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From: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: last night
Message-ID: <6127@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 21:48:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.6127
Posted: Mon Jun 24 21:48:13 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Jun-85 06:19:16 EDT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 120
[ ">>" = I don't remember (male); ">" = Ellen's followup; "" = a pet vole]
>> Of course this was ineffective. It didn't do a good job of showing
>> your anger.
I think you probably did a good job of showing your anger, but
not in a way that caused the other person to stop the offensive
behavior.
>> Besides, the guy probably WANTED to be offensive and degrading.
But then, that only reflects on *him*.
>>...If you had hit at him the way he hit at you,
>> you would probably feel a lot better at this point.
Well, a man would have felt smugly satisfied with himself at that point.
>I've gotten a lot of mailed responses to my posting, and many of
>the men suggest that I respond in this manner; none of the
>women.
I find this reassuring, to some degree. While my response was intended
in jest, I immediately thought in terms of punishing the other person
for the offensive behavior he engaged in. I take it the more common
female response was that it never should have happened at all.
>> ...I really think most women aren't mean
>> enough when it comes to protecting themselves.
> Jeff may be right that women don't get enough "meanness
>training"; however, I disagree with him, and I want to explain
>why, while I support aggressiveness in women, meanness is not
>what I would want to see us developing.
Would it be fair to say you support the development of self-assuredness
or self-confidence in women, instead of aggressiveness? I've always
associated the words "aggressiveness" and "arrogance". And I for one
do not see meanness as a desirable trait.
>It's common for many men in our society to play verbal
>one-upmanship games with each other, a kind of pecking order.
>Occasionally, someone will take offense and turn it into a
>physical confrontation, but it usually stays verbal, often even
>outwardly kidding, with a lot of "playful" put-downs.
Pecking order? Pfui. It's the remaining method of enforcement by which
people exert their dominance over each other. Why do you think that
superiors, bosses, and thugs hate to be talked back to? Because it
embarasses them, and asserts your parity with them in the hierarchy.
> ...I do not want to escalate that situation.
This is, of course, the primary reason for not being nasty to a person
on a dark streetcorner in a city. Anything short of overwhelming (and
inappropriate) force will just make him mad, and the use of such force
would make things very official very quickly.
>Above all else, I want to STOP the action, not make it worse.
>I think I succeeded in doing that.
Well, I don't know. I think you LEFT the situation instead of making
it worse. While this shows wisdom and restraint, it does nothing to
prevent other women from being harassed by this same person later.
>The other reason is simply that, were I to return his insults at
>his level of intelligence, it would say a lot about my lack of maturity.
Problem: he will get mad if you return at his level, and won't understand
if you don't. So what do you do? I would mutter something about tilting
at windmills, and write him off as unworthy of my anger. Then again,
if he makes me angry, that's not *my* fault, and *I* (or rather, you)
shouldn't have to go around putting up with this.
>...However, I would be angry no matter what action I took,
This is important, because it shows that no matter what action
you took, you would not "win" in the male sense (including that of the
other person), because there is no way that you could exert dominance
over him. (If you had wanted to, which I doubt.)
>because my anger is directed less at this
>man as an individual than at the society which bred him and his
>kind of jerks, and allows them to flourish. I feel strong about
>the action I took, and I feel that I would not change anything I
>did. I don't want to fight him like a man, I want to fight him
>like a woman: with strong words, not insults, and with
>self-confidence, not one-upmanship.
>
>Ellen Eades
I have three sets of feelings about the last sentence:
1) It shows a more constructive attitude than I would expect from a man
(including myself),
2) However truthful, the phrasing is insulting to men as a class,
3) I think you would have preferred not fighting him at all, and you are
thus angered _because_it_was_a_bad_situation. And one that, by all
rights, you should not have been forced to deal with.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to opt out of the male dominance-motivated
bickering syndrome. The rules for this bickering are such that to attempt
to opt out brings on a feeling of superiority in the other person, and leads
to an attempt to exert dominance, not to recognize it's inapplicability.
Reiterating my call for the 263rd time for a more holistically oriented
social education of our youngsters. However, what do we do to improve
the situation for the *current* generation?
--fini--
Eric McColm
UCLA (oo' - kluh) Funny Farm for the Criminally Harmless
UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,trwspp,cepu,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!mccolm
ARPA: (still) mccolm@UCLA-CS.ARPA (someday) mccolm@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
Quotes on the Nature of Existence:
"To be, or not to be..." -Hamlet (Wm. Shakespeare)
"I think, therefore I am." -R. Descartes
"" -Gleep (Robt. Asprin)