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Re: Hodenausaunee Egalitarianism (was: Re: WANTED: A good (fwd)
Thomas W. Rimkus (trimkus@COMP.UARK.EDU)
Mon, 29 Jan 1996 09:44:38 -0600
On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, Bret Diamond wrote>
> For the past two years that I have been on this list, both of you have
> made wonderful, thought-provoking contributions to Anthro-l. However,
> your continued petty-bickering on the list is an embarassment to both the
> list, and to our discipline. No one is saying that you can't/shouldn't be
> human, but PLEASE, take your fighting off the list!?!
>
> Bret D.
>
The problem seems to me to be one of self control. Several times each month
some potentially interesting topic is diverted by Rohrlich into her paranoid
black hole of feminist hatred. The only way an open forum such as this can be
protected from such abuse is to censure Rohrlich by pointing out the
irrationality, paranoia, or irrelevance of her postings. The hope is that
Rohrlich will have the intelligence to recognize public embarrassment and
refrain from issuing condescending and beligerent postings to threads that
she readily admits to know nothing about. Several times she has accused
members of the list of saying things that they did not say, she regularly uses
name calling to divert attention from her rediculous positions when she is
exposed, and she has on several occasions manipulated threads from their
original and interesting topics over onto her agenda of hatred. If everyone
on the list would simply ignore her postings as has been suggested before,
things would probably work out. But we are all human and when attacked we
usually defend ourselves, thus diverting the thread to her agenda. It would
seem very workable to simply move the personal attacks off list but she refuses
to do this. She will not respond to personal communication. Look back over
the last year and count the number of postings she has issued which should
have been over private channels. Maybe she is going to use the number of
postings to the list on her resume;>
There seems to be a certain amount of overhead of this sort on an
unmoderated list necessary to maintain a level of quality thru the
pressure of professional credibility. In this case, however, it seems
that the list has been held hostage to Rohrlich's paranoia and her inability to
recognize public embarrassment. If, as you suggest, all censure of Rohrlich
be off list, the problem will persist: she simply will ignore the censure.
If the condemnation is public she becomes more vitriolic and irrational.
It looks to me as though you are stuck with her persistent and annoying
line of feminist hatred until you find a way to turn off her keyboard.
Frankly, I found the annoying postings of Robert Johnson more
intellectually stimulating than Rohrlich's diatribes. Johnson was
removed from the list, I assume, for violation of basic rules. I suspect
Rohrlich has violated a few of these rules also, but it is not for the members
of the list to deal with her membership status. Hugh Jarvis has the
uneviable job of dealing with those issues.
Those on the list who want a clean, professional media to discuss
anthropological topics may need to return to the journal format where
letters to the editor do not appear in the main body of the material.
In the free format of the list server, however, it seems that the
discussion is not limited to anthropological topics, but also to
anthropology as a discipline and even anthropologists (very generously
applied);>
Tom Rimkus
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| Tom Rimkus | phone/fax : 501-559-2863 |
| Madison County | internet : trimkus@comp.uark.edu |
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