Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    re .0, but, Mike, you didn't say why you hate men?
    
    Lorna
    

    Just trying to stimulate some discussion.  :-)
    
    -- Mike

    
    because they're loud and obnoxious and violent and don't love women
    or the planet or even themselves enough. they think narrowly,
    worshipping rules but rarely following them. they are uncompassionate,
    seemingly unable to put themselves in another's shoes. they are
    greedy and selfish, materially and personally.
    
    i don't know any man, including men that i love, including my poor
    self, who do not have at least a little of the above in them. it
    makes me sad and wish for a better way.
    
    

    Oh wait a minute, wasn't this a song from "Kiss me Kate"?
    
    How did it go....
    
    "I hate men
    I can't abide them even now and then....
    ......
    And then there is the athlete type with muscles bold and brassy
    Who ...........................................grassy
    He may have hair upon his chest but, sister, so has Lassie!
    I.....Hate....Men....."
    
    
    Well, I don't hate them, but I certainly don't like 'em ALL
    
    -Jody
    

    I love men, but sometimes I don't like them...
    

    Michael
    
    Can you say "mares nest"?
    
    I thought you could!
    
    E Grace

    I hate everyone.
    
    Lisa

    >> Oh wait a minute, wasn't this a song from "Kiss me Kate"?
    >>
    >> How did it go....
    
    "Of all the types I've ever met within our democracy
     I hate the most the athlete with his manner bold and brassy
     He may have hair upon his chest, but, Sister, so has Lassie!
     Oh, I hate men!"

    Hating someone for what they *can not* change. Skin color, gender, 
    height, bone structure. Denotes a failure to comprehend the difference
    between what one can and cannot change. Obliterates the concept
    of volition. 
    
    "He was really nice." "Most people are when you get to know them."
    Harper Lee, 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    

    .9 - 
    
    Oh, I was kind of taking this as a lite topic.
    Sorry if it weren't!
    
    -Jody
    

    .7 - The feeling is mutual.
    
    I hate men because they don't let me go on talking after I interrupt
    them.
    
    Ray

    I never hate men, although I am frequently angry with them or some of
    them.
    
    regards,
    

    
    ..they leave those little bits of beard-hair (which men clear are
    lacking the optical receptors for) in my sink :-)
    
    

    Because when a man is in residence, I can't keep the magazine rack
    next to the toilet.  Yeeeccch!

    I lifted this piece from another conference.  There is no reference as
    to who wrote it, where it was first published, etc.  I thought I'd post
    it here because it fits with this note topic, but it also is pertinent
    to the discussion going on in the processing topic about =wn policy and
    why this particular conference seems to be under siege.
    ***********************************************************************

	I HATE MEN!!!
	=============
 
I have friends.  Some of them are men.
 
Year after year I see my male friends.  I want to see them, to see how they are
doing, to add newness to our long and complicated histories, to experience some
continuity.
                                                                       
Year after year I continue to realize that the facts of my life are irrelevant
to them and that I am only half listened to, that I am an appendage to the
doings of a greater world, a world of power and priviledge, of the laws of
installation, a world of exclusion.  "That's not true," argue my male friends.
There is one certainty in the politics of power: those who are left out of it
beg for inclusion, while the insiders claim that they already are.  Men do it
to women, whites do it to blacks, and everyone does it to queers.
 
The main dividing line, both conscious and unconscious, is PATRIARCHY...and
that magic word - FAMILY.  The ones we love assault us and rape us.  We are
told that we may not be sexual, but that we must be sexual when they want it.
And treated like property in terms of child rearing, both damned if we try and
damned if we abstain.  Our reproductive organs are treated like incubators, for
rich white male politicians to take over.  It is as if the propagation of the
species is such a fragile directive that without enforcing it as if it were an
agenda, humankind would melt back into the primeval ooze.
 
I hate having to convince men that women live in a war zone, that we're
surrounded by bomb blasts only we seem to hear, that our bodies and souls are
heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or raped, dying of grief or disease,
stripped of our personhood.
 
I hate men who can't listen to women's anger without saying "Hey, all men
aren't like that.  I'm male too, you know." As if their egos don't get enough
stroking or protection in this arrogant, sexist world.  Why must we take care
of them, in the midst of our anger brought on by their fucked up society?! Why
add the reasurrancxe of "Of course, I don't mean you.  You don't act that way."
Let them figure out for themselves whether they deserve to be included in our
anger.
 
But of course that would mean listening to our anger, which they almost never
do.  They deflect it, by saying "I'm not like that" or "Now look who's
generalizing" or "You'll catch more flies with honey..." or "If you focus on
the negative you just give out more power" or "You're not the only one in the
world who's suffering." They say "Don't yell at me, I'm on your side" or "I
think you're overreacting" or "BOY YOU'RE A BITTER WOMAN".
 
They've taught us that 'good' women don't get mad.  They've taught us so well
that we not only hide our anger from them, we hide it from each other.  WE EVEN
HIDE IT FROM OURSELVES.  We hide it with substance abuse and suicide and
over-acheiving in the hope of proving our worth.  They bash us and stab us and
shoot us and bomb us and rape us in ever incresing numbers and still freak out
when angry women carry banners or signs that say FIGHT BACK.
 
For the last decade they let us die in droves, and STILL we thank President
Bush for planting a fucking tree, applaud him for likening rape to car-accident
victims who refuse to wear seatbelts, because women who walk alone are "asking
for trouble".  LET YOURSELF BE ANGRY! Let yourself be angry that the price of
our visibility is the constant threat of violence.  Anti-woman violence to
which practically every segment of this society contributes.  Let yourself feel
angry that THERE IS NO PLACE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE WE ARE SAFE.  No place where
we are not targeted for hatred and attack, the self-hatred, the suicide - of
the closet.  The next time some man comes down on you for being angry, tell
them that until things change, you don't need any more evidence that the world
turns at your expense.  You don't need to see only men in positions of power on
TV...  You don't want any more phallic pictures shoved in your face on
billboards.  No more weddings, showers, anniversaries, please, unless they are
our own sisters celebrating, by keeping their names, their jobs and their
IDENTITITES.  

And tell them not to dismiss you by saying "You have rights", "You have
privileges", "You're over-reacting" or "You have a victim's mentality." Tell
them "GO AWAY FROM ME, until YOU can change." Go away and try on a world
without the brave, strong women that are its backbone, that are its guts and
brains and souls.  Go tell them to go away until they have spent a month
walking hand in hand in public in a skirt and heels.  After they survive that,
then you'll hear what they have to say about WOMEN'S ANGER.  Otherwise.  Tell
them to shut up and listen.
 

This I Hate Men peice has been entered here already a few times I
think (first by D! I beleive).  In any case, some history is in order.
This article is from a pamphlet by the political group Queer Nation (a
gay liberation group first founded in NYC). Someone substituted that
word strate for men I (with some other slight mods) to get the
result posted in .17.

john

    I wish this was a lite topic or something not to take seriously. I
    DON'T hate men although I've been given quite a few opportunities to
    develop that attitude. 

    I hate some things about some men and love some things about others.
    Hate men as a class?  Nah?  Hate the sexism that makes a lot of men
    unappealing (to say the least)? Oh, most definitely yes. But then, it's
    hard to find a person appealing who doesn't like a very fundamental
    thing about one's self.
    
        Margaret 

    Hate men? What a dreadful thought.
    
    Having hatred is a burden. I can't imagine hating 1/2 of the
    population.
    
    Kate

    But Lisa, I love you.....				Pascal
    

    
    I don't hate men.
    
    In fact, I don't hate anyone. I have better things to do with my
    energy.
    
    Some individuals (of either gender) get right up my nose though, for
    various reasons. Personal and/or political.
    
    'gail
    
    

    This note makes me uncomfortable as a noter...
    I'd like to see it as a lite note...

  re. 23:
  
  I have to agree with you...it looks like another rathole oppurtunity
  for for chief ratholer in this conference.

    Oh Pascal, you say all the right things to win a woman's heart......
    
    Who are you, anyway?
    
    Lisa

    I don't hate men.
    
    Some women are jerks, some men are jerks.  A penis does not an enemy
    make.
    
    (am I allowed to use that word?)
    
    karenkay