different from anyone > else on this list in that respect, including you. > > But, for example, when you give your answer to the respite from what? > question above I certainly DO recall my own experience of tinnitus. How do > I get 'respite' from the roaring, banging, whining noises in my head that > interrupt my sleep that makes me tired so I can't concentrate and gives me > visual disturbances and depression so that I have to stop working etc. etc. > And how do I at the same time live up to the images of pride and positivity > that are demanded of me by the disability movement and earn my livelihood? > I am not saying that this is in any way equivalent to what you have > described, simply that there are common threads. I certainly agree that we have things in common - My prob with the social model is that whatever its subtlest thinkers have intended, it is being interpreted, dangerously, by the less subtle, as a way of resolving all of life's unfairness by making it all the fault of society. I personally find comfort in thinking that life is unfair, unequal, it sucks, you do your best, and you;'ll only make yourself miserable if you burden yourself with trying to resolve everything neatly. > I don't have answers to > that question any more than I have answers to yours, Pheww! That's a relief - people with all the answers are a worry. > but what I do know is > that if 'society' were to sometimes just stop and think 'Well maybe > Mairian's disorientated, angry, tearful because ...' instead of assuming > that 'Mairian's mad' I would feel less disabled. Well, for that the personal growth movement is a lot more enlightened than the academic. Personally, I always feel at my maddest in the University, obviously, since it's the place that most polices "reason". That's got to be enough for now... Judy %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%