"Do you really assume that all feminists are bitter, harsh, and rude?"

X-From_: html@www.deltanet.com Sun Nov 29 13:31:05 1998

Date: Sun, 29 Nov 98 21:31:02 GMT

To: cybrgbl@deltanet.com

From: DeltaNet Form Processor (formpro@www.deltanet.com)

Subject: Guest Book Signature The field values for the form received were: Name="Maria C. Garibaldi"

Age="50"

email="artlover@lycosmail.com"

City?="Syracuse"

State?="NY"

Country?="USA"

Findout="Just surfed on in!"

How is life treating you?=""Life does not 'treat' me, Life IS what you make of it""

comments=" Richard, At first I was very impressed, surfing into your massive web site, and finding the Page about Tennamen square and the students who died there...

Then on your home page and FAQ page I discovered that, while you are highly educated, have thrown out your tv and have read many great thought by many great minds Your statements about "feminists" stand out.

Do you hate all feminists or are you merely on that 'bandwagon' of people who hate the WORD feminist?

Why do you slam Hillary with the statement ( "I did not Vote for her)???

Does this mean you wish all women to hold a sub-servient place to all men? Or do you just wish YOUR women to make sure they stay in their place and accept from you a condescending attitude?

I notice you talk in your FAQ ABOUT women in the lowest way, as if we are all meat in your market. Body Parts and acceptable with "half a mind"....

I hope this is a mis-assumption, merely from the limited venture your pages offer in regards to females...(we are barely mentioned although your pages are extensive)

Do you really assume, ( not rolling back to the section found in your FAQ page, this is not a direct quote) that all feminists are bitter, harsh, and rude?

If so, this is truely sad. Especially sad for the memories of your own mom. (Please accept my condolences on her loss)

I was at first bothered that you call yourself Republican.(as I am a long time Democrat) But after reading you consider yourself pro-choice, pro-environment and okay with gay-rights, I have to ask: Are you Republican merely out of Family Tradition?

I doubt very much if there are many Fellow Republicans who would accept you into their fold. Which brings up yet another question:

You state that the first time you voted was for Reagan... well, the "big Tent" party is not the Republicans. I hate to be the one to mention this (as you will probably accuse me of being a "feminist" *LOL*) the Republican's are the party of Big Business, anti-Union, anti- Civil Rights, Anti-Women, and Anti-Gay... gee they even refused money from Gay-Republicans! If they have a Big Tent, it is a tent filled with White-men-in-suits holding big check books. Look Again.

Also I doubt very much you will Kemp or Powell running in 2000, The ticket I fear will be Quayle and G.W.Bush. Powell does not wish to fight the religious right. And Kemp is out of Politics. (a personal friend of my dad's by the way)Kemp's national view of "Trickle-Down Economy" was used by Reagan and proved to be a disaster,and he has no 'new' ideas.So I hope you will vote for AL GORE. His wife will not intervene and backs your world view and environmental concerns. ;o)

Finally, I want to add that I really LOVE your pages and would like permission to link them to my own homepage and use some of your ideas.

I am a former teacher. I taught in Syracuse, Texas, New York City and New Jersey. It is a hard but rewarding life as long as you do not "let the Turkeys" get you down (administration).

And in closing, one suggestion FOR your long long FAQ page. Perhaps you would wish to add at the top a list of topics covered and scroll dots to them? It would make reading the page much much easier. I am sure you know the HTML for this.. but if not, check out my Vegetarian page or (Heavens! It MAY SCARE YOU!) my Wild Women Page..they both have index links.

Thank you for an enjoyable afternoon on a dark, cold, rain-turning-to-snow Sunday in the Miserable North East where we never, almost never, have an earth quake or a tornado and all the drivers have blue-hair,

Maria"

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Dear Maria, So many questions! I am not sure where to begin! It is true I find most card-carrying members of feminist organizations harsh and abrasive, and equally true that I am a Republican out of conviction and not mere family loyalty. But labels are reductionist and do not tell the whole story, and I hope in this e-mail to better explain where I stand on these issues. You claim that while my webpages are "extensive," I rarely offer anything with regards to women. Not many of my pages are devoted to women per se, that is true -- although there are many which do (touching on rape, female circumcision, men knowing nothing, and how to get a baby). But neither are the vast majority of my pages directed solely at men. Most of the "Thoughts Worth Thinking" deal with the "human condition" - for both men and women. I think the overall difference between the sexes not great and don't usually see the need to say one thing for men, another for women. You might argue a masculine theme runs through many of my pages. This would not be surprising, insofar as their author is a man. But most women from whom I hear say they appreciate the love poetry and erotic photography; they don't find it to be an ode to feminine "body parts" or "half-minded" bimbos. Every now and again a message tinged with feminist phraseology does dribble into my electronic mailbox, and it makes me think; but I console myself with the thought that the vast majority of my reader e-mail from women claims to love the poems and pictures. The tiny minority of critical e-mail I receive comes from squeaky feminist college students of English literature from some university or religious fundamentalists who a priori find pictures of naked woman immodest and offensive. (I have always found most interesting this alliance against "pornography" between militant feminists and fundamentalist Christians). Clearly you cannot please everyone. But I did not write these pages to please militant feminists or fundamentalist Christians. I wrote them to appeal to almost everyone else. As for my personal views on the matter: no, I have almost never met a self-described "feminist" with whom I got on well. So let me be clear on this: I consider most such feminists I have met or heard speak a vexation and an irritation; I see them as contributors to male-female hostility rather than any part of its palliation. I remember reading the campus feminist magazine as a student at UCLA and being irritated by the polemical and provocative rantings and ravings. I remember the feminists irately spitting "NO MEANS NO!" yells at me during protest marches ("TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!") and describing all sexual relations as a form of patriarchal power politics -- if not rape! The masculine virtues and the virility of manhood they abhorred; they seemed to have a problem with me personally, simply because I was a man! I would hardly apologize for being a man! An anger began to creep into my relations with women, and even with my mother. But I exited the noxious environment of radical campus sexual politics, found a life removed from the effluvium of strident feminism, let the relationships with the women in my life develop naturally and with mutual respect, and the anger dissipated until it was virtually non-existent - a mere memory of something I did not wish to re-visit. I could go hang out at the local feminists' collective or sisterhood bookstore and probably all that past anger would return to the fore. I choose not to do that. That most men I know tend to ignore silly feminist blather is a gauge of their collective mental well-being. What would I choose to be any different? In the very complex interaction between men and women, attitude is almost more important than anything else; and above all, my problem with hardcore feminists lies in their attitude. Look at Betty Friedman, Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem! It is the caustic "I-eat-nails-for-breakfast", "in-your-face" attitude of many women who sport "National Organization for Women" bumper-stickers on their cars whom I strive dutifully to avoid and consider anathema. These feminists are polemical warriors of the angry pen and prodigious producers of endless grousing: spleen venters, regurgitators of bitter bile, people who would prefer to make war than love! Who has time for that? And hardly anyone listens when you yell at them! Men and women will never understand each other, but they can endeavor their best to love one another. You seem to assume that to dislike feminists is to dislike women in general. The argument is specious. I love dearly and could hardly live without the female sex, but I can hardly tolerate feminists of Andrea Dworkin's ilk. When you read the ungentle comments about feminists in my FAQ, please bear this in mind. You might argue that not all feminists are militant or extreme, and you would be right. However, almost without exception the only women I have ever met who wore their feminist identity on their sleeves were the militant and extreme ones. Think about the irony of how although most mainstream American women agree with core feminist tenets, few label themselves as "feminists" and fewer actually join feminist political organizations. This has everything to do this image problem that won't quit! Feminists are so often radicalized and militant far beyond what most women are comfortable with, casting men and masculinity almost inexorably as the enemy. In my humble opinion, feminism never will rehabilitate its public persona with today's generation of women if they do not moderate their message and, more importantly, their hostile and confrontation attitude towards men. The vast majority of women do not really want to be like men, and the reverse is equally true -- although to hear certain feminists talk you would think otherwise. Politics is largely a battle over language and symbols, and too many feminists are rigid, harsh, intolerant, and mean-spirited. They are humorless scolds made livid and pugnacious by bitterness and hatred and endless polemic, and fruitful conversation with them, as opposed to arguing, is nearly impossible. Much more than their message, it is the unquenchable anger of many feminists which I reject. These dyspeptic battle-axes never learned that how you say something is almost more important than what you say. So many of the irate feminists I hear blathering in a white-hot heat about the "patriarchy" are more strident and truculent than even the most aggressive of men! They convince few, alienate many. Hence their appeal is limited and transient. Rancor and conflict between the sexes is hardly new. The earliest dramatists and poets take us modern-minded people to school to teach about men and women at each other's throats. But I wince in acute embarrassment when I read the more pungent observations from centuries past where some men (particularly the religious) would decry the female sex as inherently evil and corrupting. "Woman is a sink of vice, the source of man's fall from paradise, a font of irrationality and weakness, the reason we are not better than we are, a heavy weight burdening down our souls!" Nowadays we have come full circle and hear bandied about by many feminists similar declamations denouncing the opposite sex. "Men are aggressively selfish animals unable to control themselves, the root of the violence and aggression in the world, oppressors and rapists by their very natures, the causes of our misery and suffering, that which we need to remedy inside and outside of ourselves!" The converse is equally true to these scorched-earth feminsts whose hatred for men leads naturally to self-congratulatory messages that run like this: women are morally superior creatures due to their innate empathy, kindness, ability to listen, and so on. Nevertheless, a perspicacious individual can clearly see the various virtues and vices putatively ascribed to each sex as more often than not present in both sexes; sex roles being undeniably important, only a fool or a polemicist (in my opinion) would claim they are so important as to dwarf all other considerations. Why see the world in binary tones of "men" and "women" when they are so nearly an "infinite variety" of human beings all with their unique quirks, talents, and demons? And how sad it is to see this delicate balance between men and women made into cannon fodder for the gender wars! We poor humans are unfortunate to have the delicate, precious relations between the sexes upbraided and sullied by such people. To go to a feminist rally today and hear calls to arms in the gender wars is to despair for the future, but this is an internecine war (I solace myself!) in which the vast majority of women (or men!) don't wish to enlist. Most women have too much invested with the male sex to write them off as beasts and scoundrels -- this idea some women have that every man is a potential predator and violator! I try to remind myself that many feminists are the way they are because they have been brutalized by certain of the men in their lives; there are, after all, no shortage of men behaving badly. I remind myself that these feminists are more to be pitied and understood than challenged and fought. Nevertheless, when I hear about the barbarities that some men commit against women in parts of the world (ie. female circumcision, burning brides to death because of insufficient dowry, killing "undesirable" baby girl infants, etc.), I almost want to become a feminist myself! But then I hear some feminist ranting and raving and frothing at the mouth and am brought quickly back to reality. We men and women are cut from the same cloth, sharing the same essential humanity. I cannot see terribly much difference between the two sexes, although ones finds enormous diversity between individual human beings. But dfferences do exist -- rooted in evolutionary biology and social custom -- and they are as important as often they are subtle. For all the talk about equality, most women don't want to be treated like men -- and vice versa. But all this is to speak in measured tones and to try to find the truth of the matter in between extremes. It is ambivalence, complexity: these are not personality traits native to political crusaders. And all this is why I rarely share word one civil word with feminists in America today. I apologize if my comments alienate, and I try to remain charitable and understanding towards feminists here in the United States, but it is difficult -- and nowadays I give the radical ones a wide berth, as if they were rabid dogs in the corner who find nothing more enjoyable than biting and yapping at passerby's. In the "gender wars" that rage hotly in corners of the republic, I would prefer to stay well out of jawing distance. My father occasionally gets angry and bent out of shape by pugnacious feminists. I urge him to simply ignore such people. You can try reasoning with your average man-hating feminist. You can try reasoning with a barnyard animal also for that matter. I note an animus in your e-mail against the more extreme elements of the Republican Party (ie. the "Religious Right"). I see such pugnacious conservatives as little different than the hardcore feminists and homosexual activists; let them all go out into the desert and bark and bite at each other, I say. They are two weasels struggling blindly in a hole, seeking desperately to eviscerate the other; it is down and dirty combat with little honor and no ultimate victory. Matthew Arnold catches well the mindlessly contentious Washington D.C.:

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with the confused alarms of struggle and flight

Where ignorant armies clash by night.