From: forb0004@student.tc.umn.edu (Eric Forbis )
Subject: Re: Historical accuracy of Maggie's claims?
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:24:09 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.070930.29047@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> keb3_ss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Karin E. Baker) writes:
>In <forb0004.192.726708906@student.tc.umn.edu> forb0004@student.tc.umn.edu
>(Eric Forbis ) writes:
[material deleted]

>>It was sexism, pure and simple. I know of a good many men who were very 
>>offended by Maggie's backhanded swipes at the entire gender; if this was 
>>supposed to be irony or parody, they would have accomplished the same with 
>>race by references to "niggers", etc.. Lousy episode. Considering their 
>>founding sequence where lesbians were glorified and men were portrayed as 
>>emotional cripples by nature, I'm not too surprised. Welcome to feminism in 
>>action. 

>Do you want to talk about sexism?  It's where you have a problem with lesbians
>being glorified.  Heaven forbid that for once in a depiction which men
>actually
>might watch (there have been several positive depictions in thing which are 
>termed as "women's" shows such as "Heartbeat" and the "woman's" movie of 
>"Fried Green Tomatoes" (which as I saw it, the NEXP show was a complete copy
>of, therefore while making a positive statement about lesbians, gave us 
>nothing original or new!).  And just because there are strong women, doesn't
>mean by any lengths, such as in this episode to which you refer, that men are
>"emotional cripples by nature" anymore than women are despite strong males.  
>You wan to talk about sweeping backhand swipes, look at your own post.  
>You really need to get a grip on your own masculinity so you don't feel 
>threatened when a woman disagrees with your point, heaven forbid makes

Watch the damned episode before making public comments about my masculinity, 
please. 

This was no positive statement about women, strong or otherwise, just many
generalized abusive statements about men. As far as my _reaction_ being a 
swipe: then by your rules no one has a right to react to injustices, women 
included- and since this program was based on Maggie's reaction, you've got 
a double- standard running I'd like to see explained.

Not agreeing with glorifications of lesbianism does NOT make one a sexist; 
you can't coerce people into agreeing with you in this way. Further, the 
lesbianism as portrayed on the "founding" episode did not confine itself to 
praising leasbian women; that wouldn't have bothered me. The founding 
episode had a nice little pseudo-Freudian lecture wherein it is shown that 
all men are emotional cripples because bonding occurs between the child and 
mother, and only women sustain this connection. Men becom estranged from 
their source of love, their femininity, and the only object of a woman's 
love can be another woman. Of course, the existence of _fathers_ was 
completely ignored, as well as the possibility of a bond between the 
father and his kids, and his raising his sons well. It was a _blatant_ 
denigration of men- watch the episode. Sorry, I'm not going to sit back 
and accept the crap without comment. 

>generalizations (I did not see the episode on the fourth, although I've
>read plenty about it) about men, or portrays strong women, who happen 
>to be lesbian, that you find your feathers ruffled.  Strong women say 
>nothing about the men around them; they simply state about women.  That some 
>men, such as yourself, seem to take every act, portrayal or thought by a woman
>as some sort of reflection about their masculinity is very vain to say the
>least. 

As above, watch the show before going to the extreme of calling someone's 
masculinity into doubt. You're dead wrong; the show _didn't_ focus on strong 
women, but instead put down men as a group. 

---------

Eric Forbis      forb0004@student.tc.umn.edu
Newsgroups: alt.tv.northern-exp