Author: caryn mallard (---.swbell.net)
Date: 10-17-2001 03:41
Here find Phil's remarks to a post down a ways in this "discussion". I include it here to facilitate the point I am trying to make.
Phil wrote:
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<some stuff replied to elsewhere, and...>
I don't hate women, but you might not believe that- right? I have a lot of female friends, probably not, eh? You wear your expectations on your sleeve Caryn and you are not willing to accept that ....
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There you go again....speaking for me.
Here's a sleeve for you, Phil...
"Just because you say it, doesn't make it so."
You can say that you tried to be reasonable, but it doesn't alter the fact that your post did not seem reasonable to me. You can say you have a hundred lesbian friends who all agree with you. You can, as AM does, say that you have a lesbian GM who thinks excatly the way you do. You can, like NC, claim I am a minority lesbian because you read it in a book. You can go on and on about how great a human being you are, and how all your friends agree, but it doesn't accomplish anything beyond preening yourself for your fellows on the forum.
It does not advance the argument.
I won't do what you men do---quote a number of my male friends who thought you all were something or other not very nice, or mention all my PC memberships, or sqwak about how I already know what your going to say; it is specious for me to do so.
It does not advance the argument.
If you want to be reasonable, Phil, try not speaking for me.
Throughout this thread, men---and only men---have harangued each other about how much I hate men. They have distorted my words to "prove" their point, they have called me names and pronounced on my poltics, my psychology, even my appearance...but not one....not a single one, ever ask *me* if I hate all men, or who I meant by boyz, or what I felt should be done about images that effect women negatively.
AM, you make a big deal about what a great human being you are, and yet you are the worst of all. I nowhere stated that I would want to be the arbiter of what is and isn't put up at the gaming store; you wrote that, not me. You presumed to speak for me, without asking me to speak for myself. You state I think images of "attractive" or "beautiful" women are bad, or corrupting, or something along those lines. Nearly every word I wrote you deliberately distorted. Such hatred is not the hallmark of an ascendant human being, whatever PC club you belong to.
All of you harangue me because I'm such a hateful person, a "miandrist" as AM likes to call me. You do so by calling me names that are personally offensive, deliberately so. You take pride in it, as though it is a creed of the ACLU to be verbally abusive (AM). You say you don't mind doing so, yet you mind a great deal when you percieve that I have somehow put one over on you. Do you, AM & NC, believe it is a tenant of a great human being, or a scholar, to be unable to see one's own culpability? Phil, is it reasonable to attack someone, and agree that you have done so, and then claim you were trying to be reasonable?
I won't answer your distortions of my veiws. Not becuse I feel I am superior, but because you don't want an answer, or you would have asked a question. AM calls me a coward, yet cannot even bring himself to quote me properly, or admit that he has distorted my views by making assumptions about what I believe. Phil wastes his sharp wit on insults and cruelty, instead of on my views. NC writes that my experiences as a lesbian are not valid, because he read so in a book. He says my experiences as a lesbian do not count, because he could not find them in a book. His views on me, need no such support.
What ties you all together is your insistence non radicalizing my views. You propound positions for me that I have not taken, nor would take. When I protest, you do not allow that you might have misunderstood, and ask me to clarify, you insist that I do not know my own position, because you have decided what it is. You do not want to know what I meant. You want to maintain the illusion that you, and those like you, understand what I meant, even as you make up lies from whole cloth.
You are the ones whose minds are sealed, who are never wrong. You are the ones whose arrogance prohibits useful, intelligent discourse. You are the cowards, afraid to speak to my words, you fashion your own and claim them as mine. Afraid to think, you accuse me of condescencion when I call your distortions and lies as they are.
Whenever you feel brave enough to argue what I truly wrote, not what suits your pride, I will be glad to argue, and to admit when I am wrong, or overzealous, or unforgiving.
It is the men of this forum who fear honest argument, and who fear to admit their wrongs, not me.
caryn
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