jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA (John Purbrick) (12/16/84)
> I get griped at what I see to be entrenched egoism combined with the > constricting and everpresent and FALSE stereotype of women craving pain. > My anger reflects no germ of truth in the stereotype--it is instead > something that has grown as I've aged and seen that ignoring damaging > falsehoods doesn't insulate one from them, nor banish them... > > L S Chabot OK. But is it that simple? When Judith Rosner's "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" came out in ~1975, I was living in a group house that included several women. (It is the story of a young woman, Theresa Dunn, who suffers from self hate(?) that leads her to hang out in a bar called "Mr. Goodbar" where she lets herself get picked up by a succession of violent men, until one more violent than the rest kills her. There is also a nice, if dull, man who loves her (why?), but she feels he is too good, or not bad enough, for her. Diane Keaton won an oscar for playing Terry Dunn in the movie version.) Anyway, a copy of LfMG circulated through the house (women first!), and they *all* said that they identified with Terry Dunn. I remember saying "Look, this woman is obsessed with self-abnegation, she's basically suicidal, you can feel sorry for her but how can any normal person feel anything in common with her?" and the women (and these were not "Total Womanhood" types, by any means) replied that it wasn't likely that a man could understand it, but there was something in them that that character spoke to. I still don't understand; sounds like a lot of people out there don't either. As for "ignoring damaging falsehoods", well, how much good does it do to deny damaging truth? I think it's true that there are masochistic women, and moreover, there's a lot of women who understand how a woman could be a masochist. If one believes that we have a woman-hating culture (and do we?) then in that culture men will hate women, and women will hate themselves. Could one also imagine people admitting it and refusing to do it any more?