At Sat, 13 Mar 1999 22:57:07 EST, you wrote:
>
>In a message dated 3/13/1999 9:26:02 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
><< People might at least try inquiring of the moderator of this list if she
>considers her professional colleague in New Zealand to be a sexist. >> dees
>quote
>
>Oh, why bring the moderator into this.is this a veiled threat? Is it Behave
>and accept the patriarchy or I'll set the moderator upon you for her opinion
>rules supreme?? >>
>
>
>GS,
>
>If the moderator did not think her colleague was a sexist, would that prevent
>you from reading what he wrote and deciding that you felt he was one?
>
>Should it prevent any one from deciding it, if they felt that opinion?
>
>Joe Dees has no power over anyone on this list. We don't think we do either,
>but he doesn't know that he doesn't. He is hoping that "the system" will
>reinforce his power. He is not disagreeing with you on facts, he is telling
>you what your opinion is allowed to be.
>
>I have found that the consistent conflict for me in our interaction. It is so
>easy to type an email, but in real life, I would never have the patience for
>him, and if I had to hear him vocalize the things he said, especially in the
>patriarchal white male tone, it would not have lasted half of the first
>paragraph of the first email from him to me. I would have sent him away. He
>seems to be the kind of man who would try to be physically overbearing, and I
>would have to set an eldridge cleaver type man against him to protect me. Or
>utilize one of those defensive techniques to protect myself.
>
>I don't even think he is aware that his "power" doesn't exist into our minds
>to tell us what to think, much less into our lives to dictate our behaviours,
>expressions of feeling.
>
>Nicole
When I was beginning my studies in existential phenomenology, I had a Belgian
professor named Daniel Herman who embodied the worst attitudinal qualities of both the
Germans and the French. He was a strict taskmaster, and ruthlessly enforced
intellectual discipline. "Those things which do not kill us make us stronger" F.
Nietszche wrote, and so, Dr. Herman strengthened me.
I will never forget when someone caught in blatant self-contradiction between the
merciless jaws of a logical dilemma dared to retort that "everyone is allowed to have
their own opinion." Dr. Herman fixed the miscreant with a penetrating and baleful
stare, and replied that no one was entitled to an opinion which was not in accordance
with the facts of any matter with which they planned to be involved, and that
furthermore one had the responsibility to discover what those facts were if they did
not know them, lest they harm both themselves and others through attempting to act or
to inform others from a position of ignorance.
Much of your opinions on this list are purportedly backed up by your knowedge or
personal or secondhand experience of the topics under discussion (you seem to have
"relatives ' in every country that comes up, not unlike Mr. Haney in the old sitcom
"Green Acres"). You undercut your self-proclaimed bases for the validity of your own
opinions if you subsequently maintain that knowledge and experience count for nothing,
and that one should not pursue them diligently before claiming to speak from some
position of authority.
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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