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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (45477)	7/13/1999 10:29:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Anyone who is that deeply effected by something written on a computer screen should look inward for there solutions, instead of outward. You can choose to be effected by someones words or you can not. But it's your choice. If someone says something hurtful toward me I can accept it as valid, choose to ignore it, or respond. But it's my choice. You raise some points that will make for a good discussion if we can get some of the right people involved in it. Your thesis is, as I understand it (feel free to restate it; I don't mean to be unfair to you by inadvertently misstating it): no written statement should affect anybody unless they voluntarily choose to let it do so. (I expanded it beyond the internet to any written statement because I assume you would make the same argument for something written in a magazine or book.) I disagree. Although I have serious problems with the radical feminist movement, one area where I think they may have a point is their claim that pornography has a direct and negative effect both on the reader and on women generally. That men (usually) who read pornography are affected by it, even if they don't choose to be, to diminish the worth of women, and that that carries over into other parts of their lives, leading to diminished respect and rights for women who had no part in the pornography. That's badly put, but others here will surely step in and clarify the point, and perhaps point us to some sites that present the theory beter (Joan, you there??) Then take a Jew who lived through the hell of concentration camps. Do you seriously believe that they can choose not to be affected if they read virulent neo-Nazi propaganda which denies the Holocaust, derides those who believe in it as deluded, and advocates the destruction of the Jewish people by force? (Recall that your thesis is NOT that they can refuse to read such stuff, but that they can read it and choose to be unaffected.) If a woman who has been beaten and brutalized by her husband for years finally escapes to a shelter, but he finds out where she is and sends her a letter (or, to take your scenario, an internet message) saying that he knows where she is, that she will be sorry for running away from him, that she cannot escape from him forever, that he is going to come after her and she will wish for him to kill her quickly because what she will suffer at his hands will be far worse than a simple, painless death, do you seriously expect her to be able to choose to be unaffected by this? (Not a fictional scenario; actually happened to a client of mine.) How about a black person who is derided on line or elsewhere by being called monkey, or boy, or ni#$%r, etc. Or a retarded person who is teased about their retardation. Consider a girl who has just been raped and whose attacker posts a victory message on the net. Do you really think these people can choose to be unaffected by these words? I think not. I think speech affects people. It can affect them positively or negatively. They can try to control the way they react. But no person can do that perfectly, particularly people who have been subjected to trauma. To claim so is to deny the power we have to hurt or to heal people. What do people here think?