to think Delia is a bit of a tosser for saying' I am not a feminist - I like men'

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

Stick to the cooking theres a dear

now I have to go pick up DS and spend some time with him. Please don;t think any silence is a retreat!

Dittany, can I sugest you educate yourself on conteporary gender studies by taking a look at the uni link I posted before - the one you had censored? Debating psychology and gender with you is like debating in a time warp.

GlaDOS,you alluded to your knowledege of references.i asked you to cite some.pretty straight forward really

posturing is your Oh me me i am so busy, too busy. you go look at every book in the library

i erroneously presumed your willingness to discuss your academic citations

silly me

GlaDOS,you alluded to your knowledege of references.i asked you to cite some.pretty straight forward really

posturing is your Oh me me i am so busy, too busy. you go look at every book in the library

i erroneously presumed your willingness to discuss your academic citations

silly me

I will SM, but MN is not my priority. Getting my facts striaght and my essays in on time is - as well as gettingf DS. If you wish to take this in bad will (oh suprise!) do so. With your apparent experenive you should know that complining and double checking citation is the most time consuming and exact element of writing. It has alreadybeen checkefd by academic psychologists and neuroscientists as well as a few feminists. The fact that the study of masculinity is a fact of rape is the least conentious issue in the paper. I would trust you more if you had challenged somehting obvioulsy contentious.

jesus wept GlaDOS.you need a chill pill.stop projecting your anxieties and insecurities

stop taking a pop at other posters - that wont get your work done or allay any fears

my experience apparent or not is not the question.you have disproportionately flared up at a simple and yes non contentious query

i asked out of interest, not to trick or catch you out

but clearly you misread some other intentions

GLaDOS. I think you, and "young women of today" (thanks for making me feel like a granny) are mistaking the media image of feminism, whith it's "rhetoric of victimhood" for the real thing.

I don't recognise the feminism you talk of. I can see echoes of the radical sepratist movement of the late seventies and early eighties, but that is no longer mainstream thought, except, however, when the Daily Moron wants to drag out it's pet lunatic for the population to laugh at. I worry for all those girls who have been fed this image of feminists as hand wringing, eternal victims with no real grounds for their eternal whinging. Their response seems to be to 'empower' themselves by enhancing themselves to look like blow up dolls and take up pole dancing.

I also take issue with this comment:
"Feminism is very anti giving women any advice to lessen the risk of rape. "

Firstly, it was feminism that did the research and advertised the fact that most rape occurs within the family and not out on the streets. Have you never encountered the 'Reclaim the Streets' movement? It seeks, in part, to destroy the myth that rapists are anonmyous men on the streets. This myth puts restrictions on women's lives, forces them back into the home and, ultimately, puts them in more danger. Child sexual abuse occurs mainly within the family too. By pushing it out into the media, making it less of a stigma, allowing women, girls and boys to recognise the signs and feel empowered to speak out feminism has given women (and men too) the tools to escape from the abuse.

Secondly, I still remember well the lessons taught in my womne's self defence course, taught by the Womens' society at university. I've yet to encounter course taught by any other group that offered gems such as 'how to easily push away a man who has you pinned against a wall' 'how to turn fear into anger' 'how to break the finger of of hands trying to strangle you' and 'the best moment to bite the penis that is being rammed down your throat'. All taught by women who had used them in real life situations.

I do not understand this. If you have just cited from your academic work on MN, then you must also have the reference to hand as it must be in your work. Why don't you just tell us the reference?

"It also tells us that when under certain social, cultural and genetic pressures, some men will attempt to override that autonomy by rape, in order to bolster their own reproductive fitness." Or the more simple explanation is that some men use rape as a way of gaining control in a society that is out of control.

When societies break down (ie in wartime etc) many people's deteriorates as a survival strategy, people steal and kill in order to feed themselves (and in some cases their children) but people also steal and kill in order to possess things they want rather than need - you can't eat gold or plasma screen TVs and they are heavy yet people will still loot 'valuables' even when fleeing a burning city into the wilderness. That men in crisis situations will also rape doesn;'t mean that men are all rapists any more than it means that people are all murderers.
Regarding the comments on 'feminist' rape prevention strategies: the best rape prevention stragegies are the ones that teach women how to defend themselves physically, not the ones about how women shouldn't dress provocatively or drink alcohol or go out after dark. Yet the idea of self-defence for women, women being able to physically thwart and fend off aggressive men, always seems to make a lot of mainstream patriarchal society uneasy.

Really Slug? What have myself and Gredal being doing today other than defending our persepctives, whch are based on our real expereinces, and being told we are 'mistaken', that we are oppressed and powerless, even if we do not experience this and actually feel empowered and powerful? Thgere are some intersting issues that I do want to discuss in the rest of your post though, but it will have to wait till ds is in bed.

Having a pop? SM, I was in a hurry. I had to pick up my son from nursery. I am cringing at the pseudo-macho word play here. I have checked my citation list and there isn't one for the phase you question SM, not becasue it is tenuous, but becasie it really isn't contentious. The study of masculinity by psychologists and feminists looking at rape is the norm. It doesn't require a 'proof'. Like I said there were too mant to read in the library. I did a quick cursery check tho and there are 14,700 entried in google scholar under the tags 'masculinity+psychology+rape'.

If you want to make your rather baffling query a bit more explict, it might help me narrow down the issue you are challenging?

men in crisis situations will rape?..wtf? what kind of crisis?..

SGS, have you read me right? I am not saying men are all rapists...thats most definely not what I am saying.

LOL GlaDOS do you have a PhD in "being obtuse" merely asked you if the psychology refs were peer reviewed and by written by whom

you continue to evade and flap about instructing me to go hither to library.well i am not the one citing my own research. a fair bit of your basis of this thread is your qualitative data.Naturally i asked you as you discussed it in context of this thread and your studies

as i maintain quite straightforward innocous query

which you have evaded answering

mumcentreplus - 'crisis situations' like war and natural disaster. You must have heard about soldiers using rape to terrorise and silence populations?

Or even after the war is won/lost (the Russian army following the fall of Berlin raped thousands of German women).

I have not evaded it. The enquiry is innocuous actually. Either we can keep going arond this roundabout or you can tell me what your specific challenge is to a general and universally uncontentious point? If you actually have one, and are not 'being obtuse'. My nose is not bloodied yet, SM. I get off on this stuff.

charity the way it came across in the paragraph was as though it was something beyond their control or a natural reaction to a critical situation!...sorry took it out of context...all rape is about power and control whatever the circumstances.

This is absurd. You cited your own writing from your phd. A thesis has to be referenced. You must have a reference for one or more papers that say that rape is an inherent part of masculine psychology. Why can't you just give us the reference?

If you won't reference, then don't use parts of your academic work on a forum!

This isn't my PhD MillyR. I will not be writing that up for another 5 years. And points of debate or contention only need to be referenced. Novbosy in academic has an issue with saying psychologists and feminists have long wondered if it is something in masculinity itself that may want to control women sexually. That really is about as moot a point as you can get when it comes to this issue.

Maybe I'm not making myself clear GLaDOS. Your description of feminism as having a "rhetoric of victimhood" that "alientates its target audience" and "is very anti giving women any advice to lessen the risk of rape" is simply not the feminism that I recognise in my life, in the workplace or in the women's societies and organisations. I do recognise that description in the media and, to a lesser extent, in academia.

I would be very, very worried if my daughter mistook the media and academic debate for real life. Just because you (and Gredal)personally have not been affected by some of the issues today's feminism tries to address, does this mean women should abandon their efforts to make life better for women, and by extension, society as a whole? I'm sure you don't currently feel oppressed or powerless, but this does not mean that a) women as a whole are not oppressed and powerless or b) you may encounter oppression and powerlesness as result of your gender at a later date. Should we abandon the struggle just because you are OK at the monent thank you very much? You would not be writing your PhD now if it were not for the feminists of the past. The best thing you can do to repay their efforts is to continue them, not to use your priviliged position to denigrate and diminish the efforts of those who seek to continue their work. Feminism has your best interests at heart, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

I prefer direct action to academic debate myself.

1970s 'scary' feminism upset men and some women not because it made women out to be victims, but because it made them angry, determined to change things and not prepared to take any more shit from men. Women were always supposed to be passive. And that is why women who took on the older caring roles felt attacked. If women were changing the space they took up in the world what would happen to the old certainties. What value to being a nurturer when that was what women had done for ever? People like my mum hated feminists because they attacked the very core of her life view and rubbished what she saw as her entire purpose.

I don't see why modern younger women feel threatened by that any more. Most women make their choices for many reasons other than gender. Of course gender is still an issue and it always will be. There are still battles to fight. But feminism has moved on. Why, because you have decided to stay at home and take on a more traditional role, does that mean you can't have respect for a movement that empowered many women and still is helping those that need that help in the roles they have chosen.