From: noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: Men's Issues Newsbrief
Date: 5 Sep 92 02:43:50 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

In article <Bu2y4A.Jqy.2@cs.cmu.edu> garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:
>In article <1992Sep4.214744.6540@cbnewsk.cb.att.com> noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer) writes:
>#In article <Bu2Grt.M4t.2@cs.cmu.edu> garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:
>##In article <1992Sep1.024134.7681@leland.Stanford.EDU> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
>###In article <1992Aug29.040317.18445@cbnewsk.cb.att.com> noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer) writes:
>##
>##[one man's fictional account of a conception deleted]
>##
>####Is this rape?  He never consented.  He was not penetrated.
>##
>###It is rape.  The man is not able to give his consent to sex, thus it's
>###rape.
>##
>##Of course it would be, if it really happened.  I think that
>##Hoffmeyer was being a bit dishonest when he mixed fact and 
>##fiction in his article.
>##
>#
>#Oh, come on, Susan.  I picked a "hypothetical" example that defies the
>#classic language of typical rape definitions in state laws.  Just
>#because it was from a fictional book doesn't mean that it couldn't
>#happen or that it didn't happen.  In fact, I chose it because it wasz
>#familiar to so many people - all those that read the book and all those
>#that saw the movie (although I don't recall the explanation of the
>#specifics of the sex act being very clear in the movie, but some folks
>#who had only seen the movie recognized it immediately anyway).  The
>#whole point was that so many of us read this passage of saw it in the
>#movie, but how many of us thought to themselves, "My God, this is rape."
>#Which it was - no doubt.  If you don't believe me, ask Farthing.
>
>I said that it would be rape if it really happened above.
>
>Do you think that it happened?

Do you think that it is possible?  How do you know that it has NOT
happened?  Maybe Irving got the idea somewhere.  Truth is almost always
stranger than fiction.

>I recognized it as rape when I read the book.  I also recognized
>it as fiction, in particular, fiction written by a man who 
>often makes his characters behave in extreme ways.  

I guess because no people really behave in strange ways, we can assume
that your assumption that this NEVER happened is correct then.  Well, I
stand corrected.

>I understand your motivation - it isn't a traditional rape, and
>perhaps some people didn't recognize it as such.  Your point
>wouldn't have been lost, though, if you had indicated the
>source of the story.

Oh, it wasn't lost.  People were pointing out the source within 24 hours
of the time I made that post.  Some of them might have even had a
revelation - `hey, that was rape.  I wonder why I didn't think that when
I read the book.  Why was this Irving guy so quick to just forgive this
woman, what was her name, Jenny Fields, for raping a man?  Why did she
become a hero of the feminist movement in the book?  Were women actually
advocating that men are such brutes, their only value on this planet is
as sperm donors?  But then she had a boy - a son - and this son did not
have a father.  Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields.'

But that's the whole point of being obscure.  It's kind of like 2001
and 2010.  2001 was a brilliant movie in its time, but it was obscure
too.  It left all these unanswered questions (that weren't even
answered in the book), so many people had to imagine what was not being
said.  2010 let virtually nothing up to the imagination - only what the
aliens looked like - but it didn't even makes us ponder `is it possible
that there is intelligent life out there somewhere?'  Many people
thought the "obscurity" of 2001 made it a better movie/book.  Why,
because it made us think - it was not just more pablum.  It incited
many of us to find out more.  Did anyone even wonder - after watching
2010 (or reading the book) - how Jupiter could be transformed into a
sun?  Well, Jupiter actually emits more heat than it receives from the
sun.  It is a sun in the infrared spectrum - but it is not
fissioning/fusioning.  However, if the density of Jupiter was increased
- if it shrunk to about 1/4 (maybe 1/10th - I don't remember) its size,
it would go thermo-nuclear and would be a sun.  Amazing.  But 2010 only
left little things like this for us to find out (And I think this was
explained in both the book and the movie - possible faulty memory
alert).  It basically spoon-fed us all the explanations necessary to
understand all the intricate details of the story.

>###Of course, you know these staunch feminists who frankly don't respect
>###men and their suffering.  If they're not becoming lesbians, killing
>###their babies, or engaging in witchcraft, they're becoming nurses so
>###they can rape unconscious men at will.  This is something Pat
>###Robertson should add to his list of the perversions feminists want to
>###inflict on the rest of us God-fearing folk.
>##
>#I love Farthing's anger.  Yes Farthing, I was being a pig.  How big of
>#you to notice.
>
>Maybe I do understand why you were reluctant to admit that
>this scenario was the product of a man's imagination.

How do you know that Susan?  You don't - so don't try to convince us.
Ivanna Trump just wrote a fictional novel recently.  Did anyone notice
how the central character of her book seemed a lot like Ivanna - but
different?  You don't know that Irving did not know someone who did what
he had his central character's mother do.  Just because it was revealed
in a fictional book, doesn't mean that it never happened.

>##Irving also created a bizarre group of "feminists" who
>##mutilated themselves to protest a rape and mutilation.
>##(I've seen some people argue that rape was the central 
>##theme of _Garp_.)  Few people would cite "Ellen Jamesians"
>##as an example of radical feminists, though.
>#
>#Yuck.  The Ellen Jamesians, I thought, were the epitomy of radical
>#feminists.  Cutting out their tongues to protest a brutal rape of a
>#young girl.  Why does self-mutilation help to fix the problem?  It was
>#a completely emotional reaction.  
>
>Luckily, people who hate women (or in your code, feminists) as
>much as you do are rare.  

Funny, but I don't hate women.  I'd like for you to present one thing
that I've ever written that was a simple reflection of hatred towards
women in general.  

>Can you cite any real-world group that has done anything like
>this?  

Well, where do I start.  I don't know why self-mutilation is so popular,
but many people adorn their bodies with permanent inks - tattoos.  Men
routinely have the foreskins lopped off at birth, for no good reason.
Body piercing seems to be a popular fad.  How many nose rings have you
seen recently?  In African cultures it is common to perform
circumcisions of women, in some cases cutting off the clitoris, but
mostly just the labia around the clitoris.  Many primitive people mutilate
their bodies by putting things in their noses, through their lips, etc.
In some African tribes, the males adorned the penis and the longer the
penis, the more "desirable" the man.  So, they also developed ways to
make it longer - the desire - that is. 

No, I don't know of any real-world groups that have done any
self-mutilation.  Oh, I suppose you meant self-mutilation in protest to
acts of physical abuse and rape.  No, don't know of any handy.  But, I
have heard words of hatred coming from radical feminists mouths.  Some
might say they are self-incrimninating.  Words that I don't like.  You
mistake my disdain for their words as disdain for women.  Nothing could
be further from the truth.

What kinds of words?  We all know them.  But here's a small refresher:

>Consider the quote from Jacsun Shah, a reporter from the Houston
>Chronicle one more time.  And tell me how much value does it have.
> 
>>->   "Yes, I am a man hater, yes, I am a feminist. and why not?
>>->    Women are dying . They die every day, at the hands of men.
>>->    Men ... beat them, rape them, dismember them. Hell yes, I
>>->    hate men ... To all of you women out there, I say _hate_.
>>->    You have every right to ... I knew the kindest thing I could
>>->    do for the women of this world is to hate men with full force."

Jacsun is a man hater and feminist.  She says so.  Is that
man-hater/feminist or just man hater and feminist.  1 * 1 = 1.  (And,
no, I'm not saying all feminists are man haters - nor all man haters are
feminists - I was just playing a little logic game.)

Or how 'bout Andrea D.

"I am asking you to stop men who beat women ... get them jailed or get 
them killed."
	- Andrea Dworkin, Montreal Gazette, May 13, 1991

I could go on with Gloria Steinem, Catherine MacKinnon, Adriene Rich and
many others, but by now this is old hat for most of us.

I don't even hate these women.  I hate what they believe, and I'm sad
that they could possibly grow to believe such things.   I'm sad because
they direct their anger against specific bad men towards men in general.
Men, in general, are not deserving of their wrath.  They do nothing to
make things better - they just serve to further isolate the two sexes,
they give credence to misdirected anger.  They don't solve the problems,
they just push men and women further away from one another.

Why does something like, "A women needs a man like a fish needs a
bicycle" produce no good results?  Yes, we chuckle.  But do women, in
general, need men?  Do men, in general, need women?  Do we have
something to offer the other sex, besides sex?  Aren't there emotional
and intellectual rewards for interacting with members of the other sex?

>#Oh, did you notice that Irving (as in 
>#John - not Washington) had one of these "Ellen Jamesians" murder Garp 
>#at the end of the book/movie (in fact, it was Garp's neighbor, who 
>#-even though he never did anything to him, was quite sure that he had
>#somehow molested her when she was a child - you know - those memories
>#of how some big, bad evil man abused you when you were three years
>#old)?  
>
>This explanation of the muderis not from Irving's book or the movie 
>version, but is a product of Hoffmeyer's imagination.  There is

Well, sure you can just say that off the top of your head, but go read
the book.  Garp and one of his little neighbors got in some kind of
trouble when they were wee little kids.  Seems Garp monster was putting
the moves on this little girl's sister and she saw them.  She was
repulsed by it and grew up believing that Garp had somehow molested her
sister.  So, my original memory wasn't 100% accurate.  Big deal.  I
wasn't lying - just wasn't 100% accurate in my recollection.  You can
believe that I was purposely trying to con everyone and mentally rape
the world, but I know better.

>nothing about memories of being molested in either.  Why Hoffmeyer
>has chosen to lie about this, I'm not sure.  (The character
>who killed Garp was portrayed as emotionally unstable
>throughout the book.)
>
>Get this straight, Hoffmeyer - some children are molested.
>Ridiculing them is despicable.  

Yes, and many men, such as myself, a part of an acrimonious divorce,
have been falsely accused of carrying out such acts.  Ridiculing men
who have been falsely accused of such acts is despicable too.

Susan, how many men are raped while in prison in the US every year?  Why
don't you care about the abuse that these men suffer?  Is it not cruel
and unusual punishment to be sexually abused as part of paying off a debt
to society?  Oh, how mentally stable are these men, when they are
released from prison, in their sexual relations - after they have been
sexually abused for years?  Do you think that locking up all these men,
who are not mentally "all-together" in the first place, sexually abusing
them for years, then releasing them back out into society, is a good
thing?  Do you think it reduces the incidences of rape against women?
Is it possible that it makes the situation worse?

There are many victims in this world.  I feel for all of them - the
victims of real abuse and the victims who were falsely accused.

Did you know that studies of death-row inmates indicate that 2% of them,
throughout the history of our legal system, were not guilty of the crime
they were charged with?  The information is based on cases where someone
else would later confess to the crime, or where people were exonerated
before they were put to death.  In Ohio right now there are 78 men on
death row and 3 of them are not guilty - and they have very strong cases
to prove they are not guilty - like someone else has confessed to their
crimes and all the evidence really points to the confessors.  Yet, these
men still sit in jail.  Why?

>#Doesn't say much about what Irving thought of all those "Ellen
>#Jamesians," does it?
>
>This is absurd.  They were products of his own creation -
>they were purposefully made to be ridiculous caricatures.
>I've yet to hear anyone express admiration for them, other
>than a few fictional characters in the book.
>
>Susan

Yeah, well here's news.  There's a college-aged rock group making the
rounds right now called the "Ellen Jamesians."  No shit.  I read their
bio.  Can't tell whether they are making fun of the "Ellen Jamesians" in
Irving's book or if they are serious in their support of women victims 
of rape.

And there are many men who are sympathetic to women victims of rape.
Many.  I am one.  But I'm also sympathetic to men victims of rape.  I'm
also sympathetic to those who have been falsely accused of misconduct of
any sort.  I know what it is like.  Why just recently, some woman
accused me of being a liar and a misogynist - and I try very hard to be
neither.  It's so easy for some to make glaring accusations that are
simply not accurate.

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
TR@CBNEA.ATT.COM 

P.S.  The following is a song by Toad the Wet Sprocket, which, if
anything, seems to be indicative of some men's sympathy of women
victims of rape.

hold her down

take her arms and hold her down...
until she stops kicking
take her arms and hold her down...
until she stops moving
	and they don't know her
	but what the fuck
	they've got nothing else they can do
	and they've no reason
	but they still come
		and i
		would have a hard time facing you
		this crime
		the shame of what a man can do
take her arms and hold her down...
until she stops screaming
take her arms and hold her down...
until she stops breathing
	and they don't know her
	but what the fuck
	they've got nothing else they can do
	and they've no reason
	but they still come
		and i
		would have a hard time facing you
		this crime
		the shame of what a man can do
		i would've died
		from all the hell that you've been through
take the night back
all they've stolen
all we took from you

###

That's kind of what I get from Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon,
except it leaves out the "all men are scum" part.  But even I take
exception to the lumping of all men together as "we" in the last line.
I have not raped anyone.  I don't like being lumped together with all
the sick men and women who have.

Anybody hear from Dave Gross recently - we need some new newsbriefs.
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.rape,alt.child-support