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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Mary Ann Beavis, IUS" <mary@CONED.UWINNIPEG.CA>
Organization: The University of Winnipeg
To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:59:35 CDT
Subject: Re: was Re: And the course winds up...
> Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:11:41 -0500
> Reply-to: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature"
> <FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
> From: Neil Rest <NeilRest@TEZCAT.COM>
> Subject: Re: was Re: And the course winds up...
> To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
> Laura Wigod <laura@OAKRIDGE.COM> answered me:
> >>> Liposuction is not "pretty much the same thing" as clitoridectomy. The
> >>> assertion is false. Your statement suggests that you deliberately amplify
> >>> the emotional preconceptions which cloud your perceptions, rather than try
> >>> to recognize them.
> >>
> >Consider, however, that you
> >>could have made that simple statement to contradict Laura's without the
> >>loaded words that you chose. If I were Laura, I'd be wounded. I'd read
> >>them as a personal attack. I want to make a plea that we try to discuss,
> >>disagree and even argue with each other without trying to take it out of
> >>each other's hides.
> >>
> >>-nalo
> >
> >Thank you, Nalo. Neil's response was so startlingly (is there such a
> >word?) aggressive that I had chosen not to respond at all.
>
> Your original statements (I am not saying *you*; I said, very narrowly and
> specificly, "your statements") were so wrong that they took my breath away.
>
> >It was far too
> >tempting for me to respond to his attack in my own attack mode. And I
> >hoped that my declining to get seduced into such an exchange would help
> >serve as a model for self-restraint, something I Most Definitely Do Not
> >excel at, in real life! (And I won't even TOUCH on how mysogynistic his
> >"emotional preconceptions which cloud your perceptions" comment was!
> >Egads! What year is this?!?! What planet am I on?!?!)
>
> Did I say that your statements were wrong "because you are a woman"? No.
> Did I say your statements were wrong in a way which men's statements
> aren't? No. Did I associate my opinion of your accuracy with your gender
> in any way? No.
>
> > However, as to
> >your assertion that.....
> >
> >>Female genital infibulation is societally
> >>enforced mutilation; liposuction is not.
> >
> >.....well to _that_ I take exception! :-) (naturally)
> >
> >How is it that neither of you can accept liposuction or breast enlargement
> >or facelifts as societally enforced?
>
> Dreadful as the pressures may be, liposuction is not indispensable for
> adult status.
>
> 'Successful' liposuction doesn't leave the patient crippled and maimed.
>
> They *are* different. (General semanticioans forgive me.)
>
> <rant with which I mostly agree snipped>
>
> >I still stand by my claim that both the little African girl having her
> >genitals scraped off and sewn up and the woman in Beverly Hills going in
> >for a little tuck are still victims of the same bullshit - society telling
> >women how their bodies should conform. Period. And that's _with_ my
> >emotional preconceptions recognized, Neil!
>
> There are wide, major similarities in the social pressures, and, even more
> importantly, in the male emotions behind the social pressures.
> Liposuction and clitoridectomy are still not the same.
>
>
> Neil
>
Laura did not say that liposuction and clitoridectomy are
"the same"--her original statement was that they are "pretty much the
same thing," which seems to me to be "pretty much" synonymous with
Neil's concession that there are "wide, major similarities in the
social pressures" behind the two practices. Am I right?
Mary Ann
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