Sisterhood of Perpetual Victims:

It's a tremendous piece, Francesca! BTW, I have seen that newsclip and there were NO tears. Clinton choked up for a brief moment, but nothing like the "tears" misogynist pundits and cartoonists have been harping about ever since. You can tell they just pounced on the situation because they'd been waiting to label the only female contender "too emotional".

great response Francesca

thread drift: The people I know from from Owen Sound /Parry Sound area have a great sense of humour. My wife's family is from the Georgian bay area.

I really enjoyed [url=http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=865606]Jane Docherty's[/url]letter to the ed.
[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

And Babble needs "elephant protection bracelets"! Shhh... when a troll is spotted, our Code Word will henceforth be "Brace Yourself"... [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]Wow, what a prick. And they cut YOUR column? [/b]

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No shit hey!
And I would add misogynist to prick, his whole article was one huge hatefest against women.

Thanks R_francesca, it was an magnificent letter in response to the hate mongering of Merriam, this point is very salient:

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In order to help put you in the mood and to prime your pump Merriam shares several examples of family squabbles. These examples show clearly a narrow brand of humour carried out on the backs of others, and at the expense of women. Most of these stories present women in a degrading way, portraying them as irrational, stupid, dangerous and not trustworthy. These are the typical stories, that many men tell each other about their wives, girlfriends and women in general.[b] By continuing to tell such stories and by making them sound like jokes we minimize the real problems between men and women, and [i]position men as the victims of violent women. [/i]

In reality, we know that on a daily basis women are physically, sexually and emotionally abused at disproportionate numbers by their intimate partners in Canada and right here in our community.[/b] Violence between men and women is not a laughing matter, especially when women continue to die in their homes at a truly alarming rate.

Readers need to know that in Canada, [b]500 women were killed by their intimate partners between September 11, 2001 and 2007.[/b] When we compare that figure to the 44 Canadian Soldiers who died in the same period in the war in Afghanistan, it is easy to see why Merriam's column is not funny

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[ 30 January 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
[b]But the bestestest part is that the offending columnist had to write about one of my fundraising events.....[url=http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=879766]Winterama[...

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Dude. He started three paragraphs (two of them in a row even!) with the word "Winterama".

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
[b]A truly stunning way to look at how we value life[/b]

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Well actually, it is a stunning look at how women's lives are not valued.

And insight it gives into the false positioning of men as victims of women, through jokes and other societal entrenched stories denigrating women, is much needed.

One has to wonder if men, are subconsciously, or even perhaps consciously, dissemminating such jokes and stories, to rationalize, to themselves, aka lie to themselves, and other men, to justify their mis-treatment of women?

...; ?????

ARGH!

Quite the egoist referring to himself as Jonathan Swift type of writer. Say nothing of his racial bigotry expressed by his use of the term "black humour". Nor the fact that he was not making a huge satirical juxtaposition, such as Swift did.

He minimized and trivialized domestic violence and nothing more, and he still is.

He is using false rationalization to lie to himself and to readers.

What an excellent letter! Seems like there are so many great writers in your community, Francesca (including you). What a shame it is that the editors of that paper can't recruit some of them to write columns instead of braindead morons like this guy who apparently are only capable of status quo, cliched crap.

[ 13 February 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

Her writing doesn't seem too bad. Obviously that's a personal blog, so I wouldn't judge the subject matter, but her writing seems engaging enough. I'd have to see what she writes for the paper to be able to judge properly.

So, is she doing it for free?

Lord almighty.

Well, feel better, Francesca. Surely you don't want to be associated with a rag that publishes crap like this Merriam guy and this stream-of-consciousness-live-journal-becky-eckler-wannabe stuff anyhow, right?

(Not that there isn't a place for that sort of writing. I like chick lit as much as the next chick lit reader. But publishing nothing but fluff, to the exclusion of any columnist with substantive issues to write about, is pretty bad.)

[ 13 February 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by rural - Francesca:
[b]But she's right, since the fence went up, we haven't been attacked. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [/b]

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What are you talking about? Your hockey team must be called the Owen Sound Attack for a reason! [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

Two good quotes from the excellent "Abused women still suffering in silence" article:

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Tettero has been in the field for more than 20 years. She found women’s attitudes and knowledge about domestic violence have changed over that time, but there’s a new sense of shame as women who see themselves as strong, smart and independent try to come to grips with being in an abusive relationship.
“Women know what abuse is and they know that the person who’s perpetrating the abuse is the one who’s responsible for that,” she said. “Women are blaming themselves for getting into a bad situation or staying in a bad situation.”

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I find that really scary. One of the downsides of the reassuring strong-contemporary-woman smokescreen put up by the corporate media.

Also:

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“Family and friends can be incredibly important to a woman who’s struggling with abuse, but they can also really undermine her,” Tettero said. “If the general population is more educated, they can also be more helpful.”

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I have found the book [b][i]When Love Goes Wrong[/i][/b], by Ann Jones & Susan Schechter (Harper-Collins, 1993) to be extremely helpful for people who want to help. There is a whole chapter dedicated to just that. Getting a copy into your local library should be very helful.