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Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 15:19:34 -0500 (EST)
To: Andrew Reeves <andrew.reeves &AElig wayne.edu>
cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Kevin Lochner <klochner &AElig eecs.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Feminism debate
Status: O

I'd also like to send a thank you to james, for arriving out of nowhere
like the deus ex machina we all know him for, steering the discussion in a
less combative direction & landing on some sane conclusions where we can
hopefully all find a little common ground.  Not to mention for doing
it with some intellectual panache of his own.

And Grandpa Reeves, with all due respect, you're either a brave or foolish
man for including that joke about - "no means maybe."  I think the
current-day feminist incarnation of that joke would go something like
this:

"no means maybe" means harrassment
"maybe means yes" means rape
"yes means she's not a lady" means you're not a man

- kevin


On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Andrew Reeves wrote:

>    I apologize for any perceived personal insult in my last message.
> There was no intent to offend Michelle personally; actually, I thought
> that she was quoting some unidentified original source. On the other
> hand, the valiant efforts of Victoria and others to portray this as
> nothing but a deep psychoanalytic explanation for anorexia, bulimia and
> other eating disorders is totally off base and flatly contradicts the
> very wording of Michelle's remarks--"..yet another MEANS of encouraging
> women to take up less space in the world" [emphasis added]. In other
> words, female physical build and/or fashion trends, obviously dictated
> or inspired by men, are a plot in the competition for cubic footage in
> the increasingly crowded inhabitable sphere of the planet. This is how
> I understood the remark and in this sense, and in this context, I am
> afraid that I have to stand by my original opinion of this view.
>    To answer Victoria's question of whether I was ever "coerced" to
> have sexual intercourse, the answer is not easy: certainly, in the
> bland anatomic/physical sense, NO, but that is really obvious given
> the physiologic realities of the male body. I was, a few times in my
> life, placed in situations that amounted to virtual psychologic
> coercion--and I successfully extricated myself every time. To tell you
> quite frankly, extreme forwardness of women has (or had) an anti-
> aphrodisiac effect on me and we European males of my generation were
> quite accustomed to, and even learned to like, a certain bashfulness
> in women. At the risk of being frivolous, let me quote an old joke
> that illustrates the situation.
>    What is the difference between a DIPLOMAT and a LADY?
> If a diplomat says YES, he means MAYBE. If he says MAYBE, he means NO.
> If he says NO, he is no diplomat.
> If a lady says NO, she means MAYBE. If she says MAYBE, she means YES.
> If she says YES, she is no lady.
>    Perhaps a very poor joke, but a good indicator of the mentality
> we grew up in, and perhaps it also gives a flicker of explanation for
> the spurious McKinnon quote because a certain gentle but firm
> determinedness on the part of the male in overcoming the probably
> phoney female hesitation in the last phase of foreplay was not al all
> considered bad form in that culture.
>    In closing, let me salute James Mickens whose comments were in my
> view the best in the lot in this whole debate.
>    DANNY'S GRANDPA ANDREW
>