Women are
NOT blameless when it comes to abuse... and NOT blameless when it comes to
destroying our planet either. OUR COMMON ENEMY IS PATRIARCHY, NOT MEN.
I think we all agree on that. However, the problem with patriarchy is that it
produces individuals, mostly men, who are abusive.
There is an excellent book: "Male Violence" Edited by John Archer. It
contains the results of studies on violence, and is heavily annotated. This
book is good because it addresses the issue of male v.s. female violence.
"...we...acknowledge that females are quite capable of aggression, and may
even be violent in some cases. But we do not let this side-track us from the
much greater social problem of male violence by mistaking aggression for
violence or by over-emphasizing the relatively unusual, but highly newsworthy,
cases of the seriously violent wife, the female sexual abuser of children, or
the woman serial killer." pg.4.
"Most human violence is carried out by men. Male violence could even be
described as the major source of human suffering."
There is another truly excellent book, "Real Boys" by William Pollack which
discusses the innate humanity of males and the de-humanizing effect on them of
growing up in a patriarchy.
Good reading!
Madrone
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Aug 26 17:28:56 1998
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 17:28:50 -0600 (MDT)
From: Jake A Paisain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: STUDIES IN WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: working together
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In regards to my objection to the idea of creating a male-free ecofeminist
listserv:
On Th
u, 27 Aug 1998, bunny wrote:
> I also feel you made some good points.
hmm
> However, in general, it is men (in my country) who are most guilty of
> raping the country (they have the power here both in parliament and in
> commerce) and also many more women and children die here from acts of
> domestic violence than men.
I don't disagree that those men do this... but why? Because Patriarchy
and our culture have trained them to do that from the beginning? And I
don't hold those men in any higher regard than you do. In America, there
are women who yield power too... in the government, in corporate America
and while they might be doing real well on a self-empowerment level,
they're not always necessarily doing anything to bust this system open,
expose it and transmute it into something that might last.... women
participate in and support capitalism too, just as much as men, and
capitalism, thus far, has had nothing but detrimental effects on our
ecological situation.
Furthermore, Francoise d'Eaubonne, the woman who coined the term
eco-feminism, is quoted as mentioning that in Australia, there was at one
time an ecofeminist delegation of representatives to the government. Does
anyone in Australia (or anywhere else know about this group? Could we get
bunny in touch with them?)
My original point was that excluding men from participating in an
ecofeminist dialog is contrary to my understanding of an ecofeminist ethic
of loving care and friendship. Please don't judge all of us because we
have a piece of flesh hanging between our legs any more than you would
wish to be judged for your abilities to participate in ANY dialog because
you have flesh hanging from your chest. Pardon the crudeness of that, but
this topic really ruffles my feathers because I for one am tired of being
excluded from dialogs that are important because I don't meet others
expectations of who I should be.
Education and a revised schooling system
> might help rectify some problems (in my view) if this was done correctly
> but there is no financial plan or deliberate strategy in place here to
> promote respectfuleness towards women.
This can also happen on a daily basis by putting our own ethical stance to
practice in our personal, academic, business and political lives.
Also, male sports and a macho
> society continually rewards some violence (such as sport violence) while
> women and children are the end sufferers (in general) of this behaviour.
> I would like to see some positive strageties adopted by our government
> now to reduce entrenched violence towards women and children and to aim
> to lower the acceptance of violence in entrenched male enclaves such as
> sport etc.
I thoroughly agree and support your position.
>
> Sorry to disagree, but in my view of things, men are the largest group
> of perpetrators of violence towards women and the environment.
>
I don't disagree with you on this at all. I agree that we must change
this. Let's work together.
jacob
> Kind regards,
>
> Marguerite
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