laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/17/84)
(another in a series of unpopular articles from utcsstat!laura) Look, gang, we are going have to get one thing straight. Life ain't easy. FOR ANYBODY. Now one can argue about whether it is tougher to be a woman than it is to be a man, but let us not lose sight that it is damn hard for everybody. Okay. Got that. I don't want to have to keep telling people that I am not the most heartless cold fish in the universe, because I am not. It is just that when you tell me that life is hell, you aren't exactly telling me news, and I forget to mention this because I thought that it was obvious. You live and learn. Now. You are a person. You just happen to be a woman, and you think that life is a bitch. You go out and you get lots of evidence that life is a bitch and that there is all this discrimination garbage going on and that you aren't appreciated and people are making rude comments about you and it is all very foul and you feel rotten and depressed. Do you grok this? I've been there too. Now, one day you decide that you can't sit around moaning forever and it is time to get on with life. but it is damn hard because people are still treating you badly and you don't like it, and you don't think that you have the strength to make the grade. Still with me? I've been here too. Now, you have to get the guts to get on with life. I only know of 2 stores you can go to to get the guts. One is the store of hatred and the other is the store of compassion. if you go to the hatred store, you decide that those people who hate you and treat you badly are flaming assholes and you are going to make it and damn their eyes for being lousy people and treating you badly. if you go to the compassion store you decide that their life is real tough and you can understand where they are coming from and you are going to feel sorry that they are in such a bad condition as to not appreciate you because that is too bad. Still with me? Okay. now we get to support groups. Everybody needs support, and friends are real important. But organised groups for support can only exist to try to help you find the hatred store or the compassion store in your own head. And the hatred store is a lot easier to find -- so most groups end up being used for mutual backing-up-the-hatred, so that you can have the guts to go out there. now this is the problem. Compassion is hard to find, and finding the balance between sympathy and letting yourself get walked over is real tough. Hatred, on the other hand, is relatively easy to do once you have caught on, and it is terribly addictive. You get to like hating. You go back to groups simply because you have a lot of fun hating, though you might never be willing to admit this to yourself. So, andybody who is really into hating is going to find that a support groups is an all-time wonderful place, because you can hate and not be criticised for doing so. Full-time haters clog the place and make it hard for the non-haters to get heard. Now, if the problem is that men are a bunch of flaming assholes then this is all very fine, and you can go on hating and even be justified in doing so. The trick is that I don't believe this. I think that men are pretty much in the same boat as the rest of us -- life is a bitch and they want to find the answers and they are real confused 'cause it won't play by the rules that they thought were true. Thus I think that compassion is a lot better than hatred. If by "feminism" you mean "lets go out and hate the boys and feel good about doing so" then I don't wnat anything to do with it. if, on the other hand you mean compassionate feminism, then I think that it is a very neat idea, but probably the name is wrong, because it focuses on the difference, which makes it very easy for the haters to get into the act and corrupt the whole thing. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
jamcmullan@watmath.UUCP (Judy McMullan) (01/18/84)
>Now, you have to get the guts to get on with life. I only know of 2 >stores you can go to to get the guts. One is the store of hatred >and the other is the store of compassion.... >...And the hatred store is a lot easier to find -- so most groups >end up being used for mutual backing-up-the-hatred, so that you can >have the guts to go out there. Laura, I have to disagree that support groups teach one to hate. I have been in various women's groups (some structured strictly as "support" groups and some with a political purpose). I will never deny that there have been some man-hating types in the group but they are always a very small minority. Far more often, these groups give one ideas about how to cope with life. For instance, someone may suggest the snappy comeback to make to your thick- headed boss's remarks. Someone may tell you how they finally got it across to their boyfriend (awful word) what it is like to fear rape. Because these people may be able to look at you more objectively than your family, they may point out the job skills you have that you didn't even realize were valuable (eg. because no one thought being a seamstress was valuable). For myself, I have discovered some marvelous books. Reading these gave me plenty of snappy comebacks for all sorts of situations women find them- selves in. I have also discovered women's music (no, not Chris Williamson -- Anne Murray!!). Being in women's groups has also given me the feeling that I am not alone!! I am so happy to find that I am not the only one who hates being called a "girl" (ridiculous, after all I've been through!). I also have a friend who is very uncomfortable with the "macho" role of men. He joined a support group of like-minded men and they were able to discuss their feelings and shape new roles for themselves in an environment without hostility. I don't think they were spending time hating. They had lives (their own) they were busy re-shaping. Mmmm. I like those last two sentences. I think that's the way I feel about support groups. --from the sssstickkky keyboard of Judy McMullan ...!{allegra|decvax}!watmath!jamcmullan
saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (01/18/84)
I do agree with Judy that I do believe there is a need for support group as such (for support) and that these groups do not necessarily foster hate. I do wonder however if there is such a need on the net. Judging from the contents of net.women, we have not been doing much supporting of each other, but rather discussing topics of a general interest. There is one support group that is doing very well on the net, it is net.singles; I don't think this group fosters hate towards married people. Maybe there is such a need for women to help them deal with problems they encounter as women. . I don't see too much evidence of such a need, but then again, I don't see too much evidence of women participating in the net in general; why? to you women reading this, are you not interested in the net? if you are reading it regularly but not posting, why? is it because the topics are not interesting, you do not have enough time, or because you feel that the net is too male-dominated for you to dare say anything. If the latest is the case, then maybe we do need to differentiate between net.women and net.social, keeping the first one as a support group, but the second one as a arena for discussions on sex roles etc. Until you women speak up, we won't know, and there probably will not be any womenspace on the net as most of us women who are already submitting are not too intimidated by men and do not feel a REAL need for a support group on the net. We can find such groups on our own if we really want to.
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/20/84)
Maybe Judy has been finding better support groups than I did when I went looking. I gave up, because the monsters I found there weren't anything like what I wanted to be. the alternative explananation is that Judy has not been able to recognise hatred when she's seen it. Having met Judy, I don't believe this. However, if any of you out there say "gee -- that's just what my support group does, it must be okay" it may be time to take another look. 'Cause there are some out there which do nothing as far as I can see besides exchange phone numbers and encourage hatred. Far more often, these groups give one ideas about how to cope with life. For instance, someone may suggest the snappy comeback to make to your thick- headed boss's remarks. This one I heard a lot. However, I rarely heard anything about whether the boss was actually thick-headed. there was an unwritten assumption that anything that any woman said about a man was the strict, literal, and unadulterated truth, while any comments he might make were vile slander. People would vie with each other over the "most rotten" thing that their boss had said to them that week. I felt incredibly sorry for their bosses. I doubt that he could have said anything which would not have been picked apart in an effort to prove that he was a chauvinist and should be served up as pig-pie. I remember over the course of 3 weeks hearing one group of 3, who had the same boss. Week 1 -- boss is jerk because he says "his" rather than "his or hers". Solution -- bitch incessantly at boss. Week 2. Gloat. Boss is using "his or hers" all the time, and is using male and female prounouns throughout his memorandums. Week 3. Boss is now terribly sexist because he has used male pronouns 60-some percent of the time and female 30-some percent. he's had one week, he should be using 50/50 now... Everybody talks about how they keep track of such things on the tops of their steno pads... Poor Boss. I am sure that if I knew my employees were counting my words in order to rake me over the coals 2 times a week I should can the employees and hope to get some with a sense of "company loyalty" next time. Someone may tell you how they finally got it across to their boyfriend (awful word) what it is like to fear rape. Boyfriends come in all shapes and sizes. I heard one get raked over the coals. It seems that he was a psychologist, and he figured that if his girlfriend feared rape the logical thing to do was to get her some therapy (though not from him!) so that she would not feel frightened. By the time everybody had worked over that poor girl, she was convinced that her boyfriend was the ultimate in loosers because he would not let her "have her fear". i figured that he already knew that she already "had her fear" and he was suggesting something constructive that she could do about it. Alas, as a raped person who could never get a boyfriend to understand, she could get a lot of attention from the supportive women. They were telling her that she didn't "need" any boyfriend, since she had them. Hmm. Maybe she didn't (and shouldn't) need her boyfriend, but he might be nice to have anyway. it would be rather nice if somebody had cared about him when suggesting that she drop him for being 'callous'. Also, the support group clearly were making a need for them in that woman, who might not have needed them if she could have got her life with her boyfriend together. Cynical old me thought that there couldn't possibly be any connection between this and the increasing "membership fees" and the power-tripping that certain people were obviously enjoying... Because these people may be able to look at you more objectively than your family, they may point out the job skills you have that you didn't even realize were valuable (eg. because no one thought being a seamstress was valuable). On the other hand, because they do not know you well enough, they tend to believe all the bs you can give them. And sometimes they instruct people to bite off far more than they can chew... When I was in Ottawa, the neat and new wonderful thing to do is to tell anybody who could type (most people there) that they had all the necessary skills to move to the well-paying job of Cobol programmer. Unfortunately, programming Cobol requires brains. (and the field could use a whole lot more brains -- the horrible things I have seen...) Some of these dissatisfied secretary sorts (Ottawa -- a government town -- is full of them.) never demonstrated any ability to think as far as I could see. Yet the embarked on the effort. I cornered a few of them and asked what they would do if they couldn't hack it. They said "look pretty". I don't know about you, but I sure don't want to support the code of someone who was kept around "to be pretty". Being in women's groups has also given me the feeling that I am not alone!! I am so happy to find that I am not the only one who hates being called a "girl" (ridiculous, after all I've been through!). The problem with this, is that if you think that it is ridiculous to hate being called "girl", with all that support you may never get around to doing something about that ridiculous hate. Or any ridiculous aspect of yourself. it all becomes wonderful because "all the girls" have it. One of the things that I found most annoying in Ottawa was the topics which were absolutely and permanently off limit. Such as "how do you get a cheap baby sitter in this darn town" and "why can't I bring my (not female) lover to this meeting?" (the answer to that one was: "THIS IS WOMENSPACE" which I always thought should win the most hypocritical line of the year award, since these "womanspace lovers" were the first to crack down on the all-male clubs in the area.) By the way, since my last article on rape, I have met one man who was raped. By 3 women. It was the most horrible rape story I have heard, and I have heard lots. The threat of castration does an awful lot of damage to a person. Also being forced to perform multiple times. Being beaten and being crved by a knife doesn't help much. This happened 10 years ago, and he and his male lover (who was his lover at the time as well) have not yet recovered. He has the problem that there isn't a psychiatrist in the world that knows how to deal with male rape, since it either is uncommon, or is never reported out of embarrassment. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura