"Frances Bolton (PHI)" wrote:
> Well, I guess I don't see Showalter as minimizing or disrepecting the very
> real suffering of CFS. I think she treats CFS with much more respect
> and seriousness than she does Satanic Ritual Abuse or alien abductions.
The crime -- and it seems to me a crime -- exists in putting in the same book, as manifestations of the same organizing principle -- alien abductions etc with either CFS or Gulf War Syndrome. That crime will remain even if, eventually, she will be proved partly right, for it with immense intellectual sloppiness combines real mass illusions with issues that are clearly subject to debate among rational women and men. Her refusal to meet in public debate an Associate Professor of History at a respectable institution, with a proved scholarly record, perhaps reveals that Showalter herself recognizes the flabbiness of her initial premises.
She can't be proved wholly right, period, because she disables her argument by grounding it in an eroneous, shall we say hysterical, pschological theory. And this also means that her critique of alien abductions is irrelevant, and that if we had to base our rejection of that nonsense strictly on Showalter's arguments we would have rather weak grounds for our mockery of Roswell, etc.
"Psychology" as an independent causal factor just doesn't cut it. Frances's inability or refusal to even try to understand Doyle's exploratory discussions of neuroscience takes on more sinister implications in the light of this attack on Mary Schweitzer. She is one of those humanists who [hysterically?] believes in the mumbo jumbo that leads to dividing humanity into two parts, one of which is superior to the other.
Carrol