Sorry to quote so much, but I felt it necessary to give context to what
I'm responding to.
On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Kelly Lynn Martin wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2000 18:04:42 -0500, Erin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >1. Women/girls experience sexual abuse, assault, harassment, domestic
> >violence far more often and regularly than men/boys, which is
> >damaging to the core of a person's self and which takes a great deal
> >of time and personal strength to heal.
I disagree with this statement on one primary ground: women are more
*afraid*. What is worse than something you fear actually happening?
Something bad that you DIDN'T fear happening and had no preconceived
notion was possible. It's an emotional blindside.
Thus, I assert that, on average, women are better prepared emotionally to
heal from abuse *because* they are more fearful, on average, than men.
> As far as assault, harassment, and domestic violence goes, I don't
> think this is true. Boys get beaten as often if not more often than
> girls, in part because they're supposed to "be able to take it". I
> know a _lot_ of men who have been severely damaged by parental,
> sibling, or classmate abuse.
Ditto.
> The evidence for sexual abuse is inconclusive, especially in light of
> recent admissions that many of the sexual abuse stories that were all
> the rage in the early 90s were in all probability invented by
> therapists, confabulated, or just plain fraudulent. I'm not saying
> that sexual abuse doesn't occur -- clearly, it does -- but I do
> believe that we have no good figures on its incidence, or on which sex
> is more likely to be a victim.
I agree. I personally have dated two male incest survivors. They had a
MUCH harder time of it than the women I know primarily because they had
even fewer people they could open up to.
> Victim groups (and those who work for them) are, unfortunately, not good
> sources of information because they are extremely biased and have very
> powerful motivations to make the problem to be as large as possible.
> Again, no criticism of the value of those groups is intended; they serve
> a valuable purpose. They're just largely worthless as a source of
> unbiased factual information.
Most SIA meetings exclude male survivors.
--
_Deirdre * http://www.linuxcabal.net * http://www.deirdre.net
"That doesn't make sense in any meaning of 'sense' with which I'm
familiar"
-- Aaron Malone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
