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- Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!nic.umass.edu!m2c!jjmhome!smds!rh
- From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
- Newsgroups: soc.women
- Subject: Re: What does "Male-dominated society" mean?
- Message-ID: <1993Jan24.010521.28434@smds.com>
- Date: 24 Jan 93 01:05:21 GMT
- References: <1j7v04INN3o8@transfer.stratus.com> <1jhohpINNmqg@emx.cc.utexas.edu> <1993Jan20.181338.22062@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> <1993Jan23.201246.9736@leland.Stanford.EDU>
- Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
- Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.
- Lines: 36
-
- In article <1993Jan23.201246.9736@leland.Stanford.EDU> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
-
- >And yet we keep seeing posters maintain that there is a
- >cultural/societal proscription against violence towards women. How
- >does it work, then, that men and women in fairly equal numbers abuse
- >their mates, but there is a proscription in favor of women but not in
- >favor of men?
-
- Quite simply and, it seems to me rather obvious. Men direct most of
- their violence against other men. If one counts all cases the target
- of male violence is more likely to be male than female by a ratio of
- about 3 to 1. If one excludes domestic violence then the ratio is
- more like 10 to 1.
-
- >By this reasoning, it appears that women are much
- >better at controlling their violence than men, since men commit
- >violence in spite of a proscription and women commit violence in the
- >absence of one.
-
- There are a lot of missing and hidden premises in that sentence.
- What is true is that violence outside of domestic settings is almost
- exclusively a male activity and is generally targeted against males.
- Within domestic settings violence is more nearly egalitarian. Make
- of that what you will.
-
- >This nearly sounds like a moral superiority of women
- >that a few feminists suggest.
-
- Indubitably, if one accepts that non-violence is morally superior.
- It is well known, for example, that rabbits are morally superior
- to wolves. Ask any rabbit.
- --
- Richard Harter: SMDS Inc. Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398
- US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742. Fax: 508-369-8272
- In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
- Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
-