Letters to the Editor
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@ Anonymous 04:00 PM
You need to read dtx's comments throughout this thread and not just the last one. dtx has made it clear that the single instance of physical violence that the LW cites may not be sufficient to dump his wife when the context of his letter indicates that he loves her and wants to work on keeping her. Unless he chimes in and says that he has changed his mind and now wants to dump her there is simply nothing wrong with dtx mentioning the strength disparity between men and women, unless you are now going to contend that women are physically stronger than men. Nowhere in dtx's post does dtx excuse hitting. In fact, in another post dtx indicates that people who use physical violence need to get help for that before couple's counseling. Also, the LW does not indicate that his wife is a blackbelt or uses weapons against him.
I wish people in these threads would focus on 1. helping the LW 2. Learning to read 3. Read all a person's posts in the thread before going on the attack.
Sorry dtx for shortening your name but I can't remember how to spell than last part.
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@ Anonymous 05:02
"You need to read dtx's comments throughout this thread and not just the last one. dtx has made it clear that the single instance of physical violence that the LW cites may not be sufficient to dump his wife when the context of his letter indicates that he loves her and wants to work on keeping her."
Please re-read my comment. I made no suggestions regarding actions the LW should take. (Perhaps you misinterpreted the comment about bigotry. I was referring to dtx's statement, not the LW or his wife.)
"unless you are now going to contend that women are physically stronger than men."
Again, I made no such claim in my post. I simply made the claim that dtx was using a faulty generalization to make her point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization), which one should not be able to get away with in rational debate.
"Nowhere in dtx's post does dtx excuse hitting."
Again, re-read my post. I did not claim that she did.
"Also, the LW does not indicate that his wife is a blackbelt or uses weapons against him."
I was using an example to counteract dtx's faulty generalization. This is a standard rhetorical technique.
"2. Learning to read"
I suggest that you take some time to review basic induction.
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re: xanadu
Well... I agree with you, although it's an unpopular opinion here, that a single episode of physical violence doesn't necessarily mean you should write the other person off as subhuman.
However, flipping out over a pair of her own panties isn't normal behavior. I've seen a lot of married women, including some who were very jealous, and you're not going to convince me that it's perfectly reasonable given the age of the marriage and the stresses of his being overseas. It's not. The woman isn't behaving in a way that's typical for couples during the first year of marriage; she's, to use the vernacular, acting like a fucking nutcase.
It's not just the violence, it's the combination of violence and flipping out for no reason connected to reality that I think bodes ill for the marriage.
I also agree with you that an average woman who punches a man is unlikely to severely injure him, while a man who punches a woman may very well severely injure her. However, I've known of many women who dealt with this disparity by picking up whatever was to hand. An average woman wielding a kitchen knife or a frying pan or a lamp is pretty dangerous.
Big jump from punching to hitting someone with a lamp? Not really. Not for someone who's demonstrated that she no longer dwells in the rational universe.
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Never Ever Tell
Nothing good will come out of "confessing" past sins and non-sins. It is bad advice to come clean, particularly about non-issues. You said you didn't cheat, so there is nothing to admit to (and even if you cheated in the past, I wouldn't recommend telling her -- it would only make things worse and she would trust you even less).
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@ Anonymous 5:18
This isn't a debate dtx was clarifying from his previous posts. His posts in this thread have been about giving advice from the perspective of a therapist. I have been reading here for a couple of months and I sometimes think Salon should lay down some rules about posting here just to prevent harm to vulnerable people who ask for advice. The name calling, the diagnoses and the debates and insult aspects don't actually help the LW. Just my perspective, but carry on with your logic lesson.
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"damnthatxanadu's gross generalizations should not be tolerated"
Hilarious! Someone who is anonymous advocating censorship. Or should we just send damnthatxanadu before a firing squad at dawn?
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@ Anonymous 5:55
I do not completely follow your post, but I think you are expressing frustration that my post was not in service of the LW, and rather directed toward the composition of another post. Indeed, I have been reading all of the posts, but the point I was trying to make does not depend on dtx's past postings. The writer made a gross overgeneralization. That was my point.
"but carry on with your logic lesson."
You obviously meant this sarcastically, but, nonetheless, will do! Comment sections like these tend to devolve precisely because fallacies compound. I urge you to take the same action when you spot something fishy. For example, you might argue that my using the term "bigot" was an example of a personal attack fallacy. This would have been a more useful response than "Learn to read," which is obviously absurd, itself a personal attack, and makes you as much a part of the "insult aspects" of Salon's comment sections as me or anyone else.
Moving on.
AKA Smith
"Hilarious! Someone who is anonymous advocating censorship."
Here we have a straw man fallacy. I did not use the term censorship nor imply that dtx's comments should be censored. A person or social group expressing intolerance toward a position is not the same as top-down censorship.