Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 322 Editor's Choice: 34
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ridiculous hypothetical
[Read the article: No punishment too severe?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ArticWolf: The three children I know and love whom were molested by their grandmother are not hypotheticals to me. Nor is their mother, who will carry the traumatization by the same female offender for her lifetime. This particular female sex offender, who will likely never be held accountable, once looked me confidently in the eye and said, “Women just don’t do that. It’s men who do that.”, a sentiment similar to yours and which helps maintain a safe environment for female predators. You might check out: Female Sex Offenders by Julia Hislop (2001, Issues Press).
Jason: Q. – Who needs a repressed, fatherly moral authority like Kant to tell right from wrong? A. – Maybe someone who’s avoidance of inner experience has prevented creation and owning of a personal moral system.
Julia: Who needs protection? Certainly children do. What about the child who is sexually traumatized (as nearly all offenders were), “providing” that child with an internal model that says “I need intimacy but must always have complete control.”, then is exposed to a culture that represses healthy sexuality and sexualizes children? Is the pathology really in the individuals or in the systems, including families, where 90 % of the abuse occurs?
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it's OK to let go
[Read the article: My mom is mentally ill and it's tearing the family apart]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW, I see lots of solid support here for you taking care of yourself as a priority. It’s not just self interest – it puts you in a position of best being able to decide how to be helpful. Sometimes the best way to help both self and other is to set boundaries and let an other know clearly how her behavior is affecting you. This isn’t the same as distancing and withdrawing, it can be a way to help, albeit a painful and difficult one.
I hope you saw the letter from Patricia Schwarz. Psychosis can be a feature of a variety of conditions. From your letter, I wouldn’t necessarily assume schizophrenia and I would never assume anything from a limited number of encounters with the mental health professionals who are out there. In any case, however you proceed should be informed by an accurate and empathetic understanding of your mother’s experience, as opposed to a diagnostic label applied to her.
You lost something you deserved but never had in your childhood family. Your healing might best be served by the new attachments you create in your own, chosen relationships.
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mice and [wo]men
[Read the article: Spread the love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, 1) the reproductive strategies (evolutionary game plans) of humans versus marsupial mice are very different, and yet 2) both run some software developed by common ancestors, 3) software which may lead to maladaptive outcomes in contemporary settings (like individuals moderating anxiety with food intake, leading to obesity and ill health; or males controlling the reproductive behavior of females, leading to genital mutilation, unwanted births, etc.). Yet, 4) whatever software is running, human (unlike other) females are always (potentially) free to choose. Bottom line as nailed so effectively by Anonymous: “Do we really need excuses from the animal kingdom to use our sexuality however we want?” Only if we allow ourselves to remain trapped by biological compulsion and social (patriarchal) prescription.
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It's because comedy is murder
[Read the article: "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The measure of Ms. Zacharek’s insight and authentic responding to Borat is how productively uncomfortable it has made us. It does seem odd, doesn’t it – that appreciation of humor could become an intensely debated moral question centered on “guilt” and “victims”?
Or maybe not. Because if we dare look at the evolutionary origin (i.e. the real meaning) of humor, we find that laughter, as a matter of life and death, would naturally pull up guilt and anxiety along with the more pleasurable feelings of euphoria and relief.
Think about the last time you were in, say, a classroom situation. When the un-cooly dressed and clique-less loser raises his hand, then begins a painfully discomforting disclosure, what do the cool kids do? They make eye contact with each other and giggle. THERE IS NOTHTING THAT IS ACTUALLY FUNNY. Yet they are behaving, and with a purpose: to communicate the understanding, “Freak show over there makes us uncomfortable and will never, ever hang with us.” It’s a social death sentence.
Fifty thousand years ago the eye contact was there, the vocalizations were different, and the understanding communicated was a literal death sentence for the deviant individual, because survival depended on the protection afforded by group inclusion, and the protective functioning of the group required compliance and conformity, with no tolerance for deviance.
Think about what we get from laughter with a group, especially when there is a victim of the humor: a feeling of deep, euphoric relief – “I’m safe because I’m still accepted by the group that ensures my survival.” The opposite of that feeling, experienced by the victim as humiliation, resonates with what evolutionarily is literally a death sentence, and accordingly can lead to extreme reactions, like Columbine. Life and death.
Archetypically, when we laugh we kill a non-conforming group member to ensure our own survival, through ensuring integrity of a tightly-controlled group. Complex, cruel, and guilt-inducing, just as Stephanie noted.
Sarah Silverman’s humor is so effective and uncomfortable because she connects us with its existential nature – survival and death, deviance, rejection, safety and guilt all inextricably linked. When she or Borat makes us uncomfortable it’s a gift, an opportunity to begin to understand the forces we are unconsciously driven by.
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The T-shirt serves two important functions
[Read the article: A scarlet letter for sex offenders?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, it's a way for us to project, rather than integrate, our socially-driven fear (and hatred) of our own natural sexual impulses, allowing us to avoid the discomfort of honestly facing inner experience and to comfortably remain pre-adolescents.
Also, it focuses attention on the rare outsider sex offender, distracting attention away from the 90% of child abuse which occurs within the sacred, closed, protected systems we call "families", in which the victims are essentially legal property of the perpetrators.