Well any excuse to bash Bush supporters is being used. Funny thing is the more shrill it gets the more it stregthens the resolve of those who did vote for the President.
I won't comment on Gilles' political linkage, other than to say that it is fatuous.
I have known several abusive relationships. I have been in one. And in all cases, the perpetrator's gender was not what people like Gilles would have you believe it was.
This is again a case of highjacking language. Just as rape now means two foolish people getting drunk and having sex, battery now means being bludgeoned with ideas. Obviousy this woman has never had anyone deck her. I ran into this nonsense in the education department at Purdue U. One female professor stated that "oppression" is a man opening a car door for a woman. I asked, "Then what word do you use for a woman carrying two children as she's driven from the home a mob is burning behind her?" I was a marked woman from then on. (Abuse! Abuse! Oh...it doesn't work if the battery is from a Leftist)
Thanks, Dean, for covering this one. I was a bit surprised at Gilles' point of view. I wrote it off as another example of (1) someone falling in love with their own analogies, and (2) seeing everything through the same filter.
I've seen it a lot. She works with battered women. That's uncomfortable to her. So she's uncomfortable with the election results. So that becomes like battered women.
Then, falling in love with the analogy, she runs with it.
You should need a license in this country to reason by analogy. Most people don't know how to do it, and more often than not they end up in the wrong place. And very often they say silly things when trying to reason by analogy, like Gilles' example.
I frankly find it offensive that anyone would cheapen the trauma of victims of violence for a hackneyed political message, especially someone who claims to stand for the group she so callously exploits. There's a hell of a big difference between running a bad political campaign and being abused.
You're right about the abuse from both sides, too. If the Right battered her by winning the election, she's verbally abusing the right with this crap.
What a pretentious moron. And somehow I want to go into academia????
No, you don't really want to go into academia. That's only an impulse to learn and better yourself which you're confusing with a desire to go into academia.
Really, academic institutions should be barred from advertising to minors.
I currently work in academia, and if you can tolerate being surrounded by people who automatically assume you agree with them, and believe that anyone who disagrees is some obscure, bizarre creature that only exists in theory then you'll be ok.
It's actually not that bad, although I do get a little sick of politics being interjected into everything. But it's also interesting to be surrounded by a bunch of people who are so sure they are right that they cannot even fathom why anyone would ever disagree. It's quite a learning experience to work with supposedly curious, intelligent intellectual-types, who have no interest in learning about or even acknowledging alternative viewpoints. Anyone who disagrees is just written off as stupid and/or evil. Sometimes it's frustrating, but most of the time I just find it amusing.
Then maybe it's a good thing that the more prestigious (and extremely left-leaning) universities are priced out of the range of many young people today? Kids that work before college or go to local community colleges and then transfer to four-year state colleges are less likely to be "indoctrinated?"
Puts me in mind of a comment made over at Centerfield:
You are absolutely right that the red states represent the heart of FDR's coalition. There's been pretty much a flip in state loyalties since then. The Democrats are the party of upper class professionals (but not entrepreneurs). The working class is in the process of deserting it, but many Democrats don't have enough self-knowledge to see it.
You must have a much stronger stomach than I do, Dean, and it looks like the rest of you, too. This is precisely why I have long ago stopped reading the writings of a vast quadrant of the Port side of a spectrum. They are not worth spit. I far prefer to battle my enemies on the Right such as Bork and Santorum, who, though I hate their guts, are far more interesting and at least don't nauseate me with this dreck about being "oppressed, abused victims".
I hear what you're saying. Disinclination to spend the rest of my working life engulfed by political correctness was one of several reasons why, once I finished my Ph.D., I bailed out of academia and reentered the real world. And today, 13 years later, living on a gravel road miles out into the Iowa countryside, I find myself happier, more centered, and far less stressed out.
You stomached it better than I could. I got out with my masters and my sanity, though it took a while to regain the latter. I'm still working on it.
The thing which got me about academia is that it has the worst parts of the social fixation of middle school, but without the redeeming aspect of transcience. Academia is, for the most part, fixated on what one's peers find interesting; it's the most intellectually and spiritually stifling environment I've ever been in. What makes it unbearable, I think, is academia's fixation on novelty for the sake of novelty (which is a direct result of the publish-or-perish system, I suspect).
Anyhow, I'm impressed that you guys lasted so long.
With respect to the figures on convictions, acquittals and sentencing, please remember that women are less likely to be arrested, and when arrested are less likely to be charged, so the reality is even worse than the numbers indicate.
In the early 90s I checked out from the library and actually read the reports from the National Family Violence Surveys of 1975 and 1985.
They showed that at all levels of violence, women were more likely to initiate violence than men.
So I wasn't really surprised when there was no 1995 Family Violence Survey.
Dr. Suzanne Steinmetz participated in the 1975 study, but has been quoted as saying that she no longer researches domestic violence because she received too many death threats from feminists.
I hear ya. The publish or perish system is a problem. It basically encourages people to publish large amounts of crap (and publish just for the sake of publishing) rather than encouraging true intellectual inquiry. I also find it intellectually and spiritually stifling, but that's mostly because I work in the Education department. I received my master's degree in industrial/organizational psychology, and despite psychology as a whole being a bastion of left-wing buffoonery (although not as bad as sociology or anthropology), the program I was in attempted to be very scientific and open to alternative explanations and viewpoints.
Education as a field, however, is dominated by fads and pseudo-intellectual nonsense. I know of people who have received Master's degrees in programs where most of the classes consisted of sitting around a table and chatting about whatever was on their minds that day. Viewpoints might vary from whether they thought Bush had a slightly below average intelligence to whether or not he was a complete moron. Most of my classes weren't like this, but I had to take a few. And when I did, I'd think to myself during one of the many Bush-basing sessions: "Since we all agree that Bush is a moron, can we just go home?"
While I by no means wish to portray that abuse is acceptable, I agree with Dean that the situations are often oversimplified and stereotyped.
The brother of a friend of mine works with children who have serious issues. My friend told me that his brother believes mothers abuse their sons sexually as often as fathers abuse their daughters sexually.
I know a guy who spent a night in jail because when his girlfriend hit him, his natural response was to hit her back. I think that a lot of adult abuse situations don't have one party who is clearly the victim and one party who is clearly the abuser.
Regarding those of you commenting how stifling academia is: one of the problems I notice is that anything which remotely resembles good writing also tends to be frowned on in academia. Extremely dry and limp is about the only thing they seem to find acceptable; I've seen people frowned on for anything that makes a concept clearer or puts it in an interesting light.
So you get these terribly dry, boring, hot-air-filled papers that no one cares about and hardly ever reads much of the time.
Real scientific research papers tend to be a little better, only inasmuch as you can often skip the prose and the generaliations and go straight to the hard data.
Jane: I don't know where you're from, but it's quite true that a growing number of states are starting to take such policies.
From what I've seen they still aren't the majority. But cops and DAs are starting to learn. Not all yet, not all, but we're getting there.
Certain entrenched political forces continue to fight it tooth and nail of course. They're still wedded to the "helpless woman/brutal man" paradigm, in part because they have a vested interest in continuing the status quo on that.
I have known several abusive relationships. I have been in one. And in all cases, the perpetrator's gender was not what people like Gilles would have you believe it was.
I've seen it a lot. She works with battered women. That's uncomfortable to her. So she's uncomfortable with the election results. So that becomes like battered women.
Then, falling in love with the analogy, she runs with it.
You should need a license in this country to reason by analogy. Most people don't know how to do it, and more often than not they end up in the wrong place. And very often they say silly things when trying to reason by analogy, like Gilles' example.
I'm only half-kidding about the licensing thing.
You're right about the abuse from both sides, too. If the Right battered her by winning the election, she's verbally abusing the right with this crap.
What a pretentious moron. And somehow I want to go into academia????
No, you don't really want to go into academia. That's only an impulse to learn and better yourself which you're confusing with a desire to go into academia.
Really, academic institutions should be barred from advertising to minors.
I currently work in academia, and if you can tolerate being surrounded by people who automatically assume you agree with them, and believe that anyone who disagrees is some obscure, bizarre creature that only exists in theory then you'll be ok.
It's actually not that bad, although I do get a little sick of politics being interjected into everything. But it's also interesting to be surrounded by a bunch of people who are so sure they are right that they cannot even fathom why anyone would ever disagree. It's quite a learning experience to work with supposedly curious, intelligent intellectual-types, who have no interest in learning about or even acknowledging alternative viewpoints. Anyone who disagrees is just written off as stupid and/or evil. Sometimes it's frustrating, but most of the time I just find it amusing.
Puts me in mind of a comment made over at Centerfield:
"Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Violence inherent in the system! Violence inherent in the system!"
I'm there right now. I'm a grad student finishing up my last year of my PhD and trying to decide whether or not I should stick around.
But it has been fairly easy to stay in the political closet, as it were, among my colleagues.....
I hear what you're saying. Disinclination to spend the rest of my working life engulfed by political correctness was one of several reasons why, once I finished my Ph.D., I bailed out of academia and reentered the real world. And today, 13 years later, living on a gravel road miles out into the Iowa countryside, I find myself happier, more centered, and far less stressed out.
"...a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience; menstrual periods are not the foundation of morality"
Where else but the sacred halls of academe can one sample this kind of deep, penetrating analysis?
Ohmygosh... there I go with the sexist metaphors again. Can't help myself -- I'm just the victim of a violent, male-dominated patriarchal hegemony.
sigh...
Sometimes I disgust myself.
You stomached it better than I could. I got out with my masters and my sanity, though it took a while to regain the latter. I'm still working on it.
The thing which got me about academia is that it has the worst parts of the social fixation of middle school, but without the redeeming aspect of transcience. Academia is, for the most part, fixated on what one's peers find interesting; it's the most intellectually and spiritually stifling environment I've ever been in. What makes it unbearable, I think, is academia's fixation on novelty for the sake of novelty (which is a direct result of the publish-or-perish system, I suspect).
Anyhow, I'm impressed that you guys lasted so long.
http://www.dadsontheair.com/research/2003/abuse.index.htm
With respect to the figures on convictions, acquittals and sentencing, please remember that women are less likely to be arrested, and when arrested are less likely to be charged, so the reality is even worse than the numbers indicate.
In the early 90s I checked out from the library and actually read the reports from the National Family Violence Surveys of 1975 and 1985.
They showed that at all levels of violence, women were more likely to initiate violence than men.
So I wasn't really surprised when there was no 1995 Family Violence Survey.
Dr. Suzanne Steinmetz participated in the 1975 study, but has been quoted as saying that she no longer researches domestic violence because she received too many death threats from feminists.
I couldn't make this stuff up. :(
I hear ya. The publish or perish system is a problem. It basically encourages people to publish large amounts of crap (and publish just for the sake of publishing) rather than encouraging true intellectual inquiry. I also find it intellectually and spiritually stifling, but that's mostly because I work in the Education department. I received my master's degree in industrial/organizational psychology, and despite psychology as a whole being a bastion of left-wing buffoonery (although not as bad as sociology or anthropology), the program I was in attempted to be very scientific and open to alternative explanations and viewpoints.
Education as a field, however, is dominated by fads and pseudo-intellectual nonsense. I know of people who have received Master's degrees in programs where most of the classes consisted of sitting around a table and chatting about whatever was on their minds that day. Viewpoints might vary from whether they thought Bush had a slightly below average intelligence to whether or not he was a complete moron. Most of my classes weren't like this, but I had to take a few. And when I did, I'd think to myself during one of the many Bush-basing sessions: "Since we all agree that Bush is a moron, can we just go home?"
I liked your comment:
'she works in the area of "domestic abuse" is probably not quite descriptive enough.'
I agree: she probably gives "how to abuse your spouse" workshops, and is trying to branch out....
The brother of a friend of mine works with children who have serious issues. My friend told me that his brother believes mothers abuse their sons sexually as often as fathers abuse their daughters sexually.
I know a guy who spent a night in jail because when his girlfriend hit him, his natural response was to hit her back. I think that a lot of adult abuse situations don't have one party who is clearly the victim and one party who is clearly the abuser.
So you get these terribly dry, boring, hot-air-filled papers that no one cares about and hardly ever reads much of the time.
Real scientific research papers tend to be a little better, only inasmuch as you can often skip the prose and the generaliations and go straight to the hard data.
From what I've seen they still aren't the majority. But cops and DAs are starting to learn. Not all yet, not all, but we're getting there.
Certain entrenched political forces continue to fight it tooth and nail of course. They're still wedded to the "helpless woman/brutal man" paradigm, in part because they have a vested interest in continuing the status quo on that.