Subject: Re: men, the bastards
From: Cheryl Cline (ccline@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 15 2000 - 18:16:48 GMT
Wow, that subject line. It's pretty disappointing. I hope that if anyone
dares to mention, say, racism on this list, they won't receive a kneejerk,
sarcastic reply of "Kill whitey" in return.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scottie Bowman" <rbowman@indigo.ie>
>
> I'm a doctor, not a social engineer.
I hope so. Besides, I never claimed that you were personally responsible
for your patients' pain outside the office.
And my poor
> naive patients are, of course, unaware of the true nature
> of their victimhood. In their innocence, they're more
> concerned with what went on - or didn't go on -
> within the stockade of their families. And that,
> in turn, seemed more the result of dad's drinking or
> mum's chilly control - than the number of copies of
> Cosmo scattered over the living room.
Hmm. There is supposed to be a higher rate of suicide among homosexuals
than among heterosexuals. Is there some "gay gene" that compels them to
aim-er, point-a gun at their own heads, some biological tendency to react
badly to the dysfunctions of their parents, or is it perhaps the homophobia
that surrounds them in the daily world? More likely the latter two, but
neither of them exclusively. And I doubt that they could pin the source of
their despair on a single remark or magazine-to claim that they could
trivializes the effects and pervasiveness of prejudice. Besides, families
do not exist in a vacuum either. The oppression of women can manifest
itself within the family as incest, for example. Maybe "mum's chilly
control" stems from, say, frustration at being a housewife, because she was
sexually harassed out of employment. Maybe dad's dad walked out one day.
Who knows?
>
> Whether you like or not, most scratched wrists
> belong to 15-25 year old females - hence the 'girlish'.
> Most scratched wrists have the purpose of drawing
> attention rather than of self-destruction - hence
> the 'hysterical'. Both are quite respectable English
> words conveying a clear meaning to most readers.
>
I know what hysteria means today, but its origins are interesting. To my
knowledge, it was used to attribute the discontent of Victorian women to
their internal reproductive organs, rather than a rigid, sexually oppressive
society. I suspected that your post was doing the same; that girls have an
innate tendency to scratch their wrists in an attempt to relieve pain. I
was already aware that most of the 2 million self-mutilators in this country
are young women. It's possible that no cultural factors are involved, but I
find that hard to believe.
> And no, there's nothing recent about anorexia nervosa.
> It was already the great focus of our attention when,
> in 1961, I was appointed Senior Registrar to the London
> Child Guidance Training Centre - four decades ago.
> Those were the days when Gina & Sophia ruled the camera
> lenses.
Of course, anorexia nervosa did not spontaneously spring into existence in
the 1980s or so. However, unless every statistic I've ever heard is wrong,
the incidence of the disease among young women has increased in the past
decade, when women like Gwyneth rule the large screen. By the way, I heard
yesterday that the number of young women of about high-school-graduate age
who receive breast implants has gone up 57% in the last two years. I doubt
that the cultural emphasis on women's appearance-on the mutually
contradictory ideal of large breasts and extreme thinness-have nothing to do
with the readiness of women to harm their own bodies, whether through
starvation or undergoing medically unnecessary surgery.
As for the poisons of society, I know that's pretty vague, but I think they
are quite prominent in Salinger's work, particularly in Catcher and Franny
and Zooey. Does society have nothing to do with Holden being "frightened,
confused, and even sickened by human behavior"? Holden partially cripples
his hand for life when his brother-not just any old beloved brother, but one
of the nicest, gentlest, and unphoniest people he knows-leaves the world;
Franny breaks down physically, with the slightest hint of masochistic
deliberation (as Zooey hints) partly in response to a world full of
Professor Tuppers. As for Seymour, his parents are kooky, but can hardly be
accused of physically or emotionally abusing their children; mum's control
in Franny and Zooey is far from "chilly." The family alone doesn't seem to
impel the Glasses or Caulfields to inflict violence on themselves.
Cheryl
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