Letters to the Editor
-
Congrats -- Agent Smith just equated educated adult women that got drunk with young children
This is more support for my theory that grown adult women are not rational or effective actors and need protection from men.
I say burkas, chastity belts, and stoning if women leave the house. They certainly need permission of the husbands or fathers if they wish to leave the house and go further than church or the grocery.
Yes, because according to Agent Smith, society cannot expect more from a grown up woman than it can expect for an infant, toddler, or child.
Well Mr. Red Star Hander Outer, you gave her part I post a red star, I think you need to give her second post a star too.
Still trying to figure out who the feminists are. The ones that want to protect women and demand we infantilize them, or the ones that demand they enter a society of grownups and act responsibly.
What say you Tracy Clark-Flory?
-
Incest Part III - Sometimes I Gets Confusing
Of course, incest is not always so without nuance. For instance, a woman (I will call her Jane) I know considers herself an incest victim. I know Jane personally. I did not meet her through my work, either professional or volunteer. (All names have been changed and indentifying details avoided.) Here her story:
Jane is the youngest child in a family of four. She is less than a year younger than her brother Tom. Just older than Tom are sister Meghan and sister Alice. This is a family that had their children very quickly -- bam, bam, bam, bam, if you will, so all the children are close in age. Their mother was often ill throughout their childhood. Their father has a professional career. Because of the "inattention" of the parents, the children were often left to their own devices.
Jane had a difficult young adulthood. She kept having strange panic attacks and nervous breakdowns. Because she couldn't remember much of childhood, it was difficult for therapists who would help her to extract any understanding of her problems. Then there were her horrendous nightmares that seemed so real that she often thought she was actually awake when they happened. She kept dreaming she was having sex with her brother. Of course, she was extremely upset and embarrassed by these dreams.
Finally, in desperation, trying to understand the dreams, the memory gaps, and her own shattered psychological state, she confided to her eldest sister Meghan about the dreams. "Those are not just dreams," Meghan told her. "Tom must have molested you too." (Please keep in mind that Meghan is older than Tom as is Alice.) At last, things begin to make sense to Jane. She is having these dreams because Tom molested her. She is traumatized because Tom molested her.
Jane has been much hurt by her family, her parents in particular thinking she is "crazy." She calls her parents to tell them, to explain to them WHY she has been having these problems. Her mother seems to believe her but isn't too inclined to condemn Tom. Her father is noncommital. all of the family continue to maintain contact with Tom, except for Meghan, who never got along with him anyway, and Jane who has always been uneasy with him. However, Jane, who feels she has spoken her truth begins to heal.
In fact, she gets so much better that she actually divorces her husband from whom she had been separated because he beat her and goes on to remarry. In some ways, Jane may never be 100% but she is much, much better. However, she continues to be troubled by the fact that for much of her life she attracted and formed relationships with bad men. She is also troubled by the fact that her parents, who live close to Tom, more or less financially support him because he seems to be incapable of holding a job. He has a terrible temper. He is a physical bully. He has always been a bully. In fact, when they were children, he often physically bullied Jane.
Jane still has not "recovered" much of her memory. She pretty much relies on Meghan's and Alice's statements that Tom was a sexual abuser. However Alice remains good friends with Tom and she lets her daughters visit him unsupervised.
I mention this case of Jane, not to make any judgments because I am a bit puzzled myself. I am curious about what other (non-trollish) people think about this situation.
As you can see, sibling incest, where the children are close in age, can be a rather confusing thing when it comes to assigning blame.
BTW, I do not know Meghan, Alice, Tom or their parents. The account I have given is from conversations I have had with Jane.
-
I meant my title to be "Sometimes It Gets Confusing" of course.
Although I must confess I do find Jane's story confusing.
-
Painful Wording
...on the whole rather less disempowered than...
No offense, Bob, but that wording should be taken out and shot. :P ;)
-
Hand to god
I thought this was about old people.
-
I wonder if most people here would agree that informed consent matters?
And while we may not actually all agree on what age people should be to given informed consent, that most of us would agree that there should be SOME laws concerning age of consent?
-
Oh. Is There A Problem Here?
Gee.
And to think that I didn't even know there might be a "gray rape" problem going on with young women who tramp themselves around town acting and dressing like what we used to refer to as common sluts! So, THAT'S the hooking up thang, eh? Well, I wondered.
See,I thought the very nature of "hooking up" implied you wanted sex? So are you saying that all this sexually aggressive posturing with hooking up is defined as the just fooling around variety, like petting? Or does that also include actual penetration of the vagina? Silly me. Wow! And all this time, I thought that mixed signals were what guys used as an excuse to do what THEY wanted to do sexually with women. Hmm.
Oh, and the alcohol part: Yeah, that's still a huge problem, isn't it? Like, I mean, drink til you turn red and puke and can't lift your head to say, "Hell no. Get off me, Freak, before I pull your balls off your scrotum!" Man, what freedom!
And to think that the sexual and reproductive freedom that women like me and others were so vocally in favor over 40 years ago has now turned into young women acting like sexual thugs out prowling the bars for their next "hit and run" experience while young men await an opportunity to rape them? Oh, okay.
And the arguments about emasculating men? Oh, please! Is the theory proposing that young men suddenly got religion at about the same time these women lost theirs? Hardly.
Send these girls over to hookup with some guy in my age bracket(late 50's). I can tell you that these dudes won't feel "used and abused." They've spent most of their teen years and adult lives obsessively preoccupied with trying to get women who don't want to have sex with them to have sex with them. Just listen to them talk among themselves about how they aren't getting any.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."
Janis Joplin, "Me and Bobby McGee."