From: phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone)
Newsgroups: ba.politics
Subject: Re: Are they not men?
Date: 21 Dec 92 22:01:58 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Generally in favor of, but mostly random.

In article <1992Dec21.174121.2890@island.COM> guido@island.COM (Guido Marx) writes:
    >I have to disagree - the issue IS about assaults. In the
    >story you quoted, the man in question didn't feel threatened
    >until someone made an unwelcome physical advance toward him
    >in the middle of the night. The fact that men and women don't
    >shower together is simply a matter of societal convention. I
    >have lived in dorms where men and women DID share bathrooms
    >and showers. Despite what you claim, it wasn't a "sexual
    >context".
    >
    >The fear that these men underwent clearly was a fear of being
    >assaulted, not of being placed in an unwanted "sexual
    >context".

Oh? I see. tell me, the dorms that men and women shared bathrooms and showers,
was it voluntary? Or was it a forced assignment? I would be very surprised
if the "shared" showers were shared in the military sense -- one large
room with many showerheads. No cubicles, no privacy.

And, by the way, that was NOT an assault by legal definition. To sexually
grope someone is not an assualt unless there is an intent to bodily harm
or it persists after a "no". (Otherwise you have the absurd situation
where the very first initiation of petting between two people is an
assault).

You are wrong. After all, if the author has responded "climb on in sailor",
it would not have been an assault.

Of course, you persist in thinking that only the way you think can be the
one "real" way.

1. Some football jock that came out of the closet writes how after he
   came out, the other jocks (basically) avoided him in the locker rooms.
   "Somehow" he ended up with a locker assigment that was mostly out of
   view from the other players lockers. Nobody was actually directly
   nasty to him, but he did complain of feeling a pariah in the locker
   room.

   Now, consider the size and physical shape of a footbal player, I don't
   think those men were worried that they would be raped/assualted. But they
   clearly didn't feel "comfortable" around this guy -- their sexual context
   was being violated.

2. A female gynecologist (I can never spell that word) in Ohio is suing her
   local practice group for sexual orietntation discrimination (per a clause
   in her practice agreement). She was invited to join because she had
   a fast growing practice -- women DO like to have a female gyn. She was
   then observed in the local lesbian bar, and her practice melted away.

   The practice group then kicked her out because she fell below the
   monetary floor they had set. She sued because it all happened because
   of her sexual orientation.

   Now, I don't think her patients left her because they thought they were
   going to be raped. They left because their sexual context was violated,
   after all, they chose her because she was a female in the first place and
   more "comfortable" to them than a man.




-- 
I believe Gennifer Flowers.

These opinions are MINE, and you can't have 'em! (But I'll rent 'em cheap ...)