Nancy Levant: The Cultural Devastation of American Women

[stilltrucking]

(What's a Heaven For)

Man's Reach Should Exceed his Grasp

Confessions of An Ex-Prom Queen been a long time since I read that book. The one thing I remember was how she drew a time line going around all four walls of her bedroom. She wanted to see the whole history and evolution of human kind. I have had Faustian delusions of understanding everything. I feel dumb because my reach exceeds my grasp. It is frustrating.

For some reason the American Association of University Women makes me nervous. And I can't remember why.

College gender gap widens: 57% are women
By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
In May, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education posted the inevitable culmination of a trend: Last year for the first time, women earned more than half the degrees granted statewide in every category, be it associate, bachelor, master, doctoral or professional.

And on the other hand the prison population of women committed for violent crimes is increasing. It is a brave new world. Serial murderers, I think women are catching up there too. And many if not all of the male serial murders have been victims of abuse many have been abused by their mothers.

What Makes Serial Killers Tick?

Serial murderers are frequently found to have unusual or unnatural relationships with their mothers," notes Steven Egger in his book The Killers Among Us. ...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=se ... rs&spell=1

And there are a lot of articles about how boys are falling
farther behind in school. This one is a 17-year-old kid suing
From the Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... bias_suit/


Schoolboy's bias suit
Argues system is favoring girls
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | January 26, 2006

At Milton High School, girls outnumber boys by almost 2 to 1 on the honor roll. In Advanced Placement classes, almost 60 percent of the students are female.


Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys.

Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.

Grading on homework, which sometimes includes points for decorating a notebook, also favor girls, according to Anglin's complaint, filed last month with the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

''The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin said. ''From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this."

e-dog and you were talking about men being more violent and aggressive by nature. Maybe if you just look at the last ten thousand years or so of our history. Civilization brought about the fall of women. And I have heard it said that women started this whole mess. You know they created agriculture and then food surpluses and then settled communities then temples then priests and then the Republican party .
It will work out, It seems like Sanger and the other female rebels always had rich patrons to help their work along. I wonder what Kerry's wife has been up to lately. I think I read that more wealth is in the hands of women then ever before.

76% of Americans believe that men control more wealth than women. But a new survey
of Federal Reserve Board data reveals that women actually control 51.3% ...

http://www.pbs.org/ttc/society/philanthropy.html

I bet if Barbara from Maryland had a couple of hundred million bucks she could turn this thing around.

You know I am only thinking of one woman and her son. My sister myelf. Spiderwoman used to tell me a woman can make a man do anything she wants him to. And I though maybe so but at what cost to herself.

[whimsicaldeb]

Quote:
76% of Americans believe that men control more wealth than women. But a new survey
of Federal Reserve Board data reveals that women actually control 51.3% ...

http://www.pbs.org/ttc/society/philanthropy.html

I liked the PBS Women and Philanthropy article ... it's well balanced in its coverage, and shows how men and women actually work well together to the same ends. In addition, it points out and corrects minority misinformation and misbeliefs as well.

Women have expanded their philanthropic pursuits at home as well, and in interesting ways. According to a poll of 1,000 voters conducted jointly by Celinda Lake and Linda DiVall (the top female Democrat and Republican pollsters) for To The Contrary, Americans have an inaccurate picture of giving by women and minorities. While men as a group may earn more money, women make more of the critical decisions about household purchasing and exercise control over many family financial resources. Women actually control 51.3% of percent wealth in the United States. Also, issues drive giving -- both men and women believe that helping to address an issue is the most compelling reason to give money. Men are more likely than women to also be concerned about their involvement in the group and the group's financial accountability. The percentage of women reporting household contributions was 76% in 1993. The percentage of men reporting household contributions was 70%.

(cutting)


THE POLL RESULTS:

* 76% of Americans believe that men control more wealth than women. But a new survey of Federal Reserve Board data reveals that women actually control 51.3% of personal wealth in the United States.

* A common myth is that men give more to charity than women, but the poll suggests that most Americans do not agree. Of the poll respondents, 55% disagreed with the statement that "Men give more money to charity than women" and that 24% agreed. However, a recent National Science Foundation study showed that women, on average, donate twice as much as men.(Eckel, Catherine C. and Philip J. Grossman. Forthcoming. "Are Women Less Selfish than Men?: Evidence from the Dictator Experiments" Economic Journal

* Many Americans believe that whites give a greater percentage of their income to charities than minorities. The poll show that most Americans believe this. However, in families with incomes of $25,000 or more, Black women are more likely to give to charity than White women are, and give in excess of $1,000. In addition, minorities are more likely to give when asked for a donation, but are asked less often than whites. ("The Contemporary Charitable Giving and Volunteerism of Black Women, 1986, Gallup.

* Most survey respondents (46%) believe that children and the poor should receive more than women in charitable contributions. Only 3% believe women should receive more. This belief holds true even among women. But in fact, women represent more than 50% of the poor. Two thirds of the 60 million women working outside the home have no pension plan and those who do have benefits receive half the benefits of their male counterparts.

* While Americans are often perceived as selfish, 85% of Americans polled said they had given their time or money to charity over the past year.

* Many Americans believe that women and girls receive a high percentage of private philanthropy, but this is not the case. Only 5.7% of foundation dollars support programs specifically serving women and girls.

Nice article.

[stilltrucking]

I can't bring myself to join the AARP. Now there is an organization with clout. Children don’t vote so what the hell have they got to say about it. To bad women don't have a lobby that powerful
Yes we are all for the rights of the unborn. But once you get born its screw you jack I got mine. We got medicare, children got squat,

Only 5.7% of foundation dollars support programs specifically serving women and girls.

So who gets the other 89.3% Boys and men?

What do you think about that kid's law suit?

The serial killer article I did not read. But it reminds me of a Jerry Jeff Walker song. It's up against the wall red neck mothers, you mothers who have raised your sons so well. I saw a picture of the Madona and child and it had this text, "

Code: Select all

I came into this world an innocent trusting baby" 

George Jackson soledad brother.

Yes men and women can work together well. But we just don't have enough. 61 women in the House and 13 in the Senate.
535 divided by 74 = 13.7% And a couple of them are bimbo's.

Does Jane speak for John. Gee whiz we had two women on the supreme court for a while. That was a giant leap forward. Now we wait for a giant leap back ward.



Every thing is peachy WD, if six was nine I could care less. I am a short timer I got no stake in this. I just want to ride my motor cycle.

added 2/14/06
I wonder what Mrs John-Heinz-Kerry is doing with all her dough. If I remember my history the early pioneers like sanger and anthony had rich patrons to help them.

I wonder how much charatible money is ear marked for boys and men. 5.7 %.

It will all work out in the cosmic scheme. It is the short term I worry about.

[abcrystcats]

Boy, is THIS a good book!

The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler.

I just got it as an audio book and I'm almost done listening.

Stilltrucking, I take part of my objections back. I think we're both right. The root of the problem may be the biological responsibility of women and the corresponding strength and mobility of men, but the dynamic is clearly cultural.

I still maintain that the most important thing women can do to further change in the 21st century is to hang onto their reproductive rights and make sure the power of controlling fertility spreads across the globe. If we don't do that, there will be no hope for the changes we are discussing.


Anyone interested in this subject SHOULD read this book. Wow.

[stilltrucking]

There it is.

I still maintain that the most important thing women can do to further change in the 21st century is to hang onto their reproductive rights and make sure the power of controlling fertility spreads across the globe. If we don't do that, there will be no hope for the changes we are discussing.

I should not make hasty unsupported comments but where did all these catholic supreme court justices come from. Five? Nothing wrong with that I never had any problem with Kerry's faith. He is a man of conscience not a True Believer. FDR got so fed up with the supreme court he tried to raise the number to 15 so he could appoint more judges that saw things his way. I think if they mess with Roe, congress will feel the voice of american demanding justice and protection of the laws, not some schmata to cover her from head to toe, that voice has to be loud enough to drawn out the voices of the minority of women with the moral monopoly Abortion is a terrible method of birth control I met someone who told me she had six. She was in her late middle twenties That seems like a lot. But the plan B pill is still not available. Got dam those pecker heads, pro choice is pro death, they are all for the unborn, but they got ADD about the born-ed. Attention Defacation Deficiency. They just don't give a sh*t about you after you are born I think. Reminds me of Einstein's quote about, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time."

[stilltrucking]

I hardly ever use emoticons.

Or I should have said, pro life is pro death, A woman named Turkle at MIT a proffessor Minsky's medeia lab. she had an explanation of freudian slips that much more elegant than freud's. .

http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/Life-on-the-Screen.html

[whimsicaldeb]

Interview excerpt from:
http://www.partnershipway.org/html/subpages/eisler.htm

The School for Violence:
A Conversation with Riane Eisler
Interview by Helen Knode, LA Weekly,
Vol. 23, Number 45, September 28-October 4, 2001
http://www.partnershipway.org/html/subp ... school.htm

So what's your solution to terrorism? How do we fight it?

There's a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy - and they have to be simultaneous. In the short term, I'm afraid that military response against terrorist bases in nations that fund and support terrorism is necessary.

You've shocked me. The New Age community, the Dalai Lama, are calling for peace and love. I associate you with them philosophically.

The pure "peace and love" response is the flip side of the "kill and hate" response. Neither is realistic, and both ignore the psychosocial dynamics of terrorism we've been talking about. Unfortunately, failure to respond will encourage more terrorism. In the dominator mind, there are only those who dominate and those who are dominated. Nonviolence is equated with women, with what's despised, what's controlled and is legitimately, and easily, terrorized into submission.

But violence only breeds violence, you said it yourself.

If you've got a psychopath lunging at you with a knife, that's not the time to talk about peace and love. It's the time to defend yourself to save your life. The time to talk about peace and love, and to put them into action, is before that person becomes a psychopath. If we're to effectively address the festering problems that breed terrorism, we have to deal with the foundations of violence. We have to think of the long term. Any war on terrorism is doomed to fail, just like the war on drugs, unless we address the deepest historical, cultural, social, economic, political and psychic forces that produce terrorism. This is urgent in our high-technology age.

You know people argue that humans are naturally violent.

This argument comes straight out of the dominator view of human nature. Evolutionary science shows we carry genes for both violence and caring. The decisive issue is our experiences, and particularly the influences of childhood. These experiences actually affect brain chemistry and synaptic development, and with that the propensity toward violence or caring. We'll never eliminate violence completely, but we can eliminate structural violence, violence built into the system.

So addressing the foundations of violence would entail what?

Cultural transformation. I spoke of two underlying ways of structuring relations - one is the dominator model, the other is what I call the partnership or respect model. Here power is nurturing and empowering, rather than fear-and-force-based and disempowering. The male and female halves of humanity are valued equally, and there's a high value placed on caregiving, empathy and nonviolence, qualities that are part of the biological repertoire of both men and women.

The U.S. is divided between partnership and domination. It does awful things and wonderful things. Think of the NGOs spending billions to help people worldwide - peace, human rights, feeding hunger. It behooves us to throw our resources into a shift toward partnership, at home and abroad. Did you know there's a new House bill to create a Department of Peace? We make a mistake to deal with dictatorships to protect our oil interests. We're safer in the long run to join with pro-democratic forces in the region. There are many people in the Muslim world who would welcome U.S. help. I know some of them. They're working for religious freedom, the human rights of women and children, family planning - real democracy, not just a vote.

We have to stop exporting our violent media. We have to re-examine the values behind globalization. If it's only to promote what we inaccurately call free enterprise, which primarily benefits the elites of the developing and developed world, then we're actually strengthening the top-down socioeconomic structures integral to the dominator model from which violence inevitably comes. On the other hand, if we back an international campaign involving heads of state and clergy to end intimate violence, we're dealing with foundational matters, with the school for violence. If we channel economic aid and training to the grassroots, if we channel health-care, nutrition and educational programs directly to women and children and make their implementation a keystone of globalization, we're addressing foundational matters.

You're thinking multilevel solutions for a multilevel phenomenon.

Let us call it the partnership response to terrorism. We need a long-range plan, and we need to do this together with people all over the world. And if we only talk violent solutions, we fuel the dominator regression that will be fatal to everything we Americans yearn for and aspire to. We have to change the foundational dynamics of terrorism. Without this, we'll never have lasting peace or security.

[abcrystcats]

I am not pro-abortion. I've never had one and never would have one. But after long deliberation and lots of discussions and thinking about this, I AM pro-choice. Reluctantly so, but I think that in some cases it may be better than the alternative.

What alarms me is not so much the right wing attacks on Roe v. Wade, but the attacks on the rights to access birth control. THAT freaks me out, BIG time.

And I am a thin-edge-of-the-wedge person. If the Supreme Court topples Roe v. Wade, other changes may take place after that, that will limit a woman's choices in the birth control area and reverse the woman's rights advances.

And, BTW, I HIGHLY recommend The Chalice and the Blade. You'll find out on reading it that (or listening to it on audiobook, as I did) this is NOT about "women's rights." It is a MUCH bigger issue, going all the way back to the Venus of Willendorf and the matrilineal societies that existed thousands of years ago. The author of this book believes that if we have a chance of changing the world, it's through the Women's Movement to an egalitarian-style social structure.

She's also worried, like I am, about the world population and the burden that places on the earth.

I was very impatient with the book at first, because it seemed like she was saying some things about these earlier cultures that I know not to be true, but she wasn't, and she taught me some things and put some ideas together in ways I had never seen before.

I'm starting to like audiobooks because I can listen to them while I am cleaning house or taking a bath. My books are getting awfully soggy And I consider cleaning house a necessary waste of time, so adding some productive listening to it this weekend really helped.

[whimsicaldeb]

One of the few shows I watch on network tv is Boston Legal. I love that show ... it's fun, in that campy sort of way.

But I also like the show because each week they take on all these various controversial issues, putting them out there to be seen from the personal level. This last Tuesday, they tackled exactly this subject: denial of access to birth control.

http://abc.go.com/primetime/bostonlegal ... n2/15.html

Shirley Schmidt and Julie Bauer defend a teenaged girl who was brutally raped and is now pregnant. The girl wants to sue the Catholic hospital where she was treated because they refused to provide her with emergency contraception.

In the show, the young girl won the case against the Catholic hospital, but they leave her facing a decision about abortion, which she personally never wanted to make.

I wish life were like tv, in that all these issues get wrapped up neatly each week. None the less, exposure breeds tolerance and from tolerance, acceptance can be reached much easier -- for those willing, open.

But for those not open or willing; The Dominators like Riane Eisler shows us, only strength in holding our boundaries of what is and is not acceptable in the face of their wrath will work.

I agree with you cats ... it is a concern.

[abcrystcats]

Oh, cool, whimsicaldeb -- we must have been posting at the same time and I totally missed your post about Eisler's beliefs about appropriate responses to violence. Good article. So she has thought about that! I'm glad because I didn't see that in her book, and I just posted to your other thread thinking about that very topic.

And thanks for the article about the denial of emergency contraception. That is exactly the sort of thing that unnerves me. It ties in to the whole trend of putting women BACK in the home where they supposedly belong, and it goes right back again to why this Nancy Levant article really pushed my buttons. Don't ever dare imply that women's roles were better before we got these rights. Don't even go there, Nancy Levant. LOL.

[whimsicaldeb]

Three things bothered me about about Nancy's article;

1. Her instance on women’s spiritual superiority over men (men’s), which I knew immediately was untrue.

2. That we – American Women had devastated the women’s movement …

American women allowed for the corruption of feminism – the complete and total corruption of feminism – and the results have devastated our nation.

And 3. I didn’t understand at all it was all American Women’s fault in corrupting our school systems.

At the time I was reading that article, I saw that while it was full of truths about the injustices towards women, of all nations … I wasn’t seeing anything that backed up these particular statement of A) The woman’s movement has been devastated and B) all this supposed devastation was created by American Women.

But I did see a lot of truths in her articles, fact… yet what I wasn’t seeing was how these facts supporting her beliefs. That’s why I posted it, because I felt I must have been overlooking something. Thank goodness I did! For I was, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

When I wrote her and asked to explain the school corruption by women, as well as join us … that she’d learn a lot for listening to our critique of ideas; her reply spoke the loudest to me and cleared many things up.

Chiefly, she’s focused on selling her book because she strongly feels she's onto something.

I wish she had come, did have time to listen … she’d hear, see some different views -- and from them she'd certainly see what she can expect once her book goes public. But – at this point, with her book just coming up for release …listening to people who can back up that what she’s saying isn’t as true as she claims it is, is not likely what she’s interested in hearing or experiencing right now. Who can blame her … she’s got a book to sell, and she's invested a lot of time and effort in her ideas ...

Plus, who to say it won’t help ~ got us all going!

Thanks to ST’s posting of that article by Phyllis Schlafly … I realized the American Women that Nancy is most likely referring too – that most likely she’s talking about and addressing -- are the “Phyllis Schlafly” types in this world. And on that I would agree that they have not 'helped' things. But devastated us (American women, the movement) ... I don't think so. I think she may be over-reacting, or throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I do know that when she uses that catch-all term “American Women” – I got lumped in there as well – and that she wasn’t talking about ‘me’ – and I don't feel devastated. In fact, I feel exactly opposite. and of everything that's happen, it would be this that I'd want Nancy to see and know.

~~~~ and now ... thanks to your posting of hearing Eisler's book, her thoughts (!), I’ve found someone whom feels the same as I do. More importantly is grounded in facts, and balanced in perspective, and able to present it well.

~chuckling~ And since both of these women have books out for sale, I know which woman’s books I’m going to buy – and which woman’s I’m not.

[judih]

I'm bumping this in the light of the the Jerusalem Post article brought to my attention by Starlight ( http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/profile ... file&u=419). Please read it.

The price of 'disrespecting' women
By SHMULEY BOTEACH

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 2FShowFull


The story of the alleged rape by the Duke Lacrosse team of an African-American woman who worked part-time as an exotic dancer, which so shocked American sensibilities, barely raised an eyebrow with me.

You see, I served for 11 years as rabbi at another elite university and witnessed firsthand the growing misogyny that has become a central staple of university life. Even when the police released the e-mail that was sent out at 1:58 a.m., directly after the alleged rape by one of the players on the team, and which read: "To whom it may concern, tomorrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome... I plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceding to cut their skin off while [ejaculating] in my duke issue spandex..." even then my reaction was one of resignation and acceptance.

University men in the Western world view going to college as an arena for the fulfillment of their unbridled lust, and it is these intellectual crossroads wherein one finds, ironically, the greatest contempt for women. Sadly, unless it leads to some terrible tragedy, like rape, nobody cares.

AT OXFORD during Eights Week the main annual rowing event at Oxford University that takes place on the Isis in June, I used to listen in astonishment as the male students chanted: "A-bor-tion, A-bortion... Lay that lady on her back. Pull that baby from her crack. A-bor-tion, A-bor-tion..."

Then there were the "panty-raiders" at Eights Week; male students would steal women's underwear and hoist it up the boathouse flagpole.

It is time for the Western world to accept the sad truth that universities are becoming bastions of female-hating lechers who spend four years trying to bed as many women as possible, while making the word "bitch" one of the most used in their vocabularies.

Tom Wolfe's newest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, chronicles the unbelievable scorn for women that permeates the American campus, and how women have lost all dignity, becoming complicit in their own degradation, as they stop at nothing to become the male plaything.

The greatest cultural story since the 1960s is the decline and fall of the Western male, and how women have accommodated that fall by allowing themselves to be treated like garbage by men. It's now 60 years after feminism, and there has never been a better time to be a man.

To be a guy today is to have your pick of hundreds of women who will sleep with you and expect not only no commitment, but not even courteous treatment. You can burp in their presence, break wind, and they will still go to bed with you. To be a guy is to have women move into your apartment and cook and clean for you, even as you endlessly push off the question of marriage, which you have no intention of addressing anyway. And to be a man today is to have women take off their clothes on TV to sell you everything from beer to cars to hamburgers.

ONCE, WHEN I lectured at Yale, a female student perfectly identified for me how it is a man's world and how it all begins at university: "When it comes to love and relationships the men here sit and pick us out, like a man sifting through a jar of jellybeans for the colors and tastes that he likes, leaving behind all the ones that don't appeal to his taste buds at the moment."

But in becoming boastful beasts of female prey and losing their sense of awe for women, men have guaranteed their own boredom. If you're a man, and a woman can no longer excite you, what will? A bunch of guys hitting a ball with a bat? Watching race cars go in a circle for 500 miles? Do men realize just how pathetic they have become as they endlessly pursue cheap substitutes for a lost sense of erotic excitement?

Most of the men I meet aren't even that attracted to their wives and live in predictable and monotonous drudgery in their marriages as a result. Yes, there is a price to pay for disrespecting women.

The male overexposure to women has even led to the death of the heterosexual man as we know him. If the definition of a heterosexual man is a male who is attracted to women, then most men today are barely heterosexual.

Think about it. Nearly all the men I know are only attracted to about one in 10 women, that is, the 10 percent of women they consider "hot." The other 90% leave them cold. Doesn't that mean that they are 90% asexual? And I'm not trying to be funny. If a man is not attracted to a woman, then he is not heterosexual. Period. And if he only attracted to a small fraction of the women he meets, then he is fractionally heterosexual.

THE SECOND great tragedy of the Western man is that since women no longer strongly attract him, he cannot separate himself from his male buddies and truly attach himself to a female soul mate.

Everywhere I go in the Western world I meet husbands whose real confidants are still their drinking and card-playing buddies, and who are lonely in their marriages as a result. Alternatively, they are single men who are addicted to dating but who never fall in love.

Both of these factors were in operation that terrible night, on March 13, at Duke. The alleged rape victim had been paid $400 by the Neanderthals who surrounded her to excite them. And she arrived as the perfect obedient male fantasy, wearing, according to The New York Times, a "negligee and shiny white strappy high heels." But when even that failed to ignite an erotic charge, one of the highly educated youths allegedly "held up a broomstick and threatened to sexually assault her with it."

A neighbor said the players were demanding their money back. She allegedly refused to participate in degrading acts that might finally give these overexposed and desensitized men some excitement. And when she didn't do that, well, violence was allegedly just around the corner, as the men ganged up on her as a pack. After all, if the "bitch" doesn't serve the purpose of turning us guys on, what on earth else could she possibly be good for?

The writer is host of Shalom in the Home now being broadcast in the United States.

[whimsicaldeb]

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on this Judih?

[firsty]

i wanted to watch that "shalom in the home" thing on tv, but after reading that article, not so much.

that women are complicit in the real problems on college campuses isnt something to be glossed over (it's but quickly mentioned in the article), and the same goes for the fact that men arent doing themselves any favors in this environment.

the introduction of "asexual" people in this article is pretty simplistic. makes the article seem more like a rant than anything else.

what bugs me about these kinds of perspectives is that they seem to blame one gender for the treatment of another gender. women named victims, men defined as idiotic, menacing fools. another way to approach this is to blame both genders for this certain problem. further, both genders are raised within the same society, the same schools, by the same parents.

i'm not prepared to say that men are inherently worse examples of humanity than women, so i'm inclined to look at social systems, schools, parenting when searching for a reason for these problems.

in the duke rape case, a big part of it can be blamed on the mob mentality. there were 2 women, and a bunch of men. the individual men in the one group were less likely to stand up for their own beliefs because of the group they were in, not because the group was made up of men.

i'm sure race played an issue. in a situation like that, communication techniques and reactions are greatly sped up and small mistakes quickly explode into other, much bigger mistakes.

it's cheap and easy to blame race or gender for this. we like the cheap and easy explanations, because it helps us fit the situations into good/evil, crime/victim. this makes it easy for us to understand things and then move on with other things. but that doesnt make those explanations anything but cheap and easy.

the statement "there has never been a better time to be a man" is ridiculously simplistic. tell that to an 18-yr-old soldier in iraq,

the only men acting like assholes to women are the ones who find women who allow them to act like assholes. why would a woman feel like competing with idiot women for men who want to act like assholes? give me a break.

the first thing we need to do is accept that women are as much to blame as men for these problems, because we are all part of the same society. women as victims puts half of the entire society into a class of people who arent to blame for these problems, it ignores entirely half of the problem, and we'll never get anywhere if we're just looking at half the problem.

[judih]

deb - what do i think of the article? This man states non-surprise concerning the behaviour of the Duke LaCrosse team. He states that he sees sexist chauvinist behaviour all the time. He states that he sees it in men and in women.

That rape was reported to me by my daughter who is just now learning of extreme racism in her present neighbourhood of Florida.
She was shocked. This all is new to her.

The writer of the article is not surprised - he's merely reporting what he is seeing.

What are my reactions? Disgust. Nothing's moving. Feminism stopped way short of raising human awareness of the sanctity of both sexes. Life is not for merely gratifying our senses but also for a little cultivation of respect, honour and making social awareness a little more sensitive for our children than it was for us or our parents.

Aren't we trying to rise above social stigma and propaganda. Don't we all hope for a little bit of mental peace and social safety?

Do i want to be treated like a sex object by strangers? No thanks. If a strange man comes on to me, it surprises me, in fact. i thought that getting older would be a carte blanche for being me in my entirety, not just someone else's outer view of me.

But then relating to one another involves maturity. Maturity! Is that too much to expect on a college campus, a workplace, in a bus or any other public place?

What do i think of the article?
i'm hoping that some other voice will pop out and report that on their campus, in their school, someone tried to sexually harass another and was immediately stopped by the people who happened to be in the vicinity.

What do i think? i'm hoping that the article of non-surprise will be printed side-by-side with an article of surprise.