andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) (10/22/85)
>frye@cuuxb.UUCP (frye) says: >>I'm for attitude adjustment (right on top of the head with a >>sawed of piece of piss-elm pick handle) for wife and child beaters. In article <338@nrcvax.UUCP> terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: > ... However, when it comes >to bashing a third party's brains in just because a second party >doesn't want to do it themselves, I draw the line. If they are too >stupid to defend themselves and/or leave, I wash my hands of them.... >Give me my great grandmother's cast iron skillet any day. Women who can take Tom's and Terry's view of things certainly don't need our help. But those who have been raised not to expect any such behaviour from their husbands, and don't know how to handle it except by slipping into victim mode, do. And other people need our help too: the men who don't know how to handle their problems except by slipping into wife-beater mode. Of course their personal flaws make them partly responsible; but I don't believe that they "choose the path of violence", as someone recently put it. The greater prevalence of wife-beaters over husband-beaters shows that men's upbringing makes them particularly susceptible to working out their emotions through violence against people they love. Attacking wife-beaters and imprisoning them without treatment, after what our culture shapes them to be, is like training a dog to attack and then putting a muzzle on it. --Jamie. ...ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "His soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind a city block"