andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) (01/26/86)
And now, my first and last words about Al, the poster of the
"prick-tease" article.
It was obvious to me from the original message that Al had been
burned by women many times, or that the times that he had been burned
were more serious to him than they may have been to others. As we
have probably all been burned by MOTAS's in the past, in similar
situations, we should probably have tried to generate some sympathy
for him. We would probably have been able to do this and still
pointed out that he was expressing his hurt in ways that we consider
to be sexist. (I realize I'm guilty of not doing this too.)
The fact is that our society does expect the man to take the
active role in heterosexual relationships, and it expects that even
of normally shy men. One way a shy man can get up his courage
sufficiently to do what is expected, is to convince himself that the
woman is interested in him. If he gets rejected, he can easily start
thinking that the woman was toying with him. I think this is
basically where Al was coming from, so to speak, though I don't agree
with where he ended up.
There's a big difference between that kind of article --
honestly expressing a misguided opinion -- and the mysterious flood
of recent articles whose authorship I don't care to remember,
concerning a so-called "joke" about a "girl" deciding she had been
raped. This kind of article, which seems to have been cross-posted
here for the express purpose of getting people's goats, shows real
bloody-mindedness that is almost too obvious to flame.
I enjoy seeing the Paul Dubucs and Ray Franks get toasted to a
nice crispness, but not the Als.
--Jamie.
...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"If you knew what I've seen with your eyes"