Re: Class on gender...

Marius Johnston (mariusj@NETCOM.COM)
Fri, 14 Oct 1994 09:37:09 -0700

A few points in reply to Killoran's post 13 Oct '94

1. The next time you post, you might take a few things under
consideration. The most important of which is to think about what you
have written and it's meaning, to others, prior to posting. You said at the
*start* of your post:

\After seeing a bumper sticker last summer in Nebraska that said: "If I
\don't get laid soon someone is going to get hurt" I decided it was time to
\put together a course/and do research on how sexuality and aggression
\are constructed.
\I'm putting together a class that I have titled (although I don't like it):
\*Narratives of Gender and Sexuality and Aggression* for juniors and
\seniors.

These statements provide us with your motivation and focus. This is the
context for the rest of your post.

I wonder why you did not just list your course title, the reading list, and
ask for feedback on the list?

2. You have not responded to any of my points. Instead you merely attempt
to categorize and complain about my post.

3. The bumper sticker is rather like a Rorschach image in it's ambiguity.
It made no statement about who was "going to get hurt". You assumed
that it was to be a women. Your book list confirms it by
readings such as Sanday's Fraternity Gang Rape,
*Virgin or Vamp* (written by a journalism prof. but a good analysis of the
lang. of the media on rape) , *Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate
Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club*" and etc. I suppose Gloria Steinem
defined the paradigm: "Patriarchy *requires* violence or the subliminal
threat of violence in order to maintain itself.... The most dangerous
situation for a women in not an unknown man in the street, or even the
enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their own
home." This is a polemic.

Unfortunately I do not remember the name of the C&W song that quote was
derived from but that, and other barroom brawl songs, are a C&W staple and
culturally interesting.

The history of Anthropology can be seen, in part, as learning to see or
study other groups in such a way as to avoid the above error (projection).
It is a tough job and takes a lot of wisdom. You are traveling in an
opposite direction.

Marius Johnston